The reason we're depressed is because we have to live in a world of religious dominance. We're constantly told that we're going to hell, that we are worthless, and that we're evil to the bone simply because we don't believe in a divine creator. We are depressed because 90% of humanity is stupid enough to believe that shit!
This looks like a chibi Christian/Atheist thread
d-I-S don't be so harsh, it is not like everyone mistreat you because of this, and please don't call religion "that shit", you take a lot more kindness if you give kindness.
I agree with you. But you must ignore and rise above.
[I've been reading the works of Joseph Campbell recently] Christianity's (and many other's) biggest problem is that their believers take metaphor to be fact.
I've talked with pastors and Christians and more and had discussions about their faith. I would call myself an atheist, and I was not once cut down, or said I would be damned to hell, or anything of the like during those discussions.
My confoundment comes from your desire, your choice to believe that there is absolutely nothing beyond this existence. To choose that there is absolutely nothing but us and this moment. That seems thoroughly empty and without hope.
I never "chose" to believe that life ends at death. It was terribly inconvenient for me to accept this. It took YEARS of denial before I finally came to grips with it. Why? everyone is scared shitless of death, and no one wants to deal with the reality that lost family members are gone forever, it's simply too painful. It wasn't a choice, but rather "I had no choice".
I had no choice, because logically, there was no other choice as far as I was concerned. During this transition, life became meaningless and void, but only temporarily. Through existentialism I found a whole new meaning to life, one that I created, and that I was solely responsible for. It made me feel free and independent. The grass became greener on this side.
You made your choice. You took your journey. You had your time with Unapishtim upon the storm and the 12 leagues of blackness.
And you saw through it. I understand not being devoted to one faith, to accept one as true and all the others false regardless of what they have to say.
I understand the desire to shun the fact from religions. To see the ridiculousness about say, Jesus actually rising from the dead in to heaven.
I shun those impulses as well. For they are not fact.
But atheists who shun the fact with the metaphor is to say, "This is a good thing we can learn if we open our minds, but because it cannot possibly be true we must throw it ALL away."