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This has probably been asked before but maybe we can get some fresh input. Some of you left Christianity at an early age and went on to live full happy lives. Others stayed with it until much later, maybe until after your best sexual years were over and now you're finally realizing Christianity is a fraud. Do any of you oldsters who walked the straight and narrow--probably had a few occasions to indulge in some naughty behavior but didn't for fear of going to hell, do you regret your past? Do you regret having thrown away the best years of your life on a lie and now as death nears and you feel it's all about to end that you're going to die and then comes the big void?
I maintain my deism, probably because I cannot let go that there has to be something after death to validate all the stupid things I did here in this life and all the opportunities I squandered as a practicing Christian. As I get older I do feel a certain amount of depression and despair creeping in. I suppose that's the one good thing about "ignorance is bliss" is that Christians approach death with this firm conviction they're going onto a greater reward or world and that made all the crap down here worthwhile and that makes death a little easier to swallow, but atheists don't have that luxury. Agnostics have a little more tolerance far as the possibility of an afterlife so maybe they derive a degree of comfort from that.
But any opinions as to how you face the specter of death and annihilation? Coping mechanisms?
I don't know why you are framing deconversion as significantly a question of obtaining sexual license. My sexual mores did not change and were not at stake, and I'd think this is fairly typical. Also fairly typical is that whatever hangups / repressions I'm saddled with because of Christianity's influence in my upbringing, don't just magically vanish when one deconverts, either.
As to regretting "blowing away the best years of my life", I don't go to those places. If it hadn't been theism it would have been something else. The simple reality is that I was young and naive and didn't know myself ... I have to own my role in the matter.
The approach of what you call the "big void" is a comfort to me. I think that, properly understood, oblivion can be nothing else. Death and oblivion are not a "specter" so there is not much to cope with. It's mostly a matter of dealing with the process rather than the fact of dying.
In my experience the dread of mortality and death is a function of one's attachment to the notion of immortality. Once you let go of that the whole problem falls away. It is stressful to live beyond one's true scope and to insist on control over life that you don't have.
This has probably been asked before but maybe we can get some fresh input. Some of you left Christianity at an early age and went on to live full happy lives. Others stayed with it until much later, maybe until after your best sexual years were over and now you're finally realizing Christianity is a fraud. Do any of you oldsters who walked the straight and narrow--probably had a few occasions to indulge in some naughty behavior but didn't for fear of going to hell, do you regret your past? Do you regret having thrown away the best years of your life on a lie and now as death nears and you feel it's all about to end that you're going to die and then comes the big void?
I maintain my deism, probably because I cannot let go that there has to be something after death to validate all the stupid things I did here in this life and all the opportunities I squandered as a practicing Christian. As I get older I do feel a certain amount of depression and despair creeping in. I suppose that's the one good thing about "ignorance is bliss" is that Christians approach death with this firm conviction they're going onto a greater reward or world and that made all the crap down here worthwhile and that makes death a little easier to swallow, but atheists don't have that luxury. Agnostics have a little more tolerance far as the possibility of an afterlife so maybe they derive a degree of comfort from that.
But any opinions as to how you face the specter of death and annihilation? Coping mechanisms?
with the discovery of gravity waves it's almost impossible to think of "nothing" as more reasonable over "something". But we will see the convoluted logic continue on both fronts. The literal theist and the literal atheist trying to convert everybody or trying to push that crap if you're not with me your against me kind of thing. we normal's in the middle do not have to play reindeer games.
Now if we can get the theist fundy, ex fundy and militants to just understand their role in what they themselves did we can focus on the real problem. Fundies and militants. The mentals have to accept that what they saw "this Jesus fellewerer" is just their image. I don't even care that they keep the image, just don't force it on the rest of us as the only truth.
We all do not share the same fears. There are things worse than death to many men. The self centered physiologist can't understand it so they make up convoluted bowls of crap to explain for themselves when it is as simple as "just the right thing to do". But if we need an after life to keep our angst at a low, thats is way cool.
Some of you left Christianity at an early age and went on to live full happy lives. Others stayed with it until much later, maybe until after your best sexual years were over and now you're finally realizing Christianity is a fraud. Do any of you oldsters who walked the straight and narrow--probably had a few occasions to indulge in some naughty behavior but didn't for fear of going to hell, do you regret your past?
Answering this as a binary yes or no question, I will say no. When I figured out that the religious interpretation I internalized of how one should refrain from and indulge in sex was wrong, I was still young enough to move on.
Were your questions to be phrased more in the middle, along the lines of did your version of Christianity instill unreasonable fears and expectations about sexuality, and did these influence you in psychologically harmful ways that caused you to make some bad decisions, some regrettable, I would have to answer yes. Moving away from the fear did not fix the self esteem issues I'd developed. That took much longer, although reminders of low self esteem still pop up now and then.
I'm grateful I have no horrific tales to tell and if you had a microscope to look into my life, I don't think you'd find it that interesting. Woody Allen wouldn't have wanted to make me a character in one of his movies. Mordant is right that the Christian related baggage doesn't go away just because one stops believing and not all of one's baggage is caused by religion.
I think I understand the fear you're describing, although I don't think I had it as bad. And I hope you can gain some solace from sharing your story here. I appreciate your talking about it, and hearing other's stories in these forums has been a comfort to me. Some of the C-D stories other tell have made me feel like I wasn't so alone, even if it felt that way at the time. They've helped me understand some of my baggage better.
It's extremely difficult for people to imagine not being.
If you really think about it, the fear of being dead is based on the idea that you're going to somehow be aware of it and since it's an unknown, it can be scary.
Once you fully understand that there will be no awareness, there is nothing to fear.
As far as any part of life being wasted, every single bit of it was a learning experience. I wouldn't know, now, what I know if all of it hadn't happened.
Wow. I have no problem with the concept of "not being" and calling death a "specter" is just weird to me. I'm concerned about pain and loss of dignity at end stage, and believe that death is usually painful and difficult because life fights to hold on (until it doesn't) but hope to have the means of termination at hand when that time arrives.
I didn't "deconvert" from any religion, but the way some of you wrote about death required a response.
I don't know why you are framing deconversion as significantly a question of obtaining sexual license. My sexual mores did not change and were not at stake, and I'd think this is fairly typical. Also fairly typical is that whatever hangups / repressions I'm saddled with because of Christianity's influence in my upbringing, don't just magically vanish when one deconverts, either.
The sex thing is just one aspect, a piece of the whole pie. It shouldn't be singled out as distinctive from the other aspects of having found a soulmate and had beautiful children who went on to establish their own happy lives. I do feel cheated in this way. Statistically, 50% of us married and divorced multiple times. 40% of us stayed in unfulfilling marriage to various degrees. Only a lucky handful found someone they truly were happy with. This doesn't even take into consideration the question, "Did I really have fun or was I pretty miserable in a dead-end job and living near poverty and suffering from a host of maladies during my short stay here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
As to regretting "blowing away the best years of my life", I don't go to those places. If it hadn't been theism it would have been something else. The simple reality is that I was young and naive and didn't know myself ... I have to own my role in the matter.
Perhaps that is wise. I think if we all started summing out lives the wins against the losses would look pretty dismal for 99% of us. That's where the concept of the 1% comes from to a certain extent. Some of us had the good fortune to be born with silver spoons, others to be born kings and prince's, other to achieve fame and the good life that goes with it. Nearly all of us, however, were born to scratch the soil in one way or another and plant a seed in a scorching wasteland and hope a plant would sprout so we'd have dinner for ourselves and our children, if we had any. Whatever "intelligence" set this whole thing up, whether a deity or evolution, they sure seem to have made a terrible muck of it. As a whole, civilization has just been one horrible failed experiment. You may feel inclined to dispute that for the sake of argument, but when I look back at history and see just how far off the rails civilization went I feel nothing but regret that the universe even bothered to lay this giant cosmic egg on this ball.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
The approach of what you call the "big void" is a comfort to me. I think that, properly understood, oblivion can be nothing else. Death and oblivion are not a "specter" so there is not much to cope with. It's mostly a matter of dealing with the process rather than the fact of dying.
In my experience the dread of mortality and death is a function of one's attachment to the notion of immortality. Once you let go of that the whole problem falls away. It is stressful to live beyond one's true scope and to insist on control over life that you don't have.
Facing the big void for me is just the sense of feeling cheated that fate didn't offer me a better life. I ask myself, "If this is all I got and now I'm going to disappear, then what was the point of it all?' We can argue evolution isn't intelligent; it doesn't discriminate; it doesn't pick favorites. One has to wonder, though why it was all set up for 1% to thrive very nicely and the other 99% to scratch to various degrees for a living. Couldn't the cosmos have done a better job at balancing the have's and the have-not's, not just in financial but in matching us with someone compatible. Why was our soulmate born on the other side of the world? Why were we never given a fighting chance to meet them? As I said, who or whatever controls all this couldn't have effed it up more if they tried with all their might. If I've lost belief in any higher power it's probably for that one reason alone.
with the discovery of gravity waves it's almost impossible to think of "nothing" as more reasonable over "something". But we will see the convoluted logic continue on both fronts. The literal theist and the literal atheist trying to convert everybody or trying to push that crap if you're not with me your against me kind of thing. we normal's in the middle do not have to play reindeer games.
I don't think I've ever encountered such a self-loathing atheist as you.
Your perpetual - and barely coherent - mission to flog the false equivalency between religious fundamentalism and atheists who don't soft-peddle their perfectly rational atheism is bizarre and more than a little sad, yet fascinating.
As far as any part of life being wasted, every single bit of it was a learning experience. I wouldn't know, now, what I know if all of it hadn't happened.
My current wife had a horrible childhood and will always carry baggage from it. And she had some fairly horrible things happen to her in her adult life. While she is nice enough, when I'm occasionally downcast about my own disappointments and struggles in life, not to rub in that bad as I had it, she had it still worse, she does remind me that there is no sense decrying what were essentially illusions anyway. I couldn't have known better, until I knew better. I can however say with a clear conscience that I was at all times true to the light / comprehension that I had at the time.
My children for instance, particularly my mentally challenged son, suffer ... but then neither can I imagine not knowing them. They are my children. What am I supposed to do, wish that they had never been born? If so, to what end, and what purpose would that serve? Things are what they are because they got that way.
So I completely agree ... we have no choice but to accept that we're at the end of various causal chains that we had nowhere near as much choice in as we'd like to imagine, and celebrate that we made the best of it that we could and knew to.
The sex thing is just one aspect, a piece of the whole pie. It shouldn't be singled out as distinctive from the other aspects of having found a soulmate and had beautiful children who went on to establish their own happy lives. I do feel cheated in this way. Statistically, 50% of us married and divorced multiple times. 40% of us stayed in unfulfilling marriage to various degrees. Only a lucky handful found someone they truly were happy with. This doesn't even take into consideration the question, "Did I really have fun or was I pretty miserable in a dead-end job and living near poverty and suffering from a host of maladies during my short stay here.
I pondered these issues 15 years ago or thereabouts and the literature I ran across described the concept of "vital marriage". Let's fact it, this is the brass ring we all want: a vital marriage is one in which there is very little discord and the relationship is, to BOTH participants, their greatest joy in life.
While the study was not very specific about the frequency with which this occurs, it is not hard to back your way into a general idea of it. As you point out, 50% of marriages end in divorce and so we can be pretty sure that 50% of marriages are the polar opposite of "vital". We further know that just because a couple doesn't divorce, doesn't mean their relationship is something they are content with, much less thrilled about. We all know people who stay together "because of the children" or from simple inertia, such as that the financial and/or emotional repercussions of divorce are at least in the short run even worse than the repercussions of a dull or miserable marriage.
We also all know of marriages that are no great shakes but the participants manage to rationalize it as okay or even great.
In the final analysis I'd have to say that this fabled "vital marriage" is at best in the single digits (<10%) and probably something like 1 or 2 percent. You know, a marriage that "just works", simply flows, and isn't a source of strife and misunderstanding and despair, or a sinkhole of endless effort for uncertain returns.
Aside from all the above you have the simple fact that marriages are interrupted by the general mayhem of existence -- death, serious illness and injury -- and these can turn even a "vital marriage" into a joyless grind, if it doesn't terminate it altogether. We haven't entirely vanquished "nature, red in tooth and claw".
So I concluded that if you are looking for marriage to perk up an otherwise uncompelling sense of purpose and meaning, you have probably a 98% chance of being at least somewhat disappointed / disillusioned, and maybe a LOT disillusioned. I have quit putting significant eggs in that basket and never looked back. Just as well before that I quit putting any of my eggs in the "my children will someday respect and appreciate me" basket. All of these investments depend on the often irrational and always baffling actions and responses of Other People. It is generally a fool's errand chasing after the understanding and regard of others. I take the understanding and regard I can get as a found gift but I don't count on it.
(And yes, for those who wonder, I know that I suck as much as everyone else, so don't even go there).
Realizations like this have always caused me to have some regard for Buddhism, which basically in so many words starts out with the admission that life is difficult and nothing is permanent and then rather than promising to fix that, teaches you to accept it. If you can really get this concept through your head, and really live it, it does wonders for your emotional state. And you don't really need all the trappings and practices of Buddhism to grasp this concept.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
I think if we all started summing out lives the wins against the losses would look pretty dismal for 99% of us. That's where the concept of the 1% comes from to a certain extent. Some of us had the good fortune to be born with silver spoons, others to be born kings and prince's, other to achieve fame and the good life that goes with it. Nearly all of us, however, were born to scratch the soil in one way or another and plant a seed in a scorching wasteland and hope a plant would sprout so we'd have dinner for ourselves and our children, if we had any. Whatever "intelligence" set this whole thing up, whether a deity or evolution, they sure seem to have made a terrible muck of it. As a whole, civilization has just been one horrible failed experiment. You may feel inclined to dispute that for the sake of argument, but when I look back at history and see just how far off the rails civilization went I feel nothing but regret that the universe even bothered to lay this giant cosmic egg on this ball.
I really haven't found any good argument against the contention that the human experiment, at least to date, is a failure that deserves to be cancelled. The problem as I see it, though, is that the experiment isn't finished and recorded history is barely a blip in the face of geologic time anyway. If you forget about the pain and suffering involved, and assume humanity manages to survive, then a few tens of thousands of years of human suffering over against potentially millions or billions of years of humans clawing their way into some kind of stable and enjoyable and compelling existence, may be a small price to pay. Cold comfort for you and me, but also, if you dare to hope just a little, it is a powerful rationalization also. More on some days than on others, I'll grant you.
As for the "1%" I can only point out that 99% of the population isn't offing itself so from an evolutionary standpoint it doesn't matter. Our survival instincts and our fear of death and our actual good experiences keep us reproducing, and from the viewpoint of natural selection, that's a smashing success.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Facing the big void for me is just the sense of feeling cheated that fate didn't offer me a better life.
Well then stop right there, because there is no intentional agent such as god or euphemistic replacements for god like "fate" or "chance" to "offer" you anything. And IF such things existed, it'd be foolish to assume that (1) they owe you anything and (2) agree that they owe you anything and (3) care that they owe you anything and (4) wouldn't squash you like a bug just to shut you up.
The universe cares not a whit about either of us and offers us and owes us nothing. If you really understand that, and really understand that you are of no significance whatsoever, you will quit caring whether there's a "point" or you made a "difference". Certainly I look for points and try to make a difference, and respond when someone else actually acknowledges my pains like the lap dog that I am. But really, I have had to get over myself ... no small task for a former evangelical raised to think that god almighty himself had me in his back pocket.
A lot of what you bemoan is a waste of time and not actionable and serves no purpose. You'll figure that out eventually. After all, one of the benefits of leaving fundamentalist / literalist thought behind is that it frees you, not only to think without restrictions and follow evidence WHEREVER it leads, but also it frees you from the responsibility to BE SOMEONE in the eyes of some imagined deity or even your own eyes. I do my best, and I have had pretty good luck in some ways (I am debt free and make an excellent income at a job I enjoy for example) but ultimately I really don't give a fig whether or not they build a statue of me and put it in the town square when I die for the pigeons to crap on. As long as I have empathy and compassion for the fellow humans I deal with during my life, I let the chips fall where they may rather than agonize over whether I've "made a difference" that anyone else would bother to validate. People are too fickle, to unaware, to self-absorbed, and too judgmental for the most part anyway. I realized a long time ago that I will never be good enough or accomplished enough or transcendent enough in the view of random others, but I can at least have a clear conscience with regard to myself. That is much more manageable. I have found that Mordant is a good and loyal friend to himself, never betrays himself, and always is true to himself. This is, and must be, sufficient.
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