Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
That's true. If I had been raised in a more liberal branch of Christianity rather than the word of faith evangelical movement I wouldn't have had the cognitive dissonance of inerrancy and reality and might have changed differently.. leaning more towards deism or something.
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You don't have to be raised in a conservative sect/theology/denomination to come to your same conclusions. There will always be people who don't accept the status quo of what they are told to believe in and who will always try to research and learn for themselves. Usually they have a deep instinctual skepticism. If they can rationalize or reconcile contrary streams of information with with their instinctual feelings, to deal with their cognitive dissonance, they can live with a slightly altered and more accomodating view. If they can't, then there is nothing wrong with abandoning those beliefs completely if they cannot accept them from heuristic, ontological, or just plain emotional standpoint. You have to believe in what you can live with believing in. My church was pretty liberal and progressive in many ways but I knew, even before I was a teenager, that something wasn't right. Everything just felt off and wrong to me on a very basic level and I had to dig for years to find my own answers to live with myself.