Went To My First Secular Humanist Group.

[tylereverett]

Tonight I went to a secular humanist group at the local college campus.  Mostly people around my age.  I got to know some people and hung out at a taco joint afterwards.  They all seemed genuinely interested in my story as many of them never were as deeply into religion as I was.

 

I felt a tremendous sense of relief at talking to them.  I think it is a community I could really get involved in. However, I felt a crushing sense of fear and guilt the whole time.  Like I didn't belong.  Felt like I was still a Christian pretending to be an agnostic/atheist.  

 

I guess tonight my deconversion felt more "real" than it ever has.  I told 30 people I was not a Christian.  It was freeing but I wanted to throw up the whole time.  A mix of guilt and fear as if I was "joining the enemy."  And in the middle of all of their confident talk of atheism, I realized a big part of me still believes God is there and he's gonna punish me.  Anyone relate to this?

[NeverAgainV]

Hi Tyler!

 

I think it just takes time for the guilt to subside. For me, I had a lot of fear after leaving the church for a good year, after that year it did get better.

However I was still a christian, I had just left the "true church" so I had the fear of abandoning the "truth".

 

Another year down the road I realized that I could no longer have faith in bible god...and though there was some fear, i had to talk to myself and

I would tell myself the reasons that I could not believe in bible god anymore. I literally had to brainwash myself again to get the toxic xian dogma

out of my head! LOL

 

Since the whole xian premise is based in fear, "fear god" "do this or ELSE!" etc... it takes time to get rid of the false guilt, which I do think causes more fear.

 

What worked to get the fear out of my head was to replace that fear with logical good information. In addition reading the writings of people like Robert Ingersoll, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Paine, Mark Twain helped me because those people wrote exactly what I had been thinking too!

Basically the fear and indoctrination are sometimes hard to get out of our heads, so be patient. No good god would use FEAR on it's creation! A good god would use

compassion, logic, reason and would not be angry or pissed off that people would have doubts, questions and curiosity.

 

Hang in there! It really does get better!

[RenaissanceWoman]

It has been said here many times: deconversion is a journey or a process. You don't just one day say, I no longer believe, and then you're there. You have to peel back all the layers of that onion, and dissipate old thought patterns that are embedded in all kinds of nooks and crannies in your brain.

 

For me and many others, a big part of the faith was the community in a physical place (the church building). A place to go, stuff to do with other people, people who had to sort of get to know you. In fact, when I miss something about my church days, the thing I miss is the people and the ready-made stuff to go do (even though some of them were downright awful and evil to me in the end). You at least have made steps to fill that human need for community, in a healthier setting than church could ever offer. Good for you!

 

I am still gun-shy about groups (I got burned bad at my church), so even though it would probably be good for me, I have not gone to any meetups yet. But somehow, just getting their weekly email reminders of that week's events is enough for me -- just knowing they are out there if I need a place to go, to meet "real" people, and yet still be myself.

 

You will get past this stage.

 

The thing that broke my longing for the people at my old church happened just a few months ago, after I had been out for well over a year. I thought I was over them and all healed up, but then... I did not get invited to the wedding of the daughter of one of my two remaining "friends" from the old church. Too many other people from the church were invited, and I realized that by having me there, my friend would look bad in their eyes for including me. After all she and I had done together, all the time I had spent with her daughter (choir, youth events, dinners at their house), the times my husband fixed their cars, etc... she let her fear of the other club (oops, I mean "church") members outweigh our friendship. That hurt. I cried.

 

So good for you for looking for community with people not dictated by fear and control. I hope you give them another try. Soon enough you'll not feel like such a newbie with lingering thoughts about our former imaginary skygod friend. You have an awesome perspective on the whole thing, and you will be a valuable person for them or maybe for the next newbie to come along.

 

Soldier on, young man. You are on the right path.

[Eugene39]

It was freeing but I wanted to throw up the whole time.  A mix of guilt and fear as if I was "joining the enemy."  And in the middle of all of their confident talk of atheism, I realized a big part of me still believes God is there and he's gonna punish me.  Anyone relate to this?

Certainly do. When it all fell apart for me, it was a very scary time as I couldn't shake the story of Annias and Sapphira from Acts out of my mind - thinking that God was going to do something to either me or my wife and kids. When nothing happened after a couple or three months, then I had to decide that either God isn't like that or God doesn't exist. As others have said, it's a process and takes some time.

[slave2six]

Hey Tyler - Residual Christianity is hard to shake. It took me a good two years before I was able to let it go completely. Or so I thought.

 

When I was a kid, everyone talked about the Judgment as being this big courtroom where the devil is accusing you and billions of people are looking on. That was supposed to terrify you into being good, right? But I was always afraid that Judgment day would be walking into an empty room with a camera facing you and god sitting at a desk. As soon as you walk in he says, "So, what do you have to say for yourself?"

 

I mention this because I recently auditioned for AGT and that is exactly what happened. You go into a room with a camera and a producer and he asks your name and then to perform. It totally freaked me out. I left the audition shaking and practically ran to get out of there when it was all done. 

 

So, yeah. Just when you think you've shaken off your old beliefs, they pop up out of nowhere. But they subside once you get away from the situation.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

That fear and guilt double-threat may be with you for a long time; but it will eventually get easier, especially if you hang around with the unbelieving crowd. 

 

Be careful with it, though; fear and guilt sucked me right back into hardcore religion when I was 24 and only a nominal christian at best.  It cost me six more years of hell and a completely unnecessary divorce. 

[Nadooshka]

I can totally relate! I am at a point now where I feel like I am joining the enemy too, like I am going against the universe. It's a weird feeling because of the confusion it creates.

 

The issue I have is coming to terms with the idea that a jealous vengeful god is not the epitome of love. I know it sounds crazy, like a person who really believes their abuser loves them. See, cognitively, I know better than to believe that a loving god would hide himself and punish those who can't find him. Emotionally, however, I make concessions for that same god.

[R. S. Martin]

Tonight I went to a secular humanist group at the local college campus.  Mostly people around my age.  I got to know some people and hung out at a taco joint afterwards.  They all seemed genuinely interested in my story as many of them never were as deeply into religion as I was.

 

I felt a tremendous sense of relief at talking to them.  I think it is a community I could really get involved in. However, I felt a crushing sense of fear and guilt the whole time.  Like I didn't belong.  Felt like I was still a Christian pretending to be an agnostic/atheist.  

 

I guess tonight my deconversion felt more "real" than it ever has.  I told 30 people I was not a Christian.  It was freeing but I wanted to throw up the whole time.  A mix of guilt and fear as if I was "joining the enemy."  And in the middle of all of their confident talk of atheism, I realized a big part of me still believes God is there and he's gonna punish me.  Anyone relate to this?

 

Yup, I remember the confusion. It is definitely enough to make you sick. If this was your first get-together with atheists, you were dealing with much more than theology (Christian versus atheist). You were also dealing with culture shock. A person deeply into religion as you describe has been conditioned to hear "atheist talk" as "The Enemy." Your entire psyche would have been screaming to "Get yourself out of there!" Your body joined the effort by making you want to throw up--an effective way of forcing you to leave the room and removing yourself from the alien environment. 

 

I don't really know how the emotions, physiology, and intellect are interconnected but it seems they are, though they can act independently at times. It seems you experienced a clash when the intellect reached a decision the other parts had not yet adjusted to, i.e. that it is okay to attend a Secular Humanist meeting. "Go with your gut" might not apply in situations like this.

 

As many of us have noted, whoever wrote in the Bible to "Teach a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it" was onto something. Changing from "the way we should go" takes TIME. But it does eventually get better. Your next meeting with this group will probably be easier, and the worst will probably be over in a few months, though getting rid of all vestiges--every shred of it--can take many years. After seven years I thought I was basically rid of the fear of hell. At ten years I was sure of it. In a post above, someone said two years was all it took. We each have our own story and time table. 

 

All the best, Tyler, as you find your way to answers that work for you.

[tylereverett]

Thanks everyone for the responses.  Its good to know I'm not crazy. 

[Deva]

tyler, I understand where you are coming from. In getting out of the religion I was raised in, I really felt like I was betraying my heritage and throwing out everything.  My parents did a good job of providing for me as a child - and they even put me through college. So, its like a slap in their faces to reject a large part of what they wanted to teach me by sending me to church all those years. Although I am very happy as a Buddhist now, I still have some of that feeling now and then. A feeling of disloyalty.

 

I did everything I could think of to get out of fundamentalist Christianity. I attended a Unitarian church for a couple of years and they had a humanist group there. That did not work for me, but do whatever you need to and disregard these ideas of fear, guilt and that you are pretending.  You are not pretending, you are seriously finding your own way.

[R. S. Martin]

Deva, with reference to feelings of disloyalty to parents. Recently it was pointed out to me that in the animal world, the young are with their parents only till they are able to look after themselves. Why, then, are human children expected to follow their parents for life? It is true that we have higher intelligence and capabilities re taking care of parents in their old age than do animals. All animals can do is let the old and sick die in isolation. But why must we adhere to every teaching of our parents as though they were god? It is "unnatural," to put it one way. 

[Deva]

Yes R.S. it is odd when you think about it too, that human parents still insist (not all, but some), that when their children have become adults, that they retain the same views they were taught. It is as if they don't want any development or maturity in their children!

 

I don't have children of my own, but I would like to think that if I did, after they are adults, I would stay out of their philosophy of life/religion unless it were plainly harmful to others or themselves. Even then, what a useless mission on the whole to continue to make them conform.  They have had the opportunity for many years to teach the children, and if they "fail" then they should deal with it, not make continuing efforts.

 

Let's imagine that I had a son or daughter involved in Islam, or fundy Christianity. It would be tough for me, but I would have to accept it.  It would be foolish for me to try to deconvert them.  Also, to continually have an attitude of disapproval just drives them away, and makes any type of relationship impossible.  I have had my chance to express my views of life to the children for many years; if they don't accept it, I am not the one to keep trying. It just seems like the height of foolishness.

[R. S. Martin]

My parents finally had the decency to die. Dad managed to preach one last sermon from the grave. I wasn't there for the reading of the will but he included Bible verses, which my sister copied down and gave me. I looked them up. It was stuff like judge not and be merciful--things I live by, though probably not in the way he preferred. After a few weeks I ripped that slip of paper to bits, knowing that THIS TIME he's in the grave and cannot reprimand me for disrespect. It felt very liberating. 

 

I've got a feeling, though, that this post is off-topic for this thread in everything except the message that we don't have to follow our parents' dictates for life if we conclude that our parents were wrong.

[gingernut]

Tonight I went to a secular humanist group at the local college campus.  Mostly people around my age.  I got to know some people and hung out at a taco joint afterwards.  They all seemed genuinely interested in my story as many of them never were as deeply into religion as I was.

 

I felt a tremendous sense of relief at talking to them.  I think it is a community I could really get involved in. However, I felt a crushing sense of fear and guilt the whole time.  Like I didn't belong.  Felt like I was still a Christian pretending to be an agnostic/atheist.  

 

I guess tonight my deconversion felt more "real" than it ever has.  I told 30 people I was not a Christian.  It was freeing but I wanted to throw up the whole time.  A mix of guilt and fear as if I was "joining the enemy."  And in the middle of all of their confident talk of atheism, I realized a big part of me still believes God is there and he's gonna punish me.  Anyone relate to this?

 

I can empathize....the guilt and the feeling that we are collaborating with the "dark side" is pretty hard to shake.  Even if we aren't atheist but agnostic we still are all lumped in together with the "lost".  I know it gets better so just hang in there.  The important thing is to decide what you believe or don't believe in on your own and know it for yourself and then let their judgments, both heard or just imagined, roll away off your back like rain.