Hi Oscar. I’m curious- why did you give this article the “Atheism” tag?
Was it so that a person who doesn’t believe in the Christian God could understand a Christian’s frame of reference? If so, thanks for the handy reference! It’s important that people with different worldviews attempt to understand each other in a compassionate way, and this succinctly packaged list of attributes and citations could certainly help.
Was it so that a person who doesn’t believe in the Christian God could somehow read this and change their mind? If so, that’s unlikely. Allow me to illustrate:
Believer: Check it out! God is all of these things. I have a handy list with citations that should be convincing.
Skeptic: Thanks! <reads> Ummm… there must be something missing. Where’s the verifiable evidence of these claims?
Believer: What do you mean? Look at all of those citations! Bam!
Skeptic: But… I’m confused. Why should I believe this? Who says it’s correct?
Believer: God does. The Bible is the Word of God.
Skeptic: Why should I believe that?
Believer: Because God says so in the Bible. Which is His Word. If you’ll consult the attribute list, you’ll see that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and He reveals to us what we need to know about him via creation, Jesus, and the Bible.
Skeptic: Wait, what? The nature of our existence and the nature of Jesus’ existence are only defined in the Bible, so really the revelation only occurs there. And you’re saying that this book is credible purely because the book itself says it is, which is the Word of God because the book says it is? So the book is true because the book says it’s true because God can’t be wrong and the book is God’s Word and we know that because it’s in the book?
Believer: Right! Well, there’s lots of other stuff too.
Skeptic: OK lemme hear the other stuff. This book is irrelevant because it can’t prove itself to be credible.
Do you see what I mean? It’s a non-starter. You can use the Bible to talk about theology, philosophy, dogma, metaphor, morality, ethics, genocide, compassion, family, cruelty, storytelling, violence, mythology, love, hate, politics, mental illness, anthropology, psychology, law, history, and so so so many other things. But the Bible can’t prove itself to be correct just because it says so. That’s a logical fallacy called circular reasoning.
