When I was a kid I watched the movie Rocky 4 in the movie theater and was greatly inspired and it began my pursuit of Health and Fitness. I learned from Dr. Paul Dobransky's DVD Seminar Mature Masculine Power 3.0, that religious mythologies can be harnessed for their inspiring value and usefulness. Dobransky's formed a psychological method of using Greek mythology in order to achieve psychological wholeness and personal success, similar to how Rocky 4 had inspired me as a kid to get in shape. I realized that one could do the same thing using the Bible as a set of useful and inspiring stories to overcome setbacks and challenges. For example, if we are dealing with a difficult situation that requires courage we might be reminded of the story of David taking on Goliath. Or we might remember all of the passages where Paul talks about a kind of antifragile Christpower within him: where his losses and weaknesses don't stop him from getting back up after being knocked down and moving forward toward the greater cause he is seeking to achieve like a runner running a race. Sylvester Stallone said that he was inspired by his own Christianity in the writing of the Rocky movies. This is why the first Rocky movie opens up with Rocky boxing and the title of gym is the Resurrection.
Let's say I'm in an irritable mood and stuck in my ego and releasing negative tension on somebody else. Well I might have a flash of a phrase I read in the New Testament. For example, I might remember Proverbs 15: 1 (NRSV), "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." I might stop with my tone and say to myself, "Well I might feel good releasing tension onto the person but my tone is going to cause them to react back at me and generate defensive tension and an energy depleting tit-for-tat exchange that is lose-lose. So I might be influenced by the New Testament's message that everyone has value and intrinsic worth as a soul not just an assembly of atoms with no soul as with atheism. Seeing them as an Imager of Divinity (as Michael Heiser puts it) I will be more motivated to talk to them as a mirror reflection of my own soul, generating more positive energy between us which is mutually beneficial (win-win).
So what I have realized over the last several years is that when I was an atheistic reductionist, I was constantly chopping down any kind of metaphysical hope with hyper skepticism, and poking holes at any kind of faith or higher meaning in life. But I see now it was merely a defense mechanism, my frontal lobes were simply on high alert nitpicking any metaphysical assertion and I was not allowing my whole brain to experience the other side of being Human: the side of us that benefits from story, song, dance and meditative stances; connecting to something larger than ourselves. I craved an existential purpose like I had when I was a Christian missionary.
My atheism only brought me temporary elated emotions on occasion, by feeling intellectually superior to others or discovering some scientific truth or historical data that excited me. But using the metaphor of peaks and valleys, I would only experience emotional peaks of intellectual elation and then fall back into the valley of despair from my atheism. So my intellectual highs were always short-lived and I was faced back into the abysmal void of a meaningless pointless cosmos where the soul does not exist and we are just gene-machines (robotic replicators: no better than copy machines) and destined to be worm food. I was often overlooking the reality of atheism by distracting myself into ignoring the existential dread and unyielding despair of authentic atheism.
Once I allowed myself to feel Christian again, even if many of the stories were seen as "metaphorical truths" rather than scientific truths, I began to feel better on a deep psychological level. It was as if my soul was being filled with durable joy and a Source of ongoing positive energy was being funneled into me; and it made me feel more strong and powerful with a new vitality: as if I was a balloon being inflated with new existential meaning and purpose and a cosmic identity that filled my self-esteem with cosmic confidence and lasting well-being.
I was no longer a cosmic orphan, alone in the cosmos as an atheist, adrift in a black sea of meaninglessness; trying to stay afloat and worn out by the sinking feeling into dark nothingness pulling me under into the atheistic abyss. I was buoyed up by Christianity and inflated with existential meaning and felt connected to a Great Story and a People that shed blood and tears in generating a grand narrative of redemption and ideals through stories; which connected me to these lives out of which the stories developed and grew and it gave me a new group identity, a historical connectivity and sense of belonging, which was empowering.
As if cutting the mood of a room with a knife when someone negative leaves that room and you could tell the difference in the emotional atmosphere; I could feel the difference in my mood, deep in the inner core of my being: as I moved away from atheism toward being a pragmatic Christian.
I began to realize that I no longer cared if I could prove any of it as scientifically true or completely rational with equations. I began to care less if I could demonstrate it in a laboratory. For I'd already experienced the difference between atheism and Christianity in the laboratory of my own life. I realized that there was another kind of truth, metaphorical truth, like we see with inspiring stories, theater, art and the power of poetry and parables. I thought about the powerful feelings of being alive when I have written romantic poetry to a girlfriend and how those metaphors describing how I felt about her we're just as true as if I had express my affection through the science of love and talked about myself feeling the brain chemicals of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. I began to realize that the New Testament is a love poem to reality. In this sense, Christianity has become for me poetry for the soul.
I began to refocus my attention on seeing the New Testament as a set of symbols and stories aimed at inspiring people to overcome challenges and be spiritually antifragile and build emotionally healthy Gardens of Relational Joy in their midst. I began to realize I wanted that peace and joy described in the New Testament.
I no wanted less to intellectually one-up believers and chop down their hopes and beliefs. I didn't want the cold vapid message of atheism anymore. I wanted the cosmically fulfilling and empowering message of Christianity. I wanted to be more than a gene-machine and future worm food in a pointless existence. I no longer wanted to be stuck in a state of pessimistic moody nihilism like the character Russ Cole in the first season of True Detective. After all, if atheism were true and this life means nothing and we are nothing then what does it matter if I entertain a greater narrative for myself? Like Russ Cole at the end of True Detective, I wanted to look up and frame things so that amidst the darkness I was more focused on seeing the light shining forth and winning.
True Detective also helped me to see the unhealthy influence that pessimistic atheism can have on one's countenance and body and overall mood. Just compare Matthew McConaughey himself who is a Christian in real life (pictured below):
I began to look at the Christian message psychologically and how much more empowering it felt to enter the narrative world of seeing myself as participating in a higher ideal, a greater cause larger than myself, and this notion of participating in the emergence of God's Realm: emerging on earth through transformed individuals representing God's Ideal Society. I began to realize that this metaphysical narrative was both metaphorically true and psychologically useful. But more than that my study of history, anthropology and sociology made it clear to me that such a metaphysical narrative was actually positively beneficial for individuals, friendships, families and societies.
Seeing myself as a member of a Divine Family rather than a member of only mindless atoms and cells (destined for nothingness as a walking nothing), Christianity provided me with a higher sense of meaning and a metaphysical identity which was psychologically empowering and fulfilling.
I also realized that pragmatically speaking, as Jordan Peterson rightly argues in his discussion with Sue Blackmore, Reality itself selected for the Christian memes which interacted with our genes. In other words, the symbols and stories of Christianity were competitively more successful in the marketplace of ideas and spread mind to mind effectively in making us more civil and happier, thus benefiting our species because they were more useful and beneficial to the human organism. In fact, I would argue that the gene meme coevolution of the biblical stories led to what we modern people consider our conscience and our modern ethics. Thus, like a goldfish swimming in a pond and breathing in the water of the pond, the atheist is actually swimming in and breathing in the ethical water of Christianity. But then turning around and not at least appreciating the historical Waters that feed their current ethical conscience.
From a scientific perspective, why would I go against Reality and not benefit from a set of stories and symbols that were clearly more beneficial to my humanity than other narratives. It actually became clear to me that Ultimate Reality "wanted" me to believe these things because Reality had memetically evolved Christianity as organically useful to me personally and was benefiting our societal long-term thriving; and Reality had evoltionarily designed me with an imagination and the capacity for metaphorical thinking so that I would feel better believing in the Christian memes. From this perspective, it would actually be kind of stupid and unscientific to not benefit from Christianity.
I mean the atheistic fantasy of living in a world of Vulcans imitating the hyper rationality of the cold and emotionless Spock on Star Trek, is a nice idea and all; but it completely ignores our emotional human nature; and I simply would not want to live in a world devoid of emotion and comedy, movies, art, and poetry. I mean that is ultimately what Christianity is, an emotionally fulfilling life philosophy: full of comedy, theatrical art (midrash), and parabolic poetry.
I began to realize that psychologically, the Christian identity redefined my humanity as having cosmic value and purpose. Beyond being a mere gene replicator destined to disintegrate into nothingness, while believing in Ultimate Nothingness. Instead I realized that Christianity introduced me anew to the power of believing in Ultimate Somethingness. I was something, this world was something, life after death was something. Other people are somethings and not walking-nothings. I wanted to dwell in this narrative realm of somethingness because it gave me existential vitality, an identity, and a durable fulfillment.
What atheists do is only argue with the Fundamentalist types but ignore the more sophisticated philosophical theologians like Marcus Borg who encourages reading the Bible through a historical-metaphorical lens; that is, instead of asking if the story or event or passage is literally true, asking what is the historical context and the etymology of the words in the text. Then asking what is the psychological meaning behind the words; is there a metaphorical message? This approach has made scripture come alive for me even as a 21st century man who is rational and science-minded.
I have seen over the years that atheists are often "Christian atheists" pretending to be anti-christian. In other words, they have the same virtues and values espoused in the New Testament. If they were truly in line with darwinian evolution and pure atheism, then they would be more in line with the philosophy of Nietzsche which the Nazis used. This is covered in detail in the book by Abir Taha, titled Nietzsche, Prophet of Nazism: the Cult of the Superman; Unveiling the Nazi Secret Doctrine. I challenge anyone to read that book and deny that Nietzsche's philosophy had no impact on the Nazis. Also see Nietzsche and the Nazis: A Personal View by Stephen Hicks. After studying the subject for years and at times not wanting to accept it, the fact is that the Nazis were inspired by Nietzsche's writings and utilized his pagan spirituality to do what they did. So I no longer have patience for the atheist who has zero appreciation for the powerful ethical impact that the New Testament had on humanity for the last two thousand years (which is covered in Tom Holland's book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World).
Many atheists want to instead hyper focus on the few bad apples within Christianity, past and present, and completely ignore the many authentic Christians who truly represent Christianity. They also overlook what the New Testament message is actually about: which is actually a condemnation of the kind of Christians that many atheists don't like. For example, Jesus spends almost all of his time criticizing his own fellow religious Jews in pointing out that some religious people are not changed from the inside out but act "holier than thou" and self-righteous. Jesus spends almost all of his time criticizing these types of spiritual fakers. In contrast to the religious fakers, the message of the New Testament is about being an actually transformed group of people as Christians that represent the ethical Good and model the Ideal Society. Christianity was not originally even a belief system, in other words it did not begin as a set list of intellectual propositions, but originally was about the one belief that Jesus was Lord (not Caesar as Lord), and after his crucifixion his message was metaphysically revived in the transformed lives of those who pledged their allegiance to Christ over Caesar.
There were very few essential "beliefs" in the original Jesus Movement. What the original Jesus People were mostly believing in and working toward was the practical emergence of God's ideal realm on earth as it existed in their idealistic perceptions of the heavenly realm; which they were seeking to socially build up on earth through healthy face-to-face relationships; and organically planting and cultivating in people's souls the spiritual Kingdom realm of God; which was essentially the ideal Just Society that every politically liberal atheist actually wants just as much as the politically conservative theist.
