Relda, which of all Jesus' many miracles would you describe as “astonishing”, but not a “suspension of the laws of nature”?
The first Gospel of the New Testament, Matthew, testifies that there were 14 generations between Abraham and David, and 14 between David and Joseph, thus completing the prophecy that the Messiah would -MUST- be of the line of David.
Christian tradition insists that Joseph was most emphatically NOT the father of Jesus.
Absurd?
On the matter of the resurrection;
Matthew records that Mary Magdalene and 'the other Mary' went to the tomb; there was a violent earthquake, and an Angel, dressed in gleaming white, rolled away the stone, revealing an empty tomb.
Mark says Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James and Salome went to the tomb, but were worried about how they would move the stone. When they got there, they found the stone had already been moved. One young man in white clothes told them Jesus had risen.
Luke agrees that the stone had already been moved, but he records the women entered the tomb and found it empty. While they were standing around wondering what to do, 2 men appeared as 'angels of the Lord'.
John has Mary Magdalene visit the tomb by herself. She finds the tomb empty, and runs to get Peter, and 'the other disciple, the one who Jesus loved'.
No angels.
Absurd?
In 2009, a retired mathematics teacher apparently accepts as 'Gospel Truth' the testimony of primitive tribesmen, who generally believed:
diseases were caused by demonic posession,
the Earth was flat,
women guilty of adultery should be stoned to death;
even though such testimony has never been verified by any recognised historian of that era or location.
Absurd?
George, you appear to show as much objectivity as any other fundamentalist: those who agree with you are intelligent, those with other views are 'absurd'.
AJ, what about say carbon molecules invariably forming the word “boo” when viewed under an electron microscope?
That'd be cool.

Grim,
I’ll preface my reply firstly by saying, perfect faith is only for perfect fools for it requires the most foolish arrogance to assert, "I cannot be mistaken." To be sure, those who often say this will assert that they are humble, not arrogant, and their claim is that Jesus cannot be mistaken - but this is specious. Any faith, including the faith in reason itself, is paradoxical, since faith and reason are fundamentally different functions of the human psyche. But the paradoxical quality of Christian faith is further heightened by its specific content: that the Son of God became man, died, and rose from the dead.

Some of our more modern theologians, e.g. - Niebuhr, Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the German expatriate Paul Tillich would more than likely be reviled by the average Church parishioner or "folk Christian" if understood. Tillich, for instance, retains use of the Gospel and of Christian mythology and symbolism, but he rejects literalistic interpretations of the biblical witness, he rejects any distinction between the sacred and the profane, and be rejects the notion of "eternal law" in favor of situational or evolutionary ethics. Interestingly, radical Christianity seems to come very close to humanism – but not quite.

According to Jungian persuasion, the redemption or wholeness we seek requires knowledge and acceptance of our own inner darkness and our own propensity for evil. Only in accepting our own human frailty can we accept it in others. And unless we at least are conscious of our own failures, and are accepting and inclusive of others, we ourselves will remain fragmented and unrelated to the whole that God is. In this manner of thought, the movement of the ‘Christ journey’ is a descent from the light into the darkness, and then bearing back into the light of consciousness a portion of the darkness encountered. This affirms the “specific content”, as earlier mentioned, at its essential point

Grim,
>> George, you appear to show as much objectivity as any other fundamentalist: those who agree with you are intelligent, those with other views are 'absurd' <<
I do not think you want me to react to this except to say that I am sorry to have upset you that much.

AJ Philips,
Thank you for your reaction: we are not here to convert each other, but (hopefully) to deepen our own understanding of reality (our own world-view) by gaining insights into other - not necessarily opposite - views. So please excuse me if it will take more than two posts to respond to your challenges.

I used the term “naive” in its technical sense as “prior to analysis”, not as synonymous with silly or simplistic. This is how we understand most concepts before we feel the need - for whatever reasons - to deeper analyse them.

The classic paradox you mention belongs to the family of self-referential statements, like “The Cretan barber who shaves every Cretan who does not shave himself” or the “Set of all sets that are not elements of themselves” (Russell’s paradox). This is a fault of our language or logic, and it does not imply that there were no barbers on Creta or that Cantor’s set theory should be abandoned (the paradox has non-trivial ways of by-passing it) or not taught to high school children. The same about God’s existence which is thus neither proved nor disproved. (Paul Davies’ “The Mind of God” has on pp. 100-103 a very informative - in my opinion - treatment of self-referential paradoxes).

>>because that’s the God I know and that’s the God that most Theists believe in<<
You probably meant “the idea (or model - my favourite term) of God I know”. However I have to agree that that is the idea of God that most theists believe in since most of them are not philosophically or theologically inclined. There are many other concepts, including those from physics, that most people understand in a way a professional mathematical physicist would find too simplistic. (ctd)

George, on the contrary, I would like very much for you to respond; that is why I reintroduced the argument. Thus far, I have found your dismissive arguments unsatisfying.
Please, explain to me why it is more absurd to expect a timeless and omniscient God to demonstrate some knowledge of future events, or even inexplicable knowledge of a physical nature common to all periods, than to expect me to believe in a God who does little more than perform parlour tricks to an undiscerning crowd of primitive and highly superstitious people?

AJ Philips,
Here comes the continuation of my last paragraph from 24 hours ago:

Well, not only physics but also philosophy and theology have advanced beyond what they were just a few decades ago.

I reacted to statements abut the historical person Jesus. If you do not believe he existed then there is no point in discussing anything about him, since the NT is then just a fairy tale, at best a meaningful myth. If you believe he existed and was the “son of God” (a concept that makes sense only in a theological context that requires interpretation, since there is no DNA of him and e.g. Joseph to check son-ship) then you are in fact asking why God (through His son or otherwise) did not provide enough “evidence” that would convince you to accept His existence, in the way there is enough evidence to convince you about the existence of e.g. Alpha Centauri.

That is a different question, and the brief theological answer is that God wants you to seek and find him, and not to succumb to Him as an inevitability. Like you do not want your beloved just to accept your love as an inevitability but to love you herself (himself). Let me emphasise that this is an explanation, not an argument I would expect you to accept. And yes, it touches upon the paradoxes of theodicy.

The long answer revolves around the concept of “evidence” that depends on the context - subjective as well as objective - in which it is to be convincing. (A photo was a convincing evidence for the court 75 years ago, when DNA did not exist, today DNA evidence is valid, and after Adobe Photoshop photographic evidence is almost irrelevant.)

>>I don’t think your “three-year-old” analogy really works because the father in it has limited knowledge and power.<<
It was not an analogy “to work” (or an argument) but rather an attempt at explaining. Like saying “you can understand that 10 billions is much more than 10; well infinity is much, much more than even that”. (ctd)

(ctd)
>>It’s convenient that he appeared at a time when society was shrouded in mythology and superstition.<<
When, do you think he should have appeared? The nativity story tells us of the angel who appeared directly to the shepherds, whereas the three wise men had to follow a symbol (a star, we do not even know existed) to figure it out for themselves. Is this not a hint that we - who no more are “shrouded in mythology and superstition” - cannot expect an “angel” (miracle) to testify but have to figure it out for ourselves? Let me hasten to add, that this again is not an argument aimed at persuading you, just one possible way a Christian might see it.

>>I ... don’t like the “God is beyond ... comprehension” ... argument.<<
In quoting me you left out the part “of any believer” which shows that it was not meant as an argument but as an attempt at describing how theists see what they believe.

Let me thank you again for this opportunity to more carefully formulate my views.

I shall finish with a quote from http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/03_Areas/evolution/perspectives/Haught_1995.shtml. The article is more for Dan than for you, nevertheless it might give also you an insight into how we see things:

“A God of love influences the world in a persuasive rather than coercive way, and this is why chance and evolution occur. It is because God is involved with the world in a loving rather than domineering way that the world evolves. If God were a magician or a dictator, then we might expect the universe to be finished all at once and remain eternally unchanged. If God controlled the world rigidly instead of willing its independence, we might not expect the weird organisms of the Cambrian explosion, the later dinosaurs and reptiles, or the many other wild creatures that seem so alien to us. We would want our divine magician to build the world along the lines of our own narrowly human sense of clean perfection. But what a pallid and impoverished world that would be.” (John F. Haught)