David the apologist wrote:
I would argue that Christianity is more rational than its competitors,
Who or what do you believe are its "
competitors"?
And how can you sure that the idea being in a competition isn't a false illusion of those who believe in a religion like Christianity?
Isn't it Christianity that proclaims to have a "Jealous God" who is in competition with other God's for the attention and favor of humans?
Can you provide a convincing argument to support this claim?
David the apologist wrote:
More to the point, the evidence for it would not be convincing to an artificial intelligence that had neither emotions nor a sense of aesthetics. To judge something like an incarnation or a resurrection as "probable" or "improbable," one needs to see how it fits in with the grand scheme of things, whether it makes sense as a deviation from the ordinary metre in the epic poem of our cosmos. For this, induction and deduction are inadequate. We need something else. Without this something else, we've missed what it means to be essentially human. In order to get to the truth of the Christian religion, we need to recover our own humanity. Otherwise, our search is over before it even begins.
I'm one of the most die-hard hopeless romantics you could ever hope to find. I have a very deep and profound sense of aesthetics and emotions. Why should that cause me to believe in Christianity, or to even find it attractive?
The picture I see is a story that is simply unbelievable on any level. Specifically on the level of the idea that any supremely intelligent creator would behave as ignorant and immature as the God depicted in the Bible.
I mean, I can grant all the "miracles" and supernatural events that the Bible has to offer, and I see nothing but an extremely selfish, inconsiderate, egotistical Godhead, who is not only hopelessly hung up on his own "glory", but who also has absolutely no understanding of human empathy or compassion at all.
In short David, I see absolutely no emotional or aesthetic reasons to believe in Christianity. On the contrary, those are the greatest reasons why I reject it.
I could allow and accept for supernatural events by a God if those events and behaviors actually portrayed an intelligent being. But as far as I can see the Biblical God is not even remotely intelligent. On the contrary it's every bit as ignorant and unintelligent as I would expect the mortal authors to be who wrote this stuff.
This God never solved a problem intelligently. In fact, if you truly open your eyes and look at the Bible you will notice that this God never solves a problem at all, ever. He uses extremely crude curses and violence to try to solve his problems, and they never result in a solution anyway.
Is this the behavior an emotional and ascetic person would expect to see in a supposedly all-wise, all-intelligent, omnipotent, omniscient God?
I don't think so. On the contrary, I would expect to see behaviors that actually reflect wisdom, intelligence, omnipotence and omniscience.
So proclaiming that a person needs to be emotional or have a sense of aesthetics to believe in Christianity makes absolutely no sense to me at all. On the contrary those are the greatest reasons why I personally reject it.
The God depicted in the Bible represents the epitome of stupidity, as far as I'm concerned. And that's just in the Old Testament. Christianity only takes this God to the extremes of absolutely insanity by having him commit what can only be seen as an act of pure desperation.
Any God who would create a church and religion and not even be able to keep his own priests in order to the point where he has no choice but to send his only begotten son among them to "set them straight", by having them call for the brutal crucifixion of his only begotten son, can neither be intelligent, nor wise. And he most certainly couldn't be omnipotent or omniscient either.
My reasons for rejecting Christianity are almost 100% based on emotions and aesthetics, coupled with what appears to me to be the obvious practical common sense that no all-wise God could possibly be as stupid as the Biblical fables demand.
Forget about the practically of miracles or supernatural events. I'll grant that to any supernatural creator God. But granting supernatural powers to the God of the Bible does absolutely nothing to salvage it from being the world's most idiotic deity ever invented by mankind.
And I don't say this with malice in an effort to be derogatory toward this mythology, it's simply the truth of the reasons why I reject it. I reject this religion because, IMHO, it represents the epitome of stupidity in terms of how this God behaves.
This is the reason I reject this religion above all others. It has absolutely nothing to do with supernatural technicalities. I can easily accept a supernatural God if you can show me a truly wise one. But please, don't point to Christianity as an example of a wise God, because it's not even remotely close to representing a wise God IMHO.