Lots of cognitive dissonance.
Christians will tell you that they are supernatural creatures, souls, immortal, just like their gods, while simultaneously asserting their human fallibility. It's very weird shit, rationally speaking, and accounts for all manner of strange behavior.
People of all faiths do the same (as you know); not to mention that there are "Christians", or at the very least people that call themselves Christians, who take a very liberal view of scripture (and will even admit to cherry-picking). I was at a Catholic church recently for an occasion involving a relative. The priest's homily never mentioned hell, damnation, or touched on anything that I would consider offensive. It could have been a universalist church, or some new-age institution, for all I knew. There
was all the kneeling and mumbling, which I finally stopped doing out of fatigue.
I do not attend church normally and I am only a "Catholic" insofar as I was baptized as a Catholic. I was not even raised a Catholic. My father is an atheist, always was, and my mother is a fallen Catholic: raised Catholic, but never really followed the doctrine. She is pro-choice, and thinks a lot of the Catholic doctrine is for the birds; but she still calls herself a Catholic and talks about angels and sends people religious cards. She even sent me a rosary one time. I was baptized when I was around five, when my father finally relented and allowed it. My mother took me and my siblings to church a few times, but it never took hold. My brother mocked everything, as he does; my sister was too little to know what the hell anything was about; and I was scared to death, as per usual for little Billy. I was scared of the wafer thing, afraid I would choke. I was afraid of the thing where you dip your hand in the water and genuflect. I was scared to DEATH of the Holy GHOST, thinking it was a real ghost who would haunt me. I hated all the kneeling and the recitations. I tried to follow along, a frightened little child. I was afraid of the priest, with his strange costume. I was afraid of the smoking censers, the scary rituals, even the silly singing, which sounded like a horror film to my five year old ears.I was scared to death when they passed the collection plate around, worried that if I didn't throw in some money I would be in
serious trouble. I was scared to death about the poor skinny fellow on the cross: bleeding and obviously in great pain. I wanted so desperately to be able to help Him get down. Or at least unpin His hands so that they could come together.
Later on, in 2006, I wrote a villanelle called "Palms" which was all about this horrible feeling I had at seeing this man's hands pinned forever and apart, bleeding. I was a fire breathing atheist, like my father, when I conceived it, and it is written from an unbelieving point of view. I have not altered it one jot, since I think it's silly for a poet or any author to try and fix earlier work to fit a change of mind they had later. W.H. Auden, famously going from liberal to more conservative, and picking up religion along the way, famously revised most of his extant work, and ruined a good deal of it, trying to make all of the work he wanted to survive him conform to the person he was in later years, seemingly unaware that he was no longer the person he was when he wrote as an atheist, and a liberal, or that he had seriously defaced his own material, which was absolutely fucking brilliant. Either he was unaware or too scared of going to hell. Don't know. It's a shame either way.
I have been over this a thousand times, but people miss it, or they forget: I went from atheist to theist because of a mental breakdown, followed by a psychotic episode which wound me up in the hospital, absolutely out of my mind, followed by a precipitous decline in everything, including my sanity. I was diagnosed bi-polar in 2012 with severe depression and personality disorders, as well as chronic anxiety, and have been on meds ever since. SOME people have very religious feelings due to an area in the brain that affects such kinds of thinking and behaviors. There are all kinds of articles and videos about this phenomenon, and I continually recommend that people study up on it, so they can be disabused of their notions that any kind of god-belief has to be the result of ignorance, stupidity, lack of native intelligence, or some kind of major character flaw. I became a semi-believer, then a true believer, even a Christian. I preached here at TFT, and pissed a lot of people off. All that being said, it irritates me to no end when I see posters here claim that anyone showing up here saying that they they "used to be an atheist" must be lying. Do these posters actually not realize that conversions happen a LOT, from atheist to believer, and/or from believer to atheist. Why do some members here insist that no-one could really go from being an atheist to a true believer, but they have no difficulty understanding that many people go from being a true believer to being an atheist? The contradiction and double standard here is sometimes just plain silly.Of course: religious people DO THE SAME THING sometimes, perhaps even more: they insist that one cannot have been a true Christian and then become an atheist. By their twisted logic, no-one who is "saved" can become unsaved, SO, if a person really was a Christian, they can not lose their faith; OR, if they do lose their faith, then they were not a *True Christian*, the classic No True Scotsman dodge. Therefore, please do not assume that I do not know this, but am just picking on the atheists. I am very small "c" "catholic" with respect to whom I call out for silliness. If one is being silly, irrational, mean-spirited, or just plain stupid, I will speak up. I will also demean MYSELF when I am being a complete ass or a total douche bag. I am NOT one of those who considers apologizing a sign of weakness. It is often seen that was by my opponents, but I say fuck 'em, let them assume I'm weak. Apologizing for screwing up and making errors, either factually or in judgment of something out of prejudice or just by way of making a little mistake, is healthy. I think people who never apologize for being in error, or behaving badly, have a mental problem.
Anyway --Eventually, probably due to medication, I lost the religious mania and returned to atheism, but I never forgot how the god-feeling made me feel. I felt genuinely happy for the first time in my life. There was a distinct sense of loss, which I can only describe as grief. A sense of futility, that all meaning in life is gone. Suicidal ideation ensued, and I began to drink heavily. I swung down into full blown alcoholism. I would probably be drinking right now if it weren't for probation and random UA testing.
For me, sobriety. Fucking. Sucks. As Ozzy is famous for saying. Sobriety is for the birds. Since I was fifteen I have always needed some kind of mind enhancing chemical, be it alcohol, weed, some kind of stimulant, even diphenhyramine (Benadryl) and/or dextromethorphan, which I abused in large amounts for many years. Dextromethorphan has been used in trial studies for the treatment of depression, and has been known to work for some people. Some people have euphoric experiences in high amounts, and there is a whole subculture devoted to DXM experiences which I joined years ago.
Sorry to go on, but it bothers me to keep seeing religion and faith equated to major ignorance, lack of intelligence, or some kind of malicious character flaw. It is quite possible for intelligent, incredibly capable, and decent, moral members of a community to be people of faith. In fact, I will go on to say that people like Hovind, or any money-grubbing phony televangelist, or any kind of seriously judgmental religious radical, be they hard-right soccer moms or those major loonies, the idiots with "God hates fags" signs, or the evil morons who hassle young women at abortion clinics, represent only a segment of people who fall under the umbrella of Christians worldwide. I do not hesitate to suggest that there are probably MORE of these kind of people in the U.S. than anywhere else. And don't forget, I haven't even mentioned radical idiots in other religions, be they Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or what the fuck ever. If anyone wants to accuse me of whataboutism, go for it. I don't give a damn. Tough darts. The truth is what it is, and reality is real. Get over it.
Now, lest I forget to say this
absolutely clearly: I am NOT suggesting that Hovind or people like him should NOT be criticized or held to account, or be submitted to public shame and ridicule. He should! He's an asshole. Anyone who would abuse their wife, or ANYONE who would abuse ANYONE, is an asshole, and ought to be publicly shamed and held accountable, free will or no, determinism or no. As another poster here has said from time to time, and I paraphrase him: Sometimes outright ridicule is the best and perhaps ONLY way to deal with such people. Even if we risk lumping others into such and such a category by inadvertent association, and though those others may be innocent, open ridicule of seemingly intractable and recalcitrant behavior is acceptable, if only because it stands a chance of causing less stubborn individuals to think more about what they think and do.
Spinoza, in his Theological-Political Treatise (Theological-politicus tractacus), says, and I am paraphrasing, but I HIGHLY recommend anyone to read this amazing work on biblical interpretation, that typically religion does not CAUSE people to become impious (Spinoza's word for immoral or unethical, basically), but rather the reverse: immoral and impious people use religion as a mask for their genuine beliefs and actions, as an excuse, or as a corroboration of moral rectitude which they in fact developed on their own, if they are liberal and essentially "good" people. And -- they all cherry pick: all of them. There is no essential difference, at least philosophically, between a fundamentalist or a true believer of any stripe, decent or indecent: all of them treat scripture the way they do any other book, which, according to Spinoza, is precisely the way it is supposed to be treated, as a book, the same as any others.