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There is no over-arching ontological purpose. Life just exists. People often make the mistake of attributing purpose to things that just are. People want to think human life is more special because we are conscious and can consider such ideas. it doesn't make it true. Ancient authors invented religions because they thought we had purpose. I don't believe we do.
A conduit to God was input. Self awareness was the result of wrongfully taking it upon ourselves to chose knowledge which made us self aware. Who told you you were naked? Once we put a virus in that conduit God could no longer trust us to do his will without adding our two cents.
Then died a martyr's death, refusing to admit they invented it, right?
Who do you think died a martyrs death. Only a handful of people died for Christian beliefs in the 1st Century. That's nothing-Muslims died for Muhammed; would you accept he same argument when it is applied to Islam? I'm betting you would not..
Oh ... Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter, Paul, just to name a few.
But not for inventing something, writing about it, then refusing to admit they made it up.Caliban said:
Did they also invent-then-write the Koran?Caliban said:
You started out talking about "authors," now you want to talk about those who believe what was authored.Caliban said:
Now suddenly it's this:
What gives here?
So it wasn't intelligence and it wasn't self-awareness, it was 'a conduit to God' that was input. This story changes more often than bible interpretations.
I have no idea what you're talking about. But if God was omniscient, it would know what we were going to do; trust is not relevant with omniscience.
nope. God said make in our image. Conduit for God's will to be done through us. We were told not to eat of the tree. Eve did using self will rather than the will of God. Original sin. Result... self awareness. and the trouble started.
Of course.. a beta version must go through the process of glitches in order to correct. As we had become self aware it was now a matter of self correction and we as self aware humans are not the greatest at that. The angels had rebelled similarly. We were beta, angels 2.0 so to speak, create a better system. We are not there yet.
The simple fact is that most of the New Testament is composed by anonymous and pseudonymous authors. Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not actually write those books. They are dated later. Half of Pauls letters are pseudonymous. They cannot be counted as eyewitnesses.
Pseudepigrapha, are they?
Men preserve the Bible. Men wrote it, men talk about it, and men think it is more important than it is. As a piece of literature and culture--sure, it has value. But when you just repeat your belief over and over without any evidence, I just dismiss it.
You just don't have all the facts. He is referring to the fact that the origin story of Christianity is embellished by the authors of the first and second centuries. The Christian martyr narrative is a legend.
