Life as an Agnostic

[_DoubtingThomas]

Okay, it is about a year now that I decided to be an atheist-leaning agnostic. However, I was taught all my life that Families can be eternal. It brings me no happiness to think there is probably no after-life. I now fear death more than ever. I think am a little crazy now. It hurts to think I wasted many years of my life doing a lot sacrifices for the church. I wish I could get my years back.

For me a godless life is not easier, there is so much uncertainty now. I can no longer say "all is well, God is with me". I wish I could go to a secular therapist, but there is none in my area, and I don't think my health insurance would cover one. I sometimes wish I could believe again.

Hopefully someone here has something to share that can help me.

[_Fence Sitter]

For me a godless life is not easier, there is so much uncertainty now. I can no longer say "all is well, God is with me". I wish I could go to a secular therapist, but there is none in my area, and I don't think my health insurance would cover one. I sometimes wish I could believe again.

Hopefully someone here has something to share that can help me.

For me, not having to worry about what an imaginary God wanted, allowed me to take responsibility for my own actions and decisions. I have no uncertainty about where I stand with a God or what He wants me to do.

It's actually quite liberating.

Regarding "Families are Forever". I do things with my family as if this life is all there is, if, it turns out, there is actually some future where I get to be with them again, so much the better, but I refuse to believe in a God who would separate loved ones for eternity based on decisions made in a 50-70 year span.

[_fetchface]

Here the ways of men divide: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and happiness, then believe; if you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.

I kind of view this as half-true. It is painful to lose your "knowledge" of a happy afterlife, but for me at least, my soul could never be truly at peace when I was trying to believe things that did not make sense to me. That caused me a lot of anxiety and unhappiness throughout my life.

The uncertainty that comes with being a disciple of truth can be pretty uncomfortable especially concerning all of our impending deaths.

[_Maksutov]

I recommend reading Epicurus and even Ecclesiastes.

Congratulations. You are a grown up. You are the human layer between your children and their future state of non-being and you have an awareness of that. Do you have the tools and the guidance and the temperament to help them? It doesn't matter because we're already here. If you don't help them, others will or no one will. Will you? How? It is incredibly hard to come up with good answers.

I always struggle with the pain of losing someone because I don't want to see them suffer or their lives end. I will miss them, sometimes with a physical ache. It's part of the cost of being, not just alive, but aware.

[Guest]

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Okay, it is about a year now that I decided to be an atheist-leaning agnostic. However, I was taught all my life that Families can be eternal. It brings me no happiness to think there is probably no after-life. I now fear death more than ever. I think am a little crazy now. It hurts to think I wasted many years of my life doing a lot sacrifices for the church. I wish I could get my years back.

For me a godless life is not easier, there is so much uncertainty now. I can no longer say "all is well, God is with me". I wish I could go to a secular therapist, but there is none in my area, and I don't think my health insurance would cover one. I sometimes wish I could believe again.

Hopefully someone here has something to share that can help me.

Sure. A lot of us are in that boat. You suffer because you understand that nothing means anything outside of some biological imperatives, there is no inherent point to existing as far as we understand it, and being completely responsible for your state of mind is depedent on the hand you were dealt and the choices you make.

You can dive right into philosophy exploring the words of other men and women on meaning, conciousness, relational observation, nature versus nurture, existence, and an innumerable variation of any of those themes in an attempt to makes sense of senselessness.

There's hedonism, nihilism, altruism, and about a thousand other 'isms you're free to explore. It doesn't mean exploring them comes without benefits or consequences, but you can exercise your will to power and that's something.

Maybe we're a simulation. People much smarter and visionary think this is an electric universe.

Maybe it's turtles all the way down.

It doesn't matter because you're here now, you're stuck on a planet hauling ass through space, and you will die. It is what it is. Do what you can to craft meaning out of it that makes sense to you, that works for you.

That's the gift of agnosticism.

You get to do you, how you see fit. You get to own your behavior. You to regard your time on earth how you want.

- Doc

[_fetchface]

Here is one that I read for comfort from time to time from "The Great Agnostic" himself:

I KNOW how vain it is to gild a grief with words, and yet I wish to take from every grave its fear. Here in this world, where life and death are equal kings, all should be brave enough to meet what all have met. The future has been filled with fear, stained and polluted by the heartless past. From the wondrous tree of life the buds and blossoms fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth patriarchs and babes sleep side by side. Why should we fear that which will come to all that is? We cannot tell. We do not know which is the greatest blessing, life or death. We cannot say that death is not good. We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life or the door of another, or whether the night here is not somewhere else a dawn. Neither can we tell which is the more fortunate, the child dying in its mother’s arms before its lips have learned to form a word, or he who journeys all the length of life’s uneven road, painfully taking the last slow steps with staff and crutch. Every cradle asks us “Whence?” and every coffin “Whither?” The poor barbarian weeping above his dead can answer the question as intelligently and satisfactorily as the robed priest of the most authentic creed. The tearful ignorance of the one is just as consoling as the learned and unmeaning words of the other.

No man standing where the horizon of a life has touched a grave has any right to prophesy a future filled with pain and tears. It may be that death gives all there is of worth to life. If those who press and strain against our hearts could never die, perhaps that love would wither from the earth. Maybe a common faith treads from out the paths between our hearts the weeds of selfishness, and I should rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not. Another life is naught, unless we know and love again the ones who love us here. They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave need have no fear. The largest and the noblest faith in all that is, and is to be, tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. We know that through the common wants of life, the needs and duties of each hour, their grief will lessen day by day until at last these graves will be to them a place of rest and peace, almost of joy. There is for them this consolation: The dead do not suffer. If they live again their lives will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear; we are all children of the same mother and the same fate awaits us all. We, too, have our religion, and it is this: “Help for the living, hope for the dead.”

[_mentalgymnast]

Hopefully someone here has something to share that can help me.

For me the choice became rather obvious. Choose a creator/God. I flirted with agnosticism and at times I still wonder, "What's it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live?"

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/burt+bacha ... 25979.html

I choose to think not. I choose to think that life has more purpose than JUST what we make of it.

As you have already made your choice for the remainder of your life, I think that you will most likely benefit from the advice of other agnostics on this board.

But, as an alternative to consider, there is the choice of living as though there is a creator/God and knowing that there will be ambiguity that is part and parcel of making that choice.

There's still plenty of free time to do what you want to do either way, religion or not. Today is cycling day for me. Did chores this morning here at home. Life is good, no matter what choice you make.

Best wishes,
MG

[_bcuzbcuz]

Okay, it is about a year now that I decided to be an atheist-leaning agnostic. However, I was taught all my life that Families can be eternal. It brings me no happiness to think there is probably no after-life. I now fear death more than ever. I think am a little crazy now. It hurts to think I wasted many years of my life doing a lot sacrifices for the church. I wish I could get my years back.

For me a godless life is not easier, there is so much uncertainty now. I can no longer say "all is well, God is with me". I wish I could go to a secular therapist, but there is none in my area, and I don't think my health insurance would cover one. I sometimes wish I could believe again.

Hopefully someone here has something to share that can help me.

I am an atheist, a non-theist. I have not seen, read or heard a statement of belief in a god that has convinced that the object of belief actually exists. People will continue to believe but belief, by definition, is in an abscence of proof.

I definitely do not accept the testimonies of Mormons as proof that god exists. The Mormon belief in god, meaning the Mormon god, has never been shown or proven to be based on anyhting other than belief. I do not, either, accept any other statements of belief in a god, whether that statement comes from a Jehovah's Witness, a belever in Zeus, Odin or Buddha.

While I was a TBM I stated my beliefs (naïvely stated as knowledge) and I heard many others make statements about their "knowledge". While I was a TBM I claimed knowledge about death and supposed afterlife. I made those claims without the slighest bit of actual evidence. Again, someone stating that something is tue does not make it so.

Now that I no longer accept the stories about death and afterlife, I cannot make statements of "knowledge" about what awaits when I die. But I do not fear this inevitable event. My death will not be any more remarkable than the billions that have also experienced the same thing before me, nor the billions after me who will also die.

Life was easier as a believer. There is comfort in feeling that there are answers to the unknown. But I view it as a flimsy comfort. I prefer to saying "I don't know" because I, in fact, do not know.

It took many years to be comfortable with not knowing but I do not regret the journey.

Good luck

[_Blixa]

I recommend reading Epicurus and even Ecclesiastes.

Congratulations. You are a grown up. You are the human layer between your children and their future state of non-being and you have an awareness of that. Do you have the tools and the guidance and the temperament to help them? It doesn't matter because we're already here. If you don't help them, others will or no one will. Will you? How? It is incredibly hard to come up with good answers.

I always struggle with the pain of losing someone because I don't want to see them suffer or their lives end. I will miss them, sometimes with a physical ache. It's part of the cost of being, not just alive, but aware.

I recommend reading. Everything. All subjects.

Look at art. Watch films.

Go out and spend time with Nature.

Live life. Think.