I've said it before: It's the Atheists that never Deconverted.
In Atheism, if you didn't know, there's a thing called "Deconversion" where you actually fully deconvert from theism entirely. Religion literally ends up meaning nothing to you. It has no impact on your social, psychological, cultural, or moral aspects of your life because you are fully separated from theism as a concept.
One YouTuber who documented this well was TheraminTrees, and another who really basically walked through the whole process from start to finish was PrplFox.
Basically, this is not a change of opinions, policies, or principles; but a complete change in your entire perspective and narrative of how you see the world from theism to atheism. The process is genuinely grueling and takes years. It's like going from Blue Pill to Clear or White Pill, but way more than that because it's a change of your whole psyche and not just your principles.
In this process, you will basically lose your entire support system, maybe even your family, because many faiths will hold that as a weapon to maintain control over it's subjects. All of your principles will have to fundamentally change because you will no longer operate in the world the same way. This is not a reactionary attitude towards God or religion, or even a rejection of it. It is a total dismissal of the concept. As if God and religion was nothing different from a TV show you used to be a fan of: some parts were nice, and some parts were not so nice, but you've well and truly moved on.
I genuinely do not think most religious people really understand what it is like to actually live as a deconverted atheist, because I think the shift in perspective would be so dramatic that you would have to resort back to faith and theism after a while.
Maybe the best way is to put the way Nietzsche put it: "God is dead and it is we who have killed him." Deconversion is like killing God. What do you do, now that you have killed God? You can't go back: God is dead. Instead, as Nietzsche kind of emphasized, you must take responsibility of this killing, and of yourself, and of your community, because you must now realize that faith means nothing; and your actions are now everything.
There is no forgiveness. There is no afterlife. There is no 2nd chance. Everything you will ever do is permanent, and unapologetic. If you fuck up, you fuck up forever. You can never take it back. Your scars and regrets are permanent, they become you in exactly the same way your triumphs do. So the ultimate responsibility of life is no longer on God, luck, faith, or the supernatural. It's on your shoulders... and only your shoulders. No one is coming to save you, no one even can.
The true horror of the deconverted atheist is the realization that this was always true, even when you didn't know it, and that the faithful may be blindly stumbling their way into catastrophe because they are deluding themselves from taking the extreme responsibility that they already have and are ignoring. Every moment of your life that you lived before you realized your responsibility was a moment that you simply lost to take that responsibility, never to be regained. The horror is that you didn't kill God. You just killed God for you, but God was already dead.
You didn't lose anything. This weight was always on your shoulders to begin with and you didn't know it. Yea, though you walk through the valley in the shadow of death you must temper your fear of evil, because no one is with you, and no one will save you from it. Thus, I must confront evil and death alone. I dare not be afraid, because panicked people die.
Once you deconvert, there is no "God shaped hole". There's nothing to fill.
These atheists never fully deconverted. They just took up a new ideology and a new zealotry. Worse, some of them who joined the Woke Cult simply adopted a new full blown religion that is as disastrous as Islamism.
If an atheist is still standing there telling you that they believe Dr. Fauci, they know nothing of the science, and they are of the "I Fucking Love Science" crowd that everyone in Science fucking hates.
I've said it before: It's the Atheists that never Deconverted.
In Atheism, if you didn't know, there's a thing called "Deconversion" where you actually fully deconvert from theism entirely. Religion literally ends up meaning nothing to you. It has no impact on your social, psychological, cultural, or moral aspects of your life because you are fully separated from theism as a concept.
One YouTuber who documented this well was TheraminTrees, and another who really basically walked through the whole process from start to finish was PrplFox.
Basically, this is not a change of opinions, policies, or principles; but a complete change in your entire perspective and narrative of how you see the world from theism to atheism. The process is genuinely grueling and takes years. It's like going from Blue Pill to Clear or White Pill, but way more than that because it's a change of your whole psyche and not just your principles.
In this process, you will basically lose your entire support system, maybe even your family, because many faiths will hold that as a weapon to maintain control over it's subjects. All of your principles will have to fundamentally change because you will no longer operate in the world the same way. This is not a reactionary attitude towards God or religion, or even a rejection of it. It is a total dismissal of the concept. As if God and religion was nothing different from a TV show you used to be a fan of: some parts were nice, and some parts were not so nice, but you've well and truly moved on.
I genuinely do not think most religious people really understand what it is like to actually live as a deconverted atheist, because I think the shift in perspective would be so dramatic that you would have to resort back to faith and theism after a while.
Maybe the best way is to put the way Nietzsche put it: "God is dead and it is we who have killed him." Deconversion is like killing God. What do you do, now that you have killed God? You can't go back: God is dead. Instead, as Nietzsche kind of emphasized, you must take responsibility of this killing, and of yourself, and of your community, because you must now realize that faith means nothing; and your actions are now everything.
There is no forgiveness. There is no afterlife. There is no 2nd chance. Everything you will ever do is permanent, and unapologetic. If you fuck up, you fuck up forever. You can never take it back. Your scars and regrets are permanent, they become you in exactly the same way your triumphs do. So the ultimate responsibility of life is no longer on God, luck, faith, or the supernatural. It's on your shoulders... and only your shoulders. No one is coming to save you, no one even can.
The true horror of the deconverted atheist is the realization that this was always true, even when you didn't know it, and that the faithful may be blindly stumbling their way into catastrophe because they are deluding themselves from taking the extreme responsibility that they already have and are ignoring. Every moment of your life that you lived before you realized your responsibility was a moment that you simply lost to take that responsibility, never to be regained. The horror is that you didn't kill God. You just killed God for you, but God was already dead.
You didn't lose anything. This weight was always on your shoulders to begin with and you didn't know it. Yea, though you walk through the valley in the shadow of death you must temper your fear of evil, because no one is with you, and no one will save you from it. Thus, I must confront evil and death alone. I dare not be afraid, because panicked people die.
Once you deconvert, there is no "God shaped hole". There's nothing to fill.
These atheists never fully deconverted. They just took up a new ideology and a new zealotry. Worse, some of them who joined the Woke Cult simply adopted a new full blown religion that is as disastrous as Islamism.
If an atheist is still standing there telling you that they believe Dr. Fauci, they know nothing of the science, and they are of the "I Fucking Love Science" crowd that everyone in Science fucking hates.