I want to clear up a common misconception that people have about my position when I say that I am an agnostic-atheist. This does not necessarily mean that I think any of the gods of the major religions could exist. Most relevant to Life in the United States, this does not mean that I believe that the God of the Bible could exist. Let me explain…
Commonly, people perceive my continued use of the self-identification “agnostic” as a suggestion that with regard to their personal choice of a deity that I am still undecided. As if I occupy some middle ground between belief, and outright rejection. This is not at all what I (or many people) mean when I say that I am agnostic.
So what DO I mean when I say I am agnostic about the existence of a god??
When I call myself an agnostic it is because I can conceive of gods that are philosophically possible, internally consistent from a logical point of view, and are unfalsifiable… That is to say I can imagine a god that at least theoretically COULD exist, and even if this god does not exist I would be unable to prove it. So, in order to be intellectually honest and admit my limitations, I continue to say that I am an agnostic.
As I said to begin this post, however, this is a much different issue from saying that I am undecided about the existence of Yahweh,as described by the Bible. IF Yahweh DOES exist, I am very comfortable in saying it is not accurately described by the Bible. This is not to imply that I understand what the nature of God should be, could be, or is, but rather because Yahweh as described by the Bible is contradictory. The nature of Yahweh as described by the Bible does not remain constant, but instead changes drastically. This is true despite Biblical suggestions that this is NOT true. For example, Malachi 3:6 “I the LORD do not Change”, Numbers 23:19 “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being that he should change his mind”, Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever”.
The problem is, it is evident from a critical reading of the Bible that this simply isn’t true.
One of the oldest questions facing Christian theologians is why is there such a sharp disconnect between the God of the Old Testament, and the God of the New Testament. In the Old Testament God orders the genocide of entire peoples (Deuteronomy 20:17 “Completely destroy them–the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites–as the LORD your God has commanded you.”), and indeed we see this command play out (1 Samuel 15:3 “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”). We contrast this with the teachings of the New Testament, Matthew 5:44 “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, or Matthew 5:38-39 “You have heard that it was said, ‘AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.’ 39″But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” This disconnect is discussed in some detail in a work called Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide. In this book four Christian scholars all offer various explanations for the drastic difference in the temperament of God over the course of the Bible. The explanations range from the Rev. Daniel Gard arguing for “spiritual continuity”, to Dr. C.S. Cowles arguing for “radical discontinuity”. Regardless of the argument, what all four Christian scholars in this book acknowledge is that there is, in fact, a disconnect that must be addressed. So it would seem that even Christian scholars acknowledge that God seems to change over the course of the Bible.
What about the claim from Numbers 23 that God does not lie?
Well… 1 Kings 22:23 “So now the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The LORD has decreed disaster for you.”, and 2 Chronicles 18:21 “Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of these your prophets, for the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you.”
Often when confronted with these passages Christians will say, “it is not God, but a spirit acting under God’s command that tells the lie, therefore it is completely consistent to say that God cannot tell a lie.” To most people I know, Christians included, this is entirely unconvincing. Presumably this spirit cannot go against the will of God, and in fact is acting directly on God’s behalf. It is hardly excusable to say that because God ordered a lie to be told, but did not do it himself, that God is exculpated from responsibility here. So, here we see again that the nature of God, as described by the Bible itself, does not remain constant.
I will not continue to beat a dead horse here. I know that people tire of Biblical explanations for or against aspects of faith. I could go on to demonstrate how in some Biblical traditions Yahweh is an anthropomorphic figure who quite literally walks among the people (think the Garden of Eden, Jacob literally Wrestling with God, or God appearing to Abraham during the heat of the day at the entrance to a tent), while in others he is a figure that does not appear in physical form because that would be too much for human senses to handle ( Exodus 33:20 ” But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”… John 1:18 “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”… or 1 John 4:12″No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” ), but I will instead move on. Suffice it to say there are many MANY examples that one can use to demonstrate that virtually every aspect of God Evolves over the course of the Bible, despite insistence from the text itself, and subsequently theologians ever since, that this is not the case.
So what does all of this mean relative to my initial point regarding agnosticism?
Well, I think that I am justified in saying that the nature of God is not accurately described by the Bible. If you totally accept the Biblical description of Yahweh, then you are forced to accept contradictions. So, as a result, while I cannot know with absolute certainty that Yahweh does not exist, I do know that literal interpretations of scripture fail to reveal its nature. Beyond this, without a reliable guide to access the nature of God, individual attempts at describing its nature lack any demonstrable validity. What we are left with, then, is millions of people claiming to understand the nature of God, a seemingly endless amount of disagreement about what this nature actually is, and no objective measure by which we can determine who is correct, and who is not.
So, while I cannot say with absolute certainty that no conceivable god COULD exist, and thus will remain partially agnostic, I can say with the closest thing to certainty that intellectual honesty permits, that God is not accurately depicted by either the Bible, or modern Christian theologians.
Christjahn 
I have basically agreed with some of your points here in prior personal discussions, I have said myself that “while I believe in God, I do not ascribe to everything that man has said about Him, but let me offer you this thought, scripture will argue that “Abraham debated with God and changed His mind about the destruction of two immoral cities”, as ammunition that God is a liar when He says “He does not change, yesterday, today or tomorrow”, well view it this way, Abraham didnt debate God, until God saw it his way, instead, Abraham debated with God, until Abraham saw it God’s way, so another way of phrasing this, would be that God tested Abraham, and Abraham came to the conclusion God wanted all along…now to your point about the God of the OT and NT contradicting each other, there is a famous line by Mr Spock in a Star Trek movie, that refers to the idea that, “the life of the many, outweighs the life of the few”, so first thing you must come to grips with here is temporal life vs eternal life, God may require at anytime, mans temporal life, but this is polar opposite of God’s determination of the same mans eternal fate, so as to the tribes in which you feel may have been dealt with harshly, by Israel as instructed by God, God was setting up a nation, that would be the heir of His Son, they had to be free of idolatry, and of pagan tradition, since they came out of bondage by atheist Egyptian rule, so God had to rid them of everything from diet, to make-up, jewelry, false worship, sexual immorality, that in some way filtered it way into the DNA, now, many if not most of these tribes slaughtered by Israel, were given an opportunity to join worship of the true God, and even if they werent, this was God’s call, because if we accept a Sovereign God, we must allow that He would know ALL beginning to end, and would know the choices these folk would make, so when man puts himself in a position to “judge God”, clearly by definition “a finite man cannot have all the facts”, if I as a human, build a house, I would also have the perfect right to tear the house down, if I design a computer, I should have the right to bust it into pieces, who is created man to question God’s authority to destroy His own Creation, let me give you this real simple example, lets say a teacher has a disruptive class in chaos, and she goes a grabs a couple of key kids that she can either reason with or ones she can force to settle down, then when those are taken out the equation, the rest of the unruliest settle in, as I used to tell my daughter, “a class clown isnt a class clown if nobody laughs”, so God to get control of this planet, and have a people too witness of Him, without annihilating every living thing He created, had to deal very harshly at times, but who is to say, some of these folk wont have eternal life, even in a cesspool, one may have to just clean a spot, or isolate a spot, as home base to clean the rest…
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