Religion is a Mental Illness

First of all, I’m sorry to hear that. Losing someone important is never easy at the best of times, and I imagine it’s even harder when you were already in the process of trying to work stuff out.

No, it really doesn’t. There’s nothing in this world that actually suggests the heaven myth is real in any way. Everything we know about the way consciousness and the brain works tells us everything is tied to our physical body. As with every other animal on the planet, when our body shuts off, so do we.

Somebody, possibly on Atheist Experience, put it something like this: imagine you had thought all your youth that you would get a $50m inheritance when you turn 21. But as you got older, and ultimately to 21, you discovered it wasn’t true. Have you been cheated out of something, or lost something? You might be upset that you’ve been lied to, but you never had a $50m inheritance in the first place.

But then, as with some of the other ex-believer questions, i might not be the best person to ask, as I was never a believer, so I never had to shake it off.

We’re so fortunate that we exist. There’s entire ancestral lines that terminate and go no further; some of them hundreds of thousands of years ago as other species were not as successful, while others end more recently for various reasons. If we’re lucky, we get a decent blast of time to make a mark, even if it’s just being important to someone else. Which, how can that not be one of the most important things in the world?

A believer “knows” that they’ll see all their dead friends and family when they move on up to the next world - well, the friends and family who deserve it - where they can live forever in sunshine and rainbows (in Celestial North Korea where there’s no evil and therefore no free will). To me, that utterly cheapens this world. It becomes a doormat, a waiting room for the next realm. As long as you do enough to make The List, you can forget about the few dozen years you spent in this realm. What’s 30, 50, 80 years on Earth, and who cares what you leave behind, when you have eternity to look forward to in the VIP room? Everybody who doesn’t make it? Well, that’s their own fault - the believer didn’t make the rules. I find it a pretty gross and destructive concept, to be honest.

It does make me a bit anxious that when it does happen I might have unfinished business - things I never figured out, experienced, resolved or whatever. And what the actual process is like - scary, painful, peaceful… nobody actually knows, and it will be influenced by how it occurs. Which, again, nobody knows.

But that I won’t have “eternal life”? No. It won’t bother me to be dead, because I’ll be dead. As Mark Twain said  above (which may be misattributed), It’ll be just like it was before I was alive.

As I say though, I might not be the best to help with the afterlife attachment, as I’ve never had it in the first place. You may find it more helpful to hear from ex-believers, such as those on the Atheist Experience, who can tell you how they resolved it.

There are resources available for people leaving their old superstitions behind, trying to figure out their lives without them. If you’re struggling, please reach out to these groups, because many people have left religion before you, so you don’t have to figure it all out alone.

Give it time, though. You’re in the unfortunate situation of grieving both for someone special, and for the comforting belief you once had, and neither is going to happen quickly.

And look after yourself, both physically and mentally.

P.S. if anyone else has any useful resources for ex-believers, please let me know and I’ll add them.

Is there honestly any actual basis for thinking any of that is true?

If there’s no hell, we don’t need saving from anything. Unless it’s heaven vs the end of the line, then the same problem of hell occurs: a god will let you die your permanent death on Earth and not let you into eternal heaven for secret and/or arbitrary reasons, mostly centred around satisfying its imperfect needs. It’s still as unjust. If it has the capability of “saving” everyone, but doesn’t, it’s not an all-loving creature.

If everyone will be “saved” then I don’t need to do anything. Also, Hitler will be there. All the same problems haven’t actually gone away.

Is there any evidence of the entity doing the “saving”, any evidence of the reason we need to be “saved”, or any evidence of the place we will be “saved” to? How did you come to this conclusion of “everyone eventually being saved”?

It’s absolutely possible scripture has been misinterpreted. But what makes you think your interpretation is more correct, even if it’s “nicer”? And aren’t we just admitting that they’re all wrong? And that not only do we not know if/that this hypothetical creature is there, but we have even less idea what it wants than the traditional scriptural stuff, since we don’t even have those unreliable bronze-age scribblings.

And why is it humanity’s responsibility to sort it out? If the entity exists, then it should acknowledge there’s a ton of confusion here on little ol’ Earth, and come back to set it straight. And then apologise for all the thousands of years of death and destruction wrought in its name by people thinking they had it right, when they didn’t. That it hasn’t already done so isn’t a very good sign of its benevolence. Or existence.

On the surface, it sounds prettier, but there’s a ton of problems with the idea - including a few rather unpleasant implications - not least of these problems is how did you/can we determine that any of this is true?

In the end, scripture isn’t really my problem. It’s often gross, violent, full of plot- holes, bad continuity and poor character development. It doesn’t say what people, who often haven’t even read it, say it says. But it doesn’t matter to me whether Sauron is angry or happy with me, whether he wants to kill me or grant me magic wishes, if he only exists in a book.

The fundamental question that precedes the wishes or attitudes of any of these god concepts is their existence - demonstrating this thing actually exists before I worry about what it wants or what its policies are.