[ExI] The void left by deleting religion

[Samantha Atkins]

Max More wrote:
> A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an 
> extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist 
> belief system: Did you take seriously the idea of Hell as a place of 
> eternal torment and damnation?
>   

I was never of a fundamentalist persuasion and eschewed the idea of hell 
by about age 11.  But I seem to have some affinity for meditative and 
mystical states.  Around the end of the Vietnam war I was wide open to 
the "conscious expansion is our only hope" memes so I dived into various 
mostly Eastern religious mystical systems.  I recovered for some time 
and then went through another serious bout many years later.

> In the period just before I shucked off my Christian beliefs in my 
> early-mid teens, I DID take the idea seriously. As a result, I found 
> the process of losing the religion highly distressing. For about a 
> year I kept thinking "What if I'm wrong?" followed by thoughts of 
> eternal, horrible misery. (It didn't help that my (half-)brother 
> assured me, one Christmas Day, that I would indeed go to Hell for 
> rejecting Jesus.)
>
>   
I couldn't manage to believe that God would torment people eternally for 
one life of not managing to belief "the right stuff" or for being as 
imperfect as the preachers insisted we were created or doomed to be from 
birth.   It made no sense and did not square with what my budding 
mysticism led me too either. 


> That painful experience no doubt fed the following period of 
> aggressive, sometimes obnoxious, atheism. I'm curious how others felt 
> as they struggled out of those chains.
>
>   
When I first turned atheist at 13 it was difficult at first to wrap my 
head around a naturalist worldview.  I first built it up as a 
hypothetical way of looking at things in my head.  Then with it seemed 
self consistent I gradually moved in.  At first it was very jarring.  
But it soon felt as if a tremendous amount of guilt, metaphysical dread 
and seeing God (or worse) behind every bush was removed.    But it still 
felt pretty lonely and bereft of part of myself for a long time.


- samantha