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Oh my God, what if we're just people?

A quote from Sam Harris' podcast about that need for believers to ask what are you left with if you can't be assured of the divine source of your holy texts.

It's interesting hearing where those believers grapple with some of the same problems skeptics have: the contradictions between the availability of repentance and salvation despite everything being predestined by God mirrors me trying to figure out how free will exists in a universe that seems governed by physical laws of cause-and-effect (or quantum randomness - but that doesn't help the problem.)

Sometimes fundamentalist interpretations (across religions) feel more consistent and true to me than more relaxed ones, even as I despise their conclusions and actions - but sometimes their extrapolations from their faulty initial premises have an admirable clarity. I reject their conclusions, of course, as will most humane people, believer and non-believers alike... but I then don't know how that's not a call to a universal humanism.