You might find that the sense of bother never quite goes away.
Hadn’t considered that quite as much, but admit it could be a very real possibility.
So why should “If everything has a cause, then what caused god?” bother a theist?
Point taken, but it actually bothers me that theists don’t seem to be bothered by anything. Now that I’m on “the other side,” it is just astounding that the world is so religiously divided. I think it would bother me as a Christian that my god made the most important thing in all of existence so subtle with respect to discoverability, that billions of people all over the world are well aware of the bible and toss it aside with ease in favor of theology-as-revealed-by-golden-plates or humans-as-non-functioning-thetans.
One possible trick to help build your confidence is to notice when you do things that are known to be wrong.
This seems worthy, but could you connect that practice to how you “gained an understanding for why you were uncomfortable with losing your religion”?
Point taken, but it actually bothers me that theists don’t seem to be bothered by anything.
Well put. I think that was one of the things that convinced me that I probably wasn’t right about god or religion, though it took a long time to get to that level of awareness.
but could you connect that practice to how you “gained an understanding for why you were uncomfortable with losing your religion”?
Sure, looking back it seems sufficiently vague to need clarification, even to myself.
For me, I came from a background where it was pretty much assumed that people are rational agents, and that everything we do is for a justifiable reason. It just seemed to follow that if something feels a certain way, then it was almost certain to be that way. A whole slew of biases could or did manifest here that I couldn’t even begin to fathom until I took a class on psychology, which revealed to me the “Just World hypothesis” which turns into blaming the victim.
Now that I am aware of some of the many ways in which human minds fail, I have knowledge of some of the horrible consequences that these happy illusions can lead to. Having a visceral understanding of these horrors gave me a strong urge not to do them. But having had the very same urges just before, I knew how they felt from the other side, and how comfortable they were.
At least, that’s what I think I was referring to. Thanks for asking for clarification.
Thanks for clarifying; I think that makes sense. Basically you both learned more about the biases you had, saw that they were undesirable in terms of their consequences, but also due to the “freshness” of being under their spell, you also saw what it was that made them “happy illusions” and “comfortable.”
That does make more sense—you gained some distance, saw that you wanted to move away from those aspects of your former self, but also saw why leaving the old mindset behind might have left a lingering “botherdness” or “subtle longing” that was difficult to pin down?
Hadn’t considered that quite as much, but admit it could be a very real possibility.
Point taken, but it actually bothers me that theists don’t seem to be bothered by anything. Now that I’m on “the other side,” it is just astounding that the world is so religiously divided. I think it would bother me as a Christian that my god made the most important thing in all of existence so subtle with respect to discoverability, that billions of people all over the world are well aware of the bible and toss it aside with ease in favor of theology-as-revealed-by-golden-plates or humans-as-non-functioning-thetans.
This seems worthy, but could you connect that practice to how you “gained an understanding for why you were uncomfortable with losing your religion”?
Well put. I think that was one of the things that convinced me that I probably wasn’t right about god or religion, though it took a long time to get to that level of awareness.
Sure, looking back it seems sufficiently vague to need clarification, even to myself.
For me, I came from a background where it was pretty much assumed that people are rational agents, and that everything we do is for a justifiable reason. It just seemed to follow that if something feels a certain way, then it was almost certain to be that way. A whole slew of biases could or did manifest here that I couldn’t even begin to fathom until I took a class on psychology, which revealed to me the “Just World hypothesis” which turns into blaming the victim.
Now that I am aware of some of the many ways in which human minds fail, I have knowledge of some of the horrible consequences that these happy illusions can lead to. Having a visceral understanding of these horrors gave me a strong urge not to do them. But having had the very same urges just before, I knew how they felt from the other side, and how comfortable they were.
At least, that’s what I think I was referring to. Thanks for asking for clarification.
Thanks for clarifying; I think that makes sense. Basically you both learned more about the biases you had, saw that they were undesirable in terms of their consequences, but also due to the “freshness” of being under their spell, you also saw what it was that made them “happy illusions” and “comfortable.”
That does make more sense—you gained some distance, saw that you wanted to move away from those aspects of your former self, but also saw why leaving the old mindset behind might have left a lingering “botherdness” or “subtle longing” that was difficult to pin down?
Is that even close?
I think you said it better than I could have. Yeah, that is very close to what I was trying to get at.