Secular grace is a proactive acceptance, love and caring for our fellow human beings person to person.
Secular humanism has a ways to go to catch up to religious organizations in regards to building community and facilitating deep human connection. Religion has had centuries and sometimes millennia to fine-tune their strategies. Some of their strategies have been manipulative and others have been genuine. One of the manipulative strategies is easy to induce guilt in the guise of sin against a deity. One of the more effective and genuine strategies is simply loving acceptance sometimes called grace.
When I was a Christian I was a grace junkie. I became a Christian because of grace and I stayed a Christian much longer than I would have without my understanding of grace. I understood on a deep level my need for acceptance. I saw it as equally important to give grace to other people. I still do.
Many atheists hate the term grace for a number of reasons. For one, the implications of both substitutionary punishment and substitutionary atonement are offensive. The idea that someone can be punished for another’s crimes is heinous as are the implications of human sacrifice. Atheists also don’t like the term because it implies people are broken in some way and are in need of fixing. The very idea of sinfulness has dark implications about how one feels about oneself. Lastly, atheist balk at the idea that people can do anything immoral and then just repent/confess and all is forgiven. Is that really moral?
Christians will argue atheists are reacting to the “offense of the cross,” without really thinking through the implications because to them atheists are actively rebelling against God. They cannot begin to comprehend how someone would reject such a wonderful offer sometimes while simultaneously condemning atheists to hell.
So let’s remove the theological implications of grace for a moment. At its best, grace is about being accepted and loved for who you are as you are. I believe there is a deep human need for this kind of acceptance and love. One of the great draws to religion is becoming a part of a community that cares for you. Our need for human connection does not go away when we discard belief. In fact, that may be the time of our greatest need.
So is grace about being forgiven by an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent god? Or is it at its heart people caring for people? I realized after deconverting that it is very much about the latter. And since then I have noticed more and more that religious organizations are leveraging their communities to bring people into their doors. It is the people and not a deity that provide meaning and connection.
Humanism is the idea of being good and ethical without the need for a god. I propose an addition to humanism: secular grace. Secular grace is a proactive acceptance, love and caring for our fellow human beings person to person. Humanists being human to other humans.
The concept of Secular Grace acknowledges that there is nothing more valuable, moral or ethical than people loving and accepting one another.
It is summed up succinctly in the South African term, ubuntu:
“I am because you are.”
Secular grace does not assume people are broken. It does not assume punishment is required substitutionary or otherwise. Neither does it necessarily condone peoples’ poor decisions. It does attempt to understand them. But most of all Secular Grace attempts to empathize with people without requiring them to conform to an ideal. This simple act of human kindness is quite powerful.
You do not have to look far for the opposite of secular grace. Many atheists and theist online see it as their personal mission to disabuse each other of their respective positions. I’ll admit debate and argument are a lot of fun. But it rarely actually changes someone’s mind.
I am much more interested in interacting with people who are questioning, deconstructing, on their way to deconverting or have recently deconverted. It is clear to me that this is the group of people who could benefit most from secular grace. People in these positions are in the greatest need of human connection and community.
When a person is considering giving up their belief structure, it is not just their beliefs they are losing. They may be risking relationships with family, careers and their concept of meaning. That is a fragile place to be. They need a listening ear more than cold hard logic.
I am looking for ways to create humanist community. And to help those who are doubting, deconstructing and deconverting through the process.
Continuing with my series on presuppositions that lead to credulity or incredulity, I ask the question is morality objective and absolute? Your answer to this question will greatly influence your perspective on the existence of God.
A rock bottom foundational assumption of the theist is that morality must have an objective source. To believe otherwise is to cast oneself into the chaos of moral relativity. C. S. Lewis captures this argument in Mere Christianity. In fact, I suspect that most modern Christians have absorbed this way of thinking from C. S. Lewis if not directly, by osmosis.
Conscience reveals to us a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, thus pointing to a supernatural Lawgiver. –C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis argues that because we feel like there is an objective moral ruler that we measure ourselves from it must exist and its source must be God. Now, I will grant, this perspective is understandable. Humans do feel a sense of right and wrong. The question is what is the source of that sense?
The assumption of an objective morality is so foundational that very few believers ever consider to question it. The threat of moral relativism is the specter that keeps them from evaluating its validity. Many arguments between believers and atheists spin round and round in circles because of not understanding each other’s presuppositions on this point alone.
This argument for God based on conscience that C. S. Lewis uses is called the argument from morality. It is important to understand that the assertion of moral order is taken as a given a prori.
Argument[s] from moral order are based on the asserted need for moral order to exist in the universe. — Wikipedia
The argument from objective moral truths for the existence of God goes like this
If morality is objective and absolute, God must exist.
Now here is the thing, the second assertion is completely taken for granted. Nothing objective in nature suggests that morality is an absolute. Although differing cultures agree on some basic broad strokes of morality like “murder is bad,” they do not agree on many particulars like the treatment of women, the justification for war, etc.
What is the source of morality?
Back to my statement earlier that humans do feel a sense of right and wrong. How can this be explained without a deity? As in many things believers question atheists about evolution is the answer. Humans have evolved to have a moral conscience. We instinctively know some moral truths, cooperation over antagonism, do not mate with a sibling, murder is bad. This evolved conscience helped the human race survive against its competitors.
Culture then adds on top of these innate moral instincts. Individual cultures value certain morals above others. Some cultures value strength and honor while others value service and humility.
I argue that morality progresses. We as a the human race or even an individual culture recognize past mistakes and make improvements. In short morality itself evolves. The greatest case in point, is slavery. Who today in 2016 would make the argument that slavery is acceptable let alone based on inherent differences in the “humanness” of the races? We recognized this terrible mistake, realized that all humans have inherent worth and abolished slavery to the extent that now anyone who communicates racist attitudes is considered backward and ignorant not to mention morally repugnant.
An evolutionary morality married with progressive cultural mores explains both the similarities and differences in morality between cultures today. In fact, it explains this much better than an objective absolute morality. For if morality is objective how does one explain the change over time?
Christian morality has not remained static through history. The above example of slavery is again my prime argument. I assure you if you are a modern day Christian woman you would not want to be placed in a time machine and travel back to the first century. It would be unpleasant for you. Nor would a Christian of color wish to live in almost any time in history prior to today. Notice also the dramatic change in moral tone from the Old to the New testaments. Morality is fluid and influenced by the surrounding culture whether one acknowledges this or not.
This is why two ethical questions of our time are of great importance: the LGBTQ community and Black Lives Matter movement. I believe the church is on the wrong side of history on these issues. Why? Because morality progresses. We recognized our mistakes like marginalizing minority groups and we improve. Looking backwards to a 2000 year old document set in the context of first century culture and morality will not help us navigate these modern ethical questions.
On the fear of relativism, morality is relative it always has been. * We must accept that. Even within a particular faith group their are differences of opinion on morality. The very fact that we have different moral intuitions, even among similar faith groups is evidence for the non-existence of an objective moral truth.
Does this mean that we cannot argue between cultures over progress? No. We very much can and should push for progress on the ethical issues of our day. The world is shrinking by the day. We will have to cooperate and we are likely to disagree. But having the debate in the first place is already progress.
Can one be good without God?
Finally, the root of the believer’s discomfort on these issues comes from the assumption that one cannot be good without God. The believer is taught that human beings though made in the image of God are fundamentally broken by sin and incapable of good on their own.
To atheist ears the idea that Christians are moral only because God told them to be is an indictment. If the only thing holding the believer back from a murderous rampage is their belief in a non-corporeal judge, is this goodness?
I have been a Christian. I have held some of the above believer’s opinions. I then met a number of atheists who love their families, contribute to charities and give back to their communities, in short, very good people. I am now one of them. And though, I am still uncomfortable calling myself a good person due to the prior indoctrination, my morality has remained virtually the same. Just a lot less guilt.
* Update: I am entirely too flippant in this paragraph. This post is an argument against the theistic argument that morality is impossible without a god, specifically premise 1 above. It is not a complete theory of natural morality. The point I was attempting to make is that societies’ morality progresses and likely at different rates relative to one another.
I actually do think there are some objective moral truths. Not in the absolute sense but in the sense that humanity as a whole moves towards consensus like Martin Luther King Jr.’s “the moral arc of history bending toward justice.” The simplest example is “The unnecessary suffering of sentient beings should be avoided.” I will be the first to admit I have an incomplete theory of natural morality. It is a work in progress for me. As a skeptic I suspect that all moral theories are incomplete.
The thrust of the post is to say that the source of morality is us, human beings, and not a theistic god. We will get it wrong at times but through the process of error correction morality will progress.
When I was a Christian I wondered often why many of my peers who were atheists did not believe. And more importantly I questioned why I did believe. We were of similar intellect, social and economic background so why the difference?
I theorized there was some watershed idea, experience or environmental variable that caused one person to believe and another to reject faith.
Now after having a deconversion experience and becoming an atheist myself, I think I have some insight into why intelligent people of good faith believe and others do not.
Culture
Our culture encapsulates us completely. Like a fish that is unaware that it is wet, we are blind to the culture that surrounds us. It influences us in benign and insidious ways. For the purposes of this discussion, let me just point out that the surrounding culture dramatically influences our thinking and perspective sometimes in imperceptible ways.
For me and my likely readers we are a part of Western culture. Western culture has been heavily influenced by ancient Greek thinking. We have many great cultural artifacts from our Greek past including democracy, the Socratic method and geometry.
Dualism
One of the Greek ideas that we could do without is dualism. Dualism, simply put, is the idea that the physical and the non-physical exist and may or may not be seen as in opposition to one another. The two major philosophical influences that lead us to dualism are the Platonic ideals and Gnosticism.
In The analogy of the cave Plato argues that the reality we experience is a mere shadow of the true reality. We are like cave dwellers who are looking at shadows on the wall rather than going out into the light and witnessing the reality that causes the shadows. Plato is suggesting that the perfect ideals are the real reality and that the physical reality we experience is crude facsimile of the perfect forms.
From Platonism we get the idea that the non-physical ideals (or forms) are more real than the physical world we experience around us. Let that sink in.
Soon after came Gnosticism which took dualism to the next level. They taught the dichotomy that the material physical world was evil and that the spiritual non-physical world was good. The flesh is to be despised while the things of the spiritual world were holy.
Relevant to our discussion, the early Christian fathers argued with and against the Gnostics. Much of the early doctrinal creeds had to do with arguing against Gnosticism. Many of the rejected books of the apocrypha are Gnostic books. In spite of this effort, early Christianity was deeply influenced by the Gnostics. The Gnostic influence on Christianity is seen in the ascetic sects which taught the need to flagellate the flesh into submission.
This dualistic perspective has permeated what we call Western thinking throughout history. Dualism to one degree or another has continued to influence our thinking to this day.
It is in the sea of unexamined cultural dualism that most people view spirituality. The non-physical exists and it in some mystical way is more real than the physical reality around them. It is holy. Through the prism of dualism theism is not a huge leap.
To those who reject dualism either intuitively or analytically the physical, that which can be experienced, tested and examined is all there is. For these people theism is a very huge leap indeed.
Presuppositions
The point I am trying to make is that we have a number of presuppositions that lead us either to credulity or incredulity. One’s perspective on theism or atheism does not happen in a vacuum.
It wasn’t so much my rejection of Christianity itself that lead to my deconversion but the eroding of these underlying beliefs. I held on to faith in the resurrection for dear life up until the bitter end knowing that it was a binary choice. Once I admitted to myself I did not believe in the resurrection it was all over. This did not come from a rejection of the “evidence” in the bible because that was all of a piece, a closed system. It came by examining the assumptions that the closed system rested on.
To further make the point, given a certain set of presuppositions it might even be reasonable to have faith in a theistic god. This is why Christian apologists almost always use the same arguments. They are arguing within the closed system that makes assumptions about reality. The atheists who debate with them are speaking an entirely different language based upon an orthogonal set of assumptions.
You may note that I have not shied away from using the term assumption. At some level we must make assumptions. I think math is beautiful in that it conveys rock solid truth. 1+1=2 is True with a capital T. But even mathematics makes some assumptions about reality. For even the concept of twoness is abstract, not two sheep or two apples but two as a concept. It took humanity a while to understand numbers as abstract ideas. It is very easy to fall into an epistemological black hole when discussing assumptions, a hole which I would like to avoid.
Therefore, I would like to posit a number of presuppositions that act as watersheds separating those who believe and those who reject belief. My plan is to write a blog post about each of these in the coming months. We have already talked about dualism here, and I have written about the soul. I’ll be adding to the list as time goes on. Let me know what you would add to the list.
I have come to the realization that the term post theist was too loaded with connotation. I had mistakenly used a very technical philosophical term to mean simply after theism.
I have changed my handle and wordpress blog to Graceful Atheist which more accurately captures the connotations I am trying to convey.
Previous version of the blog post
Post Theism is a term that can be used to mean a post modern liberal religious view. Or all the religion but none of the supernatural.
I want to be clear that I am abusing this term for the name of the blog. I am very much an atheist in that I believe there is no evidence for a god or gods. I am agnostic in the sense that one cannot prove a negative. And I am a humanist that puts people before ideology.
What I want to convey with Post Theism is the sense of humanism after having had a theistic world view and subsequently having abandoned it. The much pithier Life After God was taken.
I have a much more nuanced perspective on religion itself. I am still working out how to express it. I have family and friends who are still very religious. I do not side with the hard line atheists who find no value in it whatsoever. And I think humanism has a ways to go to catch up to the ability of religions to meet the basic human need for connection.
Having said that I would describe myself as areligious. I think religion has had more downside than upside and its potential to go wrong may make it not worth salvaging. In particular, the use of the term “god” in a non-theist sense is misleading and confusing to most of the world who has not studied theology in some formal setting.
The question this blog will continue to attempt to answer is how can humanism match religion in delivering connection and community without devolving into dogmatic ideology.
These kinds of messages have become cliché, but I find the need to write it anyway. Mostly this is an attempt to communicate to my friends and family as succinctly but thoroughly as possible the what and the why of my deconversion from Christianity. This is also for those of you readers who have had doubts and have struggled to keep them contained.
What I am
I am no longer a Christian. In the summer of 2015 after it became increasing more difficult to hold my beliefs against surmounting evidence to the contrary I admitted to myself I no longer believed. I was a Christian for approximately 27 years, until the Jenga tower of contradiction between belief and facts came crashing down. I could no longer sustain the mental effort it required to maintain belief against the overwhelming lack of evidence for that belief.
I am an atheist. Others, wiser than I, have pointed out that this does not tell you very much about me. To say that I am not something is not very descriptive. The list of things I am not is infinite. But I am not afraid of this moniker. I am not a theist. This means I do not believe in God or gods. I do not believe in the supernatural of any kind. The natural is more than sufficient.
I am a humanist. This means that I believe humanity is the most precious existence in the cosmos. It means that loving people trumps ideology. Julia Sweeny said it better than I can. In “Letting Go of God” after tentatively putting on the “Not believing in God glasses” she says:
And I thought wait a minute, wait a minute, what about all those people who are unjustifiably jailed? … There is no god hearing their pleas and I guess this goes for the really poor people too and really oppressed people who I had this vague idea that they had a god to comfort them and then an even vaguer idea that god had orchestrated their lives for some unknowable grand design. I walked around and thought oh, no one is minding the store! … And slowly I began to see the world differently.
We are responsible for each other there is no one else minding the store. Being acutely aware that this is the only life we get to live sharpens and focuses one’s sense of how precious our time together really is. There is no after life where we get a do over. This is it. We need to take care of each other. My time with my family and friends is the most important part of my life.
To say that I am a former theist is significant in that I have rejected Christianity not out of ignorance but from having lived it and found it wanting. It also means that I am not hostile towards my friends and family who are still believers. I have been there. I still respect and love those of you who are believers. Having said that, I acknowledge off the top that my rejection of Christianity and statement of unbelief necessarily implies a particular opinion about your beliefs. I cannot change this. I still love and care for you.
I am the same person I have always been though I am no longer a Christian. My morality did not disappear the moment I admitted to myself that I no longer believed. For my friends and family I hope to continue our relationship with each other. I have lost no love for you. If you choose, we can enter into a new conversation with one another. If you choose to pick up stones … well, there is a saying I can quote you.
A few things I am not
I have learned that there are a number of common, shall we say, embellishments that Christians tell each other about atheists that turn out to be untrue much of the time. And I am no exception.
I am not angry.
I am not hurt.
I am not depressed. My life is actually unbelievably wonderful.
I am not running away from anything.
I am not throwing away my morality to live a “sinful” life.
I am not ignorant of the Bible or the teachings of Christianity. My unbelief is because of this knowledge not in spite of it.
I am also not interested in arguing with you about your belief. I will say only this if you are having doubts try trusting your doubts.
The Why
Answering the why question will be the ongoing project of this blog but here are some of the highlights.
The Search For Truth
In a word: Science. The scientific method has proven over and over to be a reliable way to determine truth. A hypothesis is made. Evidence is gathered. If the evidence supports the hypothesis it may become a theory. Others test the hypothesis to find its weaknesses. If the evidence does not support the hypothesis then it is discarded.
David Deutsch in “The Beginning of Infinity” posits that for most of human history we have had “bad explanations” for things. If the weather was bad the gods did it. If the weather was good the gods did it. He describes this as highly variable. Which god? Any god will do. How? Magic? He points out we did not begin to have good (non varying) explanations until the scientific method came along and we as humans began to discard bad explanations.
In science theories are falsifiable. Meaning if evidence is found against the theory it has been falsified and thus will be discarded. What is important to understand is that scientific theories may be dependent on one another. If one dependent theory was in fact false subsequent theories would find falsifying evidence.
A quick example. Einstein’s theories of General and Special Relativity predicted several phenomenon that were not testable at the time. Black holes were predicted by the theories but not discovered until 1971. The theories predict time dilation both at relative speed and near a gravity source. GPS would not work if it did not account for the time differences between the moving satellites in orbit and the receivers on earth. Lastly, gravitation waves in spacetime, a mind bending phenomenon, was not proven until one hundred years after the theory was introduced that predicted them. The LIGO lab detected these waves in 2016. Ultimately, studying gravitational waves will give us a better understanding of our universe.
The point is, if either of the theories were incorrect then none of these findings would have been possible. And if we found contradictory evidence the theories would be discarded. Better yet, if we find a better theory that more tightly explains the data (less variance in Deutsch’s words) even Einstein would be replaced. It is not personal, it is about the truth.
Contrast this with faith. Questioning and doubt are things to be avoided at best and sinful at worst. Adherence to dogma is considered a virtue. Faith is hoped for and unseen. Seeking evidence is seen as “testing” God and a sign of lack of faith. And I can see why. The deeper I dug into my Christianity looking for evidence the shakier things became.
Which Faith?
I happened to grow up in the United States in a nominally Christian household. When I became a Christian in my late teens it was within the context of a culture soaked with Christian themes. But what if I had been born in Saudi Arabia? Wouldn’t I have become a Muslim? What about India? A Sikh or a Hindu? How can I honestly say I would have become a Christian if I had been raised in a different culture. The answer is I can’t.
People of faith have no problem not believing in other faiths’ gods. They do not believe that Zeus controls lightening. Nor do they believe in the literal thousands of gods worshiped throughout human history. Stephen F. Roberts famously responded to a believer with this quip:
I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
Even within Christianity we have a tremendous amount of disagreement. Catholics and Protestants. Evangelical and Main liners. There are something like 2000 different Christian sects alone. As an evangelical we call many of them cults. But how do we determine what is a cult and what is gospel?
How does one determine whether one faith is more right than another? If your answer is the bible re-read the line about 2000 different sects of Christianity. Most of them use the same Christian bible.
Even within a narrow group like Evangelicals , who or what decides between two contradictory beliefs? Is pre-destination correct or is it human choice? Is baptism submersion or will a sprinkling do? Is it pure grace or good works that saves a person? I had strong opinions on each of these as do those who would have disagreed with me. But there is no way to determine which is true and which is false.
It comes down to cultural microcosms. If you were raised Baptist, then pre-destination is true. If you were raise Pentecostal then speaking in tongues is true. All the while both groups point to the other with disdain.
It was when I began to look at what my in-group considered to be cults trying to understand why a person would believe these “crazy” things, that it occurred to me that they saw my beliefs as just as crazy. And atheists thought we were all crazy.
You see, it is not enough to convince those who agree with you. If a belief or a theory is true it must convince even the hardest skeptic. John Loftus calls this the “outsider test for faith.” If someone outside your culture is unconvinced by your arguments, maybe it is time to re-evaluate your belief. Here is Hemant Mehta describing John Loftus’ “outsider test for faith:”
I believed that if faith was worth while it should stand up to scrutiny. Once I used the same basic scrutiny and incredulity on my own faith as I used for others, it did not hold up.
One of the factors leading to my deconversion was reading the bible through in a year. Seriously, have you read the bible lately? As believers (of all faiths) we have an amazing ability to cherry pick the bits of our ancient texts that suit us and be completely blind to the parts that are contradictory, horrifying and down right dangerous. The whole of the bible, including the parts often not read like Numbers and the prophets, and even the parts read often like Psalms, is dark, violent and hateful. Only through the rose colored glasses of blind faith can the whole of the bible be seen as a moral book about love.
Read the bible without the rose colored glasses of inerrancy or authority and a different picture of the holy book appears. Does the bible contradict itself? Try this yourself. Read the genealogies at the beginning of Matthew and Luke. Notice anything? They don’t match. If you say one is for Marry and one is for Joseph, isn’t God supposed to be Jesus’s father? Read the passion story in all four gospels and try and unify them. What events took place in which order? Who first saw Jesus after the resurrection? How many people/angels were at the tomb?
Update: When I originally wrote this piece I was still learning. Though the above link has many real contradictions, they tend toward the trivial and easily dismissed. For a much more scholarly and, therefore, all the more devastating look at contradictions see Steven DiMattei’s Contradictions In The Bible.
Apologetics
Apologetics is the defense of Christianity. Over many years I have read the best apologists Christianity has to offer: William Lane Craig of the Kalam cosmological argument fame and Guiermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards who wrote “The Privileged Planet”. As well as some that are not so great like Josh McDowell and Lee Stroble. The more I read the more doubt crept in. The arguments from these authors were bending over backwards requiring mental gymnastics to try and fit the supernatural into the frame work of the scientific understanding of the world and the cosmos. The more I dug the less convincing the arguments became particularly when pitted against established scientific knowledge like evolutionary biology, big bang cosmology and quantum physics.
We can argue over first causes or supposed missing links but the point is this is the “God of the gaps” or argument from ignorance. Throughout history science has been filling in those gaps overcoming ignorance with evidence. A couple of hundred years ago there was no germ theory. Attributing sickness or healing to a god was the “best” explanation we had. Now we prescribe penicillin.
There will always be gaps in our knowledge but this is a prompt to explore and discover and not be satiated by “God did it.”
I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.
― Richard Feynman
Tautology
A tautology is a circular argument. Here is an example:
Why do I believe in God? Because the bible tells me so. Why do I believe the Bible is authoritative? Because God says it is.
Now you can throw a lot of elements into this tautology beyond just the bible: The known universe (“creation”), one’s subjective experience, stories from missionaries from far off lands, however each of these is interpreted based on the others. In a word tautological.
Objectivity
The most convincing argument for any believer is their own subjective experience.
You don’t understand, I know God exists! My relationship with God is special and real.
I do understand. I felt that way. I knew that same way. Until I didn’t.
The second I asked myself one simple question, “Could I find an objective non-tautological foundation for my faith in God?” That was the beginning of the end.
The invisible and the non-existent look an awful lot alike.
I could be wrong
This might sound like a strange thing to say. But it is extremely important to me. The scientific method leverages falsifiability and requires error correction. When new information is presented that contradicts a hypothesis it must be taken into account and either explained or the hypothesis needs to be changed or thrown out. It is error correction that leads to the accumulation of knowledge and truth.
This is what led me away from theism. But to be clear, everything I write about and hold as true is available for scrutiny up to and including my atheism. But before you come at me with your unassailable argument, keep in mind, I have read a number of well know apologists, I read and consume podcasts from theists all the time and I was once an apologist of sorts myself. I remain unconvinced by the arguments for theism. So, to change my mind I need objective evidence of the variety that skeptics accept not the kind that allows the faithful to entrench themselves.
Here is a video by @holykoolaid that nicely sums up the kind of evidence that would be required to convert an atheist like me:
This was not a choice. I did not wake up one day and decide I no longer wanted to believe in God. This was something that happened to me.
When Bart Campolo, Tony Campolo’s son, was asked when did he start to lose his faith he said:
About 15 minutes after I started to believe.
In a sense, that is true for me as well. I struggled with doubt throughout my Christian faith. I knew there were areas best left unexplored. If I asked too pointed of questions I might not like the answers. So I didn’t for a very long time.
But this masks the fact that I had very real very deep faith for more than twenty years. It makes it sound as if my faith was not the right kind of faith. If you find that argument convincing, more power to you.
Under scrutiny, I could no longer believe. Belief escaped me. The very foundations of my faith gave way. I no longer believed.
The emperor has no clothes.
To the extent that this happened in an instant, my exact thoughts where:
Oh, ____, what am I going to do?
The very search for truth that led me to Christianity led me away.
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