I knew already of the aesthetic differences. The architecture of European churches to me is more awe-inspiring and glorious while ours generally tend to be bland, constructed with more plain materials, remnants of our Puritan roots.
That video of Girard was wonderful. The full interview is
here.
Do you know what's caused the change? What makes you less certain?
This is going to sound strange or implausible maybe, I have always understood religion in two ways, one its a creedo for this life, in that purpose it serves well and probably better than some alternatives, even if I where an agnostic or athiest I would think this, the other point is an experience, a personal relationship with a personal deity, the presence of God.
I think many people experience the former and not the later, so it becomes easy to dispense with religion or trade in or trade up like its a used car, in the main people who experience the later are mystics and the like.
I'd always thought that I was pretty lucky because by reason and feeling I knew there was a God and practiced living in their presence, it was a presence to me, something similar to a long term relationship or having a dear, distant relative who you're planning to move back with once college/university is finished. With this there was a lot of consolation and certainty, its the certainty that's the important part.
However I started to read Alexander Lowen, he's a psycho-analyst who features Julian Janes in one of his books, Janes explains how through neuroscience many spiritual experiences can be explained in psychological terms, its not exactly delusion in a prejorative sense but it could be in an objective sense.
Its perhaps something to do with how the argument is made because many of the other criticisms of religion, especially Dawkins, dont phase me at all, I've no problem with evolutionary or un-Godly or "abscence of a diety" theories of our and the universe's origins, I tend to perceive them as based on serious misapprehension and human, all too human, invented obsticles.
So I think that following this discovery I've had a few days in which I experienced the world as a different, dreadful, place, without the prospect of an afterlife or God (which in some ways is the greater deal, my own personal spiritually doesnt conceptualise an afterlife as a place teaming with people, the idea of some kind of celestial library has its appeal sometimes but its really about God, not a reinvention or sembalence of life on earth). It was a little heart breaking.
The position I'm in now is one of considering that I'll not feel the same way I did before, once certainty's lost you dont get it back, although I dont feel convinced of alternative, athiestic or agnostic beliefs. I'm reading John of The Cross' Dark Night of The Soul, it seems to have some parallels.