David B. Hart mentioned to me in an email that he was “not religious.”
Your view reminds me of apophatic theologies.
There appear to be different kinds of faith (some much less clingy and defensive than others) when it comes to faith in something transcendent.
In other words there is not merely the either/or of no faith, or faith in the Christian God (or Jewish God, or Muslim God) who inspires certain sacrosanct writings. Those with the latter kind of faith have throughout history often become upset if their particular ideas about the transcendent or even about their exegesis of certain holy writings get questioned. In fact the greatest debunkers of the Bible are Christians debunking each other’s interpretations, or even each other’s spiritual experiences. And conservative Christians often can’t get along as well with each other as more inclusive members of completely different religious traditions get along with each other.
In comparison there is a wide range of more inclusive more universal yet also transcendental forms of trust like those of Thoreau, or like philosopher of religion John Hick in our own day (who left Evangelicalism for a more inclusive belief that different religions were connected by an underlying universal transcendence they each tried to demarcate).
Here is how Thoreau put it…
Let God alone if need be. Methinks, if I loved him more, I should keep him–I should keep myself, rather–at a more respectful distance. It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover that God is. I say, God. I am not sure that is the name. You will know whom I mean…
Doubt may have “some divinity” about it…
Atheism may be comparatively popular with God himself…
When a pious visitor inquired sweetly, “Henry, have you made your peace with God?” he replied, “We have never quarreled.”
as quoted in Henry David Thoreau: What Manner of Man? By Edward Wagenknecht
There is also the Alan Watts definition of the difference between having beliefs and having faith. Having beliefs is like clinging to something in the pool to keep one afloat, always being afraid of letting go and learning to swim. Also try googling “sea of faith.”
Robert Anton Wilson pointed out how many people cling to a single reality tunnel and don’t dare to seek all the ways their tunnel overlaps with that of others. Concerning western religions of the book, many of their adherents view only their holy book as being inspired and containing the lessons and stories above all other lessons and stories of all humankind, and grow defensive even when the most gruesome laws and tales of divine anger in their holy books are questioned.
And of course there are Christian conservatives, moderates and liberals who differ concerning what their holy writings really mean or what the most essential and necessary lessons really are.
And so it goes.