re: How do you consider yourself logical and still believe in the Abrahamic God of the bible.

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This is one of the problems with the relatively new notion of Sola Scriptura. If someone begins to doubt the Bible, it will almost inevitably lead to a doubt of God.

My belief in God exists apart from the Bible. If the Bible were somehow discovered to be demonstrably false or a collection of forged documents, it wouldn't have any effect on my faith in God.

I know that Jews and Christians both existed for centuries before their Bibles were written and compiled. In both instances, the canon was created for use in liturgies. They were never meant to be history or science books

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Without the Bible, you don’t have the Gospel. Without the Gospel, you don’t have salvation.

Natural revelation only gives man enough knowledge of God to be condemned. It’s the special revelation of the Bible that provides man the knowledge of God that saves.

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Why are you a Christian and how did you come to be one?

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Im a Christian because I belong to Jesus and He gave me a saving faith by His Spirit. My location has nothing to do with it, as Christ is building His church in all corners of the earth. It’s based on God’s loving providence that any are saved, not based on random chance.

For one, just because I live in the West doesn’t mean I could believe the Gospel as true. You have rejected it though you live here. Many more reject the truth even though there is abundant access to it.

For another, missionaries exist because faith comes by hearing the Gospel and the Gospel was commanded by Christ to be preached throughout the world. There are tribes in Africa who have the Gospel today and people are saved through it. Would you dare tell them that they are only Christian because of where they live?

Actually, I look for meaning and understand that I am viewing through their eyes in their time with their understanding of the world. Not just with Christianity, but from every belief system in the world.

Angels - by definition, extra-terrestrials?
Ascension on clouds of fire - spacecraft?
Noah’s flood - same story from all over the world
Watchers/Giants - gods of Olympus/Titans?
Super long life spans - space travel/theory of relativity?

Bottom line is that there is way too much in the archeological record to come to any other conclusion than one that says there is no limit to what we don’t know.

So, my faith that we were created/engineered by an entity that I know as God and that my salvation comes through the grace and sacrifice of a God/man known to me as Jesus is, in my mind, more logical than the possibility of everything being a huge accident. Not much logic in that.

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 I don’t question your right to believe what you choose. What I am curious about is why do you feel the need to insult believers by implying that they lack intelligence/logic?

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Apologies for the initial tone. I started this thread after a family member called and asked if they could bring my daughter to church and implying a few things other things. I respect your right to believe what you want I get slightly annoyed by people within my own circle that have the audacity to press me with their religiius views but immediately treat me as hostile when I press back with anything more than a head nod. I did the same thing initially here and for that I apologize.

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"faith begins where reason ends"

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I like that and it leads to a question I have been turning over in my mind lately.

Why is faith so important to God? So important that it is essential for salvation.

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Can someone who does not believe explain how the Big Bang occurred? What I mean is how could the “bang” occur from nothing?

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I do not have an answer to this. I just don't see how the Christian God is the answer either. Science continues to advance on answers to the workings of matter I think it is more likely that there is no God in the sense of the word as used in the Bible in the sense of him/her being a conscious omnipotent being than that there is

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Just take his simplistic mention of child sacrifice. The God of the Old Testament does not desire child sacrifice. I’m assuming he’s referring to the Abraham and Isaac story, which has incredibly deep symbolic meaning, and which is actually a lesson for the ancient Hebrews to NOT practice child sacrifice like all of the cultures and religions around them did practice.

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This is a good reminder, and maybe can help the OP. As mentioned how an early thought was what if he were born into a different religion. Which is a major difference between Judaism and Christianity, where the latter easily allows for others to come The Lord to be saved.

Lots of lessons of The Bible are counters to what other cultures/religions were practicing.

Definitely a helpful crucial reminder for today, as we are seeing an anti-God religion take over a political group. Pushing their anti-God beliefs via "legal" means.

It’s called faith. And please don’t tell me I can’t be logical and faithful.

Seek and you will find. The answer you seek requires faith. The existence of God can neither be proven, nor disproven, by logic. We all have faith, and use it continuously. Where you place your faith, is determined by your own free will. For me, the arguments for God are more compelling than the ones made by those who are merely trying to deny His existence in order to escape His judgment. Both positions require assumptions supported by faith.