The need to believe?

[mordant]

Hey Ben, and thanks for your thoughts. You pose a good question - how important is the truth? I think that to the best of anyone's knowledge, it's safe to say no one really knows with certainty, one way or the other, if a deity exists.

No one knows any truth with 100% certainty. Everything is a preponderance of evidence and while with respect to specific deities the probabilities are 99.99% of those specific gods not existing (being charitable here), the question is not "do I know for sure" but "is there any valid reason to afford belief to this?"

I have to stop living for my emotions, though. We're not slaves to our emotions, and that's likely why so many religions can manipulate people, it preys on our vulnerabilities and emotions.

I can tell that you're a person that "leads with" your emotions, who feels things deeply, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that per se. It does however mean that you have extra work to do, to push back against confirmation bias, agency inference, and just generally giving subjective feelings too much evidential weight. I'm probably the rough opposite of you, I lead with my intellect and am often not that in touch with my emotions. That's got its own downsides too. I don't think you have anything to apologize for or wish for here, but you simply have to develop discipline around your feelings so they don't intrude ON your intellect and maybe override it under stress. And somehow do that while still being authentic.

This is very similar to someone who is a gourmand, who truly loves and lives for food; that's fine, so long as it doesn't lead to food addiction or obesity, etc. Or someone who lives for runner's high, which is fine so long as you understand the stress that puts on your physically and you don't end up with your toenails falling off, etc. It's just a different way of being, with its own strengths and vulnerabilities.

As an atheist, I felt honest with myself, yet emotionally a bit empty. In faith, I feel intellectually dishonest (to be honest), and emotionally a bit better. Less empty, but not necessarily ''full.'' I just don't want to live on a fence, that's all.

Your statement here suddenly made something "click" for me. I've never understood the sort of agnostic who can't seem to decide if god exists or not (they are fairly rare, actually, although many believers seem to think that's the ONLY manifestation of agnosticism). Such agnostics seem tormented by their own inability to decide. And maybe that's because something like what you're talking about is going on: there is discomfort for them, emotionally or in some other way, on both sides of that belief position. I used to think it was because they (wrongly in my view) calculate the "odds of gods" at something close to 50%, and I suppose that COULD be one source of such indecision. But I'll bet it's really just that they're equally uncomfortable with both concepts, maybe even frequently for the reason you cite.

In your case, the question is, how do you take care of yourself emotionally if you take the atheist belief position? As I mentioned before, in my case, I'm actually becoming MORE comfortable emotionally because my misfortunes as a believer just made me confused, angry and resentful due to unmet expectations that my faith had set. You on the other hand trade one discomfort for another.

Many atheists talk about a sense of awe regarding science, the universe, natural beauty, so emotional stimulation is not lacking on that side of the fence. You simply may have neglected it, thinking it wasn't important or desirable. If you haven't done so, watch videos of Carl Sagan or Neil Degrasse Tyson sometime -- those guys are STOKED about the vastness and beauty of the cosmos, with no help from religious ideology at all. Maybe you simply need to put more of an emphasis on things that feed your emotional needs without committing intellectual suicide in the process. Something to consider anyway.

Also since the death of a family member was your "trigger" here, consider ways to fully confront the fact of mortality -- yours, and others. A big help to me was the writings of Ernst Becker, particularly Denial of Death, which, if you ignore his constant and distracting digressions about his hero Freud, goes a long way to provoke you to think differently about mortality (it's all the more powerful because it was written by a dying man -- during his final illness).

As framed by religion, mortality is a horrible, unthinkable thing to be avoided with afterlives and other magical compensators. When understood properly, though, it looses virtually all of that "fear factor". I do not have a malfunction with my mortality and do not fear it; my only fear is concerning the process of dying, not death itself. And that applies to my family members ... I would be far more upset for example if my son's death had been protracted and excruciating. It was sudden and quick and merciful, and that helped a great deal. The fact that he is gone is not a source of endless despair, even though it's something I'll always have to live with and I'll always miss him. I recognize that death -- even untimely death -- is simply a part of life. That we are creatures of time, and tellers of stories, who need beginnings, middles, and yes -- ends.

Becker talks about "immortality projects" that people engage in to ease their fear of death and to convince themselves on some level that they're exempt from it. Religion is one of those immortality projects. Check Becker out, I think it might be helpful to you. The best way to get rid of fear is to de-mystify what you fear. Running from it helps, but only so long as you keep running, and that's exhausting before long.