[ExI] The void left by deleting religion

[Lee Corbin]

Eliezer writes

>> There are considerable parts that I miss too.
> 
> Samantha, Spike, what do you miss?

I thought that Spike was quite eloquent on the subject.  As for me,
it so happens that my meek Methodist upbringing was not at all
inspirational.  In fact, by the time I was 15 I suspected that the
liberal theologians who ran my Sunday school classes were closet
atheists, and I started looking around for alternative religions.

So I don't miss anything, really.  In fact, at age 18 I openly and
exuberantly declared my atheism, it was because I finally knew
that there was no deity with vague and perhaps threatening powers
looking over my shoulder all the time.  My brother experienced the
same relief a year or two later.

> What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a 
> higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all 
> right.

Heh, heh.  By age twelve or thirteen, I was not at *all* confident that
this Being was doing very well by me.  Things were considerably worse
than if someone sensible were at the Helm, though I could not have put
(and would dared not have put) those feelings into words.

Lee

  But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, 
> and maybe not even then.  That feeling of comfort falls directly under 
> the non-negotiable prescription:  That which can be destroyed by the 
> truth should be.