pull down to refresh
There's a famous cry in the Bible, "I believe, help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24) I think many deathbed confessions of faith, even if motivated out of fear, are genuine (but i also can't say that all are). It's also worth noting that the Bible does not shy away from using self-interest as a reason for believing in Jesus. The message of the gospels isn't that you should believe in spite of your self interest. It's that you should believe because believing in Jesus is the best thing for you and your eternal soul.
However, I think a popular misconception is that belief means mere intellectual or verbal assent, but it is much more than that.
I would say, for those with a meta-desire for religion, why not just try it out then? If you're not sure you believe, you can try to dive deeper and spend time with the community, and see if that changes.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
This is getting close to it for me. I think a person can legitimately want to believe something that they don't in fact believe; or want to want something that they don't in fact want. Like, a meta-desire for religion, even though they can't, in truth, claim to believe the religious tenets.
This always seemed quite the metaphysical pickle. Adams seems like an example of it -- scared, probably desperate to believe, but unable to, but willing to make the Hail Mary (no pun intended), just in case. I've wondered for years whether a thing like this can "count", and I know people don't like that phrasing, but to me it's the most honest phrasing that describes a significant swathe of humans on this planet, and is therefore worth tackling directly.