As near as I can tell, virtually all of the pastors, preachers, and leaders are really Atheist but pushing the con for money. Look at what they project to see what they really know to be true about themselves and their con.

No faker here, only atheist. But that’s brilliant commentary.. To me, it’s the real reason they ‘hate us,’ because we’ve the courage they lack. A close second hatewise, are other religions, because when analyzed - they’re all wrong.

I may have some of the details wrong, but I think it is in one of Dan Barker's books where he recounts a story of a prominent televangelist who was asked in private if he actually believed all this crap. The televangelist said something like, "Well, it's too late to back out now."

I don't think that it is a simple either/or, a lot are cherry pickers, who, believe yes, but make it easy for themselves by just ignoring the bits they don't like. It is quite possible to genuinely believe a vague deism/spirituality and believe that being a church member puts you in touch with that, without thinking that more than one percent of your holy book is true. The trouble with that though, is that of course it creates a happy safe home for the fundamentalist. Where sheltered by passive acceptance they can swim and plot without challenge, and it is therefore why even the most vague spiritualism is harmful.

I do think there a lot of "pretenders" out there faking it or posing as Christians (as well as many hypocrites) just so they can fit in with mainstream society and more easily get ahead in employment, business, etc. by trading on the credential of being Christian in the US. It would be hard to measure because it's really hard to get most people to admit the truth about themselves, even in anonymous surveys, if the subject is something they feel shame or embarrassment about, such as being dishonest or lying about their beliefs.

I would express it differently. I think many so-called believers are religious only in the sense of the habit, ritual and identity of religion, and not in any real sense to the claims and beliefs of religion. Press them on their religion and you get little more than a simple summary of religious clichés. The doubts they have are internized or ignored because the actual beliefs are not that important in the first place. Huge numbers of people like this make up the numbers in religion, in my opinion. I wouldn't call them atheists, exactly, but notionally religious people based on habit and intellectual laziness.

I have tried my damnedest to believe. Raised in Baptist schools and churches, with a father who was a deacon, I believed, as a small child, that I personally was responsible for putting an innocent man to death on a cross. It was horrifying! I asked Jesus into my heart, likely, thousands of times! When I studied Aboriginal culture in South Australia in 1996, it got me thinking that my indoctrination up to that point was hogwash. I have been searching for truth ever since, but what is so great about the Baptist's take on the heaven and hell program, is 'once saved, always saved,' so if per chance I'm wrong for going astray, I have this safety net of 'getting saved' a bazillion times to catch me, like coffee grounds on a cheesecloth strainer! Well, you get my point.