It’s the idea of eternal life I can’t buy into

As a former atheist, I get it. I also hold, like Sting, that "we are spirits in the material world," and that the energy of spirit goes somewhere. So even taking a sciency approach, I've not read an atheist answer for that. They almost always say "you" die when your body dies. If you agree that there are anti-entropic feelings and actions we humans take, or that one person (say, MLK) can send ripples of spirit that change/heal others, one might consider that there must be something in us that goes somewhere -- cosmos, a collective vibrational place or aura, etc.

The word heaven is dealt with in a book that studies the Aramaic/Hebrew concept of that world.

I understand that you're atheist.
And I'd also say that thousands of years of not giving up on documents about the source(s) of spirit and love -- say, a god, for lack of another word in those languages -- is not for nothing. And that an evolved humans-in-the-cosmos view is certainly not an 'opiate of the people' as my pal, Marx, used to say.

(Sidebar: I also read a lot by theologian Mary Daly back in the day; she should be read by Christian feminists here.)

I've prided myself on my research and intellectual capacities, and I can say that Michael Heiser is a formidable intellect about early ontological concepts of the BC ancients. Those who believe there have been alien visitations would also appreciate their concepts.

I’ve never pretended to understand it. It just kind of hurts when people say you’re gonna see your mother in heaven or something. And I do believe that my morality came from my mother and she was a good Christian. I do wish more of today’s Christians would follow Christ’s teachings. And I do believe there was a Jesus in history. Thanks for your informative writing

that roman stuff which is biased retelling of history in favor of the author. btw catholics think they are christians

that one remaining Declaration of Independence document is "alleged" and in no way proves that you lived in the oldest democracy in history? Get me?

In human history, archeologists show that of the million things they've discovered, there's only one of most of them. Reasonable doubt exists about hundreds of single pieces of historical evidence. Take your pick -- which of those you want to believe and/or dismiss.

If it weren't for one Poggio Bracciolini, a 15th-century papal emissary and obsessive book hunter who saved the last copy of the Roman poet Lucretius's De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) from near-disappearance, we'd never know of the important ideas that sparked the modern age, including Lucretius's laying out of matter being made of atoms. Oh, sure. One document.

It took the papacy of the first Christian church, the Catholic Church -- yeah, it IS Christian -- 400 years to accept that Galileo and Bruno Giordano were right -- the Earth revolves around the sun.

Trumpers would agree with you, that when one wants to hold to being right, no amount of evidence will change that.

I gave a "broad summary," choosing one example of what I found. But I've already made the effort to research the historicity of some 80 authors of the canon, and you likely haven't. I'm not going to spend my time here doing it for you.

...theist belief structures, but what it always boils down to for me is that I am, and not by wish or decision, an Apathetic Agnostic (I don't know and I don't care).

Humanism fits me best.

I sincerely don't believe that we could 'know' about a thing that's beyond our human comprehension, and believing in something I can't recognize as fact is out (I think that's called delusion).

And I don't fit Atheism because, well, ya can't prove a negative, if I can't know a god or whatever exists how could I know it doesn't?

So I'm left as an Agnostic (the 'don't know' part) who doesn't see how any larger being's existence would matter to how we live our day-to-day lives in any case (the 'don't care' part).

With Humanism, I can find justification in 'being good without god', and that's all I really ask of myself, is to be as 'good' as I can during this life thing.

I hope you find answers, grace and peace.

All along the journey, I've tried to be IN the world but not OF it. Keeping a heart open to the universe is part of that.

I'm with Joe Biden when he quotes Hebrews 11:1
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Thanks for your post.