Living without God

I don’t feel so good recently.  My mood has switched into something nameless.  I can’t describe it; a kind of shaky deadness.  The way you’d imagine carrion  scraps stitched to brown bone shivering in the wind.

Mental illness and religion have a long association. Even the language used to describe mental illness is heavily reliant on the ideals of spirituality. We overcome our demons. We walk with angels. We have faith in our recoveries.

Many people see their psychotic experiences as valuable because it bought them closer to god. “Hyperreligiousity” appears as a symptom of a manic episode, and I, without god, have experienced it too. I went through a phase where I was buoyant in the belief that I was a chosen disciple, that I was blessed by god. I also went though a period where I believed that Satan lived in my bedroom.

There is the old adage that if Jesus existed these days and went around declaring himself the messiah he’d be sectioned. And we regard David Shayler and David Icke (it seems that David is the mandatory name for a Messiah complex) as ever so slightly mental. Anyone remotely unusual is somebody that we say is mental.

There are times in which I cherish my lack of spirituality. I have absolutely no spiritual beliefs whatsoever. I don’t believe in god, angels, karma, any sort of afterlife, wiccanism, satan and ghosts. I have absolutely no interest in New Age-ism, reiki, holistic therapies, alternative therapies, the occult, the alignment of the moon and the seas, in anything like that. It doesn’t mean that I dislike people who are interested in such things. It just doesn’t hold my attention. Whereas I don’t believe in god, I am still interested in god as an idea. To me, god is simply the most primitive, and enduring, form of law.

This might portray me as a staid scientist with a lack of morals but I believe in love, in human abilities, in compassion, kindness and joy. However, do I think that humans are naturally good? No, not really. However, I think our goodness is hampered by outdated bigoted doctrine that has a frightening influence on society. A society based upon by religion will never progress because questions become blasphemy. That law and morality is founded upon dusty tomes written by humans years ago scares me. The basis of holy texts; take the bible as an example, are sound. Love thy neighbour, respect your parents, give to the needy. But those principles got lost somewhere and others are twisted around a politic to give it credibility. Religions are exclusionist, and my principles are inclusionist, that we should work towards a better world together, with humanity as one. While not quite joining hands around this rocky star, then something close would be ideal for me. A “stick to your own” is a hallmark of an oppressive society; think of white nationalism. A “stick to your own” applies too with religious extremism. Even non-extremism. And it is a selfish, self preserving notion that does not benefit humanity one iota.

But.

There is a difference between faith and religion. And faith, pure, goose-feathered, floating, joyous faith, untarnished by hatred and traditional responsibility, is something that I admire. It takes strength to have faith in anything, but especially something that you cannot tangibly feel. Of course, people would argue that god’s presence is everywhere, that this is his creation, so how could you not have faith? My rational mind just believes that we’re primates crawling upon cragged mountain faces. I still marvel at the veins pulsing through heart-shaped leaves. It doesn’t mean that I do not gaze in awe at the sky and try to fathom how we came into being. It’s just that my initial conclusions do not involve seven days.

So what meaning do psychotic religious experiences have to an atheist? What meaning does any of this have to an atheist?

I see my own religious mania as a symptom of my mental illness. What a dull way to see it, but that’s how it is. It, like so much more of my psychosis, has no basis in reality whatsoever, no connection to my rational, ordinary beliefs. It was as ridiculous to me as thinking that Danny John Jules was stalking me.

Meaning in life, however, is rather different. This is where my admiration of faith is so expressed; that meaning, that universal feeling of being loved, and being a part of the world, of being a child of god, is a beautiful idea. I often feel extremely lonely in this. There is no “greater purpose” to my suffering, to any suffering. It is just crying into the dark, and not understanding why, or how. I do have great love for humanity, but it is lost in hatred for myself. Living without god means that there are no answers. There are only a thousand unanswered questions. And knowing, as I do in my “soul”, or that pit of ourselves where our fears and loves dwell, that this is it, is exhilarating in the right frame of mind, but so deeply depressing in another, when you realise that your life is ticking away, without consequence, with a mind that conspires against you, and a body that is cracking under its pressure.

Faith is such a plainly necessary creation. It is a natural device for coping with pain. To believe that there is more, that there is an afterlife, that we are not just bone and meat, means that when we say goodbye to our loved ones, it is only just for a moment, and that we will be reunited with them again. To believe in a soul that dwells beyond our weak form, and to believe that the soul is unbreakable and eternal, is a beautiful thing.

I am jealous of that, I guess. A few months after my dad died, I found myself slumped against a wall, howling into the wind and sobbing to the sky to come back, please, come back. With all the losses I’ve endured I have cried into pillows and simply not been able to cope with the thought that it is useless, that it will bring them back. The pain is intense, and neverending. That it is meaningless is hard to cope with. For those who I have watched suffer and die, and those in the world who continue to suffer and die, my lack of faith means that it was no reason, and that there is no penance. Knowing that my dad was also an atheist, and so afraid of death, his dying to me was excruciating, knowing that fear, knowing I could do nothing to comfort him.

Living without god, for me, is being utterly self reliant. No amount of praying, although I do appreciate it when people have prayed for me, is going to help me. So, I turn to those other gods, psychiatrists, the medical profession, who truly have powers over life and death, to help me. And the strength can only come from within, so what do you do when you feel weak? What do you do then?

For a while I believed in some sort of karma. In my own selfish world, it was that life must be kinder to me in other ways because I spent so long as the mercy of madness and destruction, and because of the continuing struggle against that madness. This, I reckoned, is enough to cope with, because I’m twenty two, I did not hurt anybody, I didn’t do anything to deserve it. But life wasn’t so kind, and isn’t, and I wonder why. I watch it try to slam me into the dust and I watch good people go through awful things and I don’t know why. It can’t be luck, because luck is a certain kind of nameless faith. And if I believe it is because I am bad, then who is punishing me? So I reasoned, that it is just how life is.

There are times when I lie awake in the dark, staring at the same spot for hours, willing some sort of shape to form and whisper to me why. But it is not there, and never will be. So I turn around, kiss Rob’s sleeping shoulder, and recognise that my meaning is to live this finite amount of years as best I can, to love, and to be loved.