How Atheism Fails Religion-Leavers

Did We Miss the Apocalypse? (Part Two)

The central point of this article is that contemporary Atheism is floundering because it has failed to adequately speak to the existential realities of the modern person. I previously published an article on what Christians can learn from Atheists. Consider this one to be what Atheists can learn from Christians. Christianity has a resurrection at the center of it’s faith. This is what Atheism is lacking. Atheism needs a resurrection.

I am often accused of being hard on religion. Keep in mind that a lot of my professional work involves counseling people who were deeply damaged or traumatized by religion. I once was a devoted religious person myself. My academic background is in theology, and for many years I was a megachurch pastor.

I am not against religion categorically. Religion means something different for each person and one’s experience of religion, good or bad, is unique to them. However, I am against religion anytime it harms people or does damage in the world.

If you peruse my Substack articles you will find a fair share that address the decline of religious faith in America, the rise of unbelievers, and the failures of the Christian religion. On the other hand, the non-religious alternatives for the unChristian are not exactly working either. In the past I have asked questions such as: Is Christian theism dead? and even, Is God dead? To be fair, I could just as easily ask, “Is Atheism dead?” In other words, is modern Atheism becoming obsolete. I’ve practically said so previously, pointing out in my ORTCON 24 presentation, that Atheism shares a similar flaw as all the other theisms. I attached below my ORTCON 24 slide presentation.

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This is Part Two of my series, “Did We Miss the Apocalypse?” If everything I said in Part One of this series is true - namely, that we are on the precipice of another God-is-dead-moment in human history - we might be headed for trouble. Why? Because we are ill-prepared to survive and thrive in a world without the belief or construct of “God”. I discussed in a previous series, The Evolution of Religion, how our species created religious thinking as a means of survival.

Writing about our earliest human ancestors, I pointed out:

“Supernatural beliefs became answers and explanations to existential questions and concerns that could not be sufficiently resolved within the raw materials of their lived human experience. These beliefs provided a strong psychological immune system to support the necessary mood and motivation to face the rigors of surviving and thriving.”

Likewise, today’s modern humans still need a way of understanding the universe and our existence in order to thrive. The threat of nihilism always follows an exodus from religion, making the need for existential health more pressing.

At risk of my introduction being a full-length article, it’s necessary to share what led to my writing this piece, which takes Atheism to task. I do not identify as a “Christian” nor “Atheist” and not advocating either, though I see value in each of them and discovered bonds between the two, which are both unfortunate and enlightening. There are several factors that led to this article, including:

• As someone who counsels those who have been damaged by toxic religion or suffered religious trauma, I have been closely involved in their process of religious deconstruction, and the reconstruction of a post-religion or non-religious spirituality, and seen the challenges in this transition.

• As founder of the Center for Non-Religious Spirituality I am routinely connected to the worldwide conversation and community of people who separate spirituality from organized religion, many of whom leave Christianity for Atheism, or have some affinity with the ideas associated with atheism and humanism.

• In the last ten years I have been following the rise of several cultural developments including: the mainstreaming of religious trauma and religious deconstruction; rise of nones and secular spirituality; de-churching of America; and the increased non-religiosity of each successive generation.

• I have observed through my personal collaboration with non-religious or secular organizations such as the American Humanist Association and American Atheists that there is an inadequate accounting for the complexities, nuances, possibilities and potentialities of spirituality, phenomenology and the numinous.

• My recent work in areas such as “Christian Atheism”, “death of God theology” and “existential health” have deepened my understanding of the connections between Christianity and Atheism, as well as the shortcomings of each in offering a viable path forward for human liberation and well-being.

• Most recently, my published article about Richard Dawkins and his newfound cultural Christianity, and article on a new theology in the wake of failed modern theological scholarship, fueled the fire for my deconstruction of the struggles of Atheism in the U.S.

The Problem Explained

There is a reoccurring historical dynamic in which the secularization or non-religionization of society leaves an existential black hole in its wake. I previously discussed this phenomenon in Part Two of my Evolution of God series, titled, What could possibly substitute for religion?

Here’s a simplification of how this dynamic works:

Religion loses credibility → Exodus from Religion → Inadequate Substitute → Nihilism

Let’s break this down. There are times in history when the need or plausibility for the existence of God is diminished. In the case of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “God is dead” declaration, it was Darwin’s work that spawned the recognition that the idea of God was no longer necessary to explain the origins of the universe.

Because many people’s existential security is tied to their belief in God, leaving religion often creates existential dread, which is deep-seated psychic anxiety about the meaning of life, death, loneliness, values, and freedom. This can tumble into nihilism, which is despair about the human condition and givens of human existence.

Many people who leave toxic religion and abandon their indoctrinated beliefs about God will often turn toward atheism. Atheism, however, is essentially a position or stance about the existence of God, namely non-belief in God. When one leaves religion, the atheistic rejection of religion feels gratifying. Not a few religion-leavers quickly find YouTube atheist-versus-Christian debates involving the “four horsemen” of New Atheism to be entertaining, validating, and reassuring. I know I did. Back in that season there was nothing better than a bowl of Orville’s popcorn, a tall glass of icy Diet Dr. Pepper, and a good Christopher Hitchens debate.

A person can feasibly get by with religion-loathing for an extended period of time in their post-religion journey before reality sets in. Part of the normal and necessary deconstruction process for many religion-leavers includes processing feelings of betrayal. For a person victimized by religion, there is an stage of acute grief and anger.

The problem arises, however, if a person gets stuck there and doesn’t continue the healing and growth process. The collapse of belief in God, existential instability, and loss of meaning and purpose in life, starts to set in. For the person who leaves religion, this can also include a deep loneliness from the loss of one’s faith community, social network, support system, and friendships.

Let’s say one night you were abducted from your home, and dropped into remotest part of the Amazon rainforest. Essential this is: Survivor: Existential Island. Assuming you have no survival training, it’s likely you would not have the necessary knowledge, tools or skills to remain alive. Right?

In a similar way, imagine that all your core truths, beliefs and assumptions about life were stripped away. Since childhood, you have depended upon these beliefs and truths to make sense of the world and navigate the lived human experience. Now they are gone! Assuming you have not cultivated new beliefs and tools, you might suddenly find yourself ill-equipped to cope with the rigors and realities of daily life.

I often find that people who leave toxic religion and dump their beliefs about God, experience an existential no man’s land. They feel lost. I have mentioned previously that there is this unique dynamic that happens between Christianity and Atheism. People leave Christianity to become Atheists, and others leave Atheism to become Christians.

Atheism is often not very helpful for religion-leavers because it is primarily a position of non-belief in God, which doesn’t go far enough. A person could abandon flat-earth theory for belief in a spherical-earth, and it wouldn’t have too radical an impact on their lives. But for someone who once believed there was a God included in human existence and then discovering there isn’t, is monumental.

I certainly cannot speak on behalf of all Atheists and Atheism. As I pointed out above about religion, so also Atheism is not a monolithic phenomenon and means something different to each person. Over the years, however, I have found that the energy of Atheism has seemed to primarily revolve around:

• Discrediting Religion

• Separation of Church and State Activism

• Replacing Faith with Scientism

Not that these objectives are wrong, but fall short in supporting a person’s transition from belief to unbelief. Modern Atheism has often been accused of exhibiting the same evangelical fervor often associated with religion - vilifying the religious, promoting the divisive “us” versus “them” mentality, and seeking to win atheist converts. In my opinion, Atheism has not sufficiently stepped up to the plate to help ground religion-leavers.

How Atheism Falls Short

I want to point out three areas where (IMO) Atheism has been ineffective as a post-religion alternative.

1. Not offering religious deconstruction resources

From what I have seen, most people who are writing about and working in religious deconstruction and reconstruction, are coming at it from a progressive Christian framework. In other words, its a deconstruction process that steers the religion-leaver from closeminded, fundamentalist, Evangelical Christian beliefs to more positive, affirming, progressive Christian-ish beliefs. I sometimes refer to this as “Bad God/Good God Deconstruction”, which is transitioning a person from a toxic view of God to a loving conception of God.

I’m not being critical of this form of religious deconstruction. In my view, if this is the only religious deconstruction happening, it’s a significant net positive. But what seems to be missing is a robust and comprehensive deconstruction process that effectively supports a person’s transition from belief to unbelief in God.

Why aren’t Atheists (and Humanists) offering more deconstruction and reconstruction resources? Atheism, as a position of unbelief in God, seems to think that once this belief-change occurs, the objective is achieved. But why do many church-leavers go back to religion? It’s because the belief-change was not enough. Their unbelief was not sustainable in the real world. Leaving their faith caused as many problems as it solved, involved suffering great losses, left them very little to cultivate a new life of meaning, and simply was not worth staying the course.

Necessary components of a religious deconstruction could include:

• recovery and healing from religious trauma

• rooting out toxic religious indoctrination

• addressing human development deficits

• rebuilding a new self-relationship

• cultivating a sustaining non-religious spirituality

This post-religion void is what led me to launch a course to train and certify people to be non-religious spiritual directors, specializing in religious deconstruction and reconstruction, religious trauma healing and recovery, cultivation of post-religion spirituality, and existential health.

2. Not equipping/empowering people for existential health

Nothing against the “four horsemen”, particularly the efforts of Sam Harris in non-religious spirituality, but if this is the extent of one’s post-religion reading list and development plan, we have a catastrophic problem.

Most Stoic philosophers were not theists. Many existential philosophers were Atheists. The entire fields of anthropology, natural sciences, physics, philosophy, and psychology are not predicated upon belief in God. Here’s a list of names that should be added to a post-religion reading list: Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus, Baruch Spinoza, Bertrand Russell, Hannah Arendt, Kwasi Wiredu, Carl Young, Abraham Maslow, Jean Piaget, Irvin Yalom, Lao Tzu, Richard Feynman, Steven Weinberg, Carlo Rovelli, etc.

I’m not saying that one must become a PhD in philosophy, psychology and physics to cultivate a vibrant non-religious spirituality. I’m just questioning whether a person can leave a lifetime of religious indoctrination and be cured by reading an Eckhart Tolle book. The point is, religion-leavers need a set of post-religion ideas, frameworks, mindsets and tools in order to construct a new way of being in the world without belief in God. I talk about this in terms of cultivating “existential health”.

According to the WHO (2002), existential health concerns attaining quality of life through eight aspects:

1. spiritual connection

2. meaning and purpose in life

3. experience of awe and wonder

4. wholeness and integration

5. spiritual strength

6. inner peace

7. hope and optimism

8. faith

You can see in the WHO description that the word/idea of “faith” seems to imply a religious component, depending on what is meant by the word. The word “faith” could possibly more generally indicate confidence or trust in a dynamic greater than ourselves, constructively at work in the universe. For example, I recently read, A Universal Learning process: The Evolution of Meaning by Brendan Graham Dempsey, which introduces a theory of meaning based in thermodynamics and information processing. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul, notwithstanding.

Irvin Yalom is a pioneer in the area of existential psychotherapy. Existential psychotherapy emphasizes that mental health problems are frequently caused by struggles with existence. Yalom describes four major “ultimate concerns”: death, meaninglessness, isolation, and freedom. He describes these as “givens of existence,” or an “inescapable part” of being human, and that every person must come to terms with these concerns through active choices to realize their individual potential.

In my view, Atheism has too often rested on its laurels of anti-religion fervor and not made enough of a contribution to post-religion existential health.

3. Making Christianity the Enemy

The third area where I think Atheism stumbles is in making Christianity an enemy. I’m not going to re-hash what I wrote in Part One of this series, Saving Christianity from Itself, as it relates to why Atheism makes Christianity better, and how conversely Christianity makes Atheism better. I have previously pointed out many reasons why Christians and Atheists should do theological work together. It’s highly unfortunate that too often theology and philosophy have been treated as two incompatible fields of inquiry.

Suffice it to say, the core of the Christian metanarrative is the death of God, carried out by the incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus. This is what ties Christianity and Atheism together. In last week’s Part One I wrote:

“The incarnation and the crucifixion of Jesus are two sides of one apocalypse, which cataclysmically changed the world. God emptied Godself into the historical person of Jesus, and then the final cessation of God occurred in the historical death of Jesus.

Christianity is the ultimate heresy, and Jesus stands alone as the world’s greatest heretic. Christianity is the ultimate heresy because it disappeared God from the universe, and Jesus was the one who did this. Jesus was a heretic to the religious establishment because he claimed to be God, but he was a heretic to the world because he pulled God down from the sky through the incarnation and killed God in his crucifixion.”

In my view, Christianity makes unbelief in God more sustainable than Atheism because of the resurrection. The darkness of God’s death becomes the light of resurrection. Life is hidden in death. Christianity has an answer to the threat of nihilism in its core narrative.

The word nihilism can either imply the despair of meaninglessness or the freedom to be meaning-makers. This point is made in recent books such as The Sunny Nihilist: A Declaration of the Pleasure of Pointlessness by Wendy Syfret, and No Nonsense Spirituality: All the Tools No Belief Required by Brittney Hartley.

French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give life a meaning.” Sartre identifies what he believes to be the most fundamental truth about the human condition, which is that we are responsible for everything. We are responsible for giving life meaning. We are responsible for all your beliefs and actions in the world. We are responsible for what your life is or isn't. We are responsible for the condition of our world. We are responsible to solve whatever problems exist in the world.

This may all sound quite bleak and grim, but Sartre said all of this can be taken as a gift and an invitation into the fullest possibilities of what it means to be human. In fact, Sartre thought that until you front these essential facts of life you can never be truly “free” and experience the greatest rewards of being so.

What I think is missing in Atheism is the absence of the idea of resurrection, which is central to Christianity.

Orthodox or traditional Christianity holds the view that Jesus was bodily resurrected from the dead and ascended to Heaven where he currently resides, and will one day return in the future.

An alternative understanding is that the essential Christian story is about kenotic Incarnation - the movement or emptying of God as primordial, transcendent Spirit to radical immanence and flesh in Jesus. The death of Jesus is apocalyptic, meaning that it acts as the historical death of the God-of-beyond, and awakens the recognition that the resurrected Jesus is the underlying and hidden reality of every person. I don’t mean by “resurrected Jesus” the actual person or personality of the historical Jesus, but rather the same transcendent ground of being one finds in the disappearance of God-as-Other, up in the sky.

In the New Testament story this is depicted in the rise of the Holy Spirit as a community of believers. Terms such as “God”, “Jesus Christ”, “Holy Spirit”, “incarnation”, “crucifixion” are uniquely based in the Christian tradition, but they more deeply hold archetypal significance that are universally applicable.

The idea of the Holy Spirit could be understood in an atheistic way - namely, the recognition of ultimate reality, not as a transcendent Other but as the underlying nature of a universal us. The first post-crucifixion group of believers were an emancipatory community without the support of big Other. God-as-other died and disappeared from the universe in the death of Jesus. The resurrection was a transfiguration of God, becoming immanently real as the ground of being of all humankind.

I have done a lot of exploration of “Christian Atheism” and “death of God theology”. Let me get something off my chest. I know these terms may seem a little concerning to some people. “Death of God” certainly may feel a bit radical and bleak. Religion certainly makes terms like this an anathema. Keep in mind that some expressions of religion also view yoga and depression medication as demonic. The point is, religion often makes people afraid of anything outside its narrow and closeminded holy list.

One of the ways leaving religion most impacted my life was overcoming my fear-based and judgmental view of the world. This sometimes gets me in trouble. For example, some time ago I came across a news story about the Satanic Temple and decided to write about it, which I did here. No, I didn’t become a Satanist. What I discovered, however, is that the Satanic Temple doesn’t even believe in Satan and their mission statement reads:

“The Mission Of The Satanic Temple Is To Encourage Benevolence And Empathy, Reject Tyrannical Authority, Advocate Practical Common Sense, Oppose Injustice, And Undertake Noble Pursuits.”

My study of Christian Atheism and Death of God theology has been useful in finding more value both in Christianity and Atheism, and has not caused me to run through the streets naked, denouncing God and committing violent crimes.

In my exploration of Christian Atheism and Death of God theology I have spotted some shortcomings. In my view, neither of them have adequately elucidated the idea of resurrection from the Christian narrative. It also seems that these theological/philosophical ideas are a little too heady and complex. If you have to master the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, understand the poetry of William Blake, or watch endless Slavoj Žižek lectures to get it, these ideas may never make it out of the halls of intelligentsia or become viable for most people.

So this is where I will pick it up next week:

• A universal understanding of resurrection

• How to live death of God theology

In Summary

• An exodus from religion can result in an existential black hole.

• Atheism is a position, which doesn’t much help a religion-leaver cultivate a new path forward.

• Both Atheism and Christianity would be better if they became better friends.

• Death of God Theology killed off God in short order, but this resurrection thing is a little nebulous.

• I don’t plan on committing a violent crime, and certainly would not do it running naked in the street.

• Thank you for subscribing to my Substack and making this newsletter possible. If you find what I share meaningful, please recommend this publication and share it with others.

“The secret to happiness is freedom. And the secret to freedom is courage.”

- Thucydides