The existence of God

[emjay]

Personally I find Neo and Bel's views on this to be quite interesting, and it doesn't make my blood boil like most 'mainstream' talk of Christianity does, but at the same time its interest for me lies in its abstractness, and that very abstractness makes it all but impossible to reconcile with the God described in the Bible. So though I think this classical concept of God, if I'm understanding it right, as some sort of abstract collection of Forms, is interesting, I think getting from that to the God described in the Bible, particularly the 'jealous' god of the OT, is too big a leap.

Thank you, that's kind of you.

Np.

It's certainly true that the classical arguments -- even if a person were to find them all persuasive -- don't get anywhere near the God of the Bible. And the people who make the classical arguments are well aware of that.

Yes, and I appreciate that you guys don't push that angle.

Obviously sola scriptura literalism is completely incompatible with any sort of philosophical argument. But how the really intelligent Christians have gotten from the "abstract" versions to some reading of the Bible can be fascinating. William Blake, for example, was an amazing genius, and well worth reading by anybody. 

As I said to awty, one of my biggest problems with Christianity is the explosion of potential interpretations that comes from going down the allegorical/metaphorical route of interpreting it... but from what you've often said, I think you think the opposite(?)... that that richness of potential interpretations, like the layers of Plato, is its greatest strength. So in other words what I see as a bug, you see as a feature(?) Basically when I was a Christian I was a literalist, and could never be anything but that on account of this concern for let's say the potential for the introduction of personal bias into the equation... not saying that that doesn't happen also with literalism, just that I think the problem gets worse the wider the scope is for personal interpretation, and imo allegory expands that potential exponentially. So yeah, I appreciate the joy you get from reading literature and exploring all of its different levels and nuances etc, but ultimately my mind just doesn't work that way, and would never, especially in the case of the Bible, trust any interpretation to be anything other than a product of my own mind and biases.