A priori, maybe not. But it could be stifling and unpleasant, it could contradict a sense of truth, and it certainly is not how I would want to live my life.
Being rational should help you win at life. Do you think the author of the top post would have a better/happier/more fulfilling life if he (a) told the truth about his religious views but alienated his wife and friends, or (b) maintained his social relationships, mostly kept quiet about his atheism, and on rare occasions pretended to go along with other peoples’ religious views?
Sure:if the only choices are to stay in the closet or come out of the closet and lose all social relationships, and if staying closeted leads to being happier and more fulfilled than losing all social relationships, then the rational choice is to stay closeted.
Those are really big “if”s, though. I’d say in that situation it’s worth devoting some resources to looking for third options.
...if he (a) told the truth about his religious views but alienated his wife and friends
I might not have been clear, but my wife and close friends already know. This might have been a reasonable path to entertain where this not the case (I guess TheOtherDave made that point below already). They are already alienated and I don’t think there’s much hope of “going back” or trying to preserve ignorance in the rest of the acquaintances who don’t know.
(b) maintained his social relationships, mostly kept quiet about his atheism, and on rare occasions pretended to go along with other peoples’ religious views?
Well, I already do the first part (keep quiet) most of the time. The “going along with” is quite difficult when it involved actions. I guess I would put it like this:
I already don’t believe in god. That’s that.
Given this, it has seemed most consistent to me to not kneel at Mass, make the sign of the cross, bow my head or lip-sync along with various prayers, and the like.
In addition (also unstated, so you wouldn’t have known my personal conclusion on this), I resolved quite early on that I’d gladly (pun!) trade happiness for certainty/alignment with the best description of “what is.”
Your (a) is not possible, but that’s not necessarily your fault for suggesting it as I might have been unclear about where things are. The biggest problem with (b) that I have is that it actually combines three sub-actions:
1) maintain social relationships
2) mostly keep quiet about my atheism
3) on rare occasions, pretend to go along with others’ religious views
Could you make the case for #1 and #2 being dependent on #3 or explain what #3 buys me? Is it just helping with having things not socially awkward? I can understand that, but I suppose it feels quite short term. I just turned 27 and can’t imagine that were I to know these people for the next 20-60 years that it wouldn’t come up somewhere, somehow either from me or from the various other common relationships who are probably bound to say something about it within those 20-60 years.
Thus, it seems like it might be worse to “fake it” for as long as possible since my confidence is low that I’d 1) be emotionally satisfied “faking it” in the first place and 2) that doing this would make for a permanent social-awkwardness-alleviator.
Absolutely—I think I would feel like a liar. Heck, I already do sometimes when I feel group-pressured into saying meal blessings (“Bless us O Lord”) or concluding with “Amen” at large events where I’d rather go along with it rather than having someone find out via my non-participation vs. personally informing them.
There was an episode on the television show House where a brain injury forced a man to always tell the truth. The condition was destroying his life to such an extent that he underwent an extremely dangerous operation to attempt to change his condition.
I think the TV show had it right because telling the truth all the time would impose an enormous cost on you, one almost nobody would be willing to pay. You need to pick your battles with telling the the truth, weighing the cost and benefits in each situation.
The author of the top post needs friends a heck of a lot more than he needs to adopt a total truth telling lifestyle.
Even if that path weren’t already closed to him, how comfortable would you be with friends you know wouldn’t accept you if they knew what you were really thinking? Friends who casually degrade the things you believe, not knowing you’re offended, but who wouldn’t stop even if they knew? Friends who you know through a shared activity which is a major part of their lives, which you can never discuss honestly with them? I’d have a hard time thinking of a relationship like that as friendship.
Posted above before seeing this. Perhaps this was the answer to my last question, then. That friends are more valuable than me expressing my internal thoughts.
I’ll have to reflect on that. I’m still inclined to disagree, but moreso because we might not be agreeing on definitions. For example, I might look at “telling the truth” and see how were I to be compelled to tell every fat person they were fat or every person I found ugly that they were ugly, that this would be quite undesirable and increase my overall social dissatisfaction.
But I’m looking for suggestions about telling the truth about myself. More on that in a sec.
Similarly, how are you defining “friend”? People to spend time with and who share common interests? I think that’s fair, but what if I added in the clause that a friend should “accept me for who I am”? I’m not saying that you need to accept this definition, but you can see how the advice might change were such a clause included.
In other words, to withhold the truth about myself from others in order to preserve friends seems to reduce to acting like someone else because were my true self to be revealed, I would have no friends.
But, quite possibly, the very definition of a friend is one who knows who you are and sticks around. So… it’s kind of a catch 22. Keep “people-to-spend-time-with” by not “telling the truth”… or “tell the truth” and keep a lesser number of “people who accept who I am”?
In the end, I would absolutely agree that I need friends… but we might be disagreeing about what “type” of such “friend entities” will be most rewarding.
I think for most people there is diminishing marginal benefit to having each additional friend. If this applies to you and you can find many people to spend time with who can accept you for who you are then you should indeed be truthful and open about your atheism rather than pretending to realize that your friends have a point about the “truth” of their faith.
I’m relatively confident that a huge percentage of well-educated Americans are basically atheists, don’t attend church, but also don’t do anything to overtly disagree with their associates’ and families’ religious views. Given that so many people successfully follow this strategy you probably could as well.
The more unusual your beliefs, the harder it is to find people who can accept you for what you are. At some point those of us with what are considered to be bizarre beliefs have to choose between honesty, and having people who wish to spend time with us. I’m in my forties and looking back at my life I think I have got the trade-off wrong by often being too honest about what I really think.
Eliezer’s genius lets him get away with a degree of honesty that most of the rest of us who have strange beliefs can’t afford.
I think for most people there is diminishing marginal benefit to having each additional friend.
That’s probably true; the quality of each relationship decreases if one tries to add more and spend equal amounts of time and energy on each.
If...you can find many people to spend time with who can accept you for who you are then you should indeed be truthful and open about your atheism...
Probably poorly explained by me, I do have a handful of friends in this category. We get together a few times per month, still have a great time together, and pretty much leave religion alone even though they know very well where I stand. Probably 2 of this handful are very close.
Even then, though, there is something missing, as I don’t even like to talk about the “meta” issues brought about by non-belief (mental anguish, difficulties in marriage, etc.) -- it’s easier to do this with non-believers.
I’d actually love to find a “new-best-friend” who is a non-believer, or at least “try it out” if that can be done...
I read the article. Tough situation as well. I can see where you’re coming from. I think I’d think twice if my job or livelihood were at stake. And I do—I stay fairly anonymous online and have never mentioned my employer as I would never want anything somehow tracked back to me by the work arena.
While the social arena is uncomfortable, this is a scenario where I just don’t know if I could live in silence or acquiescence when it comes to actions. I can keep my mouth closed for sure… but to actually “play house” when it comes to things like participating in Mass, singing praise and worship, praying, saying “Amen,” and the like… I don’t think that’s in the same category as being docile and hospitable to contrary opinions.
For example, I might look at “telling the truth” and see how were I to be compelled to tell every fat person they were fat or every person I found ugly that they were ugly, that this would be quite undesirable and increase my overall social dissatisfaction.
Let’s flip that one around. What do you think might happen if you were uninhibited about telling people what you liked about them?
Intuitively, I think I’d make a lot of people happier, but it might depend. If others were around, it might make them jealous. Or if it were the “wrong” sorts of things (attractiveness, how great their breath smelled, or anything else that makes someone a little uncomfortable), it might have the reverse effect.
If you mean it simply and basically as in telling people I really appreciated their suggestion to a problem, their work ethic, skills I admire, their level of compassion, etc… then I think it would make many people happier and feel more valuable.
Human beings are not perfect liars. A primary problem is that we are rather well evolved to detect deception from other human beings, especially our mates; there is no reason to believe he could hide his deconversion from his friends or his wife. Another problem is that humans tend to slowly believe the lies we tell. Would you consider it a beneficial side effect if he accidentally reconverted to Christianity due to this deception?
There is a cost/benefit for every lie we tell. Generally it turns out that honesty really is the best policy. This case seems to be no different.
There’s a significantly lower cost to pretending that you are religious than to pretending that you have a different sexual orientation than you actually do.
There’s a significantly lower cost to pretending that you are religious than to pretending that you have a different sexual orientation than you actually do.
That’s a very confident-looking assertion. Surely that would depend who the person in question was and who was doing the measuring.
I’d agree with this statement as far as it goes (at least, for sufficiently strong understandings of “closeted”) but I’m not sure what follows from it.
The problem, I think, is that neither religious belief nor the lack of it is entirely a matter of sitting around thinking thoughts… it also has a social component.
In fact, the social component is often quite significant.
Come to think of it, the same thing is true of being closeted and queer. It’s not so much the sex that creates the problem… for many people, sex is generally done in private anyway, and it’s not too hard to find sexual partners who will stay silent. It’s the social life around the sex: the ability to flirt, and to preen, and to talk about who I’m attracted to, and to brag about what I did last night, and to introduce my partner to my friends, and to invite my friends to my wedding, and etc.
In both cases, the real problem with living in the closet is that you’re forced to live without a supportive social structure.
So it’s not clear to me that being closeted is really all that much less of a burden for atheists in religious communities (or religious believers in atheist communities, come to that).
In both cases, the real problem with living in the closet is that you’re forced to live without a supportive social structure.
Bingo. To expand, while this might go away in the future, most of my mental energy has been toward thinking about religion, theological arguments, objections to those arguments, and what the best course of action is for raising our two children.
So… when someone in my current social circle who doesn’t know me says something like, “So what’s new?”… I am left feeling like I must sound like I don’t do anything with my life because I can’t actually talk passionately about what I’m passionate about.
In addition, I consider what I’m attempting to be basically valiant. I had a question about a big topic and I tried to dive in hard to see what I could make of it. It’s extremely disappointing to have your friends think you’re doing it wrong, concluding the wrong things, reading the wrong things, thinking wrongly, etc. when you think you’re doing something noteworthy and giving it your best shot.
Again, per the original post, this is even more frustrating when these critiques and views are coming from those who have never felt compelled to find justification for their religious beliefs.
So, yes, I think it’s the supportive social structure that’s the issue. My parents have never been believers and neither has my 15-year-older half brother. Our connection has actually increased tremendously and they area great source of morale for me.
It’s tough to have been well respected by a circle and have earned a reputation of being studious, critical, analytical, nerdy, extremely persistent and determined when it comes to problem solving, intelligent and the like about a wide range of topics, and then to have that respect vanish. There was never a problem with how I went about tackling other problems… but when how I tackled this one led to non-belief, my thinking and methods were suddenly all suspect.
I have described it as not having anyone around that was simply “pro me” anymore (as in, supportive of me applying my previously admirable skills toward religion just like I did other areas).
I of course agree that both are burdens. My intuition is that being closet atheist would be less of a burden, but I am not sure I can say why verbally. Perhaps it’s simply because my atheism seems less central to my life than my sexuality, and I could see feeling differently in different circumstances.
I would add to magfrump’s points above (with which I entirely agree) that, in so doing, I would also be contributing to the difficulties of other people in my same position.
Basically, by remaining closeted, I’d be defecting in a Prisoner’s Dilemma.
One can debate whether that’s a rational choice or not, but leaving that aside: if it is a rational choice, then I have important values other than rationality.
It’s damn difficult to separate what you believe from what you’re pretending to believe at the same time as updating a major chunk of your beliefs. This is really unrealistic for most humans.
Don’t most of us at some point or another pretend to not be attracted to an “off limits” hotty, pretend to like people we really don’t, pretend to find interesting something our children do, pretend to believe in our boss’s vision for success, pretend not to believe in stereotypes, pretend to like a friend’s cooking,...
You have great points, but these are generally one-time events (maybe except the interest in our offspring’s activities) or extremely low-investment. What about being asked to make a concerted, extroverted attempt to be the best friend of that person you don’t like?
I find the concepts of look-once-then-avert (hotty), fake smile (unliked friend), smile and saying “Woow” (kid), enthusiastic-nodding-then-dissent-with-coworkers-later (boss), and the like much easier than actually spending the next x years actually living and acting like I agree with these. Again, perhaps the children’s interest one is different, as could be the boss situation.
I’m inclined to agree that the sign of the cross and saying Amen is not a big deal and probably on par with a fake smile.
Then again, where does one draw the line? What if the unliked friend started inviting you to something weekly? Where would you draw the line and eventually find some way to say that you’d just prefer not to hang out with him that much/at all? It would seem that these forms of self-taxation are mostly to get through a situation where dissent would be untactful. One-time-use tools, not a fix for a lifetime.
I agree with you that the costs of deception are much lower for one-time events.
I think that lots of people do pretend for long periods of time to like someone they really dislike if they’re going to be spending lots of time with the person because he is a relative, friend of a friend, neighbor, coworker, or frequent customer.
I’m a professor and when a student comes to my office hours I always act as if I’m very happy to talk with her. Often this is true, but other times I would prefer to be doing my research rather than talking with a student. I currently intend to follow this deception strategy for the rest of my teaching career, and indeed I think I would be a bad professor to the extent that I didn’t follow it.
That approach may need some fine-tuning—I had a professor who seemed happier to see me than my actual friends.… but there wasn’t that much of a real connection.
Figuring this out wasn’t some huge trauma, but it was a little unnerving.
Agreed, and why I replied above that this is most difficult when actions are involved. Faking “beliefs” via non-action, non-participation, non-dissent, non-verbalization is pretty easy, from my experience over the last 15mos.
Not feeling conflicted when I either do or don’t make the sign of the cross when we’re having people over for dinner, whether to actually lead prayers when we host because that’s the “man’s role” in the Christian house in order not to make people suspicious by having my wife lead them (which is what we’ve been doing) is much harder.
Fantastic. I actually bring that up in a non-prayer way quite often, as the idea that god provided the food that I earned via work and my wife made via effort is silly, indeed.
Is he going to be comfortable lying to his wife? Will his wife agree to lie with him? Plus, long term lies are difficult. They’re not impossible, I’ve done it occasionally, but they can cause problems, not the least of which is that you can start to slip into doublethink.
Well, as stated above, my wife already knows. She has been “sort of” lying for/with me, though. This is mostly when she’s at an event and I’m not there and everyone expects that I should be there. She doesn’t want to be the one to tell them so she makes something up or simply says that I’m home with our older daughter.
She wants this to stop, though. She’s actually my biggest advocate of “going public” with something as widespread as Facebook or something. That suggestion surprised me. I think she thinks I’m being “sneaky” by not wanting it to come up and thinks I should just get the “coming out” over with—she may very well be right!
If you’re more comfortable putting on a facade all the time and never being able to be honest about matters touching on your position, then yes, but if the cost of any path is social discomfort, it’s best to determine which would entail the least, and for most people that would cause no small measure.
I concur. Religion is a social signalling mechanism. There is no reason you must cripple yourself with respect to sending (possibly) rational signals just because you lie outwardly rather than inwardly.
Quite an interesting response. Could you clarify what “variety” of “religion” you are using as your baseline? My former “breed” at least doesn’t think it’s mostly about relationships and mutual reassurance; they think it’s intellectual defensible and that atheism is untenable. Though, they think that without individual investigation; they just have a vague notion that someone, somewhere that is a Catholic, said that atheism leads to nihilism, can’t deal with the “infinite regress”, hasn’t solved abiogenesis, etc. and thus it’s just flat out wrong.
Perhaps I should have clarified that social engagements where religion is not mentioned or brought up can be quite pleasant.
But does it change you answer if at least some of these regularly occurring engagements involve talks or statements from those who don’t know my situation regarding how Jesus is the only way, how non-believer parents raising children are probably raising kids who will fail at life, that it’s preposterous that some people actually believe god doesn’t exist, and the like?
Maybe this doesn’t matter and it’s just something to “take in the chest.” I have to admit, it is difficult when ignorant people [unknowingly] hurl their insults at you via a topic that you’ve strained your brains on for more than a year.
...how non-believer parents raising children are probably raising kids who will fail at life,
I’m fixating on this one phrase. For some reason, I can be extremely tolerant and friendly towards people who believe that the world only goes back to 4004 B.C., or that the world is balanced on elephants on a turtle, but christians who claim that the value of christianity is that it leads to success in life—earthly life—drive me nuts. Probably the last vestige of my old religious upbringing.
Anyway, doing a quick google search shows that in the United States, the most successful religious denomination is...Hinduism . I wouldn’t have guessed, but it makes sense in retrospect. I imagine the numbers would break down differently in India.
...but christians who claim that the value of christianity is that it leads to success in life—earthly life—drive me nuts.
Well, they probably wouldn’t put it that way if you said it like that, but I agree that this is how it comes about. Probably if you cornered an “elder” in my community, they’d say that Christianity is primarily important for the soul.
But at a parenting talk I was just at, someone commented that “next to raising your kids to know the Lord, loving your spouse well in front of them is the best thing you can do.”
I probably didn’t define “fail” very well—I think they mostly mean that the Christian child will grow up to have better values and morals, not necessarily more money, prestige, or the like.
There would be nothing irrational about pretending to believe so you could have better social relations with your friends.
A priori, maybe not. But it could be stifling and unpleasant, it could contradict a sense of truth, and it certainly is not how I would want to live my life.
Well said.
Being rational should help you win at life. Do you think the author of the top post would have a better/happier/more fulfilling life if he (a) told the truth about his religious views but alienated his wife and friends, or (b) maintained his social relationships, mostly kept quiet about his atheism, and on rare occasions pretended to go along with other peoples’ religious views?
You are generalising from yourself. This can lead to obnoxious advice.
Sure:if the only choices are to stay in the closet or come out of the closet and lose all social relationships, and if staying closeted leads to being happier and more fulfilled than losing all social relationships, then the rational choice is to stay closeted.
Those are really big “if”s, though. I’d say in that situation it’s worth devoting some resources to looking for third options.
I might not have been clear, but my wife and close friends already know. This might have been a reasonable path to entertain where this not the case (I guess TheOtherDave made that point below already). They are already alienated and I don’t think there’s much hope of “going back” or trying to preserve ignorance in the rest of the acquaintances who don’t know.
Well, I already do the first part (keep quiet) most of the time. The “going along with” is quite difficult when it involved actions. I guess I would put it like this:
I already don’t believe in god. That’s that.
Given this, it has seemed most consistent to me to not kneel at Mass, make the sign of the cross, bow my head or lip-sync along with various prayers, and the like.
In addition (also unstated, so you wouldn’t have known my personal conclusion on this), I resolved quite early on that I’d gladly (pun!) trade happiness for certainty/alignment with the best description of “what is.”
Your (a) is not possible, but that’s not necessarily your fault for suggesting it as I might have been unclear about where things are. The biggest problem with (b) that I have is that it actually combines three sub-actions: 1) maintain social relationships 2) mostly keep quiet about my atheism 3) on rare occasions, pretend to go along with others’ religious views
Could you make the case for #1 and #2 being dependent on #3 or explain what #3 buys me? Is it just helping with having things not socially awkward? I can understand that, but I suppose it feels quite short term. I just turned 27 and can’t imagine that were I to know these people for the next 20-60 years that it wouldn’t come up somewhere, somehow either from me or from the various other common relationships who are probably bound to say something about it within those 20-60 years.
Thus, it seems like it might be worse to “fake it” for as long as possible since my confidence is low that I’d 1) be emotionally satisfied “faking it” in the first place and 2) that doing this would make for a permanent social-awkwardness-alleviator.
He thinks so. And in a situation like that, if you think so, you’re probably right in thinking so.
“He” = me?
“thinks so” = that (a) is preferable to (b) or vice versa?
Absolutely—I think I would feel like a liar. Heck, I already do sometimes when I feel group-pressured into saying meal blessings (“Bless us O Lord”) or concluding with “Amen” at large events where I’d rather go along with it rather than having someone find out via my non-participation vs. personally informing them.
There was an episode on the television show House where a brain injury forced a man to always tell the truth. The condition was destroying his life to such an extent that he underwent an extremely dangerous operation to attempt to change his condition.
I think the TV show had it right because telling the truth all the time would impose an enormous cost on you, one almost nobody would be willing to pay. You need to pick your battles with telling the the truth, weighing the cost and benefits in each situation.
The author of the top post needs friends a heck of a lot more than he needs to adopt a total truth telling lifestyle.
Even if that path weren’t already closed to him, how comfortable would you be with friends you know wouldn’t accept you if they knew what you were really thinking? Friends who casually degrade the things you believe, not knowing you’re offended, but who wouldn’t stop even if they knew? Friends who you know through a shared activity which is a major part of their lives, which you can never discuss honestly with them? I’d have a hard time thinking of a relationship like that as friendship.
Posted above before seeing this. Perhaps this was the answer to my last question, then. That friends are more valuable than me expressing my internal thoughts.
I’ll have to reflect on that. I’m still inclined to disagree, but moreso because we might not be agreeing on definitions. For example, I might look at “telling the truth” and see how were I to be compelled to tell every fat person they were fat or every person I found ugly that they were ugly, that this would be quite undesirable and increase my overall social dissatisfaction.
But I’m looking for suggestions about telling the truth about myself. More on that in a sec.
Similarly, how are you defining “friend”? People to spend time with and who share common interests? I think that’s fair, but what if I added in the clause that a friend should “accept me for who I am”? I’m not saying that you need to accept this definition, but you can see how the advice might change were such a clause included.
In other words, to withhold the truth about myself from others in order to preserve friends seems to reduce to acting like someone else because were my true self to be revealed, I would have no friends.
But, quite possibly, the very definition of a friend is one who knows who you are and sticks around. So… it’s kind of a catch 22. Keep “people-to-spend-time-with” by not “telling the truth”… or “tell the truth” and keep a lesser number of “people who accept who I am”?
In the end, I would absolutely agree that I need friends… but we might be disagreeing about what “type” of such “friend entities” will be most rewarding.
I think for most people there is diminishing marginal benefit to having each additional friend. If this applies to you and you can find many people to spend time with who can accept you for who you are then you should indeed be truthful and open about your atheism rather than pretending to realize that your friends have a point about the “truth” of their faith.
I’m relatively confident that a huge percentage of well-educated Americans are basically atheists, don’t attend church, but also don’t do anything to overtly disagree with their associates’ and families’ religious views. Given that so many people successfully follow this strategy you probably could as well.
The more unusual your beliefs, the harder it is to find people who can accept you for what you are. At some point those of us with what are considered to be bizarre beliefs have to choose between honesty, and having people who wish to spend time with us. I’m in my forties and looking back at my life I think I have got the trade-off wrong by often being too honest about what I really think.
Eliezer’s genius lets him get away with a degree of honesty that most of the rest of us who have strange beliefs can’t afford.
Here is an article I wrote for Forbes magazine explaining how excessive honesty came close to costing me my career.
That’s probably true; the quality of each relationship decreases if one tries to add more and spend equal amounts of time and energy on each.
Probably poorly explained by me, I do have a handful of friends in this category. We get together a few times per month, still have a great time together, and pretty much leave religion alone even though they know very well where I stand. Probably 2 of this handful are very close.
Even then, though, there is something missing, as I don’t even like to talk about the “meta” issues brought about by non-belief (mental anguish, difficulties in marriage, etc.) -- it’s easier to do this with non-believers.
I’d actually love to find a “new-best-friend” who is a non-believer, or at least “try it out” if that can be done...
I read the article. Tough situation as well. I can see where you’re coming from. I think I’d think twice if my job or livelihood were at stake. And I do—I stay fairly anonymous online and have never mentioned my employer as I would never want anything somehow tracked back to me by the work arena.
While the social arena is uncomfortable, this is a scenario where I just don’t know if I could live in silence or acquiescence when it comes to actions. I can keep my mouth closed for sure… but to actually “play house” when it comes to things like participating in Mass, singing praise and worship, praying, saying “Amen,” and the like… I don’t think that’s in the same category as being docile and hospitable to contrary opinions.
Let’s flip that one around. What do you think might happen if you were uninhibited about telling people what you liked about them?
Intuitively, I think I’d make a lot of people happier, but it might depend. If others were around, it might make them jealous. Or if it were the “wrong” sorts of things (attractiveness, how great their breath smelled, or anything else that makes someone a little uncomfortable), it might have the reverse effect.
If you mean it simply and basically as in telling people I really appreciated their suggestion to a problem, their work ethic, skills I admire, their level of compassion, etc… then I think it would make many people happier and feel more valuable.
They might reciprocate, as well. Double win.
Please remember that you’re Generalizing from Fictional Evidence.
Human beings are not perfect liars. A primary problem is that we are rather well evolved to detect deception from other human beings, especially our mates; there is no reason to believe he could hide his deconversion from his friends or his wife. Another problem is that humans tend to slowly believe the lies we tell. Would you consider it a beneficial side effect if he accidentally reconverted to Christianity due to this deception?
There is a cost/benefit for every lie we tell. Generally it turns out that honesty really is the best policy. This case seems to be no different.
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There’s a significantly lower cost to pretending that you are religious than to pretending that you have a different sexual orientation than you actually do.
That’s a very confident-looking assertion. Surely that would depend who the person in question was and who was doing the measuring.
Being closeted gay would probably prevent you from finding a partner whereas being closet atheist doesn’t stop you from thinking atheist thoughts.
Can you expand on your point, here?
I’d agree with this statement as far as it goes (at least, for sufficiently strong understandings of “closeted”) but I’m not sure what follows from it.
I mean that it suggests it might be less of a burden to be closeted atheist than closeted gay.
Thanks for clarifying.
The problem, I think, is that neither religious belief nor the lack of it is entirely a matter of sitting around thinking thoughts… it also has a social component.
In fact, the social component is often quite significant.
Come to think of it, the same thing is true of being closeted and queer. It’s not so much the sex that creates the problem… for many people, sex is generally done in private anyway, and it’s not too hard to find sexual partners who will stay silent. It’s the social life around the sex: the ability to flirt, and to preen, and to talk about who I’m attracted to, and to brag about what I did last night, and to introduce my partner to my friends, and to invite my friends to my wedding, and etc.
In both cases, the real problem with living in the closet is that you’re forced to live without a supportive social structure.
So it’s not clear to me that being closeted is really all that much less of a burden for atheists in religious communities (or religious believers in atheist communities, come to that).
Bingo. To expand, while this might go away in the future, most of my mental energy has been toward thinking about religion, theological arguments, objections to those arguments, and what the best course of action is for raising our two children.
So… when someone in my current social circle who doesn’t know me says something like, “So what’s new?”… I am left feeling like I must sound like I don’t do anything with my life because I can’t actually talk passionately about what I’m passionate about.
In addition, I consider what I’m attempting to be basically valiant. I had a question about a big topic and I tried to dive in hard to see what I could make of it. It’s extremely disappointing to have your friends think you’re doing it wrong, concluding the wrong things, reading the wrong things, thinking wrongly, etc. when you think you’re doing something noteworthy and giving it your best shot.
Again, per the original post, this is even more frustrating when these critiques and views are coming from those who have never felt compelled to find justification for their religious beliefs.
So, yes, I think it’s the supportive social structure that’s the issue. My parents have never been believers and neither has my 15-year-older half brother. Our connection has actually increased tremendously and they area great source of morale for me.
It’s tough to have been well respected by a circle and have earned a reputation of being studious, critical, analytical, nerdy, extremely persistent and determined when it comes to problem solving, intelligent and the like about a wide range of topics, and then to have that respect vanish. There was never a problem with how I went about tackling other problems… but when how I tackled this one led to non-belief, my thinking and methods were suddenly all suspect.
I have described it as not having anyone around that was simply “pro me” anymore (as in, supportive of me applying my previously admirable skills toward religion just like I did other areas).
I of course agree that both are burdens. My intuition is that being closet atheist would be less of a burden, but I am not sure I can say why verbally. Perhaps it’s simply because my atheism seems less central to my life than my sexuality, and I could see feeling differently in different circumstances.
Sure. And I don’t mean to claim that there’s anything wrong with that, just that it may not be so for everyone.
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I have, though not the paper (thanks!). I stumbled on it as a related video to another AAI 2009 fantastic talk by Lawrence Krauss about cosmology.
I would add to magfrump’s points above (with which I entirely agree) that, in so doing, I would also be contributing to the difficulties of other people in my same position.
Basically, by remaining closeted, I’d be defecting in a Prisoner’s Dilemma.
One can debate whether that’s a rational choice or not, but leaving that aside: if it is a rational choice, then I have important values other than rationality.
It’s damn difficult to separate what you believe from what you’re pretending to believe at the same time as updating a major chunk of your beliefs. This is really unrealistic for most humans.
Don’t most of us at some point or another pretend to not be attracted to an “off limits” hotty, pretend to like people we really don’t, pretend to find interesting something our children do, pretend to believe in our boss’s vision for success, pretend not to believe in stereotypes, pretend to like a friend’s cooking,...
You have great points, but these are generally one-time events (maybe except the interest in our offspring’s activities) or extremely low-investment. What about being asked to make a concerted, extroverted attempt to be the best friend of that person you don’t like?
I find the concepts of look-once-then-avert (hotty), fake smile (unliked friend), smile and saying “Woow” (kid), enthusiastic-nodding-then-dissent-with-coworkers-later (boss), and the like much easier than actually spending the next x years actually living and acting like I agree with these. Again, perhaps the children’s interest one is different, as could be the boss situation.
I’m inclined to agree that the sign of the cross and saying Amen is not a big deal and probably on par with a fake smile.
Then again, where does one draw the line? What if the unliked friend started inviting you to something weekly? Where would you draw the line and eventually find some way to say that you’d just prefer not to hang out with him that much/at all? It would seem that these forms of self-taxation are mostly to get through a situation where dissent would be untactful. One-time-use tools, not a fix for a lifetime.
Would you agree?
I agree with you that the costs of deception are much lower for one-time events.
I think that lots of people do pretend for long periods of time to like someone they really dislike if they’re going to be spending lots of time with the person because he is a relative, friend of a friend, neighbor, coworker, or frequent customer.
I’m a professor and when a student comes to my office hours I always act as if I’m very happy to talk with her. Often this is true, but other times I would prefer to be doing my research rather than talking with a student. I currently intend to follow this deception strategy for the rest of my teaching career, and indeed I think I would be a bad professor to the extent that I didn’t follow it.
That approach may need some fine-tuning—I had a professor who seemed happier to see me than my actual friends.… but there wasn’t that much of a real connection.
Figuring this out wasn’t some huge trauma, but it was a little unnerving.
Agreed, and why I replied above that this is most difficult when actions are involved. Faking “beliefs” via non-action, non-participation, non-dissent, non-verbalization is pretty easy, from my experience over the last 15mos.
Not feeling conflicted when I either do or don’t make the sign of the cross when we’re having people over for dinner, whether to actually lead prayers when we host because that’s the “man’s role” in the Christian house in order not to make people suspicious by having my wife lead them (which is what we’ve been doing) is much harder.
It probably won’t help socially, but there are alternative prayers.
Fantastic. I actually bring that up in a non-prayer way quite often, as the idea that god provided the food that I earned via work and my wife made via effort is silly, indeed.
Is he going to be comfortable lying to his wife? Will his wife agree to lie with him? Plus, long term lies are difficult. They’re not impossible, I’ve done it occasionally, but they can cause problems, not the least of which is that you can start to slip into doublethink.
Well, as stated above, my wife already knows. She has been “sort of” lying for/with me, though. This is mostly when she’s at an event and I’m not there and everyone expects that I should be there. She doesn’t want to be the one to tell them so she makes something up or simply says that I’m home with our older daughter.
She wants this to stop, though. She’s actually my biggest advocate of “going public” with something as widespread as Facebook or something. That suggestion surprised me. I think she thinks I’m being “sneaky” by not wanting it to come up and thinks I should just get the “coming out” over with—she may very well be right!
If you’re more comfortable putting on a facade all the time and never being able to be honest about matters touching on your position, then yes, but if the cost of any path is social discomfort, it’s best to determine which would entail the least, and for most people that would cause no small measure.
Sorry, but my reaction to this was a big, “Ick.” More below where you’ve asked a more specific question.
I concur. Religion is a social signalling mechanism. There is no reason you must cripple yourself with respect to sending (possibly) rational signals just because you lie outwardly rather than inwardly.
Quite an interesting response. Could you clarify what “variety” of “religion” you are using as your baseline? My former “breed” at least doesn’t think it’s mostly about relationships and mutual reassurance; they think it’s intellectual defensible and that atheism is untenable. Though, they think that without individual investigation; they just have a vague notion that someone, somewhere that is a Catholic, said that atheism leads to nihilism, can’t deal with the “infinite regress”, hasn’t solved abiogenesis, etc. and thus it’s just flat out wrong.
Perhaps I should have clarified that social engagements where religion is not mentioned or brought up can be quite pleasant.
But does it change you answer if at least some of these regularly occurring engagements involve talks or statements from those who don’t know my situation regarding how Jesus is the only way, how non-believer parents raising children are probably raising kids who will fail at life, that it’s preposterous that some people actually believe god doesn’t exist, and the like?
Maybe this doesn’t matter and it’s just something to “take in the chest.” I have to admit, it is difficult when ignorant people [unknowingly] hurl their insults at you via a topic that you’ve strained your brains on for more than a year.
I’m fixating on this one phrase. For some reason, I can be extremely tolerant and friendly towards people who believe that the world only goes back to 4004 B.C., or that the world is balanced on elephants on a turtle, but christians who claim that the value of christianity is that it leads to success in life—earthly life—drive me nuts. Probably the last vestige of my old religious upbringing.
Anyway, doing a quick google search shows that in the United States, the most successful religious denomination is...Hinduism . I wouldn’t have guessed, but it makes sense in retrospect. I imagine the numbers would break down differently in India.
Well, they probably wouldn’t put it that way if you said it like that, but I agree that this is how it comes about. Probably if you cornered an “elder” in my community, they’d say that Christianity is primarily important for the soul.
But at a parenting talk I was just at, someone commented that “next to raising your kids to know the Lord, loving your spouse well in front of them is the best thing you can do.”
I probably didn’t define “fail” very well—I think they mostly mean that the Christian child will grow up to have better values and morals, not necessarily more money, prestige, or the like.