New Atheist, depressed, and wondering how to cope with reality.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Keeping one's faith is need not be a struggle. Maybe, just maybe, the way to Christ with which you were presented was not the right approach for you.

[The Grand Nudger]

Smell a carcass, jackal?

You'll be aight OP, plenty of folks here have gone through it. I can't personally claim to understand, but I wish you the best.

[goodwithoutgod]

Hey guys. I ended up deconverting from Christianity, and am now a Christian Atheist. So, now instead of seeing Jesus as the savior and son of God, I see him as a teacher of good morals and reject the existence of a God or Gods in the absence of evidence. But unlike a lot of people on YouTube, I will not claim to know that there is no God, I will only be in the position that I don't see evidence to back up the claim that he is real and so I cannot know for a fact that one exists, so I will reject the claim unless evidence is provided.

I've been fighting the deconversion process ever since I've started watching MrRepzion, TheAmazingAtheist, The Drunken Peasants, Thunderf00t, etc. The youtube atheist channels are the reason I ended up becoming an atheist. I fought hard to try and keep my faith, but in the end, I guess Science always wins no matter how hard you fight. This was the video that dealt the fatal blow:





My only problem, is now my dreams of wanting to become a Christian Singer Songwriter are shattered, I now believe that when my family passes, that's it. I'll never see them again, I'm too afraid to come out to my mother as an Atheist because none of my siblings ended up remaining Christian and I was her only success story, and I don't want to break her heart, and I worry my Christian girlfriend will be forced by her parents to break up with me, or she'll break up with me herself.

So, here I am, new atheist, depressed, trapped and now asking, how do you cope with all this? Thanks a bunch.

Several things I would like to offer...

1) You are not alone, many who deconvert from christiainty have feelings of being lost, their worldview shattered, and to deal with that takes time, education, and support. I have a book in my library that I think you would connect with. It is Godless by Dan Barker. It is a story of how an evangelical preacher and christian songwriter who after being completely immersed in christianity for over 19 years, became atheist. His story is powerful, and he speaks about the journey of coming to grips with his years "misspent serving god". it was not an expensive book, check amazon.

2) Faith: realize you were given faulty tools in which to use to comprehend the real world around you.

Faith IS the delusion, belief without evidence. Faith is pretending to know things that you dont know. To say "I have faith in god" really means "I pretend to know things I don't know about god". It is impossible to figure out which claims about the world are incorrect if the tool one uses is faith. As a tool, as an epistemology, as a method of reasoning, as a process for knowing the world, faith cannot adjudicate between competing claims. The ONLY way to figure out which claims about the world are likely true, and which are likely false, is through reason and evidence. There is no other way.

3) I cannot disprove a god existing, I do feel confident I can disprove the abrahamic myth based christian god existing, or at least state the probability of him existing is so slight it is inconsequential, because knowledge of that god is derived from the bible, and the bible can be dismantled like a stack of dominoes, something I have spent many years doing successfully.

4) Jesus: one of my biggest reasons from turning away from christianity is upon researching, and taking every theology class offered by saint leo university, I learned that not only is there zero evidence for jesus, outside of interpolations and pseudepigrapha, but no one who EVER wrote of him, knew him...and the inconvenient fact that the gospels, which were not written by whom most uneducated in biblical historicity christians think, or when they think. Not paul, who also never met jesus, outside of his alleged hallucination of a light and a voice on the road to damascus...and none of the christian or contemporary authors who wrote about him...no one who ever wrote down a word about jesus, knew him, all based on the oral retelling of the oral retelling of the oral retelling of a story someone told another of an amazing thing he heard about this guy named jesus that happened 60-110 years ago depending on which gospel you are referring to.

When you realize the plethora of literate historians who resided in the area and time of jesus, who never mention this miracle performing son of god, and how no one AT THE TIME of said miracles thought that things like the world going dark from 3-6 pm upon his death, and corpses bursting out of the ground and walking around town was noteworthy enough to write down.

So strengthen your newfound freedom from the subjugative weight of the church with the knowledge that it is all a fabrication, sold on fear, and fear is good business in america..believe in jesus or spend an eternity in hell. Interesting thing in regards to hell.,

Source is Reason, Faith and Tradition by Martin C. Albl, Chapter 7 page 188 – describing hell.

"We begin with a reminder of limitations of our language. Since hell, according to Christian doctrine, is a supernatural reality, it can only be described in analogies. Holy Scripture teaches us the essence of hell in images. When it speaks of the fire of hell, it is not to be understood in a grossly realistic sense. The images of fire and pain were ways of expressing the essential Christian understanding of hell – that it is a separation from God. We may define heaven as simply being with God, and hell, in contrast, is simply being without God. It is thus an existence without goodness and without meaning."

and since it is a fabrication, and based on the three Fs of christiainty,; Fiction, Forgery, and Fantasy, you can feel guilt free walking away from it. Religion is the greatest pyramid scheme ever perpetrated upon mankind, money goes up, nothing of intrinsic value comes down. You just successfully extracted yourself from a brain washing cult that exploits fear to control you. feel good about that, you are now smarter then billions of people.

---

Keeping one's faith is need not be a struggle. Maybe, just maybe, the way to Christ with which you were presented was not the right approach for you.

interesting, lets review.

Faith - the belief in something without evidence.

Delusion: an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder. A belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.

Religion - The embracement of delusion.

How exactly is one properly presented with the myth of jesus the christ?

Since there exists ZERO evidence for jesus.

No one who EVER wrote of jesus knew him.

No one who lived at the time of the alleged miracles like the world going dark from 3-6 pm upon his death or the zombie invasion thought these events were worth recording....

Who is this jesus again?

Matthew 27:45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.

Mark 15:33 And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

Luke 23:44-48 And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.

Unfortunately for believers, there is not one shred of evidence that this happened...zero, all of the royal scribes, historians, philosophers, and literate people who wrote down and recorded EVERYTHING of any significance, failed to note the whole earth going dark mid-day for three hours...an eclipse lasts about 7.5 min max, so it wasn’t that, and there were two renowned historians who recorded each and every eclipse, as well as any other astronomical oddity....nothing, .....zero. Never happened.

Matthew 27:51-53
King James Version (KJV)
51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

A thinking person would presume these amazing events would have been recorded, written down by royal scribes, historians...someone...nope, 60-110 years later someone decided this myth they heard that sounds more fantastic then the bigfoot story was worth writing down. In fact, more evidence exists for bigfoot then jesus. I wonder why theists don't believe in bigfoot?

“my belief is based on very strong and credible direct testimony from reliable eyewitnesses” .... mmm, wait, no actually it's not. What you mean to say is My belief is based on the copies of the translations of the copies of the translations of the copies of the oral retelling of the oral retelling of the oral retelling of the oral retelling of the oral retelling of a tale that may or may not have been originally told by apostles who may or may not actually have ever existed and may or may not have witnessed the events and may or may not have told them accurately"

Why is it that you believe claims which have overwhelming, almost conclusive, evidence against them and very weak circumstantial historical evidence for them, but you don't believe claims which have only somewhat strong evidence against them, and confirmed eyewitness testimony of interviewable witnesses as evidence for them?

For example, why don't you believe in bigfoot?
Unlike the resurrection, which violates absolutely everything we know about almost every branch of science, the existence of bigfoot doesn't violate the laws of physics, doesn't violate the laws of chemistry, it just seems to violate some of what we know about biology. Furthermore, unlike the resurrection, which is supported by the copy of the translation of the copy of the translation of multiple layers of verbal hearsay by anonymous sources, the existence of bigfoot is supported by direct eyewitnesses alive today, with names, addresses, social security numbers, etc. You yourself can go and interview a bigfoot expert who has seen bigfoot multiple times, and he will share the first hand eyewitness testimony with you directly.

It seems that if you were in the business of believing unlikely stuff and were gonna be consistent rather than biased, there are loads of claims which, though unlikely, are several orders of magnitude more probable than a 30AD flying corpse…like bigfoot.

[Whateverist]

So, here I am, new atheist, depressed, trapped and now asking, how do you cope with all this? Thanks a bunch.

Um, I don't have any of that. Sorry for your unhappiness. Wish you luck.

[Alex K]

Keeping one's faith is need not be a struggle.

Rarely is the question asked: is our children believing?

[robvalue]

Keeping one's faith is need not be a struggle. Maybe, just maybe, the way to Christ with which you were presented was not the right approach for you.

This is unimpressive scavenging tactics right here. Chain up the wounded animal? How rude and unhelpful.

To OP: welcome to the forum, and thank you for sharing your story. As others have said, the strong atheist position is in the minority in my experience. Most atheists just take the approach that no convincing case for a God has been put forward, that's it. There's no requirement to go making your own claims that there is no God, and such.

I'd recommend listening to some of the atheist experience if you haven't already, it's a live call in show where both atheists and theists call in to discuss their beliefs. It's also aimed at supporting atheists, and they have discussions about many relevant topics. They also rip the piss out of religion in amusing ways. I find it informative and entertaining. If you're interested, here is a link to their show archive spanning many years. You'll just see the two 2015 shows first, but you can use the selector thing at the top to pick other years.

http://www.atheist-experience.com/archive/

I hope things improve for you, keep writing on the forum and we'll see how we can help and support you. Look for local atheist friends and support groups. If there isn't one, maybe start your own!

[psychoslice]

I don't believe in a god, but I still wright Christian songs, I also love good old gospel songs, just because you don't believe in god doesn't mean you have to give up everything to do with god, in other words, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

[Thumpalumpacus]

My only problem, is now my dreams of wanting to become a Christian Singer Songwriter are shattered, I now believe that when my family passes, that's it. I'll never see them again, I'm too afraid to come out to my mother as an Atheist because none of my siblings ended up remaining Christian and I was her only success story, and I don't want to break her heart, and I worry my Christian girlfriend will be forced by her parents to break up with me, or she'll break up with me herself.

So, here I am, new atheist, depressed, trapped and now asking, how do you cope with all this? Thanks a bunch.

Firstly, start writing songs about your journey. Document it in music, make that music your diary. Pour your heart into it. You'll get some keepers.

Secondly, tell the truth to your mother and to your girlfriend. Do you really want people loving you for who you aren't?

[pocaracas]

My only problem, is now my dreams of wanting to become a Christian Singer Songwriter are shattered,

Christian songwriter... now there's a concept that's virtually non-existent around these parts... Portugal.
What's that supposed to be like? writing songs to sing at church? blahhhh

I now believe that when my family passes, that's it. I'll never see them again,

Isn't that what happens for real?

I'm too afraid to come out to my mother as an Atheist because none of my siblings ended up remaining Christian and I was her only success story, and I don't want to break her heart,

Well... either put on a show, or take the same road your siblings took.
She's still your mother, so try to be nice about it.... even if she's not.

and I worry my Christian girlfriend will be forced by her parents to break up with me, or she'll break up with me herself.

Girlfriend issues.... I'm out!

So, here I am, new atheist, depressed, trapped and now asking, how do you cope with all this? Thanks a bunch.

Depressed? Have you talked to a doctor about that?
Or are you just "depressed", under the weather, feeling blue?

Don't think about it... enjoy life, it's very very very very likely the only one you've got.
Why squander it on some fairy tale you were once sold?

[ManMachine]

---

Hey guys. I ended up deconverting from Christianity, and am now a Christian Atheist. So, now instead of seeing Jesus as the savior and son of God, I see him as a teacher of good morals and reject the existence of a God or Gods in the absence of evidence. But unlike a lot of people on YouTube, I will not claim to know that there is no God, I will only be in the position that I don't see evidence to back up the claim that he is real and so I cannot know for a fact that one exists, so I will reject the claim unless evidence is provided.

I've been fighting the deconversion process ever since I've started watching MrRepzion, TheAmazingAtheist, The Drunken Peasants, Thunderf00t, etc. The youtube atheist channels are the reason I ended up becoming an atheist. I fought hard to try and keep my faith, but in the end, I guess Science always wins no matter how hard you fight. This was the video that dealt the fatal blow:





My only problem, is now my dreams of wanting to become a Christian Singer Songwriter are shattered, I now believe that when my family passes, that's it. I'll never see them again, I'm too afraid to come out to my mother as an Atheist because none of my siblings ended up remaining Christian and I was her only success story, and I don't want to break her heart, and I worry my Christian girlfriend will be forced by her parents to break up with me, or she'll break up with me herself.

So, here I am, new atheist, depressed, trapped and now asking, how do you cope with all this? Thanks a bunch.

---

Don't be afraid.

Think about it, you are not responsible for other people. Let's assume Christianity is correct, your fear that you will not see your family again is based on the assumption they will all follow the Christian rules in both mind and deed. you are not responsible for that.

Think about it, what if a different denomination of Christianity is right and yours is wrong? Maybe the Jehova's Witnesses are right, maybe the Seven Day Adventists are right, they all claim to be right and their followers all believe them to be right.

Think about it, it doesn't make any sense. Why would a loving god need his followers to emotionally blackmail people and guilt them into believing they will not get to see their families in the afterlife when they have no control over the actions of others, that's just cruel. And why would a loving god allow so many people to believe in nuanced differences that split the family of the church into at least 32,000 fragments (yes, there are 32,000 different denominations of Christianity).

Think about it, these are clearly the actions of humans scrabbling for control over other humans and have nothing to do with a god type figure.

Think about it.

MM