God commands child sacrifice (not Isaac story)

[pocaracas]

Kirk: "What does god need with a starship?"

Why does god required you to tell me about him?
Can't he do it himself?

Because if He did then your ablity to choose your eternal fate goes out the window. For if God presented himself to you then your response would be one of self preservation and not faith/love. For what faith is needed to believe that God is real when God stands before you? God is not the one who needs the star ship here. we need it.

That's a stupid way of doing things. How can you be sure you're not being duped by whoever showed you that version of god (who may have been duped themselves, by someone who was duped also, and so on, and so on)?
How do you explain a good part of mankind that can claim to have the same sort of evidence you have, but regarding their particular deities?

You see, from my standing point, you may have been deceived into believing something which is wrong. After all, you're just human. You and all religious people on the planet are just human and are very likely deceived by other humans of the fact that the divine exists.

your belief is based on a big assumption: That our belief is limited to what happens in Church. God (for me at least) has proven Himself to me over and over again. There is nothing in or our of the church that could convince me otherwise.

I don't remember mentioning church, but whatever.
Nothing that could convince you otherwise? What if you had been born in Iran? Or India? Or 4000 years ago in Egypt?
Your version of god was brought to you by your culture: parents, neighbors, tv, church, community, etc...
If you had been born anywhere else, or "anywhen" else, you may believe something else or nothing at all regarding deities.
That is why god should make himself known to all. Otherwise, he's just something some people made up; some other people, made him up differently; some other people made up a whole cast of gods, etc... and now all these peoples are at war with each other over who has the correct god.

Assuming your god is the only in town, if he wants anyone to love him, then he must first make himself known, then people may choose to follow or not. Making yourself known through other people has the danger of multiple gods, or multiple interpretations of the same god, and is, therefore, a flawed methodology.

Why can't god present himself to all mankind, repeatedly, for all to know? Why must we accept what the people that come before us say? That looks like a very flawed system and one that will lead to diverging statements regarding the "original" deity(s) - if he/they exist.

If you know of God before you make your desision then your desision will be based on self preservation. God does not want that for us. Now after we have decided to seek God out as illustrated in Luke 11 we get indivisual proof of God.

I fail to see how that self-preservation would be the case.... after all, didn't Eve go against god? Didn't his most treasured angel (or disciple or companion or whatever christians call these sub-gods) go against him and became what you now call the devil?
They allegedly knew of god, but turned away. No self-preservation instinct.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting the mythology, sorry.

If he gave you something, why doesn't he give it to everyone?

Because 'they' do not ask, seek, or knock as luke 11 tells us to.

Knock knock......
Wait
wait
wait
look for him.....
searching..............
hey god? you there?
wait
wait..


nope. nothing.
Luke's method failed.
Is there another?

Why must I be first convinced that he exists and then convince myself that some psychological mumbo-jumbo is proof that my original conviction was true?
Why?

To perserve the one true 'free will' choice we actually been given.

There's a thread about free-will somewhere, and I've claimed that there's no such thing. However, the decision making process is so physically complex that we have the illusion of free will. Very simply put, we are genetics based neurons and experience based synapses working together.... and a few hormones just to put everything out of whack!

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The Egyptian religion lasted for about 4000 years.... until ~year 0, and Julius Cesar.
They had a cult of the dead; a belief in the afterlife; They had to pass some judgement to enter the afterlife....
Just read:

And this is just one of the better documented ancient religions (discounting greek and roman). All around the world, people had cults related to the dead. It's probably one of the main reasons why religion came to be. The denial of the end brought forth by the biological death.

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You've missed the point.

Perhaps I did, but it's always good to point out the christianity doesn't have the monopoly of the afterlife.
I went to check and the point seems to have started here:

Death is not the end but one's birth into eternity. The only ones who need fear it are those who will be born into eternal seperation.

"born into eternal separation" meaning separation from god, or the failure to conform to maat (in the egyptian viewpoint).... see? It's the same thing!
Christian mythology is pretty much the same thing as what came before it... it's just copy/paste of bits and pieces of previous work, eventually adding some new bits due to some non-divine inspiration.
(now would be a good time for you to point that god is always the same, just people interpreting him differently through the ages, but then you'd get attacked for it! )

I liked the peace and love message.... too bad the religious leaders and followers couldn't abide by it.