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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3742 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 13, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Do the religious people on here actually believe in Christianity? Like do you actually believe that Christ rose from the dead, Garden of Eden, Jesus is the son of God, the Trinity, virgin birth, etc? Or is more Deism and you like the community from going to church? I have a hard time believing most adult converts i.e. JD Vance actually believe these things, but I'm curious if I'm wrong here.

Yes….?

If your model of the US is one where most educated practicing and professing Catholics don’t really believe it, you’re very wrong. Now of course, you can give some side eye to politicians, but if your assumption is that we all are mostly just larping, no.

That's probably a true model, however. Most Catholics regardless of education are nonpracticing and only partial believers.

Right about non practicing Catholics of course. But mentioning Vance OP seemed to be asking whether practitioners actively believed it.

Best guess estimates is that there’s about 25% of practicing Catholics who don’t intend to believe much in the way of catholic doctrine, and this definitely applies to many democrat politicians, which we know because they’ve said so.

It’s not implausible to me that VP Vance could be in the same category with opposite political valence. It’s not the explanation I’d go with.

Eh, I tend to give Vance the benefit of the doubt because he converted from evangelical Protestantism. If he had merely been chasing clout for the "smart people" version of Christianity, he'd have gone to one of the mainline denominations - Episcopalians for most snobbery value but they probably would all have turned green and had a fit of the vapours at the very notion, so one of the Lutheran or Methodist liberal churches. Bill Clinton is Baptist, but American Baptist, the northern and more liberal sibling of the Southern Baptists. There are progressive Baptists, and one James Talarico is doing his best for the Democrats in Texas by being a (liberal) Presbyterian (heavy on the liberal, less so on the Christian as anything stronger than "Jesus wants us all to be nice" doctrines).

That is not how the American elite works.

It's probably true that the Episcopalians wouldn't have taken him, but the Lutherans are not known as a convert church. A convert to Lutheranism would probably look suspicious in American political context, even. Becoming Catholic is a sensible career decision for an aspiring member of the conservative elite- although staying Lutheran or Jewish or Mormon might be acceptable, converting over would not be. These are ethnic religions in America. His real alternative was eastern Orthodoxy, which is far smaller and lower profile(and would probably be regarded as eccentric kinda Catholics by most Americans anyways- including by professional sociographers).

an aspiring member of the conservative elite

Who would still not be Catholics (the working class religion of the Irish, Italians, Poles, etc.) but more likely Episcopalians, Catholicism-Lite but with Anglican class 😁 Look at St John the Divine in New York, with its list of famous funerals, or the National Cathedral in Washington - that's an Episcopal Church building, not a Catholic one. The Episcopalians have been influential amongst American elites out of all proportion to their numbers.

Lutheran churches may still have strong roots in national churches, but a move upwards from being a redneck Fundie to a progressive Lutheran? That would help in political ascension, reassurance that you're not going to wipe your boots on the tablecloth or spit on the floor.

Though possibly I'm looking at this through a British Isles lens, where Margaret Thatcher moved from Methodism to Anglicanism as she rose in the Tory party.

Yes, you’re confusing America and England. Anglicanism is a liberal elite religion here- establishment but very much not appropriate for the right wing of the Republican Party. Catholicism covers the whole class spectrum in America and the (relatively small) liberal wing is still more moderate than the episcopal church.

I want to register that I think this is wrong. Catholics have as good or (I suspect) better networking in the halls of political power than Protestants, very strong institutions, and they are accepted on both sides of the aisle. If you are a member of a Protestant mainline denomination Protestants will quickly ask "PCA or PCUSA" (or whatever the equivalent is for that denomination) and with Catholics unless you go to Latin Mass or something, just being Catholic isn't necessarily a political tell.

Going to Latin Mass isn't really a political tail either, unless you're trying to present yourself as a democrat. Desantis and Vance both do, and Abbott has some ties. Mike Johnson even hosted a Latin Mass, and he's not Catholic.

I don’t have theory of mind for an educated person in the 21st century who believes in the Garden of Eden. My reaction is like Dawkins to Mehdi Hasan when Mehdi says he thinks Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse and split the moon. I know there are people who believe it, but I’m incapable of understanding how. I don’t want to rehash New Atheism either. I am mostly skeptical of adult converts, especially former rationalists and new atheists. People born into it I actually understand somewhat. I’ve read apologetics too like mere Christianity, and I just don’t get it.

Maybe that's the difficulty - you have only encountered the weakest versions of Christianity. Most educated Christians for most of history regarded the first 11 chapters of Genesis as myths that present theological truths about our identity as humans in relationship with God. Reading the Garden of Eden as something that has to be literally true or else all of the Bible and Christianity is false is something that developed relatively recently.

Origen:

I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally" (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).

Augustine:

"at least we know that [the Genesis creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar" (Genesi Ad Litteram, AD 415).

Also St. Augustine:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.

That said, it's not like there are no miracles either. There are books of the Bible that consider themselves to be histories, some that consider themselves to be biographies, some that are poetry, some that are advice. Each book needs to be read according to its genre. For example, this is an interesting look at how an event in 2 Kings shows up in the historical record of surrounding nations.

Most educated Christians for most of history regarded the first 11 chapters of Genesis as myths that present theological truths about our identity as humans in relationship with God.

That is not true.

It is true that denominations holding to traditions which predate, roughly, 1650 almost unanimously hold that the first eleven chapters of genesis do not have to be interpreted literally(although they also do not condemn such a belief). But the average educated Christian a thousand years ago believed the stories were completely literal(granted, they weren’t that far off from the contemporary scientific understanding of events either). The dissenters were mostly people like Augustine who held non-literal views but would be categorized as creationists today.

I hope I didn't give the impression that I thought all Christians knew about evolution and the big bang since the 1st Century. Of course St. Augustine thought the Earth was created in a spectacular way. If I recall correctly "science" at his time thought the Earth was created in Spring and the Genesis account didn't indicate that (or something like that I can't look it up right now), which is why he wrote what he did about following the science instead of treating the creation accounts as literal.

But it is true that the average Christian looked to the first 11 Chapters of Genesis for allegorical, theological truths primarily, and a description of the actual beginning of the Earth secondarily. Same with the book of Joshua, it was primarily seen as an allegory for the importance of excising sin from the soul, and only secondarily as an actual historical record of something that happened. And this way of reading the narratives is not a post hoc rationalization in the face of evidence that should have disproved it, but rather just the natural way it's been approached applied to our present knowledge.

Not actually true- up until the development of scientific evidence for evolution and an old earth, most Christians, including the apostolic churches, took those passages completely literally. It wasn't dogmatically required, but, like, Matins of Christmas talks about the earth being 4,000 years old at the time of Christ. The Byzantine calendar takes the same assumption. This was the mainstream assumption in 1800.

I think we're taking past each other. Venerable Bede wrote:

"The battles recorded in Holy Scripture are not left to us merely as records of ancient bloodshed, but as lessons in spiritual combat. The enemies that Joshua was commanded to strike down without mercy are the very temptations and evil desires that rise up within the soul. To make a covenant with the enemy is to yield to vice; to put them to the sword is to mortify the passions through spiritual discipline." — Thirty Questions on the Book of Kings, Question XI, Venerable Bede

The purpose of Joshua is not merely to record ancient bloodshed, but it was recorded as scripture for the a more allegorical purpose, in this case for spiritual combat. I can pull quotes from Origin, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, etc that say the same.

Likewise, the beginning of the book of Genesis provided a thought provoking, textured, allegorical recounting of the origins of man. Everyone saw that there were two, contradictory accounts of the origin of man in the first two chapters. The purpose of handing down these chapters was not to present an accurate account of history but to present a Biblical anthropology. Most commentary on these stories focus on the relationship of God and man presented in the stories as perennial spiritual truths. They were also taken as the best account they had of the beginning of the human species.

And yet the dominant strains in the U.S. have a much higher regard for literalism. This is not a hallmark of logical consistency.

I think once one is five or six schisms removed, one shouldn’t get full credit for citing St. Augustine.

...I am not in schism with St. Augustine. I'm BFFs with his mama.

And the point is that the dumb form of Christianity is relatively recent, local, and not representative of Christianity, so if someone intelligent converts they are not necessarily going into the dumb version.

There are more Americans believing in literal young earth creationism than who go to church every week.

Model the Christian God as a superintelligence, and the physical universe as a simulation. Then drop the usual model that any reality below the observable one should be assumed to work the way the observable one works. Consider that, if there were a deeper substrate reality under this one, you know nothing about how that reality operates at all, and none of our assumptions about the function of the universe necessarily obtain.

If our assumptions based on the observable reality don't work for higher realities, then that should signal we can't derive how/if God works from what we see in our world. No matter how much evidence there is in favor of Christianity, it provides no truth value.

If our assumptions based on the observable reality don't work for higher realities, then that should signal we can't derive how/if God works from what we see in our world.

Say rather, you can't derive the mechanics of higher realities from observation of lower ones, and this is a point that most people theorizing about stacked realities appear to miss.

But God is not a mechanism. If a willful intelligence in a higher reality wants to talk to you, it can. If it makes claims about your reality, you can compare those to what you observe of your reality. If it tells you things about the higher reality, you can choose to believe it or not, and the perceived accuracy of its statements about the reality you are in can lend some degree of evidence for trust to operate.

In any case, what is "truth value"?

If a willful intelligence from a higher reality actually talked to me, as you're correct to point out it could if it wanted, my questions towards Christians and interrogations of the truthfulness of their faith would be much fewer.

(Allegedly divinely-inspired words of mortal men, "signs", feelings and vibes are no proper replacement for a conversation in my book. If it wanted to talk to me, it could talk to me.)

Are you familiar with the atheist arguments that God's relationship to us could not possibly be loving, because it's based on coercion through threats and bribes? In my view, there's a pretty solid argument that it has to be this way for our choice to be freely made.

Interrogation of truthfulness is a good thing; my main objection is that most people I see attempting it seem to me to be doing it poorly: strict Materialists incapable of recognizing breaks in Materialism, for example.

You could argue that any relationship built on communication with a higher entity would necessarily be one built on coercion, sure. But without communication there is no relationship. When one can't be sure if he's speaking with God or with the echoes of his own mind refracted through religious culture, where does freely made choice even come into it?

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Is this supposed to make him more or less credulous of Christianity?

More, I think. Have you seen a "new atheism" analogue for Simulation theory, Singularitarianism or the Doomish? I observe that a lot of the objections to theoretical violations of Materialism do not appear to be principled. There's a pretty noticeable gap between "do I have to believe this" and "do I have to not believe this", and a lot of human thought observably lives in that gap.

There’s no shortage of New Atheist styled critiques of everything from AI millenarianism to Yudkowsky’s lifestyle choices. You can find them here or in the NYT.

Simulation theory is bizarre and counterintuitive and not, I think, all that widespread. SBF tried to cite it and people (correctly) went, no, you’ve still got to give the money back. Drawing an analogy with Christianity isn’t exactly flattering.

Simulation theory is bizarre and counterintuitive

Is it? How so?

Well, first you’ve got to consider the possibility. Our computer-literate, sci-fi-reading crowd probably has an easier time with that than the average Boomer.
Then you have to distrust all your senses, something which has been a sticking point since at least Descartes.
And you’ve also got to accept that you aren’t special.

Not that any of these make it impossible, but Christianity starts to look like an easier sell.

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Simulation theory is bizarre and counterintuitive and not, I think, all that widespread.

If this were a conversation in the general population, I'd agree. Maybe the rationalist stock has diluted somewhat here as well, but I've argued some of the points straight from the Sequences in the past. I maintain that the intellectual history of Rationalism shows that Materialism can break down and people mostly don't notice, much less ask "People just pretend to believe this, right?".

I…sure, I guess.

That’s not a particularly compelling argument for adopting another dualist belief, let alone a specific one.

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That's all fine at first, but doesn't it collapse into "Nothing is comprehensible, so believe whatever you will."?

I can take the universe as a senseless or even contradictory accident, or I can take it as the deliberate creation of some higher order, fine. But making from that the leap to the benevolent God who cares about each of individually, to an afterlife, to Jesus the Son of God, or any other specifica of any given faith, I can not.

Uncharitably it all seems like wishful thinking. The desire for there to be an actual purpose and place for us, and not just brief and pointless struggle against inevitable obliteration. I get that desire, and how it could capture the mind and make it believe. I get that it's probably healthy and prosocial. But I can't quite get myself to think it true.

What I keep circling back to is this - If there were a God who cared about each of us indivdually, who speaks to us, he'd do so unmistakeably, impossible to overlook or misunderstand. Not through vague signs, interpretations, exegeses, the words of supposed son and and prophets handed down through two millenia of misrepresentation, mistranslation and lost context.

It all seems too flimsy and accidental, too much held together by the transparent desire for God to be so. So maybe there is a superintelligence that spawned a simulation. But I don't hear it talking to me in any language I can understand.

That's all fine at first, but doesn't it collapse into "Nothing is comprehensible, so believe whatever you will."?

I am pretty sure that all humans do in fact believe whatever they will. That is, Belief formation is unavoidably a product of acts of the will, of choices made.

I used to think that beliefs were formed at least somewhat deterministically: you accumulate evidence, and the weight of the evidence eventually forces your mind down a channel. Then I spent a couple decades arguing logically with people, and realized that humans do not actually work this way.

Near as I can tell, there are three ways to form a belief:

  • You can accept (or reject) a belief proposed to you by others uncritically. This is a willful choice.
  • You can examine the proposed belief based on evidence. "Evidence" is an infinite class, and not one of the smaller infinities either, so it has to be pruned to a vanishing fraction. This pruning is a choice. Then it has to be weighed, and the metrics of the weighing are a choice. Then you can either draw a conclusion or go looking for more evidence, and this is also a choice.
  • If you want something deeper, you can use Axioms. Axioms have a shape, and some sets of evidence fit within them, and others don't, so this provides a more rigorous way of selecting and pruning evidence. But there are infinite axioms, and while you can have interplay between evidence and axioms, you still have to choose both your axioms and the evidence to test them against, making it, again, a willful choice.

People speak of motivated reason. But we reason for reasons, to accomplish some goal, and so it seems to me that all reason is motivated. This does not mean that reason is useless, only that its usefulness has an observable upper limit. It seems to me that those aware of this are better able to operate within those limits than those who believe their reasoning is not motivated, that their beliefs are not choices but rather deterministic machinery. One of the best ways to lose the ability to make good choices is to cement the belief that you aren't making choices at all, but are only a set of gears grinding out the mechanistic results of cause and effect.

But making from that the leap to the benevolent God who cares about each of individually, to an afterlife, to Jesus the Son of God, or any other specifica of any given faith, I can not.

Are you looking at this as a set of facts that compel belief mechanistically, or as an option that can be chosen? If the former, then I'm confident you will never find it, since it doesn't exist for this or any other belief. If the latter, the furthest I'd say is that it is clearly possible since I've done it myself, but whether it seems like a good idea to you is a very different question and one I obviously cannot answer.

What I keep circling back to is this - If there were a God who cared about each of us individually, who speaks to us, he'd do so unmistakably, impossible to overlook or misunderstand.

My theory is that compelling belief would violate peoples' ability to choose to love or not love him freely. I do not expect this theory to be compelling to others, though.

Not through vague signs, interpretations, exegeses, the words of supposed son and and prophets handed down through two millenia of misrepresentation, mistranslation and lost context.

I don't think the texts have actually been misrepresented, mistranslated, or had their context lost. I would rather not sidetrack into a tangential issue, but the short of it is that, from what I've observed, the evidentiary basis for this sort of argument was generated by the same intellectual cultures that gave us the Sokal hoaxes, Professor Arday, and all the other fruits of the Academy, and by similar methods.

It all seems too flimsy and accidental, too much held together by the transparent desire for God to be so.

I believe in God because I want to believe in God, straight up. When I didn't want to believe in God, I didn't believe in him. Belief in God is an Axiom, and axioms are chosen, not compelled. I appreciate that there's a ton of cultural baggage and associations that say it isn't supposed to work this way, but in perfect honesty, I think it's the cultural baggage and associations that are wrong. I've had versions of this conversation a number of times here, and I always emphasize the same point: I am not under the impression that I am going to convert my opposites to Christianity, but I really would like to get people to take a serious look at how beliefs are formed in the general case, both because I find the question fascinating, and because I think it provides significant insight into a lot of otherwise-mysterious aspects of human behavior.

Are you looking at this as a set of facts that compel belief mechanistically, or as an option that can be chosen? If the former, then I'm confident you will never find it, since it doesn't exist for this or any other belief.

This reminds me of Claude Shannon’s information theory. The idea is about sending a message. Before Shannon, you might think of sending a message as mere translation: you encode a message into a medium and send it, then the receiver receives it through that medium and reconstructs it. However, Shannon flips the perspective. Instead of viewing it from the sender’s perspective, he views it from the receiver’s perspective. If you already know the message, why do you even need to receive it? The receiver has to guess what the message is.

And guessing is different from translation. Translation can be done mechanistically: you already know the thing and simply replace one representation with another. Guessing begins with not knowing. There are multiple possibilities, and one of them has to be selected.

Translation naturally gives rise to an impression of objectivity and completeness. There is a singular truth, buried in the world itself, waiting to be excavated and laid bare for others to admire. The worldview of God.

From a human perspective, knowledge seems closer to guessing. Of course, “guessing” here does not mean choosing randomly. I do not quite know a better word for it, and perhaps I do not fully grasp the idea myself yet. My impression is that it makes more sense to see knowledge as both the question and the answer, not just the answer.

I will just add that a hugely underrated aspect of belief formation is your friend group and social circle. (Thankfully a professor of mine mentioned this to me relatively early in my life, and I have been blessed in some other respects as regards my career and geographic placement).

Who you are around shapes who you are, including your beliefs and your moral values. Your friends and whoever you spend time interacting with control your own personal Overton Window. Certainly many people are capable of withstanding the compulsive power of Overton Window but it's not generally a bet you want to take or a position you want to place yourself in. Bad company corrupts good morals. And you make a choice as to whether or not you spend time with bad company.

I am able to drop the usual model that any reality below the observable works the way the observable one works. Humans are probably incapable of understanding how the universe truly works. I don't think that's a controversial way to model the universe.

But then why the Christian God? I can get to A, but I can't go from A to B.

I suppose the way I'd put it is that, in my view, He's got a good pitch. That is, I find the deeper claims of Christianity map well onto the world I observe: things like sin and its consequences, What it has to say about how humans work, what is necessary, which things remain constant over time, etc. It promises things that I want, and in my experience it delivers on those promises in tangible ways in the material world. The arc of my life diverged markedly for the worse when I became an Atheist, and diverged markedly for the better when I became a Christian again. I don't expect my personal experiences to be persuasive to people who are not me, but they are very persuasive to me.

things like sin and its consequences

What exactly are the consequences? We've had this discussion before and you never really made it clear. I see people succeeding all the time despite sinning, and I see the virtuous suffer. The only time I see sin consistently punished in this life is when the sin is against someone who can strike back or has a patron who can. Otherwise, sin away - perhaps you'll pay up in the world to come, but I see no evidence that you will in this life. Why is that wrong?

As this condition becomes more fully established, you will be gradually freed from the tiresome business of providing Pleasures as temptations. As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”. The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye'll have had experiences . . . it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticising it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.

From personal experience, embrace of sin observably eats the self away even while you are still living. I could see myself becoming noticeably less human over time, more wretched, more insectile, ingrown in a miserable spiral of decay. And the reverse was true as well: pursuing Christ made me more human, allowed me out of myself in ways I had not been able to achieve while chasing appetite and pride, bitterness and vanity. I left Christianity because I believed it was making me miserable; as an atheist, I grew considerably more miserable, and eventually the contrast between my own life and the lives of my Christian family members grew too stark to ignore. I returned to the church, and my life now is incomparably better.

You must see how that just sounds like "separating from family made me feel worse". Those whose Christian family was, in fact, the miserable part of their lives, or those whose family was not religious at all, would have different experiences.

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But that merely provides evidence for the idea that Christianity has significant pragmatic value for ordinary people navigating their lives and for societies organizing themselves, something which even atheist thinkers have been freely acknowledging for a while now.

But to tie this to OP's original question, you'd have to somehow demonstrate how these benefits imply the truth of the various historical and metaphysical claims Christianity makes. This is IMO very hard to do, especially given that the same psychological benefits are often believably claimed to be enjoyed by the practitioners of other, mutually incompatible religions as well.

As with many other atheists/agnostics with a sympathy towards Christianity, my problem is that I see the wholesome effects of dedicated Christian practice on an individual and societal level, I can even fully entertain the idea that there is and will never be a secular project with the same effects, at least at scale, but when I get to the part where I try to believe in the whole religious complex of ideas I inevitably run into a brick wall made out of serious scholarship on the Bible, early Church history and the surrounding historical sources, the non-specific/non-Christian/universalist nature of the strongest philosophical/theological arguments for the existence of God, the weaknesses of the theological arguments for a specific/historical version of God, and the plethora of presented evidence of similar epistemological strength for other, completely different religions that I'd have little principled reason to reject if I were to start accepting the equivalent Christian arguments.

If Rationalism is systematized winning, and Christianity has systemized "pragmatic value"/winning...

Would you mind going into more detail on the return to Christianity? Not necessarily "how the arc of your life changed" (though if that's not too private, by all means), but more what got you to step back through the door? It seems all so strange in the particular to me that I find it unbelievable. Why Jesus at all? Why was he born there? Why the crucifixion? I don't expect a theologian's answers, but I'm trying to give the flavor of why it seems so strange in time and place and detail to me.

But then why the Christian God? I can get to A, but I can't go from A to B.

Might as well pick something. Christianity isn't what I picked, but I get it.

What did you pick? If you are willing to share, of course

Nothing organized.

Religion is a difficult thing for me. I've never been able to square Christianity's Message with its Commandments.

It's pretty impressive how the Catholic Church was able to survive as an institution for almost 2000 years, far longer than anything else currently extant in the Western world.

That's about all I can come up with.

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