It was probably the Romans, they needed to quell the Jews how better than to give them what they were looking for messiah but instead of having a war one you could have a peaceful one

@m16566 And what did the Romans ever do for us (apologies to Monty Python)

@Moravian The viaduct, sanitation!

The god of Israel Yahweh
didn't you see the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner

@m16566 Which one was Yahweh? Or was that the man behind the curtain?

@m16566
Nope. Doesn't ring a bell. I never saw 10 Commandments, and all I ever learned in Catholic Catechism was how to lie about never lying or stealing.

It was a good movie I recommend it, I also saw The Wizard of Oz

as an atheist I have to recognize that I live in the judeo Christian Society,

I can choose to accept it all the time I'm snickering down my sleeve looking how stupid they are.

to your point about Catholicism. when I had to go see the priest about being confirmed I argued that there was no God and that death was an oblivion. the priests came back and told my mother but I was not yet mature enough to be confirm.

I agree with you about being in the moment I have been studying Buddhism for a few years for the record I don't believe in any of the Supernatural part of it. but I do believe in the idea of self-awareness being in the moment meditation

I know that I stripped quotation from Deuteronomy out of context,

I thought I picked out enough my point I didn't want to post that went on AND ON.

thank you

for correcting the schizophrenia versus disassociative personality disorder ..

when you're talking to a True Believer . Of the Bible is the truth and the light and that every word in it must be perfect apologist are often baffled change in personality.

so whenever they can't explain something they simply ignore it

@m16566 true enough. of course you won't find many such here lol. that is why we are here. i only have one true believer with whom i must occasionally interact, but that's only a couple times a year, and she will not be invited to my guy's birthday party in june if she prays jesusly over him like she did last year (my guy is neither atheist nor agnostic he is a mostly secular jew and he is hard of hearing, and i think she counted on his not realizing what she was saying, but i made sure he DID realize!)

g

I think the nature of gods changed as people changed but then we were left with a book that couldn’t reconcile the two.

@brentan Fair point. Either way, both are completely useless, gods and "holy" books.

I suppose they are if we focus on where we are now but I love the Bible because it tells us where we were on the way to being who we are.

@brentan We differ greatly on how we see the bible. I also don't think we're any different than we were back when that horrible work of fiction was first written.
It's a horrible work of fiction because the humans that wrote it plagiarized and cannibalized every ancient text that came before it.
It's also loaded with contradictions, misogyny, patriarchy, child-abuse, and all sorts of violence against anyone who doesn't agree with it.
I think humanity would have been FAR better off if christianity, and all it's sects,
had been relegated to the dung heap.
At least ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse, mythology was interesting. The abrahamic god was a dick, and acted like it.

I have to say I think we were very different back then. I think we were very different even in the Middle Ages. But it's true the Bible stories were taken from earlier times and don't often fit well with reality. I'm thinking of the silliness of the Samson story set against the reality of the struggle against the Philistines. The Bible is really a story about the myth of nationality. We all have them, my own only goes back to about 1900. I think monotheism could only end up being the Logos personified in Christ but it's easy to say that in hindsight. I think we came to think the way we think through the only means historically and culturally open to us. But why do you think the Bible stories aren't interesting like the 'pagan' stories? I think they stand up pretty well in their own right, silly as they are, and are even more interesting when they are looked at through a psychological lens.

@brentan I think I can't look kindly on anything in the bible because I know too much of it's history. I cannot overlook the atrocities it, and it's believers, have caused.
I have zero respect for it, in all it's incarnations and revisions.
I certainly don't see it as any kind of history book.

@KKGator Fair enough!

@KKGator nice, can you imagine the conversations we'd be having if we all thought of Odin or Zeus as the main god? It would be like worshipping the avengers, fun times! It amazes me that we can read about the old gods in a comic book lol which they consider a fantasy, but they could take the bible and make it into a graphic novel and somehow everyone would still take it seriously.... Blows me away.