No. Perceptions vs. reality is most certainly not gibberish.
We're talking about a character in the book. Your question was whether that character was really the way he was portrayed in the book or whether he was just perceived that way by the book's writers, who invented the character. That is, obviously, a nonsense question.
You believe in atheism--a Godless universe. It requires more faith than Christianity.
No, it requires no faith at all. Atheism is merely the lack of belief in God. Lack of belief, when evidence is lacking, doesn't require faith. It just requires being honest about the lack of any evidence. If evidence were to emerge, I'd change my view, whereas in your case it doesn't matter how long evidence refuses to emerge, your views will remain fixed, because they're a matter of faith.
Put it this way: Do you believe that there's an invisible, intangible elf who controls your actions? If you say, "no" does that require faith? Of course not. There's just no evidence of it, so your default position will be that it doesn't exist, since it's a claim that's dramatically at odds with anything we've witnessed.
No. Man poured man's characteristics into the gods: Lust into Aprodite, engineering into Hephaestus, aggression into Ares.
Yes, and man poured jealousy and wrath into Yahweh. Yahweh is made in man's image, just like most of the other gods man has invented over the years.
No. Polytheism does not equal monotheism.
Of course not. No one thing ever equals another thing, or we'd only be talking about a single thing, obviously. Polytheism and monotheism are two of the several different major varieties of mythology.
You put the cart before the horse
No. You've admitted that's what
you do. You start with the presumption that there's a God and he's good. I do not. I look to the evidence and draw conclusions from it.
Before you know. . .ANYTHING you must first believe SOMETHING. You believe in a Godless universe. That's how you work
Are there real flying dragons living in Central Park? A moron might start with the presumption that there are, and then "reason" from that various things, like that the dragons are invisible and intangible, and that's why we never see any evidence of them. But, it would make more sense to look for the evidence and then draw conclusions from that.
There are things people could propose that I'd be agnostic about, because while I have no evidence, the claim is of a type where I wouldn't necessarily expect to have seen evidence, and where the nature of the claim is such that it's not at odds with the types of things we have been able to find evidence for. For example, is there a species of monkey that lives in the Amazon and has not yet been discovered by science? I don't know. I'm agnostic on that. There's no evidence of it, but there wouldn't necessarily be evidence if it were true, since that area is remote and densely forested, such that we haven't done a very thorough job of surveying it, and even something as large as a monkey could have evaded us. We've seen how undiscovered large fauna can turn up in such places, so it's not an inherently improbable claim, and we know there's nothing fantastical about the concept of a monkey living in the Amazon. So, I have no reason to take a stance on it one way or the other. That's agnosticism. When it comes to the flying dragons of Central Park, though, the claim is inherently implausible enough that the default assumption should be that it's untrue, until such time as evidence emerges in favor of it. Claims about God, gods, fairies, gnomes, griffons, etc., are like that.
Theists get that in nearly every case. Ask them if they think there are flying dragons living in Central Park and they'll say they don't. Ask them if they believe there's a teapot orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars and they'll say no. Ask them if they think Kim Jong Il went 38 under par his first time ever golfing and they'll chuckle in disbelief. Ask them if they believe various ancient myths of gods are true and they'll say they don't.... with the single, arbitrary exception of the one set of myths that they have faith in (which is nearly always the set of myths they were instructed to believe when they were too young to think rationally, by people they trusted). Where theists and atheists differ is that 100% of the time atheists think the same sound way theists think 99.999% of the time. We are simply being consistent in sticking to the way of thinking you consider correct in NEARLY every instance.
That's what makes theist outrage so funny. They
know that thinking the way we do doesn't require faith, because they think the way we do
almost all the time. They KNOW that assuming Kim Jong Il didn't really go 38 under par doesn't require a leap of faith. Yet when they make similarly outlandish claims, with a similar absence of any evidence, but of a sort they have an emotional commitment to, it makes them very angry when atheists just do what the theists would do in absolutely any other context and dismiss it as untrue.
Forgive me but I don't believe for a second that you came to the bible as a blank slate with no preconceptions, assumptions, or prejudices
No human is ever entirely devoid of those things. And I came to the Bible with certain prejudices -- I'd been raised Christian, and so like most such people, I started with prejudices in favor of the idea that there was a God and that the Bible told us certain truths about Him. But, those prejudices were weaker in me than in most Christians, and didn't cripple the functioning of my reason. So I was able to evolve beyond them.
That much is made clear with your own admission that you made your decision after page 2
I made no such admission. Reread.