I agree with you on all counts.

To add a little more to your arguments: In the times of Isaiah, the current corrupt greedy humans wanted to only refer to dead prophets that they could misinterpret to their hearts’ content.

There is a guy who was the founder of Less Wrong that summarized religion vs science like this: if God spoke once and every generation after is less enlightened, then following religion sucks. If science allows you to stand on the shoulders of those who came before where you are continuously becoming less wrong then you can actually do good and become better. Note that I am paraphrasing hard.

Religion that I accept is when there is both individual communication from God and collective leadership from someone who has communication from God. This handles edge cases like when you can’t feel God because of “loud hormones/feelings/pain” when you can go to leadership. It also handles you growing at your own pace and creating a personal collection of writings that are like a “you specific scripture”.

Religion lacking these traits leads to you being further from God than your parents.

Seeking religion has risks: there is a real risk of “blind leading the blind”. Good luck if you choose to pursue religion because the standard used for a godly leader was last defined as a prophet/apostle by Jesus with specific rituals to give authority. The catholic church which curated the bible says they never lost authority. All other Christian religions have to make peace with how authority to get answers on behalf of others is obtained.

Have peace on your journey.

I generally try to leave room for everyone at the table, and I think that God can still be worth worshipping. Here is my thought process:

In mathematics there are set theory theorems that prove that some infinities are bigger than others. Therefore a all powerful god (considered infinity over all this observable spacetime) is still progressing (increasing if choosing good) and regressing ( slowing the rate of increase or decreaseing) if choosing evil.

We humans were given the knowledge of good and evil at some point while growing up. We are to be joint heirs with christ (and what power and authority does christ inherit from various ways?). Therefore we humans know and can choose evil or good with infinite side effects some day.

I think/speculate that an infinite god would place hard limits on evil, but I don’t know how that would look like. Therefore if there are hard limits then the definition of this system is one that cannot go to shit.

If the process of creating “good” human-children/heirs with infinite side effects requires real choice (not strawman choice) between good and evil, then how could God create this spacetime to allow this?

I think a tendency toward judging choices and choosing good over evil are the preffered properties that are being selected for. I also think these are Emergent properties of neural nets (i think human intelligence are at least partially from neural nets from physical neurons).

I have greater capacity for evil because I know better. I can see where you come from and I respect it. Please poke holes in my theories where there are issues.

I want to use an analogy. If you have a landlord who seeks rent every month and you don’t give it one month, then you get kicked out and if you can’t transport your stuff on time then it gets trashed.

If that landlord made an exception, then the full force of the law would require the exception to be applied equally. Soon enough the landlord would have his stuff turn to shit.

However if a buddy spotted your rent, then asked you to simply remember him and try to do better, then the landlord could retain the perfect administration and the perfect justice, and your buddy could be able to chill with you in cool places.

Most of the time I hear about God the father being perfect justice like the landlord and Jesus being able to extend mercy from the suffering so he can provide mercy if you promise to do better.

Simply saying “why not have no rules if you make the rules” is a good response, but there are probably some side effects if there are not rules maintained.