Like absent, when, greatnan and, I hope, lily, I'm also enjoying this thread where it is debate. It doesn't matter to me if someone never agrees with what I'm saying; what matters is that I understand their differing point of view as far as I am able. I also hope that they will understand my differing point of view as far as they are able. That is the whole point of debate – not necessarily to prove that one point of view is right and another wrong, or that one point of view is better and the other inferior.
Thanks for your interpretation of the Isaac story, absent. That, pretty much, is how I understand it as well. I suspect that it is not over interpretation of the story and its nuances that disagreement occurs, but why the 'test' to which Abraham and Isaac were put was felt necessary by a powerful god. The god in this story seems to me to be displaying insecure human traits. Mind you, the Greek and Roman and Norse gods were like that too, so that's nothing new. It is this interpretation of the whys and wherefores of the god's behaviour, as applied to this story and others, that made me begin to question religion. If, for the sake of argument, I agree that there is a creator/power that made the universe, and we call this being God, my next totally unaggressive but merely logical thought is why would a God like that need to test the obedience and subservience of one, tiny, miniscule, fairly insignificant, animal part of his creation? Would a God that powerful need his ego soothing in such a way? And if so, why?