Of course the Bible is full of seeming contradictions and variations in tone - it was written by different authors over more than a thousand years.
Firstly, it wasn’t that long, and secondly, there are not seeming, but literal contradictions. Where something claimed in one part, is diametrically opposed in the other. Not to mention the remnants of earlier belief systems, that were polytheistic in nature.
That doesn't necessarily undermine the truth it was attempting to grasp.
And what ‘truth’ would that be?
As an analogy, the history of science is full of failed hypotheses and contradictory models. But would you look to those contradictions over time and conclude that everything ever claimed by science is false?
That is hardly an analogy, but I assume you are not familiar with the scientific process. Science is interative.
Comparing mythology to science isn’t just odd, but fundamentally flawed because the underlying motivations are (once again) diametrically opposed.
Early Christianity persisted for exactly the opposite reasons. Control and power came from the Roman empire; early Christians held their beliefs in secret because they believed them to be true in spite of persecution.
I don’t bother with the many flavours of abrahamic monotheism. As said earlier, I disregard the later additions to the ‘bible’ because then it is even more flagrantly apparent that it is one big pile of contradictions. Holding onto their beliefs in secret is hardly unique to ‘christians’, incidentally. The thousands of people who were converted by force in the name of Yeshua**, for instance.
**fun detail, the lores attributed to him are an amalgamation of similar travelling ‘prophets’, which was all the rage in those days. And of course the re-use of non-monotheistic mythology, not to forget. Anything to win over the pagans, right?
I could say the same thing about people mocking theists - that they enjoy feeling "superior" by claiming to be rational. Both are just unfounded assertions.
I only mock those who don’t keep their superstitions to themselves. I personally consider people who ‘teach’ children unfounded nonsense, child abusers, for instance.
I don’t mock people for believing something. I mock them for the sheer audacity that they think that their belief allows them to judge others. Based on absolutely nothing.
The "which god" question doesn't even make sense. If God doesn't exist, then all religions are trivially false, so there's no reason to believe any of them. But it God does exist, then it's not a question of "which god" - the various religions are all attempts to understand the same God (some perhaps more successfully than others).
This is empty semantics, because there are other mono- and polytheistic beliefs that believe in one or more ‘gods’ and they do not recognise the ‘god’ that is presented in the ‘bible’.
Moreover, and this is something always ignored: historical studies show that the root of the abrahamic religions is polytheistic in nature. As I said, they’ve tried to very cleverly curate their books by editing out parts that they found disagreeable, or declaring entire books apocrypha - but they didn’t do a particularly good job. So you still find references to the polytheistic origins. And with more ‘gods’ to choose from, which one are we talking about then?
