Reddit reviews Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why

A resource to check out would be the clergy project: http://clergyproject.org/

It's for pastors and ministers that lose their faith. You might not be a pastor, but it sounds like you are similarly an ex-christian employed by a church, and face essentially all of the same challenges.

I don't know where you live, so I can't recommend local places to meet people in a similar position, but it's worth doing some googling to see if there are any atheist or ex-christian groups in your area. You might be surprised how many closet atheists there are in the bible belt.

All I can say is be careful. You don't want to get accidentally outed before you're ready. However, when you are ready, I highly recommend the book Coming out Atheist: https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Out-Atheist-Help-Other/dp/1939578191

Edit: and if you just want someone to talk to, PM me and I'll give my contact info.

I highly recommend reading Greta Christina's book Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why. She's compiled many coming out stories and has a lot of advice about how to come out to people. There's a chapter on how to come out to your spouse.

I also recommend reading Dale McGowan's In Faith and In Doubt: How Religious Believers and Nonbelievers Can Create Strong Marriages and Loving Families. As the title implies, it has advice on how a religiously mixed couple (one religious and the other not) can have a wonderful relationship and raise kid together without seeing eye-to-eye on the supernatural. Like Christina did in her book, McGowan interviewed a lot of people and the book is a compilation of the tips and tricks people have learned.

Thank you!

Not sure if Judaism is any better than Christianity tho lol.

I suppose I can think of some tips. Number one is just know your stuff well, before you try to talk about it. Read a lot of material. Read about what you believe. Read an apologetics book -- maybe read the one I mentioned, or watch this atheist's deconstruction of those arguments. That video series in particular was very helpful to me.

2. Practice online in a low-risk environment before you try it out loud. The downside of talking about faith online is nobody listens to you and you're likely to get called nasty names. The upside is that you don't give a shit what these people think about you, and you have time to think about your responses, and you don't have to contend with body language. In an in-person discussion it can be hard to think on your feet; if you've already thought through these arguments, you can recognize them and know what to say. And when humans speak in person, a large percentage of our total communication comes from body language, not just words. If this person you talk to is very confident, strong-willed, forceful, that comes across in his body language. You can feel intimidated or unsure even if you are very sure of yourself intellectually, just because of that fact.

3. Maybe write a blog. It doesn't have to be a really good one. I wrote a blog for a while; maybe 20 people read it, and I didn't keep up with it later. But it was so helpful for me to get my ideas down on paper, in coherent form, to see how they work.

4. Read Greta Christina's Coming Out Atheist. This has a lot of tips for people like us. One of those is...

5. Know why you are having this conversation. Are you doing it to explain your position to a person you care about? Then remember that the relationship is important to you, not just scoring rhetorical points. Also remember to remind the other person that the relationship is important. Before I said, "I don't believe in God," this pastor was asking me about myself and trying to get to know me. After I said those evil words, he switched to Apologetics Mode, just listing off arguments he'd heard before. So think about why you want to do this. Are you doing it to prove yourself? Are you doing it to normalize your beliefs? Are you doing this for the benefit of other people who will hear?

6. I'm not sure whether or not "taking him down a peg" is a good goal or not. If you mean, just to show that not everybody agrees with him, then sure. But if you think you'll make him look foolish or see that his beliefs are wrong, don't bother. People have remarkable strength when it comes to defending their core beliefs, no matter how irrational they may seem to us.

I see others on this forum agree with me, that the pastor's "Sunriss prove God" argument was a bad argument--but he didn't see it as a bad argument. In fact, he may have thought he 'won' that discussion. Likewise, when he threatened me with hell, I tried to point out to him how that made no sense but he literally just didn't get it. I see Pascal's Wager as a bad argument; but after he used it on me, he thought he had made a great point.

And from the way he smiled, I feel like he thought he was winning. I wasn't able to hold his gaze; he would make eye contact with me with this intense stare where I eventually felt like I had to look down; and when he saw me do that he smiled, as if I was showing weakness and he was defeating the evil atheist with his JesusPowers.

So I think I made some good points in what I said to him, I think I answered some of his questions, but I don't know how he sees the interaction; I suspect he thinks he 'destroyed' me.

Keep reading, keep writing; read arguments, argue yourself, journal and blog. Argue with people when you want to, and shake the dust off your feet and leave them alone when you want to. Good luck!

You might enjoy Greta Christina's book, Coming Out Atheist. I think you'll find your story reflected there.

BOOK!