Jump to content

Question to OCD atheists


Recommended Posts

This post is aimed mainly at any atheists on here. I have been obsessing over "the meaning of life" for the past couple of weeks. I don't really believe there is one (which stems from my scientific beliefs) and this has never bothered me before but I have become quite depressed from this. Of course I believe we can create our own meaning but that is not my concern. I keep thinking about how futile life is. What's the point in doing anything if we just die one day? You could say to create a legacy but that will one day die too with the universe. I can't seem to get out of this mindset. I've been here before but it seems worse right now.

I feel so incredibly alone in the universe.

Link to comment
Guest nervous

I am not an atheist but I am logical person and I search for more answers than I find which probably why I am on this forum in the first place. Yes from a logical scientific standpoint there is little point to our lives especially when there are billions of people on this planet already. Think of a mole blindly digging through the ground in search of food, what possible reason does the mole have for continuing other than survival? But us humans were given the gift and the curse of an intelligence. The question. What do we do with it? Answer. That's up to you to decide. It has long been pondered what the meaning of life is and I don't think anyone can agree on an answer. The only common point to agree on is that people need something to believe in or they have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.

Link to comment

Hey CB, i'm not an atheist, but I have struggled with these same obsessive worries myself. It can be scary, and I've tried the traditional methods of fighting it, arguing with my own mind that of course there is meaning, and of course, as OCD does it always fires back with questions and doubts. I know its OCD because when I'm not having issues with my OCD, these sort of thoughts don't even occur to me or are easily dismissed. My advice is to just treat these thoughts like any other OCD worry, try not to let yourself dwell on it, try not to analyze it or argue with it, those are just compulsions. Hang in there, you can get through this.

Link to comment

I myself did go through a "anti-religious" phase I now am an agnostic. I do love science very much and it has always been an interest of mine. I don't think that science shows us that life has no meaning I think this is a fictitious stereotype of science. in fact I think things like evolution and big bang do not conflict with a god. The negative mindset that you are experiencing my be depression. have you encountered this before? :albert:

Link to comment

I myself did go through a "anti-religious" phase I now am an agnostic. I do love science very much and it has always been an interest of mine. I don't think that science shows us that life has no meaning I think this is a fictitious stereotype of science. in fact I think things like evolution and big bang do not conflict with a god. The negative mindset that you are experiencing my be depression. have you encountered this before? :albert:

I've been through this a few times before. I'm not sure whether it's an inevitable consequence of my atheism or depression. I would disagree, I do not think a scientific mindset is compatible with a belief in a god. They are antithetic of each other. Science relies on evidence and that alone. I won't go on now though.

Link to comment

Hello there! Your post caught my eye, as I have also suffered from existentialist type OCD thoughts at times. I think that your feelings are definitely a consequence of your depression rather than your atheism. The atheists I know without OCD are fulfilled, and at peace with the universe. I am not a CBT or Exposure therapy specialist, but I wonder if a treatment expert would encourage you to sit with these thoughts: as in so what if there is no point to existence? Does it matter if life is random, and a consequence of the physics of the universe. It might be worth remembering that at some time, everybody has some kind of difficult thoughts about life and its meaning: whether you are atheist, agnostic or religious, nobody%2

Link to comment

(continued) - nobody is immune from this. The issue is that people without OCD do not ruminate obsessively and anxiously on it.

I wonder if that helps. I hope so. But I am no expert. If things are really getting you down, maybe it's time to get some treatment going.

Kind regards

Tez :p

Link to comment

I am an atheist but I find great meaning and beauty in life. I agree this sounds like OCD/depression rather than a natural consequence of atheism. I think that the way to tackle this is not to agonise over death and the seeming pointlessness of it all - like any OCD thought, agonising and ruminating never brings you the solution and peace you want. The key is to just allow that anxiety to be there, get busy with something else, focus on what's going on right now, resist the urge to analyse or seek reassurance from others. It's tough, but it can be done. x

Link to comment
Guest jayjay89

I've had this question as well, my whole life. My problem with it is that I can only conclude that there is no point, so I may as well kill myself now, instead of continuing struggling, for no reason.

I agree that it's probably depression, but that doesn't really prove to me that I am wrong haha.

Let me know if you figure out a better answer!

Link to comment
Guest sophie13

I have this too... it's a mixture of depression&OCD&personal beliefs. My themes with OCD are religious, yet I do not want to believe the same old stories... OCD pretty much destroyed my old beliefs because I checked and checked and nothing made sense... I wish I never had OCD and I was still religious and happy :-) But, since I have OCD and I tried so much to understand GOD, I've come to the conclusion that the GOD from the Bible was impossible to understand... therefore I realized that GOD is everything that is, we are all part of the same substance that lives, dies, lives, dies... yes, I go through moments when I ask myself a million times WHY. My only answer to that is "experience". That is the meaning of life, experience. I have no idea if there is a life after death, I hope there is one... all I know is that I am alive and I can be happy or I can be miserable... When I obsess and obsess about these things, I am miserable.... But that is the OCD and the depression talking... When I was out of the OCD thoughts, I was very happy and I understood the meaning of life. I have no idea if this helps... but try to treat these thoughts as obsessive, try to distract yourself a little even if you feel that nothing makes sense, and think about it later. It is rumination and in time you'll get your answers... it is just that rumination doesn't bring answers, but misery :-)

Link to comment
Guest fiatver

I went through a similar process as well, one day I was in bed, thinking, and suddenly I imagined what would happen with me when I die, and I felt like a cascade of ice cold water down my back, I became very frightened and I started obsessing about death. After a little while, other themes came in but I started using a couple of self-help books to treat my OCD (it was by this time that I realised I had it).

After some time, I came in contact with Zen and I started doing meditation and reading agnostic Zen authors, when someone spoke about it I said that I have no beliefs at all, I just want to accept reality as it is instead of as I want it to be. I also loved science but I thought that science is created by humans and humans can never be certain about anything, therefore science is no certain either. I kind of arrived to a very extreme agnosticism. I just cared about my day to day and nothing else, I didn't think that the big questions of life are worth thinking about, how am I going to know if life has any point? And even if I knew, how can I be sure I am right? Does feeling that you are right means that you are right? What If I feel that I am right and then it happens that I am not right? When I thought about death it just didn't bother anymore me because I accepted that I don't know. Sometimes I thought that life has no point but it didn't bother me. Why do things need to have a point?

And then, one day I was reading a website about something in the news and then I suddenly believed. It wasn't a feeling, I just believed again. It was completely unexpected because I wasn't even interested in religion anymore. I converted back to the Catholicism that I left long ago and I have never looked back again. I read about a buddhist who converted to Catholicism and I realised all the wrong points in my agnosticism and all the wrong ideas I had about what means to believe, what faith is and what science is and the epistemology that sustains it. That was some time ago and at the minute I try to spend my free time reading about the things I like, science, philosophy, and of course my faith. I started the process and I expect to join a religious order in the not too distant future.

Edited by fiatver
Link to comment

I think its not surprising that a disorder of doubt, like OCD, can hit us in an area that could so easily cause distress and anxiety. The meaning of and meaningfulness of life is so ripe for exploitation by OCD. I agree with posters above that this type of worry isn't really about religion or atheism or anything with actual meaning, its OCD hitting us in a way that can hurt us, because that's how it works. The way to deal with it si like you would all OCD related worries and fears, God or no god.

Link to comment

I have been an atheist for a couple of years. I have recently looked into humanism. Theres a good video on youtube by stephen fry from the humanist society called happiness I think and it shows how humanists give meaning to life. Ive recently started to get very interested in science and I love learning about evolution and the universe its actually helping my ocd. I did however go through quite a bit of depression when I became an atheist and also when I became a vegetarian. Xx

Link to comment

Hi Folks,

Of course there is a meaning and purpose to life. But it's taken me a long to appreciate this. I have been fortunate to spend time with people who have dedicated their lives to answering the questìon - who am I? Having spent six months living in an ashram in India, it opened my mind (and heart).

I should point out that I am a physicist, specializing in electronics. I don't accept anything on blind faith. I question, question and question.

For anyone interested in pursuing this further, a good starting point would be the classic work by Dr Viktor Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning".

Anon

Link to comment

I know everyone means well but remember, the real problem here is an OCD obsession with meaning, so we can offer all sorts of affirmations about the meaning of life from atheistic and theistic positions, but that's not going to fix things for CB (and anyone else struggling with this kind of obsession) any more than telling a hand washer the statistics on germ spread will help them. Its about living with the doubt and accepting that these thoughts are from OCD and meaningless noise.

Link to comment

Its about living with the doubt and accepting that these thoughts are from OCD and meaningless noise.

Hi dksea,

I'm not sure it is meaningless noise. It is my view that one of the many factors that may predispose us to OCD is existential anxiety. I know that this was a factor in my case.

Anon

Edited by Anon
Link to comment

So it's not really atheism (not believing in gods) that's making you feel this way, but not believing in an afterlife?

I wouldn't want to believe in an afterlife. I don't like this life, and if this mind persisted into another one it would still have OCD.

I also think that the continuation of consciousness as a stream is an illusion, there is only ever this moment of consciousness and the very next moment is essentially a different phenomenon who simply has access to the memories of the moment of consciousness that have gone before, and falsely identifies with them. I use meditation and philosophical reflection to turn off the activities of the brain that generate the illusion of a self that persists across time. It's called non-duality by many people, it's the essential philosophy of the Eastern religions and mystic branches of Western religions, without the weird supernatural baggage.

That's how I deal with the issue of impermance - I welcome it, it's comforting. It seems that most suffering is caused, and when not caused then compounded, by the illusion that "I" was there experiencing things that have been laid down as memories, and that "I" will be experiencing anything moments, minutes and years from now. Believing the present moment is all there is for "me" at any one time, is my escape, not from reality, but into it. The sense of a persistent body of consciousness ("me") trapped inside a brain and experiencing all the different conscious experiences that the brain generates, until at least the brain's death, does not reflect objective reality, afterall.

Edited by anatta
Link to comment

I've had this theme of rumination before for months, trying to answer these existential questions. Really there is no definitive answer, you just end up going round in circles and getting depressed. I am just thankful for being consciously aware of a fascinating planet, the rest can take care of itself.

There is an article from Fred Penzel from West Suffolk Psych. Serivices about existential OCD, it's worth a read

Link to comment

Thank you all for your replies. I am still feeling depressed but I'm a little more certain these thoughts are a product of my OCD and depression now rather than a consequence of my atheistic worldview. I just have to wait and see when the subside.

Link to comment

So it's not really atheism (not believing in gods) that's making you feel this way, but not believing in an afterlife?

I wouldn't want to believe in an afterlife. I don't like this life, and if this mind persisted into another one it would still have OCD.

I also think that the continuation of consciousness as a stream is an illusion, there is only ever this moment of consciousness and the very next moment is essentially a different phenomenon who simply has access to the memories of the moment of consciousness that have gone before, and falsely identifies with them. I use meditation and philosophical reflection to turn off the activities of the brain that generate the illusion of a self that persists across time. It's called non-duality by many people, it's the essential philosophy of the Eastern religions and mystic branches of Western religions, without the weird supernatural baggage.

That's how I deal with the issue of impermance - I welcome it, it's comforting. It seems that most suffering is caused, and when not caused then compounded, by the illusion that "I" was there experiencing things that have been laid down as memories, and that "I" will be experiencing anything moments, minutes and years from now. Believing the present moment is all there is for "me" at any one time, is my escape, not from reality, but into it. The sense of a persistent body of consciousness ("me") trapped inside a brain and experiencing all the different conscious experiences that the brain generates, until at least the brain's death, does not reflect objective reality, afterall.

Your post reminded me of Susan Blackmore's "The Self Illusion".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb_0dCgVnFI

Link to comment

The problem with Susan Blackmore is that she is a product of Western thinking and she will not open up her mind to the alternatives. That's a real shame for herself and to others to whom she preaches.

Anon

Link to comment

The problem with Susan Blackmore is that she is a product of Western thinking and she will not open up her mind to the alternatives. That's a real shame for herself and to others to whom she preaches.

Anon

Care to expand? Also, as far as I am aware she practices Buddhism, or a form of Buddhism.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...