Haha, thank you! You have me laughing out loud here.

It sounded like you were preaching when you talked about god splitting himself, sacrificing himself, etc., so I thought you were trying to save me from damnation. I'm sorry you feel like you're falling apart due to loss of faith in your religious community. I would only suggest that you might want to look deeper. Christians are supposed to be reflections of Christ. By definition, Christians (at least those who believe in the Trinity) have a Holy Spirit inside them--a splinter of god, if you will--so they should be at least as good as those who are not saved, no? Why then would so many be involved with things like pedophilia? And it's not just the Catholics, but Protestants, too.

I AM depressed and under the influence of my fire and brimstone upbringing. I'm not terrified of demons or being ostracized, although I am feeling somewhat isolated with my new lack of belief. I lost (or am losing--not sure there's any clear line of demarcation) faith that the god of the Bible exists, and I don't see any evidence of a god in general. When I take my sticking points, like how could the universe be so orderly, and search for them online, there is a wealth of information that shows many of my questions are faulty. An orderly world can come about through evolution, there are transitional fossils after all, something can come from "nothing," and so on.

"I have no wish to cheer while anyone is hurting and in hell in this world or a possible next world." But Revelations says you'll be praising God while your unsaved loved ones are being cast into Hell. Can you imagine yourself doing that now? It's probably inconceivable. So what will have to change between here and Heaven for you to be able to do that? Will you be horrified (not something depicted of Christians in the Bible)? Will you be like a robot who no longer really has any feelings of your own? Would you want God to wipe away your tears when these horrific things are happening? Why or why not?

"I just don't understand why you keep referring to fear of hell, seeming to refer to a religious belief and the consequence of a lack of faith."

I can't say I fully understand, either, but what I've read about conditioning is that it's not abnormal to have cognitive dissonance. As my therapist and other resources have indicated, when you're a child, you're wired to be fully dependent on your parents at first. You trust them fully. They caution you about things--the hot stove, the cars on the street--and you learn that these things are absolutely real. You are like a sponge, and you absorb so much from your parents--their attitudes, language, and fears. If they tell you about Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, etc., you likely believe it 100% for a while at least. And there are no fears about those beings because they're soft, fluffy, feel good stories. When you introduce the most terrifying thing you can ever imagine, that you will be tortured, burned FOREVER alive in a place "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched," (the loving Jesus said that in Mark 9:44) and you've got an absolute terror introduced into your psyche. It sounds so much worse than being briefly burned by the hot stove or hit by the car on the street, no? If that's drilled into your mind from your earliest memories, don't you think it could be hard to get rid of?

I was also taught that an adult's beliefs, words, opinions, teachings were right and trumped mine. Respect your elders, be seen and not heard, and all of that. So I did not grow up trusting my own impressions. I did not develop a certain independence of thought. I am only now learning critical thinking. I don't think I even heard of the term "logical fallacy" until well into my 40s. There's a REASON so many religious teachers do not teach children how to think rationally! We would reject so much as bunk if they did. And if we reject that stuff as bunk, then it's threatening to the adults because maybe they, too, should be rejecting it.

I think it's been shown that people will do more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure. Think about it: IF the Bible merely said God is Love, and you had a choice to love him and go to a great place called Heaven or simply live a happy (eternal, if you wish) existence on earth or elsewhere, how many do you think would choose Heaven? If you can be happy away from God, why choose to live with him? What would be the real motivation? Introduce Hell, and now you've got both the pleasure and pain in this story. Very motivating.

Your upbringing is your nurture. Add to that the nature element, and you have the potential for an even worse experience. I have always been anxious and sensitive. I also have OCD, which you probably know is an anxiety disorder. One of the characteristics of that is "what if?" thinking. "I know there's no rational evidence for God, but what if I'm wrong and Hell really exists?" I had this as a kid and went through countless sleepless nights, crying and asking God to give me some peace because I was supposed to be saved but I was scared. They'd say in my Christian school that you should go forward at an altar call if you "have a shadow of a doubt" about your salvation. I always had a shadow of doubt about things, so this was a rather torturous thing to experience. Compound the scary home messages, chapel messages, church messages, and Christian school messages with terrifying multimedia like the movie A Thief in the Night (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RrXf0zGjxQ), and you've got a perfect shitstorm.

So I think you can both not rationally believe in god and still have a fear of the scary things you were taught. The question for me is, can I ever get over this? I've had one therapist who said I'll probably always be dealing with these fears. I'm trying to find a way to get over them. The prospect of living the rest of my life in fear is very depressing to me.