I was raised in an extremely devout evangelical Christian home. My parents did their best to isolate my siblings and I from what they saw as corrupting and evil influences of the outside world, in all spheres: social, educational, recreational, etc... My parents always had plenty of religious literature lying around - including Creationist nonsens which they specifically bought for me when I became interested in science - but absolutely nothing to give any of us a hint that perhaps there was another point of view out there, and that perhaps we weren't dirty, shameful sinners condemned to death and hellfire by Original Sin who needed to be 'washed by the blood of the lamb' to ever attain anything approaching happiness in this life or the one they always told me awaited us after death. I was a very sensitive child, and took much of the twisted cult theology to heart - especially the part about all the unsaved going to hell to be tortured for ever and ever and ever (you get the idea). Some of my earliest memories are about sitting in church and listening to one of the all-to-regular hellfire and brimstone sermons, looking at my siblings and friends goofing off, and praying with tears in my eyes on the verge of sobbing for Jesus to do something my brother and my friends so that they wouldn't go to hell for not internalizing his "Good News". Nevertheless, I recall that I always had at least a little cognitive dissonance, despite my very childlike faith. It just didn't make sense to me that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God would create Adam and Eve and place them in the same garden with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil knowing full-well in advance that they would disobey his command and eat of its fruit. Nor did it make sense that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being would regret creating man (indeed, I couldn't see how such a being could possibly regret anything), and drown every living being except Noah, his family and the beasts on the Ark, as a way to cleans the earth of evil, knowing in advance that evil would re-sprout ever more vigorously. By the time I was ten I was having serious doubts, but my entire worldview, indeed, my entire life was built on this religious foundation and supported by a scaffolding of fundamentalist nonsense. When I turned twelve, I'd decided that I had enough of tossing and turning at night do to the nagging uncertainty of my belief and creeping suspicion that I'd been had by the biggest confidence trick ever devised, and decided to research the matter for myself, with as much objectivity as possible, paying attention to 'the other side' as much as the one I was indoctrinated into. After two years of careful research, analysis and soul-searching, after carefully dissecting the argument of the apologists and and the skeptics, I came to the following conclusions:
1. There is absolutely nothing in the Bible that is dictated or even remotely inspired by a supernatural, or even merely super-human agency
2. The God of the Bible does not exist
3. Due to the fact that virtually every attribute assigned to God is either self-contradictory or contradicts one or more of his other alleged attributes, the God of the Bible cannot exist
I delved a little into the other monotheistic religions as well as eastern philosophy, and came away with essentially the same conclusion - none were divinely inspired, and none held the answer to life's most important questions. I became an atheist then and remain one to this day.
For a couple of years, it felt like I was adrift on a boat in the middle of the emptiest stretch of ocean on the planet - I could not anchor myself: I did not know why I was here, what, if anything, the purpose of life is, which of the victimless behaviors I was brainwashed into believing were "sinful" (premarital sex, moderate drug and alcohol use, dancing, smoking, etc.., etc..) were actually immoral or harmful, and the biggest question of all, what will happen to me when I die?
The answer to that question was rather obvious, though for the longest time I did not want to accept it. For a long while, I was nearly obsessed with death and almost incapacitated by the fear of dying. Thankfully, fate tossed me an intellectual and spiritual life-preserver in the form of transhumanism. I realized that the best thing I could do with my life was to work to abolish involuntary death for myself and as many of my fellow humans as possible.
Lately, I've been going through some rather stressful life-changes, and I find now, years after I had obsessively analyzed the argument for and against theism that I am feeling doubts again - except now the doubts are about my atheism. I find myself thinking, what if my parents are right? What if there actually is an infinitely evil supernatural monster out there who creates the vast majority of humans to send them to hell, and stoops to such nefarious deception to increase the number of the hell-bound that he creates the universe too look completely unlike the narrative in Genesis? What if? I know that these doubts are purely emotional and almost certainly caused by the strain I am under. I know there is absolutely reasonable basis for them. I know that the infinitely evil bloodthirsty demiurge hallucinated into being by psychotic bronze-age goat herders is logically impossible, and literally cannot exist. I know that these doubts are the result of abusive childhood brainwashing, because I do not find myself wondering if Allah is going to damn me to hell for rejecting the Qu'aran, nor whether I will burn in hell for the same number of years as hairs on the cows whose flesh I have eaten, as the Hindu scriptures clearly say. I know that these thoughts are completely irrational, yet for some reason, this knowledge does remarkably little to help. Is there anyone else on these forums with a fundamentalist background who's had similar experiences? Can anyone give me some advice on how to deal with this? Your input would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Edit: I should add that one of my biggest fears, next to oblivion, is that in the face of an extreme stressor I might lose my integrity and, like the novelist Anne Rice, return to the comforting embrace of a religion which I know for a fact is false. Next to my fear of oblivion, this is my second strongest objection to death - as Nietzsche so perceptively pointed out over a hundred years ago, for a Christian, indeed, for anyone who's been brainwashed into fire-and-brimstone, death is never dignified - it's a rape of conscience when the ugly specter of eternal damnation will invariably rear its head. I don't know if I have the strength to maintain my integrity in the face of the biggest unknown. If I must lose my battle with death I want to do it on my terms; I do not want my friends' and family's last memory of me to be my praying feverishly for mercy to the most vile and despicable fictional character ever devised by man's twisted imagination.
Edited by Pham Nuwen, 03 June 2010 - 02:13 AM.
