Evidence-based Belief and Living - Part 3

Thinking about religion, belief in God, more specifically Christianity, I find it very tiring to be either a Christian or an atheist. The empirical evidence may be there for both (although that would be hard to argue), but the evidence which we have at our hands is so towering that by the time you sift through it, you get to the other side only to say, "What was that detail way back on the other side? Does it contradict this bit of evidence that I am looking at here?" I mean really even if you do reach a conclusion, no one accepts a response from someone that says, "I am an atheist (or Christian for that matter), I can't quite remember all the details but I spent a lot of time working it out and I just know that the conclusion I came to led me to atheism (Christianity)."

Wouldn't that be great, what freedom. But...no, I want the details of your decision. How painful it is when someone asks me a question that I know I worked out logically long ago but now I have to go back and read a book to remember how it is I want to state my point correctly. This is paralyzing. Why do I feel compelled to do this? Is it for myself? Is it out of fear of how I will be perceived? Is it just so others are comfortable with me? Is the imbedded desire to proselytize? Of course in my experience, Christian believers--I do include myself in this group--or religious believers otherwise accept the aforementioned type of answer from ourselves all of the time. The expectation that everyone is knowledgeable enough to defend their belief in not only God but Christianity is ludicrous. It is an impossibility. How could a Christian mother of two who works 80 hours a week ever find or justify time to spend creating her empirical defense for why she believes in Jesus and God for that matter. So I believe we have a situation in the Christian faith where, because we are limited by all of the ad infinitum nuances of Christianity's message and how it has arrived to its present being, instead of using reason to justify our beliefs, we rely incorrectly on the the utilitarian word faith.