As an atheist, you weren't a practicing atheist. You were an agitator with a religion of your own, which is projecting and spreading atheism. I used to call these folks "militant atheists" because, like when I was a teenager and left the Catholic church, I was ready to treat others the way I'd been treated (and seen others treated). This is not a healthy paradigm for leaving any community though and furthermore it repeats the sins of the past.
> Like, I frankly don’t give a damn about the truth or falsity of religion anymore. That’s not the point. It lets me act as if my life has meaning regardless of whether or not that’s true, which even when I directly reflect on it is a small amount of comfort insulating me from the yawning abyss of existential terror I felt throughout all of my 20s and half of my teens.
... and then you adopted the mindset of an actual atheist (one without religion), and then adopted a religion!
For what it's worth, I'm glad you're happy, that's really what matters. Maybe now that you have experience as someone without religion it gives you perspective as someone with faith. From what you've written, it sounds like that's the case.
A final thought (and opinion) that no one asked for: as an atheist I applaud the healthy exercise of and engagement with religion. The only time in which I object to religions or institutions is when they think their ideas are proper enough to be codified into law. For that, we have science and bureaucracy, of which religion can be a part of neither due to self-interested hegemony, which is an obvious conflict of interest.
I've been reading Stoic philosophers for some time now and it has helped me a lot. Christianity seems to take a lot from them and adds a mythical spin.
I think the biggest issue with religion stems from the fact that many people fail to understand religious texts are not factual they are metaphorical. Unfortunately, throughout history (and still today) this misunderstanding has been used and led to an incalculable number of heinous crimes.
But the label of atheist has been imbued with all sorts of negativity. So much so that some people hear it and think being an atheist actually makes someone evil, without any care for the well-being of other humans. Or they think the atheist must be miserable and unfeeling.
It's why I don't even use the term any more. I don't know if other people I'm talking to will have the same definition of the term that I do. If someone asks me about my religious beliefs, I simply say that I have none.
The “atheist community” (and it was oddly enough a real thing for awhile, with atheist church and everything! Look up Oasis on YouTube). It attracted people who were hedonistic and amoral and, in retrospect, went down in flames about how you’d have expected.
I’m not just some isolated Christian who has never met an atheist deriding them as some sort of bogeyman, I was friends with people in Poly Quads and met spouses who were bullied by their SO into being swingers, then watched 50 year olds behave like teenagers with all the consummate drama as well.
Once we had kids we totally removed ourselves from that situation and it fell apart a few years later, after the leader (who was originally a Christian pastor, I might add) got #metoo’ed for (surprise surprise) having sex with half the women in the organization.
The problem is expecting the dogma of a thousands years old tradition and book to be absolutely true. There are things in the Bible and Christianity that are basically tall tales. For example, I doubt Jesus was immaculately conceived, but it makes for a great story. People make up stories about remarkable people. I believe Jesus was a real person who had world-changing insights, but I'm afraid a lot of cruft has built up around him and been carried forward as literal truth.
The challenge for an individual is separating the wheat from the chaff.
Most of my thoughts on the matter are derived from Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You.
1. man serves self and family
2. man serves state and country
3. man serves god
He believed many of our problems are due to most of us still being stuck at level 2 of existence. A man at level 3 is immune to the problems of a man at level 2. For example, they couldn't even compel Jesus w/ bodily harm. They killed him, and what good did it do them?
He also argued that the shift to level 3 is inevitable and already in progress.
If pressed I guess I’ll say it’s unlikely to be true. But that’s not the point. I don’t even care to explain the point really. But both me and my wife ran Meetup groups about being atheist and eventually decided reading Christian philosophy and teachings was a better bet than the slow crushing millstone of the weight of the universe awaiting me behind the curtain of materialism.
There’s a lot of really bad stuff and I think Christianity needs reforming, but I still think it’s the better long term bet in terms of the wellbeing of me and my future generations.