The utility of religion from a theologically liberal Christian position...

[Humanist_Activist]

I've been trying to figure out how to talk about this particular aspect of some types of Christianity, or stage of religious belief, that of the theological liberals. Not necessarily political liberals.

Mostly this is a bunch of question, because I know the answers to these questions that I found that lead to my atheism. Curious of the answers others will come up with. I will put my answers underneath these in bold, note these are answers I came up with during my years as a Christian, developing into an atheist towards the end.

1) Does your religion make you a better person than you would otherwise be without it?

At first I thought yes, to be honest, I was a better person being a Christian than I could be otherwise, but, particularly as a teenager, my perspective was very limited. As I grew older, and realized that there was a greater variety of beliefs out there, I wondered about how much influence my religion had on my morals. I concluded not much, especially when I started questioning things later.

2) Do you believe in a hell/place of punishment?

This was the first belief I threw out, couldn't believe in it since I was about 10, don't believe in it now, think a good god would never have even thought up such a diabolical idea.

2a) If yes, is this punishment permanent or purgatorial?

2b) If you don't believe in a hell/place of punishment, how do you account for its existence in the Bible.

Actually I couldn't, I thought about it, and just couldn't understand the mentions of a place of punishment in the Bible. This was one of the motivators for me to read the Bible for myself.

2c) If you answer no to "2)", is Annihilationism an acceptable alternative?

This is one of those ideas that I didn't hear about growing up, but I'm still appalled at the evilness of it, I mean, its one thing to not believe in an afterlife for anyone at all due to, you know, it not existing. But to believe in an afterlife you get to enjoy, but someone else will not? How fucking sick is that?

3) Describe the god you believe in.

Hmm, I guess, when I was a Catholic, the 3O's god, the Trinity, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Eventually this god took on pantheistic qualities as I tried to account for the problem of evil, etc. After I no longer considered myself Christian, I even attempted to explain it through polytheism, not gods that were all powerful, etc. Critical thinking and lack of evidence got in the way of those beliefs.

3a) If you describe this god as loving/benevolent, do you have an answer to the problem of evil/suffering?

To be honest I couldn't, look above.

4) Do you believe the Bible is a reliable testimony on the actions of God and/or Jesus and their followers as portrayed?

I was never taught to take the Bible as 100% truth or 100% literal. In fact, I don't remember being encouraged to read it at all, mostly our PSR classes were devoted to Catholic tradition and sacraments, not scripture. But we still recited select passages, as did our priest in our parish, and we were told to use our reason to filter things, but they never really taught us any method of using reason to discern what in the Bible was reliable and what wasn't.

4a) If yes, where is your evidence for this reliability? How do you account for contradictions and inaccuracies?

4b) If no, by what method do you discern which parts of the Bible are reliable, and which aren't?

So I actually thought to read the Bible, and the questions above came about, some of it is historical, some people, some places, other parts more ambigious. What I was told was the method is something along the lines of reason guided by the Holy Spirit, I figured that spirit screwed up, because my reason lead me to abandon Christianity for good. This includes looking at God's/Jesus' actions throughout, along with trying to figure out what actually happened and what didn't. I was twisting my mind into Gordian Knots trying to justify or explain away what I was reading.

OK, for now, I'm done, but I thought I would just lay this out here, these were questions that have occurred to me throughout my life that, though I don't think this list is complete. Obviously left the ones that don't apply to my answers blank, my answers in italics, but one thing I wanted to note. I abandoned Christianity once I realized I didn't worship either Yahweh or Jesus anymore. I created a definition for a god/gods that satisfied the problem of evil, even removing benevolence as a factor. I just honestly realized this wasn't Christian anymore. Eventually leaving the idea of theism behind, but belief is persistent, and I really wanted gods to exist in some form, just couldn't find evidence for them.

Not to mention that liberal Christianity seems extremely easy to leave, there's no consequence to it, after all.