Secular humanism and atheism simply don't offer a vision compelling enough to compete.
Basically, atheists don't get to belong to tax-exempt country clubs.
Most of the Protestants (and many of the Catholics) I know don't believe the fundamentals of Christian theology, which really haven't changed since the Council of Nicaea and depend heavily upon a pre-scientific mindset. On the other hand, they spend little enough time thinking about theology that that nonbelief doesn't bother them much; many of them, if challenged, won't admit to their doubts.
For these people, Christianity is merely a means of bonding with the community they live in, and theology is just a way of declaring allegiance to that community.
As an evangelical Christian, I managed to keep my doubt at bay for decades by reassuring myself that there were trained professional theologians who had figured out the answers to all the issues that bothered me, and that enlightened theologians and clergy were dedicated to the philosophical enterprise of harmonizing theology with the real world we live in. I was in my mid-thirties before I figured out that what the church calls mysteries of faith are simply logical paradoxes induced by insistence on the superstitious, logically inconsistent theological axioms of the Middle Ages.
I go so far as to opine that the Gods of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are logical contradictions that cannot exist, but living as I do in Alabama around a lot of religious people, I generally keep those opinions to myself. To me, that's not the same thing as atheism; I have not yet decided conclusively against the existence of an amoral God indifferent to human affairs and consistent with the observable evidence, although it's difficult to see what practical difference there is between such a God's existence or failure to exist, and thus I don't think of the issue as very important any more.
I could almost subscribe to some versions of Buddhism or Taoism, though, had I not developed along the way an aversion to religious organizations as tools for manipulating one's fellow man.
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syntheid
no subject
Date: 2005-10-20 09:21 pm (UTC)Basically, atheists don't get to belong to tax-exempt country clubs.
Most of the Protestants (and many of the Catholics) I know don't believe the fundamentals of Christian theology, which really haven't changed since the Council of Nicaea and depend heavily upon a pre-scientific mindset. On the other hand, they spend little enough time thinking about theology that that nonbelief doesn't bother them much; many of them, if challenged, won't admit to their doubts.
For these people, Christianity is merely a means of bonding with the community they live in, and theology is just a way of declaring allegiance to that community.
As an evangelical Christian, I managed to keep my doubt at bay for decades by reassuring myself that there were trained professional theologians who had figured out the answers to all the issues that bothered me, and that enlightened theologians and clergy were dedicated to the philosophical enterprise of harmonizing theology with the real world we live in. I was in my mid-thirties before I figured out that what the church calls mysteries of faith are simply logical paradoxes induced by insistence on the superstitious, logically inconsistent theological axioms of the Middle Ages.
I go so far as to opine that the Gods of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are logical contradictions that cannot exist, but living as I do in Alabama around a lot of religious people, I generally keep those opinions to myself. To me, that's not the same thing as atheism; I have not yet decided conclusively against the existence of an amoral God indifferent to human affairs and consistent with the observable evidence, although it's difficult to see what practical difference there is between such a God's existence or failure to exist, and thus I don't think of the issue as very important any more.
I could almost subscribe to some versions of Buddhism or Taoism, though, had I not developed along the way an aversion to religious organizations as tools for manipulating one's fellow man.