GDR writes:
For both religions we have to choose which end of our Holy Books we want to go by to understand God's nature, and what that means to how we live our lives.
Why?
Why can both these books be interpreted anywhichway? This is supposed to be the Word of God. He is supposed to have intervened in the world in order to give it a critically important message how can that message be interpreted in so many different ways? Not just minor ways but in ways that allow stuff like the Inquisition that lasted for centuries, the major schisms and multiple flavours of worship. In the Muslim world the split between Shia and Sunni is still the cause of wars an persecution.
Why is this god of yours so bad at telling us what he wants of us? Why is he so coy and inscutible? So far the way he's gone about guiding his flock has resulted in destructive divisions between peoples and has errected barriers preventing them ever being healed.
Why pop up regularly to primitive peoples with no method of fully recording and evidencing the contacts then never again when it might be more needed and can be tested and proven factual? Why not now?
Why use such an utterly bizarre method to tell us a very simple message. If there's a worse way of convincing anybody of a god than using a human that gets himself killed I can't think of one.
The obvious answer is because it's all just superstitious people making up stories.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.