Background: Pretty much unremarkable when I was little, except for my mother (further information upon request). However, my maternal grandfather died when I was 12 and sent mom into a tail spin. They were very close. Anyway, her mortality became a conscious thought and therefore, we started going back to church. I became a rapid fundamentalist (specifics also available upon request) and that continued until I was probably 20. Over the next ensuing years, everything began to wane and huge ideology was questioned, the former outcomes overturned. By my early 30s, I was easing into agnosticism. Finally, where I am now, looks like atheism might be my next step. I’ve concluded that, due to things like my mental illness and more (once more, please just ask), I can’t any longer wrap my mind around the unfairness of how things are for everyone. So, here I be.
What would you guys do in a similar situation? Try going back to the roots of where you were before? Work harder at a middle ground? Or embrace full-out disbelief? Please, I’d only like suggestions and not a debate. I also welcome all views and, without a doubt, I don’t condemn one over the other, nor at this point do I feel any favor. Just lost and alone and bewildered.
I thank you in advance for your time and helping me out with this. I’m sure just reading it (as always for me) is a soul-sapping task, but I do at least try to keep them short. Really.
Something that has helped me was letting go of the concept of the “fair and balanced God”. The question used to be “why does God allow X to happen to good people?”
I started thinking about whether or not God really laid his hands directly on human affairs. ISTM that a just God wouldn’t work that way – whatever God there is (and don’t read “the Judeo-Christian God from an inerrant Bible” into that), he would be to humanity what gravity is to raindrops. I can best sum up my perception of God as “eventuality” … definitely not an active anthropomorphic player in human events.
Kind of an ad hoc and personal interpretation, but there you go. If it helps, that’s great. I’ll understand perfectly if it doesn’t.
Actually bordelond, that pretty much sums up how I’ve been trying to explain my agnosticism to myself. I’ve kind of crouched in terms of ‘randomness,’ but I like your way of looking at it too. It’s almost, to my way of thinking, whoever might be out there is akin to a cosmic supervisor. Just overseeing that the randomness principle stays in effect and doesn’t really interfere with us here.
I’d go with “embrace disbelief”. It actually brings me great relief and even a measure of comfort to say to myself, “There is no God.” To me, it’s so much better than trying to deal with the idea that Really Bad Shit happens “on purpose” or “for a reason”.
I’m sorry that this is a traumatic thing for you. I didn’t find it so painful, but then, I don’t remember if I ever believed without doubt, even as a kid.
It was very painful for me, though it was ten years earlier - in my late teens and very early 20’s. I dealt with it by exploring other religions, and really trying to study religion and god and what people thought of it.
Agnosticism was a position I arrived at with research. Atheism - and remember I speak only in the strict definition, “without God” - came instinctively. One day I realized - I didn’t believe, furthermore, I didn’t need to believe. That was the end of that.
I’m not saying you should research other religions but perhaps spirituality might not be a bad idea. And you must remember, like someone said in a different thread, life is a journey, not a destination. If currently you are journeying toward atheism, well, that’s OK. Don’t beat yourself up about it.
It just, up until now anyway, felt wrong somehow to ‘jump ship.’ I struggle far more with the injustice of it all, but I’d be lying if I didn’t honestly say that the purported impending fire and brimstone conclusion didn’t worry me any. It’s still there and occasionally I have nightmares about it… I wake up and think I’m dead, with the only hope (maybe) is fervent prayer to prevent the slide into hell. I’ve mostly learned to ignore it and instead view it as a relic of my past, but it does remain difficult.
For those out there who do or did, how does one deal with the concept of a literal eternity with Satan? Was the belief hard to kick? Is it something you still struggle against? Does it frighten you, yet you stay steadfast? I want to at least firmly land somewhere, it just sucks that I have no clue where that might be.
Thanks so much Dung Beetle. You’ve given me much more food for thought.
I agree. Shed yourself of the concept that someone else, especially a supreme being, is somehow controlling your destiny. You are responsible for your own destiny.
Of course random things occur. People are killed for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or contract disease for inexplicable reasons. But to think that this is part of someone else’s master plan is ridiculous.
Go out and enjoy life on your terms, not on someone else’s. This doesn’t mean a life of debauchery and evil: au contraire. It means, to me, that I choose the friends, the existence, the morals, and the lifestyle that I want.
Coincidentally enough, a lot of good moral teachings can be found in the Bible, and other religious manifestos. But I choose to do the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because I fear eternal retribution from an invisible deity.
Maybe you’re just having trouble letting go of the religion because it was a big part of your life; that’s natural. But if you don’t believe, you don’t believe. Why try to convince yourself of something you know isn’t true? You don’t have to believe in God to experience love or beauty or have ideals. You don’t have to “embrace disbelief”; just embrace what’s important to you. I read a book by a former preacher turned atheist - I think the title is “Losing Faith in Faith” or something like that. Great book, but it struck me that he hadn’t just lost faith; it was more like he converted to anti-religion. It seemed like he was unable to shake the preacher mentality, and still had to espouse a belief, even if the belief he was promoting was actually non-belief.
I’ve always felt that you can’t change what you believe. You can expend a lot of effort in trying to convince yourself of something, but if you know it’s not true, the best you can build is a shaky house of cards that could come down at any moment. Why not focus instead on what’s important to you in life?
Your literal eternity will be complete nothingness. We live; we die. There’s no heaven; there’s no hell.
You won’t know existence after death. You will be dead. You will live on in the memory of those you leave behind. Eventually those people will die too.
Look, I know it sounds bleak, but this is reality. And nothing at all to be afraid of.
It depends on how you really came to your disbelief. Athiesm is not a belief, it’s a conclusion. I’ve been an athiest for years, and I still read about it. Understand that it’s ok to say ‘I don’t know’, don’t feel there has to be a definite answer either way. Basically, don’t force it. Learn and decide.
I guess if it was me, I would not feel able to come to any definite conclusion without doing a lot of reading on the subject. (Actually that’s pretty much how I approach anything in life.) I’d have to do a lot of investigating and thinking about the whole issue.
Wow, they really messed with your head. It doesn’t bother me just because the idea seems so silly to me, like a child being afraid of monsters under the bed. The idea that there’s a god who loves us, but doesn’t give us any obvious evidence of his existence, and expects us to find * him*, and then would torture us for eternity just because we didn’t, is so nonsensical that I just can’t take it seriously. But it’s a lot easier for me because I was never indoctrinated into that mindset.
I said before that losing faith wasn’t painful to me, but it’s true that it wasn’t easy. I didn’t shake it off overnight. Finally, I realized that I really didn’t believe, and even if I was wrong, no amount of lip service or pretending would fool an omniscient deity.
I ask myself, “Is it more likely that an invisible magic guy is going to burn me for eternity, or that some human beings are trying to scare other human beings into something?” It helps.
I always heard that the phrase “losing my religion” simply meant indulging in profane language. IOW, cutting loose with a stream of curse words. Nothing to do with losing faith.
But, music lyrics have different meanings for different people, I guess.
Far be it from me to denigrate taking a life lesson from a 12 year old rock song.
Have you looked into deism ? I tended towards atheism/agnosticism for a long time, but have slowly begun to embrace the idea that the wonder of creation justifies a logical leap of faith into accepting a higher power (of some kind, although I disdain notions that this “creator” is within the grasp of human perception. And I certainly reject the human-centric mentality that we are his pet project).
I consider myself fortunate that dogmatic scripture was never forced onto me, so I had no qualms about rejecting conventional religion (although, to this day, Christians seem aghast that I am not a Christian, too).
I can’t really counsel you on how you might consider abandoning fire and brimstone, then, but would simply point out that, IMHO, browbeating someone into strict obediance, with the threat of eternal damnation as the vengeful repercussion of independent thought, is surely a grotesque form of mental abuse. And, like anybody who has been abused, your healing will be a process.
I’d like to reiterate this. Also, my sympathies. I’ve known a number of people who’ve abandoned a cherished belief, for various reasons, and it’s often very difficult.
Be easy on yourself. I reiterate: it’s OK to say “I don’t know”. You don’t have to land somewhere if you’ve jumped from religion. Read a lot of books on various faiths and philosophies, see if anything clicks for you. Try to stick with the more positive ones, rather than the you’re-going-to-hell-if-you-disagree-with-me ones.
Meditate or pray on the issue, write in a journal. Let the process flow naturally, don’t rush yourself to hardcore belief/disbelief. Atheism should feel like a freedom from chains that bind, not a cold, careless, universe.
My journey to agnosticism (or possibly deism) hasn’t been one of disbelief in God, but disbelief in the church. The cruelty, intolerance and pettiness that I started seeing in the church drove me to wonder how it meshed with the Christian faith that was being taught. I am not able to say “There is no god”, but I’m also not able to say that I can believe in the god that they are showing and even sometimes teaching.
So rather then gritting my teeth and turning a blind eye to the parts that I can’t believe in, I’ve been working on solidifying what actually resonates with me. Before I can join a church again, I have to know what I believe in, and what I don’t believe in.
I suppose you could say that my faith is growing up. Rather then letting others TELL me what is correct/right/good, I am trying to understand what is correct/right/good. No more blindly following the crowd.
I wasn’t raised a fundamentalist, and no one ever planted a fear of hell in me. I do have a strong religious faith, but it isn’t of that flavor. But I said above that I would want to do a lot of reading and thought before making a decision; I do think that I would want to go into the middle ground, and find out about a lot of different beliefs. I wouldn’t want to stick with the original ‘roots’ in my family unless I was convinced that they were the correct ones.
Believers often say that your “convictions”–in your case, waking up in a state of panic about the fate of your ever-lovin’ soul–are proof that God is within us and is trying to save us. But (IMO) they’re actually just products of our upbringing: in our society we’re fed all of this saviors-and-demons crap at a very impressionable age, and it puts a stamp on our consciousness that we can’t get rid of. The fact that something inside you screams when you turn away from faith is no accident; but the something inside you is your culture, not an omnipresent being.
One doesn’t. It’s as simple as that. I mean, how do you even know Satan exists? Because a bunch of humans told you. Mortals. Just like you and me. The only extra qualification they have is that they’ve voluntarily had the same ideas hammered into their heads extra hard. What the fuck do a bunch of mortals know about eternity?
(Granted, I was raised Jewish and there isn’t as much of an emphasis on the eternal hellfire stuff in that religion. Actually, I was 18 before I found out that there was even a Hell in Jewish belief.)
You can only believe what you can believe. On the other hand, you can stick all sorts of labels on what you believe or how you express your belief.
It sounds to me that you already know what you do (or do not) believe and you are just wrestling with labels. I’d say ignore the labels. Unless you have a requirement to identify yourself as one thing or another to some person or group, then just ponder what you do believe (without trying to wrap all the beliefs in a bundle with a nametag), and find whatever level of comfort you can from that.
If there are beliefs that you still hold that appear to contradict each other, then you might want to spend some time seeking help in books or lectures that deal with those issues. (I’m guessing going to a spiritual counsellor would be right out :). ) But realize that most people hold contradictory beliefs on some issues. It is a big, exciting, terrifying, confusing world and I am not aware of anyone who truly understands it.
