"To believe in the face of incomprehensible chance like natural disasters and unspeakable evil like the deeds of Hitler, that God is, that God loves, that God is in control has always and will always take faith because it means believing in a reality that is denied by the empirical evidence."
Why should i deny reality that is supported by empirical evidence and take faith in something that seems to be opposed by reality?
Because it only
seems to be opposed to reality. The true dimensions of reality include the disasters and the oppressions, and the love of God.
"Why would you expect that in communications to bronze age people?"
Try to imagine, you're all powerful and you've decided to come to earth. You see people suffering all over the world. You see people starving all over the planet, you see people in pain needlessly. You could give them ideas of technology and help lessen their suffering or you could sacrifice you to yourself ( he could have just said - the world is absolved of sin without making them see a man suffer) and walk on water and heal a handful of people compared to what explaining the germ theory of disease would have healed. Also, you could have given them advanced ideas of crop rotation theory that weren't available at the time that would have saved millions.
Which one would you do?
God has given us all that through the gift of reason which found out all these things. That is why we now support of population of nearly 7 billion instead of just the 1 billion of the 19th century.
"Jesus didn't come to improve people's physical quality of life"
Why the heck didn't he? He doesnt care about our suffering on Earth?
He cares so much he came to share it.
It would seem it was completely ineffective if this was the goal. God could have appeared as a 50 foot man, bellowed on about hell, perhaps showing people a vision of it. This would have likely been much more effective than what he actually did.
Why would you think that? Jesus knew the options. He rejected grandstanding when he met Satan in the desert.
"Besides, if Jesus came when he did talking about germ theory, do you really think anyone would have taken him seriously?"
Jesus is all powerful and could have demonstrated the germ theory. People would have taken him super seriously, much much more than they even did.
Ever do role playing games? (I don't, my daughter does.) There are (or used to be) books for doing solo role-plays. The story would take you so far, then give the hero (yourself, of course) a multiple choice--then refer you to another page that gave the consequences of your choice. In one I remember, the setting was medieval England and the hero a 20th century youth who was thrust back to that time. He manages to convince the king that he has important knowledge for the safety of the kingdom, but it involves information the king thinks is contradictory---to see to the safety of his kingdom he must find a place to the south where there is snow. The king objects that snow is found in the cold places of the north, not in the warm places of the south. So what to tell the king? One option was to explain that if you go far enough south to the south pole, it is just as cold and snowy as the north.
Guess what the consequence was of telling the king that. ("he's a liar and and a spy. Off with his head. Everyone knows it is impossible to go that far south and that no one lives at the antipodes.")
(The correct option was to say the destination must be in the Alps as even though they were to the south, the high mountains are covered with snow.)
The point? Just because you can demonstrate something doesn't mean you will be believed--especially if the information cannot be easily integrated into your students' current world-view. Look at the problem some people have integrating evolution into a world-view that includes faith in the God of the bible in spite of the multiple lines of evidence for evolution.
Finally, remember Jesus did not appear as God. He became a human being, and a human being of the lower social classes. Why would anyone take him seriously when he was a man without status, influence or proper education? People who were taken seriously in first century Palestine were never crucified.
