Is it normal to feel trapped by atheism/physicalism?
Howdy, folks!
I have been an atheist, largely ascribing to physicalism/reductive materialism for six years, now.
Recently, my great grandmother died, I underwent some mild depression (nothing I couldn't handle, even if I didn't particularly enjoy it), and went to see a psychiatrist specifically handle some ADHD. When I described my thought processes and behavior patterns, he thought I was probably more anxious/depressed than lacking in attention span. He put me on zoloft, and within about a week, I went into a deep existential panic. I'm off of the stuff now, and have been for a month...but it sort of brought me into confrontation with my own mortality, and it's just depressing.
Now, mind you, I'm not about to go leaping back into the arms of some kind of anthropocentric, control-the-masses, sell-the-books religion or cult. Those suck, too.
The whole "invent a life meaning" thing doesn't work for me, either -- if we're reductive materialists (which is really how you tend to get to this sort of worldview regardless), any statement about meaning is, well...meaningless.
The whole 'nonexistence as a comfort' thing doesn't work for me either -- there are lots of things I enjoy about life, and I just don't want it to all go away.
I've been grappling with this for a couple of months, and there have been some upsides -- I got out of a 'meh' relationship, but I'm not sure I'll find a good one to replace it. Monogamy doesn't do it for me, I guess -- the odds of me finding a woman who works for me long term is about 10,000 to 1 on a chance encounter. I've calculated this. But I don't want to jump from person to person and use others for my own satisfaction without giving something back, either.
I've also started doing things that make me feel good, such as dancing (which is AWESOME), and picking up old hobbies, getting out and meeting lots of new people, etc. However, all this has done is give me a temporary joy or avoidance of pain. When I was religious, even in my worst moments, there was still an underlying core of security and comfort that was hard to replace. Everything was okay. Ultimately, my inevitable demise and the entropy of the universe depress the hell out of me.
Anyone else deal with this? Did any of you find ways to justify not being physicalists for this reason? Did you return to (egh) traditional religions? Is it normal to wish you could even just believe differently, but for some reason feel trapped?