If I had any brains I’d just shut up and glean what wisdom I can from others’ experience but, diagnosed long ago with terminal logorrhea, I am simply unable.  I do grow wistful.  If only I had known folks like yourselves way back when.  I was pretty much left to figure out what I could for myself.   I had books but there is really no substitute for an encounter with lived experience. 

I think it is a normal and natural occurrence at a societal level…

I agree, and contra our current crop of evangelical apologists, it is not the cause of Christianity’s decline but a natural consequence of it.  But let’s do social analysis later.  For now…

How much did your religion give you that remains meaningful without the dogma giving it meaning? 

Truthfully?  None.  Sans dogma, the whole fundamentalist system is gutted and hollowed out. There was a visceral hatred of anything that smacked of culture or appeals to the senses.  (If you had overheard the debate over stained glass windows you would scarcely be able to believe it.)  The only thing that shaped me permanently was being a part of a closed knit community.  I had multiple sets of parents.  Many brothers and sisters.  I was surrounded by love.  Made a part and accepted without qualification.  As long as I believed the way they did.  Deviation was exclusion. The result was that loss of the dogma gradually undermined the sense of community.   The more I questioned the more alone I became.  At this point the first third of my life (alas, the formative part) almost seems like it happened to someone else. 

Are you able, subjectively, to separate the cultural aspects of your religion from their dogmatic roots? 

I think the answer is pretty clear already but let me be explicit.  There was no culture. Unless you consider the Baptist Hymnal culture.  

Have you found a community where you are comfortable practicing without belief? 

I spent my twenties looking for something to replace that lost sense of community.  But I gradually began to understand that it would be impossible.  Perhaps one does not join a community so much as realize that one is already a part of it.  It’s like belief.   You don’t choose to believe.  You realize that you do, or you don’t. 

Part of that search included what I would characterize as a form of “liberal Christianity”.  I tried to reconcile the world as I had been taught it was with the way I perceived it to actually be.  That gap got so wide that I could no longer straddle it.  Going back would have been a kind of death.  A suicide.  (I’ve seen people do this.)  I simply leaped into the void.  I took my lumps and learned a lot.    

I think that is all super-situation specific and personal, and there are no right answers. 

Yes, we must pitiful to others – and to ourselves.   But, to quote Richard Feynman, just because we don’t know the right answer doesn’t mean there aren’t wrong answers.

But they held on to that god, that tradition, those scriptures. Instead of rejecting the whole thing, they just changed it–fairly lightly–to reflect their new beliefs. 

The whole thing shows a really interesting attitude towards inherited religious tradition. 

I often wonder what might have been if I had been raised in a saner tradition.  I think this is the attraction of liturgy.  One doesn’t have to assent to one particular interpretation.  One’s personal mood at any particular moment is not even primary.  What is important is consensual community participation.  As Wittgenstein pointed out, a game’s “meaning” lies in participation. 

In the end I suppose Christianity, “liberal” or otherwise, was not enough for me because I was incapable of truly participating in it.   

The Christianity you were raised with didn’t give you anything that would bind you to Christianity once the dogma lost its mesmeric hold. 

I think this is true.  But this aspect is inherent in the absolutism of fundamentalism.  Other expressions like Catholicism and Orthodoxy have safety valves, ways to relieve the pressure.  But a dogma driven tradition like the one I was raised in has none such.  There are are only two settings on the dial.  On.  Off.  When there’s no safety valve eventually the pipes burst.  (Or worse, they don’t.)    

So, yes, essentially there was nothing available for me to “liberalize”.  Not to overstate but coming out of fundamentalism is very much like coming out of any cult.   It’s not like merely changing an opinion on a subject.  You lose your entire concept system.   The floor slides out from under you.  (And my journey was pre-New Atheism you understand.  I had no support network however flawed it might be.  I had books, which helped but I had to find my own way out.)  

There are survival strategies available.  Grasp for another absolutism.  Try to find a more benign version of what you’re used to.  (This seems attractive but as we’ve discussed you’re always a guest at the party.  You weren’t born to it.)

Or, accept that you have lost something that can never be replaced and realize that trying to replace it would be a mistake.   I saw two options.  Run away from it as far and as fast as I could, or dive into it and come out the other side.  I can understand the first, probably the healthiest solution, but, for whatever reason, this option was not available to me.  I dove in.

What saved me, pardon the pun, was the Jesus of History.  The Jesus of Faith had become meaningless.   It was only when I discovered the Jesus of History that I could deal with my experience.  And as a matter of fact it was reading Prof Ehrman’s Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet, that pointed me in the right direction.   I remain absorbed, but historically, critically.   

(Now my atheism, that was a different though perhaps somewhat parallel track. But that’s not the subject here.)

So for “liberal” Christians I have nothing but questions. 

1.  There is an old expression I’m sure everyone has heard: “Cafeteria Catholic”, meaning someone who picks and chooses what they accept from the spiritual buffett.  Of course everyone does this, even fundamentalists.  But most folks deny it because it has an unseemly sniff about it, like you’re not really serious.  Is part of being a self-identified  ‘liberal” Christian being willing to accept they’re picking and choosing and doing it consciously?  

2. Do you have a “deadline” you will not cross under any circumstances?  (I use the word as it would have been applied in the Old American West.  You cross the line you get shot. )  Do you draw a theological deadline anywhere?  

3.  What do the articles of the Faith mean to you now?  God? The Resurrection? 

etc

Porphyry said
>>I dove in.
>>What saved me, pardon the pun, was the Jesus of History. The Jesus of Faith had become meaningless. It was only when I discovered the Jesus of History that I could deal with my experience. . . . I remain absorbed, but historically, critically.
I’m going to try really hard not to try to coach you over text in a public forum and I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I am pathologizing your experience, but this suggests to me that you are still partly in a reactive stage, still looking for closure. I mean, it sounds (and I may be completely misreading) like your interest in the historical Jesus is more than just an abiding and eccentric academic curiosity. Rather it sounds like you are fascinated by the historical Jesus insofar as that historical critical study is helping you cope with a wound you still feel deeply. It is totally normal to have a period of obsessively researching a former religion as you come out of it–to convince yourself you were and are right to walk away from it, to give yourself closure and answer the questions, “how could this have happen to me? How could I have been misled so long and wasted so much of my life?” That you seem (again, I may be misreading) to still feel that need suggests a deep wound you are still trying to heal. I don’t know whether that will resonate; I may be totally off base, so feel free to ignore it if it doesn’t land. 

Who was the poet who talked about “the wound that never heals”?  The only qualification I would make is that there is no “closure”.  Some things we don’t “get over”.  We accommodate them.  It was my childhood.  All those early moments of awareness were absorbed and filtered through a lens provided to me.  There was no “choice”.   I had no basis of comparison.  By the time I was old enough to realize that my own experience wasn’t universal (or even unique) it was too late.  

I have no anger.  Or lasting resentment*.   (Who would it punish but me?)  My parents did what they did out of love.  Not hate.  If anything they had it much worse than me.  I at least had the opportunity to escape.  But all such escapes exact a price.   The price for me was loss of a community and the creation of an unbridgeable chasm between me and family and friends.  For a long time I could never have an honest conversation with them.  Doubtless I wasn’t alone in my experience but I was isolated because I thought I was alone.   One of the advantages today is that people realize, it’s not just them!  

*Those deserving of utter contempt, then and now, are the ones who exploit these beliefs.   

>> So for “liberal” Christians I have nothing but questions.
I don’t think I can speak for liberal Christians. It’s not a term I would choose for myself, and they are a diverse lot. But I will offer my understanding, with the caveat that these are generalizations based on my understanding. 
>> Is part of being a self-identified ‘liberal” Christian being willing to accept they’re picking and choosing and doing it consciously? 
I think liberal Christians have (generally) rejected the authority structures of traditional Christianities. It is less that they are arbitrarily picking and choosing what they want to believe than that they are choosing to believe based on *internal conviction* rather than *external authority*. “Picking and choosing” makes it sound unprincipled and arbitrary and I think they would reject that, and suggest they their beliefs are actually more principled. Take something like the liberal Christian who accepts women in leadership positions: The conservative says “Paul says women shouldn’t preach to men; you are choosing what you want to believe” the liberal retorts, “If I have to choose between my convictions about fairness and justice and what Paul said, I must follow my convictions.”
>> What do the articles of the Faith mean to you now? God? The Resurrection? 
I think that is highly individual. I think those who are most inclined to accept things like the resurrection probably have adopted a pragmatist epistemology (I’m thinking here of Dale Allison who says so explicitly; but I think you see precedent in people like Kierkegaard). “Believing in the Resurrection gives meaning to my life, so I accept it; whether it actually happened is unknowable and frankly irrelevant. What makes a difference to me is my believing it happened and living like it happened.”  
I think this worldview becomes intelligible once you face nihilism. You look nihilism in the face, and decide, “yeah, I’d rather lead a meaningful and good life, and if believing in God, and Heaven, and the Resurrection will help me do that, then I’m all in. If I have to be a Nietzschean or a Christian, I choose Christ.” I’m reminded of the quip–I’ve seen various incarnations of it–that if you wouldn’t live differently whether there is a God or not, the question is irrelevant and you can ignore it;  if you would, you’d better keep believing in God. 
  

I am curious about the basis for this “inner conviction”?  And I wonder how attenuated a belief can be before it’s simply leached of all meaning.  And isn’t there a danger in having beliefs that exist simply because they provide us with “meaning”?   Since this “liberal” project is so personal, doesn’t that mitigate against the possibility of community, actually the strongest aspect of religion?

Admittedly I’m looking at it from the backend of a lot of living and thinking about it but in the end I don’t want comfort or reassurance. I want my beliefs, as far as is possible, to mirror reality.  If there is nothing I want to stare it in the face.  I’m not brave.  Just curious.  

…when I first left Catholicism.

Porphyry, if I my ask, what do you mean by “left”?  Of course you should be as expansive as you wish, but what I’m most curious about is that moment when you were first conscious that you were no longer something you had been before.  Personally I had no particular facepalm moment but went through a long process where I was continually being forced to compare the life I had been given and the life as I experienced it.  I suppose I was “out the door” before I realized it.   

… it is rooted in some internal conviction of its rightness rather than in simple deference to an external authority…

In the fundamentalist way of thinking, although quite authoritarian,  the expectation is that one must have a  “conversion” experience.   It’s not enough to do what you’re told.  You must embrace the life willingly.  Of course we typically have the experiences we are expected to have.  We believed in the eternal security of the believer, expressed as “once saved, always saved”, so the response to the inevitable waning of fervor was a moment of “rededication”.  One publicly acknowledged one’s wavering and made a recommitment.   And so on.  (I lost track of how many times I “rededicated” my life as a teenager!) 

… I suspect you are looking at someone like Cornthwaite–who labels himself an agnostic Christian–and wondering how his “belief” in the dogmatic claims of Christianity can be meaningful while being so thin he can reconcile them to agnosticism.

Cornthwaite made the interesting point that over the centuries much of what Christians considered “nonnegotiable”, in fact, is.   I wonder if there is anything at all he considers “nonnegotiable”.   If the answer is “no”, everything is negotiable, certain results obtain.   The privileging of personal preference is, I think, a sign of the decline of the tradition.  We may bristle at the concept of authority but there is a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate forms of authority.  When all that we have left  is either illegitimate forms of authority or personal preference then we encounter the waning of the tradition.  

For four thousand years humans sought salvation through the name of Osiris. Yet now he is a name in a history book.  It will also be so for Jesus. 

It is when you stop thinking analytically (and noticing all the problems) and start thinking poetically (just embrace the story) you get really powerful mythology. 

It begins as a story.  It ends the same way.  Unless you’re an academic all those old theological controversies now seem merely quaint.   When you explain the arguments at Nicaea people’s eyes glaze over.  No need for an Inquisition! 

If Prometheus could adopt a belief system that made him happy, that gave him a sense of purpose, would it not actually be entirely rational of him to accept that belief even if it were false? The reality is what it is and he can’t change that, but he can experience it as meaningless agony, or he can experience it with a sense of purpose and meaning and find a sort of genuine happiness. In such cases is it irrational to turn to the subjective?

Yes, but not unexpected.  It may be that we will recoil from the vision of reality presented to us by science and take refuge in some pleasing mirage.  The current crop of cretins we have placed in charge are certainly willing to lead the way.  But reality has a way of impinging upon a facade. 

But is that really the choice?  Meaningless agony or comforting, false belief?  I think we can be better than that.  As evidence I can point to people who have lived their lives better than that.  The mature person (or civilization) accepts the preconditions of their (or its) own existence.   However we got here and under what conditions seem less important than how we respond to the fact of our existence.  God didn’t invent love and compassion – we did!  Out of pity for ourselves and each other.   What we need is not meaning but experience.   And the realization that we all will endure the same fate.  I agree with the New Atheists in this, if nothing else.  Religion, religious faith, supernatural belief, belong to the childhood of our species.  The moment we are willing to face the universe, anxious but not afraid, will begin the maturity of the human race. 

By disposition I am the sort of person who honors the truth above all else, and yet . . . I don’t try to convince people that their religion is wrong. I don’t want the responsibility of taking that meaning out of their lives. Not just in religion, it can be downright cruel to disabuse people of the harmless fantasies they tell about themselves to give their lives meaning. 

Well, I am not militant.  And I know what I went through.  But let’s not slip into condescension and overprotectiveness.  I may be liberated but those folks over there need their illusions.  (Porphyry, I’m not saying you are doing this.)   Fantasies are seldom harmless, he said, speaking from experience. 

Imagine an ethicist who works in value theory and metaethics. After years of working on the really deep questions, he comes to realize that at bottom ethics is a house built on sand: At bottom, there is nothing holding it all up. There is no objective meaning, no objective standard of right or wrong, no objective value. It is all just communal make believe. It isn’t just that his own life is meaningless, but that everything he loves is also objectively meaningless: there is no objective wrongness to someone kidnapping and torturing his kids or raping his wife or stealing everything he owns–as far as the universe is concerned those acts are no different from killing a mosquito. There is no human dignity. Would it be irrational of him to put that thought back into its box and hide it, then go on continuing to engage in the communal make-believe of ethics?

I would question her definition of ethics and morality.  Of course rules without a rule-maker are absurd.   But is “rules to live by” an adequate way to think of morality?  What if morality consists, not of “objective” rules, but is a negotiated interaction between members of an evolving social species?  We notice that some behaviors contribute to the flourishing of our species and some undermine it.  (Flourishing is an evolutionary imperative.  Those members of a species that lack such a preference are quickly eliminated from the gene pool.  Sure, you have societies like Nazi Germany but they quickly destroy themselves. The Social democracies that replaced it thrive.)   The Golden Rule requires no metaphysical base.   It is a logical solution to a practical problem. How do large groups of people  interact with the minimum of disruption?  The fact that the GR has eventually appeared independently in virtually every ethical system known to humankind is very revealing.

I don’t blame you for wanting to look at the void.

Well I didn’t really want to. I tried to live the life I was encouraged to live.  I really did.  It just became impossible.  And if you search, and keep opening doors, one after another, you finally get to the one labeled Nihil.    But here the Buddhists can be of help.  Sunyata, the Void, (or more correctly Voidness, since it is a quality of being rather than a substance) is not an ultimate lack, but is infinite possibility.  I suppose in scientific terms it is the universe before the Big Bang.  It’s all there, galaxies, stars, life, in potentia.   And, yes it does change you.  

Thanks Porphyry.  

“Mind Control” is right.  To my bunch, Catholics weren’t even Christians at all.  Pagans.  Idol worshippers. I remember when I moved away to go to school and began to meet people of different backgrounds.  A fellow student who was Catholic and had answered some of my questions, actually invited me to go to Mass.  A perfectly natural invitation but I was utterly flabbergasted.  You mean, actually go to a Mass?  Me?   It is hilarious looking back.  I kind of expected the roof to cave in on me.  I realized I wasn’t to take communion but if I had I probably would have burst into flame! 

Robert said

Porphyry said
>> I am curious about the basis for this “inner conviction”?
I’m thinking principally about positions or beliefs generally rooted in moral conviction–like the example I gave of someone rejecting an ecclesiastical teaching that enforces a patriarchal ministry. But even in the case where someone chooses affirmatively to accept some traditional teaching, it is rooted in some internal conviction of its rightness rather than in simple deference to an external authority, like in the example of a pragmatic Christian who chooses to believe in the resurrection. 

I think those are good examples, yet I would still add another, namely that of profound religious experience… >>

I don’t want comfort or reassurance. I want my beliefs, as far as is possible, to mirror reality. If there is nothing I want to stare it in the face. I’m not brave. Just curious.

…This also sounds like the deep contemplation of God.

I’ve never talked with anyone about this much at all but when I used to pray I would have moments of ecstasy.   (I’ve already mentioned somewhere else of having a pretty full blown mystical experience at my baptism.)   Porphyry & Robert, your traditions have a vocabulary for this sort of thing but we were constantly being warned against “emotionalism”.   Doctrine!  Get it exactly right, or else!  It’s striking how so rigidly rationalistic fundies are in their irrationality.   The result was that there was no real spirituality present in the practice.  I found it outside the church in music and art and in the experience of nature.  Not so much “feelings” as a deep connection to something larger and deeper than my own isolated  life.   Helluva church, huh?  That even drives the gods away!