What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[pocaracas]

Effort?
Planning by the rulers, Id say.
The romans then took care to build roads and unwittingly disseminate that single-god concept. It is a simplistic concept and much better suited bring a whole people together, than the divisive polytheist one... Just look at Egypt and how many times they turned over from worshiping Amun to worshiping Ra and vice-versa! Eventually, they came up with Amun-Ra and had peace for a while!

Of course. The Jews and the Romans colluded to pull all this off.

I don't think I said that... but good effort.

Also, a "one true god" making a covenant with a specific people? A very localized group of people? If you can't see how limited and ungodly such behaviour is, I'm afraid you are hopeless.

How is that ungodly? How does the fact that I know what God did in the history of Israel make me hopeless?

Or is it YOUR assumption, dust of the earth, that God would have to work equally with all people everywhere simultaneously just to satisfy your personal sense of fair play?

It is ungodly because it is very limited in scope... almost like the god was the product of the people in that particular region... a too human-like god.

You are hopeless, because you have blinded yourself to the truth! (this sentence is a complete parody of religious people who claim to own "the truth"... remember me schooling you on that term?)
Actually, you're hopeless because you have wrapped yourself in your belief and cannot grasp the possibility that it may very well be false.
And any religion's very limited geographical origin is a damn big hint to its very human conception.

That and it's my observation that god's chosen people is whoever wields the greatest force in any particular region... whichever god those people happen to believe in.Curious how that works out, huh?

And all that just to bring forth a very human-looking "son of the one true god" who would pass on his message to a few uneducated townsfolk, who would pass on his message in such a flawed manner that, 2000 years later, Israel isn't really following those teachings, most of the humanity doesn't follow them...
I wouldn't stand behind such a flawed god.

Let's see...that very human son of God began with a handful of followers who converted the greatest empire on earth within three centuries without firing a single shot in anger and survived all manner of persecutions for 2,000 years while growing into the largest religious body on earth.

You're right. Bad plan. Ignore such a flawed god.

What can I say... most likely, the message of peace appealed to the people who were tired of constant warring. And it spread like wildfire among the common people. Within 300 years (or more), the message made it to the ruling party... well the rulers need the support of the common people, sooner or later, so they must have thought "might as well give them what they want"... not necessarily the peace... but the religion.

And yes, it is a bad plan, given the nigh-infinite capabilities that believers claim such a god possesses. That god could make belief obsolete and yet doesn't.... and yet relies on oral tradition and books to pass along the message which sometimes gets trampled in translation... and people are left with simple belief in this message.

Why do I have to believe in whatever my peers, my caregivers, my parents, my friends also believe and retell to me?
Why must I believe in their story? A story which has been told to them by people who had received the story from other people... and people and people... and it's people all the way down... to the people who wrote the gospels, to the people who believed in Yahweh, to the people who believed in El...to some other people who believed in some other gods... people. Believers.
Every once in a while there's one believer who claims to be a knower. The other believers call him a prophet... and he gives the believers all the knowledge he has been "given" by the god... Some then follow this new message, some find the new message at odds with their understanding of the god... thus a rift in religion is born... It's still people who are responsible for it.

God is not required for religious beliefs to exist in the minds of people.