Sandy, //But I'd sooner be a footsoldier following on the steep and thorny way to Heaven, than a general leading God knows who on the primrose path to perdition//
That’s fear, and coming from someone who claims that his God is a loving creature, fear is a conflicting emotion. Love does not create fear.
Looking at it realistically, you know there is no evidence for what you believe, and moreover you know without doubt that so much of it has been created and manipulated by other men, so why capitulate to it? I was raised a Christian; I didn’t know the history of my religion, and until I grew up, it never occurred to me to investigate it. Like most, I listened to sermons from the bible, carefully selected by the preachers who told me only what they wanted me to hear, and I simply believed what I was told - but now I know the truth, how can I believe what was clearly a lie? Impossible. I would be deceiving myself. I simply do not understand anyone, who, like you, is intelligent and far from ignorant of the origins of his religion, and yet continues to deny the reality of it.
I believe that people possess an innate sense of spirituality, and I can understand the concept of a higher power - but this God? No. His history, if anyone cares to examine it, provides plentiful evidence that it can’t be him. If a creator exists, it has to be something far greater than that. You’re talking to the wrong bloke.
And you ask why non-believers are more willing to discuss religion than the religious? Isn’t it obvious?