(March 25, 2014 at 4:45 pm)Thunder Cunt Wrote: I'm hoping this could be an insightfull nonflaming thread where Atheists share the freedom, joy, peace, wisdom, and growth that they received as a result of a conversion to Atheism.The main difference for me was that I got back the time I would normally have spent on religious activities (proselytizing, attending church, bible study, etc). I could say that using that time on more productive pursuits made me feel better, but when I was doing them they felt like productive pursuits, so that's really a wash. As for freedom and joy and the rest, becoming an atheist did not change the person I am. I've always been a happy and carefree person and that did not change when I realized that god wasn't there.
My deconversion was very gradual, so that probably helped. I did not have that sudden moment where everything in my life got thrown into turmoil or anything. One day I admitted to myself what was pretty obvious by that time, and while it did feel good and I did have a sense of more freedom and control of my life, my day-to-day life changed little.
It did take a bit longer to get over the feeling of sadness when realizing that the planet will probably die out at some point in the distant future, and maybe even the universe. But that's from that sense that religion instills, that you are the center of existence and that you'll always be there to see it all happen. Realizing that once I die I am no longer conscious of anything means that I will not be around to worry about it, and therefore it's a waste of time to worry about it now. Problem solved!
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
