After leaving the Watchtower I slowly made a return to religious beliefs, but adopting far more critical techniques of learning than before.
I don't believe in Christianity or its dogmas or teachings because of the "resurrection accounts" alone (which generally mean the written accounts in the Christian canon of Scriptures). The early church and the first several centuries of believers did not believe in the resurrection of Christ because they read it in a book, but because of the testimony of living witnesses and those that learned from them.
True, eventually the written text was added, but this was not the source or the sole accounts.
The problem with just believing the New Testament gospel accounts is that this was not what the original Christian movement was based upon. These written accounts did not exist at the time.
I also can't say that I believe in these things because of the current testimony of today's believers either. What a person says they believe is so different from the way they act that this is not a very good rule either.
As for evidence or "empirical data," I would say that would not be a good rule of thumb to follow either. True, something must have happened historically that turned the tables, but "faith" or a conscientious conviction is what it has to come down to in the end, for me anyway. There are no standards set by the scientific method or community for measuring, collecting, proving, or disproving that which claims to belong to the transcendent. If I could subject a god to test of this kind, it wouldn't be much of an almighty, immeasurable god. It would be like trying to measure someone's capacity for imagination with a yard stick and saying that if their imagination can't be measured by the yard stick this proves they have no imagination. It's just the wrong tool to measure imagination with, that's all.
Do I feel my convictions make me smarter, wiser, better, etc. than those who don't embrace it? Not at all. In fact, I have more atheist friends than I do religious ones. I prefer a critical mind open to reason and experience over one that chooses things blindly.
My convictions on this matter are quite difficult to fully explain, because, like imagination, they are hard to measure and escape my capacity to fully grasp. I do have strong reasons beyond a desire to believe in them, but the usual "proof vs. faith" and "Scripture vs. history" and "deist vs. theist" are not efficient ways to explain it. It's a combination of all these and more.
In the end, regardless of what I believe, if it doesn't make me a better person, if it doesn't make me accept and love people as they are (without wanting to change them or claim that they are stupid for not believing like me), if it keeps me from being encouraging to others to follow what they really have come to believe is true--then there's a problem.
Okay, it's not the belief perhaps a lot of Christians say they have or make claim to or perhaps sounds wishy-washy to some others, but it's probably another quirky thing you can either ignore or accept about me. I think concentrating on what we have in common instead of uselessly debating about what others waste the centuries doing is a better what at peace...And I think the time to resurrect that notion is now.
