Jay GW

Let's assume there is a god. Has anyone noticed how strangely different the god of the old and new testament is from the god that exists today?

Why did the god of the old, new testament show interest in humanity and show anger, sadness, and other emotions, communicate with some people here and there, but that god is nowhere to be found? Has anyone seen any emotion at all or communicated with that god? In a thousand years? It's just odd to me that the god described in those books can't be seen anywhere but was never described as subtle, indifferent or silent.

There is a personality to "Yahweh" if the bible is accurate that hasn't been seen in a very long time. Why would a god change personalities?

mountainman

Prophet margins.

"Religion is regarded
by the common people as true,
by the wise as false,
and by the ruler as useful"

---- Seneca the Younger

J.F. Gaul

Because the people who constantly re-invent and manufacture god change.

skepticalbip

As I see it the biblegod was a vicious, jealous, vindictive, petty, demanding, sadistic bastard that took delight in slaughtering millions of us humans. Apparently some uber-god that has no interest in humanity at all sent that biblegod to hell then went on about his business forgetting about us.

rizdek

OK, so we are pertending there is a god.

I guess there are a few reasons that one could think of for this apparent change in behavior towards humans. This schizophrenic change did seem to occur at/after the time of Jesus.

Reason 1: The people were more in tune with god's thoughts and were more open to his actions. We're all too busy to see god's actions now, blah blah blah.
Reason 2: Assuming god is actually the god of the OT and NT and did establish the old and new covenants, perhaps the old "pre-christ" covenant included a claus that allowed/required god to be more involved in the day to day lives of people and allowed/required him to personally and immediately punish/reward the behavior of the people.
Reason 3: Whatever god there is or could be is not the god of the bible and the bible authors (OT and NT), like other early civilization myth-writers were taking everyday occurrences and both exaggerating them and attributing them to a god's intervention.

Most likely, there isn't a god and then, like now, people are attributing the unexplained/unknown to a god and continue to call random and mundane events answers to prayer.

I think you'd get some really interesting responses if you posed this at theologyweb.org.

general_koffi

2 Samuel 24:1:

1 Chronicles 21:1:

Hmm?

Come to think of it... The god of the OT is never in the same room as Satan at the same time, is he?

semiopen

This is a legitmate question.

Why would God punish the Jews and destroy the 2nd temple for loshon hara (evil tongue) while the holocaust, according to almost all theists, is evidently just some shit happening for no particular reason.

Although I haven't read the book, Richard Elliot Friedman explores this issue in The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery (or via: amazon.co.uk).

GakuseiDon

I don't think it is true. The OT covers a few thousand years and entire groups of people, involved in wars and disasters. The NT only covers a small period of time, and mostly individuals or small groups. Imagine that the NT covered the period up to the Crusades and the Holocaust -- I'd imagine that the NT God would come across just as wrathful.

rizdek

Perhaps I misunderstood the OP. I was viewing it as BC vs AD (or BCE vs CE), not just OT vs NT. I perceive that contemporary theists in general don't attribute all kinds of calamities/genocides directly to god. Or do they?

GakuseiDon

It depends on how literally you want to read the OT and NT, I guess.