A RETURN AND AN ANNIVERSARY

And I'm back.
The first post on my return coincides with the sixth anniversary month of me giving up my Christian faith and admitting I am a deist. I am going to ask questions, questions I asked myself in my years of struggling, and then I'm going to end with my personal conclusion;
(These are serious questions and deserve to be answered)
How do you know that God's word can be found in the Bible and not the Koran or Upanishads or Guru Granth Sahib or Avesta?
Is it possible that God's truth may be found in other scriptures? If not, why not?
Why does Biblegod behave more like Stalin than Jesus in the Old Testament?
Why did Biblegod drown all the other animals in the Great Flood? What had they done? Why didn't he just give everyone except the Noahs fatal heart attacks? The thoughts of men were evil and the earth needed to be cleansed, but the other animals were doing just what comes naturally and not wilfully disobeying their creator.
If Biblegod knew Adam and Eve were going to eat of the fruit of the tree and therefore be infected with the fatal, hereditary Sin Virus, why did he make the tree in the first place?
How could Biblegod, when he came to earth as a man, have experienced all men can experience if he never got married and helped raise a family? If he remained single all his life, he was missing out on a lot of what men experience.
If Biblegod wanted to provide the cure for the Sin Virus, to be found in a certain set of writings why did he leave it to fallible men to write his word down? Why hasn't he provided any additions or updates in two thousand years? Say a different Gospel every hundred years or so, to keep up with scientific discovery and free inquiry?
If Biblegod insists on us believing the right way, why is the Bible so ambiguous? Why if our souls depend upon it can the same Bible verses be interpreted in different ways;
(For example. Get ahold of Christians of different denominations and ask them these questions;*
Predestination or free will?
The Holy Spirit: from the Father or the Son or both?
The Holy Spirit or the holy spirit?
Jesus: God or God's son?
Mary: the Mother of God or Mother of Jesus?
Is faith enough or do we need works for salvation?
Once saved, always saved?
When Jesus turned the water into wine, was it alcoholic or unfermented grape juice?
Can a person be saved if they have never heard of Jesus?
Women priests: Yes or no?
Icons: Yes or no?
What were the last words from the cross?
Remember, these people are using the same words to arrive at different conclusions and then condemning those who disagree to hell.)
Is the Bible any kind of genuine science book?
Is is it fair that Biblegod would condemn anyone to eternal suffering for in all reason not being able to correlate what they read in the Bible with what they understand of life? Not because they love their sin but because the word of the Bible and the word of science does not mesh?

The God of the scriptures is too petty and small and too human to be the majestic remote Creator of the universe and all in it.
If God exists he is the Grand Architect, remote and magnificent and untouchable. I can understand why a body would prefer to think of him as a Father and not a scientist pottering about a lab with us in an unacknowledged Petri dish on a shelf, but it doesn't make it true, now does it?
We say he loves us, and we are the pinnacle of his creation, This is the height of hubris, of arrogance.
If God exists, he is to be found in the perfect clockwork rotation of the planets and stars, in the billions of planets in the galaxy, tick tocking to a beat governed by laws that humans are capable of understanding if they have the ability to reason and apply mathematical knowledge. He is to be found in a cat's eyes, an insects wing, a lizard basking in the sun, a bird's beak, a tree's trunk, a blade of grass and a tiny flower. He is to be found in the way we are born and grow and live and die. It is more reasonable to assume the God who laid the foundations for life, in all it's glories and pain, is not involved, doesn't know we exist, than to force ourselves to believe he cares and watches us suffer and struggle, become ill and die, to kill one another and other animals, anyway. AIDS or the Shoah or the Inquisition or the Ebola virus or Jihad or serial killers or the exploitation of the planet and other animals all have their place in the unconscious doings of the Grand Architect in the same way birth and love and kindness and self-sacrifice and charity have.
He is not to be found in the works of men, no matter how many labels, holy, righteous, just, we place on them.
I came to this conclusion reading and thinking, not because I love my sin, but it is more reasonable to assume that if a Creator, he is too big to fit in any book and is certainly unaware of what a single section of a single species on a single planet at the back end of one galaxy in a universe one hundred and forty-six million light years across is getting up to.

*I am not going to suggest you ask the Christians whether there were one or two beasts carrying Jesus on his final entry into Jerusalem or if he went more than once, and when, because they are glaring, obvious contradictions which completely blow the idea of the Bible being the perfect and infallible word of the perfect Creator out of existence and which I will explore further in a future posting.

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