I'm sorry, Darlets, I have been preoccupied most of the week and did not get back to you.
Rather than responding to specific comments, I will explain as best as I can why I identified with RLP.
First of all, I started with a faith young in life (Christianity), and even when things got hard or did not make sense to me, for whatever reason, my basic premise of "God being there" did not fade. I just considered it a matter of finding him.
So I built quite a faith, learned a lot, put together a very big picture of life and values and what was important and what was not. My morality was constructed, and much of what I learned in the Bible (conceptually) seemed to play out IRL fairly closely, reinforcing my belief.
But I also had many doubts. The political platforms and details of the religious doctrine I often saw promoted by your evangelical/conservative Christian churches gnawed at my sense of intellectual coherency, seemed presumptive, etc. Much of what was asserted to be "true" (and then have other doctrines built up on it) seemed to me to be uncertain at best, and unprovable.
And as I got older and my experience and knowledge expanded, I found myself more and more unhappy. As RLP says in the earlier parts of his essay, he ran across some disturbing things in his work ... such as when a doctor said that someone only had a 10% survival rate from a sickness, 9 times out of 10 (regardless of earnest prayer), the person died anyway. And in the last few years, allowing myself to look at the Bible with new eyes, in a new frame of reference, drove me to reevaluate my own process of interpretation. Because of this shift in approach, suddenly the things I had just assumed to be true now were show to be just that: assumption.
And I am an intellectual person. I cannot just accept something because it supports the values I want to believe, or it supports my agenda, or because those around me are pressuring me to accept it. Intellectually, I can only credit something as much "truth" as is warranted, and otherwise do need to stamp on it, "Uncertain!" for all the parts that have not been shown to be clear to me. I have to be nuanced and honest.
I realized that much of my faith was not based on a choice to believe, instead I simply thought I saw evidence and had been letting that dictate my decision to follow God. Now that the evidence had "changed" because my perspective had changed and I had reoriented myself, what was I to do?
The Christian God and the basic concepts represented in Christianity still conform to what I believe to be true about psychological growth and health, in life. (There are many specific doctrinal points I am no longer sure about.
So, my intellect does not allow me to "believe" in God. I can't show that he is true. For all intent and purposes, I don't believe in God. He might not actually exist. I don't "know" that he exists anymore.
But I believe in what Christianity stands for, the general values it promotes (giving, self-sacrifice, patience and the fruit of the spirit, community, humility, acceptance of responsibility for my acts of culpability, etc.).I can see those things. They are what I believe to be true.
So, like RLP, I might not "believe" in God (he might or might not be there), but I still believe I can be as faithful to the values that Christianity promotes, because I do believe in them and have experienced them as being true.
Does that make sense? This is not "law" (referring to JJJ's comments) -- I am not doing this to win forgiveness or earn a place in heaven or winning some unnknown God's approval -- I am doing the good things because i believe they are what is true and beautiful in the world... whether or not God is even there.
Honestly, I don't know how much of this I can change. Like it or, Christianity has been part of my life for a very long time, and realistically I do not know how much a person can jettison. It's still my frame of reference and what I compare new experiences to. Sahara was immersed in Islam and despite leaving it, it still forms a basis for how she interacts with new experiences and ideas... and the same exists for me as well.
There is a telling example in the Gospels where Jesus manages to offend many of his followers by discussing himself as being wine and bread and needed to be eaten and drunk -- which sounded uncomfortably like cannibalism to the crowd. Disparing at how many has left, Jesus looks at his disciples and says, "Are you going to leave me too?"
And Peter says, "Where else are we going to go?"
Like it or not, whether or not God exists, Christianity and what it advocates is the best thing I have found in my life.