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Alicorn comments on Existential Angst Factory - Less Wrong
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So we agree that some people feel like the absence of objective values would be the end of the world, and some people seem not to care. I'm open to the possibility that the difference in perspective is due to differences in depth of understanding of the problem. That's why I began this thread asking what is the source of immunity. However, in response to my question, no one suggested any solutions or even acknowledged the problem independent of depression. For me, this was an alarm that people who have immunity to nihilist angst can't even relate to it, suggesting some kind of personality difference between those who have it and those that don't.
This is an amazing question to me because I feel this lack pretty much constantly. (This commenter also seemed skeptical that people feel this lack.) Actually, I'm probably an extreme case.
I'm hesitant to take the conversation in this direction because maybe nihilist angst isn't always about personalities that require external validation. I would like to hear more from other people who experienced it.
Nevertheless, since it seems we first need to identify what it is like in at least one case, I'll say some things about the experience in my next comment.
I thought this was a significant reason for resistance to conversion!
I would expect so, since I wouldn't expect someone to remain miserable in atheism indefinitely. I've heard atheists argue that once you don't believe in God, you can't go back to believing just because it would make you happier. I don't think it's so simple. If you stop believing in God and feel unhappy, this might (quite reasonably) be interpreted as an indication that atheism wasn't the right belief system for them.
But there are also cases (drawing mostly from fiction, I guess) where people lose their faith and walk around unhappy for a few years and then maybe place their faith again.
The anticipation of this experience is enough to make people resist becoming atheists. The reality of it is not at all obvious, nor necessary to explain the phenomenon to which you refer.
"The right belief system for them" implies that one prefers beliefs for reasons other than their accuracy, which tends not to be true of people who spend any amount of time as converted atheists.
This is a powerful motif in fiction, and does get used a lot. It probably even happens in real life sometimes, but I'm inclined to impugn the depth of the initial transition to atheism in those cases. Someone who tries being an atheist, doesn't like it, and goes back to being a theist may have acknowledged the existence of compelling arguments in atheism's favor, but they didn't percolate deeply enough to stick; it seems like this scenario resembles people who say things like "I should eat less chocolate" or "I should be a vegetarian" or "I should give more to charity" and don't actually do so. They detect sound reasoning in favor of the proposition, but it doesn't sit right with preferences or other beliefs, and so the reasoning is discarded by means of "faith" or equivalent mechanism of ignoring evidence.