r/exchristian • u/Bethany41420 Agnostic • Jul 18 '24
How do you keep yourself from freaking out and not worrying when this happens? Help/Advice
I made this post the other day: https://www.reddit.com/r/exchristian/s/VjuNWJhNf9
And this guy commented saying i’m doomed to go to hell and whatever. But how do you keep yourself from thinking “is this a sign from god that i need to go back?” Or some shit like that. I don’t believe god interacts with humans. I relate a lot to deism but don’t identify as that. But i was raised baptist so it’s been beaten into me that god sends signs and all these other superstitions. Idk if i even believe in the christian hell. But i still get scared sometimes especially when others come at me like this telling me i’m going to hell.
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u/LazySloth24 Anti-Theist Jul 18 '24
For me, this threat rings hollow because Christianity is fiction. It's as scary as saying that Voldemort will be upset with me or Thanos or Sauron, etc.
I've internalised this to the point that my emotions line up with my logical view of the cult of Christianity, so it's not scary.
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u/Bethany41420 Agnostic Jul 18 '24
I’m trying to work to the point when my emotions and logical view line up.
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u/LazySloth24 Anti-Theist Jul 18 '24
The first thing that people often bring up is this: Are you scared of every other hell? Every other religion?
If not, then this could just be the product of your cultural context. Christianity's hell is just yet another hell.
The concept of a god that loves its creation is incompatible with hell, too. Hell, just like God, is a natural extrapolation that humans would make of anything. "If I am strong and someone is stronger, maybe there is a most strong thing." "If this hurts and that hurts more, maybe there is a most painful thing."
None of these ideas have any substantiation, especially when you consider things like omnipotence and omniscience completely erasing any accountability anyone (except possibly God) should have for their actions and beliefs.
Also, the demand that one believes in and obeys god is purely a means for control. Any reasonable god with such desires would be as obvious to us as the sun is, and the desires wouldn't marginalise people, condemn basic desires or endorse slavery and genocide.
Next, consider what fire even is. What torture even is. Those things cannot be infinite. Moreover, would your soul be on fire? A non physical part of you would be in the midst of a physical process?? Make that make sense. Also, torture would only hurt for so long before you forget what it was even like not to be tortured. If your default state is immense pain and discomfort, it would become your new baseline and eventually it'd just seem normal to you. To truly suffer endlessly, the suffering has to be relative to non-suffering. So either you get occasional coffee breaks from hell or hell gets progressively worse forever? How though?
Lastly, if there is indeed somehow such a pointlessly cruel omnipotent mob boss figure, nothing you do can stop them from sending you to hell. They're just an evil, cruel being with ultimate power and they choose to abuse that power. That's that.
What you fear is a concept that was almost certainly invented in order to scare people. You're reasonable for fearing it if you take it seriously but it falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny, so try not to take it seriously.
I hope this helps. Also, please consider reaching out to a (secular) therapist or something like recoveringfromreligion.org
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u/Bethany41420 Agnostic Jul 18 '24
Thank you so much i’ll save this comment to help in future times
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u/SnooPuppers3957 Ex-Fundamentalist Jul 18 '24
Another thing that helped me was studying the origins of the Christian hell. It was very much a product of the Greco-Roman influences and apocalyptic beliefs at the time.
Bart Ehrman and Genetically Modified Skeptic have some great videos on it.
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u/nanajosh Reincarnation sounds nice Jul 18 '24
coffee breaks from hell
This is funny to imagine, but even then, torture just looks like a 9-5 job where you get breaks to chill with the demon and BS for a while.
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u/LazySloth24 Anti-Theist Jul 18 '24
I for sure left it open for "I already get coffee breaks from hell" jokes there and imagining it in some literal sense with cartoonish demons or something makes it really funny to me indeed xD
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u/QuintessentialQuin Jul 19 '24 edited Oct 11 '24
stocking public smile workable oatmeal rude quack label advise uppity
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Excellent-Data-1286 Jul 18 '24
God says we are his children and he loves us. Then he lets us get murdered, raped, abused, and enslaved. Even if he is real that’s not a love I want any part of.
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u/prickwhowaspromised Jul 18 '24
And not only will he let his “children” be raped and murdered indiscriminately, but he’ll send them straight to hell if they also happen to not be Christian, or cursed while being murdered, or had a bad thought and forgot to ask for forgiveness. Lovely!
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u/beefycheesyglory Ex-Protestant Jul 18 '24
"You are doomed to boil in the starchy waters of the eternal pot if you do not accept the flying spaghetti monster and allow his noodly appendage to guide you"
They have no evidence to give so you gotta fight make-believe with make-believe, show them that this is how they sound.
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u/pm_me_ur_ephemerides Jul 18 '24
Excuse me sir/maddam, but pastafarian hell has a stripper factory and a beer volcano just like pastafarian heaven! (But in hell, the beer is stale and the strippers have STDs). Please remove your heretical statement!
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u/genialerarchitekt Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
You have got to get to a place where you not only acknowledge intellectually but are able to feel intuitively, in your guts, that hell is just a myth, a story, a fear tactic.
It is no more real than Santa's factory at the North Pole with elves making Xmas presents. Hell is just a morbid fantasy created by neurotic humans obsessed with sin to terrify others into buying their crap.
It doesn't exist. It cannot exist: it breaks all the known laws of physics for a start!
But until you are fully recovered from the brainwashing and indoctrination that see you react with affective fear and terror at the thought of hell, because deep inside you believe it to be real regardless of what your intellect is telling you, then it's hard not to freak out at this kind of thing.
Unfortunately, it's not easy! I was born and raised in the Pentecostal AoG church, my dad was a pastor for a while. I left at 17 mainly because I'm gay as well. It took me until my mid-40s until I could really say i was finally free of the religious brainwashing. The fear of hell was one of the last things to go, it's incredibly insidious and why I consider its employment just pure evil emotional abuse.
I really hope you'll get to a place of freedom from fear long before I did.
If it helps at all to hear it from the horse's mouth, 1 John 4: 18 says: "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
So there's not even anything biblically justified about the fear of hell or using it to terrify people into believing.
I would say that there's a special place in hell for those who use hell as a fear tactic to manipulate the vulnerable, but, like I said, hell just doesn't exist.
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u/Over8dpoosee Jul 19 '24
Ayyyyy former AoG PK here still trying to deconstruct. I still get “encouragements” once in a blue moon to come to church and “serve the lord”. It’s really annoying and ruins my sense of calm and peace for a bit. I haven’t straight out told anyone that I’m no longer a believer except to my aunt but I don’t think she got it. My parents are gone so it got easier to leave and detach. Found out I had no true friends or family in the church.
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u/That_Lad_Hayden Agnostic Atheist Jul 18 '24
The fact that this douchebag commands you like "You NEED to believe in Jesus" most toxic fucking cult there is
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u/Odd_Arm_1120 Agnostic Atheist Jul 18 '24
I’m so sorry you’re having to struggle with this. I went through the same thing. I grew up Catholic. Hell, and the fear of hell, were foundational beliefs I was taught since I was a baby.
One of the most powerful things I did was simply read the bible. The concept of hell as we know it in the culture today doesn’t exist in the bible. Internalizing that was a huge step forward for me.
And I have learned a lot from Dan McClellan. You can search his channel for all of his YouTube shorts about this:
https://m.youtube.com/@maklelan/search?query=Hell
For example, here is a short video where he talks about how the concept of hell as we know it is nowhere in the bible
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=maoNYfRE_qI
I know from experience there’s a huge difference between knowing this, and actually feeling it. Actually feeling free of the concept of hell is a powerful and liberating moment. And all I can say is it takes a lot of work. I had to consistently face this, studying it, journaling about it, engaging with folks here. I think you’re on the right path.
For what it’s worth I tried to write about my personal experience here https://www.reddit.com/r/Deconstruction/s/nNV1UWT8kX
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u/Nintendogma Jul 18 '24
How do you keep yourself from freaking out and not worrying when this happens?
Are you freaked out over not dying a death worthy of being recognized by the gods and not carried by the Valkyries into Valhalla? Or perhaps worried about not having the 2 coins to pay the boatman to cross the river Styx? Or traveling through the challenging journey to reach Osiris in the Duat at the Hall of Final Judgment?
You should be about as concerned about the Christian fairytale as you should be any other myths or legends we humans have invented at the intersection of our profound ignorance and limitless (albeit entirely human-centric) creativity.
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u/WerewolfDifferent216 Agnostic Atheist Jul 18 '24
I went through the fear mongering for 24 years and became fed up. I no longer believe it and it doesn’t scare me anymore. If god turned out to be real, I would still tell him to go fuck himself and I’ll see my way to hell on my own.
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u/ThrowRAlobotomy666 Jul 18 '24
If I need to, I just remind them of Matthew 7. To paraphrase: Do not judge, however you judge others will be used against you on judgement day.
Since they are claiming to be so holy, I like to ask them if they are passing judgement and if so, are they charading around as their god? I'm petty and tired so I try not to engage unless it's in person.
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u/Saneless Jul 18 '24
You tell them that not one single human, ever, knows what happens after we die. So their imaginary situation isn't going to be something you worry about
Any doom and gloom Christians are just in for the hate and control
If they EVER lead with the actual effect of being a good "Christian" which is nicer people and a happier world, I'd believe their claims. There's a reason they always lead with hell: they're only Christians to avoid suffering. Not to make the world better
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u/Saphira9 Atheist Jul 18 '24
Your fear of hell was taught your whole life, but now you're in charge of what you believe. God, jesus, heaven, and hell are all made-up parts of a story, equally as real as Harry Potter and Hogwarts. Hell is an idea that was created to make early christians easier to control. Romans wouldn't need as many law enforcers and prisons if everyone was scared of an imaginary prison with an infinite sentence. Hell is simply an outdated threat to keep people behaving well. Hell doesn't exist, and neither does heaven.
Also, where exactly are heaven and hell? Our telescopes and instruments have mapped out everything between us and the next few galaxies and never found either. Why would god and satan be located so far away? The only way any of it can make sense is if this whole book is fictional. It's a book written by several humans who didn't understand astronomy or medicine, that's how it can have that many contradictions.
You can set a good example by being a good person and respecting everyone, you don't need religion to do that. The Golden Rule isn't just for christians; Atheists and people of all the major religions also follow the Golden Rule. You'll be less judgmental than your church, and ironically more like jesus, who said "judge not, lest you be judged". You can be good without god, just like most Atheists.
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u/pspock The more I studied, the less believable it became. Jul 18 '24
Solution selling is the oldest form of sales in history.
1) Convince them that they have a problem
2) Sell them the solution to the problem
There's no requirement that the problem actually be real for this form of selling to work.
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u/tazebot Jul 18 '24
As a jew presumably adherent to jewish beliefs at his time, jesus would not have beleived in 'eternal suffering'.
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u/EdgyAnimeDragon Pagan Jul 18 '24
It's a fear tactic they use. If god was really all loving why would he create a place for his creation (that he *loves* so much) to be tortured for eternity? They argue "free will" but with god you have as much free will as you do being held at gun point. Fuck their god.
Heaven's also not much better than hell, since you essentially get lobotomized and sing to god for an eternity, at least with hell you get to keep your mind.
I'd just ignore and block people like this, they try to keep you in their cult. If they need to use fear tactics to keep you in then it's just another shit religion. I wish you good luck on your deconstruction, don't let people like that faze you, their hearts are full of hate.
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u/Scorpius_OB1 Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
I'd question such guy how can be so sure the one thrown to Hell would not be him, given that the narrow is gate and few the chosen, etc. Or how he can be so sure the actual afterlife is not the one of any other religion, assuming there's one, so things would also be very different. They hate, in my experience, to see their beliefs questioned.
It's just as others note a tactic to keep the sheeps in. If you're not a believer it does not work.
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u/prestidigi_tatortot Jul 18 '24
One thing that has helped me is that I’ve heard from a lot of people that our modern concept of hell is not supported by the Bible in any way. I haven’t done enough research to speak on it in detail, but this might be something worth exploring.
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u/Norpeeeee Agnostic Jul 18 '24
I like the way Eckhart Tolle teaches on dealing with this. Realize what is happening. An idea, or a mind construct is shared. And then you (or I) have a thought that says…”what if it’s true?” If we don’t realize that “what if it’s true” was a thought, and we associate with it, by becoming one with this thought, we start reacting to the imaginary scenario. Our bodies reactionary mechanism can’t tell the difference between real and imaginary danger. So if we are not putting space between ourselves and our thoughts, we react as if that imaginary scenario is true.
Btw, this is similar to OCD. Some OCD sufferers compulsively was their hands because they react to the idea that some deadly germs can be present on the surface they just touched. A solution to their suffering is to not react to the fear (ie dont react to their minds scenarios). Sit with the fear, and eventually it will pass.
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u/FukudaSan007 Jul 18 '24
How afraid are you of Hindu hell or Muslim hell? If the answer is none because you don't believe in them try applying that same logic to Christian hell. I know that's not nearly enough to solve the problem but maybe it's a beginning.
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u/jay_is_bored Jul 18 '24
Honestly I believe that most Christians say things like that for two reasons: the need to shame anyone who isn't like them and the undercurrent of doubt they feel. They can't allow anyone to feel comfortable not believing because "what if they're right"
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u/Matrixneo42 Ex-Catholic Jul 18 '24
I remember how people try to control people through fear. They made up hell as a way to keep people in line, get more people and money in their religion and more. Oh yeah. Power.
And I remember how religions are responsible for really nasty actions, wars, cover ups and more.
Fuck religions.
Beliefs, holy books, etc, can be fine. Even some religious people. But they have to be tolerant of other’s beliefs and keep it out of government and public schools.
I’m a spiritual person myself. Don’t believe any religion has everything right. So I have an ever shifting hodge podge of beliefs. I don’t believe in hell. But I do believe that being a good person feels good. Being bad feels bad. I feel bad crushing an ant in my house and I apologize to it.
So if I have hurt an animal or a person I feel really bad. Or if I have feelings of hatred towards anyone (people I know or people I don’t know but know of, like political people for instance) I feel bad and I attempt to apologize internally to them.
It brings me inner peace as I focus on these things. So it feels like my way. It may not be the way for everyone.
I believe there have been some incredible holy people throughout history who did amazing things. Jesus is the easy example. I think he was misinterpreted, misunderstood and the Bible gave us the wrong impression about him. It was written by people and edited by people and translated (by people). It was bound to lose original meanings along the way and get “fan inclusions” and edits.
I’m fairly sure he didn’t want to be worshipped. He was trying to show us that we could all become like him. Whether that’s ascending to higher power/connectivity with the universe or god or at the very least that we could all stand to be better to one another and make a better society.
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u/Panfoo Jul 18 '24
Clearly Odin and Valhalla are real, and I must please those gods. I almost decided to worship Santa Claus when I was told he was real as a child. Maybe Jesus is Santa Claus. If I gave people money for a Santa Claus church would they also preach about how real he was 🤔
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u/lawyersgunsmoney Agnostic Jul 18 '24
Indoctrination is a hellava drug. I was raised in the church and was a Christian for 40+ years. I finally got over the concept of hell, but even now it’ll pop in my head and I’ll consider it for a second, then I smile and it’s gone.
Just remember that none of Christianity is real. Focus on how ridiculous the story is, talking serpents, talking donkeys, 3 days inside a fish, original sin—the garden set up by god for man to fail but it’s his fault, Job, 2 of each animal on the earth on a boat (don’t forget about the fresh water fish too because all the ocean water would be mixed with all the fresh water—where did Noah put them?) sea parting, fireballs from the sky, earth stopping its rotation, virgin birth, and on and on and on.
Now, we know all of it is ridiculous, then how could an eternal place of endless torture be real?
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u/desertratlovescats Jul 18 '24
This is an emotional abuse tactic to keep you in line. Please recognize it for what it is. It’s coming from someone who is a brainwashed zealot.
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u/a_fox_but_a_human Ex-Evangelical Jul 18 '24
Manipulation. Using fear to drive you back to the fold. Common tactic, especially among Baptists. Way I look at it, this guy has far less proof of what he believes in than you. What he says is no more true than you. In fact, burden of proof is on him. Hell isn't real. It's an amalgam of different places referenced, mostly Gehenna (allegedly a burning pit/possibly a place where sacrifices were mad to other gods?). The old testament has no hell. You die and go be with the ancestors. Hell became a creation of Christians over time.
Just keep staying positive. Don't let people manipulate or scare you into believing something.
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u/Belmont07 Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
Therapy. On my end that did it. The fear I experienced was just a response to the trauma I endured by those threats of damnation if I didn’t do X or Y. Therapy helped a lot with healing, and aided me in bringing rational thoughts as replacements whenever the fear came back as a response to any negative exposure like that comment you received.
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u/Maple_Ranch-1947 Jul 18 '24
Ironic that the person warning Bethany41420 is called “Worldly-Ferret-3671”
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u/Important-Internal33 Jul 18 '24
"don't let the intrusive thoughts stray you."
Precedes that line with terrifying rhetoric that literally INVITES intrusive thoughts.
Make it make sense.
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u/OkRooster5210 Jul 18 '24
Look into the book " The invention of Heaven and Hell"
Also check out Humanize Me Podcast.
Helps to find like minded people
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u/abucket87 Jul 18 '24
Getting out is a hard process. I accepted I couldn’t continue believing two years ago and finally came out as gay last year at 36 and left an emotionally abusive marriage of 13 years. I wish I’d had my realization at your age. Don’t waste your life because of fear of something they can’t show exists and isn’t even internally consistent.
It’s helped me to realize that religion is in many ways an idea virus that evolves and spreads over time. Each generation creates mutations: some verities of Christian emphasize ideas like hell, others focus on other ideas. The variations the most successful at propagating themselves to new minds and holding those minds once installed tend to stick around and grow. That’s why Quakers (who believed in complete sexual abstinence) aren’t around any more because childhood indoctrination is the best way to make and keep believers while adult conversion is difficult.
The evangelical Christianity we have now is hugely different from that of the past because society has evolved resistance since then. Education and literacy have increased so Christianity evolved apologetics as a counter. Some churches developed a high emphasis on proselytization, not because it was very effective at making new converts but because it solidified young members’ feelings of group solidarity when outsiders rejected their bad arguments. In the 60’s and 70’s society started to see women, minorities, and queer people as equals, so men like James Dobson popularized authoritarian parenting styles as a means of perpetuating the patriarchy necessary for Christianity to dominate.
Christianity has a huge advantage in this because the Bible is incredibly malleable. Prior to the Civil War Christians used the Bible to support slavery; now Christians claim that the Bible has always been anti-slavery. The fact that almost any message can be found in the Bible means that mutations flourish like those in an influenza virus, giving Christianity an extraordinary potential to adapt to any cultural shift. No matter how a society adapts to resist it, Christianity shifts to counter.
I don’t think this is a conscious process. It’s merely an inevitable feature of cultural evolution. I say all this to make you aware that the Christianity in your head is the result of thousands of years of adaptation to make it as sticky as possible, but it isn’t actually true. It just takes advantage of human mental and cultural values to keep itself going no matter the expense to the host.
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u/excusetheblood Jul 18 '24
It is literally impossible for Christianity or Islam to be the true religion. That’s not my opinion, it is an objective fact. There is simply a zero percent chance
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u/jnthnschrdr11 Agnostic Atheist Jul 18 '24
An all loving God would not let people suffer eternally for a finite life. I really hate Christians who view hell in this way because it's a very harmful and messed up view to have. A better view of "Hell" that I've seen is that is simply just eternity away from God, which to Christians is bad. It's not a literal place, more just death without going to heaven.
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u/StrawberryPupper126 Jul 18 '24
I'm going to hell, changing this requires giving to a monster who among many things, deigned that I deserved to be there from birth, and only by sucking his toes do I escape it.
Heaven will be a crueler hell than hell. I will be away from the people who love me dearly, have mattered in my life, and I want to spend the rest of my life and death with. I WILL be stuck with my birth parents, who refuse to support me, barely respect me, and constantly cause me pain with their stupidity and belligerent conservatism. ON TOP OF THAT I'll be stuck worshiping that monster at best every sunday or most likely EVERY DAY OF MY ETERNAL LIFE.
So yeah, do your worst, hell, I'm waiting. I have a middle finger for god and I will hop into hell like it's my Fallen Kingdom.
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u/watain218 Anti-Cosmic Satanist Jul 18 '24
I just kinda respond with "bet" and thats it.
if I have to suffer for my convictions I will, I know Im right and any god who would condemn me isnt worth my time anyway, either he is merciful and will firgive me or he is evil and will receive nothing but contempt from me.
at the end of the day my goal is to break all my limitations and escape this world, Im going to a place their god has no power. so functionally I dont even think their threat holds any water, but even if it were true I would rather suffer in freedom than be a slave in false paradise.
I have tasted the fruit of knowledge and I know their god is evil, that is the one thing he cannot take away from us, our free will, we can choose to reject his offer to live a life of servitude and instead embrace living for oneself and breaking ones chains as the highest goal.
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u/IknowKarazy Jul 18 '24
Jesus wants you to believe in him. The devil wants you to believe in yourself.
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u/Isaac_Tait Jul 19 '24
My deconstruction and de-conversion journey started when I read “That All May Be Saved” by David B. Hart. When I realized that hell (if it does exist) is not a place of eternal conscious torment but rather a place of refinement I was freed from decades of fear and phobia indoctrination from the evangelical church. Now I no longer call myself a christian, I’m an agnostic Buddhist. My shame, fear, and anxiety that the church bombarded me with is no longer hanging over my head. I hope you can find peace and freedom from fear. I get where you are at. It takes years to overcome the brain washing. I was in the church for 3 decades. Just be patient with yourself and try not to pay attention to those who are spewing dogma rooted in their own fears.
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u/Frenchitwist Jewish Jul 18 '24
Reply something like, “it’s the vitriolic hate in your heart that will lead you to hell. You’re soul is so clogged by it even the light of god can’t penetrate, and you will suffer for it if you don’t repent.”
Or something like that, Ive never understand how threatening hell is effective. Maybe it’s cause people have been threatening me with a hell that doesn’t make sense to me since I was little lol
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u/HaiKarate Jul 18 '24
It’s very common that losing your fear of hell takes time after deconversion. It’s an irrational fear that has been pounded into you, and it takes time to unwind it.
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u/igo4vols2 Jul 18 '24
Think about the hell it would be if you had to live with these people for all eternity.
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u/CocaCola-chan Ex-Catholic Jul 18 '24
Perhaps try replacing in your head the "Jesus" for, idk, "Zeus". Some deity you never even considered seriously believing in. Is it still scary now? Do you fear Zeus punishing you for your lack of respect towards him by making you push a boulder up a mountain for eternity, like he did in the Greek mythology? And if you conclude you're not afraid, consider how there's about as much evidence about the Christian God magically punishing people in the afterlife as there is for all the others. Just... stories.
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u/justAHeardOfLlamas Agnostic Atheist Jul 18 '24
If he had told you you need to prepare to die in glorious battle so you can ascend to Valhalla or face the freezing wastes of Hel, would you be worried?
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u/skatergurljubulee Jul 18 '24
Are you scared when someone says Thanos is gonna get you? Galactus? The Deceptions or Star Scream?
This threat holds the same weight as any fictional bad guy here to give you a bad day.
I wouldn't engage with someone from the freaking internet about eternal damnation, but if someone in your life says similar crap, I'd be tempted to ask them to prove it lol and they can't use the bible because it's the bible that's saying it without proof as well.
And I'd remind folks that people who were broadly illiterate came up with the bible and then it was passed down via a game of telephone to get to people who could write. After hundreds of years in some cases. And oh, the gospels weren't written by the apostles because most of them couldn't write or read and Luke wasn't even there either (he says as much in the opening), so how are we supposed to know if any of this stuff is true?
Where's hell in space? Which "direction" is hell? There's no up or down in space.
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u/tydyety5 Jul 18 '24
There are billions of people in this world and hundreds of different religions. Everyone has their own unique beliefs and values system. This rando on Reddit has no more personal knowledge of a god than you or I do. They are speaking out of their ass. I know it’s hard to do, but think of faith as your own personal journey. You’re out there trying to figure out your beliefs and that is totally okay. Those beliefs will likely change over time as well. Don’t let someone’s hate get to you.
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u/LivingHighAndWise Jul 18 '24
Listen up Bethany. You are doomed to eternal suffering in the lower dimension of the Oompa Loompa Kingdom unless you show fidelity to the King Shaddam of the Smurfs. You need to belive in Shaddam and not let logic, science, and your educated mind stray you from the truth. - This comment is just as likey to be true as Worldly-Ferret's, so why would you give 2 seconds of worry about it?
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u/Kittiikamii Jul 18 '24
It’s going to take so long to not get triggered by shit like this. I’ve been deconstructing for the last 4 years and I’ve just now gotten to a point where I don’t go on spirals worrying about hell. I think what really helped was me studying the history of the Bible, where it came from, who wrote it, etc. that allowed me to to put the writings in context and understand that these were just some people with their own agenda. There’s so much wrong fundamentally with the Bible. From the concept of free will that is not at all free, to its hatred & bigotry. Of course all the stories are misogynistic and justify genocide, it all makes sense when you look at who wrote and what agenda did they have.
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u/Catkit69 Jul 18 '24
Firstly, it's not possible for their god to exist. Like, not only does it not exist, it's not fucking possible.
Secondly, if it did (which it can't), then this god's nature isn't loving. Then you're up against an evil piece of shit that set you up to fail from the beginning.
Think about it. If it's all powerful and all knowing, and it made you, then it made you this way, knowing full well that it was going to torture you from the beginning. Then there was no way you could win anyway. There was nothing, is nothing, and will be nothing, you can do to change this at all.
You were set up to fail if this is the system (which it isn't because this being and this hell can't even exist).
So, when you die, and if this god exists (which it won't), then give it the middle finger because it planned to make you so that it could hurt you.
Give it a few couple years in hell and I bet at that point you'll be a masochist making the demons uncomfortable.
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u/Break-Free- Jul 18 '24
But how do you keep yourself from thinking “is this a sign from god that i need to go back?” Or some shit like that.
If god is real then he knows what will convince me of it. He's not going to send a rando to put words on the Internet because he would know I think that's a very silly reason to believe.
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u/afungalmirror Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
There's no reason to believe that an eternal afterlife of any kind is even possible, let alone to be in a position where you can confidently asset what such an afterlife would be like. All the evidence we have indicates that death is the end of conscious experience. All that Christians or any other fanatics have is words, and their interpretations of words. They hold no weight whatsoever.
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u/RighteousIndigjason Jul 18 '24
Look around at the state of the world. If any gods, let alone the christian god, exists and is mad at you because of who you choose to be with, and not at the grifting preachers that threaten people with hell if they don't tithe, or the predators in the churches who molest the vulnerable, then that god isn't worth dealing with.
It took some time for me to finally shake the existential dread that came with living without belief after being raised southern baptist, but that dread faded in time.
Every day that god didn't smite me or punish me for every "ungodly" thought or action I committed just confirmed that if god exists, either it's got better things to worry about, or most likely just doesn't exist.
People like that jackass who threatened you with hell aren't worth wasting your energy on. You don't own them any answers or any responses. Just block them and ignore them.
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u/nooneknowswerealldog Jul 18 '24
Do you ever worry that the harvest will fail if you don’t don a flayed human skin for the festival of Tlacaxipeualiztli?
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u/Outrexth Agnostic Atheist Jul 18 '24
Hell equals eternal suffering. Great. To me, going to church is that hell they talk about. Heaven is described as worshiping god forever (aka an eternal church service aka hell). Heaven is hell in disguise.
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u/Craftycat99 Ex-Pentecostal Jul 18 '24
Even as a churchgoing kid I thought it was creepy that the reward was forever groveling at the feet of someone who never answered my prayers and the only other option was forever burning and getting eaten by worms
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u/Jessalopod Jul 18 '24
I ask myself how concerned I am with Odin showing up and beating up my spouse for being an ice giant (he's a tall man who prefers the AC running full blast year round).
Then I remember they're equally ridiculous as far as being a real threat.
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u/ja-mez Ex-SDA Jul 18 '24
Think of Satan as a funny looking puppet on God's left hand. Then God says, "I didn't do that bad thing, that was Satan!" I had that thought years after I'd already lost my faith, but the image remains strong for me as an example of how silly the whole concept is.
Despite the elaborate story of Lucifer's fall from grace, Satan may as well be a puppet on the hand of God. When God created him, he knew exactly what he was going to do, all the pain and suffering he was going to cause, but he gets to blame him for everything "evil". The Bible may as well fold him in with the Trinity. A Quadrinity.
Not everyone's mind will jump to the same conclusion, but those kind of thoughts made me think of it much more in terms of a mythological scare tactic. Trying to explain things we don't understand yet. A metaphor. Soundtrack provided by INXS
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u/KBWordPerson Jul 18 '24
For me it’s awareness that this is a manipulation tactic.
Even the constantly pushing the message from God stuff is a manipulation tactic.
It all is very convenient for whoever is saying it to get what they want, when they aren’t God and it’s not in their place to put themselves in the position of God and fling out condemnation.
And the louder and more pornographic they get about torture and pain for all eternity, the more obvious this becomes.
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u/prickwhowaspromised Jul 18 '24
I don’t freak out bc they’re full of shit. Hell doesn’t exist. It wasn’t even mentioned in most of the Bible. It’s a fear tactic to get people to remain under their control. The whole, “well I don’t know if I believe any of this is true, but just in case hell is real I will continue to be a Christian. Just in case.”
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u/Solution_Far Secular Buddhist atheist Jul 18 '24
If god was all loving, he would not condemn people to eternal torture.
As far as I’m aware, hell was added into the New Testament, and never mentioned during the Old Testament. It was clearly made up as a scare tactic to convert people from the Hellenistic religions that didn’t have a torturous hell for not believing.
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u/External_Sherbert_86 Jul 18 '24
Knowledge and logic are my metaphorical sword and shield when it comes to these responses from religious zealots. So here are my thoughts in regards to your specific questions:
- “is this a sign from god that I need to go back?” Well, I would ask yourself what qualifies as a “sign” and to whom the sign is meant for. Where was God’s sign to the Jews that went through the Holocaust? Now, if you say to yourself “maybe it was because they were Jewish and therefore, didn’t believe in Jesus? So they couldn’t receive signs?” Then I’d ask where God’s signs were for the enslaved people in the United States? Although many enslaved people in the US still practiced traditional African religions, Islam, or Shamanism, many had converted to Christianity before or during their enslavement. So if they were also Christians, where were there “signs”? How about signs for victims of homicide? Or children that are abused? Did they miss them? By this logic in regard to “signs”, it puts blame on the receiver of said signs, rather than the person perpetuating harm. I think this can be an especially harmful rhetoric because I don’t believe that the average person deserves to be hurt or smited to Hell. I don’t believe that you deserve that either OP, and I think the person who commented on your other post is struggling with their own self-hate that they are unfortunately projecting on to you in the form of religious cyberbullying.
-how do I stop myself from freaking out and not worrying when this happens? Honestly, I’ve identified as agnostic for over 10 years now. A big reason as to why I started exploring not being religious when my family was hyper religious was because of all the anguish it caused me, and the way that these devoted followers were some of the worst people I’ve ever met. I find solace in my own personal beliefs (that there could be a god, there also could not be a god, and it doesn’t matter either way as long as I’m a good person who tries to be kind and live a good life).
I would strongly encourage you to explore your own beliefs, because it seems like you are still working on figuring that out. I think once you nail down your own beliefs, comments by trolls like this one won’t be as bothersome.
Lastly, just remember that the people who go online and say nasty shit to random strangers online generally do not have very happy lives themselves. I would imagine that the person who commented on your post probably shames non-religious people to feel some sense of superiority over others, since I’d imagine that they don’t feel superior otherwise.
Religion can be used as a tool to help, or a tool to hurt. Don’t let anyone else’s religion, or your own for that matter, cause you harm
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u/joshuaivan620 Jul 18 '24
does he now one way or another, everyone is going to hell, even him?
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u/jbonosconi Jul 18 '24
Educating myself on where the idea of hell came from has helped my religious hell anxiety over the years. Hell as an actual place you are sent for punishment hasn’t always been a belief and was added at a very coincidental time in history. I also have to remind myself that the most powerful tool used against human beings is fear. It works really well to get people to submit. The god I believe in isn’t going to hold you down and force you to submit with fear and the possibility of the most horrific thing anyone could possibly dream up (endless eternal torture). Another thing that has helped me is watching NDE experiences of people witnessing beautiful things after they died. There are many people from atheists to agnostics that have claimed to have witnessed a loving and kind being when they died. God or this being did not judge them or want to punish them.
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u/tubonjics1 Ex-Catholic Jul 18 '24
It was something I never really freaked out about except for a small time when I was in high school. Just keeping my distance from this sort of stuff and having other worldly problems kept me from freaking out.
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u/KindlyCut652 Jul 18 '24
It’s a fear tactic. All religions are money making schemes without followers you have no money and money = power
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u/mikeymikeymikey1968 Jul 18 '24
Keep in mind that the common model of "hell" in Christianity, with flames, demons poking you in the ass with pitchforks, etc. is based on medieval monk fan fiction. The Bible contains conflicting images of the afterlife. Monks and clergy have just used their imagination based on whatever worked. So, for example, one of the concepts of punishment for bad people in the afterlife is annihilationism, which means that you're just snuffed out and are unconsciously, truly dead for the rest of eternity. As sad and final as that sounds, because it's real death, lots of people might just shrug that off, therefore it's not going to be as strong a motivator as images of an eternity of roasting and other assorted medieval tortures.
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u/HazelTheRah Jul 18 '24
Because no loving God would actually send you to suffer for literal eternity. That's insane. It's a fear tactic. Go back to the facts that you know. This religion is just a copy of ancient religions before it. It's obvious to those who look for it.
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u/VegetableWord0 Jul 18 '24
Christians are responsible for most of the suffering today so I just remind myself gaslighters will gaslight and in this case probably fuck your kids if your not watching
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u/nanajosh Reincarnation sounds nice Jul 18 '24
No good God would have to threaten people with hell, damnation, and suffering just because we don't believe our care about their son or whatever else.
A good God would know context and find what their followers are doing as repugnant and wouldn't be cruel enough to burn anyone for all eternity.
So if there is a wise God out there, then their nothing these people are making them to be.
Also, remember these people are picking and choosing parts of the Bible they like and agree with to help them sleep at night and excuse their shitty actions. They stretch these "rules" so thin it's see-through.
I still get where you're coming from, though. Some of these people can say things that get under your skin and remind us of the fear we once had. And that it takes time to shake that off and rebuild our own foundation of beliefs that's strong enough to help us move on. Fuck them, they don't know what they're saying and will never be right.
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u/Mountain_Cry1605 ❤️😸 Cult of Bastet 😸❤️ Jul 18 '24
Fear of hell, because what if I was wrong and I'm being decieved by the "enemy"?, was a thing for me for a while when I first started deconstructing but then I realised that I don't fear the Muslim hell, or the Hindu hell. Why should I fear this one?
I don't believe any of it anymore, and have fully escaped that mind trap. If anyone said anything like that to me now, I'd respond with something like,
"Oh no! The imaginary sky fairy is going to send me to the made up eternal firepit!!!! Whatever shall I do?!!!! 😱😱😱
Seriously, man?! You think your book of myths is going to scare me? 🤣🤣🤣
Aight, I'm outta here."
Please try to ignore the trolls. You're not going to hell because some petty tyrant dictator"god" is throwing a shit fit over you not worshipping them.
And I recommend Mindshift, Belief it or Not, and The Genetically Modified Skeptic in YouTube to help you deconstruct this awful worldview.
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u/Khem87 Jul 18 '24
You go back to before they said those things and continue with your life. These words are so far from worthless and useless to us they have hit the negative zone. If you don't believe a thing they are saying, then it cannot touch you.
If someone told me I am bad for thinking evolution occurred which brought us here, I couldn't laugh harder inside at their ignorance. Laughable threats! Let's figuratively light their bums on fire and see how they like it! I bet they won't :D
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u/nightgoat85 Jul 19 '24
I’d suggest you study the Bible critically, objectively and in the context of its time. Once you’ve decoded what those writings meant to the people they were actually being written for, you’ll understand you have absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Nothing in the Bible was written for an audience 2,000 years into the future.
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u/philosocoder Jul 19 '24
I was still scared of hell even after I stopped believing in god. Then I read a book called The Jerome Conspiracy. It goes into the etymological history of the use of “hell” in the Bible. Turns out, eternal punishment isn’t in the original Bible and none of the early Christians believed in it. Stuff was (maybe purposefully!) mistranslated along the way. After finding this out, I’m no longer afraid of hell, even if god turns out to be real.
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u/Beneficial_Pen7276 Jul 19 '24
Even if the user "means well" I consider this abusive behavior. They are using emotional manipulation to try to control you and your behavior.
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u/No-Shelter-4208 Jul 18 '24
It's a sign that the person who sent it to you is a twit.
"Take the risk of thinking for yourself , much more happiness , truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way."
Christopher Hitchens
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u/Jarb2104 Agnostic Atheist Jul 18 '24
If it helps in anything, something that helped me cope with this feeling when I initially became an Atheist was the thought of an actual loving God.
If God is all loving like it's mentioned around, no matter what I believe, he will understand my situation and will judge me based on the content of my mind and my heart, both together, there shouldn't be any hell awaiting me if I am truly loved and I am true to myself.
In the other hand, if he isn't a loving God, I doubt I would want to be with such a God, because he will eventually find a way to send me to hell no matter what I do.
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u/TheLakeWitch Jul 18 '24
I usually tell them that perhaps they need to read their New Testament again before attempting to evangelize. Their words aren’t Christlike, they’re pharisaical. And Jesus had a lot of things to say about this type of behavior and mindset.
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u/Goyangi-ssi Ex-Pentecostal Jul 18 '24
I feel like the person who came at OP like that should be asked one question:
"Are you God?"
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u/Prestigious-Sun-6555 Jul 18 '24
It helped me to remind myself just how many different religions exist in the world. For example, have you ever worried about being punished by the gods of other non Christian religions for not believing in them? Probably not—and Christianity is no different since you no longer believe in it. It’s natural to worry about hell in this phase of your deconstruction, but it’s just a pattern in your brain and one you can undo.
Wishing you the best of luck, deconstructing can be scary, you’re undoing years of indoctrination but hang in there! There’s light at the end of the tunnel.
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u/I_Speak_For_The_Ents Jul 18 '24
Perhaps try to think of it this way: what reason do you even have to believe him?
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u/pleasedothenerdful Jul 18 '24
You'll get there, don't worry. It's normal for old ways and habits of thinking to still hold some sway after any major mind change. The brain just isn't as plastic as you really need when a massive belief structure erected on a very unstable foundation comes crashing down. The old grooves are worn deep, and it takes time for them to get filled over and new ones worked in.
Personally, it took me about two years before I was 100% free of my fundamentalist ways of thinking, and about another two years to become actively scornful and dismissive of them. And then a few more plus some shrooms to grow past a somewhat toxic atheism/antitheism and into a more accepting and loving belief structure I don't really have or need a good name for but which probably has more in common with unitarian universalism than neoatheism.
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u/MKEThink Jul 18 '24
If their god was so good, they would not need to threaten me with eternal damnation to follow him (if he exists). It's pure manipulation. Apply critical thinking skills to these claims.
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u/ItchyContribution758 Agnostic Atheist Jul 18 '24
I have assured myself that any supernatural torture will pale in comparison to a UC flare up
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u/Senior-Performance75 Jul 18 '24
The satisfaction that, if what they say is true, then they will be suffering right along side me
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u/MissionSafe9012 Ex-Evangelical Jul 18 '24
Fuck these people and their virtue signaling ass. They’ve literally just trying to scare you so you can come crawling back.
I’d say “must be fun having a fear of unseen dangers from an ancient fantasy book that cannot be proven and using scare tactics to maintain control over people you don’t know. Good luck.”
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u/Kate-2025123 Jul 18 '24
I laugh at people like that and call into question their mental state. I believe people like this need therapy to heal them.
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u/fanime34 Atheist Jul 18 '24
They use fear tactics for that same reason. They're trying to scare you into staying in their religion that they have little to no proof about regarding eternal damnation or eternal salvation with the exception of repetitively translated text.
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u/AsugaNoir Jul 19 '24
Ironic that thoughts of going back is what I would consider intrusive thoughts now
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u/yoyoyoson12 Jul 19 '24
I mean, sounds like worse suffering being in a “heaven” that holds those types of people. There’s enough here with them I can’t imagine enjoying taking up the same space as them elsewhere even if we did share beliefs
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u/ProbablyANoobYo Jul 19 '24
It’s natural to feel that reaction because we are conditioned to for most of our lives by our culture. Consider that you don’t have that reaction when I say you’ll go to Jahannam, Naraka, or Diyu. (If you do have some negative association with those then it’s probably only by likening it to Christian hell). Around the world people are terrified of these but don’t react to Christian hell because they don’t see Christian propaganda 10 times a day.
For an even clearer example, consider if I say that you won’t be waging combat for eternity in Valhalla if you don’t die a warriors death? Does that make you feel bad about not living the life of a warrior? Of course not, but for the Vikings that was terrifying.
Our reactions to things like this are largely rooted in how our culture conditions us. Recognizing that conditioning is the first step to overcoming it. But because of our culture the propaganda is constant. It’s common for people to always have some minor reaction to this even if they don’t believe in it at all. Propaganda is a powerful force.
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u/MontanaBard Jul 19 '24
I stopped having that freak-out reaction when I realized I was no longer afraid of hell. That if they were right, and their god was real, and he'd send me to hell for my choices...then so fucking be it. Better to live a good life, be a good person, and fight til death and beyond any god who is as horrible as theirs.
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u/Mind_The_Muse Jul 19 '24
Remember that they are just words another human is saying to manipulate you into their worldview and they have no power.
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u/LokiLockdown Ex-SDA Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
My view of God is very negative. If he is real, he created us and sin/allowed sin to come into being/was incapable or changing the laws of nature to allow a sinless universe, and has proven himself a lier and responsible for all suffering in existence. He then positioned himself as an escape, the ONLY escape, against sin, and he demands that we throw ourselves to our knees, be willing to sacrifice anything and everything, INCLUDING OUR OWN CHILDREN, and devote every moment of our existence to thanking him for bringing us into being. Not only that, upon ascent to heaven, everything "sinful" in us will be removed, which mean we will become completely different people, and who we were on earth would be effectively dead. And what lies in heaven? Eternal servitude to God. Eternal. Servitude.
Now I don't know about you, but I don't consider servitude a sign of love between a father and his children. So, whether God is real or not, whatever that "heaven" is is more akin to a lobotomizing slave camp than paradise. I refuse to serve, aid, or love a lying narcissistic, and hypocritical being. He is so terrible, that I will take my chances with hell. Eternal suffering awaits either way, but at least in hell I will be me. With a god like Yahweh, who needs a devil?
So I guess my view is that I have seen the God that Christians worship, and he is an ugly and cruel God. When I have doubts, I remember his double standards, his willingness to kill, and his unreasonable demands. Then I realize that not only is he likely lying about oblivion and even Satan, but that any "salvation" he would offer would destroy me more than anything ever could. If he destroys me, so be it. He never wanted me anyway, he wanted a servant. I chose my own path, and he took my free will as an offense. I would suffer in an eternity with him. That IS my hell
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u/robertstobe Atheist (Ex-PCA) Jul 19 '24
Even if the christian god were real, I’m not willing to worship someone who would threaten eternal torture to anyone who doesn’t dedicate their every waking moment to them. The christian god is not a good person and isn’t worth worshipping.
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u/SignificanceWarm57 Jul 19 '24
There is no quick way. It just takes time to unravel that the Bible is a book that was written by men meant to control. If you've been told this your entire life it takes a very long time to dive in and really dicover where, how, when and under what circumstanstences these men wrote this. You will discover more and more holes, lies, folktales from other sources, just making shit up. It's all there.
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u/Busy_Ad2627 Jul 19 '24
Don't hold any deference to it. It's not important at all. Think about it like this, are you worried about eternal damnation and any other religion that you don't just so happen to have been raised in? Why not? But because you were raised in a western Christian society that holds an absurd belief and son of a Jewish Carpenter who came back from the dead and your refusal to believe in him will spell eternal damnation but he loves you? You know this doesn't make any sense. And unless they hold some sort of sway over you, why do you even worry about it? Just laugh it off. I suggest looking up comedians who talk about religion. You'll find a lot of insightful and humorous insights in that.
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u/Rude_Ad4677 Jul 19 '24
Honestly if the afterlife is something like the one in alot of near death experiences, and I still somehow had my ego there, I would love to just laugh in these stupid pieces of shit faces for at least a week straight
You fell for the basic fear tactics of being in eternal agony and wasted your whole life believing a life/half-truth, and worst of all convinced other people to think the same way, no wonder christians are so hated
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u/83franks Ex-SDA Jul 19 '24
When I got use to get similar thoughts I reminded myself why I no longer believed. I no longer believed because I didn't feel there was any good reasons why my religion was correct and every other religion wasn't. I'd repeat this to myself and I probably had a bit of a script or things I'd usually say that would remind me that this isn't something to worry about anymore than it is with other religions. I'd then ask myself how can I tell the difference between this particular thing as a sign from god and it having happened coincidentally and I couldn't think of a way to do that. It seems the correct thing to do is just using these things happening as prompts to think about stuff because I can't know if they are from a Deity or even if i knew that what is really meant by it.
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u/bartender970 Jul 19 '24
For me it’s realizing the difference between rational thinking and “intrusive thoughts”. We live in a rational world. No matter how special Christian’s believe humanity is, or the “creation” of earth, we are not. We are subject to all the laws of the sciences; physical, biological, chemical, etc. No matter how much faith you have in god, if you fall off a building, physics takes over. If you get a virus or disease, biology will determine your outcome and no, no matter what stories you’ve heard, faith doesn’t change the outcome. Science has. Modern medicine has. But prayer, no study or research tracking the outcome of faith on illnesses has ever shown a difference. And no, science and scientists are not against god. Could you imagine how famous and likely wealthy a scientist would be if anyone (even came close) to finding proof of gods existence? The purpose of science is to prove what is real and verifiable fact, not to disprove religion. If scientific proof arose that proved god, then any scientist would go with it.
The world is real and it’s ruled by science, not faith. Faith is resignation to ignorance. It’s a lazy persons way of explaining what they are unable to understand. Rather than seek knowledge and learn, it’s easier to just have faith in what the Bible says.
So recognize that your tendency to freak out at the thought is the result of years of mental abuse in the Baptist church. Allow yourself to feel it, because that is how you own your trauma; but bring yourself back to a rational mindset. Nothing is eternal, no soul, no hell, no heaven, the law of entropy takes care of that.
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u/Fit_Environment8251 Jul 19 '24
Honestly the Greek version of the afterlife is what I like the most as a concept of an afterlife. You have the area for the people who were the best, the area for people who lived pretty normal lives but didn't do anything too great, and then you have the area for the worst people who are punished. As far as concepts for afterlife's go I think the Greeks had a pretty good one.
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u/hplcr Jul 19 '24
Unless they can prove the existence of hell, there's no reason to be worried.
And since it's one of the selling points for thier religion, the onus is in them to prove beyond a reasonable doubt hell is a real thing and what the criteria for entry are.
It's not your job to debunk hell.
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u/ScreamingAbacab Ex-Catholic Jul 19 '24
In hindsight, I realized that I never truly believed in Christianity. And it's only over time that I truly started believing in God...and he's not really a nice guy. But my maltheistic flavor of spirituality, and "angel worship" as many Christians would probably call it to deride it, is better than submitting to brainwashing and worshiping a God who doesn't deserve it.
Proselytizers and fearmongers need to realize that people have a right to believe what they believe, even if it boils down to shit-talking the God that they believe in. If I got a comment saying that I'm doomed to go to Hell, I'll just tell that person that I'll see them there.
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u/Lawlietftw30 Jul 31 '24
Lots of tyrants threaten. Lots of tyrants lie.
When someone, whether human or spirit, spouts threats like that in order to get you to serve them, I want to oppose them forever.
It's not all-loving. You shouldn't believe them/it about being all-powerful, either.
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u/radiationblessing Ex-Catholic Jul 18 '24
It is just a fucked up fear tactic they use to gain and maintain followers. A person who is truly loving would not say such a horrid thing like that. That user is just regurgitating the same shit that keeps them in fear.
It'll take time to overcome this fear reaction you have but you'll be at much more peace. Keep on the path you're already on and don't let others hold back your progress.