Whether belief in Jesus is a simple matter of the heart, or a devotion to a specific anthology, it’s still a supernatural belief in an old story with eternal consequences for the wrong belief, which sounds like a human invention to me.

I understand your point about treating the creation story like Aesop’s fables, and I hear this a lot from liberal Christians. My question is, how does that make it better? What’s God’s moral that he’s trying to get across? That men came first, and women were made to serve him? That he sets arbitrary rules in our lives that we can’t even understand, then allows Satan to mislead us and then punishes us for our naivety? That we are inherently bad and must be made to suffer in our lives? Again it reads like mythology and not a beautiful inspiring truth (in my opinion). I’m not seeing the part where it demonstrates that God wants to be in a loving relationship with us. Even as a fable, where’s the value of it?

I can tell you (as can many others) that “turning away from God” does not automatically bring misery and suffering. The suffering that ex-believers experience often comes from the fear of hell which Christianity ingrained in them, and the social fallout when their families, friends, and church communities condemn them. Some people do miss “talking” to God, but for others like me who never found any sense that someone was listening or replying, giving up on prayer is nothing but a relief.

Honestly, I am glad that you have a more compassionate theology when it comes to who will be sent to hell. That is one of the things I appreciate about liberal Christianity compared to fundamentalism. But from my perspective, it still seems like a nice way to dress up something ugly and barbaric. If God is ultimately not going to send anyone to hell because he’s compassionate and loves everyone, why would he allow the church to spread the fear of hell for so many centuries? Do you know how many people have been deeply traumatized by this ideology?

I can see why liberal Christianity would work for some people, but for me it’s no better than fundamentalism. I’m not interested in any religious doctrine in which I must place my faith in an ancient holy book and adopt supernatural beliefs that fly in the face of scientific knowledge. To me, the ubiquity of religious belief — going back far beyond the days of the Old Testament to prehistoric tribal times, and evolving from animism to polytheism and monotheism, etc. — is evidence that religious experiences are an evolved trait of our human psyches, and it’s long been normal to feel convinced that your religion is obviously the right one, even if it seems completely absurd to an outsider.