I guess for me, part of the problem is the whole setup has set the burden of proof so much higher than it would otherwise have to be.
What we have now is a claim that a supernatural god exists, but is hidden, and that he used to do powerful, observable miracles a long time ago. All of the history associated with him happened in an area on the globe about the size of a dime. He currently only performs miracles that cannot be verified, and he only reveals himself in personal, non-verifiable ways to some people.
So, looking at that, it looks completely indistinguishable from any other ancient mythology. Picture, instead, this same god revealing himself to all peoples throughout history, making meaningful and useful predictions they couldn't know about (like the germ theory of disease), and him still showing up in verifiable ways to this day, with no 2,000 year gap in seeing him. That would set the bar a lot lower.
As it is, even if he showed up right now, I'd be really skeptical of the whole thing, just because the entire setup is so ridiculous.
What we have now is a claim that a supernatural god exists, but is hidden, and that he used to do powerful, observable miracles a long time ago. All of the history associated with him happened in an area on the globe about the size of a dime. He currently only performs miracles that cannot be verified, and he only reveals himself in personal, non-verifiable ways to some people.
So, looking at that, it looks completely indistinguishable from any other ancient mythology. Picture, instead, this same god revealing himself to all peoples throughout history, making meaningful and useful predictions they couldn't know about (like the germ theory of disease), and him still showing up in verifiable ways to this day, with no 2,000 year gap in seeing him. That would set the bar a lot lower.
As it is, even if he showed up right now, I'd be really skeptical of the whole thing, just because the entire setup is so ridiculous.
