Believing Vs Claiming to Believe

[Tonus]

The more I talk to self proclaimed Christians (outside of AF), the more I get the feeling that most of them pretend to believe. When pressed to give a description of their belief, they either can't provide one and would rather not talk about it, or chalk it up to the way they were raised, and humbly admit they don't know very much about it.

I think that there is a genuine belief, especially for those who (like me) were raised religious. You take for granted that god exists and because that belief is absolute, you don't worry that much when a tough question comes along. Almost any explanation or rationalization will do because it conforms with that deeply-held belief.

I can remember that even the earliest questions that I had problems answering (I think the first ones were about Judas) did not make my belief in god waver. There were probably other questions and doubts that attacked that core belief that wound up leading me away from religion. I cannot recall any of them offhand, just the few uncomfortable questions that did not seem to shake my belief. But as long as that absolute belief in god existed, tested or not, I was pretty safe.

But because so much of the difficult stuff was anchored to that one assumption, it crumbled pretty easily once I gave up that belief. Until then, though, my belief in god and my ability to rationalize religious belief in the face of even overwhelming evidence was not really threatened. That is the essence of blind faith, and why I think it is so damaging to a person (and why it can make otherwise 'good' people very dangerous).