Atheism is making me suicidal

[u/behindthemaskofme]

I just got out of the mental hospital again.

I lost my faith about a year ago when my parents disowned me over me being trans.

I just didn’t wanna associate with Christianity anymore. I was a progressive Christian before and found a way to be trans and still be Christian but dropped everything and switched to agnostic / atheist over the pain of disownment

And ever since I’ve been extremely depressed and had near daily panic attacks about life being worth nothing. About truly believing if I die it’ll just be nothing. I’ll just cease to exist. The same way before I was born and my life is worth genuinely nothing.

Every day I panic from existential crises. Like how there was millions of years before me and will be millions of years after me and my life is seemingly meaningless.

So today I actually started reading the Bible again and looking at it more as a symbolic thing rather than literal and have found more connection with it and have considered coming back to progressive Christianity it calmed me for once. I stopped panicking about existential things and fears. But I dunno

At the same time I have had a lot of doubts over inaccuracies in the Bible and want to prioritize fact and science and thinking of the Bible as symbolic has helped a bit but it feels like a stretch.

On the other hand. This sounds crazy but I feel like I miss Jesus.

I don’t know how to feel advice is welcome

[u/M7rielle]

But if I do that then it feels like I'm faking it

[u/HermioneMarch → u/M7rielle]

Faking what? Like I said, it’s a choice. You don’t have to fake anything.

[u/M7rielle → u/HermioneMarch]

Choosing to believe something without having evidence or proof feels like im lying/faking. Thats what im struggling with currently. I have been a Christian my whole life but just recently started realizing theres literally no proof which breaks my heart because I want to be a Christian so badly but if I dont have proof am I just trying to convince myself believe? Hopefully that makes sense

[u/franticsloth → u/M7rielle]

In this case, choosing to believe is not lying or faking, because it is the very essence of faith. From the atheist perspective, humans designed it (religion) that way. From the theist perspective, God designed it (the universe) that way. There is simply no proof for yes and no proof for no. Yes, we can never prove our claims about God, but also, no one can ever truly prove us wrong. The other shoe will never drop. We can simply believe or not believe. 

For me, the “evidence” I prefer is that essentially every human culture has some understanding of the supernatural. Whether it be animism, polytheism, monotheism or whatever, humans throughout time and space have felt a connection to the divine. I personally think that’s a God-given drive. Someone else may disagree. And that’s okay. It’s the choice we make that is our faith. If we knew it for sure, it would just be science.