How I Became an Atheist

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How I Became an Atheist

Postby NeonLX » Thu May 29, 2014 8:29 am

...or at least no longer believing in the "benevolent God" bullshit.

This really isn't about religion so much, but it kinda is.

If "god" exists, then he's a cruel rat bastard. Long story short: I tried to commit suicide about a year ago. It obviously didn't work (too drunk at the time to pull it off). After that, I was diagnosed with severe depression and got put on meds and therapy. I joined a depression support group where I met a woman who became very dear to me. She had tried to commit suicide as well, many times. Her mom had prostituted her when she was a kid. She was repeatedly subjected to violent rapes with her mom watching. She got pregnant at the age of 10. TEN. As you'd expect, she had complications from the birth and her uterus was removed. She went nuts and was institutionalized for awhile--big shock--but eventually she wound up in foster homes. After a time, she was able to function pretty well, considering.

She's smart and funny. But very scarred.

We got to be friends and supported each other through a lot of tough shit. It was my friendship with her that led to my impending divorce. I'm moving out of the house tomorrow, after 32 years of marriage.

Last weekend, my daughter helped my soon-to-be-ex hack into my email. Once she got in, she then sent a nasty message to this friend, telling her what a whore she is and also wishing that she would catch a deadly disease and die a miserable death (hang onto that thought for a second).

Backing up two weeks, my friend came down with particularly nasty pneumonia. Coughing up blood and all that. She couldn't shake it so late last week, they did some blood tests. Guess what? She's HIV positive. As a result of the rapes she endured when she was younger. And after all she has been through already.

So my estranged wife's nasty email message gets delivered to my friend shortly before the blood test results came in. And then...

At this point, I'm not sure I want to exist in this universe anymore. It's too fucked up.
If there is a god, he's one sadistic mother fucker. Just ask the millions of people who are starving to death right now, as they helplessly watch their loved ones die.

On edit: I couldn't have made this story up from my lackluster imagination. No, I had to experience it in real time, and in living color, for me to believe it. I wish like hell I had dreamt it.
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby 82_28 » Thu May 29, 2014 8:59 am

My friend, NeonLX. Believe it. We, I, am here for you. I'm going through a rough patch myself. You are a great human with such insight that it is moreover loveable. I can't even imagine what you must be going through right now. We're just the door prize for this ordeal, but I do in fact love you with all my heart without knowing you.

Man, you are the kindest of souls and it comes out in everything you have ever written. There are no answers when this shit happens. No answers. I would totally just start a farm with you deep in the forest and we could sit on the porch and watch figuratively the sun set for many days to come.

I'm so sorry for your distress. If you need anything please feel free to PM, post, comment to myself or just about anyone I would imagine here.

No, you won't be fine but you will be loved, my friend. I'm so sorry. Keep me posted. Please.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby norton ash » Thu May 29, 2014 9:10 am

I'm so sorry, Neon. People can be monstrous. Nature can be cruel. And if there is a god-force, I don't believe that it intervenes or rescues. I do believe that there is a light and peace within and without you that I hope sincerely will sustain you and your dear friend through this time of suffering. Namaste.
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby LilyPatToo » Thu May 29, 2014 10:03 am

Neon, that's awful and horribly sad. Just know that there are people here who would give a lot to make this situation right...or at the very least more bearable. I was severely abused from childhood into my early 30's, watched my only son die of a cancer caused by radiation (from nonconsensual testing many years ago), and been diagnosed with cancer myself last fall. To me, the greatest cruelty of most organized religions is that they teach that there is a personified God who loves us and watches over us as we suffer here--WTF?! I hate that.

I was raised Catholic and left the Church in my very early 20s for Wicca. Then I went through an agnostic phase in the mid-90s that lasted over a decade. But then one spring morning 2 years ago, cold sober and in normal consciousness, I saw what could only have been a ghost--a sad little girl trying to cuddle with her unaware mother on a bus. The intelligence and anguish in that little girl's eyes when they met mine blew my agnosticism to shreds and I've been trying ever since to come to terms with the nature of reality.

Consciousness continues after death, I now know that first-hand, rather than from belief/teaching. But a personified God now seems absurd to me. I don't mean to be disrespectful to the lucky people who believe they have a personal relationship with their Creator--I really don't. I envy them. But my life and experiences have made that way of thinking irrational. So I respect atheism and agnosticism, but they have it wrong too. That little girl I saw on the bus was as *alive* and conscious as you or I.

Maybe the pain you're suffering through right now is what Life here is really about--the cosmos becoming self-aware and experiencing itself. No kindly old man in the sky rewarding the good and punishing the bad, no fucking fairness at all. Just experience. We go on, so experience can continue. People who've died and been revived speak of a bliss that permeates the place where they were, but that little girl ghost I saw was suffering, grieving the loss of her mother--she was experiencing pain. So I don't know where that leaves the whole bliss thing...perhaps she'd just died to our world and was refusing to leave it in order to stay close to her mother. Perhaps bliss was waiting for her, I don't know.

The older I get, the more I believe that all that matters is how we treat each other, here and beyond. Kindness is pretty much it, which makes what your family did to you awful, abhorrent. Some of us are battered by our lives and the rest of us need to support and love them through the assault. Because any old man in the sky who does this to us is a heartless fucking sociopath. All we have is each other.

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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby NeonLX » Thu May 29, 2014 10:41 am

LilyPat, your insight makes complete sense. Yes, it's the "loving benevolent father in the sky" that I don't believe in. But there's more to this place than just the "normal" physical stuff we see/hear/smell/touch.

I also agree that how we treat each other is THE most important part of our existence. It sure ain't if we believe in the psycho old sky-man exactly the right way (the protestant view).

Thanks for the very nice reply. Same goes for Norton Ash and 82_28. Thanks.
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby NeonLX » Thu May 29, 2014 2:47 pm

And LilyPat--I, too, am a cancer survivor. At least for now. I've got a rare hereditary condition that causes kidney and lung tumors. I'm down to one kidney now and about 55% of normal lung capacity.

Fascinating story about the girl on the bus. I *think* I've experienced something similar, the story of which I'll save for another day.

My favorite line from so-called believers: "Well, god doesn't throw more at us than we can handle". What an utter crock of shit. Go tell it to the mother who just lost two kids as "collateral damage" during a drone strike. Then get back to me with the results.
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby slimmouse » Thu May 29, 2014 3:16 pm

Neon, from a philosophical perspective. In your own opinion Is there a difference between an atheist, and someone who believes that consciousness survives death?

I ask, because using your own definition of God, I would fall into both categories.
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby LilyPatToo » Thu May 29, 2014 3:18 pm

Yeah, some days the Christian platitudes that fly like confetti on Facebook make me want to puke. So sorry you too have cancer, Neon. It sucks. I'd love to hear about your paranormal encounter when you feel like sharing it. I agree with you that reality is more strange than 99.9% of atheists realize. It's that component that's kept me here at RI through all its ups and downs. I'm appalled at the dearth of serious, intelligent discussion of anomalous events outside this forum. There's every flavor of disinfo-tainted crap for the conspiratainment crowd, but so few people brave enough to face their peers' contempt if they talk about something like having seen an actual ghost or having had a chunk of missing time. Kneejerk dismissal is demeaning and it perpetuates societal ignorance on the most important questions humans can ask.

LilyPat

Just saw your post, slimmouse and that definition interests me too.
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby NeonLX » Thu May 29, 2014 3:34 pm

slimmouse » Thu May 29, 2014 2:16 pm wrote:Neon, from a philosophical perspective. In your own opinion Is there a difference between an atheist, and someone who believes that consciousness survives death?

I ask, because using your own definition of God, I would fall into both categories.


I actually hadn't thought much about that. I don't think I believe in a "god" anymore, i.e. a supreme being who created stuff and hangs out watching billions of us lead shitty lives (as well as watching us destroy "creation" through greed). But--consciousness after death is possible, in my limited way of looking at things. I guess I could believe there is a higher power, or more dimensions, or something like that...I just don't believe in the sadistic creator anymore. Does that make sense?
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby kool maudit » Thu May 29, 2014 3:46 pm

gods, if they exist, are awesome (in the original sense) and terrible. religious history is pretty honest about this, or was until a certain point in time.

they also have no reason to care about death or dying, which is from our perspective a very major event.
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby LilyPatToo » Thu May 29, 2014 3:53 pm

It makes sense to me, Neon. In fact, it's a relief to find someone else who's arrived such a similar conclusion to mine. I've been feeling really isolated due to being surrounded by so many intelligent atheists who completely reject the idea that a ghost could possibly exist, so I'm glad this subject came up. What's really galling to me is how many of them, when I recently was foolish enough to recount the story, immediately assumed that it was my cancer diagnosis that prompted me to come up with a self-comforting story :mad2 Actually, I saw the little girl on March 30th of 2012, more than a year before my diagnosis. That look of indulgent sympathy on their faces nearly made me bust a blood vessel.

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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby 82_28 » Thu May 29, 2014 4:06 pm

It makes total sense. I was a full blown atheist for a long time and took great pleasure in destroying various say, campus evangelicals for years. My good friend who I write with turned me onto gnosticism along with quite a bit of PKD and it forever changed my life. The cool thing about being a Dickhead is that you have friends everywhere. No matter where you go, PKD resonates like no other author or figure ever. I have atheist tendencies insofar as how I approach obvious charlatans. I do however believe there are great traditions that must exist for some reason and that reason is both knowable and unknowable which is the beauty. So I am neither atheist or agnostic. I allow for both to conceptually exist at the same time or just maybe the "concepts" allow for me to "exist". Who knows?

I've linked to it before, but just read again Dick's Tractates:

http://deoxy.org/pkd_tcs.htm
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby brekin » Thu May 29, 2014 4:36 pm

Sorry to hear about everything that is happening Neon. Words fail, really. 2013 for me was probably the roughest year I've had on numerous fronts in decades. For me, the thing I take solace in is while God may not exist, transcendence, redemption, atonement and serenity do. I've experienced these myself, sometimes in my darkest hours. I think religion is still in a very early, buggy beta stage and many of the doors to a better existence are mislabeled and covered in sanctimonious gooey cheese and even holy bullshit. But I take solace that there are doors there. I hope you find the doors you need when you need them.
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
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Re: How I Became an Atheist

Postby NeonLX » Thu May 29, 2014 4:38 pm

I think I became a Dickhead as a result of some post or yours here at RI, 82_28. I love his stuff, but it takes me some time to recover whenever I finish one of his stories. They hit me hard and there's a bit too much familiarity in what he writes.
Last edited by NeonLX on Thu May 29, 2014 4:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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Stupid double post. Sorry.

Postby NeonLX » Thu May 29, 2014 4:38 pm

Ic
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
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