No problem, I do not expect immediate response. Now, let me jump right in.
It is no more reasonable to say that you "only" need to know about "life and the universe" than for me to say that I believe in God. That's a lot of "only" left on your part. ;)
Christianity is like the fact that you have grown up with something so ordinary that you consider it completely normal that a human does not simply end the life of another human without bringing moral principles to their conscience. There was a time before Christianity when this was the case. If the cults before the times of Christendom was to perform bloody human sacrifices, then it was a coherent one for the people of that time. This coherence crumbeled under the influence of the beginning of Christianity (and else monotheistic movements).
Following the New Testament, Christians believe that the self-sacrifice of the Son of God has made all human and animal sacrifices to God superfluous. Since Anselm of Canterbury's doctrine of atonement, Christian theology has attempted to bring the diversity of the New Testament into a common system. In modern theology, however, ideas of an atonement that God needs to satisfy his wrath are usually rejected.
The reformed theologian Karl Barth replaced the concept of atonement with the concept of reconciliation. Jesus' substitutionary assumption of guilt is interpreted as the deepest justification of human rights and the beginning of the end-time liberation from the void (Barth's term for sin). All-reconciliation is considered as a possibility.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menschenopfer
In any case, I think that this transition from ritual human sacrifices to more moderate symbolic acts was a merit of the Christians. For me, the Ten Commandments (the most important doctrine, I would say) resulting from Christianity stand as the best ideal to date. This ideal is an expression of faith in God, not an expression of a belief in the infallibility of human beings, because that is what Christians recognise: that "every human being is fallible". As normal as this statement may sound, it cannot be assumed as an official doctrine by former cultures. Once a doctrine becomes normal, it's often very hard to see, which is quite a paradox.
Now, if you say that Christians themselves behaved cruel and violent, this would be true. It nevertheless makes the ideal not to be cruel and brutal not obsolete, though. It underpins it.
The ordinary (I shall neither kill you, nor cheat on wives and husbands, nor take away what is yours) comes out of the extraordinary, not the other way around.
But if you would think that violence, brutality and oppression is the result of having faith in God then you'd argue that such faith is not needed (and you may lump the Christian monotheism together with the cults of multi-theism and other ancient cults, while they differ vastly from one another).
Like Chesterton said: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried." Here is the bit of context out of his writing:
.. it is actually true that the Reformation began to tear Europe apart before the Catholic Church had had time to pull it together. The Prussians, for instance, were not converted to Christianity at all until quite close to the Reformation. The poor creatures hardly had time to become Catholics before they were told to become Protestants.
This explains a great deal of their subsequent conduct. But I have only taken this as the first and most evident case of the general truth: that the great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over– lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
I'll come back to what we seemed to agree on at the beginning. That the interpretation of what the religious scriptures have left us allows for intimate contemplation and interpretation. This does not mean that each interpretation is equally good or equally bad, but that one is better than the other. If all were equally good/bad and there were not a few that were better than the many, I could just as well say "Everything is up" - I wouldn't have said anything at all.
"I swear by God to be faithful to you" sounds completely different from saying: "I promise that I will not break my commitment." (but then, you could ask how many times you even say that nowadays to someone, and mean it).
"I bind myself to you in the holy sacrament of marriage until death do us part" has a completely different meaning and power than not doing and not thinking such things. If I neither think nor do such things, then I have not only lost sight of the ideal, but simply allow the less ideal to happen. Why do you think that films like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones move us if those involved in the story didn't really believe in the oath they had taken? Aren't the traitors in these stories precisely those cynics and godless people who believe in nothing?
You said:
We could not play the same game with lightning from the sky, but since we base so much of our existence and beliefs about the world on cause and effect, we could not help but imagine a cause for what we saw. That's all God is, in my opinion.
Saying "that's all there is to it" in relation to God is like saying to me as a Christian that my faith is "nothing but" a spiritual (even helpless) explanation in the absence of any intellect on my part in this regard. Or saying to a child who wonders about its existence: "Oh that? That's nothing. You just came out of your mother's womb. And that's all it is." While it factually is true,I find it not true in the whole sense.
Because I believe in God doesn't mean I've stopped wondering, in fact quite the opposite. Whereas at another time in my life I agreed with you and even felt superior when I said to my friend: "Oh, Christians are only Christians because they can't stand the fact that instead of a miraculous explanation, God, there is a very simple one, and anyway. We live and then we die. That's just the way it is." But even back then, while I said it, I already felt there was a sort of fatalism and disappointment in myself. I tended to be a materialist but then, I never fully became one.
I greet you and thank you for the so far debate.
That's just it though: it doesn't sound completely different. Also, Holy Matrimony isn't different than two people (of either sex, gender, or sexuality) agreeing to live monogamously together. For it to sound completely different in my ears, God would have to be real to my mind. But He, or She, or It isn't, so it sounds the same as "May the wrath of Gandalf descend upon me if I break this promise!" See how that works? I really have no problem with it sounding completely different to you though, you're welcome to your beliefs, I mean that.
That's right. So, wouldn't you say then that it doesn't really make a difference if belief in God exists or not? And couldn't the exact same be said about any idealism? I'm sure humanists could, and would, behave cruelly and violently given certain circumstances, but that nevertheless wouldn't make the humanist ideals obsolete. Also, I'm sure Nazis could, and would, behave perfectly loving and caring, but that wouldn't make their ideals right.
I agreed to that with a rather important footnote, namely that the same can be said about many books and epics. I found it refreshing to see someone regarding the Bible in this light because it's something your average Christian wouldn't agree with. The Bible is supposed to be the absolute true word of God, and the (one and only) right interpretation thereof is left in the hands of the many different religious authorities and denominations. Your interpretation of the first part of Genesis was, and still is, especially refreshing to me.
I still haven't seen Game of Thrones, nor have I read A Song of Ice and Fire, but The Lord of the Rings makes my point much more than yours. The oaths in that story come from interpersonal relationships and promises; rarely do we see such a strong commitment between two individuals as between Sam and Frodo and, the glue that holds the Fellowship together also is the glue of a friendship forged through shared struggles and promises made to each other. It's the becoming and the testing of that friendship that moves us all, religious and non-religious people alike because we can all deeply relate to that.
And I never said you did stop wondering. I'm saying that William Lane Craig, who has a huge following, places God in the few remaining gaps in plausible explanations of the material world provided by an honest and rigorous scientific examination of that material world. I'm saying that in my mind, it's as useless to try to prove the existence of God, as it is to try to prove the existence of Gandalf or Sauron. That's my opinion as well as the opinion of all the scientists I've heard on the subject. That is because a God, by its very nature, is supernatural and science only deals with the natural world.
It's perfectly fine to have personal faith, as that entails so much more than just the question if a God exists or not. But faith is still faith and science is still science. Science is the art of not knowing. It doesn't deal with certainties, only probabilities, as in "it's more probable that God doesn't exist" and "it's more probable than not that our universe had a beginning". But the universe could be eternal. We just don't know.
Why wouldn't he? The average Christian is neither a fundamentalist nor an extremist. He does not take the Bible literally.
I do not think that an average Christian or theologian would answer me that the Bible is the absolutely true word of God, since the Bible contains many words that require interpretation and cannot be understood as coming absolutely from God because of this logic of "many words". That would have been a very long conversation indeed, if that would have been so - LoL :D
What is taken as true, I have tried to explain in my above blog text, is the fact that biblical stories are puzzling, which does make finding truth not easy. Now, finding truth never is an easy peasy act. If it were, we had no problems. If it were not mysterious or contradictory, then one is said fundamentalist/extremist who makes illogical statements, such as that the Bible should be taken literally. Or too lazy in mind, since only imbeciles take something literally which is meant to take you into a state of meditation and contemplation.
If that was the case among average Christians, that the Bible is seen literally as Gods true words, then we wouldn't need a Bible at all, no biblical stories or metaphors, none of it - the Ten Commandments would be just enough (but you see, these Commandments themselves involve a lot, if you start to talk about them).
All the writings and commentaries, all the theologians' notes and sub-notes since the Bible came into existence would be completely superfluous.
It seems perfectly clear to me that even if Moses "received the words from God", he did not speak "Divinish", just as he did not speak French, but interpreted what "came to him" (through what he thought and felt at that moment on the mountain, of course). Even if one does not believe in Moses as a real existing human being, it is a fact that some human being finally wrote down these commandments.
edit:
Well, letting a dentist doing that, would be a bit odd, right? LoL
I mean, if you'd have interest in being part of that party, then you could educate yourself as a theologian (study it) and take part in the interpretations, discussions and debates in those circles. Or, become a priest and talk to the members of the congregation, which would you make a part of that authority.
Amen! ;)