@eaterswedn Got me thinking about "metaphysics" in relation to Abrahamism. I had thought up a thread, may as well post it. What makes Abrahamic thought weaker than ours?

I am giving the basic Christian version here, I realize there are different versions, I know them.

For me, the answer is obvious. Abrahamic thought has an incoherent view of the "progression" of things in the world. It starts off with its god, Yahweh, making things. He supposedly did this, for some reason, even though he is eternal and unchanging.

So there was nothing, but Yahweh, and then out of nothing, he makes things. Suddenly deciding to come out of eternal unchangingness. Then he creates humans, he didn't really care much about the rest of what he made, but humans, everything is about them.

What happens is well known. Yahweh's little weekend project, putting humans in the garden, fails in short order. Because of the tree of knowledge, that he must have put there. Why put something there only to forbid it? They wrack their brains over it, none of them know.

So Yahweh punishes the humans, for "sinning" even though before they had the knowledge, they could not have known what that was. And further, he created a place to torture them and ALL of their descendants forever, because he can't get over being disobeyed.

At some point, a bunch of Yahweh's own angels turned on him, leading him to have to throw a bunch of them out....somewhere. A lower heaven, Earth, Hell, the Christians were not even clear on this one. Heaven also turned out to be a failed project.

After failing two projects, both of which started out perfect, free of "sin", and made by an all-wise omnibenevolent omnipotent Yahweh, he watches the humans that he kicked out multiply. Then, for whatever reason, he decides to scrap things and start over, by drowning everything.

He spares some guy and his family, and they save the animals, somehow. Then Yahweh regrets drowning everything, because it was not a solution at all. He promises not to do that again. It turns out that this too was a failure, because Yahweh still isn't satisfied with his creation

He waits a bit, not apparently bothering with anyone for centuries(except Enoch), until he approaches a guy called Abraham and makes a deal. Abraham agrees to obey this god, and to circumcise himself, his slaves, and children, and his descendants will do the same. Abe gets land

But not immediately. Actually, old Abe is told that his descendants will get the land, he won't get it, but Yahweh will make him rich nonetheless. Abe and Yahweh manage to bilk some suckers out of their goods, sure enough. And so on down the line with Isaac and Jacob.

Jacob in particular is a very successful trickster, getting his inheritance from his blind, dying father by deceiving old Isaac, and getting the rights as the heir by buying it from his own brother, who he would not feed until Esau gave that up. He was ambitious.

And later, Jacob also uses magic to swindle a bunch of sheep out of his uncle Laban, who, to be fair, also pulled a fast one on Jacob. Turnabout is fair play I guess, especially in that family. Jacob's son Joseph does him proud, managing to do the same to all of Egypt.

Go forward, Yahweh gets a new favorite called Moses. He tells him one day to go liberate his people from Egypt. Even though Yahweh was the one that sent them to Egypt. Yahweh also tried to kill Moses right after commissioning him, until Moses' wife does a quick circumcision.

Moses does his bit, and Yahweh makes sure it doesn't work, because he told Moses up front that he would make sure Pharaoh would not agree, so he'd have an excuse to kill a bunch of people. Stuff happens, people die.

Yahweh's chosen wander in the desert, and he constantly punishes them, even for things like complaining about food. At one point, he decides to just kill all of the Israelites except for Moses, but Moses talks him out of it by pointing out that.....

Other nations would laugh at Yahweh if he led his chosen people out there only to give up and kill them. And Yahweh agrees to that. PR and rep, very important to him. They say it takes years to build a reputation but only a moment to ruin it, so I don't blame him.

He tells Moses, more or less, to kill everything else. Israel is to acquire wealth, land, and multiply. Other nations are Yahweh's enemies, and Israel is his "battle-ax" to hit them with. He promises the Israelites success, if they obey his rules.

Yahweh at some point decides to give the Israelites a king. He specifically picks some kid called Saul. But Saul makes a single mistake, and after that Yahweh is his enemy, driving him mad with evil spirits. Yahweh tells Samuel that he regrets picking Saul, and changes his mind.

Yahweh favors some kid called David instead. This mostly goes well. He ditches Saul, and eventually gets him killed. Yahweh promises David all the power and wealth instead. We know how that goes.

This ends up a failure. The Israelites never follow the rules to Yahweh's satisfaction, except in the case of a few of his favorites. He punishes them, they repent, they relapse, repeat. He finally decides to just have them all deported by the Babylonians and Assyrians.

Strangely, Yahweh did this to Judah even though one of his favorites, Josiah, had done away with all the things that made him angry. Yahweh promises Josiah a peaceful and long life...and then Josiah dies in battle against the Egyptians because he thought Yahweh would help him.

The most common reason given is that Yahweh punished them anyway, because he was still angry with prior generations even though Josiah had fixed the problem. "Prepare to slaughter the children for the iniquities of their fathers" as Ezekiel put it.

But he also promises that he will bring his chosenites back from Babylon, make Jerusalem glorious and rich, and not allow it to fall again to gentiles. He also says that he will make it so that they follow his law, giving it to them innately. These promises are in Jeremiah.

All that fails, of course. Ezra and Nehemiah have to browbeat people into even realizing there is a law of Yahweh. And they are terrified of their enemies, subject to the Persians.

Is a pattern apparent here? That ties into the "metaphysics" problem.

It is strange to see an entire narrative of world history revolve around an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator throwing tantrums because his plans constantly fail. Gets even more out there when the Abrahamists argue that his plans fail by design....