I respect your views. And I wasn’t assuming anything about what you’ve tried.
But don’t you sometimes just feel you are surrendering to an alternative, albeit much more positive and constructive, form of emotionalism over reason?
I'm, a book guy, a street guy, and a warrior guy, I deal in a lot of levels, one thing that I pick up everywhere is some sense of God.
Atheists are rare, at least in free nations.
“But don’t you sometimes just feel you are surrendering to an alternative, albeit much more positive and constructive, form of emotionalism over reason?”
There is no denying that emotion is part of faith in Christ. I do, however, believe that Christian faith is very reasonable. To read through the narratives of the people of Israel, the extremely rational argumentation by the apostles, the juxtaposed perfect justice AND mercy of the gospels - very reasonable.
But I must say my atheist life - a long time ago now, so I have to try hard to remember - also was very emotional. Certainly I tried and sometimes I succeeded to reason things out. But a lot of my reasoning was driven by an emotion. Anger.
So no, I don’t think I have surrendered to emotion over reason. I think emotion and reason are present in both Christianity and atheism.