Quote from: HurtfulTurkey on May 14, 2015, 01:36:43 PM

which is to see David's lineage eventually culminating in Jesus.

I'm sure you understand that it's incredibly difficult for an atheist like me to understand why an omnipotent deity would act in such a manner.

Not to mention, I feel the Humean criticisms apply here: why Yahweh? Why not Allah? What legitimacy do metaphysical conclusions about the nature of God have in light of the empirical considerations? How do you know it wasn't, as Hume put it, an "infant Deity", or a collection of Deities as a group of ship-builders would construct a carrack?

What empirical basis do you have?

As an empirical basis, I think Aquinas does a reasonable job with his five proofs, though Augustine laid a more theological foundation. There are many forms of these proofs expounded by various philosophers. From there, the next level is determining which hypotheses (religions) are correct. Do I think Christianity is 100% correct? Not at all. I think the Jews used a lot of Ancient Near Eastern culture and myths to establish a framework of the world and its history, in addition to legitimate divine revelation and historical narrative. Christianity, by far, has the preponderance of sources and literary integrity throughout history, surviving an unparalleled litany of scrutiny. Why not Allah? Because the Qur'an is an unreliable series of documents with demonstrably false origins, particularly the singular authorship by Mohammed.

Why would a god act in the way described in the bible, working slowly over thousands of generations? The lazy answer is simply that he wanted to, and the less lazy answer is that it allowed humanity to forge a relationship with the divine over a long time, which lends itself to a believable, verifiable series of events (referring to the hundreds of completed prophecies). The infant deity proposition is interesting, and I don't think it necessarily disagrees with Christianity, as there is a long period of silence between Jesus' time and the proposed events in Revelation, but it's just as feasible as any number of similar propositions, and I think they miss the mark in trying to characterize how a deity would behave.

Quote from: HurtfulTurkey on May 14, 2015, 01:36:43 PM

Could you give an example and the reasoning behind it?

My answer won't be very good, since I'm pretty rusty on the specifics, but we'll stick with the Noah example. There isn't evidence of a worldwide catastrophic flood occurring, and yet every Ancient Near East culture has a flood myth, and despite geographical separation, they frequently resemble each other in characters, motivations, and consequences. The Epic of Gilgamesh is very similar to Noah's story, for example. The actual text of the story could very well be translated to indicate a regional flood, and note that I'm not talking about a liberal interpretation, but a legitimate scholarly translation. A lot of the popular details about the duration and number of animals is probably a form of poetic or reverent exaggeration.

So why do babies have cancer? Why did god create a world where babies die of cancer?

I've directed you to a lecture on the subject, as well as two books that directly address the concept of a loving god in a broken, sick world. I can't give you a one sentence answer to that, if I could even give one at all, and if I could, I doubt the answer would assuage your concerns in any way.