What if there's a third possibility?
I am thinking at a story in the Bible where God and the Devil discuss about a guy (not sure his english name, it is named Iov in my language) and God agrees to test the guy and kills his children, Iov continues to worship God and at the end God gives him other children, for me children are not like objects, you kill them to test my reactions and if I pass you give me other children or other reward, for me this shows a God that has no empathy or humanity, maybe I am too low level to understand the superior plan but you have Judas that should have seen miracles daily and he lost his faith, how you expect someone that never sees any miracle, that sees the world how unfair it is to believe (considering the most priests still try to convince you that the wold is only 5000 years old and tons of other crap in the Old Testament)
The first story you recount is about Job. My personal take about Job is that the story about God and the Devil is an explanation for why bad things happen to good people, i.e. one of the consequences of free will means that Karma doesn't work. Sure God let it happen to Job but not because He was in cahoot with the Devil but because of free will.
The second story about Judas, I don't think it's true that he lost his faith. I think either Judas was plain greedy or more likely he saw all those miracles and thought that by turning Jesus over to the Jewish leaders he would force Jesus' hand to use His power to overthrow the Roman government and let Jews rule their own kingdom with Jesus as king.
> considering the most priests still try to convince you that the wold is only 5000 years old
I agree with you here. My personal ideology is to always follow the truth with an open mind and not be afraid of where that leads me. Some say that religion is truth but I don't see it as a tautology. Even a religion needs to prove its claims of the truth.
Anyway my problem is that I had faith when I was young, I was brainwashed with this religious stories and I even wanted to become a priest , but I lost the faith, I can't believe, I read the Bible and I seen the world, maybe only f I see a miracle or see a devil or ghost I could have some doubts that there are supra natural things. (coincidentally when I was young I was also believing in ghosts, vampires witches )
How would you find the truth about God, let's consider that from the 10+ major religion neither is the correct one, do you try to find something that is common in all religions, or only in major ones? If you believe there is a God is there also a Devil that is all the time tricking you and you need to be paranoid and question everything?
Do you believe? do you have no doubts? Do you try to think about those doubts or you attempt to push the thoughts away so you don't upset God that you are considering what if he does not exists or what if your religion is the wrong one, really bad one.
Honestly I'm not sure what I believe. I lean towards believing in a God but I'm full of doubt about the essence of God. I was brought up in a Christian home and like you really religious when a kid. We had a "high ceiling" both at home and in the church, encouraging individual thinking and discussion so I never felt brainwashed. If there is a God I think He/She is greater than any religion can encompass, so there may be strands of truth in many religions.
I don't worry so much over having the correct faith (IMHO any God worth their salt would not condemn a man based on things unknowable) as about the consequences of my actions (or in-actions). So for me, any religion that encourages its followers to do good things to other people, and not bad things to other people seems like it can't be really bad (it can still be practiced badly..). Following the teachings of Jesus then seems like a good idea ("Love thy neighbor...Do unto others... etc"). Unfortunately, while a lot of Christians do that, a lot of them don't.
While I tend to believe myself to be quite rational, I still prefer to keep an open mind about these things. If you've read C.S Lewis "The magicians nephew", there's a part in the book where all the animals start talking, but the magician only hears growls and animalistic sounds because he has convinced himself that it simply cannot be that the animals speak. That's my greatest fear, that I've closed my mind to possibilities outside of my very limited comprehension.
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> Not sure I buy your Judas story, if he believed then he was stupid to sell God.
I'm not sure I think Judas believed Jesus was God, I think Judas may have believed him to be the Messiah, who many Jewish groups had differing ideas about. Some believed the Messiah would be an earthly king, and I believe that Judas may have been one of those people.
And it is not like genocide would be only example, just extremely easy one.
In simolar situation, when boss or company just let's people to do whatever and then laws get broken, people harass each other and children bully each other, we blame teachers and bosses and parents.
You can't play reaponsible father while letting children bully sibling. Not even in kids adulthood.
Not letting a child bully a sibling means imposing a limit on said first child's free will. In most societies that is considered a good thing so even if we value our children's free will, we will limit it if they hurt someone else. Most people would agree that limiting a child's free will in such cases is a good thing to do, yet it does limit free will.
I dislike the fact that if something good happens is God fault, he made a miracle, if something bad happens we find someone else to blame.