A Helpful Way To See Christianity As Myth

[Leo]

Rationally, I am an atheist. I was even accused of atheist thinking for the last few years of my Christianity. But we all have a hard time emotionally viewing the culturally dominant religion as a myth. To that end, I am performing a bit of a thought experiment on myself and hope this will help some of you.

I bought a fantasy role-playing game from the iPhone app store called King of Dragon Pass. But there are free games online like Sryth and others. Or you can do this by reading a fantasy series. But the fantasy must have gods and goddesses and sacrifice and spirits to work right. I admit, I usually didn't do much of the spirituality type games before, or if I played them, I rationally used the spirituality part to level up my character as needed, applying my own atheistic thinking to the game as much as I did to Christianity.

But for this thought experiment, I'm trying to imagine the characters believing this stuff. And while I'm playing it, I try and imagine my own Christianity as a fantasy. We sacrificed to the Christian god our money, our time, our prayer rituals, and so on. So rather than see the D&D style fantasy as just myth and playing along, I'm taking steps to see it as myth no more and no less than Christianity. I could never make myself believe in these fake gods and goddesses, or think that a bad harvest was because of a spirit from a tree. So, in parallel, was that Hell dream last night really a message from God? Not if I fully understood that God was a myth. With humans dreaming an average of 50 times per night, it's certainly more than possible to have a dream that reflects the dominant supermajority religion in the country where I live.

I like the saga of this game, just as you might like the saga of a book series if a game isn't your thing. But I'm trying to make myself imagine these people actually believing this stuff, rather than chuckle at the silliness. And when I do that, I'm putting this fake religion constructed by my answers to questions at the beginning of the game, on the same par with Christianity.

Again, it's just a thought experiment really. But I continuously have this rational part of me that is fast figuring out what's been going on. And then the not so rational part, that many others have really eloquently written about on here. And that I often dream about: seeing my coworkers and most people I know in Hell, and I'm about to go there. Or seeing myself be convinced back into Christianity all the while not really believing any of it.

I'm hoping this thought experiment will actually help my not so rational part of myself to understand this has all been an elaborate story. I'm open to ideas for how to extend this in my not so rational part of myself. I'm admittedly not that educated in psychology, though I did just read the Seven Sins of Memory, and that was instructive for how we do and don't remember things. So I'm open for any further ideas and I do hope this helps someone else who might want to try it and convince the irrational part of themselves of the mythology of Christianity.