Let's face it - in this scientific age, the arguments for the existence of God don't bear much scrutiny, and the arguments against are hard to counter, in particular the existence of suffering: not all suffering, which is probably inevitable in a material universe, but the built-in suffering, such as parasitic worms, some of which cause hideous suffering to their hosts, but have to do so in order to live themselves; also horrendous genetic diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy, epidermolysis bullosa, and proteus syndrome.
However, human beings have a religious capacity and need (not every single human, before some smart-arse says "I dont!", but humans in general), so why not practice religion - Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or whatever - without pretending that it is a true account of the world: treat it, as it were, as artrather than science? That, essentially, is the non-realist position, espoused by Don Cupitt and others, and foreshadowed by Paul Tillich, and is where I am nowadays.
Thoughts? Come on, traditionalists - try to argue me back into belief in an objectively-existing God!
There was a comment from a poster with the moniker R U Mashin' on the old BBC Christian Topic site who said this years ago (1):
Coversion (sic) is achieving a mental state where the Christian model 'works' - that is offers us a consistent world view.
Deconversion is when this model fails.
The problem with the intellectual-only approach to God is that one unintentionally ends up creating a ‘god’ in their own image. The approach may be far more sophisticated than building idols of wood or stone, but the root is the same: something created by human beings to make sense of the world.
The antidote is a biblical incident that appears here regularly! When God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac, an intellectual-only approach will either conclude that Abraham was mistaken or that God was lying about Issac being Abraham’s heir. This either-or approach is what happens today, and as it stands there is no way to resolve the apparent contradiction.
The solution is to do what Abraham did. He trusted God! Hebrews 11 v 19 shows that Abraham reasoned that if Issac were to be killed, God would have to raise him from the dead. At the time when Abraham decided to trust God, he didn’t know how things were going to play out.
Ultimately the faith of the Christian is not in arguments for God, or in counter-arguments for those against. It is in the person of God Himself! Therefore, what is needed today is the same kind of trust in God when we don’t have all the answers now, e.g. the often raised problems of evil and suffering. It is neither trust-only (no intellect) or intellect-only (no trust). Both are needed.
(1)#68 of this thread Deconversion: Phase 0 (the pre-deconversion)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbreligion/NF2213235?thread=6244050&skip=60#p74791102
