Oliver,
The theological position is we were made in the spiritual image of God and to bear the nature, character and our purpose as the purity of God desires. That is why there is a moral intention in our relationship with God. Humans are the only creature that is defined by civilised behaviour.

So your perspective "Through my eyes gods, are all too often an anthropomorphic projection of humanity and its societies". has similarities. God is revealed in character, attitudes, actions and wisdom, which are qualities of the human spirit

Katie O wrote:

"If the Torah has given us a false account, then all recorded history is in disrepute."

Dear Katie O,

Why should any recorded history depend on the truth of the Torah? There is no evidence for a world wide flood or other phenomena mentioned in the the Torah. Why should that put recorded history in disrepute?

davidf,

As my first degree is a BA (Hons) with a double major in History and English then when I use the phrase “recorded history”, I am describing the very specific process of recording history through written language.

I am not talking about the reconstruction of history through archaeology.

As the Torah has been accepted to varying degrees by the Samaritans and others as the authentic revealed message of God to the Israelites and as a factual history of the early Israelites, in both cases as conveyed by Moses, then it qualifies as an authentic “recorded history” (in so much as for Christians and Jews, it is also the revealed word of God, that is neither here nor there).

BTW davidf, I think you should take this up with your rabbi!

If God were to exist and we are to attribute the exisistence of the universe to him, he would certainly be a man.

Thoughtfully put together Adam and then just went to town on shape, form and looks, completely disregarding working parts, whilst putting together Eve. How like a man is that :)

Some of his designs have merit though, like marsupials. Practical and functional.

As ruler of this planet he is as moody and arbitrary as any average man. Benenvolent one day, showing who is boss the next.

So, God looks like a man, with or without a beard.

Other than that, I like Bugsy's description best. God is the universe. And as Fractelle pointed out, we are just a tiny, though pesky for its destructiveness, part of the whole. No more, no less important than the flies that bother us during a summer's day Barbie.

And just like those flies we're not even a Broadway sideshow really, that would be a tsunami of the magnitude experienced a few years back, or the explosion of Krakatoa in the 19th century, or the meteor strike in central America that wiped out whole species.

Planet Earth is a Broadway sideshow.

And what's more, if God is the Universe, then it bestows a stochastic mercy upon all, believers and non-believers alike. The Earth is nothing, it is as less than a grain of sand is to a planet with the cosmos.

Under this schema, the mercy of God is statistically calculable. Actuaries are the true priests, divining the probability of God's will and meting out rewards and punitive measures accordingly.

Dear Katie O,

We differ on a definition of history. History is not something that is received through revelation. History is constructed through documents and accounts of witnesses. The Torah contains a historical core which is overlaid by legendary material. It is not history. By the way the Torah is only part of the Jewish Bible. The Jewish Bible is in three parts, the Torah or five books of Moses, the prophets and the writings.

It's the other way around. The Bible has to be viewed in the light of recorded history. Prior to Abraham in Chapter 12 of Genesis the Torah is completely legend. From then on it has a great deal of legendary material. eg. The Book of Esther has absolutely no historical verification.

My rabbi does not consider the Torah history.