Last week, after a lot of thought and help from LessWrong, I finally stopped believing in god and dropped my last remnants of Catholicism. It is turned out to be a huge relief, though coping with some of the consequences and realizations that come with atheism has been a little difficult.
Do any of you have any tips you noticed about yourself or others after just leaving religion? I’ve noticed a few small habits I need to get rid of, but I am worried I’m missing larger, more important ones.
Are there any particular posts I should skip ahead and read? I am currently at the beginning of reductionism.
Are their any beliefs you’ve noticed ex-catholics holding that they don’t realize are obviously part of their religion?
I do not have any one immediately around me I can ask, so I am very grateful for any input.
Thank you!
Unlike religion, here no one claims to be all-knowing or infallible. Which, from my point of view at least, is why LessWrong is so effective. Reading the arguments in the comments of the sequences was almost as important as reading the sequences themselves.
I wouldn’t mind the paradise part or the living forever part though.
Yes, of course. I was mostly just trying to be funny. One could keep the joke going and compare the monthly meetups, Winter Solstice meetup, the Effective Altruist movement, the Singularity, and so on to their complements in Christianity.
Speaking from experience: don’t kneejerk too hard. It’s all too easy to react against everything at all implicitly associated with a religion or philosophy that you now reject the truth-claims of and distort parts of your personality or day to day life or emotions or symbolic thought that have nothing to do with what you have rejected.
Thank you.
Last week was full of “Is this religious? Yes? No? I can’t tell!.”
My brain has thankfully returned to normal function, and I will avoid intently analyzing every thought for religious connotations.
The lack of guilt is nice, and I don’t want to bring it back by stressing about the opposite.
Similarly, there’s no need to be scared of responding positively to art or other ideas because they originated from a religious perspective; if atheism required us to do that, it would be almost as bleak a worldview as it’s accused of being. Adeste Fideles doesn’t stop being a beautiful song when you realize its symbols don’t have referents. I think of the Christian mythology as one of my primary fantasy influences—like The Lord of the Rings, Discworld, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant or Doctor Who—so, if I find myself reacting emotionally to a Christian meme, I don’t have to worry that I’m having a conversion experience (or that God exists and is sneakily trying to win me over!): it’s perfectly normal, and lawful, for works of fiction to have emotional impact.
The religious allusions seem even blatant now, but there is no way I’m getting rid of my copy of Chronicles of Narnia. I still feel the urge to look in the back of wardrobes.
Thank you. I had a religious song stuck in my head yesterday, but remembered reading you comment so was able to bypass the feeling of guilt.
What others already said: Don’t try to reverse stupidity by avoiding everything conected to Catholicism. You are allowed to pick the good pieces and ignore the bad pieces, instead of buying or rejecting the whole package. Catholics also took some good parts from other traditions; which by the way means you don’t even have to credit them for inventing the good pieces you decide to take.
If you talk with other religious people, they will probably try the following trick on you: Give you a huge book saying that it actually answers all your questions, and that you should at least read this one book and consider it seriously before you abandon religion completely. Of course if you read the whole book and it doesn’t convince you, they will give you another huge book. And another. And another. The whole strategy is to surround you by religion memes (even more strongly than most religious people are), hoping that sooner or later something will “trigger” your religious feelings. And no matter how many books you read, if at some moment you refuse to read yet another book, you will be accused of leaving the religion only because of your ignorance and stubbornness, because this one specific book certainly did contain all answers to your questions and perfectly convincing counterarguments to your arguments, you just refused to even look at it. This game you cannot win: there is no “I have honestly considered all your arguments and found them unconvincing” exit node; the only options given to you are either to give up, or to do something that will allow your opponents to blame you of being willfully ignorant. (So you might as well do the “ignorant” thing now, and save yourself a lot of time.)
Don’t try to convince other people, at least not during the first months after deconversion. First, you need to sort out things for yourself (you don’t have a convincing success story yet). Second, by the law of reciprocation, if the other people were willing to listen to your explanations, this in turn gives them the moral right to give you a huge book of religious arguments and ask you to read it, which leads to the game described above.
Basicly, realize that you have a right to spend most of your time without thinking about Catholicism, either positively or negatively. That is what most atheists really do. If you were born on another planet, where religion wasn’t invented, you wouldn’t spend your time arguing against religion. Instead, you would just do what you want to do. So do it now.
It reminds me of Transactional Analysis saying the best way to keep people in mental traps is to provide them two scripts: “this is what you should do if you are a good person”, but also “this is what you will do if you become a bad person (i.e. if you refuse the former script)”. So even if you decide to rebel, you usually rebel in the prescribed way, because you were taught to only consider these two options as opposites… while in reality there are many other options available.
The real challenge is to avoid both the “good script” and the “bad script”.
Thank you for the advice. I’ve started by rereading the scientific explanations of the big bang, evolution, and basically most general scientific principles. Looking at it without constant justification going on in my mind is quite refreshing.
So far I’ve been able to avoid most of the arguments, though I was surprised by how genuinely sad some people were. I’m going to keep quiet about religion for a while, and figure out what other pieces of my worldview I need to take a rational, honest look at.
I find myself to have a much clearer and cooler head when it comes to philosophy and debate around the subject. Previously I had a really hard time squaring utilitarianism with the teachings of religion, and I ended up being a total heretic. Now I feel like everything makes sense in a simpler way.
Last week, after a lot of thought and help from LessWrong, I finally stopped believing in god and dropped my last remnants of Catholicism. It is turned out to be a huge relief, though coping with some of the consequences and realizations that come with atheism has been a little difficult.
Do any of you have any tips you noticed about yourself or others after just leaving religion? I’ve noticed a few small habits I need to get rid of, but I am worried I’m missing larger, more important ones.
Are there any particular posts I should skip ahead and read? I am currently at the beginning of reductionism. Are their any beliefs you’ve noticed ex-catholics holding that they don’t realize are obviously part of their religion? I do not have any one immediately around me I can ask, so I am very grateful for any input. Thank you!
Well, here at LessWrong, we follow a thirty-something bearded Jewish guy who, along with a small group of disciples, has performed seemingly impossible deeds, preaches in parables, plans to rise from the dead and bring with him as many of us as he can, defeat evil, and create a paradise where we can all live happily forever.
So yeah, getting away from Catholic habits of thought may be tough. With work, you’ll get there though...
Unlike religion, here no one claims to be all-knowing or infallible. Which, from my point of view at least, is why LessWrong is so effective. Reading the arguments in the comments of the sequences was almost as important as reading the sequences themselves.
I wouldn’t mind the paradise part or the living forever part though.
We? That’s generalizing a bit wouldn’t you say? It’s “LessWrong,” not yudkowsky.net after all.
Yes, of course. I was mostly just trying to be funny. One could keep the joke going and compare the monthly meetups, Winter Solstice meetup, the Effective Altruist movement, the Singularity, and so on to their complements in Christianity.
Speaking from experience: don’t kneejerk too hard. It’s all too easy to react against everything at all implicitly associated with a religion or philosophy that you now reject the truth-claims of and distort parts of your personality or day to day life or emotions or symbolic thought that have nothing to do with what you have rejected.
Thank you. Last week was full of “Is this religious? Yes? No? I can’t tell!.” My brain has thankfully returned to normal function, and I will avoid intently analyzing every thought for religious connotations. The lack of guilt is nice, and I don’t want to bring it back by stressing about the opposite.
Don’t forget that reversed stupidity is not intelligence; a belief doesn’t become wrong simply because it’s widely held by Catholics.
Similarly, there’s no need to be scared of responding positively to art or other ideas because they originated from a religious perspective; if atheism required us to do that, it would be almost as bleak a worldview as it’s accused of being. Adeste Fideles doesn’t stop being a beautiful song when you realize its symbols don’t have referents. I think of the Christian mythology as one of my primary fantasy influences—like The Lord of the Rings, Discworld, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant or Doctor Who—so, if I find myself reacting emotionally to a Christian meme, I don’t have to worry that I’m having a conversion experience (or that God exists and is sneakily trying to win me over!): it’s perfectly normal, and lawful, for works of fiction to have emotional impact.
The religious allusions seem even blatant now, but there is no way I’m getting rid of my copy of Chronicles of Narnia. I still feel the urge to look in the back of wardrobes.
Thank you. I had a religious song stuck in my head yesterday, but remembered reading you comment so was able to bypass the feeling of guilt.
What others already said: Don’t try to reverse stupidity by avoiding everything conected to Catholicism. You are allowed to pick the good pieces and ignore the bad pieces, instead of buying or rejecting the whole package. Catholics also took some good parts from other traditions; which by the way means you don’t even have to credit them for inventing the good pieces you decide to take.
If you talk with other religious people, they will probably try the following trick on you: Give you a huge book saying that it actually answers all your questions, and that you should at least read this one book and consider it seriously before you abandon religion completely. Of course if you read the whole book and it doesn’t convince you, they will give you another huge book. And another. And another. The whole strategy is to surround you by religion memes (even more strongly than most religious people are), hoping that sooner or later something will “trigger” your religious feelings. And no matter how many books you read, if at some moment you refuse to read yet another book, you will be accused of leaving the religion only because of your ignorance and stubbornness, because this one specific book certainly did contain all answers to your questions and perfectly convincing counterarguments to your arguments, you just refused to even look at it. This game you cannot win: there is no “I have honestly considered all your arguments and found them unconvincing” exit node; the only options given to you are either to give up, or to do something that will allow your opponents to blame you of being willfully ignorant. (So you might as well do the “ignorant” thing now, and save yourself a lot of time.)
Don’t try to convince other people, at least not during the first months after deconversion. First, you need to sort out things for yourself (you don’t have a convincing success story yet). Second, by the law of reciprocation, if the other people were willing to listen to your explanations, this in turn gives them the moral right to give you a huge book of religious arguments and ask you to read it, which leads to the game described above.
Basicly, realize that you have a right to spend most of your time without thinking about Catholicism, either positively or negatively. That is what most atheists really do. If you were born on another planet, where religion wasn’t invented, you wouldn’t spend your time arguing against religion. Instead, you would just do what you want to do. So do it now.
This is known as cafeteria Catholicism. (I had only heard that used as an insult, but apparently there are people who self-identify as such.)
It reminds me of Transactional Analysis saying the best way to keep people in mental traps is to provide them two scripts: “this is what you should do if you are a good person”, but also “this is what you will do if you become a bad person (i.e. if you refuse the former script)”. So even if you decide to rebel, you usually rebel in the prescribed way, because you were taught to only consider these two options as opposites… while in reality there are many other options available.
The real challenge is to avoid both the “good script” and the “bad script”.
Thank you for the advice. I’ve started by rereading the scientific explanations of the big bang, evolution, and basically most general scientific principles. Looking at it without constant justification going on in my mind is quite refreshing.
So far I’ve been able to avoid most of the arguments, though I was surprised by how genuinely sad some people were. I’m going to keep quiet about religion for a while, and figure out what other pieces of my worldview I need to take a rational, honest look at.
I recommend this list:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki_Atheism_FAQ_for_the_Newly_Deconverted
I find myself to have a much clearer and cooler head when it comes to philosophy and debate around the subject. Previously I had a really hard time squaring utilitarianism with the teachings of religion, and I ended up being a total heretic. Now I feel like everything makes sense in a simpler way.