Whether a shul, mosque, church or temple, religion has always been a form of control, it's group think and therefore, a PSYOP; the ultimate if-then-else statement.
Is that so? How interesting. Must we profess religious assent to this dogma you present in order to receive avowal, or is it up for disagreement?
Do you NEED to be told not to kill someone? To honor your parents?
It is quite clear from each and every field of knowledge, that human beings absolutely need to be taught the foundational principles of ethics, or they will quite literally devour each other, beginning with the most vulnerable elements of society. To say otherwise is equivalent to arguing, for instance, that a child does not "need" to be taught good manners, because somehow they're intrinsic to his or her nature. We're not birds, born knowing how to make a nest... we need to be taught, especially manners, by parents who are like God in our childlike eyes, and then such things as ethics and morals by teachers whose wisdom has always been considered as higher than the sum of individual human thoughts.
A God who would tell a primitive people in a world based on brute force and conquest, that not only they
should not kill but rather
not even covet their neighbors' goods, is as revolutionary and life-changing as the statements "love your enemies," "put down the sword," and "turn the other cheek" (even when the very people who claim to follow the one who said those things often chose to ignore them, proving that, if anything, we're quite deeply corrupted...).
by and large, most people are good and wish to live their lives in peace, not as murderous, abusive thugs.
That's beautiful.
Except, even children will be abusive bullies, given the opportunity...if not to their peers, to other living beings, or to inanimate objects...
Not sure what world I grew up in, but given that I have spent years in different countries, my experience shows that it's one very different from the above-described utopia...
Maybe a bit of time studying the natural surgence of organized crime across lands and times would be enlightening, before precipitously casting stones at religion or painting humanity with the broad stroke of natural goody-two-shoes striving for goodness and peace...
Is it likely for an all-powerful, enlightened Being to display human characteristics [...] To attribute human emotions to the Almighty is short-sighted yet, every religion and their texts does so.
I would hope a Creator would speak to his creatures in a language they can understand. I would hope an enlightened Creator would grasp exactly how much it would mean to creatures for God to appear in the image and likeness of a human. A man who suffered much once wrote:
In perfect love this law holds:
that the lover become like the one he loves;
for the greater their likeness the greater their delight.
Of course sounds much nicer in the original Spanish, but this will do.
If you want to prove God, you must first define God. Now you take the God of the Bible, but there are more books. So maybe you will define God first.
Why reinvent the wheel, when others have gone through the trouble? A bit of Scholastic theology goes a long way here.
never considering if the story is actually real, how said book came about, when it came into existence, who wrote it, how many people wrote it, was/when/why and by whom was it edited
Sometimes you can tell more about a cause by its effects, than by such inordinate amounts of knowledge. The infinitely simple should be simply understandable by all, not the limited realm of a chosen few.
If coding interests you, try the direction of gimmetria
An excellent suggestion. It has been said by more than one wise man, that everything is number. The danger is when we make up our own patters or misunderstand meanings. Yet this is a very interesting topic.
If you're a religious believer in god you might dismiss it entirely
Philosophically, it would be unfeasible for me to do so without contradicting some of the most basic principles of logic and reason.
the bible would be in the first lot tossed ... at its very core, it's a weapon designed to promote a specific set of thought patterns, fear and obedience. That's it. That's the 'message'. 'Believe in all this, or burn in the fires of hell forever'.
Interesting. Having read multiple versions in multiple languages, I was under the impression that there was a much higher purpose and message within. Then again, we see as we are.
In my opinion; the best evidence for an Intelligent Designer, is not from ancient texts written by the hands of men; but rather mathematical patterns found repeated in all of the Creation.
This is a wonderful starting point, but not everyone can see or understand such patterns. Which is why people tend to write things down or explain them in poetry, storytelling, parables, and whatnot...
taking verses out of context to support some kind of agenda, has plagued the church organization since the first century. At this point, any true believer should discard Christianity and organized religion as we know it
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. No need to tear down a wonderful edifice in order to try and start from scratch from the floor plans, especially if we have no concept of how to build soundly. Much better to repair...
all 3 abrahamic religions do very little for women as a whole
Without Christianity, women would have no concept of rights. Even enlightened civilizations failed to recognize the true dignity of women, and offered nothing but subjugation.
In many ways it's a master/slave religion creating submissive and easily manipulated people by promising a better afterlife if one suffers through whatever hell the masters are doling out in this life.
Christianity is a tad bit more complex and demanding than that.
there are a gazillion flavors of 'christianity'
Not really.
God knowing what its creation will do is absolutely the definition of predetermination. By virtue of it knowing, events MUST follow accordingly. There is no free will left.
That is most definitely not how predestination works. That is why very intelligent people have spent quite some time writing about it. And while some have taken the shortcut of dismissing free will, it is but a dead end. Predestination is a direct consequence of omniscience, and in no way does it conflict with human free will. How could it be otherwise? Knowing one's choice is not the same as forcing one's choice.
Thinking it (reference to God is "it" in my lexicon because it contains both the divine masculine and divine feminine) is so small minded that it put codes in the bible (a group of books arbitrarily chosen by men) to "prove" its existence is like imagining you've wrapped you mind around and corralled infinity.
If we can find the Golden Ratio inside flowers, why can't we find a code in a book that billions consider sacred (regardless of how small-minded individuals believe its individual bits were chosen or by whom)?
man is made in God's image which means the ground of man's being is a reflection of God's being which is void/emptiness.
Yet nature abhors a vacuum, and that is the greatest limitation I myself found when I decided to move on from the various forms of Buddhism I was considering at one point. Self-emptying, or kenosis, cannot be but the beginning of the process...even in this our context of stolen history, unlearning lies is but the first step. There must be an objectively true history to learn (although some posit otherwise, epistemologically speaking).
this thread however, a total waste of time
No open conversation is ever truly a waste of time. Only mindless repetition, as it is an exercise in futility, and even then, it can find its purpose if one seeks to clear one's mind from intruding thoughts. That being said, I would have hoped that when the OP asks for objective evidence for the God of Scripture, anyone who professes no belief in - or has an axe to grind with - said God of Scripture would politely refrain from adding nothing to the conversation.