First, a little context.
When I first started frequenting the R&P forum a few months back, I was a fairly devout follower of the Christian faith. I attended Church every sunday, prayed constantly, all the regular stuff you'd expect.
hen I started reading posts in these forums, you guys just pissed me off and annoyed me to no end. I would have sworn that some off you were just bigots here to troll people for their beliefs. Turns out, that was a knee-jerk reaction.
Talking to you all brought up so pretty deep questions that required me to think hard about my beliefs if I had any hope of defending them. It got tiring after awhile, and I eventually went to a pastor at my church for some help.
Long story short, every time I ask a valid question from the perpective of a atheist, he would come back with an answer that I felt was bullshit. I had already been questioning the more WTF parts of the bible and the things the church believed up til then. But this was the final thing that turned off the whole deal. 2 weeks later I was done with the whole thing.
So, here I am now. Lost and incredibly unsure of what I'm suppose to believe. It hasn't been an enlightening experience. Mostly just a completely depressing one. So here are my questions for those he might have gone through something similar.
1) How did you deal with it? Was it easy for you to except the new world view?
2)What were your moral values like afterwards? Did you still find yourself holding the same views in other areas.
And to any atheist, honestly, how do you not give into nihilism? The thought that there might not be anything after this might be the most fuck up part of this whole thing.