Still struggling.

[KevinM1]

Damn, man, I'm so sorry.

I'm definitely no therapist, but I will say that one of the big benefits of being an atheist is that skepticism is a great tool to use against stigma. When you realize there's no invisible parental figure judging your every second of existence, and that there's no divine and eternal punishment for being 'wrong', and that the notion of 'wrong' that felt so pervasive came from a bunch of ancient Middle Eastern goat fuckers who really didn't have any special wisdom (beyond knowing which goats were the best lay), well, things get easier. Because then the answer to "What if..?" is simply "So what? Are you happy? Fulfilled? If so, cool, if not, try to figure it out and work on it. No pressure, you got this."

The first steps in leaving religion are always the hardest. You've been taught a certain way to think and see the world, to the point where it's your default setting and is relatively comforting if only because it's familiar. Not only that, but the religion itself has safeguards built in to stop people from leaving. Doubt, fear, guilt - these emotions are purposely created by religion to keep the masses in line.

Note that I'm not saying Christianity but religion in general. The common threads in religion are that spreading the faith is paramount and that unbelievers are a threat. That's why it's so hard to break away.

Religion is something of a mental addiction. The deeper you're in, the harder it is to get out and the more painful the transition is. I daresay that a lot (most?) of what you're feeling is normal, so try to take some solace in that. It does get better with time, and for my money, life is a lot more amazing and meaningful without the mental safety net/training wheels of a god.

[Socratic Meth Head]

It doesn't sound silly to me at all.

I have been diagnosed with extremely mild OCPD, which isn't the same as OCD, but some of the manifestations can be similar.

You have to practice allowing yourself to be unsure. It's okay to not make a yes or no, black or white, dichotomous decision about everything. Finding a man attractive wouldn't mean anything other than that you are human. I see men I find attractive all the time, and I identify as straight. People are good looking, that would be normal.

If you are still caught in the clutches of your indoctrination, then the best advice I can give is to come up with some sort of thought stopper that lets you off the hook. Be a neutral observer for 6 months. You are neither theist or atheist. You are assessing the situation. Write a journal, if it helps. Make a list of all of the things that are convincing to you on either side of the argument. Then look for corroborating evidence. Let no one---atheist or theist---tell you what to believe. The only way you are going to convince yourself that the doubts you have are okay is to practice allowing yourself to have doubts and see them through. Stop beating yourself up for doubting anything. That's skepticism, and that, to me, is the most healthy of brain states.

You will get there. Hell, you might re-discover god in your search. That would be okay, too. You'll be welcome here to vent just the same. You, Kingpin, and Catholic_Lady can share the terrarium we keep the theists we like in.

Thanks so much for your understanding.
The thought of rediscovering god gives me anxiety. Hopefully this blows over because I am fearing what does not need to be feared. Thanks for your support because it only helps me feel less weird and alone, I feel so much better whenever I know I have people who don't think I'm just silly or paranoid or whatever.
As for going through the 6 month agnostic idea. I am unsure. I already get enough doubts and strange thoughts as it is. Changing the belief I have fought so hard to maintain over OCD and indoctrination and my parents would be distressing to say the least. I think It's best to just re-focus my attention and divert my mindset onto something that occupies me while I take my medicine and get my therapy. I will keep it in mind if I just can't stop doubting though.

[robvalue]

Think about all the other religions... not just those in the world today, which are many, but those which have come and gone. They are only "real" while there are people who believe in them. As soon as that stops, it crumbles and disappears. Yet people will swear their religion is true, and have done in the past. The same is true of Christianity. If indoctrination stopped for just one or two generations, I believe it would evaporate.

The chances of any particular religion being right are one in infinity, given that there's any number of possible ones that haven't yet been "discovered" (made up). Christianity just happened to be the popular one in a certain area, and was efficient at spreading itself. Nothing more. It has no more evidence that it is real than any other religion, or indeed, any other made-up concept you could imagine.

It does, however, have lots of evidence that it in fact isn't true at all. Number one, the bible. It's the #1 book for creating atheists. Christianity does well because people on the whole don't actually read it from start to finish.

If there is a god, it is not one of the ridiculous extremely humanoid characters in ignorant old books.

PS: You are always welcome to private message me if it would help you You can share anything you want to, that you don't want to say on the open forum.

[KevinM1]

I prefer to think of god as a giant cosmic whale who inadvertently created our universe with the Big Bang of a spicey fart on Taco Tuesday for several reasons.

1. It makes me smile.
2. It doesn't presuppose anthropomorphic superiority.
3. It has just as much evidence supporting it as other gods.

[Socratic Meth Head]

-ignore this-

[SteelCurtain]

Thanks so much for your understanding.
The thought of rediscovering god gives me anxiety. Hopefully this blows over because I am fearing what does not need to be feared. Thanks for your support because it only helps me feel less weird and alone, I feel so much better whenever I know I have people who don't think I'm just silly or paranoid or whatever.
As for going through the 6 month agnostic idea. I am unsure. I already get enough doubts and strange thoughts as it is. Changing the belief I have fought so hard to maintain over OCD and indoctrination and my parents would be distressing to say the least. I think It's best to just re-focus my attention and divert my mindset onto something that occupies me while I take my medicine and get my therapy. I will keep it in mind if I just can't stop doubting though.

I wouldn't want to give advice that would undo work done with an actual professional who knows what the fuck they're talking about... I'm just a guy who thinks he knows...

I just think you have to get to a place where you realize it's perfectly normal and natural to feel unsure and have doubts. That doesn't mean you're broken or something's wrong with you. Not in the least. It means your brain is functioning normally. I realize that's easier said than done with OCD, and especially if that's how your particular brand of OCD manifests itself.

I think you should discuss the stuffing/distraction method you're using with your therapist. That seems like a great short term solution, but a bad long term one. It's like taking Vicoden to mask the pain of a broken bone. Once the Vicoden wears off, you still have a broken bone. You have to set the bone. The bone is the anxiety.

Also, remember that belief is not a choice. You cannot choose to believe in god or not to--any more than I can choose to believe that the stapler on my desk will talk to me in the next minute. The belief is the result of my brain consuming and evaluating evidence. "Changing the belief," as you said, is not possible in the sense that you can volitionally make your brain go back to a state. When I said you might re-discover god, I didn't mean that you might decide, "fuck it--I'm going back." I meant you might discover something that convinces you beyond doubt that it's a worthwhile proposition. I think that's highly doubtful considering the way you present yourself here as a thoughtful, intelligent, skeptical person--but the point is being a skeptic means you never permanently make up your mind about big things like this.

[Socratic Meth Head]

Thanks so much for your understanding.
The thought of rediscovering god gives me anxiety. Hopefully this blows over because I am fearing what does not need to be feared. Thanks for your support because it only helps me feel less weird and alone, I feel so much better whenever I know I have people who don't think I'm just silly or paranoid or whatever.
As for going through the 6 month agnostic idea. I am unsure. I already get enough doubts and strange thoughts as it is. Changing the belief I have fought so hard to maintain over OCD and indoctrination and my parents would be distressing to say the least. I think It's best to just re-focus my attention and divert my mindset onto something that occupies me while I take my medicine and get my therapy. I will keep it in mind if I just can't stop doubting though.

I wouldn't want to give advice that would undo work done with an actual professional who knows what the fuck they're talking about... I'm just a guy who thinks he knows...

I just think you have to get to a place where you realize it's perfectly normal and natural to feel unsure and have doubts. That doesn't mean you're broken or something's wrong with you. Not in the least. It means your brain is functioning normally. I realize that's easier said than done with OCD, and especially if that's how your particular brand of OCD manifests itself.

I think you should discuss the stuffing/distraction method you're using with your therapist. That seems like a great short term solution, but a bad long term one. It's like taking Vicoden to mask the pain of a broken bone. Once the Vicoden wears off, you still have a broken bone. You have to set the bone. The bone is the anxiety.

Also, remember that belief is not a choice. You cannot choose to believe in god or not to--any more than I can choose to believe that the stapler on my desk will talk to me in the next minute. The belief is the result of my brain consuming and evaluating evidence. "Changing the belief," as you said, is not possible in the sense that you can volitionally make your brain go back to a state. When I said you might re-discover god, I didn't mean that you might decide, "fuck it--I'm going back." I meant you might discover something that convinces you beyond doubt that it's a worthwhile proposition. I think that's highly doubtful considering the way you present yourself here as a thoughtful, intelligent, skeptical person--but the point is being a skeptic means you never permanently make up your mind about big things like this.

I didn't mean to word myself in that manner. Whenever I say I "Chose" to be atheist. I meant that I saw the evidence and had changed my view on the world. I assumed you didnt mean that all of a sudden I would just say "kk time to go back now". Still, I want to loose faith in the sense that I wanted to remove believing without seeing. To me thats kinda what faith means. I kinda word myself weirdly and I'm sorry about that.

[robvalue]

This is hopefully meant to be somewhat comforting:

The biggest assumption people make, without even realising it usually, is that "God" realizes we are self-aware.

Once you replace the stupid cartoon characters with just an actual, sensible being that somehow created a "reality", and remove the egocentric assumption that the whole reality is here just for us, it seems unlikely it would know this. For example, we create potential "realities" all the time. A computer program, for example. If parts of that program manifested themselves somehow, and bits of it became self-aware, how on earth would we know that? Even if the characters turned to us and told us they were self aware, we wouldn't believe them.

Imagine those characters worshipping us, and making up stories about how powerful and magical we are, without having any way to confirm any of it. Sound familiar?

To me, it seems far more logical and likely that any potential creator hasn't got a clue about this. And in fact, it probably hasn't even noticed us at all when you look at the scale of the whole creation, and the relatively short amount of time humans will have been around.

In other words, God is indifferent to us, if there is one. Anything else is pure fantasy. He doesn't care what we're doing, at all.

[SteelCurtain]

I didn't mean to word myself in that manner. Whenever I say I "Chose" to be atheist. I meant that I saw the evidence and had changed my view on the world. I assumed you didnt mean that all of a sudden I would just say "kk time to go back now". Still, I want to loose faith in the sense that I wanted to remove believing without seeing. To me thats kinda what faith means. I kinda word myself weirdly and I'm sorry about that.

No worries, it was my misunderstanding.

I agree, shedding faith in things with no evidence is always good. Dogmatic belief is harmful.

What I meant by all that (probably could have said it succinctly) is that you have to use that knowledge to break out of your thought cycles.

[Socratic Meth Head]

I didn't mean to word myself in that manner. Whenever I say I "Chose" to be atheist. I meant that I saw the evidence and had changed my view on the world. I assumed you didnt mean that all of a sudden I would just say "kk time to go back now". Still, I want to loose faith in the sense that I wanted to remove believing without seeing. To me thats kinda what faith means. I kinda word myself weirdly and I'm sorry about that.

No worries, it was my misunderstanding.

I agree, shedding faith in things with no evidence is always good. Dogmatic belief is harmful.

What I meant by all that (probably could have said it succinctly) is that you have to use that knowledge to break out of your thought cycles.

I've tried being more skeptic. I've always listened to my emotions over logic though. I've been trying to do away with that recently, it's hard. It's like if someone spent their whole life hunched over, and you tried to correct their posture. It's very hard. I've always been raised to believe without question and as I try more and more to do away with that it ends up backfiring on me. I've started reading my old bible. As I read it I feel 2 things. This sounds contradictory, but I feel doubt and certainty at the same time. I feel like I'm certain this isn't real, but I still doubt it. I say "No reason to doubt it. Evolution is so well supported by evidence that it's essentially true." but I can't buy it. I hope when The God Delusion comes in the mail, some doubt will be crushed. Even if a tiny tiny percent is crushed, it's better than nothing.