Hi Jaywill,
I mean He seems to want you for eternity - "That whosoever believes into Him might not perish but have eternal life"
No he doesn't seem to want us. If he did, he would not have made our salvation contingent upon belief in one who has gone so far out of his way to remain hidden.
In Bible there is a very WIDE scope of recorded dealings of God with sinners. Noah's flood is not the end of the book.
You don't think it kinda stands out? The slaughter of almost everything that lived? That's not the sort of thing that one can just gloss over. Even with all the other atrocities on Yaweh's resume of misdeeds, I think that one stands out quite a bit.
I very much want to explore the entire spectrum of God's ways.
Much as one could "explore the entire spectrum" of Hitler's ways and find that he was kind to fluffy kittens, loved children and was wizard fun at parties. However, this is not what tends to stand out when discussing Hitler. What stands out is that he had all those people slaughtered.
Once someone has committed their first genocide, they have crossed the moral event horizon. There is no positive quality that could rebalance those scales.
Do you know who lived the longest in the bible? His name was Methusaleh. He lived 960 plus years.
Do you know what his name means ? It means something like "When he dies it will come". Many teachers believe that the "it" that is to come refers to the flood of Noah.
So, the longevity of Methusaleh "when he dies it will come" suggests that God prolonged the time as much as His righteousness would allow Him to do so.
No, it suggests that Methusala is a fictional character, whose name was selected by the author to reflect his role in the narrative.
But He is righteous. God is one for whom a more righteous one cannot be imagined.
No,
you cannot imagine a more righteous one, but that's because your over-reliance on antiquated nonsense has left you morally stunted. The rest of us have no such problems.
One who does not slaughter millions should suffice.
And Jesus said that not a sparrow falls to the ground without His Father.
A truly repugnant notion; if your god is such an obsessive control freak that even a humble passerine cannot escape his meddling, then he must be a petty individual indeed.
But man is unique because he has a spirit to contact God. And man is made to live in God and have God live in him.
This speaks volumes. The only thing you cite as a reason why humans are superior to other animals is your imaginary friend. Maybe that's all that separates you from the beasts but the rest of us have more respect for our peers than you seem to.
Mutate and Survive
™ Version 4.2