What Major Intellectual Issue Most Keeps You From Accepting The Christian Narrative?

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I'll take a stab at this. I was a Pentecostal Christian. I read the KJV cover-to-cover. I read it again in a modern English version to make sure I had understood it correctly. I had. Before I even got to the NT, the barbarity commanded by Yahweh and the inconsistence of the narrative had me convinced that it did not originate from some theodic being. The story of Adam and Eve is ludicrous, akin to a moral test of toddlers involving leaving them in a room with a loaded shotgun and a guy motivated to get them to play with it. How were they supposed to know they were doing evil before they learned the difference between good and evil? Why does Yahweh pretend he can't find them? Isn't that dishonest? Why didn't they die the day they ate the fruit, like Yahweh said they would? Why didn't God accept Cain's sacrifice? That's all just in the first few chapters. In addition, I had been taught that God never changes, but reading the book through like that, the evolution of Yahweh from chief deity of the Hebrew pantheon, to greatest God evah to 'those other gods ain't even real' is pretty evident. Plus, I caught a few contradictions, and Pentecostals believe the Bible is perfect.

Then the NT. God goes through another change, becoming a God of love, not war (but Jesus introduces the concept of infinite suffering for finite crimes), to the point that early Christians refused to fight. They got over that when they came to power, of course. The endings of each of the Gospels are a mess when you compare them to each other, Matthew (IIRC) has rodeo Jesus riding a colt and a donkey simultaneously (it's clear he's trying to make the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem fit a prophecy that he does not actually understand).

Talking snakes and donkeys. The sky is a 'firmament'. The OT is half between mythology and fable. The NT at best is a gross exaggeration of the deeds and words of an apocalyptic rabbi who ran afoul of the Romans. Don't get me started on Paul.

The main intellectual problem with accepting the Christian narrative is, frankly, that many parts are ridiculous. As an atheist I can keep whatever good I can find in Judaism and Christianity (and Buddhism and so forth) and throw out the rest. I can keep hippie Jesus (good Samaritan, love your neighbor, be more forgiving) and reject mean Jesus (cursing innocent figs and failing to condemn slavery).

If you threw out everything that was harmful and irrational in Christianity and kept the best of it, you might have something admirable. But a wise man is supposed to have said something along the lines of knowing a tree by its fruit. The fruit of Christianity is at least half spoiled.

And that's not even addressing the failing of supernaturalism in general as a hypothesis.

The Bible does contain a ton of bullshit if you forget that it's an ancient ethnocentric Middle Eastern Jewish religious fairy tale created to make the Jews seem special.  But the writers also included cautionary statements that it's just a story and that people shouldn't believe silly Jewish fairy tales.  

All of the biblical stories are crafted to illustrate one or more of the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 34:12-28.  So if a person doesn't understand that he's simply wasting his time even picking the Bible up.  

The Adam & Eve characters establish the line to Yeshua, aka the last Adam.  Their story shows what happens when the Israelites violate the First Commandment (Exodus 34:12-16) and worship a god other than Yahweh.  The talking serpent represents the Egyptian Pharaoh.  Their expulsion from the Garden of Eden represents the diaspora that's repeated several times in the Bible and their continued desire to be pals with the Egyptians.  

The story also shows how con men such as Moses and Aaron used religion  for their own selfish purposes.  They were nothing but a criminal syndicate that extorted money, produce, and animals for their own use.  

There are multiple layers to the story and a person could write thousands of pages examining it.  But the bottom line is that there is no celestial deity of any kind in this solar system.  The Yahweh character was simply the series of men who ruled the dominant ancient Middle Eastern empire at a particular time.  He bit the dust with the collapse of the Babylonian Empire around 530 B.C.  He is never coming back.  When you die you will be forgotten unless you have done something really remarkable and then, if someone recalls you, they will only think about that one thing you did and not about the real person that you were.  

As for Yeshua no one in the past 2,000 years has ever really believed in him so he's just another imaginary character.