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ribozyme
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How would you live without religion? Does your life derive purpose by having a religion? Would you embrace existentialism if you are no longer a Catholic?
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Pro_Domina
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Like any other person without God.
Miserable.
The richess playboy isn’t satisfied with life.
The most potent drug does not fill a hole of infinite proportions.
“Where have those who fled from your face gone? Where can they get beyond the reach of your discovery? (Ps. 138). But they have fled that they should not see you, though you see them, and so in their blindness they stumble over you (Rom. 11:7-11); for you do not desert anything you have made (Wisd. 11:25). The unjust stumble over you and are justly chastised. Endeavouring to withdraw themselves from your gentleness, they stumble on your equity and fall into your anger. They evidently do not know that you are everywhere. No space circumscribes you. You alone are always present even to those who have taken themselves far from you. Let them turn and seek you, for you have not abandoned your creation as they have deserted their Creator (Wisd. 5:7)” (V.2).
" ‘Happy is the person who loves you’ (Tobit 13:18) and his friend in you, and his enemy because of you (Matt. 5:44). Though left alone, he loses none dear to him; for all are dear in the one who cannot be lost. Who is that but our God, the God who made heaven and earth and filled them? By filling them he made them (Jer. 23:24). None loses you unless he abandons you, and when he abandons you where can he go or fly for refuge (Ps. 238:7) unless it be to move from your serenity to your anger? Where can he escape from finding that your law is in his penalty? And ‘your law is truth’ (Ps. 118:142) and truth is you (John 14:6).
‘O God of hosts, turn us and show us your face, and we shall be safe’ (Ps. 79:8). For wherever the human soul turns itself, other than to you, it is fixed in sorrows, even if it is fixed upon beautiful things external to you and external to itself, which would nevertheless be nothing if they did not have their being from you" (IV.14-15).
St. Augustine’s Confessions
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Tantum_ergo
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What do you mean by ‘religion?’ Rites and ritual? A personal experience with one’s God? Until you tell us what you mean by ‘religion’ we’ll all be talking past each other.
My life derives its ‘purpose’ from the God who created me and my own personal ‘choice’ to either do what God wants–which is ‘good’–or to do what God does not want–which is evil. I have a ‘purpose’ that I do not fully understand, but for which I bear some responsibility to find out as much as possible to do what God wants–which is always good–and to do it to the best of my ability. My 'religion is Catholicism, which I believe is the Truth which God has revealed to humanity throughout time, and fully expressed in the Person of Jesus Christ, Lord and Redeemer. . .who gave us Salvation, established His Church and His Spirit to guide it, and who pleads for us at the right hand of the Father.
Since I believe in God who ‘created’ me, if there were no ‘God’ there would be no ‘me.’
No life. No nothing.
My life derives its ‘purpose’ from the God who created me and my own personal ‘choice’ to either do what God wants–which is ‘good’–or to do what God does not want–which is evil. I have a ‘purpose’ that I do not fully understand, but for which I bear some responsibility to find out as much as possible to do what God wants–which is always good–and to do it to the best of my ability. My 'religion is Catholicism, which I believe is the Truth which God has revealed to humanity throughout time, and fully expressed in the Person of Jesus Christ, Lord and Redeemer. . .who gave us Salvation, established His Church and His Spirit to guide it, and who pleads for us at the right hand of the Father.
Since I believe in God who ‘created’ me, if there were no ‘God’ there would be no ‘me.’
No life. No nothing.
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whatevergirl
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I strayed from the Church many years ago, never left my faith in God, or my belief in Church teachings, but I wasn’t living as I should as a devout Catholic.
Putting it simply…I was empty, hollow, and sad. A sadness that I can’t explain. It was like I was searching for something to fill the God shaped hole in my heart.
Once I came back to the Church, the hole didn’t heal immediately, but it repaired slowy.
I could NEVER go back to that way of life. I was a wife, and mother back than, and feel that I did a disservice to my husband and kids, when I didn’t attend mass, and follow Church teachings. Granted, some of the Church’s teachings I was rather naive about, so was my husband. Being cradle Catholics doesn’t mean you’re born with a degree in Church teachings.
So glad that we became practicing and faithful Catholics. I would never go back to such an empty life, clinging to my materialistic ways.
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stacybks
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The_Catholic
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I’d have the same feelings and emotions on morality. Though I think I’d be lonlier.
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ribozyme
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I am lonely too and my lack of religion partially explains why. It would be create if I could have communion with a divine entity that loves me, but I feel like if I even start praying, I’ll simply be deluding myself.
What if you merely believe that your a the product of “prebiotic chemistry” and an iterative process of mutation, amplification, and selection (Darwinian evolution). Such a worldview, in my opinion, does not seem compatible with the notion that God created us.
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IrishAm
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The only word that comes to mind is “empty.”
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Swan
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I can answer this from personal experience. I used to be Catholic but now I’m no longer Christian at all. Why? Because my life experience, reason and observation led me to the unwelcome conclusion that the Christian God does not exist, or at least not as a “supreme” God (though perhaps one of many gods, as I am not a polytheist). I know some of you are sick of hearing this about me, but my being bipolar and my experiences with and during depression played such a major role in my belief change that I it is relevent in any discussion thereof.
So, what is my life like now that, at age 49, I have stopped being a Christian which I was my entire life (was raised Baptist, converted to RC as an adult? Well, in a way it’s better because I no longer have to try to figure out why the all loving God of the New Testament seems to be so absent from not only my life but our world. I’ve had too many “supernatural” experiences to be an atheist, BTW. It is a lot simpler this way as well. I’m looking into Buddhism, which is polytheistic but finds the gods of no real importants, as well as Native American and other nature religions. Deism interests me as well, but they seem to be monotheistic and not big believers in the supernatural, so that leaves me out.
As to what gives my life meaning without the traditional “God”, I, like the Buddhist, Navajo, etc, believe our life choices influence our spiritual progress. I don’t believe in hell per se, but I do believe that we progress spiritually after we die (reincarnation or on another plane of reality) and I can either help myself along or hinder my own progress - my choice. I am very intersted in mysticism as I believe we can progress spiritually through meditation, etc., as we work toward enlightenment (for lack of a better term). I believe our consciousness/self/soul exsited before our incarnation in this life and that it contiunes on into infinity. I think that the end result is beyond our capacity to grasp but that it is a kind of “heaven” (again, for lack of a better word).
Anyway, as I said, I am responding because I, as a former Catholic and Christian, have actual experience relating to the OP - I don’t have to try and imagine how I’d feel - I’m living it. I’m not attempting to put down anyone eles’s faith or experience, only relating my own in an effort to give the OP the benefit (or lack thereof) of my experience.
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kristie_m
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Been there, done that. Wasted eight years of my life. I heard a homily recently that rather defined why I left the church, and what made me come back. It was the thirst for something inexhaustable. I tried so hard to fill that void inside of me with everything from work, to toys, to chemicals to people. Always it left me empty.
Do I find purpose for my life with religion? Absolutely. It’s not simply a part of my life. My faith defines me. I am a child of God, and having now identified myself properly, I can live my life accordingly.
I can’t (nor do I want to) imagine not being Catholic, so can’t answer that last question.
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grandfather
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One of the brilliant things Aristotle said is, “What is is”. No matter what we happen to believe about reality, it is what it objectively is. So whatever you happen to believe about it does not effect what it is. You can either have a correct understanding of it or a faulty one. The same is true of us all.
If you are an accident then you have no purpose. If you are made by designer’s design then your purpose is that of your maker. If that is true you can only know what your purpose is if it is revealed to you. Humans can not figure out why they exist. They can guess and come up with different theories, but they can not know for certain by guessing. Still, if you are the product of a prebiotic accident you have no purpose. The odds of your being such are about zilch, but that is another matter.
Again, if you “merely believe” that is what you are, it does not make it so. You are what you are whether you know what you are or you don’t. You may have a purpose, but not know it.
I will suggest to you that we all have a single universal purpose for which we are made. It could be true. If it is and you believe it then you know your purpose by believing what you have been told, by faith.
You exist to love and be loved.
That is why you are made. You are not an accident.
If you are made you have a maker and a purpose. If you are an accident your life is meaningless.
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Lief_Erikson
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I would be dead right now, if it wasn’t for God. He saved my physical life. If God didn’t exist, I would be dead.
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ribozyme
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I meant to say “great” in that other post though.
Yes, I know living a godless life makes you feel alienated too. I feel so unfulfilled.
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vee8
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I did live life without Catholicism and it was miserable to say the least. I didnt realize just how big of a burden I was carrying at the time though until the shepherd found this lost sheep and I was washed of my sins in confession and fed with the Bread of Life: Jesus.
It is not us who find God while He sits passively by. Jesus is calling everyone
come to me and actively seeking them out. Of course He doesnt always beat us over the head, or knock us off our horse literally like with St Paul, He usually whispers, He is gentle yet active.
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strngrnrth
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As an atheist I used to struggle to figure out right and wrong. The problem was that it was impossible to separate real moral honesty from my momentary (usually wrong) impression of my own interests. I was destroying myself and people in my life and couldn’t get a handle on it. Not just while partying or while in the occult (major overlap there anyway) but while trying to be a good student, good worker, and good friend, citizen, family member and everything. My mental health was touch-and-go. I was always guilt-ridden and tried to cope with it by self-help and therapy and trying philosophies on for size that seemed to prove I had no reason to be guilty. But I have a soul and it (the real me) was screaming in pain. Only my intense social conditioning against Christianity shored up my utterly illogical attempts to stay an atheist or agnostic or New Ager despite the failure of such systems to meet their own predicted outcomes or to provide consistent explanations of what I saw.
Then try not to base it on your emotional needs. Look for the signs of the supernatural and think about them.
It is compatible and the two ideas work together in many ways. Of course it is also absurd to suppose you are merely the product of accidental chemical reactions because such could never produce a being as complex and full of contradictions and paradoxes as a human being. Highly intelligent people have died for trees and rivers. They knew very well that their emotional survival instincts would favor their own survival, then that of their offspring, then other relatives, then other humans, then other mammals and so on out through the concentric circles, yet they sacrificed themselves for plants and inanimate things. Why? Because we have a value of giving that is not a product of the drive to survive but something more powerful than that drive that can override it. Moreover, people have sacrificed themselves and their children for art and for abstract notions. People have willingly given their lives for countries they never lived in or owed anything to. There is a kind of sacrificial love in our hearts that goes far above anything that ever might increase the spread of our own DNA. Look how many people choose celibacy. The psychobiologists still dissolve into nonsense every time they try to explain real people’s behavior.
Not to mention that no one has yet made a rational case for an accidental way as much life as we have in such complex forms could have come about by accident. Most evolutionary models still used were first proposed in the old days of steady-state universes and ten-trillion-year-old-earth speculations. We know now that life just hasn’t been here long enough to have unfolded this way purely by chance. Th timing of mutations was just too perfect too many times to be utterly fortuitous. Even atheist biologists are saying so.
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The_Catholic
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It is completely compatible my friend.
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grandfather
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tobinatorstark
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non existant
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Lief_Erikson
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Lol, yeah, I thought of answering this way too
. No God, no creation, no existence, so a peculiar question 
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Augustine
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One word: hell.
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