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The Bible often talks about not honoring other gods, avoiding idols, etc. Even Solomon built many shrines to other gods for his wives. Some people interpret it

The Bible often talks about not honoring other gods, avoiding idols, etc. Even Solomon built many shrines to other gods for his wives. Some people interpret it to affirm the existence of other gods. In reading, there’s never a point where another god directly intervenes in the lives of men. There are plenty of occurrences of men creating idols to worship of other gods or falling to temptations offered by the gods of other cultures. Asherah poles are the most often called out. All that is to say, we don’t have any historical context of other gods directly intervening in people’s lives. What we do know is that if we were to claim to know when God will intervene we would be wrong. We can’t possibly. I have seen in my own life and heard testimony from others which gives me a little bit of a pattern to draw from and gain better understanding to help make some sense of it…but I’m still just guessing. What we do see in the Bible is that even the biblical heroes are all very flawed and fall in and out of favor with God. Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, etc. The only one who doesn’t is Jesus, but even Jesus became frustrated at times. There’s a story where Jesus curses a fig tree because he’s hungry and there’s no fruit on it. I always thought it was funny because it shows more of his human side…he got hangry.

tharkun__ 5y ago
Interesting. In two ways, you brought the discussion back to the Christian god instead of coming onto the "we both don't believe in those gods" playing field. I appreciate the civil discussion nevertheless and there's the second interesting point. You never actually say it directly but between the lines I read that you think to have at least an inkling of a pattern that confirms the direct interference of the Christian god in this world. I don't know why that would be relevant to be honest. In any case, I would bet that the same could be said of people in ancient times for their gods (or even right now people that have different religions might for their god(s)). They probably thought to see patterns as well and attributed them to the gods. Without thinking about any specific religion: if they made a specific sacrifice every year at a specific time to gain favourable weather for example, they probably had a pretty good chance of success by pure luck and pattern observation and any unlucky weather anomalies could easily be attributed to mistakes with making the sacrifice (maybe it was the wrong goat or whatever) for example.

tharkun__ 5y ago

Interesting. In two ways, you brought the discussion back to the Christian god instead of coming onto the "we both don't believe in those gods" playing field. I appreciate the civil discussion nevertheless and there's the second interesting point. You never actually say it directly but between the lines I read that you think to have at least an inkling of a pattern that confirms the direct interference of the Christian god in this world. I don't know why that would be relevant to be honest. In any case, I would bet that the same could be said of people in ancient times for their gods (or even right now people that have different religions might for their god(s)). They probably thought to see patterns as well and attributed them to the gods. Without thinking about any specific religion: if they made a specific sacrifice every year at a specific time to gain favourable weather for example, they probably had a pretty good chance of success by pure luck and pattern observation and any unlucky weather anomalies could easily be attributed to mistakes with making the sacrifice (maybe it was the wrong goat or whatever) for example.