Ethnographic Research (Help please!)

[Jenny A]

Existed before the universe.  Created billions upon billions of galaxies.  Our little insignificant solar system formed about 4.571 billion years ago, give or take a millienia or two.  After 4,497,500,000 years, about 2.5 million years ago, a bunch of bipedal primates starting making stone tools, so - this creature thought that it would watch a while?  After another 4,497,490,000 years - about 10 thousand years ago, give or take a few, a little Semitic tribe starting making up stories about their war god.  Did it decide they were talking about it and start taking over their brain processes?  They wrote down tall tales about it and claimed god spoke to them.  
   This brings up hundreds of questions, such as why these "inspired" works include events that clearly never happened, and how the creator of billions of galaxies wouldn't "inspire" those taking his dictation to say what a star actually is.  But my biggest question is always "if this omnipotent, omniscient creature can communicate via fantasy, then why not communicate with ALL humans?  Why wait 2,490,000 years to say hello, and why say hello to a tiny tribe living in an area smaller than Lake Michigan?  If it wanted to be known and worshiped, (another ridiculous attribute) then it would be beyond simple for it to communicate with every primate on the planet.  That would have avoided a LOT of bloodshed, which any omniscient creature would know would happen before it set off the Big Bang.We have thousands of years of history of humans killing each other over which imaginary friend is the coolest, and the most powerful creature in the cosmos, who numbers the hair on our heads and knows our every thought, is incapable of stopping it.  Incapable of saying "stop killing each other".  Incapable of stopping its priests and preachers from raping kids in its own house.  And there is not one shred of evidence for its existence to be found, anywhere.

Several of your questions are based on ill-conceived presuppositions. For one, even according to the basic evolutionary narrative, the human line did not even begin to evolve separately from the other great apes until about 4.4 million years ago (granted its been awhile since my last anthropology class, but I know that no one believes protohumans were here to understand "hello" 2 billion years ago). That said, my answer to your question is that God has communicated with all humans by revealing Himself through natural creation, conscience, morality, and human reason. This is what Christians call "general revelation." By contrast, "special revelation" is God's more direct means of communicating with humanity, which takes place through His Word. Your question itself presupposes that you have the right to dictate how God should communicate, which is false. General revelation is common to all people, but only those who respond to it and honestly seek after God can come to know and understand Him.

This is why it's hard to communicate with Christians popping into atheist forums without real intoduction. You are hear to find out what atheists think. But there isn't an atheist philosophy. There are atheistic philosophies. And there are many atheists who haven't given philosophy much thought.

Mostly, the Christians (We get Muslems too but few Hindus or Jews unless they are now atheist) who post here (and I dont think they are representative of Christians generally, at least not the ones I have face to face conversations with) are either intellectual Catholic, fundamentalist evangelical, or their own self invented thing (search for Huggy if you want the flavor of that). You are obviously not fundamentalist evangelical simply because you accept evolution.

So, let me ask you, if man and nature evolved, what leads you to believe a god created them? I grant you that evolution and a creator are not incompatible only that evolution is certainly not what Genisis describes.

Second, if there is a god directing the universe, or just creating and letting it run free, how do you discern his word? There are many contradictory holy trexts. How do you choose one over the others? How you distinguish among the plethora of purported general relovations?

Direct revolation is rather suspect too. Many claim it. But they don't agree. Imagine Mohamed, Paul, and Joseph Smith discussing what god did and didn't say. Shouting is inevitable. Violence is easily imaginable. I personally have never been contacted.

All of which leads me to the conclusion that there is no revolation. While I can't diictate to anyone more powerful than myself how to communicate with me , those more powerful than me usually make it quite clear that they are communicating, and that they damned well exist. Thus while I may not always understand taxes, I do know that the IRS is out there. And when I get a robo call claiming I'm under audit, I do realize its fraudulent. God doesn't seem able to to manage that