Doubting Your Faith For the Hundredth Time? Church Shopping Yet Again? It May Be Time To Think The Unthinkable.

I remember when I began to have doubts about my faith. The world – according to Christianity – just wasn’t adding up.

At first, I tackled the problem by exposing myself to more religion. I attended more church, met more church people, and read more of the Bible.

Still, nothing made sense.

“It must be my church”, I thought, and spent another couple of years church shopping.

Things didn’t get any clearer. Seeing that God’s churches could disagree on so much made things worse. The world, according to the Bible, just didn’t add up.

So, I withdrew from church life. But I wasn’t done with religion. I was still trying to make make God fit into the evil and suffering within the world. I watched hundreds of hours of video and read countless articles on (what seemed like) hundreds of websites.

Still, nothing made sense.

Finally, after many years of this heavy lifting, I asked the unthinkable…

“Maybe there isn’t a god?”

And then I read and watched for another two months before I finally read The God Delusion.

In between chapters, I supplemented The God Delusion with even more articles and videos – this time with a heavy focus on debates between believers and unbelievers.

And just like that, the world started making sense.

Thinking about the unthinkable was – UNDOUBTEDLY – the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Nevertheless, I finally arrived at an answer that really made sense. There was no god.

Why was it so hard?

First, because in addition to letting go of god, I let go of my ideas around immortality. I saw my mind/my consciousness/my soul as nothing more than what my brain did. When my brain died, I recognized that my life would end and there would be nothing more. This, after 40 years, was an excruciating loss. There was a very real mourning period.

Worse, not only had I let go of my own immortality, but I also recognized the mortality of my family. In a very short period of time, I had to come to terms with one day losing my parents – forever. Even harder, I began to imagine what losing my wife or one of my children would mean to me. I felt such fear. Such sadness.

I was preparing myself for future losses in a reality-based way that I’d never had to consider before.

The permanent loss of loved ones was the hardest idea I’d ever had to deal with – I’m still amazed I was able to accept all of it.

Can you accept the seemingly harsh reality atheism offers? Why would you want to go any further down this path? After all, compared to what the rest of your life has taught you, what I am saying is pretty damn bleak, isn’t it?

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley suggested that comfort and happiness often come at the expense of freedom and truth.

Yes, sometimes religion is comfortable. Sometimes it will make you happy. But, if inter-mixed and underlying that shallow sense of comfort and happiness, you feel conflict between religion and reality, it may be because you are doubting the truthfulness of what you’ve been taught so far. Accepting faith may also be impinging on your mental freedom to explore the real nature of the universe.

Comfort and happiness versus freedom and truth. Is that the choice? Not necessarily.

Since becoming an atheist, I’ve become free to think deeper about the meaning of life, and I believe I’m closer to the truth of this world than I ever was when I held a belief in God.

But, to my surprise, I am also much happier and more comfortable than I ever was before. There is no more internal conflict because the world finally makes sense. I’ve also gotten past mourning my immortality and am probably better prepared than most for my death, and the death of my loved ones. In fact, I no longer dwell on death at all (except of course to share these experiences!).

And that’s why you owe it to yourself to push a little further – to think outside the box that religion has put you in. You are seeking a melding of comfort, happiness, truth and freedom.

Is today the day you finally allow yourself to think the unthinkable?

August 23, 2009 · Filed Under Atheism, religion

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The Stages of Grief Re: Atheist De-Conversion

I have often thought about how closely my de-conversion followed the stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Wondering if I was alone, I googled stages of grief in atheist deconversion. It turns out that many atheists go through a similar experience. At the top of my search, I found a wonderfully written post over at de-conversion.com that comes very close to mirroring my experience with the stages of grief. In the post, “the Chaplain” takes us through denial, anger, shock and acceptance. I think her thoughts on the anger section were particularly interesting:

Then, I went through the anger stage. The most intense moments of this phase came when I learned that the “virgin birth” verse in Matthew is mistranslated. Translating the Hebrew text as “young woman” rather than “virgin” makes a huge difference doctrinally (regardless of NT Wright’s assertion to the contrary). The standard Christian apologists’ assurances that all of the Bible’s translation errors are minor (simple numerical discrepancies, etc.) and have no bearing on doctrine is flat-out wrong! And when I read, in several sources (Including his own writings), that St. Jerome knew that the translation was wrong, but offered some twisted logic for preserving the error, I was furious. I read about how an early Church father (perhaps it was Eusebius?) doctored the writings of Josephus so that they would appear to confirm more explicitly the life and ministry of Jesus. And I read much more that confirmed by non-belief. Even though I was furious with Christian preachers and teachers, much of my anger was directed at myself. How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I see through this stuff before? I’m a well-educated woman living in the 21st century. How could I have gone decades without recognizing that religious doctrine is all speculation? That none is any more correct than any other? None of the biblical writers really knew what they were writing about. None of the Church fathers or reformers through the ages knew what they were teaching to be factual. And contemporary Christian scholars don’t actually know what they’re talking and writing about either. It’s all guesswork, wishful thinking and ready acceptance of the traditions of our forebears. Every bit of it.

As in the Chaplain’s experience, I moved beyond anger and into the other stages – the most notable difference being that I also experienced a bit of depression over the loss of my (and my loved one’s) mortality.

That was over a year ago and, like with many losses, I moved on and put it behind me. I’m definitely going through more “stages” – but they are much less about atheism than they are about figuring out what I want for my life and how I want to contribute to life on planet earth -  the really fun part!

April 20, 2009 · Filed Under Atheism

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