Foundations in life are necessary, or at the very least inevitable. You cannot look at the world through any set of eyes but your own, and these eyes of yours cannot help but have a perspective based on the mind they answer to.
You see the world in a certain way and that is determined by many factors, not the least of which is your relationship to religion. Whether you have it or you don’t, whether you cherish it or despise it, etc.
As such, for many years religion has been at the heart of my life and my worldview for basically as long as I can remember. I don't have memories of a life before the knowledge and belief of God. It's quite simply always been there. Changing that worldview to secular from religious is sort of like turning the ocean from salt water to fresh, or like trying to make The Office actually funny.
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| That's about how I feel when I watch it too. |
It is theoretically possible, but it encompasses your time, your life, and your passions. Everything you do, everything you think, everything you feel, every opinion you have is tainted by the former and challenged by the latter. How do I really feel about politics, social issues, environmental issues, laws against rape, personal behavior, the conduct of others, and everything else.
If you spend your whole life building up a perspective based on one thing and then rip out the foundation, it’s going to leave you feeling unsettled to say the least. Lost, and floating in an endless sea of questions without answers is better.
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| Pictured Above: Irony. |
That’s not to say that without God, one cannot have purpose. This is not a phenomenon that is specific to religious belief. Anytime you have a drastic paradigm shift, you will find yourself grasping for something to hold on to. I would imagine that its even stronger with something like religion as it tends to be an all encompassing belief, when you throw out something so integrated into your worldview, then you are, understandably, left without much of a coherent worldview.
You cannot just automatically swap one for the other, the new one must be cultivated, it takes time to grow, time to fit into the circumstances of your life. After all, you may know that God created the world, then you may know that there is no evidence of this, that Evolution presents a pretty strong argument, but you don’t flip a switch and make a swap. It takes time. You must explore the new paradigm. Try it out, where it out to some parties, get it worn in. And this is just the scientific paradigm. You also have to come to terms with a life goal without a god, a marriage without a god, raising kids without a god. It’s going to take the rest of your life to really get it all worked out.
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| It hurts because it's true. |
So this has been my dilemma: Feeling a certain emptiness, or a certain void that used to be filled with complete and trusting faith. Faith was found to be an unfit cork, and know I must shop around within myself to find something that fits a little better.
How do you live a life apart from everything your cultivated instincts tell you to do? I’m not sure yet, but I’m working on it.
3 comments:
It certainly does take time to allow the paradigm shift to settle.
Oh, and the Office is funny!!! What's with the Office hatin'?
My question is, if you don't believe in God, why are you trying to convince the rest of society into something you don't have faith in?
why is there this continual drive to prove something that you claim is absent, since it doesn't exist? If you don't believe in something forget about it and go on, there is nothing to disprove, unless there is that "what if" in the back of your head. Atheism is nothing but a hamster on a wheel going around and around on the same voided points of disproving anything that they choose to disagree with, simply endless.
I look at it like this, a atheist believes in his own disbeliefs, so therefore there is no such thing as atheism. Seems as though logic and even illogical things or the belief in God, is force to be looked at as illogic. Even illogic and illogic butt heads in the atheist world, with another attemption to make it some how logic, pretty crazy if I do say so myself. How does one live this way, accept in my opinion they are the pride of their own eye. Which is self idolization, therefore you believe in your own person and cannot be a atheist. Simply a endless infinity into nothing and exhausting. Thank you my friend for letting me share that :)
Well, it seems like we need to start at the beginning. You can lead a theist to water...
a·the·ist (n.)
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
You'll notice that there is hardly any mention of hamsters in this definition. It's quite specific in what it refers to, just in case you're interested in using the word in its intended context.
You can't choose to believe, and so without said belief you are by definition an Atheist and not a Theist. You wouldn't believe in Zeus just because you wanted to try, so why should I believe in Jesus? There's no reason to think God is real or involved in the world or even that he had anything to do with its creation.
Oh, I'm wrong am I? Then prove it to me. Show me why you believe. (hint: good feelings don't count as proof)
See if you can dispel my "disbeliefs". Open invitation.
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