bobbo, the culture critic embarassed he's not reading a book says:

Nice review….. but nothing to do with the OP.

Nonetheless as the subject still holds “some” interest to me and you aren’t claiming to have God in your pocket”

1. I used to be an atheist before realizing I could only be an agnostic. /// Whats the difference to you?

2. I had some friction with religious types as an atheist because I was always trying to defame their religion. I felt science was king, religion was for the uneducated. /// Still true with agnosticism too.

3. Then after heavily loading up on philosophy and communications classes, since I felt science was king I ended up running in an odd paradox. /// Take a refresher course……….and I see you do follow up on what the paradox is just below? Quite rewarding to see you maintain a line of thought.

4. I believed doing right was stronger than doing wrong, but required scientific proof. /// What a silly concept….and science has nothing to do with it. You are talking JUST LIKE a religious nut case. Not understanding religion, god, science, morality, autonomy………the whole dictionary. (Ha, ha!!!)

5. I found the scientific proof, the an answer was not what I expected (good has to fight and be vigilant, bad behaviors must be beaten down including yourself, the strength is over the long term not the short term). //// Wut?…….. This is word salad: ie, it makes no sense. It you have the interest, try to rephrase this.

6. You end up having virtues are not far different from “don’t envy”, “don’t kill the innocent”, “don’t be lazy”, “don’t lie”, “don’t lie to yourself”, “don’t judge”, insist on fairness. /// Every rule can be phrased in the negative or in the positive. Silly to find meaning in one way or the other.

7. Christianity teaches those values. Christianity fails where the followers are not behaving according to what they are supposed to believe. /// Yep….George Carlin and others made entire comedy routines off this.

8. I like the expression “Why do some of the supposed most faithful Christians act the least like Christ?” /// A variety of reasons….. just like everything else. But here….you approach what the OP is all about. They act the lest like Christ because some of them think all you have to “do” is have faith. And “do” means “personally believe” while you can “do” whatever else you want to. That is the IMPORT of the OP.

9. I have come to the conclusion Christianity is perfectly benign. /// NOTHING you posted above supports this conclusion. What do you think “benign” means? Total fubar in logic and argument/rhetoric.

10. The good Christians are great people. /// Ha, ha…you have argued both sides and the tie. Good, bad, benign. Which is it????……..Hint: its all three, don’t ever think one to the exclusion of the others. (((Oops…yeah….I see. Your structure is so sloppy you lead others to be sloppy too. “The GOOD Christians is a subset of All Christians…….the ones you approve of without describing at all. …………………. Not thought thru)))

11. The bad ones, I tell them how they don’t seem to be following the path of Jesus and they should aspire to be more like Jesus. //// The OP gives one reason why. There are lots of other reasons based on general human psychology and not religion at all. The OP is actually quite good at setting forth how many so called Good Christians ((probably a subset of your own Good Christians)) come to it by actual religious based dogma.

12. Agnosticism is freedom. /// You aren’t free if you can’t comfortably tell shit from shinola.

13. Live and let live. /// The Golden Rule…..a rule brought to religion from pre-civilized man. Springs from our dna.

14. Humility understanding the limits of man. //// What might those be?

Religion…………… What ya gonna do?