Like the Judeo-Christian God, the cause of and the solution to all of life’s problems.
I’d rather have a mojito.
That’s what Jesus said, too.
This is probably a pretty big chasm to leap over. If you think about people (in no way implying that you’re one of them) who blame everything on others, the transition to understanding your own role in situations can be long and arduous.
Similarly (IMHO), transitioning from “let go and let G-d” to “I’ve got this” is probably a journey of a thousand miles – ie, it begins with a single step.
I do think some mantra(s) might help you.
But most of the people I’ve met who are deeply religious as adults grew up in religious environments. That ‘training’ (to avoid more loaded terms) in your formative years makes a return to organized religion easier, if that’s your thing, and/but makes breaking away just that much harder.
Step by step. You’ve got this !
I wish you a full and complete recovery. Harrowing story with a relevant point well made.
I first read about Wilson many years ago. He listed seven things all human societies have in common, regardless of their background. One was belief in the supernatural/religion. The interview is from 2015.
Wilson is professor emeritus at Harvard University. A giant in science. The father of sociobiology. The fellow who revealed the magnificence of ant society. The man many consider to be Charles Darwin’s heir. At an effervescent 82, he’s written a new book, entitled “The Social Conquest of Earth,” in which he says that morality, religion, creativity, all that makes us human is fundamentally biological in nature due to a phenomenon called eusocial behavior.
It’s a reflex. Give it time and it will fade. I’m a theist- specifically a Jew. Occasionally, when surprised or angry I will exclaim “Jesus Christ!”. This is not because I believe in Jesus. It’s because the USA is a de facto Christian society.
I agree with the general advice you’ve gotten in this thread. Ask yourself ‘Can I get through this alone?’ if the answer is no, ask for help from other humans you know and trust.
That’s some loving, forgiving deity, right there.
If you feel crappy and sorry you no longer have something to pray to, perhaps you weren’t ready to ditch superstition.
Dan
@DocCathode nailed it.
I’m an atheist from birth. As were my parents & sibs. But I’m also an American from birth and the USA is culturally Christian. So various Jesus or god-based expletives & exclamations are simply part of my anger vocabulary despite being utterly devoid of spiritual content for me.
You can break the habit of saying stuff like that when you choose your substitute phrases. Breaking the habit of feeling guilty about it may take some more thinking.
I take great comfort in the fact there are no supernatural beings around to help us when we’re in a crack. Why? Because if they did exist, you just know selfish jerk humans would be better at invoking their help than you or I would. So from your / my POV they’d be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
You can handle more than you think. And when you’re feeling close to the end of your rope, other humans are the only source of refuge in this universe. Fortunately there are millions of them right nearby and you only need a couple.
I feel crappy that I no longer believe in God too, sometimes - it is very comforting to believe that there’s someone looking out for you no matter how scared or alone you feel. Sort of like how the teenage belief that you are invincible and nothing truly bad could happen to you is quite comforting. But I don’t think the answer is forcing yourself to believe in what you know isn’t true just to feel better.
If you are a believer, great for you, but you shouldn’t pick your beliefs based on whether they make you feel a bit crappy sometimes.
Splendid and concise advice.
I’m chiming in as a lifelong non-believer raised in a non-religious household. I had no religious training of any kind other than being made to observe many different practices of religion on Saturdays and Sundays. It was interesting from a cultural perspective, but did nothing to inspire me to believe in a supreme being.
I still occasionally shake my fist at the sky and invoke assistance from the Universe (or whatever) indifferent though I know it to be, to perhaps nudge Lady Luck in my direction now and then. I fully recognize nothing is listening. It’s still something I do.
I also talk to my late husband, now deceased for going on 14 years. I know he is not around to listen but it is helpful nonetheless.
You’ve been trained since birth to believe something else is ultimately responsible for everything that happens. Accepting all the responsibility on your own shoulders for your part in the world is daunting, I imagine. But it’s honest. Go easy on yourself as you make your way through this process.
You’ve stopped believing in a supportive or helpful deity, but you’re still positing the spiteful and vindictive one(s)?
Go the next step. You can say what you want, or what comes out, without worrying about what supernatural entities think, because there’s nothing there. No supernatural entity is judging you for taking its name in vain. Say what helps.
I’ve been an atheist since I was a kid. Sometimes, when I feel desperate about something, I may say something like “please let this turn out OK!” It’s just a wish. Even if I said, “Please, God, let this turn out OK,” it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t make me a believer, and there’s no one there to be insulted/used/etc. Who cares what name you’re in the habit of saying in those moments?
But you do need to go the extra step and let yourself off the hook. No supernatural beings are out there to help you, and they are also not out there judging you. That’s you judging you. Let it go.
This is a bit off-topic, but that’s not the myth. At least not as I’ve ever heard or understood it. The idea that “there are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t that atheists don’t volunteer to serve in situations where they find themselves in foxholes. It’s that when you’re in a foxhole, and the artillery rounds are raining down and exploding all around you, and you’re covered in mud and blood and bits of your best friends, everyone prays, regardless of whether they normally think of themselves as “atheists” or “deists” or “Buddhists” or “born-again Christians” or whatever.
There is, I think, some truth to that myth. I’ve never actually literally been in the proverbial foxhole (at least not outside of training scenarios), but when I was in the Army, I was in a couple of situations where I found myself praying, even though I can’t remember a point in my life when I actually believed in any sort of Higher Power that would answer prayers. It was just kind of instinctive.
Of course, that’s my personal experience. I think it’s almost certainly true that at least some atheists have been in the proverbial foxhole but never prayed.
Right, that’s what the proverb means. And it’s not absolutely true, but then, few proverbs are.
I know the meaning of the expression. For example, I was alluding to people who are and remained atheists after acts of bravery; of course they’re anecdotal but so are stories of atheists praying.
And btw, it’s not just the same proportion of atheists in the military, but even the same proportion in active combat zones. If there was any truth to this myth then surely we’d see a lower proportion in the latter?
Which brings me to:
But weren’t you still an atheist in a foxhole, since you didn’t believe, just doing a (desperate) ritual?
And again, what about the cultures which don’t teach a personal god…I bet they would not have such an “instinct”.
It’s my understanding of the adage that in the heat of the moment, everyone acts and prays as if they were believers. It has nothing to do with battlefield conversions, per se. Just to be clear, I don’t think the adage is actually literally, universally, true, but speaking just from my own personal experience, it’s not completely wrong, either.
Again, it’s exactly my understanding of the adage that in a desperate situation, people pray, regardless of what they like to think about themselves, not that desperate situations necessarily force lasting conversions. As to whether my prayers made me an atheist in a foxhole just doing a desperate ritual or someone who wasn’t truly an atheist when I found myself in a foxhole…shrug. That seems to me like something of a distinction without a difference, and misses the point of the adage. Which, again, I don’t think is really literally, universally true.
I don’t know. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. Belief in some sort of Higher Power and prayer, or at least prayer-like rituals, seem pretty universal across time and culture (although clearly not universal across all individuals). I’m not aware of any social science research directly on point, but it seems like an interesting question. At any rate, I’m not trying to convince you of the truth of the adage, just that I don’t think you have the same understanding of it that I do.
On the other end, when things are going well and have done for a while, and you are feeling grateful, to what or whom are you grateful when you’re an atheist? For me, it’s just to whatever forces contributed to my good luck: my parents mostly, where and when I was born, my otherwise-unimportant but privilege-attracting attributes (tall white male), the lack of disasters in my immediate vicinity, and so on. Even calling it “luck” isn’t accurate, but there is no vocabulary that I can think of that will substitute. I am the beneficiary of a lot of circumstances over which I had no control, and a few over which I did have some influence. So, whatever “grateful” can mean in that context, I am that.
I always found religion, especially Christianity, unpleasant and weird, from almost my earliest memories. I have no desire to conjure deities either to protect and save me, nor to give thanks to for not needing protection and saving. If those names sometimes come out as swears under stress, they are just culturally-learned placeholders for intense emotional expressions that take too long to think of in the moment.
I think you need to just accept this as an effect of a lifetime of cultural programming. You grew up thinking “Lord give me strength!” and now nothing else quite sounds right in its place.
Imagine if you decided one day to eliminate swear words from your lexicon. Sure, you could start saying “Flip you, melon-farmer!” to people who pissed you off, but I imagine it would also feel weird and contrived compared to “Fuck you, Motherfucker!”
I’m pretty sure the “atheists in foxholes” thing is actually a claim that atheists are lying - that everybody actually believes in god because it’s built into humanity to do so, and atheists are merely pretending not to believe out of spite or something. It’s a way of denying that atheism exists at all, which some theists do because they prefer belief to be the assumed norm, and because if people are capable of tossing out their god it calls into question whether their god is necessary, which is not to be even considered.
Anyway, regarding the topic, keep in mind that there’s a difference between swearing and calling for aid. If you slam your toe in to a table leg and scream “Jesus Christ on a cracker that hurts!!”, the fact that you invoked the name of the scapegoat doesn’t mean you’re a theist, it means that Jesus has joined the elite class of fecal matter and procreative acts.
If you’re literally calling out for aid, you just need to internalize that you’re calling on Frodo for aid. (Or more accurately, Sauron.) Your need is real, but fictional characters can’t help you.
I don’t know how to tell you to reach this point - for as long as I can remember if I ever feel the need to call out for aid, I never even imagine that tossing the words into the air will help. If I reach for anything, it’s a telephone.
I’d take a bullet for my wife. I’d take a bullet for my daughters or my grandchildren. Even when I believed in a god, I wouldn’t take a bullet for an immortal all-powerful deity. It would be like giving my last dollar to a billionaire who claimed he needed money to pay for his new yacht.
One good thing I found about atheism is that I don’t have to worry about why things happen. Why did god kill those babies in a tsunami? Why the earthquake? Why the pandemic? Shit happens. The victims were unlucky, not deserving of their fate. I much prefer a godless universe.