jonstaab

It seems to me you're thinking of Christianity in terms of its popular atheist parody, in contrast to the respectful, thoughtful view of the OP. A number of things you've said are simply not true, others are not in proportion.

There are a lot of problems to grapple with in epistemology and ontology, some of which you've identified. This isn't the place to debate them, though. A great book to start with though, is Miracles, by C.S. Lewis. It blows through a lot of shallow thinking about God and the nature of reality, as well as a number of things you've referenced: which god is the true one? Why is God so mean?

Also, I'd like to point out that if God has revealed himself to us in history (via Jesus and the witnesses of his resurrection), we don't need to simply theorize about him. There's actual evidence, which we can weigh against our own personal experience.

Funny to apply evolutionary principles to a critique of religion ;) But I do think you're making the incorrect assumption that religion hasn't already undergone that sort of strenuous debate. Jesus is probably the most discussed/doubted/critiqued figure in history - certainly we've had more time to find out his flaws and the flaws of his followers than we have of science. And yet he hasn't been relegated to the dust heap of history like Baal and Thor.

Really enjoyed this. I love how practical, humble, and respectful (even of religions, which I really appreciate) uncompromising nihilists tend to be. I happen to be a Christian, so I could go on all day about meaning, but if I could say one thing, it's this:

We all die, and it's more than likely even humanity will die out as well (even if it's at the heat death of the universe). You've pretty much rejected the possibility of true objective meaning, focusing instead on various ways of measuring subjective meaning. But at the end of the day, anything times zero is zero, which is fine if you're a nihilist, I guess. The focus in this framework is on you and your "meaning graph", but cool thing about knowing an ultimate God, is that he's a connection to your graph (both investing in your meaning, and pulling from your meaning via worship), that sticks in a way nothing else can. Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true; Romans 4:17 says, God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." From what I can see, He's the only thing/idea/person that has the potential to provide any kind of objective meaning, so however delusional religion may appear (and I'll admit lots of it is deluded), there's only one God, and he is "the rock that is higher than I".