How Do You Avoid Nihilism After You Leave Religion?

Welcome to Mini-Mindshifts! These clips are selected from my longer full-length episodes and will always be 5 minutes or less.

Today's clip covers:
-Leaving Religion
-Atheism
-Nihilism
-Morality Without God
-Meaning Without God
-Deconversion
-Deconstruction

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#atheist #mindshift #atheism #exchristian

[ziploc]

Life is about the journey, not the destination.

[journey]

When I finally deconverted, I became an overachiever for awhile: I read books galore that stimulated my intellect (no fiction at all....what a snob I was), and committed myself to producing better art. I sculpt. I lost nearly all of my friends so I had time on my hands and I didn't want to become morose or feel sorry for myself. I didn't miss the god component of my former life much at all. Then one day during the process, I had an idea that startled me. With my mind firing new ideas that I found fascinating and my hands producing work that was getting ever better, I realized that I had been my own muse, all along! My best ideas, my most shining sculpts all came from somewhere in ME. They weren't from a god that somehow siphoned them into my brain, and for which I must be humbly and eternally grateful, like talent on loan from a stingy deity who wanted all the credit. No. I was the source! ME!! I felt I had come full circle.

[cornupswar]

Hi Brandon!

I was a teenager when I deconverted, and I felt like I had no huge crises in identity and temperament, but I'm still in a constant deconstruction process where I have some anxiety to address. I want to thank you for your videos. They are a big help.

[maggienewton]

when I was a kid, I had a dog. He suddenly became ill, I was sure he was dying and found it hard to hold and love him because I found the thought of losing him too hard. Then it hit me - all the more reason to give and receive love from him, really enjoy every fleeting moment, make his time as happy as possible. That's how I feel about my existence. That there's nothing after doesn't bother me, that there's no objective meaning to life doesn't bother me. It's still infinitely precious even more so because it is fleeting. Hey, I'm here, there are people and things I love, so I give it my all. (BTW, my pup pulled through and I continued to value him in my life)

[DrakeTimbershaft]

Towards the end of high school - which was also an art and performing arts school - our literature class covered the existentialist writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Around that time, my Catholic faith was - as I called it then - "flaking away." When I started college, I was approached by campus crusaders who called themselves the "Intervarsity Christian Fellowship." The more they eagerly spoke about the bible's inerrancy, the more I felt this gut level alarm that said, "Get as far away from these pod people as possible!" I awkwardly excused myself when they asked me if I wanted to be a born-again Christian. From there, it was a weird philosophical and spiritual journey, one week I was reading goddess-worship oriented literature and looking at goddess oriented art. The next week I was reading nihilistic books by The Marquis DeSade and plays like "Marat / Sade" by Peter Weiss. I felt I was in a weird trench, and I sometimes felt a tug to go back to the Intervarsity kids and say, "Okay, I give up. I'm with you now." But it felt like surrender more than enlightenment.
I met my wife at a new-pagan retreat called Reclaiming. It was a great experience and we were married there. There was no cult-like atmosphere and there was no grand guru demanding our unswerving loyalty. So they were completely understanding when my wife and I said we were parting ways with them (imagine that!). Together, Suze and I read authors like Professor Richard Dawkins, Dr. Richard Carrier, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, et alia. While we didn't agree in every single thing they said, we reasoned that was hardly the point. Our goal was to be more inquisitive, not to seek out a new dogma. In time, we began writing journals, which became blogs, which became nascent screenplays. We found ourselves to be more creative and more happy than we did when we were in church, or a political party, or social clique. We found our will to power and our "active nihilistic" journey brought us to a happy home with a more positive outlook on life. It's not a perfect life, but it is far better than where we came from.

[maggienewton]

One more thing 😄 I love that blank slate thing. Love it. In this huge, complex, incredible universe, I exist and can determine my life and choices to an astonishing degree considering how tiny and insignificant I can seem in the time-space continuum. That's so exciting, so marvelous. And so powerful. There's no room there for fear or asking why I exist.

[bens]

Call it whatever -ism you want. It's just about following the truth wherever it leads.

[MG-otyr]

I imagine that's challenging for someone who has left religion, the transition from religiously based morals and meaning to secular ones. I've always been an atheist, meaning is what you make of your life, there's no greater purpose unless you strive to leave a legacy for future generations as many before us have.

[thegametroll]

I remind myself daily that speaking from an evolutionary stand point we are an extensive and complex social species just trying to get by like everything else. We have several advantages going for us as well as several disadvantages that risk sending us back to the stone age if left unchecked. I'm doing what i can to unlearn the indoctrination and mental programming i was forced through as a kid and making peace with the years i have lost to something i never agreed with in the first place. My goal now is achieving autonomy for myself and the things i enjoy doing without people gaslighting me telling this is what i should like or you would be much happier doing what i told you to do regardless of your feelings on the subject. Thanks brandon.

[rolandwatts]

I wonder how many Christians would love God and worship God the way they currently do if, in the bible, it was written:-

"I am the lord your God. I created you. You are to love me and worship me. I may make you feel better or I may make you feel worse when you do so. When you die you will cease to exist."

?

I reckon that for many, if not most, getting into heaven is their main purpose in life. Loving God and worshipping God are the means to gain the heaven they want to exist.

[garykuhre]

Great refreshing, like always- it was an abrupt ending though - no “bye” said .

[hellboundTX]

Life is what you make of it. Nothing more

[Witchoftheriver]

Ironically, learning about our planet and space and evolution and just the science of what we know of the universe in general cured me of my nihilism. Things like the projection that millions of years from now because of the earths tilt, north and south will flip making the earth unrecognizable. Or how many roving black holes there are, how the sun will swallow the earth, and all the other cataclysmic events that will happen and are happening. The eventual death of the whole experience.

I was looking forward to an afterlife for the sole purpose of being free, to know and learn about whatever I wanted to. I'm getting to do a lot of that right now through the internet and living in a trailer (the rent got too dang high, plus I can keep roaches out of the trailer 😖 goddess bless google scholar too lol) and I find that the more I learn, the less I want to exist after this life is over. I don't want to witness the death of the last human, I don't want to watch our earth and all evidence of our existence be erased by our own sun. I'd much rather fade into death with the memories of my loved ones to keep me company.

So either way, if there is or isn't a continuation of consciousness, I have my purpose for today and that makes me plenty fulfilled. I hope everyone gets to feel that too at least once in their lives.

[harveywabbit]

The Lord, God, is a SUN and a SHIELD.
No sweat, he will always return in the morning.

[optimus_rhymes]

It’s weird for me, because for different reasons I’ve lacked purpose during and after religion. When I was a Christian, I knew everything was planned out, and that god already had a plan for me. Now, I see that’s not the case, but it really doesn’t change anything. I’m here and then I die. Just seems pointless. Sorry, for being a nihilistic Nancy. These are just thoughts I have a lot of the time.

[bens]

Many say they are religious because they need something to hold onto. But isn't this the opposite of faith? It takes real faith to let go. Alan Watts liked to reflect upon this. He said religion ought to teach us how to let go rather then give us things to get neurotically attached to. (He had to leave the church because of such views.)

[gavinyoung-philosophy]

As a philosopher of Nietzsche myself, I must say your representation of Nietzsche’s response to nihilism is refreshingly accurate! Thank you for not falling into the rabbit hole of assuming Nietzsche was a nihilist and showing that you’ve actually read him well (or at least learned enough to know his actual position).

[lelouchz]

How do I avoid nihilism after leaving region?

Purpose.

[TheRatzor]

I never understood the concept if there no God how are you moral, or how do you have purpose like WTF?

[aisforapple]

I cannot, as Camus suggests, embrace the absurdism of life and even find purpose in the absurd.
Life is meaningless. There is no purpose and no amount self-work or therapy or anything else can make it meaningful in any way.
I was brought into a rigged game, against my will, that has ever-changing, arbitrary rules that I had nothing to do with establishing and no one even knows the rules and there's no victory in playing the game.
The only thing that would "repair" my life is to play by these arbitrary rules and start over and pretend, like everyone else, that this is the meaning and purpose.
That ship sailed a long, long time ago. Now I'm just ready to check out of this crappy "Terrestrial Hotel" and be done with all of this nonsense!