Julian Cope – Saint Julian

I’ve been thinking back on the “edgy online atheism” phase I went through in the early ’00s and why I quit doing it. Not that I became religious again, but spiritual isn’t a dirty word for me anymore.

In fact, some form of spirituality could be very healthy.

The angry phase lasted for a few years after I completely lost my religion. I had already abandoned my cognitively dissonant fundamentalism and was hanging onto the idea that God had a plan and I was in it.

Then life circumstances walloped me upside the head and made that impossible. Sometimes a tragedy is just a tragedy and no “mysterious ways” argument can ever justify it. Disasters happen because the world and the universe have no morals.

So I went hard on the atheism. I spent way too much time virtue signaling to other atheists online. I got into people like Richard Dawkins and Matt Dillahunty.

Whatever you think of him, Dawkins deserves a lot of credit for coining the term “meme”, long before anyone ever made one online. Funny how memes as we think of them now illustrated his point about the replication and evolution of ideas.

Back then I had that edgy online thing going. I thought I was so smart. I had figured it all out (again). I was in my 30s, too old for that kind of attitude. But I realize now I was just angry. Not “angry at God.” Angry because I’d been lied to.

Angry because I was grieving.

It’s a phase you have to go through when your worldview gets yanked out from under you. Pissed off and betrayed. You want everyone to know what horseshit it all was.

But ultimately the fire burned itself out. I support and agree with atheists most of the time, but that can’t be my tribe. I needed to move on. Atheist felt like a description, not an identity.

That’s all it really was. Grief.

You probably know about DABDA, the stages of grief. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. You don’t always go through it in order, but I went through all of that when I left Christianity.

If you can make it to the last stage of grief – Acceptance, you can maybe acknowledge it wasn’t all horseshit. You probably got something of value out of it or you wouldn’t have grieved over it. That’s where I am now. I don’t believe it, but I’m not angry. If anything I’m sad.

It occurs to me that grief could also explain why Christians seem to be angry these days. Why get so angry when others won’t believe what you do? Why do you wish so hard that they would just STFU?

Could be because they’re in the first stages of grief: Denial. Deep down, maybe it’s not as meaningful as it used to be. They’ve got some causes and some firebrand preachers to whip them into a frenzy, but maybe it’s not enough.

Folks who weren’t raised religious might not understand, but having your world view ripped out from under you is a terrifying prospect. Even if you know deep down it’s something you have to face if you want the truth.

I’m beginning to understand that science and rationality, while important, are not enough to hold a society together. Westerners – Americans in particular, are suffering from a lack of meaning and it shows.

I’ve been afraid to read Nietzsche because of his fans (adding him to the list), but now I understand what he was trying to warn us about. Christianity was the glue holding Western Civilization together.

I’m never going to back, but I no longer want Christianity to disappear. After all it’s where I got my values. I want it to change, into something that plays well with others and still provides a sense of meaning and community.

Perhaps go look at some of the early Christian sects, when the influence of Neoplatonism was stronger, see what might have been discarded that could be brought back.

Lately I’ve been a big fan of Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher John Vervaeke. He’s been talking to a variety of thinkers in various fields. He hasn’t disappointed me yet.

He published a 50-episode YouTube series, “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” where he goes through the psychological developments that underpin Western Civilization. I’ve already learned a great deal. Not even halfway through yet, but I’ll get there.

He also has some interesting and frankly ominous things to say about Artificial Intelligence and the massive ways it could impact our society.