Yep to all that.

I personally. Think western civilisation is going through a process similar to that experienced in the fourteenth century Europe.

The Black Plague devistated most notions of social stability and traditions.

The Catholic Church was stripped of man power to perform its rituals, and thus its hold on the religious populous. The rise of Protestantism was soon to follow, among many other flow on consequences.

But Chaucer remained the optimistic and cheerful poet through it all.
Maybe he is the example for coping. (Canterbury Tales anyone)?

Dan

I can't say that I've ever heard a Christian claim that his or her faith was "something concrete or definable." But then, I don't go around looking for reasons to put the boot into Christians, as some people love to do. I'm just grateful that I was born into a Christian culture - rather than one of the others - and how people feel about their faith is their business, not mine. Further non-Christians can live peacefully in a Christian society without having to join up; nor do they have to be annoyed by it. These whingers would find Islam and a majority Muslim society, for instance, a lot more "annoying" than Christianity and Christians.

This is just another attack on Christianity, strangely using a Jew as a stick to beat it up with.

I cannot look heavenwards at a starry starry night, hear a newborn baby cry or touch a leaf and not believe in a creative force or divine intelligence!

As for the alleged teachings of a messiah, Anything is possible if committed to paper years/decades after the event and by plagiarising writers who regularly embellished the works of those they copied!

And written to fit the ethnic social mores in vogue at that point in history!?

Moreover, like any "holy" book subject to endless revisions and substantial editing to fit this or that narrative and to the point where the statement, ye must be born again, now reads, you must be baptised and adhere to many post-event, man-made laws. And imbecilic interpretations, such as made slavery acceptable, or confined womanhood to the status of mere bagatelle or the indentured servant class!

Conferred a power to forgive on mere fallible men when that was previously reserved between man and maker! As was the so-called sacrament of marriage

Simply put, the entire universe and everything in it is energy. And one immutable law is, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, just transformed.

Meaning, everything that was or is, was or is, some form of transformed energy. That has had to exist in some form, before the dawn of time.

And includes the entire universe and you and I.

Can the universe think, dream or weep/feel pain, emotional or physical? Well, you and I can do all of that and we are an integral of it!
Alan B.

One just has to look at ancient ruins of which literally nothing is known of the people who lived there. It becomes clear (to me anyway) that so-called civilisations rise & then inevitably fall.
The achieving of high living standards appears to be the formula for eventual downfall.
We can see that in our western society right now. Since the daily struggle for survival has been eliminated, frivolities have taken over & have caused the death of common sense.
We've had the benefit of recent history being recorded in books, on tablets & in paintings but when I look at the digital age now, there'll be no physical leftovers from our hopeless outfits.

The "individual" approach:

*...I saw all things that be made under the sun, and lo! all things be vanity and torment of spirit. (I saw everything that is done under the sun, and lo! everything is empty and futile, like chasing the wind.)...* Ecclesiastes 1:14.