At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, one of my biggest misgivings in my atheist youth was thinking that religion was about knowing a lot about your chosen religion. (Which also played into thinking that religious people were undereducated or stupid, because obviously if you learn a lot about religions you'll find tons of flaws or inconsistencies, and the majority of
any religion's adherents
aren't scholars of that religion.)
It's more like having a belief that your parents love you, or that children are important to society. Like I can go sit down with a laundry list and talk to you about that time your parent failed you or the objective reality that they have multiple kids and you're not special- obviously there is some level of logic but it's also just about your sense of devotion and what you think that relationship means. Do you love your cat? What if I took a blood test and it showed you don't have the clinically associated levels of neurotransmitters associated with a strong bond? Would it disprove that you love your cat? At some point I learned what it meant to have "blind faith."
I mean, if you want to become Catholic or Orthodox you have to have a different conversation, hahaha. But in my Baptist corner of things, I had just four pages of religious education that I had to go through with the pastor over two weeks to prove I had enough religious understanding for him to baptize me- and I was Christian even before that, but it was kinda the metric for being committed and "deep" in it enough to be a member of the church.... which I didn't do afterward, but the baptism was still important.
It's more about a lifestyle and a way of living than any specific education. I've had very little formal religious education and I'm sure I'd be demolished in debate. I could probably argue the atheist side of things better as I was raised up on Richard Dawkins books. And critically, I think a lot of other religious or lifestyles have it rougher. If you turn things over to Jesus, you feel less lost, less overwhelmed, you feel secure in God, eh at least for me it really has replaced that sort of Father figure in my life (that I otherwise lack.) It's somebody bigger than me, and I supposed I always have had the need for a person bigger than me in my life: and if it weren't God it would probably be something pretty bad. With God, I am a child of the King: this has an important impact on my self-esteem, sense of identity, etc- and a beneficial one.
If you wish you lived a different sort of life, what stops you from changing one thought process? What stops you from trying to answer one problem or conflict with a religious answer, to see what it does for you or what it might bring up? For me, listening to gospel music has been the biggest religious "fuel" and main form of worship in my life.
