southernhybrid

I agree with most of what has been said and would like to add my own personal experience. I was raised a Baptist. I was told about the Xian god from early childhood. During my childhood, I believed what I was told, I always had great difficulty trying to figure out why the Xian god made no sense to me, even as a child. Always the adults would say, "we don't understand the wisdom of god." I accepted this until I was about 18 and it hit me that the Xian god couldn't possibly exist. I had only believed the traditions that were told to me. The Xian god just didn't make any sense. I began to question. If there was such a god, why was he so nonsensical. He gave us the power to reason. He taught us justice and yet he didn't seem to be just by any rational explanation. He was jealous, vindictive, moody and quite inconsistent. Not to mention there was no evidence that he really existed.

Why would a god create something as complex and powerful as the human brain and then expect the owner of that brain to cast all reason aside and believe something so absurd as the Xian religion!

So, whether you call it common sense or critical thinking, the Xian god doesn't have a chance if one tries to use their reasoning skills to explain his existence.

KnightWhoSaysNi

Hi Kalestia,

I think I'll add my $0.02 to the discussion.

As far as the conservative evangelical Christian version of God goes, there's several things that don't make much sense to me.

It just seems really odd to me that a universal omnipotent deity would confine himself to one particular culture in human ancient history, in this case an ancient tribe of middle eastern desert nomads. Why didn't he manifest himself to the ancient Aztecs, Incas, Australian aborigines, Cree, Chinese, Celts, and others? Why just the Israelites? If a monotheistic deity wanted to get his message across to the whole of humanity, just stickin' with the Israelites in ancient times just seems rather odd.

If the OT stories are taken as literal history, I also find it weird that an omnipotent deity found it necessary to routinely intervene and micromanage the tribal social affairs of the Israelites. Why would a universe-expanding, all powerful, all knowing entity want to bother himself with weird nit-picky things like not boiling a goat kid in its mother's milk (Deut. 14:21), forbidding pork, insisting a part of the male genitalia be cut off (i.e. circumcision (Gen. 17:9–14)), or having a woman's hand severed if she accidently touched someone's testicles while trying to stop two men in a fight (Deut. 25:11-12)? It just seems like the OT is like a big version of the PC game, Populous.

Overall, it makes a lot more anthropological sense to me that the OT deity is simply a product of an ancient tribe of desert nomads. I've also had problems regarding the OT atrocities and doctrine of Hell that you may have seen me discuss in the moral foundations forum.

[ July 26, 2002: Message edited by: Nightshade ]</p>

Defiant Heretic

There's very little originality in the Christian myths. Everything's stolen from the mystery religions or polytheistic societies.


On a side note:
If the god of the bible does exist, he's malevolent (judging by his actions) and fallible (judging by contradictions, incompetence in creation, and the fact that he thinks pi=3)
Therefore, if it turns out that he does exist, I say we fight him.