Acting on my belief that there is no god, all we had was different barbaric tribes telling their own stories and interpreting how the rules should be. The result is that there were multiple tales and rules, each independent of anything else. The people/organizations that finally compiled those stories (many hundreds of years later) had their own agenda of presenting their own belief systems. They picked and chose what suited them discarded others, most likely destroyed tales that were in direct conflict.

So even at 500 AD there were multiple different religions all based on the Abrahamic/jesus story line, but each altered.

On top of all that, even in these times theists are picking and choosing what gives them the feelgood thingy. How many times have you heard a theist state they believe in the bible and follow it, but ... slavery is bad, so they don't adhere to that part of the bible.

If there was a “God”, then why do people interpret “him” in so many different ways?

I won't help you regarding the motivations,as it calls for speculation, but I can help you historically. You seem to be of a christian background so I will confine myself to that history, as it seems that this will be more use to you than discussing Zeus or Loki.

The records we have of the Jesus figure are confined to the synoptic gospels, and the later writings of "john". Remember firstly that all the gospels are anonymous, we have no idea who originally wrote them down. For clarity I will use the names in common usage.

We know that Mark is the 'oldest' gospel and that Luke and Matthew were both largely copied from that.

What is important to understand is each of those writers was not writing 'a' gospel. They were each writing "THE" gospel, intended for their own audience, their own culture. They were not intended to form a book, or to be compared to each other.

They were each a stand alone account of the Jesus figure's life, each edited to appeal to a particular audience.

That Luke and Matthew were largely copied from Mark is no longer in much doubt with near unanimity amongst scholars.

Then, much later along came "john" (again anonymous) and, claiming to have consulted eyewitnesses wrote yet another stand alone account of the Jesus figure some 60 years after the events (at the earliest).

When examined from this perspective the differing interpretations of the jesus (god) figure date from the very first foundations of the christian religion. It is easy to see that even in the 1st century CE there were widely different interpretations of the jesus/god figure based on the particular text they received.

The early jewish christians were Adoptionists, the later mainly Hellenic Marcionites believed in a non divine Jesus, The Paulines invented the Trinity some time later to try and make the jesus figure compatible with the contradictions in all the stories.

It is unsurprising that nowadays the modern christian religion is fractured into over 30,000 competing sects, all claiming to have the divine truth, and none realising their own history.

Hope this helps!

delete

Humans create god in their image.

edit: corrected grammar

Man creates deities in their own image: not the other way around.

That's why deities always by and large reflect the desires ignorance and prejudices of the humans who create and worship it.

If objective morality and absolute truth were derived from monotheistic religions then its moral outlook would be identical to the barbaric and cruel codes the original creators envisaged as moral. Yet religions and the religious are dragged along with the evolving morals of the cultures and societies in which they exist. Often kicking and screaming, but they change nonetheless.

I put it down to the fact that these old books have become like rule books where the rules are frozen in time. Since everything in them is seen as the word of their gods you cannot change any of it.

As society changes and our moral standards are evolving the god squad are twisting themselves in knots trying to reinterpret their rules to try to make them seem more acceptable in the modern day. Even they’ve had to acknowledge that the old testament is nothing more than bullshit stories or they’d still be preaching about eating babies.

The biggest problem for me is that this reinterpreting idea is so open to abuse.

If you have a peaceful well intentioned preacher they will preach all sweetness and light but at the other end of the scale you get ones who preach hate and get people to strap bombs on themselves.

@Jacob

I can help explain 30+ thousand denominations. A man named Martin Luther taught that the Bible is the only teaching authority. Do you see the loop? No one in those denominations can.

I think there are many interpretations for the purpose of controlling people. Be it political or religious institutions, they need differences so that their people remain their people. If there was only one definition, they can never use it to control us and divide us.