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tonydev wrote:

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By definition God MUST exist, or nothing else would. Those who don't accept the Christian God invariably concoct some de-facto other one which they may not call god, with the default being themselves.

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by whose definition? Aristotle? The concept of the Unmoved Mover?

YES

There is nothing that insists that the universe came into existence by anything other than itself. And, even if there were some entity it would be so far beyond our comprehension as to be pointless to consider.

Quite the contrary. Everything in the universe is observed to come from something, not nothing, so why do you conclude that everything came from nothing. That kind of reasoning says that since no book in the library has written itself, the whole library must have produced itself. All rather silly.

As to a divine plan - the Christian view defies logic. Why would a god create only to destroy and then revive?

After telling me that if God existed He "would be so far beyond our comprehension," you insist that unless you understand everything He does and the motives for them, that proves He can't exist. The illogic of that is too obvious to comment further on.

What kind of god would require a blood sacrifice?

Perhaps one that knew it was a very appropriate symbol for what He was trying to convey to people to understood such things. The ancients associated blood with the life of a being (very correctly since without it everything died), So offering blood was a dedication of life to the gift receiver. Since ultimately we are being taught to dedicate our lives to God, that is a great first step in getting that across.

As to the bible - they are stories. Even given the text - why select the creation story that condemns ( Gen 2:5 - 3:25) rather than the story that blesses (Gen 1:1 - 2:4)?

Why "either or"? These needn't be contradictory, and accepting both illustrates different aspects of something that is not simple.

To believe, even metaphorically, that sin brought death, demands that there was a time in creation where death was unknown - that's ludicrous and contrary to nature.

It seems you are able to look out a window on one side of a building and describe what's on the other side. Since we can only observe what we are told is post fall nature, how are you drawing conclusions about pre-fall nature and ridiculing what you know nothing about?

Look at the development of Jesus. The Jesus of Mark know no divine conception, speaks rarely of love, gives no sermon on the mount, no Lord's Prayer. In fact his great concern is the coming of a new kingdom - where he may be the king : a very good reason for his execution.
Only in later gospels do we see the development of the "Love Jesus" - due, in all likelyhood, to the influence of Paul.

So are you implying that unless everyone says everything about everything all at once, the whole must be contrived and false? What kind of reasoning is that?

The values of the NT are the core of our civilization and our social development but they are based on human constructs.

So what is the significance of that? The Pythagorean theorem is a human construct too, but man had nothing to do with creating the nature of space and triangular relations. We can only describe them. The NT describes Divine truths that have been conveyed by Jesus' life and teaching. We can use them and build theologies etc., and these are no less human, and truths no less Divine for all that human handling.