Ad BlueJunillam

I would never have thought of you as 'Calvinist'. Low Church, certainly, but Predestination? Are you? Ex-Calvinist, I mean. And does this explain where I've been getting confused all these years? When you talk about optimism without faith - or perhaps optimism and 'faith' without the One True God - are you talking about the Schroeder's Cat (which is a much less stupid idea in Theology than it is in Science) element of Predestination in Calvinism? That that particular impasse is what allows for optimism?

I find the Gospels and especially what Christ talks about in the Gospels very heartening, though I don't believe in his Divinity, nor Monotheism in general. Doctrine I always find endlessly disheartening. The idea that abandoning Doctrine eats at optimism is rather strange for me, because Jesus says what he does and that's the end of it. Doctrine is the scaffolding we build around it because we don't trust it to stand up - so much for our faith! - and I think, because we're rather frightened some bit of masonry might fall an crush something we hold dear, like, as JayBee points out, Usury.