When you've lost God, how do you fill the void?

[Renee_]

OK. I've tried to hit 15 w/o any spamming but... -15- goodbye.

[Anatta]

OK. I've tried to hit 15 w/o any spamming but... -15- goodbye.

Kia Ora Renee,

You'll be back 

Metta Zenda

[Mahsa Tezani]

I'm Catholic.

But if I lost God, I'd fill the void with the good and the bad aspects of humanity.

[tekla]

I liked the ritual but never bought the reality of it.  Later I found I could create my own rituals that were just as fulfilling.  And eventually I grew out of those.  There is beauty enough, truth enough, love enough and joy enough in the real world without having to manufacture or create it by artificial means.

[Lily]

I used to be an atheist a number of years ago. I didn't become one because of how others treated me, or because of hypocrisy, or my dysphoria, or anything like that. I never felt like any of those things were valid reasons to quit a belief-- if something is true it's true even if I don't like it.

It was just that I didn't believe in Christianity anymore. That was it, and I felt that good enough reason to leave.

It really hurt me though, it hurt me a lot because it had been a big part of my youth. It hurt to not have that community.

I comforted myself mainly through roleplaying religious characters in MMOs (I can play a zealot well because I used to be one), and by listening to atheist podcasts because it felt good to have my beliefs echoed by others.

I don't know what to call myself now... some kind of deist pagan I guess. My path is not yet complete, I have far more growing to do.

[Padma]

I've found there's always some letting go to do. 20 years ago, I "became a Buddhist", and was pretty rabid and robotic about the whole thing (because I needed a sense of belonging, and approval from others).

Since then I've needed to keep letting go of "being a Buddhist" in order to just be able to practise as a person . I find myself more and more uncomfortable with "group practice" (in the sense of "we all do that this way, and that defines us"), as my sense of how all this works becomes more and more personal. And that's fine, I feel. I've walked into a metaphorical forest that's been with me all my life, and there's things I have to do there on my own. And it's such a relief not to be caught up in Brand Loyalty any more .

[mimpi]

My family weren't religious with my Dad actually hating religion having been born out of marriage and seeing the condemnation his Irish mother suffered. Was even the only child in my year to refuse to do 'Confirmation' as it all seemed bull>-bleeped-< to me and even when I nearly died from Leukaemia at 18 nothing entered my mind in that respect. Very committed Communist throughout my twenties as well. There was no void at all at the time.

Things can change though..

[Crypt]

My family was very religious
Baptist raised, church was mandatory every sunday as well as sunday school.
Went to Awana as a tyke and then eventually moved up to youth group as I got older.
But none of it ever really seemed real before to me they talked about people being happy and this and that and I looked around at all the people who claimed to be christian and most of all I looked to my parents and how happy they were but my parents would fight and argue, they didn't seem as though they were very happy unless they were out in public and more or less I just kind of fell out of the religion and lost faith in all that they forced down my throat for years and years and years.
Today what fills that "void" is Karma.
I do believe that when you wrong someone a wrong will be done unto you, and the opposite is true as well.
This has actually made the most sense to me and in my opinion proven itself again and again and again.

[Silver]

My family was Catholic (though not super-devout.) I went to church some and was eventually forced to have my first Communion. That was a pretty bad experience, I had to wear this overpriced dress and since I am FTM. . . yeah. It was no fun. My mother would try to scare me with stories about the devil appearing to people that I'm sure she believed but in hindsight were pretty freaky. I ended up becoming afraid of the dark again for that when I was much too old for that fear. XD It was her way of guilt-tripping me (and she really loved to try to make me feel guilty for things that weren't even problems.)

So once I realized that (to me) the religion made no sense, I felt freer. No void or anything. Seemed to me like a wild card had been removed and that's okay by me. But now that I'm really looking at it, I'd probably still be vaguely Catholic (but we never really attended church much) if I didn't have family problems. But eh, I don't think the church needs another who only uses the label for being born in a family of Catholics and who doesn't know much about it at all. The rituals always struck me as more unsettling than comforting or awe-inspiring.

This is the most I've posted in a while. XD

[xXRebeccaXx]

KFC and McDonalds helped me cope pretty well.

[Anatta]

KFC and McDonalds helped me cope pretty well.

Kia Ora S,

But what if Mc D and KFC close down-then what ? 'Taco bells' 

Metta Zenda

[treeworshipper]

love and kindness

[justmeinoz]

I have discarded the concept of God as unneccesary over the last week or so.

I really don't have a void to fill. In a process similar to the quantum cosmology,  and self-organising chemical and other structures that led me to that conclusion, things just pop in and out of existence spontaneously.
Meanwhile I get on with my life, and if I have any deeper questions I seem to be able to cope with them by applying the principles of the philosophy of General Semantics.

The end result is an all pervading sense of happiness and liberation; without any guilt or fear of judgement.

Karen.

[treeworshipper]

recently
i wet insane
but it was in a sane world
so it was safe
but if you go uniquely insane
truly
in an already insane world
that sucks
for everyone
im glad the universe is regaining sanity
i just wana live a chill live, i wanna do honest work but not stupid
bull>-bleeped-<, thats set up like busy work (that trees died for because it involves paper)
like every student in class
thats why i dropped out
i'de like to actually learn things i can use
not just submit to beauracracy
because thats empty
and it could never fulfill anyone

[Pica Pica]

I grew up with religion, when I was 11 my dad trained for the priesthood and I spent my early teen years in a college that taught ministers. The process disillusioned me with the business of religion and losing contact with that, the things that were said in churches seemed to overcomplicate the world. I began to feel that the world made less sense if presided over by a God.

Now I have made up with the business of a religion and I see it as a legitimate and important expression of a human need, but the belief in God is no longer there. God merely makes the world make less sense to me, I prefer it streamlined.

[treeworshipper]

i think it all just has to do with true love, and how loves comes over people... im sorry i've  been going on and on posting love everywhere... i love to do it, its true lol, i feel so amazing for some reason, i am glad i came back here, all of us are Love literally, in the beginning, we were Loves, everyone is a Love, and we still are everyone and everything is a Love, love a love and all our thoughts are loves and all the silences are loves

[xXRebeccaXx]

Kia Ora S,

But what if Mc D and KFC close down-then what ? 'Taco bells' 

Metta Zenda

I die, it also helped me cope with social dysphoria.

[Calder Smith]

I wasn't born into a crazy religious family. My family believes in God but doesn't speak about religion often. My mom I think is sort of turning into an Atheist honestly.

I was pretty religious myself though. When I was little, I told my mom I wanted to be a Nun when I grew up and I would always ask to go to church. I had a little Children's Bible and I would read it almost every night. I've been to church a couple times and I didn't mind it. When I went with my mom and step-dad it was a one time thing, and the other times I tagged along with my great-grandma and aunt who go to church every Sunday.

I don't know exactly when I lost my faith. I think I just opened up my eyes to all the bad things happening in my life and in the world. I've suffered with severe depression and I'd pray for all my problems to go away but it seemed my problems got worse. Now that I'm a pretty devout Atheist, my morals are just be respectful and kind to one another and live a happy life basically. I don't need some God to tell me what's right from wrong and control my life.

[dalebert]

It must be very difficult to completely give up this god-centric comfort zone...

... Does it bring you a sense of 'freedom' ?

The latter. It was more of a relief for me. I always had unanswered or badly-answered questions and doubts of the religion I was raised with (Southern Baptist).

It was only scary very briefly because I'd had my head filled with fear of Hell for not having faith. In fact, it's often presented as the one and only unforgivable sin and that's how it was presented to me by my sister. She said something like if I lost faith in God for even an instant, I would be doomed to Hell. In a way, that made it okay to explore it because it was already too late. If I was wrong, oh well. Doomed anyway. *shrug*

It seems some people turn to religion for answers. For me it always kind of fell short of making sense. So when I let it go, I finally started to get answers that made sense to me. So atheism filled a void that an irrational religion created for me.

I guess that sounds better than souless eternal black void.

It's not eternal at all. There's no experience of it whatsoever. It should just be like going to sleep--all your pain, worries, needs, fading away. It should be very peaceful.

As far as "prayers falling on deaf ears", I think that's just part of becoming an adult and taking responsibility for your own needs. Some people never seem ready to do that and will always look to a fictional god figure to be a sort of parental figure for them. I think people do the same thing with government. Neither really makes sense. Nature says that we only get to be children for a while and we have to eventually stop asking for our problems to be solved for us and start tackling them ourselves.

[suzifrommd]

It's not eternal at all. There's no experience of it whatsoever. It should just be like going to sleep--all your pain, worries, needs, fading away. It should be very peaceful.

I don't anticipate death will be peaceful. I anticipate it will be nothing. I will never again have any of the experiences that make life wonderful.

The thought of this terrifies me and fills me up with such dread that I need to put this certain future out of my mind.

I would find a religious concept of heaven much more comforting if I could only believe in it. But no matter what way I approach the question, I always reach the same conclusion. When my mind is destroyed, so will my ability to feel anything. I would love to believe in God and Heaven. I just can't make myself do it.