Again, I'm sorry, but the way you've described Christianity is almost 100% inaccurate and a modern whitewash of its essence.
You also neglect the creation stories of other "spiritual" religions. Many Hindus say that the "universe" began as water/was formed through the creative vibration/etc. Brahma this or that, whoosh, everything is created including other celestial beings.
Christianity is much more similar to transcendental Hinduism and other highly philosophical spiritual systems than you give it credit for. Most Orthodox Christian denominations (i.e. Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) believe that most of Genesis is a highly metaphorical spiritual analogy. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church strictly adheres to the idea that there are a series of different ways to read different parts of the Bible based on the apostolic tradition. Not everything is literal. A lot of it is spiritual allegory, which is important for you to recognize. For instance, most Hindus believe that there exists, beyond all celestial beings and personalized incarnations of "God," an all-pervasive, unconditional reality that we call God, within which all material existence exists. This is called Brahman. It's a very cool idea, and almost identical to Spinoza's spirituality, except it was conceived of thousands of years before him in India.
Anyway, this concept is really no different than Christianity's understanding of God. It is nuanced. It is complex, and more than willing to admit the inherent Mystery of spirituality-- accepting our own inability to even conceive of such a concept as infinity or eternity or God. In Exodus, when Moses asks Yahweh what his name is to be able to tell the others who is calling them, Yahweh responds, "I am He Who Is." From the Catholic Catechism: "This divine name is mysterious just as God is mystery. It is at once a name revealed and something like the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is - infinitely above everything that we can understand or say."
Since nothing within material existence holds within itself the very reason for its existence (that is, you have to appeal to a higher reason for something's existence, such as a flower from a seed from carbon from stars from the big bang from etc.), there must be something whose very nature it is To Be-- To Exist. This is often referred to as the "Argument from Contingency" by Saint Thomas Aquinas, or the "Unmoved Mover," or the "Uncaused First Cause." It's a basic philosophical problem that Christianity deals with in a very spiritual way. It's not "black and white." It's not, "He's a big dude with a white beard in the sky yelling shit at you." That is how modern society views Christianity and it is simply flawed.
|