Why isn’t God more obvious?

[anotheressence]

"Anthropological research has indicated that among the farthest and most remote primitive people today, there is a universal belief in God. And in the earliest histories and legends of people all around the world, the original concept was of one God, who was the Creator. An original high God seems once to have been in their consciousness even in those societies which are today polytheistic."

No, most old belief systems involved many Gods, not one.

The Earth...its size is perfect. The Earth's size and corresponding gravity holds a thin layer of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gases, only extending about 50 miles above the Earth's surface. If Earth were smaller, an atmosphere would be impossible, like the planet Mercury. If Earth were larger, its atmosphere would contain free hydrogen, like Jupiter.4 Earth is the only known planet equipped with an atmosphere of the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal and human life.

Exactly, we got lucky with the Earth. Saying "like Mercury" proves my point here, Mercury DIDN'T get lucky. It shows that there was a chance that a planet like ours WOULDN'T form. And we can reasonably say that there are many more planets like ours as well.

Water...colorless, odorless and without taste, and yet no living thing can survive without it. Plants, animals and human beings consist mostly of water (about two-thirds of the human body is water). You'll see w..

Blah blah blah Water is good for you, and that proves God exists?

When NASA launches a shuttle mission, it is assumed a monkey didn't write the plan, but intelligent and knowledgeable minds. How does one explain the existence of the human brain? Only a mind more intelligent and knowledgeable than humanity could have created the human brain.

No, it's called Evolution. The human brain was "created" (more like formed) over millions and millions of years.

Imagine looking at Mount Rushmore, in which the likenesses of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt are carved. Could you ever believe that it came about by chance? Given infinite time, wind, rain and chance, it is still hard to believe something like that, tied to history, was randomly formed in the side of a mountain. Common sense tells us that people planned and skillfully carved those figures.

Actually, with infinite time/rain/wind/water/chance, those statues WILL be formed. Same with life. All it took was one little unicellular lifeform to be formed by chance, and bam, chain reaction.

There arises in all of us, of any culture, universal feelings of right and wrong. Even a thief gets upset and feels wronged when someone steals from him. If someone violently grabs a child from a family and rapes that child, there is an anger and revulsion and a rage to confront that act as evil, regardless of the culture. Where did we get this sense of wrongness? How do we explain a universal law in the conscience of all people that says murder for fun is wrong?

Product of society. There is no universal feeling of wrong and right. Everyone knows that.

God's thoughts, personality, and attitudes can only be known if God chooses to reveal them. All else would be human speculation. We are at a loss if God does not wish to be known. But God wants us to know Him and has told us in the Bible all we need to know about His character and how to relate to Him. This makes the reliability of the Bible an important consideration.

Uh, hello, the Bible was written by HUMANS. God didn't tell us anything in the Bible as "God" has never spoken to man. Once. Ever. And the Bible isn't reliable...it has been edited by the Church and mistranslations countless times.

Why Jesus? Look throughout the major world religions and you'll find that Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius and Moses all identified themselves as teachers or prophets. None of them ever claimed to be equal to God. Surprisingly, Jesus did. That is what sets Jesus apart from all the others. He said God exists and you're looking at Him. Though He talked about His Father in heaven, it was not from the position of separation, but of very close union, unique to all humankind. Jesus said that anyone who had seen Him had seen the Father, anyone who believed in Him, believed in the Father.

And for that reason, Buddha, Muhammead, Confucius, and Moses are all the more believable. They weren't some crackpot who said they were equal to a god. Yeah, it sets him apart. Sets him apart all the way to the nuthouse.

And Jesus didn't even say he WAS the son of god. The Church changed it so it would say that. He was just a mortal prophet just like those previously named...except Confucius, he wasn't a religious icon.

What proof did Jesus give for claiming to be divine? He did what people can't do. Jesus performed miracles. He healed people...blind, crippled, deaf, even raised a couple of people from the dead. He had power over objects...created food out of thin air, enough to feed crowds of several thousand people. He performed miracles over nature...walked on top of a lake, commanding a raging storm to stop for some friends.

Made up, made up, made up, etc etc etc. We have no proof of any of those things happening.

The most conclusive proof that Jesus is equal to God was Jesus' most closely scrutinized miracle - His own resurrection from the dead. Jesus said that three days after His burial He would come back to life. On the third day after His crucifixion, the almost two-ton boulder in front of His tomb was catapulted up a slope.16 The guard of well-trained Roman soldiers saw a blinding light and an angel. The tomb was empty, except for the burial clothes that had been wrapped around Jesus' body. Over the years, legal, historical and logical analysis has been applied to Jesus' resurrection and the most feasible conclusion still is that Jesus rose from the dead.

Still no proof that this happened.


Any more, uh, credible sources? I'll be going through that list you posted soon.

 

[Warrior61]

Since Religion is believing something with no proof. Atheism is simply the lack of belief. Lack of belief requires no faith, since it is a LACK of belief in something.[/B]

So religion is belief in something with no reason. You then say that atheism is a lack of belief. But shouldn't there be a reason why you--or any atheist for that matter--lacks belief in a deity? Where is that reason? However you define it--atheism as belief of no God or as a simple lacking of a belief--there still must be a reason for why that belief is held(surely you wouldn't just lack belief for the fun of it.) Where then is your proof, your reason for your lack of belief? If there is no reason for your lack of belief, then what else can be your rationale save faith?

 

[Chazman]

You correctly stated that knowledge can limit freedom, in the sense that it grants us awareness of things we did not know. On this, I agree.

The point of this thread was to divine why a God who wanted us to love and obey him made himself so obscure. If we are to assume that the reason God has made himself so mysterious is, in fact, to allow for more "freedom" (as discussed above), then it seems God has purposefully made himself harder to know in order to see how we might act in the dark, as it were.

Certainly God's motives need not be cruel. Perhaps he has withdrawn in order to allow us to experience the wonder of not-knowing and the humility that comes with it. But, if we are referring to the Biblical God (as the original post seemed to do), things get a bit more complicated. The Biblical God punishes those who do not guess correctly. That's why God's obscurity is troubling.

If God could make himself more known (which, I think, would not be terribly difficult, considering all the miraculous events he supposedly caused in the Old Testament) and he punishes those whose only crime is failing to see through his obscurity, then we can indeed call him cruel.

How stupid Can one get , of coase the biblical God ..
there is only One God whom we refer to here , DUHHH!!!
is this not plan in site ???? please .....

 

[Chazman]

You correctly stated that knowledge can limit freedom, in the sense that it grants us awareness of things we did not know. On this, I agree.

The point of this thread was to divine why a God who wanted us to love and obey him made himself so obscure. If we are to assume that the reason God has made himself so mysterious is, in fact, to allow for more "freedom" (as discussed above), then it seems God has purposefully made himself harder to know in order to see how we might act in the dark, as it were.

Certainly God's motives need not be cruel. Perhaps he has withdrawn in order to allow us to experience the wonder of not-knowing and the humility that comes with it. But, if we are referring to the Biblical God (as the original post seemed to do), things get a bit more complicated. The Biblical God punishes those who do not guess correctly. That's why God's obscurity is troubling.

If God could make himself more known (which, I think, would not be terribly difficult, considering all the miraculous events he supposedly caused in the Old Testament) and he punishes those whose only crime is failing to see through his obscurity, then we can indeed call him cruel.

Indeed there we all have it :::::JustARide is truly a believer,,,
he must know that the true God of ALL.. IS ON HIS BACK ........
for he is fighting sooo hard to go against all that is true ....
CAN I GET AN AMEN !!!
I SAID CAN I GET AN AMEN ???

 

[JustARide]

How stupid Can one get , of coase the biblical God ..
there is only One God whom we refer to here , DUHHH!!!
is this not plan in site ???? please .....

Chazman --

My response was meant to answer Rosa's question. And, in examining hypotheticals, I had to differentiate between what I felt could be other reasons for God's silence and the reasons I felt were mandated in the case of the Christian God, which are entirely different due to the addition of the Christian notion of Hell. I was not suggesting that this thread's topic was directed toward anything but the standard notion of a Christian God. Rather, I was examining the implications of Rosa's statement about the nature of freedom.

Though I might add that merely mentioning other gods, religions, or philosophies is not an entirely foreign phenomenon here on a religion discussion forum.

But I wouldn't expect you to understand that, considering your posts suggest that you are either twelve years old or mildly retarded.

Thanks and have a great day.

 

[Leo Volont]

Dear Justaride,

Yeah, I think that whatshisname was being way overboard in supposing that this discussion would be necessarily limited to Judao-Christian literatures, premises and doctrines. It is true that the native ignorance keeps quite a contraint on the span of the conversations around here, but that doesn't mean there are any rules against interjecting educated viewpoints.

Oh yeah, cats DO rule! (I have 3 indoor and a legion of ferals which I feed).

 

[JustARide]

Oh yeah, cats DO rule! (I have 3 indoor and a legion of ferals which I feed).

I have only one indoor cat (named Brooklyn). I tried getting another but she decided it was her duty to either kill the new cat or die trying. Anyway, that was a bit too much to handle in my jail-cell-sized apartment. Heh. Maybe I should have named her Bronx.

 

[Leo Volont]

I have only one indoor cat (named Brooklyn). I tried getting another but she decided it was her duty to either kill the new cat or die trying. Anyway, that was a bit too much to handle in my jail-cell-sized apartment. Heh. Maybe I should have named her Bronx.

It is a good thing I have THREE Indoor. The oldest, a Calico Female, hates the newest, a neutered Tom that came in as an adult (a rescue), and, yes, that would be an otherwise unsupportable situation except that they both love the other cat, a silver spotted oriental tabby female that was introduced to the Calico Female while still mostly just a kitten. So the combatants can get good quality time from both me and the gorgeous little Spotted Tabby.

I think the trick is to bring in new 'bunnies' while they are still kittens or at most adulescent.

Or... what you might have done was gamble on a third and forth kitty -- friends for your feuding combatants. But, yes, apartments can get crowded quickly. ... especially while the fights are intense and closely spaced. You know, eventually the kitties agree to not more than a few pitched battles a day. Even now, the two vowed enemies are napping within three feet of each other after having shared a Tuna Food Treat off the same plate. But, yes, for the first several weeks, the fighting seemed very loud and very constant, and I would have terminated the arrangement except that I noticed that each day it died down alittle bit.

 

[HARRY]

Hi,
wish to add a bit to the discussion.
If we believe in the Bible, then one would have to say that in Genisis God was present in their daily lives. The first most amazing example was with Cain. He warned him of the consequences if he killed his brother. After he even made a sign on his forehead so no-one would kill him. It has to be said that the God of the Bible is mysterious in what he does and understanding why is part and parcell of the Christian faith and or Old Testament Faith. The Christian faith I would say requires more than just average faith, because we are asked to do what seem impossible. 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.' (Gospel of John chap.20 verse 29) I understand Christian's are expected to do what seem's impossible but made possible through pure and simple faith. The power in the Christian faith is based on the priciple that your faith in God is doubtless.
Someone could say that it's just a mean's to tricking people into believing in something false, this is not the case here. Chirst support's faith in him with many sign's that comfort the believer that it's not some kind of hoax. Even believers that didn't follow the disciple's would cast out demon's in his name.
So for anyone that hold's the Bible to be true then my understand of it tell's my that Yes you are asked to have blind faith, but with the reassurance that it will give you the power to perform what seem's impossible.( As a side note, God honers those that don't need signs and wonder to be righteous.)

For those that do not believe in the Bible, then the only evidence of God is in Nature and or in document's that are in their eye's trustworthy. I say this because if archaeology proves that man has from the eariest record's believed in the supernatural then too some this could be proof of God or in something's more than what nature provide's.
As far as I'm concerned the growth in spiritualist practices and the spiritualist pracitices that still go on in Africa for example is enough to indicate to me that spirit's are real. If you believe in the spirit world then the Bible come to life.
'Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the prinicipalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness,against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the Heavenly places.' (Ephesians ch.6 verse 11 to 12).
To be a Christian mean's to become a warrior against the Devil and his servant's. You need more than just blind faith you need the power that God give's those who believe whole heartedy and correctly. Faith without work's is Dead.

Ps. I'm no expert so no need to hack down anything I've said with vengence. Constructive criticisms are welcome. Anything not relatating to this thread can be discussed in my thread Partners in Mind.

 

[Leo Volont]

But what does that have to do with cats?

 

[Cris]

SVRP,

http://www.wcg.org/lit/jesus/davis.htm#Davis

This is a long assertion of faith – there is no evidence of a historical Jesus here.

http://www.carlislecofc.org/extrabiblical.htm

This is all hearsay since none of this was recorded or quoted during the alleged life of JC. Josephus would have been the only credible source but his texts on the matter have been shown to be fraudulent, i.e. edited and embellished by the Church Fathers to suite their needs.

There is no evidence of a real JC here.

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/jesusref.html

This is outlandish Christian propaganda. It even begins by asserting that the fraudulent texts from Jospehus are absolutely true. The author is in denial or is simply ignorant of reality.

This is worthless.

http://www.probe.org/docs/ancient.html

“Christ” was a title not the name of a person. This article seems to confuse them and quietly ignores the fact that there were many who claimed to be “would be” saviors and were summarily crucified. Even the comedy movie “The Life of Brian” explains that quite nicely.

And more hearsay from many decades after the alleged life of JC.

And LOL – Josephus again. And here it is being linked with other vague and indirect speculations as if many myths make a truth.

So no credible evidence here.

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/bill...ediscover2.html

LOL – Josephus again. The rest of this is useless propaganda and baseless speculations.

http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/testimonium.htm

Josephus again – but a quote from the link “For the first time, it has become possible to prove that the Jesus account cannot have been a complete forgery and even to identify which parts were written by Josephus and which were added by a later interpolator.”

It’s at least a Christian admission that it was a forgery – but the struggle persists in trying to ascertain which part of a forgery might be true. LOL.

http://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html

This is more Christian propaganda and certainly no objective science. The style is one of “this can’t be explained so it must be God”

http://www.worldinvisible.com/libra...li/ntdocont.htm

This is again speculations and dated hearsay apart from Jospehus which we can disregard as a forgery.

http://www.issuesetc.org/resource/archives/maier3.htm

Gosh – this relies on Josephus again – what a surprise.

http://www.malaspina.com/site/person_319.asp

These are the same speculations and hearsay, as well as Josephus, quoted in the earlier links.

Still no credible evidence that a man named Jesus actually existed and was crucified as a savior of the human race. The best evidence seems to be from a recognized historian who lived during the alleged period but where some critical writings were forged at around 300CE to support the Christian myth.

The real crunch is that there is not a single piece of hard evidence that supports the existence of Jesus let alone any of the actions he is alleged to have performed. This is the essential mythical basis of Christianity.

Cris

 

[Cris]

Hi Harry,

'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.' (Gospel of John chap.20 verse 29)

Why?

The power in the Christian faith is based on the priciple that your faith in God is doubtless.

Why consider that anything believed without adequate evidence is powerful?

Someone could say that it's just a mean's to tricking people into believing in something false, this is not the case here.

How can you tell if you can’t show that Christian claims are true?

God honers those that don't need signs and wonder to be righteous.)

This is standard propaganda in almost every religion where nothing can be shown to be true. An age old technique used by every subversive regime since history began – i.e. don’t question those in command since you might learn the truth.

..if archaeology proves that man has from the eariest record's believed in the supernatural then too some this could be proof of God or in something's more than what nature provide's.

No it is simply proof that man has chosen to imagine the supernatural as a cause for the unknown for a long time. It is of course no proof that anything supernatural has ever existed or can ever exist.

As far as I'm concerned the growth in spiritualist practices and the spiritualist pracitices that still go on in Africa for example is enough to indicate to me that spirit's are real.

Why? This is a logical fallacy – Argumentum ad populum – the fact that a large number of people might believe something gives no guide to whether it is true or not. If this worked then you would have to conclude that indeed the Earth was at one time flat.

If you believe in the spirit world then the Bible come to life.

But that doesn’t make the bible true, only that you believe it to be true. Wouldn't it be more usueful to seek truth rather than superstition?

Cris

 

[Cris]

Warrior61,

So religion is belief in something with no reason.

No, not quite. Religions are based on beliefs that have no factual support (evidence). That’s why they quote faith. The act of logical reasoning requires evidence as a basis for forming logical premises. Given that religions have no evidence then their principles are logically unsound or outside of reason.

You then say that atheism is a lack of belief. But shouldn't there be a reason why you--or any atheist for that matter--lacks belief in a deity? Where is that reason?

A good reason for not believing that something is true is when there is inadequate evidence to show that the claim is true. In the case of gods there is no evidence to show that any gods can, have, or will ever exist and hence there is no logical reason to believe they do exist. This is a perfectly sound logical position. The theist position on the other hand insists that a god or gods do exist without any factual support. This is entirely illogical or irrational.

However you define it--atheism as belief of no God or as a simple lacking of a belief--there still must be a reason for why that belief is held(surely you wouldn't just lack belief for the fun of it.)

So I hope you now understand from my above explanation.

Where then is your proof, your reason for your lack of belief?

I don’t think you even understand your own question.

Withholding belief for a position because the claims seem unbelievable is perfectly logically acceptable, but this is not the same as believing that the proposition or claim is false.

Cris

 

[water]

Ok, I understand.

The question was "why isn't God more obvious?" and I think that He allready is that obvious.

As simple as that, Pascal isn't needed in that equation.

However, I do see what you mean, I (more or less) has to assume that God exists while making that assertion, but I really think that it has some bearing in this case.

It's like adding color to a black&white picture. Even though we had seen only greyshades for all our lives, when the color is put to it's place, then it's obvious that it has to be there, and we realise that it has allways been there. We just didn't see it before.

Some people might have got the thought that there were something missing in the picture they saw, something isn't there, that should be there.

In the world we know of, that someone, is someone who can teach us about how this game is played, someone that can tell us why, someone that can lead us (and whom we can trust). That person is missing. The greater of all, the king of kings. The Judge of the world. The creator. The one we could allways go to, not in fear, but in hope.

Sin is what has ruined that for us, but peace will be restored. We were like sheep accepting that we were lost, instead of trying to get home.

You correctly stated that knowledge can limit freedom, in the sense that it grants us awareness of things we did not know. On this, I agree.

The point of this thread was to divine why a God who wanted us to love and obey him made himself so obscure. If we are to assume that the reason God has made himself so mysterious is, in fact, to allow for more "freedom" (as discussed above), then it seems God has purposefully made himself harder to know in order to see how we might act in the dark, as it were.

Certainly God's motives need not be cruel. Perhaps he has withdrawn in order to allow us to experience the wonder of not-knowing and the humility that comes with it. But, if we are referring to the Biblical God (as the original post seemed to do), things get a bit more complicated. The Biblical God punishes those who do not guess correctly. That's why God's obscurity is troubling.

If God could make himself more known (which, I think, would not be terribly difficult, considering all the miraculous events he supposedly caused in the Old Testament) and he punishes those whose only crime is failing to see through his obscurity, then we can indeed call him cruel.

I think that the whole problem with God (and almost any God, for that matter) is that we are, for some reason, used to see him as "something that isn't really there", "something foreign", "something distant", "something hidden", "something not obvious", "something existing only by faith", "something external to us" and so on. I claim that it is just the opposite: we could all hear and recognize God's work in ourselves, if we only weren't so afraid of what we hear and recognize.

We are often wishing to see God as something God is not -- maybe because we wish to distance ourselves; but not distance ourselves from God, but from the feeling of freedom that we can have believing in God.

I think that people simply look too hard to find God; they look "further than the mark" -- and thus we witness millions and millions of rationalizations, intellectualizations etc., Pascal's Wager being one of the more prominent ones.

As for God wanting us to obey and love Him, and punishing those who don't: Here, many many people fall into the trap of anthropomorphization, eventually picturing God as that old man with a beard (yes, as ridiculous as it may sound!). Namely, how are we to love God -- but with the love as we know it, the love we have for other humans? How are we to obey Him but with the obedience we obey earthly authorities? This seems obvious.
Indeed, people treat God just as if he were human, but at the same time saying that he is not human, they fall into some sort of empty space of inexplicability -- and many misunderstandings derive from that.

I have met people to whom faith in God was just that: forever putting up with that empty space of inexplicability. This indeed is *blind* faith.


The picture I got of God, listening to many believers, is as if God were no different than human, only more powerful, more wise etc. -- in short, a Zeus-like God.
But not the Christian "God is love", or the "God whose temples our bodies are".

You can't say "my body is Zeus' temple" or "Zeus is love", but you very well can say "my body is God's temple" or "God is love".

Yet why is the Christian God treated as if He were Zeus?!


We can call *only* upon a Zeus-like god to "show himself", to "be more obvious", "to not be so silent". Zeus has indeed (reportedly) done such things. But the Christian God is not Zeus(-like), so why expect him to behave as if he were?!

 

[jcarl]

Warrior61,

No, not quite. Religions are based on beliefs that have no factual support (evidence). That’s why they quote faith. The act of logical reasoning requires evidence as a basis for forming logical premises. Given that religions have no evidence then their principles are logically unsound or outside of reason.[/B]

What then is the evidence for atheism?

A good reason for not believing that something is true is when there is inadequate evidence to show that the claim is true. In the case of gods there is no evidence to show that any gods can, have, or will ever exist and hence there is no logical reason to believe they do exist.

I thought you only withheld a belief in God. Here it seems that you have taken a stance that there is no evidence they can't exist, which is not the same as saying "I don't know". Is this view backed up with support?

This is a perfectly sound logical position. The theist position on the other hand insists that a god or gods do exist without any factual support.

And anyone save a soft agnostic would have a similar problem with factual support when it comes, in their case, to statements like "God does not exist" or "we can't know if God is exists."

Withholding belief for a position because the claims seem unbelievable is perfectly logically acceptable,

Withholding a belief is soft agnosticism, simply an "I don't know". That's not what you're doing. You're claiming that deities don't exist or have no evidence of existence.

but this is not the same as believing that the proposition or claim is false.

You seem to be claiming atheism but giving agnostic defense.

 

[Cris]

Jcarl,

What then is the evidence for atheism?

Weak atheism requires no evidence since it is simply a lack of belief and not a claim.

And probably the best evidence for strong atheism is the continuing absence of evidence for gods despite thousands of years of claims by theists. But strong atheism also asserts various paradoxes that demonstrate the impossibility of at least the Christian god.

There is also the issue that the concept of gods is an entirely imaginative fiction devised by humans and hence no reason to believe that such fantasies have any place in reality. From this perspective theism lacks credibility.

I thought you only withheld a belief in God. Here it seems that you have taken a stance that there is no evidence they can't exist, which is not the same as saying "I don't know".

You have a double negative in that which makes your statement unclear. The essential point is that there is a lack of evidence for gods. Nowhere did I say that gods do not exist or state that I knew whether gods exist or not. The issue is that there is no evidence that supports the concept of gods, past, present or future.

And anyone save a soft agnostic would have a similar problem with factual support when it comes, in their case, to statements like "God does not exist" or "we can't know if God is exists."

I have no idea what is meant by “soft agnostic” but strong atheists can usually quote paradoxes that demonstrate the impossibility of specific gods.

Withholding a belief is soft agnosticism, simply an "I don't know". That's not what you're doing. You're claiming that deities don't exist or have no evidence of existence.

Agnostics are either theistic or atheistic since there is only two positions, either one believes in a god or gods or they don’t. There is no middle position. The suggested “don’t know” position is an atheist (lack of belief).

Claiming that deities do not exist is entirely different to highlighting the absence of evidence for them.

You seem to be claiming atheism but giving agnostic defense.

You appear to be confusing atheism and agnosticism.

See the sticky thread in this forum that provides a link to a thread that discusses these definitions in more detail.

Cris

 

[JustARide]

But what does that have to do with cats?

lol.

 

[JustARide]

As for God wanting us to obey and love Him, and punishing those who don't: Here, many many people fall into the trap of anthropomorphization, eventually picturing God as that old man with a beard (yes, as ridiculous as it may sound!).

And why do you think that is? The Bible itself presents a very anthropomorphized picture of God. In it, the creator of the universe gets "angry," changes his mind, takes a "rest" on the seventh day, and quite often commits acts that would not be out of character for an earthly dictator.

The picture I got of God, listening to many believers, is as if God were no different than human, only more powerful, more wise etc. -- in short, a Zeus-like God.
But not the Christian "God is love", or the "God whose temples our bodies are".

You can't say "my body is Zeus' temple" or "Zeus is love", but you very well can say "my body is God's temple" or "God is love".

Yet why is the Christian God treated as if He were Zeus?!

You bring up an interesting point. I believe Jacques Derrida calls this "translatability": the notion that the name "God" is forever interchangeable with other names, whether it is "Love," "Wisdom" or, for Derrida, "Justice" and so there can be no bedrock definition of God.

But Derrida's God is not the Christian God, but rather the God of negative theology, which attempts to define God by subtraction instead of addition. The Biblical God is quite human-like in his disposition and actions. Also, we are to believe that humans are, to some extent, made in the Biblical God's image. All of this undoubtedly leads to a certain anthropomorphization (if that's a word).

Still, our problem remains. The Bible God, who makes fire come down from the heavens and turns people into pillars of salt, is decidedly man-like. And it is obvious from his various exploits in the OT that it is within his power to make himself more known. And yet, he prefers to remain mysterious enough that 70% of the people in the world today have failed to recognize that he even exists, or they have grossly misinterpreted his "signs." And, if we are to take the Bible at face value, then no matter how well-intentioned that 70% is, we must believe they are riding the highway to Hell.

We can call *only* upon a Zeus-like god to "show himself", to "be more obvious", "to not be so silent". Zeus has indeed (reportedly) done such things. But the Christian God is not Zeus(-like), so why expect him to behave as if he were?!

Because the Bible God does act very much like other ancient gods at times, wouldn't you agree? Scribbling on stone tablets. Ordering sacrifices. Meddling in human's affairs. Saving people via miracles that suspend the rules of physics. It's not as if the Bible depicts God as some nuanced force, some vague New Age feeling, or Spinoza-esque being. And while I tend to agree with your musings on the nature of God (if indeed such a being exists), I don't think the Bible is innocent when it comes to painting an all-too-human picture of God.

 

[Neildo]

Show me some evidence, us agnostics will consider all comers. The evidence as of this moment is non existant for a historical figure from circa 10-30AD called "Jesus Christ". This you can verify for yourself.

Other than paintings and written documents (same things that refer to Jesus), show me that the other JC, Julius Caesar, ever existed. See how silly it is? When it comes to the past, not much can be proven absolute. Funny how we can pick and choose what we want to accept as historical fact though, eh?

- N

P.S. <--- ain't no Christian

 

[SVRP]

SVRP,

Josephus again – but a quote from the link “For the first time, it has become possible to prove that the Jesus account cannot have been a complete forgery and even to identify which parts were written by Josephus and which were added by a later interpolator.”

Still no credible evidence that a man named Jesus actually existed and was crucified as a savior of the human race. The best evidence seems to be from a recognized historian who lived during the alleged period but where some critical writings were forged at around 300CE to support the Christian myth.

Cris

Thank you for your reply, Cris, but it would help those who are open-minded to know what references you have ascertained your contradictory statements from.
Yet the hard evidence that both liberal and conservative historians have agreed upon are that the passages by Josephus in The Antiquities and Testimonium Flavuianum corroborates important information about Jesus that is mentioned in the NT- that he was martyred in Jeruselum and that he was a wise teacher who had established a wide and lasting following. The disputes are on the interpolations that were added on which do not agree with Josephus' writing style, as pointed out in the website, but it does not take away the fact Josephus recorded a person named Jesus who lived and was considered a wise man, yet was crucified in Jerusalem under Pilate. (Here is a short list of historians who consider Josephus writings reliable historical documents - Karen Armstrong, Ben Worthington III, James Strange, Paula Fredriksen, Helmut Koester, N.T. Wright, and John Dominic Crossan.)