(September 10, 2020 at 9:45 pm)Nihilist Virus Wrote: Another issue is the apparent disconnect between ancient people and modern Christians. During my time as a Christian, I very much got the sense that no real Christian would accept a cash payment to bow down and worship, say, a statue of the Buddha. No amount would suffice. Not even a gun to the head would do it, and many of these Christians would not even claim to have experienced anything supernatural in their entire lives. Yet ancient Jews worshiped other gods all the time, despite apparently witnessing their god perform miracles with their very own eyes. How can this possibly happen?
When I was a Christian, I found it inconceivable that God actually "did things" in OT times, but didn't do things now. I quickly realized that when the bible says "God did X", it just means "X happened, and the writer attributed it to God".
If you read things that way, the only question you need to ask is "why did the writer attribute this event to God?", or "why did the writer invent this story that they attributed to God".
The answer reveals something about the theology of the writer, but tells you nothing about any actual gods (if they exist). It tells you what the writer needs out of their tribal god, at the time.
