I don't know how anyone gets past this phrase in the 2nd commandment with any faith left:
"For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God"
Who is he jealous of? Do Thor and Shiva taunt him often?
Is jealousy part of the perfect boyfriend? The perfect man? The perfect "god"?
I see this as a fairytale written by man, to control the masses. With that being said, of course they will impose their own thoughts and emotions onto their deity. They get around this by saying that we were created in His image. Well, that kinda throws the whole free will thing out the window, doesn't it? If we're just like Him, then we aren't really all that special, are we? Which leads me to fate, faith, or whatever. You can have free will, but you'll be punished for making the wrong choice. Whaaa? Kind of a dick move on their God's part.
Well it was written over 2500 years ago so maybe you have to see it more in that context. Worshipping other gods was very common ,what you did not do at that time was believe that there were no gods.
The Jews were the first religion to have just one god so you have to hand that accolade to them at least,they were originators of monotheism,,even if it was merely tidying up all those existing gods into one.
This god would have been "jealous" in the respect that humanity up to that point was still worhipping tree spirits,river spirits,Egyptian sun gods,Greek gods that live on Mt Olympus and the particlar favourite of the Jews at that time, a golden idol of a calf. Moses was described as furious whne he left his tribe for 40 days and vcame back to them dancing round a golden calf. So furious he ordered the death of all those who failed to see that it was wrong. Now don't get me wrong, Moses is a fiction but the story was written to make the point to all Jews that worshipping idols is not a sensible thing to do,worshipping one god is progress from that point of view..ok I know thats not a popular view here either. But these guys lived in different times is my point.
I'm with you on this one, @DJVJ311. On the other hand, they accept all the other weird things presented in the Abrahamic god thing, some of them even more obtuse.
In my opinion...the commandments, as well as the Bible, were written by men for the benefit of men in the era they were written in.
In the Bible story, Moses brought down the commandment to replace the laws and gods of Egypt and establish dominance and control.
In the end, his god was no better than any that came before or after.
One of the very reasons I don't buy in to the commonly held understanding of the christian god. If I want to live in a place where I'm continuously watched over by a narcisstic maniac who expects me to follow their every whim or face severe punishment, I'll just move to North Korea.