Posting for the first time because I feel I could maybe use some help. [And yes, I know of the Welcome Thread, but I think the Open Thread gets more attention so I’m posting first here. Maybe later I’ll post in the Welcome Thread.]
I come from a very religious family and community, but I’m a closet atheist. (More accurately, I’d label myself agnostic leaning atheist with regard to the existence of one or more intelligent world-designer(s), but I give almost no credence to any religious claims beyond that. In any case, for simplicity I’m just going to refer to myself here as an atheist.)
I have only a single very close friend who knows of my atheism. 5 or 6 other people know I disagree with all the standard religious arguments, but they think that I’ve opted for “blind faith” and I’m still religious. Most of my family and friends, however, although they know that I’m unusually open-minded and intellectual for my close-minded religious community (and they look at me a bit strangely for that), still think that I’m fully religious.
A bit of background: I started doubting in high school, but it didn’t turn into a full-fledged crisis of faith until I was about 18 or 19. Eventually a religious mentor pointed me to Pascal’s Wager, and I leaned on that for many years. I got married to a wonderful religious girl and went on to study advanced religious studies. Shortly before the birth of my third child, however, I finally took another critical look at Pascal’s Wager. I read numerous scholarly works and articles, went through a bunch of articles on the internet (including several from LessWrong), and did a lot of heavy thinking. In the end I decided that I can’t rely any longer on the Wager. For the next few months I forced myself to nonetheless believe by pure force of will (whether this was Belief in Belief or real belief is a different question), but eventually the cognitive dissonance grew too great and I gave up.
The problem is that I can’t tell anyone. My wife would probably decide to follow me—but there’s a chance she might not, and I love her way too much to risk losing her. Even if she did follow me it would cause her a tremendous amount of mental anguish which I really don’t want to impose on her. She’d also likely not be able to keep that kind of secret from her friends and family for too long, and the pain of trying to keeping it secret would likely be even worse for her than it is for me. And if it did get out, then we’d risk losing virtually all of our (close-knit, wonderful, highly supportive) families and friends. And that’s besides the terrible emotional effects that a revelation of this sort would have on my parents, kids, siblings, and friends.
I do have a few vague tentative plans for eventually being able to maneuver myself into a position where I can reveal my beliefs without too much of a risk, but that’s only for the long term. For the short term I’m stuck with only a single friend who knows my true position.
The problem is that it’s so hard! I hate keeping secrets from my wife. I hate having to bottle up my intellectual arguments (particularly because I’m the type whose favorite activity is a good intellectual discussion with friends). I hate having to fake prayers and fake interest in my friends’ and family’s religious discussions. But what am I to do? I’m stuck with no alternatives.
So what do I want from you, fellow readers of LessWrong? I don’t know. Emotional support? Advice? Maybe a link to an organization I could contact (secretly, of course) or to some relevant online resources? Whatever you can think of, I guess. Or maybe I’m just venting my emotions.
ETA: Maybe I should be a bit more specific. My situation closely parallels this. I do not want to end up like that!
Paul Graham wrote an article called What You Can’t Say that seems somewhat relevant to your position, and in particular engages with the instrumental rationality of epistemic rationality. I bring that one up specifically because his conclusion is mostly “figure out what you can’t say, and then don’t say it.” But he’s also a startup guy, and is well aware of the exception that many good startup ideas seem unacceptable, because if they were acceptable ideas they’d already be mature industries. So many heresies are not worth endorsing publicly, even if you privately believe them, but some heresies are (mainly, if you expect significant instrumental gains from doing so).
I grew up in a Christian household and realized in my early teens that I was a gay atheist; I put off telling people for a long time and I’m not sure how much I got from doing so. (Both of my parents were understanding.) Most of my friends were from school anyway, and it was easy to just stop going to church when I left town for college, and then go when I’m visiting my parents out of family solidarity.
My suspicion is that your wife would prefer knowing sooner rather than later. I also predict that it is not going to get easier to tell her or your children as time goes on—if anything, as your children age and absorb more and more religious memes and norms, the more your public deconversion would affect them.
I think that your edit clarified things for me substantially. I read the entire article that you linked. I regret my earlier post for reasons that you will hopefully see.
I have a relevant anecdote about a simpler situation. I was with two friends. The One thought that it would be preferable for there to be less and/or simpler technology in the world, and the Other thought that the opposite was true. The One believed that technology causes people to live meaningless lives, and the Other conceded that he believed this to be true but also believed that technology has so many other benefits that this is acceptable. The One would always cite examples of how technology was used for entertainment, and the Other, examples of how technology was used for work. I stepped in and pointed out the patterns in their respective examples. I said that there were times when I had wasted time by using technology. I pointed out that if a person were like the One, and thus felt that they were leading a less meaningful life by the use of technology, then they should stop. It would be harmful were I to prescribe that a person like the One indiscriminately use technology. I then said that, through technology, I was able to meet people similar to me, people whom I would be far less likely to meet in physical life, and with whom I could hold conversations that I could not hold in physical life. In this way, my life had been made more meaningful by technology. And so it would be harmful for someone to prescribe that I indiscriminately do not use technology.
I definitely did not consider this enough in my original response to you, and I apologize. Just like it is not a matter of less technology vs. more technology, it is not necessarily a matter of ‘Keep your old life,’ vs. ‘Start a new life.’ Honestly, your ‘vague tentative plans’ sound like potential third alternatives. I would say keep thinking about those, and also feel good for thinking of and about them. I’d love to hear about them, however vague and tentative. Vaniver touched on this. I would say that he found a third alternative in his own life. I’m bisexual; in physical life, I’m selective about whom I tell, and I don’t feel outraged that this is pragmatic or feel inauthentic for doing it. Others would feel like they were in a prison of their own making. I picked the best alternative that I could live with.
There are people who feel like their skin is on wrong when they use technology that they consider undesirably advanced. I love technology. The One thought that people who used technology were suffering from a sense of meaninglessness, and they were simply unaware of this, or actively ignoring it. This was not true for me: Technology makes my life more meaningful. For either of us to act otherwise would be for us to act against our preferences. Likewise, it may have been more important for Shulem to act authentically than it was for him to keep his social relationships. Maryles had a sneaking suspicion that this is false. Yet, Shulem may really be more lonely and really not regret it.
People value other things besides happiness. The One saw that some people were happy playing mobile games all of the time, their reward centers firing away, but didn’t think that it was worth it because their happiness was meaningless. The One valued meaning more than entertainment, and perhaps even more than happiness in general. People forget this easily. I see this in the article when Maryles says:
Not that I have a right to tell people how to live their lives. I just wish that he would have made choices that would have kept his family intact, and given him a better more meaningful life. Shulem says that he has no regrets. And yet I wonder if he has had similar thoughts? So I am sad for Shulem who still seems to live a very lonely life. I am sad for his children who lost a father they once loved. And yet I am hopeful that those with similar leanings that read his book will realize that the kind of radical change Shulem Deen made- even as he felt it was the right one based on being true to oneself -may not be the best solution for individual happiness.
He wishes that Shulem had made decisions to give himself a more meaningful life. He wishes that Shulem had made decisions to give himself a happier life. He wishes that Shulem had made decisions to give himself a less lonely life. He thinks that, ultimately, Shulem has made decisions to give himself a more authentic life at the price of forgoing these other possibilities. About this, he may be right. Another possibility is that there was no more preferable alternative. Maryles suggests otherwise: He seems to think either that authenticity, meaning, community, and happiness are all the same; or that all are reducible to one; or that all necessarily follow from one. I cannot glean which he believes from context. It is entirely possible that Shulem feels that his life is less happy, less meaningful, more lonely, and more authentic, and that he prefers all and regrets none of this. On the other hand, you, it seems, would not prefer this and would regret this, because you are not typical, as said above. I keep the complexity of value in mind when evaluating potential third alternatives.
Lastly, because things are often about that which they explicitly are not, I feel obliged to touch on this:
I was sad not so much about his erroneous (in my view) conclusions about God and Judaism. Although I am in no way minimizing the importance of that—this post isn’t about that.
If this is true, then ‘The Lonely Man of No Faith’ is a bad title, in the sense that it isn’t representative of the article’s implication. (It does, however, make for excellent link bait.) No one is thinking, “Surely his lack of faith is merely a coincidence. There must be other reasons that this man is lonely.” Maryles has to say that the post is not about ‘that’ precisely because everyone has assumed that it’s about that.
The general implication is that the so-called truth-seekers are worse off even though the opposite should be true. On this, I will say that any time that I have seen someone become less satisfied with their life by reading about the sorts of things that are posted here, it’s because they have experienced a failure of imagination, or their new beliefs have not fully propagated. The failure modes that I’ve seen the most are:
Reductionism implies existential nihilism. (“Magical processes are really natural processes of such complexity that I mistook them for magical processes? I live for nothing!”)
Determinism implies fatalism. (“Things can only go one way, therefore, I should not make decisions.”)
Representing truth values with probabilities rather than with Boolean values implies epistemological nihilism. (“I can’t know things for sure, so I should stop trying to know things.”)
You’ve given no indication that you believe any of these things, but I had to address that because of the article’s implication, and you or others very well may believe these things, explicitly or implicitly, without indication. You identify as an open-minded person; you seem to take pride in it. As such, you may not really believe that there is no God; rather, you might believe that you ought to believe that there is no God, because perhaps that is what you believe open-minded people do, and you want to do what open-minded people do. (I had this very problem. Belief in belief goes both ways!) Saying that one atheist is less happy because he has been separated from his loved ones is very different from saying that atheists are universally dissatisfied because theism is essentially preferable. Though the author attempts to make that distinction, I think that he fails.
I’m also not saying that I deductively concluded that truth-seeking is preferable to ignorance. I inductively concluded it. Truth-seeking could have been horrible: It turns out it generally isn’t.
The general implication is that the so-called truth-seekers are worse off even though the opposite should be true.
The opposite should be true for a rational agent, but humans aren’t rational agents, and may or may not benefit from false beliefs. There is some evidence that religion could be beneficial for humans while being completely and utterly false:
Of course, this is not “checkmate, atheists”, and doesn’t mean we should all convert to Christianity. There are ways to mitigate the negative impact of false beliefs while preserving the benefits of letting the wiring of the brain do what it wants to do. Unitarian Universalists from the religious side, and Raemon’s Solstice from the atheist side are trying to approach this nice zone with the amount of epistemological symbolism and rituals optimal for real humans, until we found a way to rewire everyone. But in general, unless you value truth for its own sake, you may be better off in life with certain false beliefs.
Good point, maxikov. I agree that instrumental rationality > epistemic rationality once you have enough epistemic rationality to understand why and not have it backfire and inadvertently make you less rational in both senses. As I said before, life is always lived in practice.
Thanks, Torello. Like many good things, they’re really short and sweet summaries of things that Eliezer and others have been saying for years. The list is by no means exhaustive. I’m not very far into the Sequences, and this is just what I’ve pieced together, so someone else would probably be able to point you to relevant LW posts. I know far less than I appear to know.
I haven’t read it, but my guess is that Gary Drescher’s Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics would be what you’re looking for. I know for a fact that it explains why no absolute morality != moral relativism or moral nihilism, and why determinism != fatalism. As for the second, from what I understand, reductionism is the key to solving most of our Old Hard Unsolved Problems, so he’ll talk about that, but I don’t know if he’ll talk about people weirdly losing all hope when they see that reductionism is the way to go. I don’t know about the fourth item, but I don’t see Drescher successfully avoiding it. The fifth item in the list probably did not merit discussion in Drescher’s book.
I don’t think it merits its own post, even in discussion. It’s not really novel here, except perhaps in presentation.
I have never been in a situation similar to yours, so my advice may be wrong, but here it is anyway.
When people change their opinion, they sometimes go from one extreme to the opposite extreme, as if to make sure they would not drift back to their old position. But there is no need for sudden large changes. Unlike religious people, atheists do not have a duty to proselytize everyone to their non-belief. To put it bluntly, you are allowed to lie and deceive, if it is necessary for your survival. I do not support lying in general, because it has its cost, but sometimes telling the truth (at the wrong moment) has a much greater cost. The cost of lying is weakening the relationship with people you lie to. So I think you should try to be open with your wife (but be careful about your coming out), but lying to everyone else is an option.
When explaining how you feel, focus on the positive parts, not the negative parts. Rejecting religion is the negative part. It is not your terminal value to be non-religious. You probably still like some aspects of the religious culture; and that’s okay. (Atheists are free to celebrate Christmas, if they choose to.) It’s just that your positive values are understanding the world, being honest, etc. and religion happens to be incompatible with that. You are throwing religion away because the alternative would be throwing your curiosity or sanity away. If you are going to explain to someone the negative part, you should explain the positive part first (without even mentioning religion at the beginning). Only when they value the positive part, you should show them the conflict; then they may empathise.
Specifically, I think you should show your wife all the cool things you are interested in, starting with the noncontroversial ones. She does not have to like them all; different people have different preferences; but you may find something that is interesting for both of you. Then you have an enjoyable topic to talk about which is unconnected to religion. The more such topics you have, and the more time you spend debating them, the less time you spend debating religion, and the less role the religion plays at keeping you together. Then the impact of abandoning religion will be smaller. Just start with the simple stuff; do not go into “adversarial intellectual debate mode” you are probably using with your friends sometimes. Instead, be a guide in an intellectual adventure. For example, find some noncontroversial TED talks videos (not about religion, politics, evolution, global warming, or whichever topics are controversial in your religious community) and watch them together (maybe even with your children). Be the one who brings positive value, not the one who causes conflict.
You should be strategic about your social circle. I do not know the people around you, but I have read stories where people lost their whole religious community after coming out. You may have a few loyal friends who will stay with you regardless, but even those friends may be under pressure from their friends and families. You prepare strategically for this by creating new friends in advance. Preferably ones that your wife will like too. Every new friend who does not share your religion, is a friend who will not abandon you when you come out. To some degree, friendship is a question of spending time together, and having experiences in common. Essentially, you should manage your time to spend more time with people outside your religious community. (I hope they are available.) Again, bringing new nice people as friends is a positive step. Finding new interesting activities you and your wife could enjoy together, outside of your religious community, is also a positive step. You could take a family vacation outside of your community, with the new friends.
Shortly, build new bridges before you burn down the old ones. Treat everything related to your religious community as something you may lose, as something that may be used to blackmail you in the future, so do not invest in those things. Plan to minimize possible damage in the future.
Also, if you want your wife to support you, you also have to support her. Support her in all her dreams, help her explore the world. Be a team together. Make it obvious you would support her even where your religious community wouldn’t.
Specifically, I think you should show your wife all the cool things you are interested in, starting with the noncontroversial ones.
Assuming that you don’t already do this, doing this signals “I am trying to convince you of something which I don’t want to talk about”. People notice when you act in ways that you haven’t before.
(I take it “follow me” means “stay married to me despite the overt religious difference” rather than “deconvert along with me”.)
Keeping secrets from your wife seems like a really bad idea. Are there ways for you to test the waters a little? (Admit to having serious doubts about your religion, maybe?) Perhaps there’s something you can do along those lines that will both (1) give you some indication of what you can tell her without hurting her / making her file for leave you / … and (2) prepare her mind so that when you tell her more it isn’t such a shock.
My situation somewhat parallels yours—formerly quite seriously religious, now very definitely (and openly) atheist, married to someone who is still seriously and actively religious. But my guess, from how you describe the situation, is that your family and friends are likely to be more bothered by irreligion than mine. (In particular, both I and my wife have plenty of friends and family who are not religious.) So I can tell you that it’s all worked out OK for me so far, but I wouldn’t advise you to take that as very strong evidence that openness about your (ir)religious opinions would work out well for you.
Even so, my guess is that it wouldn’t be as terrible as you think it would. But, again, I don’t think there’s any reason for you to trust my guesses.
Maybe you’ll lie for the whole rest of your life. Maybe you will lie until your kids are out of the house. Maybe you’ll lie for another few weeks or years and then decide the truth is important enough to you that Shulem’s story no longer seems worse to you than living with the lie.
People lie all the time, and I think it would be foolish to try to craft a life in which you never lie, or in which you feel horribly guilty about lying. Maybe there is some society in which it makes sense not to lie for everybody, but maybe there isn’t, either. Certainly a society such as your own is NOT that society. Your society enforces an appearance of conformity of agreement on certain matters of “fact” which are not obviously matters of fact at all. For you to fall foul of this enforcement is a purely voluntary action on your part. I suppose if there were a magical creature who could read your mind and who would punish you for lying, one might make the case that your best bet would be to tell the truth and take the societal consequences which are less severe than the consequences imposed by the magical creature. In some sense, this is analogous to choosing to one-box in the Newcomb’s box problem: rationality means winning. For you to take societal consequences for telling the truth when the truth you are telling is that there is no magical creature reading your mind and enforcing rules about what it must contain, well, that is irrational to the extent that it involves making a choice to lose.
To the extent I can imagine being in your situation, my main concern would be getting my kids out. In my own personal lying, I never lie to my kids except if I think it is for their own good, not mine. Of course, you obviously love your Hasidic life so much that you mgiht believe that lying to your kids to keep them in theirs is for their own good, and far be it from me to tell you you would be wrong. I am very aware that for me, an intelligent physicist engineer, the “cost” of false belief in the supernatural is much higher than it is for the clerk in my department who lives her entire life at her Jehovah’s Witness church. She witnessed an atheist discussion between myself and someone else once and sent me fairly naive reasons she should stay in her belief, and I responded, and I meant it, that she should believe if that is what she needed to make her life work.
Honestly, I think your real difference from your peers is not that you found the reasons not to believe, but that you couldn’t convince yourself to ignore them! For myself, I give you great credit for being like that, which is small consolation I imagine for risking the loss of your family and your life. I was lucky to come from a family which was already fairly liberal (compared to hasidism anyway) about religion and in which about half of them in my parents’ generation leaned towards atheism anyway. I have the luxury of living in a society which barely has the energy to even complain about my atheism, in which my atheism is as vibrant and powerful as their religiosity. If I lived in a society that punished atheism, I would lie about it. I would go only as far as I could go publicly without risking the things I found important. My own version of one-boxing: I do NOT sacrifice myself for abstract beliefs.
Ironically, I will close by suggesting you have faith. Don’t be more publicly atheistic now than you can. Chances are if you hide it now that you may find over the coming years your trade-off point moves towards more exposure, more openness. Enjoy your life: we ALL live in medieval mind-controlling societies, the differences are matters of degrees rather than matters of kind. Enjoy the one you are in and make a difference on the margin. In real life, we are not truth-seeking machines, we are life-seeking machines. Our brains evolved to serve our lives, to invert that, and have a life which serves your brain is hardly required, especially once you understand that magical mind-reading controlling creatures probably do not exist.
Hey there, Parmenides. I am totally cool with you venting at me.
And if it did get out, then we’d risk losing virtually all of our (close-knit, wonderful, highly supportive) families and friends.
I take this especially seriously. Leaving the tribe is hard, especially when it has tangible benefits and costs. I think this is the biggest thing that the rationalist community has yet to fully address insofar as it seeks to compete with other communities in traditional domains, but certainly not for lack of awareness. I think I’ll link this video I found of William and Divia Eden’s wedding ceremony.
I kind of feel like a creep for doing that, but this is a great example of how rationalists are making their own communities and institutions and rituals. Eliezer makes a bunch of science jokes and implicitly jabs traditional everything, as he is wont to do; the spouses agree that they totally love each other and are in it for as long as they both think they should be and that both of those things are cool; they keep the usual wedding trappings because wedding trappings are fun, and fun is cool; they change their last name to Eden because Eden is a cool last name; and there’s a general feeling in the air that being cool about most stuff when it’s cool to do so is generally the coolest way to go. Basically they do everything possible to avoid the kind of shitty problem that you’re in now. (That is not to say that you could have avoided it through some superior exercise of personal integrity.)
You might also dig these Skepticon panels on how rationalists deal with relationships and death. I highly recommend the one on relationships because there’s an atheist on the panel who to my knowledge is a former fundamentalist Christian and is in a relationship with a woman whose entire family are devout Christians.
I say all of this because you can find a new community or have a hand in making a new one. LessWrong is one such community. I have said before that most LessWrongians are ‘super smart and super ethical.’ They make good company. ChristianKI says something important as well:
Without knowing the social environment in which you are operating it’s hard to tell, but are you really sure you would lose all your friends.
You might be overestimating the probability that your tribe will abandon you. After all, that wouldn’t be a very Christian thing to do, would it?
(More accurately, I’d label myself agnostic leaning atheist with regard to the existence of one or more intelligent world-designer(s), but I give almost no credence to any religious claims beyond that. In any case, for simplicity I’m just going to refer to myself here as an atheist.)
I used to say something really similar to this. I would say, “Nominally, I’m agnostic, but practically, I’m atheist.” Then I thought about other, less important beliefs in which I could make a distinction between ‘the nominal and the practical.’ Say a person with whom I live leaves the house and goes to the store, and it has been some time, and another person asks where they are. Usually, I say, simply, “He is at the store.” But this is not necessarily true. It is entirely possible that on the way to the store he was diverted from his usual route and out of kindness stopped to help a troubled motorist, and so he is nowhere near the store; or that the store has become the site of a hostage situation, and so no one may enter the store; or that the other has already, as we speak, been killed in a traffic accident, and so he may never enter a store again; etc. Yet, I do not tell the other resident, “Nominally, I am agnostic as to the whereabouts of our fellow resident, but practically, he is at the store.” My veiled belief is that he is at the store, so this is how I act. It is undesirable to act contrary to this belief because the consequences are obvious and completely negative. It is easier with religious beliefs because the consequences are not as obvious and short-term positive (but long-term negative). Nominal beliefs are useless in life because life is always lived in practice. All to say, I have learned here that very little is certain and that that is far less important than one would initially think. Almost certainty is more than enough, and you and everyone else rely on that fact everyday.
My wife would probably decide to follow me—but there’s a chance she might not, and I love her way too much to risk losing her.
I think it’s funny (funny-strange, not funny-haha) that you say that you’re not willing to risk losing her, but you go on for another paragraph after this about other reasons that you should not do this even if you are willing to risk losing her. It sounds to me like you, in fact, are willing to risk it, and rightly so in my opinion, and like that fact scares the shit out of you, and rightly so in my opinion.
Even if she did follow me it would cause her a tremendous amount of mental anguish which I really don’t want to impose on her.
Realistically consider your ability to be exactly what is desirable to your wife for the rest of your life. Ask yourself if you think you can really avoid resenting her (and you do not have to be evil or lacking in character to be resentful) for the rest of your life. Never have I successfully willed myself to meet the expectations of others.
And that’s besides the terrible emotional effects that a revelation of this sort would have on my parents, kids, siblings, and friends.
I really don’t see how momentary ‘grief’ from the loss of a tribe member, even a community’s worth, is worse than you feeling what you currently feel for a lifetime. And if you don’t tell the kids, then you could perpetuate the cycle.
Talking to you is a moral hazard for me. I want to make more evangelizing atheists. I tried to be a counterpoint to your gloom more than an impartial advisor, and hopefully that resulted in a more thorough overview of the risks and payoffs of this decision. I say this because I see a lot of talk of the risks of coming out of the closet, but not a lot of talk about the payoffs, and when you do talk about them, you bury them in implications about risks. You’re definitely continuing in a motivated fashion. Like everyone else, you also have an overwhelming compulsion to maintain the status quo.
You don’t say how old your children are. Is the timing on this revelation to your wife, if it occurs, likely to affect whether they are brought up religious, or is that ship sailed now?
Like many of the others, I would advise you to tell your wife, but not necessarily others, at least until it seems more convenient to do so. But it is important that you make it clear to her that you are expressing your own position, and not attempting to convince her of it. As long as that is clear, I think there is no significant danger of losing her. Consider the one friend who already knows; if they did not abandon you over your beliefs, why would your wife do so? On the other hand coming out and openly trying to convert her to atheism is almost certainly a bad idea, and would definitely result in a significant risk of losing her.
Also, I think this situation is quite common in social groups which are strongly religious, and that while you may overestimate the harm that would be done by simply being open with everyone, many of the comments here dramatically underestimate that harm, because most of the commenters were never in such situations in the first place. And I think it is very, very wrong and harmful to suggest “well, if they would react badly, then ** them all, abandon everyone you know and join a new community.”
My wife would probably decide to follow me—but there’s a chance she might not, and I love her way too much to risk losing her.
I’m just going to focus on this, because if I were in your position it would just loom over everything.
My wife made me swear not to keep secrets from her, because of her personal history with an ex. But even if she hadn’t … that’s just too big and too relevant to your relationship. Having a secret like that damages your relationship, even apart from your own painful awareness. It just flies in the face of core values of marriage, or even friendship. It’s disrespectful to her.
You have a lot to lose. But you also have a lot to gain, if you can repair this break. Are you (ex-)Christian? If so, she should at least be able to stay married, given what the New Testament says about divorce. Being in open disagreement would feel worse, but I don’t think it would actually be worse, it would actually be a closer relationship. And as you imply, that could be temporary. Which means you’d have to listen to her attempts to bring you back into the fold, with a mind as open as you can stretch it, and go over the whole religion question all over again. An ordeal, and a steal at twice the price.
I am deeply touched by your story. I can’t imagine how hard it must be on your place, for which reason I feel I have no right to tell you anything. However, you asked for advice, so here are my 5 cents.
I think that your most urgent moral obligation is towards your children. You shouldn’t let them be raised believing in blatant falsehoods. I don’t know how old they are which obviously makes a big difference. But I would make deconverting them a priority.
I would seriously consider telling my wife. I’m almost physically incapable of keeping secrets from my wife. I know it would be killing me if I did. But then, I don’t know you, your wife or your relationship.
Make atheist friends. I don’t know where you live so it’s hard to be specific. Is there a LessWrong meetup nearby? Some other atheist community? Atheist people you know from other places: work, schools you went to?
If you want an e-mail friend, feel welcome to write me any time: top.squark@gmail.com.
I wish you the best of luck. I think I don’t speak only for myself when I say LessWrong is rooting for you.
Movements like the Brights can give you ideas for your current situation. For an online community of like-minded people (of any faith or none), I recommend Beliefnet.
Posting for the first time because I feel I could maybe use some help. [And yes, I know of the Welcome Thread, but I think the Open Thread gets more attention so I’m posting first here. Maybe later I’ll post in the Welcome Thread.]
I come from a very religious family and community, but I’m a closet atheist. (More accurately, I’d label myself agnostic leaning atheist with regard to the existence of one or more intelligent world-designer(s), but I give almost no credence to any religious claims beyond that. In any case, for simplicity I’m just going to refer to myself here as an atheist.)
I have only a single very close friend who knows of my atheism. 5 or 6 other people know I disagree with all the standard religious arguments, but they think that I’ve opted for “blind faith” and I’m still religious. Most of my family and friends, however, although they know that I’m unusually open-minded and intellectual for my close-minded religious community (and they look at me a bit strangely for that), still think that I’m fully religious.
A bit of background: I started doubting in high school, but it didn’t turn into a full-fledged crisis of faith until I was about 18 or 19. Eventually a religious mentor pointed me to Pascal’s Wager, and I leaned on that for many years. I got married to a wonderful religious girl and went on to study advanced religious studies. Shortly before the birth of my third child, however, I finally took another critical look at Pascal’s Wager. I read numerous scholarly works and articles, went through a bunch of articles on the internet (including several from LessWrong), and did a lot of heavy thinking. In the end I decided that I can’t rely any longer on the Wager. For the next few months I forced myself to nonetheless believe by pure force of will (whether this was Belief in Belief or real belief is a different question), but eventually the cognitive dissonance grew too great and I gave up.
The problem is that I can’t tell anyone. My wife would probably decide to follow me—but there’s a chance she might not, and I love her way too much to risk losing her. Even if she did follow me it would cause her a tremendous amount of mental anguish which I really don’t want to impose on her. She’d also likely not be able to keep that kind of secret from her friends and family for too long, and the pain of trying to keeping it secret would likely be even worse for her than it is for me. And if it did get out, then we’d risk losing virtually all of our (close-knit, wonderful, highly supportive) families and friends. And that’s besides the terrible emotional effects that a revelation of this sort would have on my parents, kids, siblings, and friends.
I do have a few vague tentative plans for eventually being able to maneuver myself into a position where I can reveal my beliefs without too much of a risk, but that’s only for the long term. For the short term I’m stuck with only a single friend who knows my true position.
The problem is that it’s so hard! I hate keeping secrets from my wife. I hate having to bottle up my intellectual arguments (particularly because I’m the type whose favorite activity is a good intellectual discussion with friends). I hate having to fake prayers and fake interest in my friends’ and family’s religious discussions. But what am I to do? I’m stuck with no alternatives.
So what do I want from you, fellow readers of LessWrong? I don’t know. Emotional support? Advice? Maybe a link to an organization I could contact (secretly, of course) or to some relevant online resources? Whatever you can think of, I guess. Or maybe I’m just venting my emotions.
ETA: Maybe I should be a bit more specific. My situation closely parallels this. I do not want to end up like that!
Paul Graham wrote an article called What You Can’t Say that seems somewhat relevant to your position, and in particular engages with the instrumental rationality of epistemic rationality. I bring that one up specifically because his conclusion is mostly “figure out what you can’t say, and then don’t say it.” But he’s also a startup guy, and is well aware of the exception that many good startup ideas seem unacceptable, because if they were acceptable ideas they’d already be mature industries. So many heresies are not worth endorsing publicly, even if you privately believe them, but some heresies are (mainly, if you expect significant instrumental gains from doing so).
I grew up in a Christian household and realized in my early teens that I was a gay atheist; I put off telling people for a long time and I’m not sure how much I got from doing so. (Both of my parents were understanding.) Most of my friends were from school anyway, and it was easy to just stop going to church when I left town for college, and then go when I’m visiting my parents out of family solidarity.
My suspicion is that your wife would prefer knowing sooner rather than later. I also predict that it is not going to get easier to tell her or your children as time goes on—if anything, as your children age and absorb more and more religious memes and norms, the more your public deconversion would affect them.
I think that your edit clarified things for me substantially. I read the entire article that you linked. I regret my earlier post for reasons that you will hopefully see.
I have a relevant anecdote about a simpler situation. I was with two friends. The One thought that it would be preferable for there to be less and/or simpler technology in the world, and the Other thought that the opposite was true. The One believed that technology causes people to live meaningless lives, and the Other conceded that he believed this to be true but also believed that technology has so many other benefits that this is acceptable. The One would always cite examples of how technology was used for entertainment, and the Other, examples of how technology was used for work. I stepped in and pointed out the patterns in their respective examples. I said that there were times when I had wasted time by using technology. I pointed out that if a person were like the One, and thus felt that they were leading a less meaningful life by the use of technology, then they should stop. It would be harmful were I to prescribe that a person like the One indiscriminately use technology. I then said that, through technology, I was able to meet people similar to me, people whom I would be far less likely to meet in physical life, and with whom I could hold conversations that I could not hold in physical life. In this way, my life had been made more meaningful by technology. And so it would be harmful for someone to prescribe that I indiscriminately do not use technology.
I learned three things from this event:
1) I should look for third alternatives.
I definitely did not consider this enough in my original response to you, and I apologize. Just like it is not a matter of less technology vs. more technology, it is not necessarily a matter of ‘Keep your old life,’ vs. ‘Start a new life.’ Honestly, your ‘vague tentative plans’ sound like potential third alternatives. I would say keep thinking about those, and also feel good for thinking of and about them. I’d love to hear about them, however vague and tentative. Vaniver touched on this. I would say that he found a third alternative in his own life. I’m bisexual; in physical life, I’m selective about whom I tell, and I don’t feel outraged that this is pragmatic or feel inauthentic for doing it. Others would feel like they were in a prison of their own making. I picked the best alternative that I could live with.
2) I should remember that humans are never ‘typical.’
There are people who feel like their skin is on wrong when they use technology that they consider undesirably advanced. I love technology. The One thought that people who used technology were suffering from a sense of meaninglessness, and they were simply unaware of this, or actively ignoring it. This was not true for me: Technology makes my life more meaningful. For either of us to act otherwise would be for us to act against our preferences. Likewise, it may have been more important for Shulem to act authentically than it was for him to keep his social relationships. Maryles had a sneaking suspicion that this is false. Yet, Shulem may really be more lonely and really not regret it.
3) I should remember that humans do things for more than just happiness.
People value other things besides happiness. The One saw that some people were happy playing mobile games all of the time, their reward centers firing away, but didn’t think that it was worth it because their happiness was meaningless. The One valued meaning more than entertainment, and perhaps even more than happiness in general. People forget this easily. I see this in the article when Maryles says:
He wishes that Shulem had made decisions to give himself a more meaningful life. He wishes that Shulem had made decisions to give himself a happier life. He wishes that Shulem had made decisions to give himself a less lonely life. He thinks that, ultimately, Shulem has made decisions to give himself a more authentic life at the price of forgoing these other possibilities. About this, he may be right. Another possibility is that there was no more preferable alternative. Maryles suggests otherwise: He seems to think either that authenticity, meaning, community, and happiness are all the same; or that all are reducible to one; or that all necessarily follow from one. I cannot glean which he believes from context. It is entirely possible that Shulem feels that his life is less happy, less meaningful, more lonely, and more authentic, and that he prefers all and regrets none of this. On the other hand, you, it seems, would not prefer this and would regret this, because you are not typical, as said above. I keep the complexity of value in mind when evaluating potential third alternatives.
Lastly, because things are often about that which they explicitly are not, I feel obliged to touch on this:
If this is true, then ‘The Lonely Man of No Faith’ is a bad title, in the sense that it isn’t representative of the article’s implication. (It does, however, make for excellent link bait.) No one is thinking, “Surely his lack of faith is merely a coincidence. There must be other reasons that this man is lonely.” Maryles has to say that the post is not about ‘that’ precisely because everyone has assumed that it’s about that.
The general implication is that the so-called truth-seekers are worse off even though the opposite should be true. On this, I will say that any time that I have seen someone become less satisfied with their life by reading about the sorts of things that are posted here, it’s because they have experienced a failure of imagination, or their new beliefs have not fully propagated. The failure modes that I’ve seen the most are:
No absolute morality implies moral relativism or moral nihilism. (“Actions are not intrinsically good or bad, therefore, morality is open season or meaningless.”)
Reductionism implies existential nihilism. (“Magical processes are really natural processes of such complexity that I mistook them for magical processes? I live for nothing!”)
Determinism implies fatalism. (“Things can only go one way, therefore, I should not make decisions.”)
Representing truth values with probabilities rather than with Boolean values implies epistemological nihilism. (“I can’t know things for sure, so I should stop trying to know things.”)
The lack of sensation after death is equivalent to a sensation of darkness and silence of infinite duration). (“I know that you’re saying ‘no experience,’ but I feel like you’re saying ‘one of the worst experiences that I can possibly imagine.’”)
You’ve given no indication that you believe any of these things, but I had to address that because of the article’s implication, and you or others very well may believe these things, explicitly or implicitly, without indication. You identify as an open-minded person; you seem to take pride in it. As such, you may not really believe that there is no God; rather, you might believe that you ought to believe that there is no God, because perhaps that is what you believe open-minded people do, and you want to do what open-minded people do. (I had this very problem. Belief in belief goes both ways!) Saying that one atheist is less happy because he has been separated from his loved ones is very different from saying that atheists are universally dissatisfied because theism is essentially preferable. Though the author attempts to make that distinction, I think that he fails.
I’m also not saying that I deductively concluded that truth-seeking is preferable to ignorance. I inductively concluded it. Truth-seeking could have been horrible: It turns out it generally isn’t.
The opposite should be true for a rational agent, but humans aren’t rational agents, and may or may not benefit from false beliefs. There is some evidence that religion could be beneficial for humans while being completely and utterly false:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2153599X.2011.647849
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Folly/NewSciGod/De%20Botton.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361002/
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0003679
Of course, this is not “checkmate, atheists”, and doesn’t mean we should all convert to Christianity. There are ways to mitigate the negative impact of false beliefs while preserving the benefits of letting the wiring of the brain do what it wants to do. Unitarian Universalists from the religious side, and Raemon’s Solstice from the atheist side are trying to approach this nice zone with the amount of epistemological symbolism and rituals optimal for real humans, until we found a way to rewire everyone. But in general, unless you value truth for its own sake, you may be better off in life with certain false beliefs.
Good point, maxikov. I agree that instrumental rationality > epistemic rationality once you have enough epistemic rationality to understand why and not have it backfire and inadvertently make you less rational in both senses. As I said before, life is always lived in practice.
Your discussion of failure modes at the bottom of this comment is excellent.
Do you have any recommend books or articles on the topic?
Has there already been a post about these failure modes on the main page? If not, please expand this into a main post.
Too all other readers, please feel free to share books or articles on the topic.
Thanks, Torello. Like many good things, they’re really short and sweet summaries of things that Eliezer and others have been saying for years. The list is by no means exhaustive. I’m not very far into the Sequences, and this is just what I’ve pieced together, so someone else would probably be able to point you to relevant LW posts. I know far less than I appear to know.
I haven’t read it, but my guess is that Gary Drescher’s Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics would be what you’re looking for. I know for a fact that it explains why no absolute morality != moral relativism or moral nihilism, and why determinism != fatalism. As for the second, from what I understand, reductionism is the key to solving most of our Old Hard Unsolved Problems, so he’ll talk about that, but I don’t know if he’ll talk about people weirdly losing all hope when they see that reductionism is the way to go. I don’t know about the fourth item, but I don’t see Drescher successfully avoiding it. The fifth item in the list probably did not merit discussion in Drescher’s book.
I don’t think it merits its own post, even in discussion. It’s not really novel here, except perhaps in presentation.
I have never been in a situation similar to yours, so my advice may be wrong, but here it is anyway.
When people change their opinion, they sometimes go from one extreme to the opposite extreme, as if to make sure they would not drift back to their old position. But there is no need for sudden large changes. Unlike religious people, atheists do not have a duty to proselytize everyone to their non-belief. To put it bluntly, you are allowed to lie and deceive, if it is necessary for your survival. I do not support lying in general, because it has its cost, but sometimes telling the truth (at the wrong moment) has a much greater cost. The cost of lying is weakening the relationship with people you lie to. So I think you should try to be open with your wife (but be careful about your coming out), but lying to everyone else is an option.
When explaining how you feel, focus on the positive parts, not the negative parts. Rejecting religion is the negative part. It is not your terminal value to be non-religious. You probably still like some aspects of the religious culture; and that’s okay. (Atheists are free to celebrate Christmas, if they choose to.) It’s just that your positive values are understanding the world, being honest, etc. and religion happens to be incompatible with that. You are throwing religion away because the alternative would be throwing your curiosity or sanity away. If you are going to explain to someone the negative part, you should explain the positive part first (without even mentioning religion at the beginning). Only when they value the positive part, you should show them the conflict; then they may empathise.
Specifically, I think you should show your wife all the cool things you are interested in, starting with the noncontroversial ones. She does not have to like them all; different people have different preferences; but you may find something that is interesting for both of you. Then you have an enjoyable topic to talk about which is unconnected to religion. The more such topics you have, and the more time you spend debating them, the less time you spend debating religion, and the less role the religion plays at keeping you together. Then the impact of abandoning religion will be smaller. Just start with the simple stuff; do not go into “adversarial intellectual debate mode” you are probably using with your friends sometimes. Instead, be a guide in an intellectual adventure. For example, find some noncontroversial TED talks videos (not about religion, politics, evolution, global warming, or whichever topics are controversial in your religious community) and watch them together (maybe even with your children). Be the one who brings positive value, not the one who causes conflict.
You should be strategic about your social circle. I do not know the people around you, but I have read stories where people lost their whole religious community after coming out. You may have a few loyal friends who will stay with you regardless, but even those friends may be under pressure from their friends and families. You prepare strategically for this by creating new friends in advance. Preferably ones that your wife will like too. Every new friend who does not share your religion, is a friend who will not abandon you when you come out. To some degree, friendship is a question of spending time together, and having experiences in common. Essentially, you should manage your time to spend more time with people outside your religious community. (I hope they are available.) Again, bringing new nice people as friends is a positive step. Finding new interesting activities you and your wife could enjoy together, outside of your religious community, is also a positive step. You could take a family vacation outside of your community, with the new friends.
Shortly, build new bridges before you burn down the old ones. Treat everything related to your religious community as something you may lose, as something that may be used to blackmail you in the future, so do not invest in those things. Plan to minimize possible damage in the future.
Also, if you want your wife to support you, you also have to support her. Support her in all her dreams, help her explore the world. Be a team together. Make it obvious you would support her even where your religious community wouldn’t.
Assuming that you don’t already do this, doing this signals “I am trying to convince you of something which I don’t want to talk about”. People notice when you act in ways that you haven’t before.
(I take it “follow me” means “stay married to me despite the overt religious difference” rather than “deconvert along with me”.)
Keeping secrets from your wife seems like a really bad idea. Are there ways for you to test the waters a little? (Admit to having serious doubts about your religion, maybe?) Perhaps there’s something you can do along those lines that will both (1) give you some indication of what you can tell her without hurting her / making her file for leave you / … and (2) prepare her mind so that when you tell her more it isn’t such a shock.
My situation somewhat parallels yours—formerly quite seriously religious, now very definitely (and openly) atheist, married to someone who is still seriously and actively religious. But my guess, from how you describe the situation, is that your family and friends are likely to be more bothered by irreligion than mine. (In particular, both I and my wife have plenty of friends and family who are not religious.) So I can tell you that it’s all worked out OK for me so far, but I wouldn’t advise you to take that as very strong evidence that openness about your (ir)religious opinions would work out well for you.
Even so, my guess is that it wouldn’t be as terrible as you think it would. But, again, I don’t think there’s any reason for you to trust my guesses.
Lie.
Maybe you’ll lie for the whole rest of your life. Maybe you will lie until your kids are out of the house. Maybe you’ll lie for another few weeks or years and then decide the truth is important enough to you that Shulem’s story no longer seems worse to you than living with the lie.
People lie all the time, and I think it would be foolish to try to craft a life in which you never lie, or in which you feel horribly guilty about lying. Maybe there is some society in which it makes sense not to lie for everybody, but maybe there isn’t, either. Certainly a society such as your own is NOT that society. Your society enforces an appearance of conformity of agreement on certain matters of “fact” which are not obviously matters of fact at all. For you to fall foul of this enforcement is a purely voluntary action on your part. I suppose if there were a magical creature who could read your mind and who would punish you for lying, one might make the case that your best bet would be to tell the truth and take the societal consequences which are less severe than the consequences imposed by the magical creature. In some sense, this is analogous to choosing to one-box in the Newcomb’s box problem: rationality means winning. For you to take societal consequences for telling the truth when the truth you are telling is that there is no magical creature reading your mind and enforcing rules about what it must contain, well, that is irrational to the extent that it involves making a choice to lose.
To the extent I can imagine being in your situation, my main concern would be getting my kids out. In my own personal lying, I never lie to my kids except if I think it is for their own good, not mine. Of course, you obviously love your Hasidic life so much that you mgiht believe that lying to your kids to keep them in theirs is for their own good, and far be it from me to tell you you would be wrong. I am very aware that for me, an intelligent physicist engineer, the “cost” of false belief in the supernatural is much higher than it is for the clerk in my department who lives her entire life at her Jehovah’s Witness church. She witnessed an atheist discussion between myself and someone else once and sent me fairly naive reasons she should stay in her belief, and I responded, and I meant it, that she should believe if that is what she needed to make her life work.
Honestly, I think your real difference from your peers is not that you found the reasons not to believe, but that you couldn’t convince yourself to ignore them! For myself, I give you great credit for being like that, which is small consolation I imagine for risking the loss of your family and your life. I was lucky to come from a family which was already fairly liberal (compared to hasidism anyway) about religion and in which about half of them in my parents’ generation leaned towards atheism anyway. I have the luxury of living in a society which barely has the energy to even complain about my atheism, in which my atheism is as vibrant and powerful as their religiosity. If I lived in a society that punished atheism, I would lie about it. I would go only as far as I could go publicly without risking the things I found important. My own version of one-boxing: I do NOT sacrifice myself for abstract beliefs.
Ironically, I will close by suggesting you have faith. Don’t be more publicly atheistic now than you can. Chances are if you hide it now that you may find over the coming years your trade-off point moves towards more exposure, more openness. Enjoy your life: we ALL live in medieval mind-controlling societies, the differences are matters of degrees rather than matters of kind. Enjoy the one you are in and make a difference on the margin. In real life, we are not truth-seeking machines, we are life-seeking machines. Our brains evolved to serve our lives, to invert that, and have a life which serves your brain is hardly required, especially once you understand that magical mind-reading controlling creatures probably do not exist.
Mazel Tov, Mike
Hey there, Parmenides. I am totally cool with you venting at me.
I take this especially seriously. Leaving the tribe is hard, especially when it has tangible benefits and costs. I think this is the biggest thing that the rationalist community has yet to fully address insofar as it seeks to compete with other communities in traditional domains, but certainly not for lack of awareness. I think I’ll link this video I found of William and Divia Eden’s wedding ceremony.
I kind of feel like a creep for doing that, but this is a great example of how rationalists are making their own communities and institutions and rituals. Eliezer makes a bunch of science jokes and implicitly jabs traditional everything, as he is wont to do; the spouses agree that they totally love each other and are in it for as long as they both think they should be and that both of those things are cool; they keep the usual wedding trappings because wedding trappings are fun, and fun is cool; they change their last name to Eden because Eden is a cool last name; and there’s a general feeling in the air that being cool about most stuff when it’s cool to do so is generally the coolest way to go. Basically they do everything possible to avoid the kind of shitty problem that you’re in now. (That is not to say that you could have avoided it through some superior exercise of personal integrity.)
You might also dig these Skepticon panels on how rationalists deal with relationships and death. I highly recommend the one on relationships because there’s an atheist on the panel who to my knowledge is a former fundamentalist Christian and is in a relationship with a woman whose entire family are devout Christians.
I say all of this because you can find a new community or have a hand in making a new one. LessWrong is one such community. I have said before that most LessWrongians are ‘super smart and super ethical.’ They make good company. ChristianKI says something important as well:
You might be overestimating the probability that your tribe will abandon you. After all, that wouldn’t be a very Christian thing to do, would it?
I used to say something really similar to this. I would say, “Nominally, I’m agnostic, but practically, I’m atheist.” Then I thought about other, less important beliefs in which I could make a distinction between ‘the nominal and the practical.’ Say a person with whom I live leaves the house and goes to the store, and it has been some time, and another person asks where they are. Usually, I say, simply, “He is at the store.” But this is not necessarily true. It is entirely possible that on the way to the store he was diverted from his usual route and out of kindness stopped to help a troubled motorist, and so he is nowhere near the store; or that the store has become the site of a hostage situation, and so no one may enter the store; or that the other has already, as we speak, been killed in a traffic accident, and so he may never enter a store again; etc. Yet, I do not tell the other resident, “Nominally, I am agnostic as to the whereabouts of our fellow resident, but practically, he is at the store.” My veiled belief is that he is at the store, so this is how I act. It is undesirable to act contrary to this belief because the consequences are obvious and completely negative. It is easier with religious beliefs because the consequences are not as obvious and short-term positive (but long-term negative). Nominal beliefs are useless in life because life is always lived in practice. All to say, I have learned here that very little is certain and that that is far less important than one would initially think. Almost certainty is more than enough, and you and everyone else rely on that fact everyday.
I think it’s funny (funny-strange, not funny-haha) that you say that you’re not willing to risk losing her, but you go on for another paragraph after this about other reasons that you should not do this even if you are willing to risk losing her. It sounds to me like you, in fact, are willing to risk it, and rightly so in my opinion, and like that fact scares the shit out of you, and rightly so in my opinion.
Realistically consider your ability to be exactly what is desirable to your wife for the rest of your life. Ask yourself if you think you can really avoid resenting her (and you do not have to be evil or lacking in character to be resentful) for the rest of your life. Never have I successfully willed myself to meet the expectations of others.
I really don’t see how momentary ‘grief’ from the loss of a tribe member, even a community’s worth, is worse than you feeling what you currently feel for a lifetime. And if you don’t tell the kids, then you could perpetuate the cycle.
Talking to you is a moral hazard for me. I want to make more evangelizing atheists. I tried to be a counterpoint to your gloom more than an impartial advisor, and hopefully that resulted in a more thorough overview of the risks and payoffs of this decision. I say this because I see a lot of talk of the risks of coming out of the closet, but not a lot of talk about the payoffs, and when you do talk about them, you bury them in implications about risks. You’re definitely continuing in a motivated fashion. Like everyone else, you also have an overwhelming compulsion to maintain the status quo.
One last piece of advice, since I see a lot of ‘all about their feelings, and not mine’: Learn that making sure that the rest of your life does not suck at the cost of some hurt feelings is totally okay, and that learning that will make the rest of your life not suck.
You don’t say how old your children are. Is the timing on this revelation to your wife, if it occurs, likely to affect whether they are brought up religious, or is that ship sailed now?
Like many of the others, I would advise you to tell your wife, but not necessarily others, at least until it seems more convenient to do so. But it is important that you make it clear to her that you are expressing your own position, and not attempting to convince her of it. As long as that is clear, I think there is no significant danger of losing her. Consider the one friend who already knows; if they did not abandon you over your beliefs, why would your wife do so? On the other hand coming out and openly trying to convert her to atheism is almost certainly a bad idea, and would definitely result in a significant risk of losing her.
Also, I think this situation is quite common in social groups which are strongly religious, and that while you may overestimate the harm that would be done by simply being open with everyone, many of the comments here dramatically underestimate that harm, because most of the commenters were never in such situations in the first place. And I think it is very, very wrong and harmful to suggest “well, if they would react badly, then ** them all, abandon everyone you know and join a new community.”
I’m just going to focus on this, because if I were in your position it would just loom over everything.
My wife made me swear not to keep secrets from her, because of her personal history with an ex. But even if she hadn’t … that’s just too big and too relevant to your relationship. Having a secret like that damages your relationship, even apart from your own painful awareness. It just flies in the face of core values of marriage, or even friendship. It’s disrespectful to her.
You have a lot to lose. But you also have a lot to gain, if you can repair this break. Are you (ex-)Christian? If so, she should at least be able to stay married, given what the New Testament says about divorce. Being in open disagreement would feel worse, but I don’t think it would actually be worse, it would actually be a closer relationship. And as you imply, that could be temporary. Which means you’d have to listen to her attempts to bring you back into the fold, with a mind as open as you can stretch it, and go over the whole religion question all over again. An ordeal, and a steal at twice the price.
Without knowing the social environment in which you are operating it’s hard to tell, but are you really sure you would lose all your friends?
People don’t have to follow you. It’s quite okay when you believe different things then people around you.
Parmenides, hello.
I am deeply touched by your story. I can’t imagine how hard it must be on your place, for which reason I feel I have no right to tell you anything. However, you asked for advice, so here are my 5 cents.
I think that your most urgent moral obligation is towards your children. You shouldn’t let them be raised believing in blatant falsehoods. I don’t know how old they are which obviously makes a big difference. But I would make deconverting them a priority.
I would seriously consider telling my wife. I’m almost physically incapable of keeping secrets from my wife. I know it would be killing me if I did. But then, I don’t know you, your wife or your relationship.
Make atheist friends. I don’t know where you live so it’s hard to be specific. Is there a LessWrong meetup nearby? Some other atheist community? Atheist people you know from other places: work, schools you went to?
If you want an e-mail friend, feel welcome to write me any time: top.squark@gmail.com.
I wish you the best of luck. I think I don’t speak only for myself when I say LessWrong is rooting for you.
Clearly you are a super partner.
Movements like the Brights can give you ideas for your current situation. For an online community of like-minded people (of any faith or none), I recommend Beliefnet.