I believe that we are all on an individual journey and there is no perfectly right path for everyone. One shoe does not fit all theologically or philosophically. I do think that some philosophies and theologies are better than others. I have been an Evangelical Fundamentalist Christian and a Progressive Christian along my journey. I have since abandoned the Progressive Christian ship for many reasons that this website will make clear. However, I don't like thinking in rigid All or Nothing terms. So while progressive theologies, like that of Marcus Borg, John Spong, and John D. Crossan, no longer work for me personally. They are a viable alternative to the Fundamentalist theologies out there.
Some atheists and agnostics expects religious people to go from literal and dogmatic fundamentalists to card carrying atheist or agnostic in a matter of months or a couple of years. This is too demanding and ignores the individual autobiography of the person. It denies human psychology and sociology. Humans are much too complex for simple black and white views. Most atheists and agnostics I know personally, often went through a stage by stage transition from theism to some form of deism or pantheism, then to liberal/progressive Christianity, to then nontheistic secularism and some then to humanism. Many nontheist secularists will admit that when they were a liberal/progressive Christian their beliefs were mostly harmless by and large and this position was far better than Fundamentalism.
This site thus supports the case for the Progressive Christian view. The website triangulations argues that even non-theists have a dualistic side to them. See his article The Theist in the Atheist, where he argues that "there may even be a small Theist in the some who who envisions themselves Atheist." The idea being that we have sub-selves and thus we may be rational most of the time but parts of our brain may be susceptible to "mystical" experiences. So many people who lean non-theist nevertheless find emotional upliftment and social support in a progressive church. Elsewhere on his website triangulations, the author states that "many people simply use the self-identity as 'Christian' as a way to tie together these important elements in their life. To such people, if their specific Christian beliefs are severely challenged, they don’t throw out their identity as 'Christian' but instead reshuffle, re-organize and re-theologize their beliefs so as to keep the label 'Christian' intact." (Source).
On my journey away from all Bible-focused philosophies, I attempted to re-theologize my own views after resigning from the Mormon Church and overtime I became a progressive Christian. Coming out of Mormonism, I did not stay too long in the Exclusive Salvation camp of Evangelical Fundamentalism for very long. For the LDS Church is a Universalist Faith and so after experiencing a more humane and rational theology growing up LDS, being exposed to the Fundamentalist idea that most of humanity had to turn or burn for thoughtcrimes seemed immoral and absurd. I also did my own independent study and came to realize that the Universalist position was a viable interpretation of the New Testament. The author of Triangulations offers another diagram of the various Christian views of salvation titled The Spectrums of Salvation. Below that image he writes, "I feel that the closer one’s views get to the right side of this spectrum, the more just and helpful that view. For in my world, even if views may be wrong (mine included), I think that there are degrees to the damage or good our wrong views can do." I agree completely.
Check out his page My Favorite Type of Christians, where he essentially argues that humans are complicated and some people are better off staying in their religion; yet there are healthy and unhealthy forms of every religion. He then presents a comparative chart of Christian theologies and interpretations and points the arrows in the direction he considers are better Bible views than others. After reviewing his chart I completely agree with his positions. Like the author of Triangulations I would prefer to see Christians move from a Calvanist-Augustinian/doom and gloom/ "turn or burn" type Fundamentalist views, to a more moderate to progressive Christian view.
I currently don't attend any church or endorse the Bible as holy writ nor a healthy guide to life. I do however respect the Bible as a library of documents to learn about humanity's progression over time, just like other holy books. Right now I am a secular agnostic, yet I am sympathetic toward Progressive Christians and if I had to choose a form of Christianity to endorse, it would be the work of John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, John D. Crossan, Rob Bell, Brian Mclaren, and Jordan Peterson. I am indebted to these authors for helping me see another point of view other than Evangelical Fundamentalism. However, these authors are not the only one's who have informed my views. I read widely many points of views, including the consensus of critical Bible scholars. It is wide variety of scholars of the Bible that has made me realize the Bible is more nonsense than sense, more full of bad advice than good advice, and more harmful with its cultish mind-control themes than helpful as a self-help book.
I think reading the New Testament, for example, in a scholarly historical context -- and taking it as literally as the original authors intended some parts to be taken, -- means it is a collection of documents that in most cases is against healthy masculinity, is anti-biological-family over the cult family (the in-group); it is sex negative, and presents a slave mentality; with an over focus of the next life at the negation of this life, with some scholars arguing it is thus a death cult.
However, having said that, within the pages of the Bible as a whole (Old Testament included) there are a lot of pro-family ideas, a healthy masculinity and sex positive ideas ; not to mention an egalitarian ethic and compassion for the poor and less fortunate; and thus, with the right amount of cherry picking there is a lot of good in the Bible, which even atheists will agree with. But a drop of black die in a clear glass of water does muddy the waters.
As for myself, I have found that most of the good ideas in the New Testament were not just Jewish but taken from the Stoics and thus Christianity has much of the best aspects of Judaism and Athens. The parts I like most, is when the Jesus figure is criticizing his fellow Jewish Rabbis about added traditions to the Torah (called the Tradition of the Elders), turns out, is something that many Jews of the day would have also preached. In other words, the best parts of Jesus' words and deeds are part of Judaism and contains the ideas of Jews themselves, as Jesus lived and died a practicing Jew (that is a Jew for Judaism). This is the view of nearly all scholars of the historical Jesus who are objective without a theological agenda.