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I know what you mean by "no religion is correct" or I assume you mean it cosmologically, as in "no religion correctly describes the cause of existence." I was going to say you mean it metaphysically but morals are part of metaphysics, and there is one provably morally correct text and it is the Bible. I also know that is quite the claim and is itself worthy of a separate discussion so I will collapse it to this: as a set of rules for the people of a society to follow, we find empirically Christianity produces outcomes superior to all other belief sets.
The reason this discussion exists, the reason this website exists as a place for this discussion, the reason for the internet, for your internet-connected device, for the grid that powers your device, is the give or take 2,000 years of Christianity that raised this civilization.
What we can say of Christianity that we cannot say of any other faith on this planet is how perfectly it is tailored to key human biotruths. No other faith approaches Christianity's understanding of man, of his weaknesses, his wickedness, his worst excesses, but and of course also, our strengths, the best of ourselves, and how we use these to address our shortcomings. How we may edify ourselves and conquer the worst of ourselves in pursuit of becoming the best of ourselves. This flows out, it defines the people and the nation, it raises the civilization.
Take monogamy: most men who have ever lived did not procreate. In religiously-proscribed monogamy, until death, women were given value beyond their wombs, and men were simply given value. This implicitly but so crucially and truly individualizes, it recognizes the inherent value of the person. For each and every man to be a husband and each and every woman a wife, that we might be joined as one. Civilizationally this produces buy-in. As the couple is wedded and has children, they are invested in their place, in their community, in their people and in their nation. Young men who are not invested in their nation time and again burn it down, it is the precipice the West hangs upon today, large numbers of unmarried young men with little or no hope for the future, just waiting for the match.
Islam explicitly endorses polygyny and the keeping of concubines, as does Hinduism. Buddhism and Taoism do not circumscribe, and polygamy has a history of being widespread in China, among other traditionally high-practicing nations. Shinto also does not circumscribe, though Shinto endorses monogamy and polygamy was historically rare in Japan, a practice limited to their elite and largely for heir production and the securing of alliances. Similar most to Western Europe. Why is it that the most highly developed nations on this planet are the most historically monogamous?
And Christ preached this in Rome in the first century Anno Domini. Morality is a technology and I wish I could recall the exact analogy I read on this point because it was a historian who understood far, far better the moral context of Rome and he put it in appropriate technological terms for these principles to have emerged during Tiberius' reign. Western civilization's moral framework laid out entirely in a few years of Christ's teachings, was it like if they had instead progressed to landing men on the moon? It feels appropriate, as Aldrin took communion there.
This moral framework, this inconceivable leap forward--if God walked this Earth as a man, it was as Christ, and his historicity is not at question. The totality of manuscripts and indeed the existence of Christianity is attestation of its namesake. But here we do have a critical problem in the debate. The naturalist historian and the layman atheist operate from a fallacious first premise: Miracles can't happen, so this text is false. If the texts lacked any and all content the naturalist could dismiss on first-principle rejection of the supernatural the accounts would be universally accepted as overwhelmingly true. But the miracles are in the accounts, foremost that he rose from the dead. If it didn't happen, why did his first followers believe he did? We reinvite that fallacious premise. The premise is God doesn't exist, the premise is miracles can't happen, so they don't conclude that they were lying, they premise that they were lying and reason back.
I say all this, and I believe it, even as I know this isn't a place for proselytizing nor me the suitable evangelist. I also know this isn't something that can be reasoned into. I've personally always felt the truth of Romans 1, that God is evidence in his creation. I do wish I could impress this feeling on others, I think it's the only thing that I would ever view as something I could give as testimony, that I can step back from myself and invite this awe in creation and axiomatic apprehension of the creator. But these are words on a page and saying how obvious it is to me has worth only to me. I might then appeal to logic, at one point I had here a full formula for the argument, but you can't logic yourself into this either. Even if I convinced you of Christianity's moral supremacy and its historic solidity or else you found my logic unassailable, even if you then for a time pursued it, you might and rightly feel it was for the wrong reasons, that your heart wasn't in it, that you were lying to yourself.
I don't know what to say, I don't have the words, and this isn't the venue.
It is nice to feel truly known. I've been thinking a lot lately about Orson Scott Card's depiction of love. Ender of course; to defeat the formics he needed to understand them truly. To understand truly was to love them, to love truly was to understand them. This I must believe informed Card's depiction of the character Jane, an AI that started as a program to understand Ender, and she does, and she loves him, it is in loving him she gains her specific personage. So I'll say again, it is a nice thing to feel truly known. It is nice in this to have something that makes sense of existence.
But this is me, and maybe you don't feel like you need to make sense of existence, or that you feel your view of things already makes enough sense of existence, and you don't need any more. You might also wonder if I am reliant on this, if I need this to be true, if I am as guilty as making the conclusion of its truth my premise, and reasoning backward. On the last you'd be right, it's what makes me an unsuitable evangelist, my lack of testimony. I know it's true. Not for any moment, I've had no definable spiritual moments, nor do I feel like I need to. I know it's true regardless. Why, though, and what good is that to tell others? You can tell it's true by the way that it is. Such elucidation. I don't have the words!
You say you've thought about going to church a few times in the last decade, but each time "this isn't true" rears its head. Why, then, do you think you consider going? This might be worth considering, and deeply, how this feeling has arisen repeatedly within you despite your belief that you know better. Maybe you do know better, just not in the way that you think.
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