Science and Religion, Epistemology and Discrimination

An interesting (but long - I only skimmed it) rehash of a debate between Alvin Plantinga (probably the most well-known Christian philosopher in the world) and Daniel Dennett (philosopher of mind and one of the "new atheists"). The commentator decided to remain anonymous, and wrote this about his decision:

I prefer to remain anonymous for various reasons, in particular because I am inclined towards Plantinga's position over Dennett's and were this to become well-known it could damage or destroy my career in analytic philosophy. This is something I prefer not to put my family through. I almost didn't publish these comments at all, but as far as I could tell, this would be the only public record of the discussion.

Friends, if you can identify me, I request that you keep my identity secret. I am sharing my thoughts as a service to the philosophical community and all those who have an interest in such debates. But I prefer not to suffer at the hands of my ardently secular colleagues. This is not to say that all secular analytic philosophers are this way; they most certainly are not. But enough of them are that I cannot risk being known publicly.

Interestingly, in the comments on the post, several people dismissed this as paranoia, while one person gave an example of something like this happening. One commenter wrote this:

I am a Christian, and I wrote my master's thesis at a secular university on Plantinga's epistemology. Half of my committee members were theists, half were not. Not once during my time as a graduate student did I ever feel that my career as a philosopher was threatened due to my theism or my sympathy with Plantinga. I have no idea why anyone would make this statement.

Fantastic argument, that. "It hasn't happened to me, therefore it doesn't happen to anyone." Reminds me of this comment from Emily Maguire's recent book on feminism, Princesses and Pornstars:

I’m sick of hearing people say that women aren’t oppressed because their husband does lots of housework or because their company pays women the same as men or because they’ve never personally been raped/groped/called a slut/been denied a basic human right.

Anyway, it is an issue I think about from time to time. Am I too open about my Christian beliefs? Will I be stereotyped as a believer, with the result that no one will take what I say seriously, because obviously I'm biased? This thought occurred to me a couple of years back when I was at a conference held in honour of John Hedley Brooke, one of the world's leading scholars on science and religion. He's notorious for never giving a straight answer about just what he believes, although rumour is that he's a Christian. He's written a lot about the relations between science and Christianity, in particular against the idea of conflict. His work is well respected, but if he was more open about what he believed, would he have been dismissed as an apologist or propagandist for Christianity? Not sure about this. Still thinking. Well, actually, thinking is on hold until after the thesis, but anyway...