Why do some modern intelligent minds accept Yahweh?

[marco]

The Old Testament God is the stuff of nightmares, creating and destroying, commanding and punishing, crazy with jealousy and obsessive about being "loved."

It seems obvious that Yahweh is born of primitive imagining. Yet many intelligent people do accept he is a real being. Why? Some like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis have changed sides and embraced Christianity with both hands, presumably admiring the unlovable OT God. What makes people do this?

Love seems out of the question, so is it fear?

[bluethread]

I'm pretty sure the 'fully God and fully human' stuff is not found anywhere in the bible. Even back when I was a Christian in my late teens I used to have a problem with that notion, "the special-effects saviour" as I used to call it.

I do admit that the phrase is simplistic. However, if I may borrow from the Hitchhiker's Guide, I would tend to say pan-dimensional. If one sees a foot moving around under a curtain, would one not say both, that is a foot and that is a human? Why can't a deity have the likeness of a man, especially if man was created in the image of that deity?

[RightReason]

[Replying to marco]

I am normally happy to let people accept what they believe. In the case of people "loving" God, I make an exception. It is not possible to love God. It is possible to deceive ourselves into thinking what we experience is love. It isn't.

Agree to disagree. Deception can work both ways. Perhaps you are deceiving yourself about the impossibility to love God.

Prayer is one of man's absurdities.

Agree to disagree. I find your statement absurd

Millions congregate to thank God when there is nothing to thank God for.

I have a great deal to thank God for.

If we are reduced to praying for a solution, there is none.

Agree to disagree. That simply does not logically follow.

Scientists got to where they were not by prayer but by intelligent research and calculation.

You don’t know that. Why can’t it be both?

If they modestly attribute their efforts to the Holy Spirit's inspiration, that's got nothing to do with me -or the Holy Spirit. Man works unaided by heaven.

More of your differing opinion. I think you underestimate “inspiration�

Then they read selectively, with the bad parts cut out. To kill a few people might be unfortunate; to destroy almost all the people on the planet is a work of wickedness. To ask for bits of a man's genitalia might be weird; to ask for the murder of a man's son is wicked. There is no love in the OT God unless death and love are synonyms.

I would suggest no one is leaving out the bad parts, and you would be just as guilty of “selective reading� than anyone else. You are starting with a different premise and IMO not reading Scripture as we were intended to.

This guy Father Barron explains it well . . .

[Volbrigade]

I'm pretty sure the 'fully God and fully human' stuff is not found anywhere in the bible. Even back when I was a Christian in my late teens I used to have a problem with that notion, "the special-effects saviour" as I used to call it.

I do admit that the phrase is simplistic. However, if I may borrow from the Hitchhiker's Guide, I would tend to say pan-dimensional. If one sees a foot moving around under a curtain, would one not say both, that is a foot and that is a human? Why can't a deity have the likeness of a man, especially if man was created in the image of that deity?

While the phrase may be "simplistic", the reality certainly isn't.

"Fully God, fully man", like "The Trinity", may not be iterated ver batim in Scripture. It is a doctrine that is intrinsic in the text, however, from the account of the Virgin Birth.

Only a perfect man could fulfill the requirements of The Law perfectly (see the 10th Commandment, the Sermon on the Mount), in order to atone for the sins of all (for "as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned... so salvation came through one man much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many". -- Romans 5:12, 15).

Only God is perfect.

He became a man, through the auspices of a young Jewish girl who was of the royal lineage. In this way, He is the "God-Man". And our "kinsman redeemer", as modeled in Esther -- another "gentile bride", redeemed by an ancestor of the royal line.

For a number of reasons, an involved analysis of this dynamic yields a formula of "fully God, fully man", rather than the chimeric "half-god, half-man", as in the pagan religions.

It is yet another example of how Christian truth is unique and superior to all other religions, which are in varying degrees copies and echoes and perversions of it.

[bluethread]

I'm pretty sure the 'fully God and fully human' stuff is not found anywhere in the bible. Even back when I was a Christian in my late teens I used to have a problem with that notion, "the special-effects saviour" as I used to call it.

I do admit that the phrase is simplistic. However, if I may borrow from the Hitchhiker's Guide, I would tend to say pan-dimensional. If one sees a foot moving around under a curtain, would one not say both, that is a foot and that is a human? Why can't a deity have the likeness of a man, especially if man was created in the image of that deity?

While the phrase may be "simplistic", the reality certainly isn't.

"Fully God, fully man", like "The Trinity", may not be iterated ver batim in Scripture. It is a doctrine that is intrinsic in the text, however, from the account of the Virgin Birth.

Only a perfect man could fulfill the requirements of The Law perfectly (see the 10th Commandment, the Sermon on the Mount), in order to atone for the sins of all (for "as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned... so salvation came through one man much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many". -- Romans 5:12, 15).

Only God is perfect.

He became a man, through the auspices of a young Jewish girl who was of the royal lineage. In this way, He is the "God-Man". And our "kinsman redeemer", as modeled in Esther -- another "gentile bride", redeemed by an ancestor of the royal line.

For a number of reasons, an involved analysis of this dynamic yields a formula of "fully God, fully man", rather than the chimeric "half-god, half-man", as in the pagan religions.

It is yet another example of how Christian truth is unique and superior to all other religions, which are in varying degrees copies and echoes and perversions of it.

I was not inviting a discussion of exactly how it works. I was just responding to argument that it is not possible for an entity to be two things at the same time. It is possible to be two things at the same time, especially if the one thing is part of the other thing.

[Mithrae]

There you go: As I suspected, it is important to you exactly how you want this hypothetical god to "set the record straight.
....
So your complaint then is not that god has failed to "set the record straight": It's that you have some particular standard for doing so in mind, which he hasn't met. But obviously different people are likely to have different standards. As a personal opinion for you, that this hypothetical deity hasn't done enough to satisfy you of his good intentions, that's fair enough. But in broader terms, it is a very subjective criterion that you're basing this argument on.

Genuine disbelief proves that there is no set the record straight. So i don't know what nonsense are you babbling about.

Q: Can God of the Bible set the record straight, demonstrate his existence to everyone, deliver to everyone his message in matter of seconds with perfect efficiency?(Yes/No question)

Insults are the last resort, I suppose

It's possible that you simply hadn't been reading what I wrote before (or since) you jumped in on my questions to Marco and Kenisaw. This notion that either 'god' is an all-loving entity craving a personal relationship with all humans or 'god' must be malicious, indifferent or non-existent is a simplistic false dichotomy which I don't buy into. Nor do I buy into the equivalent false dichotomy, that either a worldview (religious or otherwise) or type of information is 100% accurate and reliable or it can be dismissed as irrelevant.

Hence, my question to Kenisaw:
"[Abraham's God is] Utterly impossible? By implication, are you saying that it's not possible for humans to exaggerate, embellish and attribute incorrect and contradictory characteristics to an extant deity?"

You responded:
"All this confusion, mutually exclusive beliefs, disbelief, mess(torture, bigotry, hate, murder/genocide) involving of what God is and what God wants point to a rather grim picture for the believers:

"Either God exists and he clearly does not care for us, therefore is indifferent/malevolent or he does not exist. . . ."

I have showed (with regards to the injustices and atrocities committed by professing followers of Yahweh) that indeed, whatever had gone before, that religion did set the record straight once and for all in the 1st century CE when its deity allegedly came down to see things from our perspective. The unambiguous emphasis on commands to "love your neighbour" and "do unto others as you'd have done to you" are obviously incompatible with the notion of a malevolent or even indifferent deity.

You're apparently still trying to argue that he must be malevolent or indifferent merely because there are some individuals who don't believe. You're welcome to try to make that argument, but unless you really haven't been reading anything I wrote and actually are trying to push that false dichotomy, at this point in time I simply don't see how you're joining the dots there.

[alexxcJRO]

It's possible that you simply hadn't been reading what I wrote before (or since) you jumped in on my questions to Marco and Kenisaw. This notion that either 'god' is an all-loving entity craving a personal relationship with all humans or 'god' must be malicious, indifferent or non-existent is a simplistic false dichotomy which I don't buy into. Nor do I buy into the equivalent false dichotomy, that either a worldview (religious or otherwise) or type of information is 100% accurate and reliable or it can be dismissed as irrelevant.

Hence, my question to Kenisaw:
"[Abraham's God is] Utterly impossible? By implication, are you saying that it's not possible for humans to exaggerate, embellish and attribute incorrect and contradictory characteristics to an extant deity?"

You responded:
"All this confusion, mutually exclusive beliefs, disbelief, mess(torture, bigotry, hate, murder/genocide) involving of what God is and what God wants point to a rather grim picture for the believers:

"Either God exists and he clearly does not care for us, therefore is indifferent/malevolent or he does not exist. . . ."

I have showed (with regards to the injustices and atrocities committed by professing followers of Yahweh) that indeed, whatever had gone before, that religion did set the record straight once and for all in the 1st century CE when its deity allegedly came down to see things from our perspective. The unambiguous emphasis on commands to "love your neighbour" and "do unto others as you'd have done to you" are obviously incompatible with the notion of a malevolent or even indifferent deity.

You're apparently still trying to argue that he must be malevolent or indifferent merely because there are some individuals who don't believe. You're welcome to try to make that argument, but unless you really haven't been reading anything I wrote and actually are trying to push that false dichotomy, at this point in time I simply don't see how you're joining the dots there.

Q: Wait what?!!! Just some individuals who don’t believe?!!!

Don’t make me laugh.

The majority of the people that lived on Earth after 30AD and are living on Earth did not/do not believed/believe Jesus is God.

So I would say this setting the record straight is a clear failure.

Even the overwhelming majority of the Jews that lived in that time were not convinced by this Jesus.

Q: And why should I or anyone else be convinced?

We only have some bogus anecdotal (testimonial) evidence from 2000 years ago.

We have the same testimonial evidence for the miracles of Sathya Say Baba(he apparently healed himself in front of the thousands of people gathered in Prashanthi Nilayam who were then praying for his recovery.), The Greys(abductions) and for any other miracle(from other religions), supernatural, paranormal event out there.

We have sincere and vivid accounts of one’s encounter with an angel or the Virgin Mary, an alien, a ghost, a Bigfoot, a child claiming to have lived before, purple auras around dying patients, a miraculous dowser, a levitating guru, and so one.

We have The Miracle of the Sun experienced by tens of thousands of people if not millions in Fatima, Portugal. According to many witnesses the sun was then reported to have careened towards the earth before zig-zagging back to its normal position.

But the logic dictates if not suffering of bias, special pleading one should also believe in reincarnation, The Greys(aliens), Bigfoot, Ghosts, and so one if one accept the miracle of Christianity because the evidence is the same: (anecdotal (testimonial) evidence).

There is no logical reason for one to accept one claim based on testimonial evidence and reject the other claims when we have the same testimonial evidence.

But yet again these claims contain mutually exclusive things and therefore one cannot accept them all for it’s logically impossible for all to be true.

So to be logically consistent one has to reject them all.

Q: Why don’t you?

[Mithrae]

But yet again these claims contain mutually exclusive things and therefore one cannot accept them all for it’s logically impossible for all to be true.

How does a miraculous healing of Sathya Say Baba contradict crazy solar phenomena visible only in Fatima? They're entirely different and unrelated events. If you believe that there were thousands of documented modern witnesses confirming a miracle in India and also believe that there were thousands of documented modern witnesses confirming a different miracle in Spain, absent more plausible explanations the logical conclusion would be there's a good chance that miracles occur.

Hanging an entire religious theology on each alleged miracle (as religious folk do) and then deciding that the two theologies contradict each other is an utterly irrational approach.

[alexxcJRO]

But yet again these claims contain mutually exclusive things and therefore one cannot accept them all for it’s logically impossible for all to be true.

How does a miraculous healing of Sathya Say Baba contradict crazy solar phenomena visible only in Fatima? They're entirely different and unrelated events. If you believe that there were thousands of documented modern witnesses confirming a miracle in India and also believe that there were thousands of documented modern witnesses confirming a different miracle in Spain, absent more plausible explanations the logical conclusion would be there's a good chance that miracles occur.

Hanging an entire religious theology on each alleged miracle (as religious folk do) and then deciding that the two theologies contradict each other is an utterly irrational approach.

Nonsense.

Sathya Sai Baba claimed to be the reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi.
Reincarnation is incompatible with Christian afterlife.
Only one dogma can be true. Therefore they are mutually exclusive.