New atheist here, gotta say, not loving it

[Rayden_Greywolf]

Thank you for the responses, guys.

What changed was that I lost what little hope I had. The hope that there was a reason for suffering in the world, that there was some transcendent goodness to the universe.

Sounds like you had a pretty dim view of the world that god created?  There's still a reason for suffering in the world, plenty of them..more accurately.  The reason simply isn't god and it never was.  Similarly, the same amount of transcendent goodness exists as did before...it's just not divine...and like before it never was.  

Sure, I have hobbies and family and friends and all that, but they're just conditional, material....things.

Full disclosure, I've never been a believer...but the idea that friends and family meant (and still mean) less to you than a ghost you'd never met and now don't even believe in is hard to wrap my head around.  

Like...I don't know, I feel that I don't have a reason to do anything now. I'm just an animal with animal fears and desires and there's else to it.

You always were, even when you believed.  Nothing about that changed.  Can it really be that the only reason you had for doing anything, before..was god?  That's a pretty tough sell, don't you think?

In the years I've been here, reading similar deconversion issues...it sometimes seems as if believers become -more- pious in leaving their faiths than they ever were when they were still in them.  I've never met a single believer whose entire life, and all sense of meaning revolved around god to the exclusion, even, of their own family.  They seem to take meaning and pleasure out of most of the same things I do.

What transcended goodness?

I don't really know how to answer your response about me and my family. Maybe that makes me a heartless monster, I don't know.

I should mention I never really "truly" believed. I grew up in a Christian household, but when I was able to start thinking for myself, I eventually realized I had no reason to believe in it. I never had faith in anything.