Tag Archive for depression

brendan.murphy | January 7, 2012
2 comments

Atheism, Mental Illness, and Coping

I want to preface this piece a little bit. I originally wrote it several months ago, when the storm of blogging about mental illness was just getting started among the popular atheist community bloggers, as an argument for why Skepticism should pick up mental illness as a talking point. We’ve seen Jen McCreight and Greta Christina come out and discuss mental illness, JT Eberhard give a tearjerker talk at Skepticon IV, and many others come out to our community (including your own Ellen Lundgren). So while I may have missed the boat a little bit, it is never too late to discuss something which afflicts a very significant portion of the population, claiming many of those lives as well.

I don’t suffer from mental illness, but I’ve become intimately acquainted with it in many folks whom I love and care for, and they deserve my help and support. So, color me an advocate.

Time and time again, when dealing with socially defined taboos – and the groups of people directly affected by them – we see that closets with closed doors leave the isolated in the dark. And in combating this, we’ve seen various movements towards yanking these closet doors wide open within the skeptic & atheist, LGBTQ, and mental health communities. As is often discussed (here by Greta Christina), the relationships between and, albeit partial, intertwinement of the LGBTQ and atheist movements have offered both groups new and effective coping mechanisms. Atheists have learned how to come out of their closets and into the streets in droves, and the LGBTQ community has been offered more prominent humanistic perspectives and secular reasoning to add to their, and everyone’s, arsenal for why people with non-heteronormative sexualities deserve to be treated as humans. Sufferers of mental illness deserve this same support network, and it’s time for secularism to help blow the doors off the closet of neurochemical imbalances.

Psychological studies have shown that, in later life, depression and psychological decline can be abated by the presence of religious influence1. In their review, “Religion and depression in later life,” Braam et al. found that late-life religiousness mostly negatively correlates with depressive symptoms, and the association is more pronounced in elderly Americans in poor health. Further, they outline four dimensions of religiousness which may affect psychological states, to varying degrees: cognitive – beliefs and convictions, affective – spirituality and religious trust, behavioural – church attendance and private practices, and motivational – personal importance. It is clear that cognitive and affective religiousness can directly influence psychological states related to depressive moods, and the social support networks present in religious communities are exactly why so many skeptical people within churches fear the dive away. And once depressed, it’s possible for affected individuals to positively influence remission through religious salience.1

So how does secularism even begin to touch that? It’s often argued that even if beliefs and hopes are false, they should be left alone if people find personal comfort in them; PZ Myers will be one of the first to say that false hopes are socially damaging and should be avoided (he noted this in a panel discussion at the University of Minnesota in 2011), but how can atheism work to replace the documented positive effects of religiousness in certain mental health patients? We start by talking about the origins of mental illness, delusions, and neurodegeneration in reality-based, scientific terms.

The mind/body duality, as well as allusions to divine intervention, promoted by various religions and philosophies over the centuries are intrinsically damaging to the acceptance and treatment of mental illness. Colloquially known as the “it’s all in your head” falsehood, the concept of mental illness as being separated or excluded from obvious physical illness is cemented by the very idea of separation between the psyche and the body. Depression, social anxiety, and the hosts of other neural misfires from which many of us suffer, are rooted in neurobiology and neurophysiology – but so are the emergent properties of the “mind”, e.g. consciousness and self-awareness. So, the sooner the secular movement stabs at this duality misconception within the context of recognizing mental illnesses as physical diseases, the sooner taboos are killed and closets are emptied.

For the social-network savvy younger generations, taking the plunge and admitting to suffering from mental health issues, without the motivational benefits of religiousness, is less difficult than for those of greater generations. And to address the issues of mental health, false hopes, and atheism at more advanced ages could prove exceedingly hairy due to familial and social implications. The existence of religious community and support networks justifies addressing these issues at such a pivotal time in the human condition, and yeah, we atheists have those too. So with such a plethora of safety nets at our backs, why not start addressing mental illness from a secular perspective – at any age? Especially considering that “atheistic belief-based coping can be as effective as religious belief-based coping in helping individuals adapt to various issues that accompany ageing and old age”.2 In their findings from a case study pairing 11 subjects with strong atheistic beliefs with 8 strongly religious subjects, Wilkinson and Coleman write the following:

“Considering Dawkins’s four traditional functions of religious belief [explanation, guidance, consolation, and inspiration], [-], this study provides some evidence that a strong atheistic belief system fulfils [sic] the same role in people’s lives as a strong religious belief system in terms of the explanations, moral guidance, consolation and inspiration that beliefs bring. While science has arguably long surpassed any religion’s explanation of life and the universe, and while man’s moral nature is beginning to be examined in terms of evolutionary psychology, Dawkins admits that religion may trump an atheist’s worldview when it comes to issues of consolation (Dawkins 2006). He no more than suggests that an atheistic outlook on life is just as inspiring as a religious one, if not more so (Dawkins 1998, 2006). Virtually all the interviewed atheists at some point mentioned how inspiring they find science and that their understanding of one’s infinitesimally small position in material reality helped them transcend their own problems.”

If religion truly trumps atheism in the consolation and comfort of mental illness patients, it is only through external consolation and the deportation of control and personal influence. In accepting our depressions, our anxieties, and our personality disorders as physical ailments of the brain, we’re rejecting the religiously-enforced idea that there is something metaphysical about our minds – that there is an impassible gap between our bodies and the roots of mental illness. In discussing mental illness and coping mechanisms within the secular movement, we’re creating a safe space for affected individuals outside of organized religions. And in offering up our communities and compassion to closeted sufferers of mental illness, atheists can protect and advocate for yet another bloc of misinterpreted, misunderstood, and mislabeled people.

Sources

  1. Braam, A. W., Beekman, A. T. F., and van Tilburg, W. Religion and depression in later life. Current Opinion in Psychiatry. Volume 12(4), July 1999, pp. 471-475.
  2. Wilkinson, P. J., and Coleman, P. G. Strong beliefs and coping in old age: a case-based comparison of atheism and religious faith. Ageing & Society, Cambridge University Press. Volume 30, 2010, pp. 337-361.
Category: Opinion, Religion, Science | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Astrid Lydia Johannsen | December 21, 2011
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Winter Solstice

It's a long night ahead. The longest.

Today is the winter solstice, and I am very happy about that. I have an affinity for the winter solstice over any other celebrated day in the month of December for a couple of reasons. First, it’s a reminder to me of when I identified as a Wiccan, then a garden-variety pagan, and lived my life in tune with the changing of the seasons and the rhythms of the natural world. For nearly ten years during the 1990s, I was a practicing pagan, and though I was effectively an atheist at that time I didn’t really believe in gods and goddesses. They were myths and archetypes of past generations, echoes of what was important and essential to people now long gone. I would read these myths, such as the story of Persephone and Demeter and the mythical reason why autumn exists in the world. I knew these myths weren’t true because I knew the scientific reason why there are seasons, but that scientific knowledge never diminished my appreciation for the stories.

It’s the knowledge that axial tilt is the reason for the seasons that is the other reason why I celebrate the winter solstice. As someone who suffers from clinical depression, that depression is exacerbated by the reduced amount of daylight hours during winter, as well as the reduced amount of sunlight from overcast skies. The winter solstice is a happy turning point which my rational mind understands. After this long winter night, the days will once again get longer as the tilt of the Earth wobbles around to get more direct sunlight, warmer and longer days. The nights won’t get any longer than this night tonight, and that helps me to keep the beasties of depression at bay for a little while longer.

However, the winter solstice marks the beginning of winter, which means that even though daylight hours will increase, the weather will be getting colder and inclement (at least in my part of the world). That means cloudy skies and no direct sunlight. Despite more daytime, January and February are rough on the psyche.

Nevertheless, I shall celebrate the turning of the season with my satsuma (representative of the sun moving back north in the sky), and with the knowledge that the sunrise tomorrow will usher in longer days ahead.

Happy Solstice!

Category: Focus on Religion, General | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Ellen Lundgren | December 4, 2011
3 comments

Why Bullying Must Stop

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

I always thought this phrase was bullshit. Pardon my french. Sure, words won’t hurt you physically, until it turns your life to utter hell like Jonas here and you start cutting yourself in second grade.

Bullies seem to have no idea how their words are so damaging. As a bullied child, I still can’t see how it works, how they’re okay with their lives having made someone else’s so miserable.

It was difficult to watch this video since I identify so much with how he’s feeling. I never cut myself, and I’m not homosexual, but I was bullied and called names including ‘lesbo,’ to the point that denying it only got me bullied even more. This lead to a lonely life and deep depression where suicide was on my mind.

Lately some legislature has been going through in Michigan that puts restrictions on bullying with the exception of religious reasons. So essentially bullying is okay, as long as you have a religious excuse to do so. So imagine those middle schoolers calling kids ‘fag’ and ‘homo,’ then the teacher or administrator coming by and telling him to stop. The kid can just whip out, “Oh but my Bible says fags are going to hell, that’s all I was saying,” and that’s excusable. WTF?!?!?!

Basically… bullying needs to stop. We need better enforcement in our education system to allow teachers to intervene without risking their jobs, better education for the students to realize that bullying isn’t only harmful to others, it will harm their lives as well if they don’t stop. Schools should be a safe place for students, not the terror that they’ve turned into for many including myself.

Category: Lifestyle, News | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Ellen Lundgren | November 25, 2011
2 comments

Response to Mental Illness

I received this email shortly after posting my guest piece on JT’s blog and I thought I’d share it here.

_______________________

This is not to take you up on your (generous) offer of help, but because I would like to thank you for opening up and reaching out.

It makes me happy to see someone to talk about mental health on this personal level and every time I see someone do it, I find their courage… well, encouraging.

There’s still a lot of fear and shame involved when it comes to psychological disorders and I suspect there are many people who feel alone with their problems because nobody wants to be the first to talk about it. This doesn’t only make people feel worse, it also prevents timely treatment.

For me, knowing that there is a name for my problems -I’ve struggled with an eating disorder for about a decade and suspect that as yet undiagnosed depression and anxiety have played an irritatingly large part in my life – and knowing that I am not alone, made it easier to take both myself and my problems more seriously and not to have them dismissed.

Sad as it is that others are suffering too, knowing their stories can be comforting. I can relate very well to the social anxiety part and am glad to hear this has gotten better for you as well.

Stepping forward and reaching out was a brave thing to do. As was your decision to face your psychological issues and work on them.

I don’t know what your background on psychology is, but I was quite impressed with the tricks and techniques you used to pull yourself up. “Fake it till you make it” is a great strategy, isn’t it?

Also, I always find it encouraging if people talk about their personal successes and become living proof things can get better.

That the tackling of the topic isn’t accompanied by religious sentiments and the claim that you somehow need faith to find comfort and strength to recover, seems almost like a bonus.

For me, a naturalistic worldview has gone hand in hand with the idea the concept of mental disorders as being no different from any other health problem. I think this makes it more difficult to jude people with psychological disorders but points the way towards inverstigation and understanding of mental health. I find that view quite liberating as I was struggling with a lot of feelings of guilt in shame in addition to my other problems. So, I’m happy to see the topic discussed within the sceptic community as I think scepticism might be a natural ally when it comes to evidence-based forms of therapy and overcoming prejudice.

So I guess the whole point of this email is to say : Yay, Ellen :D!
Again, thank you very much for that post.

Best wishes,
Julia

_________________

Thank you very much to Julia for sending me this email and allowing me to publish her response. I wanted to share this because she has made many great points herself on how sharing your story can help others, and how it’s possible to overcome such disorders without needing religion to do it. I hope her response continues to help others to see that mental illness is beatable and there are ways to get through it with the help of others. Rah, rah, skeptics!

Category: Lifestyle | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Astrid Lydia Johannsen | November 23, 2011
One comment

That Blue Time of Year

Here in the United States, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. And with it comes a time of year that I don’t exactly look forward to. While I am indeed one of those atheists who balks at the Christmas season, it is not the holiday that I’m talking about. It is the winter blues that makes the season so particularly unbearable for me.

[Trigger warning: Self harm.]

I’ve written about my depression in previous posts, but I don’t think I mentioned just how severe of an impact it has had on my life. I have suffered from the mental illness of clinical depression for all of my life, and every winter when the daylight wanes and the skies turn grey, my depression becomes ever more severe. Depression is a dullness that lingers throughout the whole body. It’s like listening to the world through sound-blocking headphones. It’s like seeing the world through lenses that make everything monochrome. Depression is feeling numb every minute of every hour of every day and not being able to do anything about it no matter what kind of concentration or effort is mustered. In high school, I took up the desperate habit of cutting my arms with razor blades just so I could get a brief respite from the seemingly inescapable grip of depression. And four times in my life I have attempted suicide because of depression. Though I’ve abandoned the cutting, I still retain the scars of my coping mechanism. The depression lingers, and I must find new and more constructive ways of dealing with it.

I read an article recently about a study claiming that regular religious service attendance staved off depression in post-menopausal women. It would have been nice for the demographics of the study to be a little broader, but it was enough to get me thinking about why it might be the case that regular religious services would help to prevent depression. Most likely it is not the religiousness that treats the melancholy, but rather the social interaction. As an atheist, I don’t exactly have a kind of social group that gathers on a weekly basis in the same way that many religious folk do, although for a while after I graduated from the University of Oregon I did attend weekly meetings of the university Alliance of Happy Atheists. That did meet my need for regular social interaction as well as my preference for being in the company of like-minded folk. However, I left the group for a couple of reasons. The first is that I was no longer a student, and the second was that even if I was still a student, the age difference between myself and the majority of the group members was enough to make things socially awkward for me. Given the choice between staying at home with my cat or attending a group in which I was feeling increasingly like the odd one out (probably an artifact entirely of my imagining), I opted for the company of my cat in a decision that could only be seen as the early stages of becoming a reclusive and crazy old cat lady.

Isolation only helps to reinforce the numbness of depression, and with the longer nights and greyer skies, the added challenge of seasonal depression rears its ugly head. I don’t take anti-depressants because I’m concerned about how they will affect my creativity. The only time I was ever on anti-depressants was sometime during or immediately after high school, and they dropped me into a catatonic stupor. So the tools I use to fight against the formidable foe of depression are the following: better nutrition, adequate exercise, my full-spectrum lamp, and my fuzzy kittycat. I’m also forcing myself out of my apathy by forcing myself to do things which involve more human interaction. Going to the patisserie for a coffee and cheesecake, joining a local writer’s group, or even making regular visits to my local rock climbing gym (which is something I’ve yet to actually go do).

Depression is an indiscriminate disease which hits atheists and believers alike. In my case, the key to beating it (or at the very least, managing it), is to have a social safety net of friends and allies who (and this is the key part) live in the same city as me and can be available when I need some emotional support. The internet is a wonderful place to communicate with folks, but it is a very lousy place to find help when I am feeling depressed, or worse, suicidal. However finding a local social circle, especially as an atheist, can be a serious challenge. It’s one among a handful of other issues I have (which I won’t get into here) that discourage me from seeking out friendships in my local community, and thus feed the isolation that breeds more depression.

For now, I take solace with my online cohorts. Though as fun as they are, they aren’t an adequate substitute for a live, in-person pub buddy who will be there for me to have a pint and share sorrowful (or mirthful) stories.

Category: Focus on Religion, General | Tags: , , , , , , ,
Ellen Lundgren | November 21, 2011
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Skeptics Can Champion Mental Illness

Still recovering from a tearful reaction to the last talk of Skepticon IV by my friend JT Eberhard on mental illness. He shared JT Eberhard on Mental Illness. I have to say that it’s the ballsiest thing I could imagine doing, and I am so damn proud that he did that, I don’t even have the words. I’ve also shared my story on my struggle with mental illness on a guest post on JT’s blog just days before this, but writing down a rambling narrative of my story seems pathetic compared to spilling your struggles and emotions and life out to a live audience. But I think both methods are tremendously important as a start to breaking the negative stigma and blaming the victim that happens to people with mental disorders in our society.

We, with mental disorders, need people looking out for those with these struggles because most of the time we won’t help ourselves. We don’t want to be a burden, we don’t want people to think we’re crazy, and we spend a lot of our time blending in and hiding our real feelings. We need you looking for us, making us get help. There may be resistance, but don’t let us hide from assistance when there is a better way to live. No one has to live with depression, anxiety, anorexia, paranoia, obsessive compulsive disorder, any of it. We have the support and medical science to help you live a normal life.

I have to give props and respect to the Skepticon attendees for their reaction of support for JT and it makes me hopeful that we, as skeptics, can take on this cause and conquer it.

So if you have depression, anxiety, or other mental issues, please, read my story, JT Eberhard on Mental Illness, do research on medications, talk to a friend, get the help you need. If you have gone through a similar situation, share your story. Tell friends and family what you went through so we can begin to break the stigma that mental illness means you’re “crazy.”

If you are one of the lucky ones not to have a mental disorder, do research on how to look for external symptoms of these problems. Find out how to help someone who might have these issues. We need to champion this cause in the skeptic movement. We need to show the inhumanity of how we treat those with mental illness and we need to show our humanity and help these TREATABLE illnesses.

Category: Activism, Conferences, Lifestyle | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Astrid Lydia Johannsen | November 16, 2011
4 comments

The Bouncy Nihilist

Love stinks. Yeah yeah.

Moments before I declared myself to be an atheist, I came to the realization that I was a nihilist. There is no intrinsic or objective meaning to life, the universe, and everything, no matter what number is offered as an answer. (Forty-two is not Numberwang. Sorry.) Even though I had spent much of my high school and junior college education studying physics, astronomy, and cosmology, and I had some clue as to the irrelevance of our precious blue gem adrift in the inky blackness of space, it wasn’t the Big Bang, it wasn’t galactic, stellar, or planetary formation, it wasn’t evolution that made me realize the meaninglessness of it all. It was unrequited love that tipped me over into nihilism. Unrequited love. How sappy is that?

When I was younger, I strongly identified with the archetype of the hopeless romantic. I was drawn to the idea that love was one of those things that could withstand the test of time, overcome adversity, and heal all wounds. In short, I was spoon-fed a greeting card lie and I believed it. I believed with every fiber of my being that somewhere out there in this callous, unfeeling, insensitive world, there was someone for me who would love me unconditionally and whom I would love equally unconditionally. But it was all a candy-coated fantasy surrounding a bitter pill which I was unprepared to swallow when I finally woke up from my delusion.

When I came to my senses that day, I was depressed. Not just because it finally sunk in through my thick skull that the Hollywood fantasy of love was a lie, but that I had been suckered into it for so long. I was depressed and angry at myself, and so I turned to what I had known about in my youth yet never fully embraced, the meaninglessness and the absurdity of it all, and decided that I wasn’t going to be a sucker anymore.

I don’t know what it’s like to leave a religion because I was never a member of one, but I imagine it’s something akin to what I experienced with my realization about love. There’s no such thing as unconditional love. It always comes with fine print. The same is true for the gods who claim unconditional love. (It’s always with conditions.) Gods are a fantasy for people who aren’t comfortable with the notion that life doesn’t have a grand purpose or an ultimate goal. Actually that’s probably one of the most beautiful things about life: it doesn’t have to be anything. It just is.

Somewhere out there, an alien astronomer is looking out into her own Hubble Deep Field and seeing our galaxy as a single pixel of light.

The Earth is just one object, among hundreds of thousands of other objects, orbiting a nondescript star. And that star is just one among one hundred billion other stars, each with hundreds of thousands of objects in orbit around them in this galaxy alone. And this galaxy is just one among … there are probably more galaxies in the universe than there are digits for a number large enough to quantify those galaxies. Infinity. (Now that’s Numberwang.) And yet there are people on this wee little planet who insist that our world was specifically designed by a benevolent, omnipotent creator for harboring human life. Yet look at how many places on our planet alone that will kill us if we went there. The idea of a god creating the world specifically for humankind was ludicrous to me before I arrived at atheism. Now it seems positively unfathomable to me how the human mind could fall victim to such an insidious idea.

But then I pause to reflect on what a religious or spiritual person might say to me upon learning that I do not subscribe to the notion of objective meaning, or the idea that there is a teleological reason for human existence. They would likely look upon me with great pity, or great contempt. I imagine they would see me as a heartless, amoral monster devoid of something like a conscience, a soul, or some other intangible essence that would successfully classify me as human. But I am indeed human. I eat. I sleep. I breathe. I complain about complicated tax forms. I grumble when the weather is cold. I smile at the pungent scent of a bouquet of lilies. I draw silly scribbles and write bad poetry. I look up at the stars and marvel at their beauty. I grow hair in places I wished didn’t grow hair. I do human things.

Ah, they say, but believing in a god is a human thing. Yes, I reply, and so is violently taking the life of another human being. Not all of us do those things, though many have been known to do them both: one in the name of the other. And for what? To proclaim to all the other ants on the anthill that theirs is the true imaginary friend and all others are false? I choose not to participate in this practice of belief in a god. Whether gods exist or not, they are not required in my worldview in order for me to lead a happy and fulfilling life.

The most pointless candy of all.

I will look at the stars and how they cluster together into galaxies. I will look at the rocks and strata of this planet of ours and see how its pieces fit together. I will admire the beauty of flora and fauna. I will relish the diversity of architecture, cuisine, music, literature, and so many other aspects of human cultures from all over our tiny blue pearl in space. These things don’t require meaning to be enjoyed. “Candy doesn’t have to have a point. That’s why it’s candy.”

We are children on a playground with only the bell of death to call us back in to non-existence, but the bullies of dogma, orthodoxy, orthopraxy, keep us from being able to truly enjoy ourselves during our inconsequential fraction of a moment of existence which we have in this universe. Falling out of love with love was a sorrow to be sure, but it has opened my eyes up to a whole new way of looking at my place in the cosmos. I do not need a purpose for the cosmos to be, nor a telos for the cosmos to move toward. I will never understand the nature of reality. It will always be a great enigma to me. And I’m okay with that mystery.

Category: Focus on Religion, General, Opinion, Religion | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Astrid Lydia Johannsen | September 21, 2011
One comment

Depression Is Not A Pathology Of Atheism

Vincent Van Gogh - On the Threshold of Eternity

I remember nothing of the beginning. I only have hearsay accounts that I was naught but a passive observer of my world. I relied solely on my genetic predisposition from countless generations of human evolution in order to make assessments of my immediate surroundings. After a bit of time had gone by, and I had gleaned as much information as I could without the benefit of asking questions, I began to open my mouth and start talking. I analyzed the data from years of observation and hands-on research and asked myself, “How did we get here?

I was seven years old when I started asking myself this question. Note that the emphasis is on the word ‘here’ and not on the word ‘get’. Out of the infinite possibilities that could have happened during the development of human civilization, we somehow wound up with this one. A significant part of me felt cheated, as though I had been forced into a world whose rules I did not and could not consent to in advance. I was just a child, and yet I had already succumbed to the depression brought on by contemplating myself and my place in this world.

Our world is such an absurd place with arbitrary rules which were enacted and enforced by individuals and institutions long before even my greatest of great-grandparents were just a statistical probability in the reproductive organs of their ancestors. I grew angry with the power structures set in place by my culture, and I grew despondent at how unwilling and incapable I seemed to be at fitting in to these existing structures. Shape up. Sit still. Pay attention. Stop it. Behave. Don’t touch that. Follow the rules. Gradually, through trial and error, I began to figure out these rules, though I still don’t like them. Following the rules always brings me back to the question of “How did we get here?”, and another question, “Why these rules?”. Though I was still only in elementary school, I was asking myself if there was some purpose to life, and I also began contemplating suicide. I hadn’t even reached double-digit age yet and I was contemplating suicide. Depression indeed. I was vulnerable and longing for answers, and potentially susceptible to the allure of easy answers from religion.

For someone like me who strives to understand the world in a lofty philosophical kind of way, it might make sense that religion would be alluring to some degree, particularly if there is a solid existential philosophy behind it. Life would be so much more bearable if I simply believed in a god or in an afterlife, and relied on that faith to keep my mind from falling down the hole of existential psychosis. It would be so simple to dupe myself into a false sense of security that there is some objective meaning to life, and that there will be a release from suffering accompanied by everlasting bliss. I could be angry at a god for making me the way I am, suffering from crippling depression, or made queer in a world that hates queer folk, then forgive that same god for cursing me with such afflictions because the long-term benefits of eternal tranquility would outweigh the short-term tribulations of a mere human lifetime.

Albrecht Durer - Melancholia

I live inside my thoughts most of the time. I’m slow to process information because I ruminate over things for a great deal of time before I come to a decision. I have always been this way. Consequently, I simply could not trick myself into believing such an easy answer even if it might lead to alleviating my depression concerning my place in the cosmos. It would be like putting a band-aid on a severed limb, or sticking my head in the sand to hide from the world. It is not a viable philosophy because it does not address how I can deal with my problems in the here and now. So I look for solutions elsewhere by turning to science.

Through science I have learned that depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain that can be treated via a number of different methods ranging from dietary to nutritional to pharmaceutical. And knowing that my depression is a result of biology, and not some vengeful deity that enjoys watching me suffer, gives me a greater sense of autonomy and command over my situation. I am not a puppet put on Earth for the personal amusement of some petulant god. I am the result of thousands of years of human civilization, millions of years of evolution, and billions of years of cosmic evolution. There is beauty and splendor in the cosmos that I likely would have ignored or dismissed had I followed a religious path. The atoms that make up my body come from the universe itself, the debris of long-dead stars. These same atoms will still be present long after my body has died and rotted away. For me, knowing the past and future of the constituent material making up my body is far superior to any speculation of reincarnation or an afterlife.

I still experience depression, but I use the one tool I have at my disposal to combat it: a rational mind. Proper nutrition and exercise certainly help though. I choose to not take anti-depressants because I’m not convinced of their efficacy, but regardless of how I treat it, it’s important to articulate that depression is not a pathology of atheism. Being an atheist does not lead to a life of depression and hopelessness. While there is likely no objective meaning to life, the universe, and everything (aside from perhaps an arbitrary number), I have created meaning for myself through my love of history and of science, by my knowledge and understanding of the workings of our universe, and also because of my own big question nagging at the nape of my neck since my childhood, “How did we get here?”. That question forced me to learn about my world, to look past snake oil salesmen with their easy solutions, and to decide for myself what would see me through.

Category: Focus on Religion | Tags: , , , , , ,
Elizabeth Knapp | July 11, 2011
4 comments

How do I know god is dead? Because I went to his funeral

The journey from faith to reason is not as easy as others may perceive. It is as brutal and heart-wrenching as any other funeral for a dead loved one. I was raised to believe that a benevolent consciousness had his eye on little-speck-on-the-earth me. I was raised to believe that my only joy could be serving him only, and my only purpose could be doing his will only. I was raised to believe that there was a higher plan that could make all the chaos, destruction and suffering in the world make sense–that my own suffering could make sense. That when I cried, Jesus cried with me. And realizing that god did not exist was like the time I realized my parents had been lying to me about Santa Clause…only it was about a hundred times stronger.

When you are raised to believe that god is the center of everything, he becomes the center of your internal, complicated universe. He was the center like the sun, and just as the universe would be throw into utter disarray if the sun was removed–when god was removed, my inner universe was shattered.
It has been a few years since I went to god’s funeral, enough time to rebuild my universe with real things, based on fact and not fiction. I’ve been able to find new meaning, new purpose, and a more gratifying reason for life. I’ve been able to find contentment, acceptance and peace. A peace that can be understood.

Grief for god has the same stages as any loss.

1. Denial – you dont want to believe it is true. You will do anything to deny it, and pretend you havent seen it for yourself.

2. Anger – you become angry at the world, at the people that lied to you, at the people that give you the facts, or even at your own self for doubting. You may even become angry at this “god” that will not answer you, not offer up proof.

3. Bargaining – “God, if you make these strawberries smell like pineapples, I will believe. If you just speak to me just once, I will believe. Show me a sign and I will believe in you.”

4. Depression – you can’t deny it anymore. It is true, and it hurts. Who am I, without god? What does life mean, without god? Can there be good or beauty without god? Does anything really matter anymore? I dont think I even want to live anymore, now that I know.

5. Acceptance – you realize that this world can still be beautiful, still be meaningful, and even be better without god. You are at peace, and you are ready to make your one brief moment in existence worthwhile to both yourself and others.

I am writing this for the ones that may be on the fence, or the ones that may be grieving at god’s tombstone right now, as I write. No matter what your decision may be, I hope you maintain your ability to critically think. Never let anyone try to asphixiate your curiosity. For the sake of yourself, and humanity.

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