I understand you completely and would have been on your side before I came to an understanding of I and self along with environment.
You can study it your whole life and still not understand it, do you study to answer or refute or did you try to learn to understand? You are missing the point of what “God” truly is while focusing on what “God” shouldn’t or ‘can’t be’ based off of a misinterpretation of texts and wanting/needing to prove that misinterpretation wrong along with a misunderstanding of context/metaphor and how to correlate meaning to imagery/symbolism. Perfect is an understanding, it’s a balance to be reached, when you understand the full implications of this design we are in and also can understand self and it’s interaction with it, you too will deem it “perfect” by design, it’s brilliantly evolved. Reality and the mind. “God” is very observable, the best form to observe of it are children, animals and life without consciousness(awareness of their own instincts)
But I am not saying what God should be, I am saying what God is, when it boils down to it and you finally understand how things work based off of chaos and order, you will find it a system based off of grand order with great fortitude.
How can the idea of “God” be wrong when it is ones interpretation and expressed opinion with no understanding of it in the ways of which it is meant to be understood? This doesn’t make god wrong, merely their acted out views and misunderstandings. There is no avoiding hell if ones intent is merely to avoid hell, that is an ingenuine way to live and will be full of regrets ultimately. Guilt, judgement by subconscious, these things are what it refers to by hell, a living in ignorance and committing acts out of such, with intent and awareness out of ignorance/evil makes the judgement worse when one actually reflects upon self and their actions/reactions.
Paradise is described in the book as what can be if man controls his ego to manifest as the one willing to learn to understand for the sake of understanding, be humble and morally just, when one aligns with self and also aligns together as a collective species to build something great, it takes a lot of work on self, especially when in a backwards mindset society/mass populace. “Eternal life” can either be metaphor for the energy of which we repeatedly recycle as due to the law of conservation or it could mean the many temporary egos of man, a collective of life always growing/evolving.
The evils are stemming from ignorance, a lack of understanding, not from “theism” you see. If a man shoots a gun, does a man shoot it or does the gun shoot itself?
It is simply, people lacking the education of how to think correctly by following the rules and universal laws, before they apply their opinion upon reality, this is ignorance and a misunderstanding of the texts and or reality, so can you blame them for their lack of understanding/knowing? It is up to us to spark curiosity to get them to learn, to guide them to an understanding.
“God” is an understanding. It’s a perception, a state of mind. It is associated with “enlightenment” or perhaps even above enlightenment.
When they say “god” delivered the texts it is meaning, a man wrote down his subconscious thoughts and described everything as it is with an understanding of what they were and still are, he attached meaning to symbols and imagery. It is the way of which they look at “god” that makes them wrong, not the other way around, their being wrong in their way of viewing and understanding doesn’t make “god” not exist. Don’t you see that?
God expressed in the texts is a state of duality. It is both good and evil but what they are doing in the book is describing the path of each side by using archetypes, manifestation of ego as literal representatives kingdom of heaven, pits of hell, etc. The path of evil or tyranny/intent of bad, the price is paid with hell, judgement, guilt and negative feelings and reality because what we think manifests in reality by our choices, words, ideas, etc, it’s a ripple effect and so it creates a hell for that individual, a struggle internal and may also project externally, a chaos in psyche.
The good path is described as a road to Heaven, paradise, etc… Think of this path as the path to wisdom, self awareness, etc.
Light and dark out of “god” the subconsciousness/consciousness. I used to have a literal view of the Bible and religions too and spent years researching independently, finding no success in what I wanted or how I looked, I switched my view to myself and began to understand myself, which lead me to understand everything else, to appreciate what -is-, is the “perfection” in which you state.
Both sides are just representatives of a path of future with by a list of actions/ideas one may commit, some being certainly out dated, due to context now versus context then.
You’re working backwards ultimately you see, you must get them to see their view is not through an understanding but instead merely believing. You are trying to get rid of “god” instead of get rid of ignorance, which is counter productive considering you are trying to work for the very “god” you are trying to get rid of by assigning it “impossible” and not “perfect” when you are literally in and of it.
Get rid of the ignorance, not what is(which you can’t really so it’s a moot attempt)
It will only cause more confusion, to go backwards. You must understand yourself fully before guiding another who does not understand themself.
If I describe psychology to you today by using terms like subconscious and consciousness, you would believe me and understand me better, you wouldn’t associate this with religion though but instead science, our terminology for the mind now is a lot more advanced than it was before. So do you see the connection? They were describing reality just to the best of what they had in terms of language and context/environment. Thus, it is not the text that is wrong but merely the not understanding of it being psychological or expression of man’s psyche through /art/ just as we do today but may understand it because it is /our language/ now.