Your points about the Old Covenant are painfully salient. If Yahweh is perfect, then why did the debacle of Noah happen and he swear never to do it again? If Yahweh is perfect, why did he need to do away with his original commands? If Yahweh is perfect and beyond time, then where was he for the 30,000 years prior to his appearance to Moses on the mountain in the bush? There were SCADS of gods prior to that, so was he hanging by the pool? Ordering pizza? Was in the GUISE of another god? Well then what about THOSE gods’ activities and their respective woefully wrongness?

Your point about circular logic is accurate and unassailable. I can think of little MORE corruptible source of communication than a text. How about a mass hallucination instead? That’s harder to misinterpret. How about leaving a bit more of a trail? Oh, if the point of the exercise is to “leap in faith,” well then this is a GAME, and I do not wish to play.

I still see mankind’s messed up thumbprint on all of this religious mucking about, and it reinforces my own view that we are a virus, an evolutionary blunder. In the greater scheme of the history of this rock we inhabit, we are but a tiny scratch in the stream of time. The dinosaurs existed for 150 million years and didn’t sully the planet the way we have in our 50,000 years. Sad. A waste on a grand scale. Someone should send a memo to god about THAT.

Thanks for your thoughts! They are like water in my parched mental soil.

The neat irony for me on your subject line is that this is what I frequently rail against, when I find one of these types in my midst. When I find someone I was calling “friend,” who I invited into my home, who I fed and shared laughter with, and then I find they sit in judgment upon me. HOW DARE THEY? How dare they rub shoulders with me and then sit on a high horse and cast blame and shame? It’s disturbing to me in a way few others things get under my skin. It’s a violation — of trust, of my own judge of character.

I have more to say, but I wanted to throw that out there!