Well. I wanted to keep the discussion honest but I am outnumbered. All of the participants here hate the God in the Bible. They have created their own. I call hypocritical if you and other Christian's are allowed to passionately hate God but when an atheist hates God it is somehow bad.
My story: At a young age I had an experience of God. As the Bible tells us, God is love, and my experience was one of pure love. God loves all, it is who He is at all times. This being so, I never questioned God, but I did question the authors of Biblical stories. How did they get is so wrong?
They did not. It simply took me years of study of ancient times, the Hebrew language, ancient cultures, and histories--and above all how they communicated in pictures and stories to teach their histories and lessons.
Every single story in the Bible was written in hindsight. The role God is given in these stories is pointing to what had gone wrong--and the emotions assigned to God in these stories depicted just how wrong it had gone. Jewish Rabbis and scholars have understood this for centuries and more. Rabbis have always insisted that scripture is to be studied, not read.
At the time of the Reformation, the Church said that people needed instruction on scriptures--and provided it. Protestants insisted that each person could read and understand all scripture on their own. To me, this is one of the biggest mistakes modern humans have ever made. Every Christian Church needs a Jewish Rabbi or a scholar of the Old Testament who knows Hebrew, ancient cultures, ancient history with a solid background on teaching methods used in those days.
If we taught children (and adults) properly, we would not eliminate atheism, but we would all better understand each other and stop accusations that Christians either love a God who hates and murders babies, or are making up their own God. Believers would better understand non-belief as well.
I agree with most of what I have seen you post over the years. You have a knowledge of scripture that is lacking by most of the self appointed experts on this board.
I read the OT (KJV) when I was eight, was anointed when I was ten, interpreted tongues when I was twelve and didn't read the NT until I was sixteen. I wish I had read it earlier. Left the Church for forty years just before I read the NT. Witnessed the Law when I was thirty three to people who absolutely did not want to hear it. When I was fifty five, my dying bother expressed a desire to go to Church. I took him and went to the altar for the first time in forty five years. I'm sure I wasn't on my knees for more that a minute and made what I thought was a simple request. Now, everyone I tell about what happened as a consequence of that trip to the altar considers me a delusional madman. Be careful what you ask for at the altar, you just might get it.
This is why I want religion as an elective in public schools. The ignorance is staggering, and we need to be better educated on scripture and on how ancient people passed on lessons/knowledge.
