It must be good then, that Genesis is a parable, and has always been understood as such.
First off, far too many people believe in Genesis as literal fact or at least believe the world was created about 6-12 thousand years or whatever biblical investigation is involved. The fact of a creator and manipulative god is a scientific one and should be verifiable beyond personal conjecture. Have you ever seen the Monty Python movie Life of Brian? That is the kind of suggestibility that must have been present in a world where the natural workings were so unknown they must have been designed.
If you say that Genesis, the account for the beginning of the world is no more than a parable then how could you claim anything claimed in the bible actually happened? Where did Cains wife come from? The book is just riddled with holes and holds as much verifiability than any other scriptural texts. There is a man in India right now (I'll find his name if challenged) that claims to perform Jesus like miracles (virgin birth, walk on water, water into wine,etc). One year on his birthday he held a birthday party attended by over a million people. These are people who believe this is the newest messiah, unfortunately not a single miracle has been verified and is no more than Life of Brian-like hysteria.
Hearsay evidence is all the bible has and all FE theory has too. Its easy to compare the two on here, I'm sure by the intelligent way you've debated you are not a FE proponent. I read some part of a FE book that claimed to have evidence because he watched a ship and it didn't go over the horizon. Clearly either a mistake or manipulation but some people still believe it, proof in evidence must go beyond that. Not to mention the scriptures were written at earliest 6 decades after the evens of Jesus Christ. So all we have is Hearsay (unreliable and highly unscientific) and old beliefs put into writing.
The differences in the classical notions of the Judaic and Christian God ... You are also assuming we can know everything, Kant would be quite disappointed in a young philosopher such as yourself.
I agree with everything you said about the addition of Jesus Christ as a figure in christianity has altered it from J and I. This is great and I support it along with Richard Dawkins when he exclaimed "Atheists for Jesus." Most of what JC taught was amazing moral philosophy and I follow alot of that in my life. You can too but you don't need to accept its biblical authority. It is reason which demands evidence beyond hearsay when it comes to a god hypothesis.
I see JC just like Socrates in the vein that he didn't write anything but had many followers. There is a constant debate between the real Socrates and the possibly romanticized version in the Platonic and other sparse writings. I honor and respect the portrayal of Socrates for everything he did, but I don't have to accept everything he said as gospel and I don't feel any less enthusiastic because he is not divine. He doesn't have to be given some superior authority to have excellent ideas.
If reason is any gift of a god then it puts in me a strong lack of belief because there is no facts to latch on to. When Bertrand Russel was asked what he would say to god if he went to heaven and was wrong all along and he said: "I'm sorry your worship, but you simply didn't give us enough evidence." It sucks that there are no easy answers, I wish there was. Oh, and about all the barbs like me being uneducated and Kant being disappointed at me are just really immature. Like, come on, I'm not resulting to backhanded insults even though some things you say enrage me as I'm sure I enrage you. Let's keep a bit of civility without the petty jabs.
Christianity is centered around God, which is a trinity of three persons of one essence, the second of whom is viewed as identical with The Truth...perhaps you should examine it in depth.
I understand your conception of the Truth and that you follow it. I do the same, however I discover the Truths out of philosophy and observation. My whole point in the entire debate is that there are no easy answers and you can't just accept that the Truth is defined in an anchient book, no exceptions. I have already discussed that all gods differ in their construct, just like pyramids may be similar in Egypt and South America but they were clearly built differently with different techniques.
It all comes down to the fact that you have no more credibility with your bible than I do with my copy of Plato's Apology. They are both excellent sources of philosophy and discussions of worldviews but both are products of man. If the bible is the transmitted word of god why is there no mention of any technology that would amaze people who thought a wheelbarrow was as modern as it gets. I know the counter to this is the whole reason thing, but my reason tells me the bible is no authority. What reason do you have for accepting it over the Koran, both claim to hold the Truth and gods words. Thats where reason tells me to open my mind.
Why would the Christian use of the word be identical? God is eternally unchanging...would you make it so that you had to reassemble parts of it every other minute?
If you say the logos is unchanging you have to discard all the supposed miracles or whenever god interfeared with the world (mass drowning, famines, disease, JC, etc). There is a very different conception of god being some entity that starts this all off (evolution and even the big bang can be accepted here life you seem to do) and the other conception is a personal god who interfears in the world. I can be much more receptive to the first than the last.
You acknowledge that the world appears to work as it does, not being constantly operated by a god. To ask me how the world works without god is clearly searching for an easy answer, I don't have it and neither do you! I'm sorry that you have a hard time dealing with the fact that we will never actually know anything but constantly have a better understanding of the world. With the whole Newton example, he figured it all out up until the solar system, then it was too complex for him to understand. That is when he relied on god to fill in the gaps, that is not science that is lazyness. I'm not saying that we can know everything but I'm saying we can try, not just give up and rely on a bigger mind to watch out. It would feel so nice but there just no evidence thats true.
If you're asking my why god would make a creation that has to be constantly corrected. Well, if we are putting ourselves in a supernaturals shoes then I would ask why is there horrible suffering? Why is a child born with a crippling disease or develop horribly painful sicknesses later in life. A child who has never masturbated (apparently sinful), never told a lie, never harmed another, etc. Why do earthquakes wipe out thousands of people, good hard working people who did no harm to the rocks that crushed them. Obviously we could go on, but you get my point.
Oh, now this is just ridiculous. Newton said that the universe was so beautiful in its motions that only God could have made it. You have said that you are in awe of nature, this awe of nature originated in the Christian idea that we could use science to interrogate nature to see Gods natural laws. ...and it is no ones fault but your own if you make the wrong choice.
Just read up for my further discussions of Newton but in reference to his Christianity, before Darwin (and even a bit afterward) it would be unreasonable to think of a world without a designer. The more we figured out the origins of species and theoretical mathematics we realised that there are fewer and fewer gaps that we need god to fill. Just because the originators of science were religious means nothing when it comes to their science. They were just too early in the scientific venture to realize the gaps were not divinly sized but small enough to figure out. The more we learn the more we see that a deist conception of god is the only rational one.
If you want to talk about men of science and their religious belief you can read the multiple surveys of the highest level scientists in the US at least are 80% non religious. Einstein was a deist, most moral philosophers had either a deist or an atheist point of view. To me it comes down to not the defense of a position but the exercise of my reason. You can't accept things just because others do, you have to be able to test them yourselves or do something to prove them wrong. I haven't done the experiments outlined in any science book but if I wanted I could. Thats the difference, there is verifiability in science but absolutely none in religion. Christianity my use reason to develop worldviews based on biblical scripture but it flies in the face of reason to accept the Truth in that book as absolute. Nothing is absolute, I'm sorry its not easy but its the real Truth.