If the bible is book that is littered with stories that are pure fiction but that are conveyed in such a way to appear as legitimate, why would you trust anything else that it had to say? If you say some of it is true, is it only because it already agrees with you have decided for yourself to be true?
I can only speak for myself but the reason I did this for so long was simply because of fear. When you are convinced that your eternal soul is at stake, you had better get it right!
It starts with a simple conflict in your mind. For example, why would god order the massacre of babies? Then there are the absurdities such as a half million people dying in a single battle, something that doesn't even happen with MODERN warfare.
So I think people start to do what jar suggests. They change the definition of "truth". These things cannot have happend (or cannot be good if they did), I cannot dismiss the god concept, therefore there must be some OTHER meaning that has value.
When you get rid of the fear, this all falls away (again at least for me this was true). When you accept that the only thing pinning your hopes to this mish mash of apology is that some imaginary property that you have might "burn" forever in some unknown place under the control of some unseen being, and of all things in the name of "love" and "justice", then it becomes easy.
It just falls away, just like my fear that Thor might strike me down, or that I may be reincarnated as an earthworm. Religion is bullshit and this just happened to be the bullshit that people around me told me was gold.
Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.
BUT if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born --a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator? --Thomas Paine
™ Version 4.2