claig - I have a bit, the philosophy is interesting. Many religions have great philosophies, just not the stories used to back them up which tend to be rooted in status building.
Caster - Still seems cruel to me and I see no reason to want to worship or wait around for a deity that cruel, cause that was over 25 years ago, I've lived and the same feeling of connection even stronger from elsewhere since then. And having read people's stories of being touched by Gods across all faiths, I don't see any of them as unique. Maybe it's touching the divinity in the Universe, but I wouldn't attribute it to a God in a book. No more than I would attribute it to Father Christmas or the Greek Gods (The Iliad is the sequel to the Odyssey, said to be written by Homer, who would have believed about the stories he was writing. Personally prefer Anansi the trickster stories but Iliad is more commonly read in schools). I mean, in my previous posts I gave a link showing just a brief look at hundreds of faiths around the world, hundreds of deities, my no longer looking for answers from an Abrahamic deity is no different than you not getting yours from the Universe or Artemis. And pearls are made from grit, easily compared, and have little innate value just a subjective monetary one - not sure I'd want to compare my philosophy to something like that.
The reason the Bible is so complicated because people in meetings chose which books were 'eternal' and which ones weren't, then other people in other meetings chose translations and interpretations which now people in other meetings argue over. The original Christian churches doctrine (where it first flourished in Africa) were pretty well destroyed by the Europeans takeover of the process. Originally it had none of the divinity of Jesus in it - mostly because divinity goes against Jewish prophecies as well as being unneeded in most faiths as spiritual sages were just as important as demigods (The Jewish Moshiah has very specific criteria - which included being human son of David through Solomon, and tribal status like that is only passed down through the father - and is believed that potentials are born in every generation, we just haven't been worthy or desperate enough yet...claiming to be one is not sin or a crime, it is usually believed that they or the generation have failed, which makes the Gospels a bit confusing, among other things). Most of the prophecies I heard about repeatedly as a child are either mistranslations (there is no virgin, in Hebrew it means young woman and her child has nothing to do with the Moshiah and Israel is commonly referred to in the singular throughout, not just in Isaiah) or didn't happen at all but somehow will in the Second Coming which there is no mention of in Jewish texts. That was pretty much the nail for me - if the prophecies don't work then there is no foundation for Christianity, and it redacts so much (Judaism has reincarnation and a system of cleaning the soul both without blood in this world - blood has never been needed and human sacrifice is forbidden - and without hellfire in the next), to the point I don't get why it tries to act like it came out of Judaism at all. And the nail for Judaism for me was in the Mishnah on the discussion of how to act during war, no room for grey or the fuzzies faux-equality that was being spouted by Noachide missionaries either. I will not follow a deity who reveals themselves to actively encourage the power imbalance and inequality of people. I no longer find sense in a revealed God at all - they never reveal to even a majority of the population, why would an all-powerful being ignore most of the world.
Also, part of the reason the Christian one makes less sense, is that the Jewish part of the Bible isn't meant to be read alone at all - quite a bit is missing from the written text as it was transmitted orally alongside among priests - hence why there is no detail of how to kill an animal in a kosher fashion or any details of how or even where to do a circumcision, that's all part of oral law now written in the Mishnah and Talmud and other texts after fears of genocide by the Romans. Hard to read a book when a lot of the information is missing.
I can see the desire to want to believe, having a community and a specific place to look for answers was very comforting, I spent a lot of time doing that, and I felt a lot of pain when it fell apart for me. But facing the world without a revealed organized faith has been a lot more rewarding. I realized whether there is reincarnation or an afterlife or nothing, I still pretty much would want to act and do the same things with my life and I wouldn't want to follow a deity that would treat their creation as the ones in the books do.