Granted 4000 years was still a long time but when you begin to understand how God works you'll see how this had less to do with what God was willing to give and more to do with what man was ready to receive.
I don't think so. Man has always been ready to receive at an incredibly fast rate, but there is no proven revelation of God, because man is just making it up, and deciding it politically. For example, the Pharisees rejected sacrifice rather early, but had to get their reforms past a ruling Sadducee sect. The reason for the slow progress, is that those men had faith in old books, because they were old, not because they were seeking new signs from God. You can't seek new signs from God, because they are deemed to be from Satan, or fabrications. The attitude of Judeo Christian thinking is to accept old doctrine, not seek new truths.
Today there is hostility towards homosexuals, because of old books, a person called "Paul", who may have been faked, and an innate hatred of men who cannot produce a male heir. God could fix this situation rather easily, by appearing in the clouds, and saying "Gays are OK". But he doesn't; therefore gay is not OK. Instead, we get a slow political evolution, in spite of the Bible.
What I'm saying is that there is slow moral progress, because the books of "God" slow it down. The Bible was written with slavery, racism, underage child abuse, anti-homosexuality, divorce, anti-science, sacrifice, a God who sniffed animal fat, and who applauded child sacrifice. It was written to reflect exactly what priests in 650BC wanted, and then it stayed that way, because Israel was occupied by people who banished the kings, and let the insane priests rule.
Then an opportunity arose. The temple was destroyed, some Christians moved to Rome and Greece, and they got to fake up a new layer of moral doctrine, without having to be accountable to Sadduccees and Rabbis. They got their particular way, because of some arbitrary preferences in some Roman rulers, who adopted the religion, and then forced their new morality onto their citizens. Bravo! *Golf clap* We were obviously ready to receive some new bullshit at that point.
Christianity seems to evolve with a punctuated equilibrium, and brutal government force - just like Islam. Orthodoxy was enforced by government, until some brave western democratic states actually managed to scrub it from their constitutions. Now Christianity is in disarray, and threatened by Islam - which is a religion kept in orthodoxy by government force.
If it's acceptable for government to force religion on us, then God could always enforce his evolving rule on us by government, at any pace he liked.
Not so. A perfect plan will merely achieve its intended results.
Exactamundo. And that perfect plan could also include converting us to Islam, and then telling us that Christianity was just a joke, for crowd control.
God by definition is a complex being, and if the plan seemed too simple i think i would grow very skeptical.
That's why the atheist plan involves everyone seeing that the God of the Bible is fictional. That adds a layer of head-spinning complexity that is believable.
Faith is not all about sitting dumb and meekly in the back of a sermon never asking why.
Faith can be about rejecting your faith entirely, and realising that God wants you to be an atheist.
and i understand that at this point i have probably begun to sound deranged to those of you reading but you must understand, there are just some things that i would never trade.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency.
