This is not a specific problem caused by Less Wrong users, but I doubt I am the only one to experience it. I found Less Wrong as a young teenager searching for ways to improve herself and understand the world. This site was immensely helpful but it was also immensely isolating. I live in the bible belt, and I have always had few people to talk to. Also due to my age and inexperience there were few contributions I could make to the Less Wrong community. The intelligent level of discussion here contrasted sharply with my school and my friends and I began spending far too much time wanting connections I could not yet have. This contributed to a state of depression I was unable to think my way out of.

Sad as it made me, I actually had to ignore the Less Wrong community for a while so I could get back into equilibrium. I am older now, and on my way to college so I plan to get involved in this community again.

A more concrete example: I attempted to talk to my mother, a doctor, about humans and immortality. She took it as an insinuation that doctors and scientists weren't currently working hard enough and grew very angry.

Speaking from experience: don't kneejerk too hard. It's all too easy to react against everything at all implicitly associated with a religion or philosophy that you now reject the truth-claims of and distort parts of your personality or day to day life or emotions or symbolic thought that have nothing to do with what you have rejected.

Don't forget that reversed stupidity is not intelligence; a belief doesn't become wrong simply because it's widely held by Catholics.

Similarly, there's no need to be scared of responding positively to art or other ideas because they originated from a religious perspective; if atheism required us to do that, it would be almost as bleak a worldview as it's accused of being. Adeste Fideles doesn't stop being a beautiful song when you realize its symbols don't have referents. I think of the Christian mythology as one of my primary fantasy influences—like The Lord of the Rings, Discworld, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant or Doctor Who—so, if I find myself reacting emotionally to a Christian meme, I don't have to worry that I'm having a conversion experience (or that God exists and is sneakily trying to win me over!): it's perfectly normal, and lawful, for works of fiction to have emotional impact.

Well, here at LessWrong, we follow a thirty-something bearded Jewish guy who, along with a small group of disciples, has performed seemingly impossible deeds, preaches in parables, plans to rise from the dead and bring with him as many of us as he can, defeat evil, and create a paradise where we can all live happily forever.

So yeah, getting away from Catholic habits of thought may be tough. With work, you'll get there though...

You are allowed to pick the good pieces and ignore the bad pieces, instead of buying or rejecting the whole package.

This is known as cafeteria Catholicism. (I had only heard that used as an insult, but apparently there are people who self-identify as such.)

What others already said: Don't try to reverse stupidity by avoiding everything conected to Catholicism. You are allowed to pick the good pieces and ignore the bad pieces, instead of buying or rejecting the whole package. Catholics also took some good parts from other traditions; which by the way means you don't even have to credit them for inventing the good pieces you decide to take.

If you talk with other religious people, they will probably try the following trick on you: Give you a huge book saying that it actually answers all your questions, and that you should at least read this one book and consider it seriously before you abandon religion completely. Of course if you read the whole book and it doesn't convince you, they will give you another huge book. And another. And another. The whole strategy is to surround you by religion memes (even more strongly than most religious people are), hoping that sooner or later something will "trigger" your religious feelings. And no matter how many books you read, if at some moment you refuse to read yet another book, you will be accused of leaving the religion only because of your ignorance and stubbornness, because this one specific book certainly did contain all answers to your questions and perfectly convincing counterarguments to your arguments, you just refused to even look at it. This game you cannot win: there is no "I have honestly considered all your arguments and found them unconvincing" exit node; the only options given to you are either to give up, or to do something that will allow your opponents to blame you of being willfully ignorant. (So you might as well do the "ignorant" thing now, and save yourself a lot of time.)

Don't try to convince other people, at least not during the first months after deconversion. First, you need to sort out things for yourself (you don't have a convincing success story yet). Second, by the law of reciprocation, if the other people were willing to listen to your explanations, this in turn gives them the moral right to give you a huge book of religious arguments and ask you to read it, which leads to the game described above.

Basicly, realize that you have a right to spend most of your time without thinking about Catholicism, either positively or negatively. That is what most atheists really do. If you were born on another planet, where religion wasn't invented, you wouldn't spend your time arguing against religion. Instead, you would just do what you want to do. So do it now.

Last week, after a lot of thought and help from LessWrong, I finally stopped believing in god and dropped my last remnants of Catholicism. It is turned out to be a huge relief, though coping with some of the consequences and realizations that come with atheism has been a little difficult.

Do any of you have any tips you noticed about yourself or others after just leaving religion? I've noticed a few small habits I need to get rid of, but I am worried I'm missing larger, more important ones.

Are there any particular posts I should skip ahead and read? I am currently at the beginning of reductionism. Are their any beliefs you've noticed ex-catholics holding that they don't realize are obviously part of their religion? I do not have any one immediately around me I can ask, so I am very grateful for any input. Thank you!

Hi Erin, I'm Adele! It's good to see young rationalists here. I think you might really like Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Daniel Kahneman is a well-known psychologist, and winner of the 2002 Nobel prize in Economics. In this book, he goes through different thinking processes that humans often use, and how they are often wrong. It is not very technical, and is a pretty easy read IMO. It might also help with some of the cognitive science stuff in the sequences.

It's okay to not understand Bayes' theorem for now, knowing the math doesn't really make you that much better at being rational - there are easier things to do with larger gains. If you want to get the programming references, it might be worth learning to program. There are some online courses which make it relatively easy to get started. It's also a good skill to have for when you are looking for employment.

One thing that has helped me a lot in being more rational is having friends who can point out when I am being irrational. Another good place to look at (and go if you can) is CFAR, whose point is basically to help you get better at being rational.

Welcome, Erin! As Adele said, even if math is not your passion, you can still learn a lot about your own thinking from what Eliezer and others wrote. For a look back by one notable LWer, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/13/five-years-and-one-week-of-less-wrong/ . Be sure to check out Scott's other blog entries, they are almost universally eloquently written, well-researched, charitable, insightful and thought-provoking.

I'll throw in a couple more explanations as well. (It's hard to know in advance which one might make the idea click neatly into place!)