The more I learn about Christianity, the less true it seems

leftrightleftrightleft · Apr 21, 2016

paul becke said:
I'm not saying Jesus didn't exist (that belongs in the conspiracy theory department), but I think his miraculous claims fall in line with other historical exaggerations of gurus by their disciples. - leftrightleftrightleft

What do you make of this ? A tissue of lies ?

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/new...oland-has-hallmarks-of-a-eucharistic-miracle/

Might've been red bread mould: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/n...les-happen-the-bleeding-host-wasnt-one-90364/

I am trying to find the actual study done by the University of Wroclaw or Szczecin, but can't find it anywhere. I would like to see their methodology. It is also strange that I cannot find this story anywhere outside of Catholic news reporting agencies. I also can't find any mention of it on the University of Wroclaw website...

It seems instantly suspicious because it has the identical story as the Utah red mould case: the host was placed in a cup of water and subsequently turned red. Generally, placing bread in water will cause it to mould quicker. Why did they place the host in water?

A question for you: why do you believe this is a miracle? Don't you have the same questions that I do? Don't you see the similarities between the Utah case and the Poland case? Do you believe everything you read without questioning it?

leftrightleftrightleft · Apr 21, 2016

Paul of Eugene OR said:
What is your thinking, outside of Christianity, about God and His relationship to humanity?

God is a very ill-defined concept. I don't really know what God is. Nor do I really know "where" he exists. I've had experiences which I would call "experiences of the divine"; those awe-inspiring moments of clarity, mystery or profundity.

I guess the best way to describe God would be a disembodied, non-local consciousness. So far, all evidence points to the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of the neural networks in the physical brain, so I'm not sure how a consciousness could be disembodied and/or non-local.

ScottA · Apr 21, 2016

leftrightleftrightleft said:
Supposedly, if you seek, you will find. I have been poking at Christianity for many years and I have read a whole list of books from both sides. I have read the New Testament in full and all 4 Gospels multiple times. I have read Mere Christianity, Case For Christ, A Skeptics Guide To Faith amongst others. I have also read other critical books such as The God Delusion, The Rise of Christianity, and The Evolution of God. I have been open to Christianity and have no hostility towards spirituality. I have attended church semi-regularly. But, the more I learn, the more the following seems clear:

1) The Bible is not historically or literally accurate. There are parts that are likely based off true events and true people, but I would say the majority is either exaggeration, allegory, myth or poetry.

2) Jesus is not the literal "Son of God". I do not know what this means outside of some sort of metaphorical context.

3) Church sermons do not depend on the historical truth of the Bible. Many sermons that I have heard are simply literary analysis of a passage which is independent of the historicity of the passage. For example, just this past Sunday, the pastor at my church preached on Mark 5:21-43 in which Jesus heals a bleeding woman and restores a dead girl to life. He used this passage to talk about spiritual healing in our lives and even mentioned how the writer of Mark set up this story in such a way to contrast Jairus and the bleeding woman. The way he spoke made me realize that the historicity of the passage was irrelevant. You could provide the same literary analysis and spiritual application by reading any myth.

4) Christianity is a 2000-year old evolving misunderstanding; a group of conflicting opinions on God, Jesus, spirituality, and paganism. It was warped so thoroughly by the Roman empire, that it is difficult to try to reconstruct what the "original" Christianity looked like. We look at Jesus, Paul and the Bible through a 2000-year lens of history with all the associated theological and historical baggage.

You are now qualified to:

Make an intelligent decision.
Teach college-level classes on religion.
Write how-to books.
Become a Minister.

...And therein lies the problem: All of the information you have...is no better than opinion.

An organic man or women cannot approach the throne of God in any worldly manner. It is the spirit within that must cry out to God...and no half hearted cries are ever heard. What is of the world is worldly (flesh), and what is of the spirit, is spirit.

Thursday · Apr 21, 2016

leftrightleftrightleft said:
Supposedly, if you seek, you will find. I have been poking at Christianity for many years and I have read a whole list of books from both sides. I have read the New Testament in full and all 4 Gospels multiple times. I have read Mere Christianity, Case For Christ, A Skeptics Guide To Faith amongst others. I have also read other critical books such as The God Delusion, The Rise of Christianity, and The Evolution of God. I have been open to Christianity and have no hostility towards spirituality. I have attended church semi-regularly. But, the more I learn, the more the following seems clear:

1) The Bible is not historically or literally accurate. There are parts that are likely based off true events and true people, but I would say the majority is either exaggeration, allegory, myth or poetry.

2) Jesus is not the literal "Son of God". I do not know what this means outside of some sort of metaphorical context.

3) Church sermons do not depend on the historical truth of the Bible. Many sermons that I have heard are simply literary analysis of a passage which is independent of the historicity of the passage. For example, just this past Sunday, the pastor at my church preached on Mark 5:21-43 in which Jesus heals a bleeding woman and restores a dead girl to life. He used this passage to talk about spiritual healing in our lives and even mentioned how the writer of Mark set up this story in such a way to contrast Jairus and the bleeding woman. The way he spoke made me realize that the historicity of the passage was irrelevant. You could provide the same literary analysis and spiritual application by reading any myth.

4) Christianity is a 2000-year old evolving misunderstanding; a group of conflicting opinions on God, Jesus, spirituality, and paganism. It was warped so thoroughly by the Roman empire, that it is difficult to try to reconstruct what the "original" Christianity looked like. We look at Jesus, Paul and the Bible through a 2000-year lens of history with all the associated theological and historical baggage.

You don't seem familiar with Catholic theology. Catholicism is Christianity. Jesus only started one Church, and most Christians belong to this Church.

If you want to understand Christianity you need to study Catholicism.

I recommend you read the first couple of chapters of the Catechism. I think it will resolve many of the issues you have with Christianity.

You can check it out here. Here's the beginning:

I. The life of man - to know and love God

1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.

2 So that this call should resound throughout the world, Christ sent forth the apostles he had chosen, commissioning them to proclaim the gospel: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age."4 Strengthened by this mission, the apostles "went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it."5

3 Those who with God's help have welcomed Christ's call and freely responded to it are urged on by love of Christ to proclaim the Good News everywhere in the world. This treasure, received from the apostles, has been faithfully guarded by their successors. All Christ's faithful are called to hand it on from generation to generation, by professing the faith, by living it in fraternal sharing, and by celebrating it in liturgy and prayer.6

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

AlexDTX · Apr 21, 2016

leftrightleftrightleft said:
Supposedly, if you seek, you will find. I have been poking at Christianity for many years and I have read a whole list of books from both sides. I have read the New Testament in full and all 4 Gospels multiple times. I have read Mere Christianity, Case For Christ, A Skeptics Guide To Faith amongst others. I have also read other critical books such as The God Delusion, The Rise of Christianity, and The Evolution of God. I have been open to Christianity and have no hostility towards spirituality. I have attended church semi-regularly. But, the more I learn, the more the following seems clear:

1) The Bible is not historically or literally accurate. There are parts that are likely based off true events and true people, but I would say the majority is either exaggeration, allegory, myth or poetry.

2) Jesus is not the literal "Son of God". I do not know what this means outside of some sort of metaphorical context.

3) Church sermons do not depend on the historical truth of the Bible. Many sermons that I have heard are simply literary analysis of a passage which is independent of the historicity of the passage. For example, just this past Sunday, the pastor at my church preached on Mark 5:21-43 in which Jesus heals a bleeding woman and restores a dead girl to life. He used this passage to talk about spiritual healing in our lives and even mentioned how the writer of Mark set up this story in such a way to contrast Jairus and the bleeding woman. The way he spoke made me realize that the historicity of the passage was irrelevant. You could provide the same literary analysis and spiritual application by reading any myth.

4) Christianity is a 2000-year old evolving misunderstanding; a group of conflicting opinions on God, Jesus, spirituality, and paganism. It was warped so thoroughly by the Roman empire, that it is difficult to try to reconstruct what the "original" Christianity looked like. We look at Jesus, Paul and the Bible through a 2000-year lens of history with all the associated theological and historical baggage.

Christianity is not a matter of the mind, but the heart which is root of the mind. If you truly love the truth you will accept the Truth whatever it may be. But if you want an intellectual conviction of proof, you will never have it until you are willing to accept the Truth for Who He Is. God does not speak to our intellect, He speaks to our hearts. He can speak to your heart through your intellect, but if you do not know how to listen to your heart, you will not hear God.

ldonjohn · Apr 21, 2016

BadHabit said:
OP, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this matter. May whatever you believe bring you some sense of closure and peace.

I responded only because I am the polar opposite of you in terms of what I found through my studies. I came from a very secular, very scientific background, and when I started studying Christianity, it was a light bulb moment for me. I might not personally agree with your views, but I'll fight for your right to have them and to make them heard.

Be well.

BadHabit,

Agree. It was also a "light bulb" moment for me. The Holy Spirit turned on the light for me and "I got it."

John

Quid est Veritas? · Apr 21, 2016

leftrightleftrightleft said:
God is a very ill-defined concept. I don't really know what God is. Nor do I really know "where" he exists. I've had experiences which I would call "experiences of the divine"; those awe-inspiring moments of clarity, mystery or profundity.

I guess the best way to describe God would be a disembodied, non-local consciousness. So far, all evidence points to the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of the neural networks in the physical brain, so I'm not sure how a consciousness could be disembodied and/or non-local.

Actually, there is much more evidence for consciousness actually not existing in neuroscience than for it to be an emergent property. This is a misconception of those who want to maintain some exceptionalism for consciousness, but ascribe to Naturalistic materialism. Luckily, Christians don't need to ascribe to either as we can invoke the Argument from Reason against such notions. Therefore God need not have a location in any sense we understand nor material existence nor a substance metaphysical existence.

As you accept God exists (or the divine or whatever you want to call it), I suggest you follow up Christianity properly. Your initial arguments were very flimsy as multiple posters had no trouble pointing out. For yes, God is ill-defined if you try and grope around in the dark, but if you have a map (Religion) to guide you, you can maybe connect the flashes of the divine you were given into a coherent picture. For each flash was a bit of beach or forest, but only with the big picture that the map gives, created out of hundreds of people's 'flashes' can a proper view of God emerge. It seems to me as if you feel a need to stay separate from Christianity, to maintain some uniqueness to your own idea of the divine, as if to feel you are somehow different or deeper then the rest of us sheep. The difference is that we know our Shepherd, but you are still struggling in the thicket to reach Him. The answer my friend will likely be found in sincere introspection and Prayer.

ldonjohn · Apr 21, 2016

civilwarbuff said:
Well, fortunately it is not based on personal experience, though many of us have had them.....

I can't speak for other Christians, but for me, my faith is based on scripture. My "personal experience" was the result of the convincing work of the Holy Spirit as He convinced me that the scripture is the Truth. That was the light bulb experience for me.

John

ldonjohn · Apr 21, 2016

[QUOTE="leftrightleftrightleft, post: 69526855, member: 246343"

How do you know that what you are experiencing is, in fact, Jesus?

leftright,

Because it is based on the truth of God's Word. I can't speak for other Christians, but I don't need any historical evidence that Jesus is the person described in the Bible. The Holy Spirit convinced me that it, the Bible, is the truth & scripture tell us of Jesus, of His death, and of His resurrection. When the Holy Spirit convinces someone that the Bible is the truth, no man can convince that person that it is not the truth.

John

Aldebaran · Apr 21, 2016

leftrightleftrightleft said:
Supposedly, if you seek, you will find. I have been poking at Christianity for many years and I have read a whole list of books from both sides. I have read the New Testament in full and all 4 Gospels multiple times. I have read Mere Christianity, Case For Christ, A Skeptics Guide To Faith amongst others. I have also read other critical books such as The God Delusion, The Rise of Christianity, and The Evolution of God. I have been open to Christianity and have no hostility towards spirituality. I have attended church semi-regularly. But, the more I learn, the more the following seems clear:

1) The Bible is not historically or literally accurate. There are parts that are likely based off true events and true people, but I would say the majority is either exaggeration, allegory, myth or poetry.

2) Jesus is not the literal "Son of God". I do not know what this means outside of some sort of metaphorical context.

3) Church sermons do not depend on the historical truth of the Bible. Many sermons that I have heard are simply literary analysis of a passage which is independent of the historicity of the passage. For example, just this past Sunday, the pastor at my church preached on Mark 5:21-43 in which Jesus heals a bleeding woman and restores a dead girl to life. He used this passage to talk about spiritual healing in our lives and even mentioned how the writer of Mark set up this story in such a way to contrast Jairus and the bleeding woman. The way he spoke made me realize that the historicity of the passage was irrelevant. You could provide the same literary analysis and spiritual application by reading any myth.

4) Christianity is a 2000-year old evolving misunderstanding; a group of conflicting opinions on God, Jesus, spirituality, and paganism. It was warped so thoroughly by the Roman empire, that it is difficult to try to reconstruct what the "original" Christianity looked like. We look at Jesus, Paul and the Bible through a 2000-year lens of history with all the associated theological and historical baggage.

To the OP:
What I noticed right away at the beginning of your post might be the main problem. You said, "I have been poking at Christianity for many years and I have read a whole list of books from both sides." Christianity is something you give yourself wholly to. It's not something you poke and prod from the outside as if it were something to be studied. It's meant to be experienced, lived, and absorbed. From the outside, it won't make sense to you.

leftrightleftrightleft · Apr 21, 2016

Root of Jesse said:
If the gospels are a fairy tale, how come there is so much information about the idiots and doubters he chose for his closest apostles?

I don't think they are a fairy tale, just an exaggerated, re-imagined retelling. The apostles are there to ask the questions that the reader would ask and doubt the way the readers would doubt. This is a standard literary tactic. The most well-known example I can think of is Timon and Pumba. Pumba is purposely dumb so that Timon is given the opportunity to explain what is happening. This is helpful for audience members which aren't following the plot.

http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/write-stupid-character/

http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/benefits-of-clueless-character/

Did any of them claim to be God?

Yes. Or at least they claimed to be "one with God" in a similar way that Jesus claims that he and "the Father are one". Almost every Indian guru or saint is considered by their disciples as an avatar of God. The idea of avatars is quite foreign to the Western world, but, by most definitions, Jesus would be considered an avatar of God; a similar idea to incarnation. Its just cultural differences that leads the Jewish wandering preacher to be "Messiah" and Indian wandering preacher to be "avatar".

Except they didn't. The huddled in a room together for fear of the Jews, waiting for something to happen to justify their beliefs. Some appearances did happen, but still they doubted. When nothing happened for a while, the went back to their homeland and went fishing. That night, they didn't catch anything until someone they didn't recognize told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat. They nearly tore their nets and sank their boats. Only after 2 months did they receive their justification, and after that, they preached fearlessly, in the face of possible death at the hands of the Romans and the Jews. In fact, the religion was not allowed for 300 years, and yet it grew.

My reading of the resurrection events in the Gospels shows a Jesus-figure who can appear out of thin air, walk through walls, and do many other things that the Earthly Jesus could not do. He is described as a ghost whom the disciples do not recognize until their "eyes were opened".

The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark is an interesting book on the early formative years of Christianity. He argues that the persecution did not really begin until much later than usually attested and, for the most past, Christianity was a small Jewish sect for quite a long time that went largely unnoticed. He also explains that persecution can often make a group stronger rather than weaker because it filters out the adherents who aren't fully committed.

Jesus didn't claim any miracles. Others wrote about them. Oh, some try to say that Jesus didn't really feed 5000 people with 5 loaves and two fish...

Yea, that is like most gurus or wandering healers. It is pretty much always their followers who write about them later claiming that they did miraculous things. Rarely does the person themselves claim such miracles.

Except that we don't see Jesus coming back in some other's body.

Jesus is said to have appeared to them in a "different form" (Mark 16:12)
People don't recognize him and think he is a gardener (John 20:15)
They don't recognize him even during a long walk and conversation (Luke 24: 13-28)

It definitely seems like he came back in some other form which was unrecognizable. Also, he was able to "appear" out of thin air within a locked room (John 20:19, John 20:26), so the resurrection event clearly isn't meant to mean that he was a literal, physical body.

And he won't have to claim that he's God returning. We'll know for sure.

Not sure what this is referring to.

NothingIsImpossible · Apr 21, 2016

All I will say is if you really haven't experienced anything and so on then maybe your in to much doubt. For example they say when you ask Jesus into your heart, He can see if you mean it or not. If you don't then nothing may change in you.

aiki · Apr 21, 2016

leftrightleftrightleft said:
So far, all evidence points to the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of the neural networks in the physical brain, so I'm not sure how a consciousness could be disembodied and/or non-local.

Actually, this isn't true. Check out the work of Dr. J.P. Moreland who has worked in this area quite extensively and has shown that mind and brain cannot be one and the same thing.

Selah.

expos4ever · Apr 21, 2016

aiki said:
Actually, this isn't true. Check out the work of Dr. J.P. Moreland who has worked in this area quite extensively and has shown that mind and brain cannot be one and the same thing.

Selah.

I cannot afford to read the referenced author, but I suggest that in saying that "consciousness is an emergent property of the neural networks in the physical brain", the other poster is not saying that the brain and the mind are the same thing.

Either way, I am deeply skeptical that anyone can make a strong case that consciousness is not an emergent property of the structures in the brain.

leftrightleftrightleft · Apr 21, 2016

redleghunter said:
Please show us.

I'm not sure what you want me to show. Jesus was likely a wandering preacher who taught a radical ethical code of conduct. He was a mystic. Probably a disciple of John the Baptist who may have been influenced by the ascetic Essenes.

In a similar way to Indian gurus, stories about him grew and developed and, by the time the Gospels were written (40 to 100 year after his death), his legendary qualities had grown.

Here is a pretty large list of Indian gurus who have claimed (or their disciples claimed) they did miraculous things, were avatars or incarnations of God, healed the sick, taught a philosophy of love and compassion, etc.

What was the witness rate for all of the above gurus?

Many of the modern gurus have videos on YouTube

Did hundreds see said guru's in the flesh with the wounds of their death? Were any of them claiming to be the Son of the One True God? Of course not. Did any of the gurus teach they were born of a Virgin and had no earthly father? Did these gurus breathe on their disciples and receive the Holy Spirit? Were they clothed in God's Glory and received the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Don't think so.

I never claimed that all the details of Jesus' life and miracles were identical to any given guru. But, the process of exaggeration, mythologization, and re-imaging history occurs regularly. Why wouldn't it happen with Jesus?

There are a multitude of tares in the world, false signs and wonders.

How do you identify between a false sign and true sign? Lets say an Indian guru, claiming to be an avatar of God, heals a child. Is that a false sign? Isn't the guru doing good by healing the child?

How did you come to this comparison? What were the purposes of the guru 'miracles?' What did those signs and wonders confirm? You cannot make such a comparison without actually comparing.

I am not claiming that the gurus miracles are real. Nor am I claiming that Jesus' story is identical to any given gurus story. All I am claiming is that stories can easily become exaggerated or misrepresented in a very short amount of time. I don't see how Jesus was immune to this process of exaggeration, re-telling and mythologization.

There is no reason why Jesus was immune to this process.

razzelflabben · Apr 21, 2016

leftrightleftrightleft said:
Supposedly, if you seek, you will find. I have been poking at Christianity for many years and I have read a whole list of books from both sides. I have read the New Testament in full and all 4 Gospels multiple times. I have read Mere Christianity, Case For Christ, A Skeptics Guide To Faith amongst others. I have also read other critical books such as The God Delusion, The Rise of Christianity, and The Evolution of God. I have been open to Christianity and have no hostility towards spirituality. I have attended church semi-regularly. But, the more I learn, the more the following seems clear:

in my experience an actual study of scripture for yourself is most helpful. In fact, the church I grew up in the pastor always said, don't take my word for it, go study it and see if I am right....powerful words when looking for truth, much more powerful then reading or listening to man's version of what it says.

1) The Bible is not historically or literally accurate. There are parts that are likely based off true events and true people, but I would say the majority is either exaggeration, allegory, myth or poetry.

first, consider that it is 66 books, thus it includes all the above in a sum total of works that all point to the exact same conclusion. IOW's the historic accounts point to the same conclusion that the allegories and poetry do.

Also, look into some of the archaeological finds, one of the truly interesting things about the bible is how many of the historical stories are being evidenced more and more by archeology. Truly interesting stuff, worth some time to explore. Now, that being said, because of the nature of archeology, we obviously aren't going to have evidence for everything, but what is very interesting is how many of the finds we do have are identical to the historical accounts in scripture.

2) Jesus is not the literal "Son of God". I do not know what this means outside of some sort of metaphorical context.

according to scripture, Jesus is both the son of man (Mary) and the son of God (the HOLY SPIRIT) we see this all throughout the bible but the first that comes to mind is the account of Mary's pregnancy.

3) Church sermons do not depend on the historical truth of the Bible. Many sermons that I have heard are simply literary analysis of a passage which is independent of the historicity of the passage. For example, just this past Sunday, the pastor at my church preached on Mark 5:21-43 in which Jesus heals a bleeding woman and restores a dead girl to life. He used this passage to talk about spiritual healing in our lives and even mentioned how the writer of Mark set up this story in such a way to contrast Jairus and the bleeding woman. The way he spoke made me realize that the historicity of the passage was irrelevant. You could provide the same literary analysis and spiritual application by reading any myth.

wow, you need to hear my husband preach, in fact, lots of people like that when he preaches he brings history and culture into it. None the less, many pastors don't, you are right about that, which is kind of sad. What you need is a good exegetical pastor. What you talk about getting is something much more akin to man's wisdom applied to God's word rather than God's wisdom applied to God's word. That does NOT mean that your pastor was wrong in his analysis, I wasn't there, I wouldn't know about that, but it does mean that you would benefit from an actual study of the word not just reading it and in that do an exegesis of the passage.

4) Christianity is a 2000-year old evolving misunderstanding; a group of conflicting opinions on God, Jesus, spirituality, and paganism. It was warped so thoroughly by the Roman empire, that it is difficult to try to reconstruct what the "original" Christianity looked like. We look at Jesus, Paul and the Bible through a 2000-year lens of history with all the associated theological and historical baggage.

again, this flaw is often corrected by a careful study of the books of the bible. One great "checks and balance" is to see if the understanding one is getting is consistent with not only the book it is taken out of but out of the entire works which we know as the bible. Without this consistency, warping is common, with the consistency, it's just a matter of whether one accepts it as truth or not.

leftrightleftrightleft · Apr 21, 2016

expos4ever said:
While I have not read the entire thread, I suspect what I am about to write has not been expressed heretofore. If I had to identify the one item of evidence that I see as most telling in favour of the truth of the Christian worldview it would be the compelling narrative. To expand: I believe that the very surprising, yet in hindsight completely Biblically appropriate, way that the New Testament “story” picks up and continues the Old Testament story is evidence of the truthfulness of the New Testament story (and, in fact, the whole story). The general idea here is that one can have increasing confidence in the truthfulness of a set of reported events to the degree that those reported events deviate violently from the expectations of the people who reported the events while, at the same time, making sense in light of a sophisticated and compelling re-interpretation of the history that informed those expectations in the first place. I realize that may sound like mumbo-jumbo, but I believe I have captured the essence of what I want to say as clearly as I can.

Let me now proceed from the general to the specifics and hopefully this will clarify things:

The Old Testament presents a story, an evolving narrative;

The Jews of Jesus’ time saw themselves as God’s chosen people, destined to rule over the Gentiles who were, surprisingly, to those Jews at least, presently oppressing them in the form of the Roman empire;

In that setting, the Jewish Messiah figure (presented in the Old Testament) was expected to deliver the Jews from Rome, almost certainly by force, and restore Israel to her rightful position atop all Gentile nations;

Jesus comes along, represents Himself as that Messiah (at least as reported in the gospel accounts), and yet, to the dismay of His followers, dies a shameful death on a cross at the hands of Israel’s oppressors, rather than defeating them;

This turn of events is profoundly at odds with the expectations of Jesus’ contemporaries; if His followers were to invent a story about Jesus, it would not include His death on a cross. Nor would it include other elements of the story presented in the gospels (no space to elaborate here).

Paul comes along and presents a detailed analysis of how his fellow Jews had profoundly misunderstood God’s exceedingly complex and subtle plans. He then argues, in great detail, that there is another way of understanding the Old Testament narrative that has led up to Jesus’ time and that what happened to Jesus very neatly ties up all sorts of threads of that re-interpreted Old Testament narrative.

This is compelling: we have a Jewish nation with strong Messianic expectations based on a certain view of their national history presented in the Old Testament. Jesus clearly did not fulfill those expectations. Along comes an unusually sophisticated and knowledgeable Jewish scholar – Paul – who is able to develop a complex, multi-threaded re-interpretation of the Old Testament narrative. And, surprise upon surprise, the Jesus story successfully completes each of those (re-interpreted) narrative threads. My gut feeling: There is too much in this scenario that works out too neatly to conclude the whole thing was “made up”, especially in light of all the different participants who cannot have collaborated together to make up such a coherent story (e.g. Paul could not “rewrite” the Old Testament, nor could he control what got later written in the gospels).

A lot more could be said, but that’s it for now.

This seems very uncompelling to me. It shows that the Old Testament and New Testament do not mesh very well. Paul had to re-imagine and reinterpret the Jewish religion in order to fit with the death of Paul's crucified rabbi. The story of Jesus is completely counter-intuitive to what Jews would have expected based on a common reading of the texts which they supposedly received from God.

"The Jesus story successfully completes each of those (re-interpreted) narrative threads".

Is that supposed to instill confidence in Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy? The re-interpretation of texts is an ongoing and evolving thing to meet the needs of the current cultural and personal paradigms of the individual. Paul re-imagines the scriptures to fit Jesus into them. Jesus did not naturally fall into place like pieces in a puzzle. He had to be pushed and shoved by Paul.

paul becke · Apr 21, 2016

leftrightleftrightleft said:
Might've been red bread mould: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/n...les-happen-the-bleeding-host-wasnt-one-90364/

I am trying to find the actual study done by the University of Wroclaw or Szczecin, but can't find it anywhere. I would like to see their methodology. It is also strange that I cannot find this story anywhere outside of Catholic news reporting agencies. I also can't find any mention of it on the University of Wroclaw website...

It seems instantly suspicious because it has the identical story as the Utah red mould case: the host was placed in a cup of water and subsequently turned red. Generally, placing bread in water will cause it to mould quicker. Why did they place the host in water?

A question for you: why do you believe this is a miracle? Don't you have the same questions that I do? Don't you see the similarities between the Utah case and the Poland case? Do you believe everything you read without questioning it?

Of course there's a similarity. I would be standard procedure ! As for he silence from other sources, even the university.. so what's new about totalitarian atheism in Western (sic) societies, and particularly, in universties?

leftrightleftrightleft · Apr 21, 2016

razzelflabben said:
first, consider that it is 66 books, thus it includes all the above in a sum total of works that all point to the exact same conclusion. IOW's the historic accounts point to the same conclusion that the allegories and poetry do.

And what if we disagree on what is history and what is myth? History or allegory?

I view much of the Christology in the Bible as at best allegory and at worst myth. I think myths contain meanings and important truths and I think the Christ is powerful symbol of rescue, redemption and forgiveness. Jesus' physical resurrection as an allegory for our spiritual revival (or enlightenment) is also important. Whether it historically happened or not is not necessarily important for an allegorical reading.

redleghunter · Apr 21, 2016

leftrightleftrightleft said:
How do you identify between a false sign and true sign? Lets say an Indian guru, claiming to be an avatar of God, heals a child. Is that a false sign? Isn't the guru doing good by healing the child?

What did the miracles of Jesus Christ and His apostles accomplish?

Who or what did they point to?

The more I learn about Christianity, the less true it seems

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