You wrote”So, do you reject the notion that God actually communicates with people, and that some religions are actually based on the content of those communications?”
If you posit an all-powerful monothesistic God—and it must be monotheistic or it wouldn’t be all powerful—then God could easily and simultaneously talk to all humans or select among them. Why SHE would choose the latter course instead of the former, or give only Delphic clues to be interpreted by humans is puzzling as it leads to schisms, sects, and false prophets, no?
you wrote: “The whole point is that God Himself, one Person of the Trinity, chose to become both fully man and fully God”
You forgot to add that it was only in the 4th century after the Virgin Birth, and after the relatively recent adoption of the non-contemporarily written books of the New Testament, that God became officially recognized as Tri-partite. This addition to official doctrine was principally elaborated by St. Augustine using the logic invented by pagan philosophers without anyone claiming a personal communication from God as far as I know.
Look, I’m not trying to denigrate your faith in certain dogmas of the Christian religion. I respect your faith in them, all the moreso BECAUSE I can’t accept what appear to me to be later man-made attempts to mold dogma to suit perceived inherent contradictions or the adoption of canons of faith such as the Virgin Birth or your more secular declarations that the United States was established by God as a Christian country.
I apolgize for tweaking you on some issues, but you made some uncalled for ad hominem attacks on me, calling me ignorant simply because I disagree with your opinion and beliefs. I tried mightily not to respond in kind.
Let’s end this discussion and go our own way with a small, and hopefully better, understanding of each others faith, reason, and the human heart.
“Why SHE would choose the latter course instead of the former, or give only Delphic clues to be interpreted by humans is puzzling as it leads to schisms, sects, and false prophets, no?”
Firstly, God is male in nature, although this is not to be understood in terms of sexual function, but of maleness in the abstract. That’s simply a demonstrated fact.
Secondly, while God may have some reasons for choosing the latter course instead of the former that are incomprehensible to human reason, there are good and sufficient reasons that are perfectly comprehensible, to those who employ right reason.
Thirdly, it is not God’s respect for our free will that causes schisms, sects, and false prophets, but our own corrupt spirituality and the work of Satan.
“You forgot to add that it was only in the 4th century after the Virgin Birth, and after the relatively recent adoption of the non-contemporarily written books of the New Testament, that God became officially recognized as Tri-partite.”
A person can be informed, uninformed, or disinformed. You fall into the latter category. You have received and believed a number of assertions that are the inventions of those who hate the good. Just as one example, “The word trias (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A.D. 180. He speaks of “the Trinity of God [the Father], His Word and His Wisdom (”Ad. Autol.”, II, 15). The term may, of course, have been in use before his time. Afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian (”De pud.” c. xxi). In the next century the word is in general use. It is found in many passages of Origen (”In Ps. xvii”, 15). The first creed in which it appears is that of Origen’s pupil, Gregory Thaumaturgus. In his Ekthesis tes pisteos composed between 260 and 270, he writes:”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm#I
Your assertion that it was “only in the 4th century” is false. It is an error. And even having pushed the date back to about AD 180 is no indication that the concept was new in that year, or that it is an invention. Our understanding of the nature of God has continued to deepen for thousands of years.
“Look, I’m not trying to denigrate your faith in certain dogmas of the Christian religion”
I doubt that you will be intellectually willing to consider that for some, and I have no idea how many, it’s not a matter of faith, but of objective, empirical knowledge.
“BECAUSE I can’t accept what appear to me to be later man-made attempts to mold dogma to suit perceived inherent contradictions or the adoption of canons of faith such as the Virgin Birth”
They only appear to be contradictions because you believe the false assertions of the father of lies. These are not matters of faith, but errors of objective fact and of right reason. You have been told, and have believed, many things that are simply false. If you were of a mind to listen and debate for long enough, with access to the needed resources, you would certainly become a Catholic.
“or your more secular declarations that the United States was established by God as a Christian country.”
I don’t see anything secular about that.
“but you made some uncalled for ad hominem attacks on me, calling me ignorant simply because I disagree with your opinion and beliefs.”
Those were not ad hominem attacks, but they were definitely called-for. I observed, correctly, that you are severely disinformed regarding the subject under discussion. I said this not because you disagree, but because it is an objective, empirical fact. Where you are not uninformed regarding Christianity, you are disinformed. This is not an attack; it is simply a fact.
“I tried mightily not to respond in kind.”
You can’t respond in kind, unless you find me spouting off in an insulting fashion on a subject regarding which I have espoused a huge number of false notions, which were originally the malicious inventions of those who did not scruple to use falsehood in their attacks.
“Let’s end this discussion and go our own way with a small, and hopefully better, understanding of each others faith, reason, and the human heart.”
When I run into people on your side of this, I try, in a triumph of optimism over experience, by demonstrating that just one of their beliefs is factually incorrect, to provoke them into examining the rest of the falsehoods they have absorbed regarding God and Christianity.
I have demonstrated that one of your opinions regarding Christianity is factually incorrect.