I am serious.

You cannot mean a statement that you do not understand. Religious statements cannot be understood. Therefore, people who make religious statements do not mean them.

Take the sentence, “God is perfect goodness.” No one really understands this. Which means that when they say it, they don’t mean it. Which is the same as saying that they don’t believe it.

Imagine saying it to yourself, and then asking yourself, “Do you agree?” If you don’t know what it means, you can’t honestly agree with it. And if you can’t honestly agree with it, then you don’t believe it.

Someone might say, “Well, I don’t understand it, but greater minds than mine do understand it, and I trust those people to tell me the truth.” Putting aside the question of why you trust these authorities, let me remind you that very few priests or theologians claim to understand the nature of God. In fact, such people are practically unanimous that such understanding is not accessible to mere mortals, including themselves. It has always been so. But this means that, when they say “God is perfect goodness,” they do not understand it, and therefore they do not believe it. Like everyone else in the business, they are merely repeating a string of words that neither they nor anyone else has ever truly believed.