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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I believe I am ‘losing my religion’ as we speak. 
I have been an active Methodist all of my life; I married a Catholic guy who goes through all the motions but doesn’t actually have deep faith. I realized we keep up the pretense for our children (kind of like the Santa analogy above) because my Methodist church provides a convenient way to help us reaffirm the values we want to instill in our children.

[b]I want to live like Jesus[/b]... I just don’t think any religion has any (provable) truth deeper than old earthly creation stories that morphed into stories of divinity. 
This has been a mix of influence of my anthropological education background / having children / burying loved ones / not feeling stronger faith as I age, but the opposite. Shouldn’t faith strengthen as we invest in it? I’ve given it 42 years.

I am struggling with this, though. [b]It’s tough to let go[/b] or something after a lifetime of trying. [/quote]

I hear you. It can be tough to make the transition to non-belief. "Letting go" doesn't need to be as complete as cutting a bad ex out of photographs if you don't want it to be. It's still okay to want to live like Jesus. In the same sense that it's okay to want to live like Atticus Finch or Robin Hood or Tom Sawyer.

Personally, [b]as a committed atheist, I'm actually really impressed by the bible. I think it's kind of cool and interesting that humans' desire to understand[/b] -- to understand the world, to make sense of creation, to explain what they didn't have the science to explain -- resulted in the creation and codification of these stories. Not that it's necessarily great literature, and a lot of it is simply not well written even in a good translation, but there's a lot there. So feel free to interpret the New Testament Jesus stories as a reasonably-decent guide for how to live. You don't have to give that up as you move away from really "believing."[/quote]

Interesting point of view -- thanks for expressing it.   Sounds like, having removed or discounted the Bible's power as a must-follow book of rules, you are able to recognize its value as ancient literature.

This is a view that can be  difficult for formerly religious people who became atheist because they were taught to "believe" the Bible as the word of God, and then found it to be a sham.[/quote]

Jefferson had similar issues with the Bible. He took the New Testament and used a razor to physically cut out all supposed miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural - i.e., the Resurrection, miracles, etc. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible [/quote]

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