But, TAD, you do believe
something concerning the nature and purpose the universe, don't you? ("Something" doesn't have to be limited to the most famous or popular options.)
Before you say "not really," take a minute to think about
why you do things, like, say, post in a forum. If you really ask why and keep asking, you'll find it's really a pretty big question (as are all questions). For instance, the fact that you bother to write words in response to me shows that you, in some way, care about what I think and feel. Why do you care? Probably because you consider understanding and appreciation of persons to be good and know that communication facilitates those things. Why do you think those things are good? Probably because you believe that people have inherent beauty and value. And why do you believe that? Because...
I would contend that
any such line of inquiry, if pursued honestly, will very quickly lead to exclusive assertions about the purpose and nature of the Universe. (Which is what I call "religion," but I know my use of the term is unorthodox.) People don't always know that they have these assertions in the back of their minds, and the assertions often don't make any sense on examination, but they're always there. Every human act stems from a worldview. (Ayn Rand's got my back on that one, for whatever that's worth. Smart woman, Ayn Rand.)
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the universe exists because your God created it. That means that in addition to everything nice in the universe that everything bad from cancer to poverty to the mess that is the human reproductive system also comes from God.
Well, no I'd say God is not to blame for the bad. When God made the world, it was
all good. Since then things have gone south because of sin, whether because of the direct consequences of sin (destruction caused by human misdeeds) or because sin exerts some kind of corrosive ontological influence on the world. Essentially, good is what God intended and bad is what has been perverted and turned away from His original purpose. (That's what Christianity teaches; I'm not, at this time, offering evidence that it's true. Just FYI.)
One can appreciate the good in reality without worshiping its creator as perfect an all-knowing. Likewise, one could appreciate reality without an understanding or even with a misunderstanding of its origins.
Do you have a wife? Try appreciating the stuff she does for you without acknowledging its source. Doesn't work very well. You can certainly enjoy the good stuff she does for you without giving her thanks or acknowledgment, but 1.) that would be very rude and degrading and 2.) you'd miss out on
a lot if you only recognized, for instance, sex as something fun for you and not also as an act of love and trust from her. The ability to appreciate things is greatly limited by not knowing or caring
why they are. That goes for anything, not just God.
Actually, in retrospect a book seems to be a spectacularly bad way of getting the message across. First of all, much of it is allegory which people are free to interpret or misinterpret to reflect their own prejudices (such as bias against homsexuality). Think of the myriad interpretations we have here over short fiction of two to five thousand words and multiply that by the difficulty of communicating much deeper and more important messages through a longer, more difficult work.
I've got to disagree with you there. People are jerks, but they don't like to admit it, so when they go about their evil deeds they like to attach some noble name to it. ("I will kill you because doing so protects my personal power and social status! Er, I mean, because God wills it. Yeah, that sounds better. God wills it!") People will willfully misinterpret any message presented in any way to suit their biases and selfish interests. (Just look at the Constitution.) That doesn't mean the message is flawed.
If you actually read the Bible, you'll find almost none of the various evils carried out in God's name over the years find any justification therein. People pull verses out of context or just make shit up (masturbators go to hell!) and then tack God's name on after the fact. If you read the Bible, it's really pretty clear on a lot of things. Like "love your enemies." Yeah, lots of people supposedly doing God's will have forgotten that one over the years. And some like to quote Ephesian 5 where it says that women should submit to their husbands while totally ignoring the very next paragraph where it says husbands should love their wives
more than themselves.
You can't fault a book because people deliberately, maliciously take parts of it out of context or assign obviously stupid interpretations to it (masturbators go to hell!).
As for it being obscure and difficult: How would you go about creating a book that is intended to be relevant for all people of all cultures at all times
and primarily concerns the infinite, the transcendent and the unfathomable? It's going to be obscure and difficult. If the Bible were in FAQ format, wouldn't that be proof positive that it was made up? What you have is something that does not easily lend itself to misunderstanding (if taken as a whole), becomes increasingly comprehensible as one devotes time to understanding it, but retains elements of mystery no matter how much one understands. Which, I think, is just what you'd expect if it were authentic.
Secondly, one has to deal with translations, mistranslations, and the mounting errors which occur with even copying - especially before the invention of movable type. Do you know, for instance, that the famous story ending with the line "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" was added in transcription and not in the earliest texts? It certainly adds a different shade to the meaning of the phrase "gospel truth", does it not?
Yes, I did know that. I learned it in church. It also says so in my Bible: That particular passage is offset and has a disclaimer in the NIV and most other translations. Ditto for the last few verses of Mark. Those exceptions prove the rule, I think, that the text is generally quite faithful to what the originals said.
At any rate, my faith in the validity of the Bible (as I alluded to earlier) is not primarily dependent on empirical data. I believe that God had His fingers in things, making sure the message was preserved accurately. But
that I obviously can't prove.
Boy, that got long... You can tell today is a slow day at work.