Question for former christians
Posted on: February 15, 2008 - 7:17am
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Question for former christians
Do you ever get that little voice in the back of your mind going "what if it's all true and Hell is real??"
It's like the primitive part of the brain, that doesn't deal in logic or reason, still gets a twinge of fright at the concept of infinite torture and suffering in the lake of fire.
I get it every now and then. It's a pain in the arse.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
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Yes. What you are imprinted with as a child will never go away. That's why religious indoctrination of children is so wrong.
Plus the thinking that everything bad that happens to you is because god doesn't like you or there are devils and demons all around.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
yip,though thankfully it gets less with every passing non-christian day.
But oddly I'm less scared of death noe than when I was christian.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
I do too from time to time. That little voice thats says "no! no! religion is good! god is love! you're going against god! ps. give me %10 of your paycheck....)
but I know it's just baggage from being a kid and is totally illogical. And I agree with Loc, I'm actually less afriad of death now than I was as a christian.
I used to feel the same way until I rejected ALL notions of superstition and spirituality. And, like Medievalguy, I'm no longer afraid of dying. I've found incredible peace of mind ever since I "woke up".
Yes, but hardly EVER anymore!!!!!!
Sometimes I forget how much progress I've made. Thank you for asking because you've reminded me that my fear of hell has abated to almost zero.
What helped the most? Ridiculing Christianity. Laughing at Christianity. You have to fight emotion with emotion. Knowing that hell is logically ridiculous does not necessarily translate to peace of mind.
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When I was a newly um... reborn atheist... yeah, I had 'what if' moments. As a comparison, you show me a woman who was sexually traumatized as a girl, and I'll show you a woman who isn't over it completely. Any kind of strong (especially negative) imprinting from childhood stays with you for your whole life.
There was a case in Canada, I believe (I'm doing this from memory), of a woman who had quintuplets. The state took them away from her for some reason or another, and literally held them in plastic bubbles for quite some time. The mother eventually got them back, but all of them grew up with various socialization disorders from their separation experience as babies!
If something from our childhood that we don't even remember can have such a profound effect on us for our whole life, how much more would years of indoctrination and reinforcement of cognitive dissonance?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Bro,
I've been an agressive freethinking infidel for over a year, and I still catch myself praying sometimes when I can't find my keys.
Its a little thing, I think to myself, "Please, where are my keys?"
And then I remember no one is listening and I get really emberassed.
Paul Kurtz calls this "the transcendental temptation" believing in God tempting in its own way.
Believing in any kind of greater purpose other than what we make for ourselves is tempting.
I actually think arguing with christians has helped me shake this bad habit.
Your life is a love story!
Yes Jello, as a former Christian I also have my "what if" moments.
Although I love my parents I also have an lingering resentment toward them for polluting my mind with that First century Jewish bull-shit ( first Christians were Jews ).
I despise all of the so-called "revealed" Abrahamic religions from the Middle East. Cruel people worshipping their cruel god.
Fuck them. Christians, Jews, Muslims. Fuck them all. God damn blood worshipping freaks....
I hate them and if I had the power to destroy them all I would do it without hesitation.
Besides,what would it matter, their whole religion is based upon death as a doorway to eternity.
Religion is filth !!!
I never believed in hell to begin with. You could claim that it was because I was precocious ("Where is hell? 'Down there'? There's nothing but mantle below the earth's crust."
or because I was simply too stupid to understand metaphysical concepts. Either way, it saved me a whole lot of trouble later on in life!
I don't get it. You were a christian, which entails that you believed in the whole rubbish jesus story, and in God, things that require faith rather than evidence, but not hell? I would have thought that once you believe in one thing that's rubbish, it's not a big leap to believe in all the rest of it as well.
Of course, I'm not you, and not everyone's encounter with theistic religion is identical.
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
Actually, I never do.
Hi Jello.
To answer your question: yes. This is actually why I remained a Christian for so long. It's a shame I never heard of Pascal's Wager until after I decided I was atheist, because this is exactly what I was following.
Despite attending Christian schools, I always had doubts, and didn't think the existence of a god seemed logical. I disagreed with most of the faculty and students at my high school on a number of issues like euthanasia, abortion (it was lonely being the only pro-choice person at a school of 450 students), etc. I was secretly agnostic, but felt ashamed of my doubts, because in chapel they told us that doubts were normal, but you were supposed to pray to God to help you overcome it. To me, this was a religion with tenets I couldn't follow in good conscience, and a religions whose fundamental beliefs were illogical at best. No amount of praying was going to change my opinion about that. But there was always that fear, "What if it's real?? I'd better believe."
But then I was worried that God would read my thoughts and see me having these doubts and realize my heart wasn't in it 100%, and I'd be screwed anyway.
At college, I checked out a couple bible study programs to try to gain a perspective different from my previous experiences - just to see if there was some obvious truth to all this that I was missing. But no. After a well-meaning Christian told me that genesis is the literal truth and there's no way evolution is possible cuz humans and monkeys are different things, that was it. They asked me to explain evolution and why I thought it was true. I'm a biology major... where to even begin?? That involves knowledge of so many molecular and chemical processes, taxonomical classifications, genome conservation... it took years of reading and studying to get to the point of understanding I was at, and they were asking for a concise 5 minute explanation that would probably involve concepts they weren't at all familiar with. At that point I realized, anyone can spend the 10 minutes it takes to read Genesis... but it takes a real dedication to the search of truth to read thousands of pages from textbooks and spend years (maybe even a lifetime) of studying and researching and refining to find the REAL truth. After that experience I never felt bad about doubting God or anything of that sort, because I realized that these people were not smarter, or more spiritual, or more "touched by the spirit" or anything like that... they were simply more ignorant.
Having been raised in a more or less non-Christian environment myself, I still sometimes feel this internalized pressure or doubt.
Now that I'm 40, and my mother is 73 (and non religious herself) I am personally several decades removed from regular exposure to such dogmas. And yet.... My brother is a devout Christian, as are his children.
Now, my brother and I are very close, and we both made peace long ago about this topic. After all some things in life are a bit more important than philosophy. Still, recently I had an incident with my oldest newphew. At 16, he's truly a phenomenal young man. Furthermore a path towards a faith based existence was one that was "allowed" him, rather than forced upon him, something I applaud my brother for at least in the sense of giving his son a choice.
Recently at a family gathering (my daughter's 14th birthday) the subject of belief came up out of the blue. Both my daughters are functionally atheist, though I'd have to say my 12 year old is still not quite intellectually "ready" so to speak to make a definitive stand in this regard. Being divorced, with an ex wife who is a Christian, I can at least be relatively relieved that my children went through the whole concept of Christian belief, and were able to reject it without too much fallout from that side of the family. At any rate, enough "background".
My oldest daughter sort of dodged the issue when the discussion started, and perhaps understandably so, as she is old enough to realize how divisive it can be in this environment to not be Christian. To be honest towards the discussion I "came out" to my brother's children, when this topic was broached. It isn't a fact I've ever dodged or hidden from my niece and nephews, just one of those things that never came up in wrestling matches and hide and seek.
To say the situation immediately became awkward was an understatement, but I and my brother and mother did our best to allay the children's "shock" at this. I mentioned my oldest nephew specifically, because this was truly an earth shattering revelation for him to accept, which left him and I at odds for quite some time.
It was during this brief period that I had some doubt, but only because of the awkwardness related to the incident when I look back with hindsight, merely my fear of alienating a nephew I love very much.
I feel periodically being assailed with some level of doubt in your own philosophy is a good thing ultimately. It is proof that your still human, as well as proof that you do try to consider things critically in your life.
I stopped believing in hell years before I stopped believing in god. It doesn't make any sense.
Heck, even if I went back to being a baptist...well that doesn't really help out with the hell thing.
According to the Catholics the Baptists are going to hell. According to the Muslims all christians are going to hell. How can you know what to believe?
And really, I mean what the fuck? Hell? Eternity of pain and torment? From a loving god? Urmm...
What?
That...doesn't...make...SENSE!
We would spend an ETERNITY for simply being unable to believe? I call major BS.
If there is a hell the vast majority of humans are going to be there no matter what religion they believe and adhere to. So screw it. It isn't going to happen.
I'll bet my non-existent eternal soul on it.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
Not really. When you understand the source of those belifs it suddently becomes rediculous. Hell is barely hinted at in the bible, and mostly embelished apon with the help of many pagan sources not to mention the imagination of Dante's Inferno and Paridise Lost. I also think back to the boogey men I had when I was young, and seeing as they were about as 'real' as my fear of hell, both I judge to be just as silly.
To go beyond your limits you must first find them.
I do but it happens less and less the more I read about the subject. I get hit with theist arguments that I can't instantly refute and I think about it, however quite quickly I just say it makes no sense and get on with my life.
Yes, but luckily the hold it has on you can become less and less with time. Unfortunately, I had the "Christian" experience juxtaposed over the "sexually traumatized as a girl" experience. (It was a man in the church and the congregation believed the man over me and some other girls.) I've made more progress banishing my fear of hell than I have banishing some of the effects of sexual trauma. I suppose I should take what I've learned (fight emotion with emotion) and apply it to other areas of my life.
Damn. I hate it that I'm middle aged and some of this shit just won't go away. I feel I should have made more progress than I have, but I guess we're all different. It's true that artist / musician types tend to be rather sensitive. I guess you have to take the whole package, but I wish I were more sanguine and could also keep my artistic gifts.
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Actually....when I was "waking up", the notion of hell was one of the first things that I tossed. I still held onto what was left of the Christian faith, but strings broke every day and it wasn't long before I chucked the entire thing completely. Of course, as a child I didn't really "get" alot of the religion and was never truly scared of Hell, no matter how hard the adults tried. (I was around 15 when I "woke up", and am twice that now)
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
- Blaise Pascal