| > but MOST people in the western world still believe in the Judeo-Christian God This is probably no longer literally true; in polling a majority of Europeans who identify as Christian don't usually believe in a personal god, and significant numbers who identify as Christian don't believe in the supernatural at all. > and all the underlying mythology. Believing in _all_, or even most, of the mythology, as something that actually happened, is unusual; you're basically talking Biblical literalists, who are a small minority of Christians. > For example, doesn’t the change from the Julian and Gregorian calendars throw a wrench into what day we are actually on? For most Christians, the only one that's particularly important that it be on the right day there is Easter, which is dealt with. The Gregorian shift, in any case, was seen as a _correction_; from the point of view of those who initiated it the problem would have been the time that went before. |
At my most recent “church session to satisfy family” the preacher talked a lot about handling doubt. I found it very revealing that, on any given Sunday, you might find a preacher feeling the need to re-convince the congregation that the thing they’re there for is “real.” It made me think, “But I thought this was obvious truth to you? Haven’t you moved beyond this point?”
Interestingly, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches don’t agree on which day Easter falls upon!