In this second half of his story, Luke describes why he didn’t go the whole way in becoming an atheist when his Christian faith became too uncomfortable to hang on to, but instead found a new Christian faith that was much more compatible with the 21st century.

Part of the solution came from giving up on the idea that the Bible is essentially a direct dictation from God, and therefore inerrant and infallible; the Bible never makes any of these claims, but many Christians have long insisted on these points.

Another part of the solution came from understanding that divine inspiration does not mean divine dictation/utterance (the same point made above), but can also include God inspiring humans to search and ask questions and share ideas. What’s more, those humans don’t only have to be those within the JudeoChristian camp …. God can also reveal truth through other surrounding cultures (in a later episode, we’re going to see the profound influence that Greek philosophy had on JudeoChristian thinking).

Other reasons for not going full-atheist include scientific ones: our pathetic inability to fully grasp all the information that would allow us to declare there is no God … our limitation to only three dimensions (when many more are “out there”) … fine-tuning of the universe … and the completely unexpected beauty and elegance of the reality we live in.

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