Hmmm. The fear of hell is a tough one: as I said above, I’d largely dealt with that fear before “leaving the fold.” I suppose you somehow need to train your System 1 - to reprogram yourself, to experience that you have nothing to fear. For me, this happened over time as I gradually got more comfortable with increasing degrees of irreligion. Some other suggestions follow.
Hell and other people
For instance, it may help to think about the many non-Christians of superlative moral character. I mean, even the medieval Christians called Socrates a “Christian before Christ”—in other words, they thought so highly of Socrates that they could not really imagine him going to hell. Similarly, the more you think of really excellent, though still flawed, humans, it may become more difficult to picture a just and fair outcome where they suffer forever. It just doesn’t make moral sense. And really feeling that moral impossibility as applied to non-Christians might help give you confidence that all non-Christians do not go straight to hell. (of course, much Christian teaching aims to establish precisely such a gap between apparent and “actual” moral deserts)
Fears and Experience
If you have multiple fears, perhaps you could enumerate each of them to yourself. Churches tend to bundle together charity, social events, counseling, and parenting and marriage advice, and so a “relationship with God” is supposed to ensure all of that, and deconversion may seem to threaten all of that. For me, becoming friends with more and more perfectly well-adjusted and strong individuals who had always been secular helped disprove the notion that a good life falls apart without religious belief.
Or, to give another example, some Baptists teach that alcohol is a sure road to ruin (really) - only experience gets rid of this fear. Take a drink, feel that you’re fine in the short- and long-term, and you feel better about rejecting that moral teaching.
Conscience is the voice of the community
In the Christian world, what you believe determines who you go to church with, and thus with whom you’re friends. Scott Alexander talks about Red and Blue tribes, pointing out that secular political beliefs also determine who you’re friends with. (I find this idea similar to Robin Hanson’s “beliefs as clothing” idea—change your ideas, change your uniform, change sides) So this isn’t a religious phenomenon only, but it was just more obvious growing up. As a result, the social aspects of religious belief change can be even more obvious and pressing than other sorts of belief change. That’s all a roundabout way of saying fear of hell may be related to fear of coming out to friends and family, and thinking about how to handle the latter if you were to deconvert may help your fear fear of hell.
Finally, I forget which writer commented that Enlightenment Europe didn’t think religion could become a non-issue; it seemed it was one of the “eternal questions.” But in fact Europe’s over that now, and despite the social prevalence of religion in the States, in any professional circles I’ve ever been in, religion simply can’t be mentioned. For us individuals also, religion can simply fade into our rearview mirror. Except for this comment, I don’t think about or miss Christianity anymore. I don’t experience tension that “it might be true,” as some undecidable and imposing question. It’s a rather boring topic. Now I spend my mental energy not on reconciling abstruse and dusty doctrines, but on learning actually useful things (there is so much knowledge left to create!). You only need to deconvert once.
Which fears can you deal with by living through others, and which through direct experience? That might be a path forward. Good luck!
Actually, I don’t have any of the community-based fears. Most of my friends are atheist or irreligious, and while my family would be concerned, I’m not especially worried about their reactions. The guide for the recently deconverted is nice, but I’m still having fears. Sorry-I’m not trying to drag things out! But this is taking a while, and I wish there was a way to just stop worrying.
Hmmm. The fear of hell is a tough one: as I said above, I’d largely dealt with that fear before “leaving the fold.” I suppose you somehow need to train your System 1 - to reprogram yourself, to experience that you have nothing to fear. For me, this happened over time as I gradually got more comfortable with increasing degrees of irreligion. Some other suggestions follow.
Hell and other people
For instance, it may help to think about the many non-Christians of superlative moral character. I mean, even the medieval Christians called Socrates a “Christian before Christ”—in other words, they thought so highly of Socrates that they could not really imagine him going to hell. Similarly, the more you think of really excellent, though still flawed, humans, it may become more difficult to picture a just and fair outcome where they suffer forever. It just doesn’t make moral sense. And really feeling that moral impossibility as applied to non-Christians might help give you confidence that all non-Christians do not go straight to hell. (of course, much Christian teaching aims to establish precisely such a gap between apparent and “actual” moral deserts)
Fears and Experience
If you have multiple fears, perhaps you could enumerate each of them to yourself. Churches tend to bundle together charity, social events, counseling, and parenting and marriage advice, and so a “relationship with God” is supposed to ensure all of that, and deconversion may seem to threaten all of that. For me, becoming friends with more and more perfectly well-adjusted and strong individuals who had always been secular helped disprove the notion that a good life falls apart without religious belief.
Or, to give another example, some Baptists teach that alcohol is a sure road to ruin (really) - only experience gets rid of this fear. Take a drink, feel that you’re fine in the short- and long-term, and you feel better about rejecting that moral teaching.
Conscience is the voice of the community
In the Christian world, what you believe determines who you go to church with, and thus with whom you’re friends. Scott Alexander talks about Red and Blue tribes, pointing out that secular political beliefs also determine who you’re friends with. (I find this idea similar to Robin Hanson’s “beliefs as clothing” idea—change your ideas, change your uniform, change sides) So this isn’t a religious phenomenon only, but it was just more obvious growing up. As a result, the social aspects of religious belief change can be even more obvious and pressing than other sorts of belief change. That’s all a roundabout way of saying fear of hell may be related to fear of coming out to friends and family, and thinking about how to handle the latter if you were to deconvert may help your fear fear of hell.
Finally, I forget which writer commented that Enlightenment Europe didn’t think religion could become a non-issue; it seemed it was one of the “eternal questions.” But in fact Europe’s over that now, and despite the social prevalence of religion in the States, in any professional circles I’ve ever been in, religion simply can’t be mentioned. For us individuals also, religion can simply fade into our rearview mirror. Except for this comment, I don’t think about or miss Christianity anymore. I don’t experience tension that “it might be true,” as some undecidable and imposing question. It’s a rather boring topic. Now I spend my mental energy not on reconciling abstruse and dusty doctrines, but on learning actually useful things (there is so much knowledge left to create!). You only need to deconvert once.
Which fears can you deal with by living through others, and which through direct experience? That might be a path forward. Good luck!
Actually, I don’t have any of the community-based fears. Most of my friends are atheist or irreligious, and while my family would be concerned, I’m not especially worried about their reactions. The guide for the recently deconverted is nice, but I’m still having fears. Sorry-I’m not trying to drag things out! But this is taking a while, and I wish there was a way to just stop worrying.