Are Christians Projecting?

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I have a hole in my heart. Does that mean my cardiologist is Satan if he closes it? Or does it make him God?

As somebody who was never raised as a Christian (apart from a rather ineffective and harmful attempt by some of my schoolteachers), I've never noticed anything like a "god-shaped hole" in me. Why so many religionists insist that it's a universal phenomenon remains a mystery to me. I have a theory that it might be a clever propaganda trick - "you'll never get anywhere without our guidance" - so it's interesting to see an alternative theory that it's something Christians and ex-Christians would actually feel and genuinely believe to be universal.

I've often marvelled at how often evangelists talk as though they understand the secular mindset when they so often don't understand it very well at all. Perhaps this projection theory goes some way towards explaining it. Where, for example, did the meme come from that atheists hate God? Clearly it makes little logical sense - it's very hard to hate something that as far as you're concerned has never existed. So maybe some theists just can't imagine genuine unbelief, and therefore see it as the nearest thing to it that could happen in their own minds, i.e. turning their backs on God. Not that I'm saying atheists never make similar mistakes when they presume to understand the religious mind.

I’ve always had issues with God due to the lack of evidence and the existence of suffering - the Biblical reason was never sufficient. I questioned his existence when I was 5. Growing up in a very religious environment, I felt like there was something wrong with me - like I was a bad person, so I would go through spurts where I would desperately try to believe and I’d do everything that my religion pushed me to do - I read the entire Bible multiple times (ew), I preached, and I prayed (to a God I didn’t truly believe in) for stuff that I find repugnant and beyond cringey now - like a submissive heart. Oy vey.

When I fully woke up, I didn’t feel like I had lost a relationship with God because I never had one. I lost most of my friends and family, though. I have a huge family. I used to really miss them, but those feelings have gradually faded over time. Any void has been created by layers of religious trauma (being shunned, being raised with misogyny, and feeling stuck in an abusive marriage among other things), not because I need God or religion.

My family talks about how miserable they’d be without God and their specific faith. I think that it’s more like it’s taken up such a huge portion of their lives for so long they can’t imagine life without it. Trauma bonding. Being in a cult or any demanding religion with a judgmental god IS like being in an abusive relationship.

Neurotypicals do.

It's just one of those things we tend to say as rationalization. Don't know if I'd say I feel there is truth to it or not.

As a Christian/converting Catholic, I feel like if there is truth to the saying, that it applies to Christians & non-Christians alike. In our mortal shells we will never feel fulfilled, not until heaven. At present, I do not have any less of a hole in my heart than anybody else.

^ Some people DO feel fulfilled in the here and now, though.

I feel fulfilled at times. I’m working on it.

Could argue that it's a temporary feeling, but I'm not one to speak for others and that is why the "God-shaped hole" is not an argument I use or rely on

^ We can’t really understand how others feel since we can’t experience it personally.

I’m much happier as an atheist than I was as a believer. I feel a greater sense of fulfillment as well.

Like I said, I don't intend to speak for others. I can only speak for myself.

I'm not specifically raised a Christian. And I'm not a devout Catholic.

Yet I do get what that meant somehow.
It feels like a tiny yet a bright spark than a hole in my chest. I knew and 'have' this as a child.

It's not hollow. There's nothing to be 'filled' in there.
There's nothing for me to 'accept' to fill it whole -- so there's no saviour for me to accept, there's no god for me to beg and satisfy it.

It is not derived from a person. It has no face, it has no name, it has no audible voice that I can imagine from it. Just light.
It's a subjective feeling and a somewhat knowing to me. Whatever this is, it's the very reason why I never, ever felt lonely...

Some can relate and understand, some cannot.
And projecting anything towards it would 'spoil' it.

And whatever it is, I do not worship it. I do not glorify it. I do not 'condemn' those who "don't have it".

It is wordless. It's more of a belief concept than whatever I picked up. It's not 'godly' in a sense of how most gods are portrayed.

It felt more like a really, really dear friend who will never judge you, or how a loving parent should feel like yet without the demanding and uneven dynamic between a traditional parent and a child, or this childhood thing that you love so much that you'd trust all your secrets to it.

It whispers of good things.
Forgiveness, true empathy, humbleness, emotional resolve and courage, prosocial ideas, sometimes wisdom, etc...
Things any child should be exposed of and safely express. Things that no one taught or often shown me in this physical existence.

Not my family, not school... No one. Any attempts just confuses me.

The longer I acknowledge this feeling, the calmer and safer everything felt...
Yet like most humans with an ego, I do not listen to it. Or even 'hear' it all the time.
Because it's silly. Or irrational.

And getting caught up with this world existing with the thoughts and feelings, along with the stress and the environmental distractions left me not much room or time for it.

Not this... Ritual and projections or whatever. That even feels rigid and demanding.
No one explicitly taught me this. Especially as a child when sermons and lectures are just noises.
Going to the church won't let me access this light. Going to a sermon won't give me time and processing.

I get better luck with meditation and reminders.


So yeah.
I do sort of have a 'relationship' with this feeling, if one calls it that. It's neutral at worst. And because of stupid EF issues, sometimes I just forget it exists.
It always exists in this all encompassing background.

The same way I have a serious hate relationship with my sympathetic nervous system for dragging my development down, for it's inability to regulate and whenever it's triggered an unwanted memory at the wrong time and place.


Anyways.
I don't read the Bible.
Partially because my verbal abilities are that bad and a lot of sayings just confuses the heck out of me.
Partially I do not trust the popular translations in English. And I basically understand nothing when it's translated to my native language.
Really, 'commandments'? And not well, 'sayings'?

I'll consider reading if there's a more faithful translation that can actually translate the ancient contexts.
Not agendas about how women are inferior or how humans should be obedient and submit to whatever.

Feeling or not...
I'm just not drawn to most ways religions are taking itself a bit too seriously.

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^^^

SMiLes Dear Edna3362
That's One of the Most
Excellent Descriptions
of the Ineffable Within

i've Read; it Really

Captures What

Cannot Fully be Captured

in Words Yet those Who Experience

The Experience May Relate Closely to

Every Word You Said as In Eastern Philosophies,

'The Tao' is Described ThiS Way As Soon As You Attempt

To Grasp it You Lose it As that Relates to the Modern Work

of Iain McGilchrist, Oxford Scholar And Fellow, Neuroscientist,
Psychiatrist, Philosopher, And All Around Newer Renaissance Man

So far Away

From Specializing

in Only One Discipline

To Find Out How Differently

Our Right Hemisphere Part of

Our Minds Process Reality than

The Left Hemisphere More Restricted

to Emotions of Anger And Need For Control;

Taking All the Parts of Reality, Materially Reducing

Them, And Measuring Them By Rulers or Even Abstract

Constructs We Call Words, Where of Course A Tree May

Be Related By Whatever Trees We Are used to Seeing Differently;

It's Interesting, in the Christian Bible in the New Testament, Luke 17:21

Clearly states That If Your Look For What is Described As 'The Kingdom of God'

iN Heavenly Way, Lo Over Here or Over There, You Will Miss it By Failing to Seek

And Find IT Within,

For It is True Science

Shows We aRe All Fractals

of tHe aLL And THE REal Illusion

is When We Materially Reduce Existence

And Fail to Put The All Back Together Again in A Child's

View; Yes, Integrating Fully From Head to Toe And

So Much MoRE; A Peace Within Beyond Words;

A Love Springing That is Essence of Pure Faith,

Far Beyond Only

one Religion

or one Quarter
BacK NoW oF One
Religious Team Alone;

Thank You For This; It's
Nice to Hear Someone Resonate
What i Experience So Clear; The Word Trade Marked

'God' Has Become So Colored With the 'Trump Meme'
Lately In Older Testament Ways, i Rather Leave The
'Adversarial Name'

to Others

To Trap
in only

Covers
of Books
Without Pages of Soul Free..