My desertion of religious faith was, at first, bittersweet. As I've expressed before, I initially mourned the loss of hope for immortality and eternal life with a heavenly father and my family. On the other hand, with welcome relief I let go of fears of coming under godly condemnation and possibly being separated from my family forever.
Now I look back on my old religious hopes and fears with some embarrassment. They were all illusory. My fears were taught to me. I feared gays and their diabolical "agenda." I feared "worldly" pleasures and the misery they would undoubtedly bring to my life. I feared the calamities incident to the imminent second coming of Jesus. I feared going to Mormon hell. So many useless fears. I might as well have wasted time fearing the monster under my bed or the bogeyman in my closet. My religious hopes were similarly silly. As a kid I would actually sit around and daydream about the types of worlds I would create once I became a god. I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy books, so I had quite the imagination. Little did I realize that being a god in Mormon thought means being pretty much like our god and just implementing a silly plan that requires a savior and damnation for a large chunk of your offspring, over and over, for all eternity. No thanks.
Nowadays I feel like my hopes and fears are much more material. I fear the following (in no particular order): man-made environmental ruin, nuclear holocaust, biological warfare, death, human extinction, etc. As a believer, I didn't worry about any of these, because I believed that no matter how bad things got, God would never allow humans to annihilate themselves, and death was no big deal because hey, resurrection and immortality for all, right? Now that I no longer cling to such beliefs, the dangers in the world become much more salient. While I recognize that global violence is actually at its lowest levels in recorded history, I also acknowledge that our self-destructive abilities are great than they've ever been. We literally have the ability to wipe out virtually all human life on the planet overnight. And there isn't any deity that would step in to intervene. That would be the end of humanity.
On the other hand, my hopes are now much more real, as well. I have genuine hope that despite the dangers, perils, and threats that we face (mostly self-made), we will innovate new and better ways to deal with our problems. Technology and modern science are two-edged swords, but I think the progress they have generated is undeniable. I believe that someday we will figure out a way to cure most, if not all, of our biological problems. I think reversal of aging will become commonplace someday. I think we will be able to achieve de facto immortality--perhaps not in my lifetime, but at some point in the future. There are companies now that offer cryogenic services where for a fee, you can have your brain or body frozen in liquid nitrogen in an effort to preserve you until a time in the (perhaps distant) future when science will have come up with a way to resuscitate bodies and prolong life. I'm seriously considering it myself (my brain, at least), as I think it's worth the risk/cost. (Besides, worst case scenario is that it doesn't work, and I'm dead anyway.) Some might call that crazy; I call it covering all my bases, because I'm certainly not going to count on the existence of a soul and life after death as described by the religious.
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