Finding comfort without Jesus during a pandemic

Started by AcrobaticDetective, March 16, 2020, 09:20:05 PM

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AcrobaticDetective

First of all, just to fill you in on my own personal version of crazy, a part of me blames my deconversion for the pandemic. I am a rational person who knows better, but the thought is haunting.

But what I'm really looking for is solace. If this had happened before my deconversion, I would have been in constant prayer and feeling like all would be okay...I just needed to have faith. Now I feel helpless. Where do you find comfort at a time like this?
"I'm a talking chimpanzee in a hat and you're a grown man in a bat suit. Let them have this."

Mike Cl

Quote from: AcrobaticDetective on March 16, 2020, 09:20:05 PM
First of all, just to fill you in on my own personal version of crazy, a part of me blames my deconversion for the pandemic. I am a rational person who knows better, but the thought is haunting.

But what I'm really looking for is solace. If this had happened before my deconversion, I would have been in constant prayer and feeling like all would be okay...I just needed to have faith. Now I feel helpless. Where do you find comfort at a time like this?
In science and reasoning.  Read about what the cause of the virus is, how it is transmitted and what to do about it.  Then do it.  At no point in your life (or anybody else) did prayer and faith have any effect upon anything--other than your own personal emotional state.  Take the steps to keep it from spreading (wash your hands, social distancing, keep your living area clean, and don't cough or sneeze on anybody. )  and you will be fine. 
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

trdsf

Quote from: AcrobaticDetective on March 16, 2020, 09:20:05 PM
Where do you find comfort at a time like this?
In maths.  In knowledge.  In facts.  Elsewhere on this forum, I calculated that even in the worst-hit parts of the world outside China, the infection rate is a whopping 0.25% -- and the fatality rate is about 1% of that.  So I like my odds.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

GSOgymrat

You need not throw out everything that worked for you as a Christian. For example, the Serenity Prayer is essentially stoic philosophy: To avoid unhappiness, frustration, and disappointment, we need to do two things: control those things that are within our power (namely our beliefs, judgments, desires, and attitudes) and be indifferent or apathetic to those things which are not in our power (namely, things external to us).

I take comfort in impermanence. The virus will eventually runs its course and be a thing of memory. The anxiety you feel now is a collection of thoughts and sensations and will change even by simply turning attention to it. If you feel happy in the moment appreciate it, if you are suffering acknowledge it, and remember that feelings are ephemeral, thoughts change and eventually memories fade.

Baruch

Quote from: Mike Cl on March 16, 2020, 10:03:30 PM
In science and reasoning.  Read about what the cause of the virus is, how it is transmitted and what to do about it.  Then do it.  At no point in your life (or anybody else) did prayer and faith have any effect upon anything--other than your own personal emotional state.  Take the steps to keep it from spreading (wash your hands, social distancing, keep your living area clean, and don't cough or sneeze on anybody. )  and you will be fine.

Are you a virus researcher?  Find out what the Public Health Department says, and do that.  You should have been washing your hands all along.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

AcrobaticDetective

My anxiety is around economic fears, job loss, and another major recession. I'm not personally worried about the virus. I am taking all of the measures the CDC recommends of course.
"I'm a talking chimpanzee in a hat and you're a grown man in a bat suit. Let them have this."

SGOS


Baruch

Quote from: AcrobaticDetective on March 16, 2020, 09:20:05 PM
First of all, just to fill you in on my own personal version of crazy, a part of me blames my deconversion for the pandemic. I am a rational person who knows better, but the thought is haunting.

But what I'm really looking for is solace. If this had happened before my deconversion, I would have been in constant prayer and feeling like all would be okay...I just needed to have faith. Now I feel helpless. Where do you find comfort at a time like this?

I wish you solace and comfort, same as I do everyone.  Your reconversion had nothing to do with this.  The pandemic came about as an natural event, a man made accident or a bio-war.  None of which you had any control over.  If you are the Chinese idiot that ate bat soup, made with an infected lab bat ... then you have something to atone for.

The best solace I can give is an old Irish joke ...

Murphy got sick and was afraid he was going to die .. he asked his priest what to do about his worry ...
Father O'Neill told him ... "Either you will live or you will die".  "If you live, there is nothing to worry about".  "If you die, you will either go to heaven or to hell".  "But if you go to heaven, there is nothing to worry about".  Murphy replied "What if I go to hell?".  Father O'Neill countered ... "That is no problem at all at all ... because in hell you will be with all your old friends from the pub" ;-))
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Baruch

#8
Quote from: AcrobaticDetective on March 17, 2020, 08:25:00 AM
My anxiety is around economic fears, job loss, and another major recession. I'm not personally worried about the virus. I am taking all of the measures the CDC recommends of course.

You will have this anxiety all your life.  It is a condition of both normal and abnormal times.  Do you have a social safety net?  Not welfare necessarily, but family and friends?  I am lucky in that I can rely on my daughter and my ex, and all three of us are now in the same town for the first time in years.  My UU community is also family.  If you are a senior, there is the senior center too.  And there are your on-line friends.  If you are all alone, you already have a problem.  And we often do define ourselves thru our co-workers.  Can you co-workers help you?
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

AcrobaticDetective

Quote from: Baruch on March 17, 2020, 08:30:46 AM
You will have this anxiety all your life.  It is a condition of both normal and abnormal times.  Do you have a social safety net?  Not welfare necessarily, but family and friends?  I am lucky in that I can rely on my daughter and my ex, and all three of us are now in the same town for the first time in years.  My UU community is also family.  If you are a senior, there is the senior center too.  And there are your on-line friends.  If you are all alone, you already have a problem.  And we often do define ourselves thru our co-workers.  Can you co-workers help you?

I am upper management and a father and husband. So I have a social net, but everyone looks to me for advice. Or maybe it just feels that easy.
"I'm a talking chimpanzee in a hat and you're a grown man in a bat suit. Let them have this."

aitm

I can’t speak to your obvious successes in life due to prayer, but for me, nothing ever got better due to praying....or worse. It was the same for me as it was for other people, some praying to different gods. If your prayers worked so well, why would you ever decide to abandon such success?
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Mr.Obvious

The Christian god punishing all of us severely because you specifically strayed away from the flock does sound like his style.

Goddamn it detective, delude yourself into believing again, people are suffering out there.

Or, you know, we're not that important to the universe that our mere thoughts change reality and call upon succes or calamity.

There are dark times ahead, regarding health and economic collapse, make no mistake. Be the best pillar you can be for your network, especially in these times of social isolation. Through words and actions, not through the thoughts which you can not control, but instead simply are.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: AcrobaticDetective on March 16, 2020, 09:20:05 PM
First of all, just to fill you in on my own personal version of crazy, a part of me blames my deconversion for the pandemic. 
Amazingly stupid.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Munch

Quote from: Baruch on March 17, 2020, 08:20:47 AM
Are you a virus researcher?  Find out what the Public Health Department says, and do that.  You should have been washing your hands all along.

I realized how stupid, and disgusting, my aunt really is now, when she visited my mum, used her bathroom, and didn't wash her hands. In a time when we're being told to.
needless to say I wiped down all surfaces in her bathroom and kitchen that day.
'Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners' - George Carlin

Baruch

Quote from: AcrobaticDetective on March 17, 2020, 12:20:49 PM
I am upper management and a father and husband. So I have a social net, but everyone looks to me for advice. Or maybe it just feels that easy.

Be honest with all of them.  Your wife must have hid your "super suit" while washing it ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2qRDMHbXaM
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.