It makes more sense in a "magical thinking" context. Though I'm not sure "sense" is the correct term here, considering the inherent magical aspects. ?

@Kafir you ever see the DarkMatter2525 vid about Noah's Ark where god just keeps answering "magic" to every question about how that was done?

@WhatsInAName no, but it sounds hilarious! I'm gonna go look it up!

@Kafir the fun starts at 3:30ish

Honestly, I don't think that it did. The Romans were notorious for their records keeping, and not a single shred of evidence concerning a Jewish uprising, a world ending flood, or even Jews being held as slaves in Egypt at all until the 3rd century. In fact there are record of correspondence between Constantine and his generals that suggest Jesus was a Urban legend they started to gain more power in lands who worshipped pagan gods. Perpetuated by his mother when she went to rule his conquered lands in the North. So, since evidence would suggest revisionist history at play, I'm forced to consider all xtian theology as historically moot.

So very true. I've read the Bible a few times (like half a dozen) throughout my life, and as comprehension grew, the worse it became. It truly is a terrifying read. There is so much hatred and bloodlust in that book. And all of it done by the "good guys"... In the end, before I had completely abandoned religion, I was routing for Satan. At least he only killed like 11 poeple... And he's the only one in the whole book who wanted us to have the knowledge of what kind of sick master we were dealing with. Then I found out that the whole smear campaign against him was from Milton's Paradise Lost, and not in any previous versions of the Bible at all. The leaps of faith it took to reconcile the two characters is staggering... lol

Yeah, that story leaves a mark. If god did order Whats-His-Name to kill his son for his own vanity he's obviously a narcissistic psychopath- would you worship an entity like that? He's clearly the enemy of humanity.

It's also, through modern eyes, an obvious psychotic break- he pulled an Andrea Yates. Sad, but not uncommon.

@Kafir Lucifer got screwed! He was a union organizer, and got thrown out of heaven for demanding god stop exploiting the angels and favoring humans. If hell were real it'd be a union shop!

@SilverBells that's exactly how I feel about it too. Dude was hearing voices telling him to kill his son... He needed help. Thousands of years before it would become available... But still.

@Kafir It's a sad story all around. With people like him, and Andrea Yates, I always wonder if they would've snapped without the mind-bending influence of . It can't have helped.

Absolutely true. It just make me wonder why they even thought that way. I mean, fear is a great motivation, but didn't they find it disgusting too?

@Kafir If it's all you know, it's all you know. You can't imagine, much less understand, advanced concepts unless you have the antecedent concepts with which to frame and conceptualize more advanced ones. Imagine knowing nothing but the concept of absolute rulers / regents, which gods are just extreme versions of. Imagine the need to placate such easily angered authority figures. Imagine if they demand human sacrifice. In that environment, animal sacrifice actually represents progress.

Even in the modern world, people tend to believe the religion into which they are born, and which their parents taught them. It has only been with the advent of higher education and other secular concepts that people can break free from that within their lifetimes.

You or I may want to believe that if we had been born thousands of years ago we would do better, but the reality is, our parents would be seeking propitiation before angry gods, and so would we.

Good hypothesis.

I feel the same way. One of the reasons I left it behind ?

Father of the year. When my mother read me that story, I asked her why he would do such a thing. She tried to explain that it was a case of unquestioning loyalty to god. That wasn't enough for me, so I asked if she'd do the same thing to me if god asked. She said, after the briefest hesitation, that she would... That was the first time I felt distrust and fear toward my mother. It was also the first nail in the wrist, so to speak, preceding the death of my faith in a god.

Wow. Did not know that! That explains a lot! Thanks!

@Kafir I only learned about it fairly recently via educational lectures about religious origins on Youtube.. They compared Yahweh to the Greek god Aries (the Romans called him Mars).

Thsi is why the old testament has more than one name for god, because some originally chose to follow a different god from the original Jewish polytheist traditions, and why the first of the ten commandments is to "not put any other god before me." Meaning it was a commandment to worship only Yahweh and abandon all the other gods.

@snytiger6 I actually use that argument to substantiate that "the one true God" is a myth when I debate Christians. "But it says so in your ten commandments! It's the first commandment! Saying put no other gods before me implies there are others! You don't hear an only son saying 'put no other sons before me!' right?" lol

@Kafir Archedologist and Social Anthropologists have pretty much determined tha tthe original Jewish tibes were made up of th outcasts of other grops on the area. Teh old testament is an amalgamation of at least four different previous religious traditions, and the Jews were not originally monotheist, by polytheist. I magien they settled on Yahweh, the war god as their one god to worship in order to take revenge on the groups who cast them out, they all the war, blood and savagery of the old testament.

When I think of all the wars and deaths that have come about due to Abrahmic religions, or in my mind so that a small group of goat herders coudl take revenge in ancient times, it really makes me doubt that humans are intelligent animals.

Unfortunately true. But the systemic celebration of such ichorous dealings is still beyond my understanding. What's next? The Church of Jigsaw?

@Kafir Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

That would explain soooooo much!

@Kafir
it would, wouldn't it ?