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I'm not denying that education plays a role, but I personally feel that emotion ends up being the deciding factor in the "should I stay or should I go" decision. Most of the people I've known (including myself) who have left the church have not left based on dogmatic issues. We have left the church because we're emotionally exausted by it.
I want to backtrack a moment to explain my comments about whom I refer to as the Apologists being eaten alive by older Christians...
It has been my humble observation that in many (protestant) churches in America, there is a certain progression of things that much happen before older adults in the church consider someone in their twenty-somethings an adult. To be considered a "real adult", you must either A. get married AND procreate, B. become a minister, or C. turn age 40.
Otherwise, you are a "young adult" and "young adults" and their ideas are often not taken very seriously, thus many feel that they are second rate citizens of their community because of their age. Why exactly this happens, I'm not entirely sure.
I can see your point about the "apologists" possibly being suseptable to "Christian brainwashing", and I fully think that's possible and I definately have known fairly intelligent people who definately have fallen into that category, but I've also known quite a few people who happened upon their beliefs quite rationally, aren't terribly plagued by some of the deep dark questions that "questioners" are, but still question their faith as well as the beliefs of those who surround them, and meanwhile they're not obnoxious about the fact that they believe what they do. I don't really find much mediocre about that.
While I do believe education and critical thinking are extremely important, I do not believe that they will ever eliminate faith.
Faith is a broader concept than "is there a God?" or "is there not a God?" Regardless of what your stance is in a higher power, that doesn't mean you don't have faith in something. Science is certainly a very faith based field. Just take a look at how many things are scientific theories versus how many things are scientific law. Isn't there some element of faith involved that certain theories we've all been taught over the years are true?
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nikkiana
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