How to Find Your Purpose as an Atheist

I’ve been an atheist for over a decade since my deconversion from Christianity in 2015. During my reconstruction into my own personal atheistic life philosophy, I encountered the existential crisis common to those going through transitions like these. After years of being told that my purpose was to glorify God, convert others to my religion, and be obsessed with behavioral perfection, I found myself wondering what my purpose would be moving forward as an atheist.

Looking for a Universal Purpose After Christianity

The problem I encountered was caused by the unreasonable expectations indoctrinated into me by my previous religion. Christianity had told me that there is a universal purpose to my life and when I left it, my subconscious sought a direct replacement. Only this time, I was looking for a universal purpose for my life from a secular viewpoint. I eventually came up with the idea that the closest purpose I could assign to human and other sentient life is that we are here to survive and thrive. However, I soon realized that this was only our living instinct, but not necessarily what we’re here to do. And again, I was still looking for that universal purpose I lost when I left Christianity.

Religion Sold Me a Problem I Didn’t Have

I eventually realized through my research and contemplation that the idea of a universal purpose for our lives was fabricated by religion. Religious people created the problem of needing a universal purpose for our lives and told us that they had the solution.This is so typical of religion, telling you that you need something (like God) to survive and thrive when you don’t and are perfectly fine as you are. Once I understood that a universal purpose wasn’t needed to live a good life, I started to wonder if I needed purpose at all. The answer I found was yes, but not quite what I expected.

What People Really Need

We as human beings don’t need to know why we’re here or how we got here to live fulfilling lives with a sense of purpose. Indeed, that’s great news because no one really knows how we got here anyway. What we do need instead are things to motivate us to keep moving forward. However, these motivators aren’t like a universal purpose that applies to everyone. While many of us share similar sources of purpose, ultimately, what motivates us individually provides our unique purpose. This could be anything from our relationships to our jobs to our hopes to our personal growth to our desire to understand the world around us. Furthermore, because motivation comes from investment, we also create purpose for ourselves wherever we invest our time and energy. Therefore, investment creates purpose.

My Struggle with Lack of Purpose

As someone who spent over a decade in unemployment due to mental illness, I’ve spent a significant portion of my life feeling a lack of purpose. For a long time, my only purpose was to survive the pain of mental illness because I knew that as long as I survived, there was hope of healing in my future. I also didn’t want to kill myself because I loved my wife and didn’t want to leave her with that suffering. So, I kept living because of these significant, but not entirely fulfilling sources of purpose. Because of my inability to make any significant contributions to my home, my family, and the world other than my own survival, I felt the pain of lacking purpose in my life. I felt like my life didn’t really matter that much most of the time and I often felt like I was just wasting it trying to survive another day. This feeling continued even though days, months, and years went by without any significant healing or progress.

Years later, as I finally began to find genuine healing from my mental health problems and become more active in my life again, I discovered that purpose comes from investing in yourself and in others. Before my healing process though, investing in anything was extremely difficult because of my mental health problems, resulting in those many years of living without feeling much purpose. 

Keep It Simple

Honestly, those struggling with purpose have a tendency to make this pursuit more difficult than it is. Contrary to our struggle, it’s actually quite simple: Better yourself and the lives of others, because that’s where purpose comes from–investment. It’s not some universal concept like worshiping a god but instead a feeling you get when you take good care of yourself and eventually have the capacity to share your time and energy with others as well.

Focus on Yourself and Help Others as a Result

The whole “better yourself and the lives of others” may seem like a universal source of purpose, but it’s actually more of a concept by which you’ll be able to find what’s specifically meaningful to you. Furthermore, I’ve also noticed that when I focus on self-care and improving myself, others invariably benefit as well. We are social creatures and in order to better ourselves, we have to create value that benefits others as well. Therefore, by bettering ourselves, we automatically end up bettering others.

Anything morally beneficial to oneself will also directly or indirectly benefit society, thus constituting a potential source of purpose. It doesn’t matter whether you get your purpose from your job, your family, your friends, or other pursuits in your life. What matters is that you’re living your life in alignment with your values, because if you do that, you and others will always benefit.

Live by YOUR Values

Don’t let other people try to push their values on you, because if you do, they will benefit but you likely won’t. You won’t be living from your heart, doing what matters to you, and being who you really are! Instead of absorbing the values of those around you, begin to ask yourself what matters to you. What brings you joy, motivation, and excitement? What makes you angry? Where do you invest most of your time and energy? These are the types of questions to ask yourself if you feel like you don’t have any purpose because these questions will reveal what matters to you. If these questions don’t reveal anything, you probably just need to start trying new things and investing yourself more deeply in things. Investment and commitment is where you will find purpose.

When the Pursuit of Purpose Needs to Take a Back Seat

I would like to note that if you’re going through depression right now, and feel like nothing matters to you, that’s common–although not a great place to be. It’s called anhedonia, where the things that used to matter to you and motivate you are no longer meaningful or appealing to you. This is a common side effect of experiencing depression–no longer being able to feel motivation or a sense of purpose. Just know that there is hope for you of healing and once again being able to feel motivation and purpose. I know because I’ve lived with severe depression, anxiety, anhedonia, fatigue and more for a long time and I’ve finally begun to heal and feel purpose again. If you’re stuck right now, dealing with any disability or mental illness, know that it's okay to only find purpose in taking care of yourself when you’re unwell. Afterall, if you’re not well, it’s going to be difficult to create value in your life, so you must focus on taking good care of yourself. Don’t pressure yourself to function highly like those who are well. Just focus on getting professional help and introducing better self-care into your routine. Healing will come with time if you choose to treat yourself with love and care. Greater sources of purpose can come later.

Evaluate Yourself

For those of you who are in a state of wellness though, you already have sources of purpose in your life; you just have to notice and acknowledge them. If what you’re doing with your life doesn’t seem to matter to you, first assess yourself for depression and mental health challenges. This is critically important because nothing you change in your life will make you feel a sense of purpose again if you are unwell, unless of course the changes specifically improve your general wellbeing. Secondly, if signs of mental or emotional unwellness aren’t apparent, ask yourself if you’re doing what you really want to do with your time. Some good questions to ask yourself could be: 

1. Are you living the life YOU want to live or the life that others have conditioned you to live? 

2. Are you being who you really are, or are you hiding your true self out of fear of rejection like I did for most of my life? 

3. Are you living by your own chosen values or the values your family, friends, and society have pressured upon you?

If you answer these questions honestly, you may gain some valuable insight into your feeling of purposelessness. While the value you’re currently providing to yourself and others is definitely a potential source of purpose, if it is not creating the feeling of purpose within you that you’re craving, you’re probably not living in alignment with your true self and personal values.

We Want to Feel Purpose, Not Just Know It

This leads me to the ultimate secret about purpose that I’ve recently discovered: What people crave isn’t universal or objective purpose, but instead the feeling of purpose. It doesn’t matter if what you’re doing with your life seems purposeful to someone else if it doesn’t…feel…purposeful…to you. Therefore, aim to find what makes you feel like your life matters. The best way to do this is to be yourself and use what makes you special to improve the lives of others and yourself. There is no need for you to try to be someone else and do what they’re good at. Instead, you need to discover who you are and what makes you special and give yourself permission to live authentically, because authenticity is the true source of purpose.

Trust Their Actions, Not Their Words

A person’s actions are the most reliable evidence for assessing who they are and what they value. While an honest person’s words may convey truth about their intentions, a dishonest person’s will rarely match their actions. Even sometimes an honest person’s claims will not be true because a person’s subconscious often has motives of which their conscious mind is unaware. Because of this–the dishonest person’s lies and the honest person’s occasional lack of self-awareness–one would be wise to stop trusting what people say (unless they’ve earned your trust consistently) and start trusting what they do instead.

I Learned This Lesson the Hard Way

Having been raised by two covert narcissists, the truth in my home was far different than the deception of my parents' words. Things were said with the appearance of kindness or love, but the manipulation underneath was anything but lovely. Furthermore, they taught me to not trust my observations because they knew that I could see that their actions didn’t line up with their words. Love was spoken, but rarely shown and frustrations were placated, but only temporarily to do the same exact thing again later. 

My Heart Always Knew the Truth

The dishonesty and deception of my mother and father showed me how people have the ability, whether they are conscious of it or not, to use their words to keep others confused–in other words, to lie. I knew that people could lie, but discovering that the people you’ve trusted your whole life are lying to you is a completely different experience. Since my teens, my subconscious always knew that my parents weren’t worthy of my love, empathy, or adoration, but I gave it to them anyway because they had convinced me with their words that they deserved it and that I would be wrong to withhold it. However, I always knew on a subconscious, emotional, and intuitive level that something was wrong with them. While my parents had consciously convinced me that I could only trust them and not my much more honest heart, my heart always knew. Why? Because the subconscious mind (our heart) processes information at a much higher level than our conscious minds, noticing the disparity between a person’s actions and words long before our conscious mind does.

Seeing the Truth for the First Time

Once I began trusting my lifetime of observations instead of their words–the deception, hypocrisy, and double-standards of my parents began flooding into my conscious awareness. I had seen and felt who they were for almost two decades, but had repressed and disregarded my perceptions of them due to their continual efforts to destroy my self-trust and protect their delusional egos. Now that I began to trust myself, I began to see them and everyone else clearly by their actions instead of easily spoken and broken words.

Where to Look to See People Clearly

Everyone will show you who they are if you objectively observe their actions for long enough instead of overvaluing their words. If you want to know what really matters to a person, look at how they spend their time. If you want to know if someone loves you, look at how they treat you. If you want to know if someone can be trusted, look at their history of keeping promises. It’s so simple, yet the pontification of so many people would convince us to ignore this simple truth and instead believe their delusions, dishonesty, and lies.

Ground Even Your Trusted Relationships In Truth

Even the people you love and trust should be held accountable by their actions. While understanding and empathizing with them is healthy, your empathy should also be grounded in the truth of their actions. Why? Because blindness is not a virtue and opens the door for dysfunction and disrespect. If we want to have healthy relationships, we must see people for who they are–not who they claim to be. Those who’ve earned our trust may get some free passes, but if their actions begin to consistently show contempt, dishonesty, or disrespect, they must be held accountable and repairs must be made before resuming trust again. Otherwise, if they are unwilling to apologize and change their unhealthy behaviors, those relationships should be reconsidered as a valuable use of our time and effort.

Place Your Trust in the Right Place

Deceivers will take advantage of our trust if we allow them by ignoring and minimizing their toxic actions. That’s what happened to me with my father and mother. While trust is wisely built upon consistently observing the actions of others, I would argue that many of us have instead mistakenly placed our trust in what people tell us about themselves. Instead of allowing people to convince us about who they are with their words, we would be wise to let them convince us with their actions. This is the foundation of reliable trust: evidence, not words or stories or feelings or promises, but instead what people actually DO.

Are You Confused By the People In Your Life, Even Yourself?

If you’re confused about who the people in your life really are and what they actually think and feel, stop listening to what they say and start observing what they do. Manipulative people in my life taught me that words are cheap, but actions reveal the truth of who people are. Even when applied to yourself, this concept will help you to develop incredible clarity and self-awareness as to who you really are, what really matters to you, and areas in which you could grow. 

Conclusion

The words that come out of a person’s mouth only have value if they continually align with their actions. If they don’t, ignore what they say and stay away. 

Life is too valuable to waste on dishonest people.

Surviving Mental Illness as an Atheist

As someone who has lived with mental illness most of my life, I have experienced anxiety, depression, irritability, and more as both a Christian previously and now as an agnostic atheist. While the struggle has always been there regardless of my perspective at the time, there have been several key differences between surviving mental illness as an atheist versus as a theist. Both can survive, and proponents of each will likely continue to argue that their position is better for surviving hardship. However, having experienced both sides, I am in a unique position to be able to share how the atheist position offers several key advantages while navigating the difficulties of the mind.

1—Atheists Pursue Healing Instead of Fighting Demons That Aren’t There

When I was a Christian, I honestly thought that my struggle to get out of bed in the morning and overcome my anxiety and depression was caused by demonic attack, spiritual oppression, or a lack of faith in God. Instead of figuring out what I needed to heal my mind or my body, I wasted valuable time praying for help and assuming that I had a spiritual problem instead of a psychological or medical problem. Once I willingly discarded my faith in Christianity, I began to look for actual solutions instead of continually seeking the failing intervention of the divine.

2—Atheists Listen to Their Intuition Instead of Unanswered Prayers

As mentioned above, because I thought I was under spiritual attack by demons and other “dark entities”, I wasted years praying to God for help. Because I never received any help or relief, I thought that God either wanted me to suffer for some inexplicable reason “for his will” or that I was somehow at fault–gaslighting myself as religion often does. I could never understand why being crushed by depression to the point of complete social isolation would do anything for advancing God’s kingdom. It just seemed like a needless waste of my life, and it was. When I became an atheist, however, rather than seeking God’s help through prayer, I began asking myself what I needed to heal and I actually started getting real answers! As a result of this, I can confidently conclude that my deconversion from Christianity was the beginning of my healing process from mental illness. Because I started trusting my intuition and allowing it to guide me toward doing what I needed to do to heal–instead of waiting for unanswered prayers–I started getting the help I actually needed, both from myself and others. This transition from prayer to self-trust marked the beginning of tremendous healing in my life.

3—Atheists Trust Themselves Instead of Feeling Abandoned by Gods

In the process of desperately praying for God’s help for years, I began to feel abandoned by him. I could no longer ignore the fact that I had never heard his voice or witnessed any notable answers from him to my prayers. Instead, I was actually getting worse. Why? Because I was trusting God instead of taking responsibility for healing myself. However, when I became an atheist, instead of feeling like God didn’t give a shit about me, I started giving a shit about me. I became what God could never be for me: someone real who I could trust. Someone who had my back. Someone who was present to love me. As an atheist, I began to trust myself and find my own inner advocacy and support so that I could begin the journey of healing my mental and emotional health.

4—Atheists Take Responsibility Instead of Waiting on God’s Intervention

Once I became an atheist and began to trust myself instead of waiting on God's help, I began to take personal responsibility for the challenges in my life. While I know that many of us have heard the whole Christian speech on “Trust God, but do your part” thing, you and I both know that is just an excuse for the fact that prayers go unanswered (or unheard) and that gods don’t intervene (or don’t exist at all).It was this realization–that God didn’t exist or was unwilling to help–that ignited personal responsibility in my life for my mental health problems. I started to understand that regardless of whether the supernatural existed or not, I was on my own and if I didn’t do anything, nothing was going to change. I realized that my healing journey was up to ME, not a god who didn’t exist or who didn’t care to help. I was never going to get better unless I took responsibility for my struggles and helped myself.

The Lies Theists Tell You About Surviving Mental Illness

If you’re an atheist in the middle of a crisis, whether that be mental illnesses or something else, don’t believe all the lies that theists will tell you about suffering, such as:

1. “Only through the power of God could I survive ______.”

2. “Without God and the support of my local church, I wouldn’t have made it.”

3. “It’s faith that got me through.”

4. And the list continues…

The problem with all of these self-depreciating assumptions that theists make is that the vast majority of them have never experienced hardship as an atheist. Even if they had gone through hardships previously as atheists before becoming theists, the fact that they negotiated those hardships and survived as atheists proves my point! The reality is that most theists underestimate their survival capacity because they believe that strength (or anything good really) can only come from their gods. They assume that they are feeble, frail, and foolish people who couldn't handle anything on their own without the support of their faith and their gods. See what I mean? How would any theist know if they could survive hardship as an atheist without actually being an atheist while going through their fires? By their same logic, atheists could easily claim that they wouldn’t have survived what they’ve been through if they had been religious.

Conclusion

The reality is that both atheists and theists can survive immense suffering. They can both claim that it was their life philosophy that got them through it, but the reality is that surviving mental illness has nothing to do with the religious or philosophical label by which one defines themselves. Sure, different perspectives have their own advantages and disadvantages in the realm of coping with hardship, but in my experience, having been on both sides, it doesn’t really matter. What actually matters is committing to living another day and accepting your pain. Acknowledging your struggle and asking for help. Realizing that it’s okay to feel bad and that you don’t need to force these uncomfortable feelings to go away immediately. Learning that emotional pain is both a sensation and a message from your subconscious, but that suffering is a choice. Taking better care of yourself instead of beating yourself up. Giving yourself permission to not be as happy or as successful as your peers right now. And, choosing to love and care for yourself in a way that your family probably never has.

Don’t let theists tell you that you're screwed without their gods if you’re navigating mental or emotional challenges in your life. The reality is that you’re probably better off. At least you can count on yourself instead of gods that never show up. At least you’re fighting to heal an actual condition instead of battling against evil superstitions. And most importantly, because you’re unencumbered by waiting for supernatural disappointment, you can start taking responsibility for your healing right now by trusting your intuition and getting the help you need. 

You’ve got this. Afterall, isn’t that what theists and atheists share in common–our humanity? And given the fact that we are both able to survive hardships, maybe it’s never been gods getting us through it afterall? Instead,maybe it’s just been our humanity this whole time.Afterall, survival is what we do, because if we didn’t, there wouldn’t be 8 billion of us on this planet. 

You are a survival machine that doesn't need an illusion to get you through this. You just need to show up for yourself. You need YOU.

Why Skepticism is Superior to Faith

Being raised in a very religious part of the United States of America, I was indoctrinated to believe that faith was important, could be trusted, and actually meant something. This all made sense to me until my deconversion from Christianity in 2015 and my subsequent intellectual awakening. 

Religion Taught Me to Suppress My Doubts and My Intellect

My parents taught me to suppress my intellect growing up, only encouraging me to use it to confirm the beliefs they gave me to absorb instead of using it to seek truth. Also, doubt was discouraged (even though I now know how important it is for ridding oneself of untrue beliefs) and blind faith in God and the Bible was honored with respect that it doesn’t deserve.

Skepticism Versus Faith and Cynicism

For the purpose of this article, I’m going to define skepticism as withholding belief when encountering new ideas unless sufficient evidence has been acquired to justify belief. Also, skepticism is not cynicism like many people seem to think. Instead, skepticism involves being open-minded to new ideas while also exercising self-restraint and personal judgement to prevent acquiring a false belief whereas cynicism tends to be the complete opposite, assuming that everything is false without giving any open-minded consideration. Therefore, true skepticism is open-minded and unassuming, which is completely different from the assumptions and close-mindedness of cynicism.

Faith on the other hand is more proximate to cynicism. It is both assuming of propositions unverified by reputable evidence as well as close-minded to any other potential truths. When one has faith, they have chosen to dismiss any evidence (or lack thereof) to the contrary while also accepting only evidence that confirms their position. Therefore, faith, by definition, is a dysfunctional cognitive bias whereas skepticism is a much more useful tool for retaining objectivity and actually discovering truth. Honestly, the faith that I had when I was a Christian was nothing more than an assumption drilled into me during my childhood, as is the case with most proponents of faith. The reality is that very few people value faith in modern society unless it was idolized in their childhood. This explains why most fans of faith have either believed in the concept since their childhood or are returning to their childhood indoctrination later in life as an adult. However, someone raised only with objective critical thinking skills and an evidence-based epistemology would likely find faith a troubling concept for sure and have no reason to invest in such an unreliable way of determining truth and reality.

The Brutal Realities of Faith

Let’s get to the real elephant in the room. People of faith like to believe that faith is an admirable value, something possessed by great people, and that somehow it far surpasses reason and evidence-based frameworks. However, the truth is that faith is nothing more than a feeling without any evidence to support it. That’s why the majority of religions value faith because it can be used to justify belief in anything with no proper grounding in reality. That’s the problem I have with faith. All of these religions are claiming that their beliefs are true on the basis of faith, even though they regularly disagree with each other on the nature of reality. Without any rule or measure by which to judge and discern reality, anything goes, including ideas that are mutually incompatible. If one religion says that there are multiple gods on the basis of their faith while another says there is only one god on the basis of faith, then what’s the truth? Either one of them is wrong, or both are wrong. It is just not possible for two conflicting ideas to be true at the same time, unless of course you use faith for determining truth and reality.

Therefore, faith is nothing more than an assumption lacking evidence to establish it in reality whereas skepticism is a system by which facts are observed and belief is withheld unless sufficient evidence is present to justify belief or conclusions. And even when a skeptic determines that belief is warranted, he practices caution by assigning degrees of certainty to his conclusions because he knows that while truth exists, it is difficult to capture confidently. This is completely contrary to the absolute arrogance of those who possess faith, who assume that they have THE truth and that everyone else is wrong even though they can’t even provide the slightest adequate evidence for their emotional convictions. The irony is that I was taught growing up to believe that skeptics were the arrogant ones while us Christians were the humble ones, bowing down at the feet of Jesus. The truth, however, is far different: It is actually the skeptics who are the humble ones, choosing to admit what they don’t know on the basis of inadequate evidence. The bearers of faith are actually often the arrogant ones, especially the evangelicals, who think that it’s somehow acceptable to push their unverified beliefs upon someone else.

Don’t Expect the Religious to Support Your Abandonment of Faith

If you were raised to respect faith and are starting to see its flaws, know that you are not alone. There are plenty of people who’ve been down this road before (me being one of them) who have discovered that faith is all bark and no bite. You may be realizing for the first time that faith is nothing more than a concept rooted in superstition, indoctrination, and group conformity instead of reality and evidence. Just be aware that most of the religious people you’ve been surrounded by your whole life will not respect your new position and will try to convince you that your thinking is flawed or sacrilegious. If you want to debate with them, go ahead. However, if you’re looking for support, you’re going to have to find it elsewhere in both new people and yourself.

The Doubting Shadow Personality of the Religious

Most people possess at least some ability to reason objectively if they choose to use it. However, people of faith often reject this aspect of themselves because it eventually raises reasonable doubts about their religion. Instead of valuing truth by openly considering these doubts, most of them give into their fear and try to suppress their rational self in favor of blind faith. As a result, most religious people possess a subconscious doubting side that has long been repressed in their shadow personality for years. Therefore, your dissent and doubt will likely make them feel uncomfortable because it will be raising this aspect of their doubt into their awareness that they’ve been avoiding for a long time. Even your withdrawal from their religion alone will be enough to trigger intense feelings of uncertainty in them–and boy do they hate uncertainty!

The Truth About the Practice of Religion

One thing you will learn quickly as a truth seeker is that most people–but especially the religious–are driven by comfort and security. When they perceive you as the cause of their discomfort, even though you’re only triggering an internal confrontation within them with their own repressed doubt, they’re probably not going to like your new position very much. Many of them will want nothing to do with your new ideas and others will even refuse to acknowledge your shift, treating you like you’re still a person of faith like them. Furthermore, some will try to argue against your ideas and others will even try to shame or discredit you to avoid facing their fears. It isn’t your fault that they’re feeling this way, but most of them will do whatever they have to do to push their doubts back into repression. That’s what the practice of religion actually is: Struggling to maintain unverified beliefs in an effort to minimize fear and maximize comfort. YOU may have chosen to leave this practice of fear and comfort behind, however, they haven’t and they are not going to understand or respect your departure from it.

Protect and Respect Yourself

Don’t let anyone tell you what you “should” think, feel, or believe. That is your right and your responsibility, not anyone else’s. Even if you feel unsure of your new ideas right now, which is completely normal, know that you are fully capable of developing critical thinking skills quickly if you haven’t already. 

Conclusion

As far as we know, humans are the only conscious beings on this planet capable of critical thinking, so let’s not waste this capacity by choosing to ignore our doubts out of fear that we might make mistakes. While we all regularly make mistakes, I would argue that faith maximizes the likelihood of possessing false convictions whereas skepticism minimizes this risk and increases the likelihood of actually securing some truth for yourself. 

The religious might not respect your new position, but those of us in the skepticism community do. Keep questioning. Keep doubting. Keep separating truth from fiction and don’t believe in anything unless you can prove it. Afterall,

The discovery of truth begins not with faith, but with doubt.

What Is It Like to Go Through a Religious Deconversion?

The short answer–and I can only speak from my personal experience–is that going through a religious deconversion can be a very confusing, disorienting, lonely, and painful experience, but it is worth it in the end! While I’m sure the experience varies from person to person, if your religion mattered to you, deconverting is likely going to hurt. And you’re probably not going to get much support on your journey either, at least from most of the people you’ve been associating with previously.

My Story - Unanswered Prayers

In 2015, after several years of severe anxiety, depression, and unemployment, I began to wonder why all of my prayers to the Christian god for help seemed to do nothing. It made no sense to me why a god who loved me wouldn’t answer my prayers for healing, especially considering that I wasn’t able to do anything productive for him. I wasn’t involved in any ministries, had no social contact outside of family, and spent the majority of my time wearing out my living room couch. Then one day, while sitting on the couch, something shifted within me. I remember looking up at the ceiling of my living room and having a realization–one that gave several explanations for my unanswered prayers. 

Either:

1. God loves me and has a plan I don’t understand, which is why he’s allowing my suffering or

2. God created the world but has abandoned humanity, so he’s either not listening or doesn’t care or

3. God…doesn’t…exist…

When that third and final idea hit my awareness, it was a jaw-dropping, light-bulb moment for me. Maybe all of my prayers were nothing more than just talking in my head with nobody receiving my pleas for help! Everything started to make so much sense to me from this new perspective. While I withheld full commitment to this new idea, being the analytical person I am, I couldn’t shake the notion that maybe God didn’t exist!

The Power of Childhood Indoctrination

It’s weird looking back at this moment because I still find it insane that at 24 years old, I had never considered the possibility that God might not exist. This is a great example of the power and effectiveness of childhood indoctrination. Prior to my awakening, I had never seriously considered any alternative philosophies to my childhood religion. In my previous life, I had heard of people who didn’t believe in the existence of gods, but I had never experienced the possibility of atheism on a deeper, more emotional level. This time was different, because I went beyond acknowledgement to believing that the supernatural might not exist for the first time in my life.

The Confusion of Shifting Beliefs

After this moment of awakening, I didn’t even realize how much had shifted for me yet. I still considered myself a Christian, maybe even a sacrilegious one for questioning the existence of God, but still a Christian nonetheless. I still prayed to God, still felt like He existed and sometimes thought that maybe I was losing some type of spiritual war to demons and other evil entities. However, I also wondered if all of my religious beliefs were just superstitious bullshit and if I had finally woken up to a more sensible perspective on the world. At this point, I was already an agnostic atheist even though I didn’t realize it until three years later in the future. I just didn’t have the terminology to label myself at the time due to my ignorant and insufficient Christian education on all of the other perspectives in the world. To this day, agnostic atheism is still my current position because it is the only justifiable position one can have if one strictly adheres to an evidence-based epistemology.

At the time though, I had no idea that I was already an agnostic atheist. I still felt, talked, and thought like a Christian (for the most part) due to a lifetime of indoctrination and conditioning. The only difference was that for the first time in my life, I started to consider that maybe doubt was a good thing after years of being told that it was spiritual “weakness” and instigated by the “devil”. It was such a confusing experience–part of you thinking that you are waking up to reality by doubting your religion and another part of you thinking that you are giving into the deception of the devil as he lures you away from God.

This phase of my deconversion, the cognitive dissonance phase, lasted for three years. During this time, I experienced a tremendous internal war. I wasn’t sure what I believed because I held convictions in both camps. It was an extremely frustrating, confusing, painful time for me. It was made even worse by the fact that everyone around me was looking at me like I was crazy. Even my wife suggested at the time that my doubt in God might be because of my mental illness. I had no one to support me through this or help me to understand what I was going through. I…mean…no one. I went through this alone. I mean, yeah, if I knew I was an atheist for sure, I could have found an atheist or deconversion support group, but with my belief that the devil might be kicking my ass too, this didn’t seem like a good idea. I felt like I was in the middle of two different support groups because I actually was. I couldn’t get any support from my Christian friends or family because they were afraid of what I was going through and didn’t understand it. I also couldn’t get any support from atheists either because I wasn’t comfortable joining their camp either. It would have helped me tremendously to hire a secular therapist or coach to support me through this time, because I can’t describe to you just how alone I felt. I felt like it was me versus the world.

Giving Myself a Proper Education

Because I already understood Christian apologetics deeply–I love that name by the way–I knew that I needed to properly educate myself on atheistic perspectives too–not the shitty strawman arguments proposed by Christians that are easily defeated, but instead the rationality offered by the brightest atheists in the world. So, in my desire to know the truth, I started watching atheist versus theist debates, reading books about deconversion stories, and educating myself on secular science. I know it might come as a surprise to some of you, but I never received a proper science education because I was raised by conservative Christian parents who homeschooled me so that they could control everything I learned. All of my science books exclusively taught the young-earth creationist point of view and made secular scientists and the theory of evolution look ridiculous. However, once I started acquiring a proper secular science education for myself, I started to find myself agreeing with a lot of what I was learning. I wasn’t convinced by everything, but I found that the secular explanations made more sense to me overall than the whole “God said it and blam, it was there!” thing that I had always been taught.

The Results of My Reconstruction into Atheism

At the end of those three years, in 2018, my cognitive dissonance had disappeared and I now realized that I had settled into being an agnostic atheist. It just made more sense to me and seemed more intellectually honest. I went from being someone who felt like he had the answers to everything (“God did it”) to someone who knew nothing but what evidence could sufficiently prove. I became willing to accept that there was a lot in the world that I didn’t know or have answers for and that I probably never would. I became curious as to the origin and breadth of the cosmos and I looked at everything in nature with wonder and awe for the first time. For most of my life, I had never really appreciated nature or science because why would I? I had all the answers; I knew where everything came from. How did the universe get here? God. Where did matter come from? God. Where did light come from? God. Where did life come from? God… I also previously had no reason to appreciate that we are sentient animals living on a giant rock hurtling through space while orbiting a star that will one day run out of thermonuclear energy, go supernova, and explode. I realized that the fact that we are here at all is ridiculous and so exciting at the same time, regardless of whether we came from a natural or supernatural origin! Furthermore, I realized that theists don’t have a clue about ultimate origins either because they don’t have an origin story for their gods. They claim that their gods have always existed (at least Christianity does), but if that’s the case, then why can’t the universe have always existed as well? Yet, they consider naturalistic perspectives of the universe illegitimate for their lack of origin explanations while they themselves don’t even know the origins of their own gods! I’m thankful to Carl Sagan for pointing out this theistic double standard and the fact that no one, either atheists or theists, really has a grasp on the origin of time, energy, matter, or life.

Deconversion Feels Like Going Through a Divorce

On a more serious note–long after I went through my religious deconversion, deconstruction, and reconstruction–I realized that going through my deconversion was like going through a divorce with God. I perceived his presence most of my life and talked with him even though he never talked back. From the secular perspective, I had an imaginary friend as a child that I never grew out of as an adult. At the time, this imaginary friend was very real to me and I considered him to be my best advocate. However, I later realized that this god character in the bible is an insecure, vengeful control freak who threatens people with eternal punishment if they don’t voluntarily enslave themselves to feeding his narcissistic ego through a lifetime of worship and obedience. Instead, at the time, I thought of this Christian god as a loving person who was willing to die for me to save me. The reality is that most Christians are good people who think that their god is good just like they are too. The problem is that most of them have never objectively or fully read their Bible, and even if they have, they’ve been taught to blindly trust that God is good and moral and that his actions should never be questioned. And–that was me for most of my life. I projected my moral self onto God and assumed that he was good like me. I had never fathomed that I was a much better person than him and that I was worshiping a monster based upon his holy book. So for me, losing my relationship with my god was very painful, and there was no one to support me through it because I didn’t look for external support. I walked this journey alone because I didn’t have any non-religious friends, family, or acquaintances.

Encouragement for Those Who Are Deconverting Right Now

I want you to know that if you are going through a religious deconversion right now that you are not the first to go through this and that eventually it gets better. You may lose family members, friends, colleagues, and sadly, sometimes even jobs, but you will eventually find your place in this world. The painful feelings of leaving behind a religion you once loved and a god you once worshiped will be replaced with feelings of self-respect and self-confidence. You will know why you believe what you believe and have the evidence to prove it instead of relying on frustrating and fallible faith. You will also have the ability to say “I don’t know” when evidence is insufficient to justify a conviction. You will eventually be able to stand as the atheist in your environment and develop new friends (if you want to) who appreciate your new perspective. Your confidence will build, your knowledge will increase, and your life will become more authentically yours. You will become the judge of morality in your life (and realize that you have actually always been) and will develop an understanding of moral reasoning that you never possessed in your religious past. You will know that just because something feels true doesn’t mean that it actually is (Faith, I’m looking at you). And most importantly, your newfound appreciation of skepticism will serve as a shield of protection for you for the rest of your life from deception, manipulation, falsehoods, and lies.

You Don’t Have to Pick a Side!

Furthermore, I want you to know that it’s okay to not be solidly in one camp. I have learned through my journey that humans are very tribalistic and tend to have a “pick a side” mentality. However, if part of you believes that the supernatural exists and part of you believes that it doesn’t at the same time, that’s okay! Most people assume that you can only possess one belief at a time, but if you study psychology, you will find out that the human brain is capable of possessing multiple incompatible beliefs at the same time. It’s called cognitive dissonance as I alluded to earlier. Here’s the thing though: Cognitive dissonance only causes suffering if you resist it and try to force yourself into believing only one side. This is one way that theists abuse themselves that you no longer need to do to yourself as an atheist. Therefore, if you accept the experience of possessing two conflicting beliefs simultaneously and don’t see it as a problem to “fix”, you will not suffer from it. Furthermore, don’t let people pressure you into “picking a side”. If they do, you would do well to tell them to leave you alone on this issue. If they continue bringing it up, I would recommend reconsidering your relationship with them because they are refusing to respect your boundaries and honor where you are right now.

You Are Going to Be OK; Trust Yourself!

Lastly, choose to trust yourself! You will get through this! Wherever you land will be OK because you are going to be at peace there eventually. I myself prefer for my position to be grounded in truth, reason, and evidence, but it’s up to you what values you choose for your life. Your thoughts and feelings matter more than the people around you because this is your life, not theirs. I’m not saying that we should close our minds to the opinions of others, because we would miss out on many opportunities to test our theories for truth; however, many of us who have been deeply indoctrinated in religion have been conditioned into trusting the opinions of authority and others too much and need to start asking ourselves what we think a bit more than we already do. Be patient with yourself in this process of deconversion, deconstruction, and reconstruction, because you are learning to think for yourself and question what is real and true. Don’t let the thoughts and feelings of others overshadow your developing intellectual independence and instincts. Your opinion matters, not only to the world consensus, but more importantly, to you. 

Get Ready for a Better Life

Even if you are alone right now, know that it won’t be forever unless you choose solitude. Eventually the clouds will part and the sun will shine again in your life. And let me tell you, the secular sun is so much brighter and more beautiful than the religious one ever was. Welcome to freedom!

Learning to Trust Myself After Narcissistic Abuse

I was raised by narcissistic parents who taught me to doubt myself. Instead of teaching me how to think for myself and trust my intuition, they tried to train my independent thinking out of me. They also assumed that I was “sinful” and “evil” at my core and thought that it was their duty to keep me from expressing my “naturally wicked” self. In addition to that, I never felt safe as a child to express (or even possess) ideas contrary to their own because disapproval and manipulation would ensue. This behavior of theirs still continues to this day, with no respect given for any thought, idea, belief, or behavior that doesn’t align with their rigid view of the world. I learned quickly as a child to never dare to question their behaviors or choices, because being narcissists, they would shame me for questioning them or blame me for their faults. Even as I am now an adult, any accountability I hold them to for their actions and how they’ve hurt me has resulted not in heartfelt apologies, but instead gaslighting and villanizing of my character. To my parents, the only questioning or doubting that was appropriate was that which I directed toward myself. In my family, I was conditioned to believe that doubting myself and assuming blame was the virtue of humility, regardless of whether or not I was at fault. To judge my parents by their actions (rather than their skillfully manipulative words) and hold them accountable–that was abhorrent. I was just being ridiculous, “too sensitive”, and “not seeing things correctly”.

All of these parental behaviors trained me to believe that I was always mistaken if my ideas didn’t align with others and that my perception was always flawed. As a result, I believed for most of my life that I could never trust myself or my judgement and that I wasn’t good enough. Furthermore, my parents taught me to trust authority instead of myself–with themselves being the primary benefactors–so that they could control me and exonerate themselves of any responsibility for their mistakes or poor behaviors. The irony is that while my parents believe in obeying authority for themselves too (given their religiosity), due to their narcissism, they have actually been serving themselves as the ultimate authority in their lives. As I became older, I saw this inconsistency in their lives, but I dared not to challenge their hypocrisy. After all, they had trained me to fear their reprisal and doubt myself to keep me from ever holding them accountable. They could do whatever the hell they wanted and get away with it because they had emasculated their son of his self-trust and courage–at least for a while. It was all eventually going to backfire on them, as it usually does for narcissists.

A couple of years ago, in 2023, I had an awakening moment. I realized that I was living my life to please everyone else instead of myself, just like my parents wanted for their benefit and control. I saw how despite some of my needs being met, I wasn’t living from my heart and securing my wants and needs like a healthy person would. I began asking myself what I needed to feel good again, to be healthy, and to take proper care of myself. For the first few months, when I asked myself what I needed, I got very little response from my intuition. I started to realize that I had been detached from my emotional self and my intuition my entire life. In my research, I discovered that it’s common for children raised in toxic homes (where self-expression was punished with shame, disapproval, or rejection) to hide their true selves and repress their emotions to survive and maintain security within the family. I learned that children altering themselves like this is an evolutionary instinct to prevent separation from the family (and inevitably death) while they were still too vulnerable to fend for themselves. I too had instinctively made this adaptation in my childhood, learning to hide my true self and suppress my emotions, which my dad had taught me were “weak” anyway. Now that I was trying to call my buried heart to the surface, I got nothing–at least at first.

As I kept asking myself what I needed to better care for my exhausted, depressed, and anxious self, slowly my emotions began to surface and gently guide me toward better self-care and authentic living. My heart was like an abused child, beaten into silence, who was slowly learning how to talk again, but who still feared being punished for expressing himself. As time went on, my emotions cautiously began to tell me what I needed to take better care of myself, and eventually, they began to reveal to me more of who I was. I began to realize that I didn’t even know who I was. As I mentioned earlier, in my childhood I had been conditioned to repress my true self, my emotions, my wants, my needs and replace them with a false self–a shell meant for the survival of my childhood. Now, for the first time, I was beginning to discover my true self, something that should have happened in my childhood, but never did.

In this journey of emotional awakening and self-discovery, I eventually realized that my self-doubt was trained into me by my narcissistic parents. I was taught both by their christian religion and their irresponsible, insecure selves that I was always the problem and that my judgement was always wrong whenever it conflicted with theirs. Much to their chagrin, I started to realize that my intuition about them and their narcissistic toxicity had always been right. It finally dawned on me that–contrary to my parent’s conditional love, gaslighting, and disrespect for me–my true self was lovable, good enough, and worthy of being respected. I now understood that I had been manipulated into doubting myself entirely through their gaslighting and perpetual undermining of my confidence. For those who don’t know, gaslighting is an act of personal irresponsibility where a guilty person blames an innocent person for their mistakes. I woke up to this irresponsibility of theirs and saw how I had been the dumping ground for their mistakes my entire life. Being the narcissists that they are, they were unable to acknowledge their faults because they had to maintain the delusion that they were flawless to protect their insecure egos. The only problem with this is that the blame for their mistakes had to go somewhere. So, instead of being mature, healthy adults and taking responsibility for their actions, they chose to shift the blame onto me, choosing to destroy the developing self-trust of their child instead of looking into the mirror and facing themselves for who they really are.

My narcissistic parents chose to ruin me to protect themselves from seeing their own faults. I suffered decades of mental illness because of this. But now I know why I have doubted myself so much. Now I know why I have felt unworthy of love for so long. Now I know why I used to hate myself so much: I was convinced by my parent’s actions that I was an unlovable, untrustable, and unrespectable person.

I was never the problem. I was a victim of narcissistic abuse. And now, I choose to trust myself.