Words spoken 2,000 years ago and nothing since! And those words significantly revised, edited until there is no semblance between the earliest version of the bible and that in agreed use today.

Moreover, there seems to have been many words put in the mouth of JC to suit this or that version of Christianity and to confer authority that didn't ever exist.

As for belief in God, one only need look at a night sky with more stars in the heavens than there are grains of sand in all the beaches of the world! To believe in intelligent design, or if you will, a Creator!

That the universe and all we can perceive of it, is just energy vibrating a tad below the speed of light to become atoms separated by vast atomic distance that make up the molecules that is all matter both animate and inanimate! And that you and I are an integral part of that unified field of energy!

Simply put, Churches didn't create nor own God nor speak for him/her/it or the irrefutable truth!

And one does not need to belong to any organized religion to believe in God or to be a good and caring human! In fact the very opposite may be true? And also to avoid persecuting difference!

To believe based on faith based belief alone, one is obliged to hold open in the mind, the possibility that the opposite could also be true!
Alan B.

Thank you Everald for a thought-provoking piece. I’m an Anglican and we’re very much in the same boat, and I suspect for the same reasons you identify.

Though it doesn’t affect the substance of your argument you might want to correct one error in your piece and the headline. The census did not find that 44% of Australians believe in God, but that 44% identified themselves as Christian. Almost 40% identified as “no religion” with the remainder either not answering the question or identifying as other religions - Muslim, Hindu, Jewish etc.

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/people-and-communities/cultural-diversity-census/2021/Census%20article%20-%20Religious%20affiliation%20in%20Australia.xlsx

I’m sure many Muslims, Hindus, Jews and others would be quite offended at being categorised as not believing in God.

It is interesting too that after self-identifying Christians (44%) and non-believers (39%) the next largest category was “not stated” (7%). So a lot of people perhaps either don’t identify with any of the religious labels in the census, or don’t think their beliefs are any of the government’s business.

This essay and the book in which it is featured describes how conventional old-time institutional religiosity is now essentially obsolete

http://www.beezone.com/beezones-main-stack/chap_1_the_new_reformation.html

This essay describes the change in our understanding that occurred during and after the European Renaissance. Elsewhere the author points out that this radical change began several hundred years before the Renaissance.
http://www.daplastique.com/essay/the-maze-of-ecstasy

This profound essay also describes the world-views (paradigms) promoted by the pre-Renaissance "catholic" church, the Renaissance, and the now-time hunter-gatherer-behavior of the "22nd century"
http://www.dabase.org/Reality_Itself_Is_Not_In_The_Middle.htm

And yes prior to the Renaissance the people altogether "lived" in a different kind of mind to us moderns. The collective right-brained essentially magical dream mind, as distinct from the left-brained power-and-control-seeking mind of scientific materialism.

Thank you Rhian for your prompt comment: I am a Hindu and do not consider my beliefs to be any of the government’s business.

Moreover, I heard that the numbers for this question are being used by government to proportionally subsidise "religious institutions". I used quotes because I don't think that any institution can receive state funding yet remain religious! Had there been a religion that I wanted to corrupt, then I could [falsely] nominate that religion on my census response. I wonder how many of those who responded to that "religion" question did so truthfully...

The truth, is there a god, or no good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqRNXZnsusA

Dear Yuyutsu,

The term, spiritual science, is nonsense.