It’s my own side. I agree with Ava on the historical analysis of the Bible, but I don’t believe in the inherently dualistic notion of a God separate from and independent of the rest of the universe. But, if we are looking at the creation of the Bible, the life of Jesus as a person, and the formation of the subsequent Christian religion, then I agree with Ava on those counts from a historical context. This includes the conflict between original historical figures and the official philosophical stances of the subsequent institutions.

My own viewpoint on God is as follows:

There is no north, at least not in the material sense. But yet north is a true concept. You cannot face north and see it for what it is without knowing or discovering the concept beforehand. North refers to an abstract principle of true relationships between locations on the surface of a planet in reference to that planet’s magnetic field.

In the same sense, there is no god. There is no separate god that stood outside the universe and set into place its natural order. But the thing people have called god for millions of years DOES exist, and the core truths embedded within the concept are the reason that it had independently evolved in nearly all human cultures for as long as there are records of them.

God did not CREATE the natural order, what you call god IS the natural order. This is why your scientists refer to the discoveries of their field as “looking into the eye of god”. Because the true referent of the concept of “god” is the base and immutable laws of nature that they are applying their discipline to learning. “God” is the underlying logos of the universe, the set of fundamental rules that all things must obey by the virtue of existing. They are the summation and abstraction of that what makes existence what it is.

The fallacy of “God” in the traditional sense was treating it separate from all else… as if it was something that could be spoken to directly. God in the biblical sense is the equivalent of praying to north to find your way home when you are lost and trusting the north winds and the spirits of animals to guide you home instead of checking a map or a compass for reference.

“Jesus, take the wheel” is the ultimate result of this mindset: abdicating responsibility, accepting the inevitability of an outcome, and treating a circumstance as if it has no base principles that could be applied to it.

Furthermore, this mentality carries with it a corollary abdication of understanding: it requires blind trust of an outside authority in abdication for coming to learn things oneself. It is the same concept as blindly trusting “the experts”, “the government”, or “the trusted sources”… and it all comes from the same dark place—-

“I just want to exist without thinking and receive regardless of doing”.