I've dedicated the last 7 years, trying to 'figure it out'..

[AnonymousAtheist99]

I know this is long, but it is what I have poured every part of myself into for the last 7 years, with no hope of anyone else even understanding. So although it is long, I really needed to get everything I've been through and learned along the way out for others to see, and compare to their own knowledge.   Had no idea where to post this, but want to talk about this sort of thing with like minded people.

I was born a Christian, I was never really into the religion itself but the idea of something more powerful than myself always resonated with me. When I was a child I'd always ask my mom questions about the universe and how it all worked (not really god per se). Eventually the idea of God got lodged in my brain pretty hard, and my vigorous search for truth became contaminated with that concept.

Since I was born, I've always had it in me that this life is awesome and I want to do the most awesome thing possible before I die. I thought big, and as you'll see sometimes too big for my own britches.

Started my own business early in life after realizing I never wanted to have to work for anyone else, and to make a long story short after years of hard hard work and on the verge of 'making it', I made some poor decisions and trusted the wrong people and lost it all.

At that point I asked myself a very simple question, when I was working on ideas for the business I'd occasionally get discouraged or be hesitant about simply trusting myself. Not trusting myself is what led to the business going under. So at this lowest point in my life, I asked myself what is it that makes me not want to fully trust myself, and promised myself I'd never ever let 'whatever' that abstract thing was hold me back again. Very simple question, but I didn't realize how far that rabbit hole would go.

It's easy to say that that thing is fear, and it was and still is, but I never realized that that simple question would turn my life up-side down. It didn't take long to realize that the ceiling of that fear revolved around god, and the idea of doing wrong and being punished somehow.

From there, that led to my wanting be in control of my whole brain without allowing whatever was stopping me stop me. The problem was this 'fear' was obviously outside of my normal consciousness, so if I was ever to figure it out I'd have to go above that fear in my mind somehow.

I am the type of person that if I promise myself something, (before I became an atheist) promised god something, I was going to do it and there was no doubt about that. So I promised myself I'd investigate this simple appearing function of the brain. What happened next, was had to figure out a way to get above that fear because the conscious mind is basically powerless of it (which has evolutionarily sound reasoning). My solution was crazy, literally.

The only way I could work out getting above that part of my brain was to force myself to believe something that wasn't true for a short period of time, essentially I said that the part of my brain that a theist would talk to as a god (because we all know it's just a matter of talking to yourself, but you have a sense that that part is alive, and it is because it's just a more subconscious part of the brain.) I'd try to install some sort of program that would keep going until that fear was gone. So I basically tried to install a 'god' into that part of my brain, so that when I had a question I could access something that would bypass any fear or doubt and give me an answer. Made sense in a weird sort of way.

At this time I really didn't know it as fear, it was more of a pause in thinking. I had something I wanted, and there was something that made me pause in its pursuit, my goal was to get rid of that pause.

This was all around 7 years ago, everything in my life is great now but the journey from that 'install' to here was fucking rocky.

It forced me to be completely honest with myself about absolutely everything. That part of my brain was basically my ideal, the best possible thing any human being could ever hope to be. If I ever strayed away from that ideal, that part of my brain would activate get pissed off. My reason for doing this was simple knowledge, to understand myself and the universe as much as possible... period. That meant having something to be held accountable to. So anytime I'd have the thought that I could do more to help this person, it would activate and I'd have no choice but to do what was needed. Also, anytime I had the thought 'I think I could understand how the universe works sometime in my lifetime', it activated. Was a voracious reader in basically all topics from quantum physics to psychology.

I realized that was the concept of a Jesus, if a person were to live and do everything to his fullest ability completely unselfishly that is what everyone should want to strive for. This whole time I was technically an atheist, but understood more about 'their concept of god' or jesus than they ever would. But of course I never believe in any of the bullshit, ever. Even though I don't believe in god, and always thought that if there actually were one, why would the creator of every not want us to use what we were born with to understand everything around us.

There was one big problem with dedicating yourself to a) learning the truth, from the most objective viewpoint possible (including the depths of your own mind), and b) wanting to help other people as much as possible. The truth fucking hurts, it's hard, and it's the reason why people turn to religions in the first place, because they'd rather give up their mind to than go through the pain to realize what you really are.

Since I grew up Christian I always wanted to know what made these people tick, and the truth did hurt. True knowledge is one of the hardest things to ever hold, and when presented with whatever the closest we can get to an objective truth about ourselves, we reject it and try to hide from it at any cost.

So after a long time of trying to free my own mind, I realized the people around me, every single one of them had that same fear and pain inside deep down that couldn't be accounted for by any single event in their past. Sure some horrible shit has happened to all of us at some point, but we all have that pain deep down that cannot be explained away very easily. The fear thing that I dedicated myself to learning about, turned out to just be my way of avoiding that pain that is the imperfection (and beauty) of life.

In the past few years, almost everyone I met I could see their problem as plain as day on their face and knew exactly how to fix it. But the journey I took to get there was mother fucking seriously difficult, so if these people didn't want it as bad as I did, they wouldn't make it through that pain, so it would most likely be in vain. I'd try, and that was where I got into trouble.

When I talked to Christians about jesus, they eventually realized that I think he is no better as a human being than I am, and I am sure of that. Hard to say something like that (and I never have out loud), the logic goes like this.

Jesus was a human (I don't believe in zombies) Jesus was supposed to be a 'perfect human' in relation to God. God is simply the truth, period. The way the universe is, what makes humans human, what causes humans to do evil or good, etc... The whole shebang.

Now if this human did everything he could while on earth to uncover that truth, including and possibly most importantly what made up his own consciousness, and was willing to die for that... all the while doing no action that would intentionally harm another, and when presented with an opportunity to help a fellow man, you take it... and expect ZERO in return, that is about as perfect as anyone can be.

This was what I dedicated the last seven years or so of my life to. Hard isn't the word to describe it, I won't go into detail on why it was so hard, but please just take my word for it. I'd go to war for those seven years, go to jail for those seven years rather than endure what I did, I'll leave it there.

So now I'm here, and consider myself finished with that absolutely crazy journey. I wish I could offer a happy ending, but in the end all I have is simply the knowledge or better yet the wisdom from those experiences.

I don't truly believe in Freud, but I found my brain to be composed of three parts very similar to what he mentions. I understand now that that part of the brain I tried to turn into 'god' or absolute truth was my super ego. The fear, was what he called the ego. And what I consider to truly be 'myself' is my id. The only truly disappointing piece of knowledge came when I questioned free will. When I say, 'I think, therefore I am' it is actually my ego, that very part of myself that I wished to get rid of. The only purpose that part of your brain has is to help you not die, that's it. Everything else is an extension of that. If you want to live your life to the fullest, doing so means no free will, period. Those dreams, at their very core are your id, that part of your that you were born with. The only time you make a choice, it is when part of your brain thinks your physical body is in danger and reacts accordingly, that's the only time you have thoughts. If you were to get rid of this part of your brain, which at our core we (our id, who we were when we got here) all want more than anything on earth, we would follow our dreams until it killed us... and it probably would kill us as well. This id is what connects us to all of the universe. It is the part of us that only reacts to the laws of nature at its core, in the exact same ways as the laws of nature work. It is what we are, we cannot change it no matter how hard we try. Every time we go against it, we are weighing the value of our own life vs. the benefit to our nature. Our nature is perfect, in the sense that all it wants to do is obey the laws of the universe (yes, I believe if you extrapolate physics far enough our consciousness will obey those same laws), when we resist that it causes what we understand as pain in the mind.

There are still limits to my knowledge obviously, and there always will be, but I'm quite happy to have learned what I have.

I am writing this because last night I had a dream. In this dream, the three parts of my brain became clear as day. This happened like this, I was doing something and there were people behind me who kept getting angry about telling the truth, all the while I felt like I was being held accountable to this abstract sense of the universe or what anyone else would undoubtedly call God. At this moment, I threw down my guard and focused on that sense of wonder of the universe because such weird things were happening in this dream and I wanted to understand what it was. Basically it ended with the three parts of my brain being completely independent, and easy to distinguish from each other. It was in this moment that I realize exactly what I was, and made the whole 7 years worth the journey.

(new edit)

To sum up what I understand about my own life, and mind and the universe around me, I'd say this. Your core, your id, as I said before is the part of you that responds to very basic laws of nature. In the same way you can't change the way Hydrogen reacts with Oxygen, you can't change that part of you. When we start getting into the ego, and superego it is hard for us to objectively judge what it is because we are using it to judge itself. A personal belief of mine is that just like the id, the rest of you just reacts to these laws in the exact same way, but since that is what we are we will resist believing that because it would imply all we are is a simple reaction exactly the same as a reaction in the lab. On to the ego, the ego is the part of us that we can understand as animal. We are out for our own survival and will do anything we can to survive, period. The super-ego is here because as we evolved we needed to depend on each other to succeed individually, at the start this was sex and families. Then as humans we developed more complex relationships, and eventually our brains evolved something that we need to be held accountable to, in order to do good for others even if it isn't in your 100% best (survival) instinct. This is what we think of as our conscience, or what theists call god. This is where theists will argue to death with atheists that we don't have morals built in, and we need to be taught them. I disagree, as I'm sure most of the people in r/atheism will, if you do something to harm others for no reason at all, just to harm them, there is some part of you (what I'll call the super-ego) that will resist at all costs. But not to the degree that it would risk the previous evolution, the ego, which would mean losing your own life. The id is the king of all, it can override all of these recent evolutions. Just like we have to obey the laws of physics, each lower level is more fundamental and less able to 'change'. This super-ego must take the appearance of something greater than themselves that will harm them if they do harm to other life, (even though there is really nothing there) we found it important enough as a species to evolve it. Each evolved because of the previous. The ego is a more complex form of the id, with the addition of the importance on the organism's survival as a unit [however simple](instead of just the individual components). The super-ego is a similar evolution, only with the addition of the importance of the group and not just the individual organism. I believe that is pretty apparent, both from an evolutionary standpoint, (a personal standpoint for me), and just simply looking out at the world as it is now. We are clearly evolving into something bigger that basically just the human race. We started truly working together, not just as a family (like most animals), or as a social group (like us and some primates), but as a unit where we actually care about a kid in china we'll never meet or see. Now not everyone is on board with that, at that level, but it appears that is the direction we are going. And rightfully so, evolution takes time there are going to be those in the group that value themselves and their families so much more than anyone outside of their group, that they don't mind if someone in a poorer country has to die just so their kids can have a little nicer car. I know that gets into politics, and brings up a whole different discussion. But to me it is basic economics as well. I like game theory in particular for this argument. Basically, early economic theory said that if we all only do what is best for us the best outcome occurs. This is true, but can be extrapolated to our sense of care for others, particularly our family and children to start with (then extend to friends, etc..). If I do what is right for me and my family, my family is better off in the end. If I only do what is right for me, and the rest of human kind, then human kind is better off. That is where we are now, we can all basically agree on the family part as humans. But the caring about all humans is where we run into trouble, we can count on our family to reciprocate our choice to cooperate but not as much as people we don't know. If there is a next step for us to take, that will be it. But as with all game theory, the opportunity for people to defect will occur and those trying to do the right thing will be hurt along the way. Not much we can do about that, it is just where we are, and hopefully where we'll end up some day. I actually believe this can be taken to the next level, when instead of just humans we relate to our closest relative, and then all the way back down to the beginning. I don't know where it will end up, we are after all just a bunch of complex chemicals interacting on a rock flying through space, so all that would need to happen is another rock to cross our path again and all of this would be gone. Just the way it is.

Sorry for the throwaway account, but every time I speak my mind on this subject it upsets people.




tl;dr: Dedicated my life with the same, or more voracity as the most devout religious (and crazy) muslim or christian would fighting for his religion to atheism, in a personal sense, went through about as much hell as one person could go through along the way but came out the other end much the wiser with a knowledge and wisdom I could have only dreamed of as a child.

[Davin]

In stark contrast: welcome.

Also, are you even intrested in discussion or just dropping load and running without even washing your hands?

[AnonymousAtheist99]

Thank you.

I'm interested in a discussion.  I know my knowledge is limited, I don't know everything, but this is what made sense to me.  As with all science, if I'm wrong, I'd be happy to know how.  But I'm pretty confident on the basic outlines of it all, it's just the details in between that I don't know, and will probably never fully know.

[Davin]

Sorry, it was just this wording that might make people a little weary of reading all that:

"Sorry for the throwaway account, but every time I speak my mind on this subject it upsets people."

It is good to get all that out, but now that you've covered pretty much everything I have no questions.

But again welcome, and as long as you're civil (most of the forum rules are around civility) and are willing to actually discuss things, then you don't need to worry about a throw away account.

[AnonymousAtheist99]

Understandable.  When an athiest debates a theist, it usually ends in the theist getting worked up because something they believe in is fundamentally wrong.   They stopped their understanding at a certain question (which is usually because of the fear of death, going to hell, or being punished in some way).  I'd love someone to poke holes in what I wrote with science.

[Davin]

Understandable.  When an athiest debates a theist, it usually ends in the theist getting worked up because something they believe in is fundamentally wrong.   They stopped their understanding at a certain question (which is usually because of the fear of death, going to hell, or being punished in some way).  I'd love someone to poke holes in what I wrote with science.

You're going to have to wait for your 50 posts for that, once you get out of the trial period, then serious type discussions can begin.

[Tank]

Hi

The bit that caught my eye was "I was born a Christian". That is not so. You were born an atheist and became a Christian. You then appear to have found your way back to a 'clean' position. That was long read and it gave me the feeling you're seriously over-thinking the whole issue of institutionalised superstition.

Welcome to HAF, I hope your stay is long and fruitful  

Regards
Chris

[AnonymousAtheist99]

It's garbage obviously, we know that.  But people seem to be pre-disposed to want to believe in that for some reason.   All I'm saying is that whatever that thing that makes them that way is, it is a part of our brains which in my opinion is a recent evolutionary addition (the super ego) that tries to allow us to work better in larger groups.   It is what makes life hard for us, I believe the weaker minded choose to not engage difficult questions about themselves, and rather move towards something they have been told is true that isn't.

[xSilverPhinx]

Welcome!

Good thing you use paragraphs, otherwise that would be unreadable as a wall of text.  

I could draw some parallels between what you've written and things I'm gone through, but I have learned to trust myself, I just need to run things through with my other 'brain departments', you might say. I ponder intuitive decisions alot.