What would you do if Christianity turned out to be wrong?

[Fish and Bread]

I thought this would be a good hypothetical question to get some interesting discussion out of.

Just remember, it's a hypothetical. So, even if you believe the premise is impossible, you pretend it's possible and it's happened and then go from there if you want to play the game, so to speak.

Let's say tomorrow someone invented a time machine, went back to the time of Christ, and it turned out that Jesus was just a human being. Maybe he had some followers and some good ethical things to say, but it turned out in the hypothetical that our hypothetical time travelers filmed him saying he wasn't God, he was just a rabbi with some interesting ideas, a holy guy, but not the guy we think he was in terms of being God, being the Messiah, and so on and so forth. In the hypothetical, we can surmise that it was after his death that people started labeling him God and the Messiah and so on and so forth. He wouldn't have lied and said he was all those things- it's just stuff that people attributed to him later without his knowledge or consent.

So, the time traveler fills you in and shows you absolute proof- whatever you need to believe what they tell you, no matter what you ask for from them to prove it, they can come up with and you believe they're telling the truth.

What happens next? Do become an atheist? An agnostic? A Jew? Something else? Or do you just keep on being Christian because you like the moral principles and the rituals and the traditions associated with it, and the time travels did show that Jesus was a legitimately good fellow, and sort of believe it's worth doing even if Jesus is just sort of represents the way you think God is, or the way you think God should be?

If you pick something else, why do you pick it? If you stay Christian, do you want to keep Christianity the way it is, or do you immediately advocate for some changes in the Catholic Church (or whatever church you go to, if non-Catholics want to chime in) figuring that since you no longer think God forbids such and such or whatever, you are free to rethink some basic moral questions? If you keep it the same, how come? If you change it, what do you change about it and why?

For the sake of the hypothetical, we'll say the time machine breaks, and the blueprints were lost or something, so the time travelers aren't going to be able to check out the other major religions anytime soon. You could decide to be a member of any major or minor religion or whatever, but you won't know if they are true or false in a literal sense. It'd be just like today, except for the new findings about Jesus. We'll also say for the sake of the hypothetical that nothing the time travelers find when they go back to film Jesus gives any evidence or clues for or against any other religion's claims in general.

 

[Tallguy88]

Just keep quiet about it. There's no good reason to try and destroy someone else's faith.

 

[Mountain_Girl406]

I'd just keep looking for what is true. Right now I'm looking for the truth, as best as it's possible for me to do so, primarily in Christianity.
If I knew I was looking in the wrong place I'd move on and look to other beliefs and the absence of belief.

 

[Fantine]

I have pretty much always believed that biblical writers and theologians were limited by the knowledge of their era--and because they were communicating to people in that era.

That's why people who look at the Bible without considering era and culture frustrate me, whether it involves the gender of priests or creationism. So it wouldn't upset me because I embrace the mystery--as I understand it now and 50 years hence anyway.

 

[Ken Behrens]

Did you ever watch a show called "Voyagers".? The agents had a little pocket watch-sized time machine called an "Omni" with which they traveled to various historical epochs and fixed the ones that did not agree with the history books as we know them. That's the trouble with time travel: It is impossible to ever know for certain if you have reached a real past, or a potential past that did not exist. The mathematics underlying this theory is simply the size of the fourth dimension. Since this argument can always be raised, no such proof can happen. The answer will simply be, "I will use my faith to back and fix this one deviant potential reality".

In other words. proof is logical, by definition. God is love and love is not logical. Proof does not determine God, God determines our desire to love which in turn determines how we process reality, which in turn determines the nature of proof.

 

[ScottA]

Just remember, it's a hypothetical. So, even if you believe the premise is impossible, you pretend it's possible and it's happened and then go from there if you want to play the game, so to speak.

That's not a hypothetical...that's a supposition of untruth. It assumes that you "don't know" what is true - but many of us do "know" and do not live merely by faith.

 

[Fish and Bread]

That's not a hypothetical...that's a supposition of untruth. It assumes that you "don't know" what is true - but many of us do "know" and do not live merely by faith.

I understand what you're saying, but for the purpose of the thread, I suppose I'm asking people like you to place yourselves within a fictionalized world where things are as described in the first post, rather than in the real world you know.

It's not going to be a very interesting thread if everyone just rejects the premise. I suppose it's similar to if I started a thread where I asked what would happen if everyone grew wings tomorrow and started flying around, and people pointed out that wings couldn't possibly support people's weight, so they'd just be decorative, like on penguins, and how would all these people spontaneously grow wings anyway? Sometimes with a hypothetical, you've just got to go with it.

 

[JackRT]

I have pretty much always believed that biblical writers and theologians were limited by the knowledge of their era--and because they were communicating to people in that era.

That's why people who look at the Bible without co side right g era and culture frustrate me, whether it involves the gender of priests or creationism. So it wouldn't upset me si center I embrace the mystery--as I understand it now and 50 years hence anyway.

I like what I think you are trying to say but could I trouble you to repair the typos in your post.

 

[Fantine]

I like what I think you are trying to say but could I trouble you to repair the typos in your post.

I just did. I actually typed that on my phone after swimming at the fitness center while sitting in the hot tub. When the phone decides it knows what I want to say more than I do, I try to come back and repair.

 

[Martinius]

If I was shown the "proof" described in the OP, it would not change much, if anything, regarding my view of God, or of my faith. The Commandments would not be different, nor would morality. What would change drastically is Christianity, and foremost the Catholic Church. This is because of the dogmas and doctrines that Christianity has created, based on the understandings it developed about Jesus and his relationship to God. Obviously, the concept of the Trinity would be gone, and how the Holy Spirit is perceived would have to be reworked. The basis for the Catholic hierarchy, including the papacy, would be eliminated. So too for the priesthood. The Mass would be gone, or become something totally different.

For biblical fundamentalists, such a revelation would destroy their world. Except that they and many others would refuse to accept the evidence, no matter how certain.

 

[ScottA]

I understand what you're saying, but for the purpose of the thread, I suppose I'm asking people like you to place yourselves within a fictionalized world where things are as described in the first post, rather than in the real world you know.

It's not going to be a very interesting thread if everyone just rejects the premise. I suppose it's similar to if I started a thread where I asked what would happen if everyone grew wings tomorrow and started flying around, and people pointed out that wings couldn't possibly support people's weight, so they'd just be decorative, like on penguins, and how would all these people spontaneously grow wings anyway? Sometimes with a hypothetical, you've just got to go with it.

There's only one possible answer: Join the zombie apocalypse.

 

[RKO]

A good question and one I've thought about some. I think I'd do what I try to do anyway, and that is assume that God is bigger than our earthly categorizations. I'd try my best to livE for others, do good things, and refrain from judging anybody else's motivations or intentions.
Remember, I said I'd TRY....

 

[Vicomte13]

I thought this would be a good hypothetical question to get some interesting discussion out of.

Just remember, it's a hypothetical. So, even if you believe the premise is impossible, you pretend it's possible and it's happened and then go from there if you want to play the game, so to speak.

Let's say tomorrow someone invented a time machine, went back to the time of Christ, and it turned out that Jesus was just a human being. Maybe he had some followers and some good ethical things to say, but it turned out in the hypothetical that our hypothetical time travelers filmed him saying he wasn't God, he was just a rabbi with some interesting ideas, a holy guy, but not the guy we think he was in terms of being God, being the Messiah, and so on and so forth. In the hypothetical, we can surmise that it was after his death that people started labeling him God and the Messiah and so on and so forth. He wouldn't have lied and said he was all those things- it's just stuff that people attributed to him later without his knowledge or consent.

So, the time traveler fills you in and shows you absolute proof- whatever you need to believe what they tell you, no matter what you ask for from them to prove it, they can come up with and you believe they're telling the truth.

What happens next? Do become an atheist? An agnostic? A Jew? Something else? Or do you just keep on being Christian because you like the moral principles and the rituals and the traditions associated with it, and the time travels did show that Jesus was a legitimately good fellow, and sort of believe it's worth doing even if Jesus is just sort of represents the way you think God is, or the way you think God should be?

If you pick something else, why do you pick it? If you stay Christian, do you want to keep Christianity the way it is, or do you immediately advocate for some changes in the Catholic Church (or whatever church you go to, if non-Catholics want to chime in) figuring that since you no longer think God forbids such and such or whatever, you are free to rethink some basic moral questions? If you keep it the same, how come? If you change it, what do you change about it and why?

For the sake of the hypothetical, we'll say the time machine breaks, and the blueprints were lost or something, so the time travelers aren't going to be able to check out the other major religions anytime soon. You could decide to be a member of any major or minor religion or whatever, but you won't know if they are true or false in a literal sense. It'd be just like today, except for the new findings about Jesus. We'll also say for the sake of the hypothetical that nothing the time travelers find when they go back to film Jesus gives any evidence or clues for or against any other religion's claims in general.

Then I would have a serious problem. I didn't learn Christianity. I know God exists because God literally grabbed my face out of the air and talked to me in 2001 and since. Direct physical encounters with God, angels and demons. Now, some of the forms by which God grabbed me, or in one case hit me (he flew a bird INTO MY HEAD to drive off a physical demon who was attacking me) and knocked me back and down, are rather Christian. Also, Christ embraced me (THAT was in a dream, so I could always dismiss it as such, but the wide-awake direct encounters and events were not dreams or hallucinations, and I cannot disregard them or dismiss them any more than I could a car accident. God is real).

In none of those encounters did God discuss theology with me. The conversations were about physics and will. Given that the other possibility was that I was descending rapidly into full-blown psychosis, I went out looking for corroborating physical miracles, things that can be examined by science that also prove God. They exist, I found them, and keenly examined them. And I discovered that they are all Christian. Indeed, they're nearly all Catholic.
THAT is why I am a Catholic.

So, anything that could "prove" to me that Christianity is not true would have to use that time machine to also show me how those miracles came to be. And would need to take that time machine back to my own direct encounters with God so that I could observe myself in the circumstances - would I still see what I saw? Obviously if God were there - and just not Christian - then God would be aware of my second, time-machine presence, and would be speaking to both of us at once.

An awful lot of the physics would have to collapse for the miracles to not be miracles, and I would be discovering, looking at myself talking to God and being sometimes buffeted about by God as being a sort of Tyler Durden beating myself up in Fight Club scene.

So, the time machine would reveal that I was in fact certifiably insane. Or God would look straight at me in my returned configuration and answer my demanding questions. When I talked to God before, it was about physics and will, not Christ - I didn't care about Christ. I've decided that God is a Christian, because of the miracles and the symbology. So if he's NOT a Christian, then I would have to ask him directly what he wanted of me.

The collapse of Christianity would really mean the collapse of science, and without that tool, God would just have to tell me outright what he wanted of me. I saw no miracles or any reason to believe ANY religion, including Christianity, before God grabbed me, so if the time machine demonstrates that I added Christian content to the divine, I'd strip away the Christian content, but I'd still be left with the divine...and with knowledge of the City above, and the Black Abyss (to which I never want to return), and the place of fire, and demons and the Dove - all that.

In terms of comportment, I would not act much differently, because I'm always walking around with God RIGHT THERE. I would feel less guilty for lust...but that would correct itself pretty quickly because then the spiders would come, and I hate that.

 

[jacks]

Hypothetically I don't think it would change my views too much about Christianity. (Though I wouldn't be happy about it!) It would mean Jesus was not divine, but it wouldn't change the message He brought or mean he wasn't the Messiah. God the Father would just have been reaching us in a different way.

 

[anjelica]

I just f oumd this thread, and strangely, I thought of all that yesterday. About Jesus. I can in no way deny God because I have experienced Him. So I thought I ought to become a Jew, but then it is very hard to get to be a Jew. B ut then. I know al so the truth of Jesus's teaching, which turns everything in the world on its head and if we followed it, the world's problems would be solved. So I don't know.

 

[Catherineanne]

I thought this would be a good hypothetical question to get some interesting discussion out of.

Just remember, it's a hypothetical. So, even if you believe the premise is impossible, you pretend it's possible and it's happened and then go from there if you want to play the game, so to speak.

Let's say tomorrow someone invented a time machine, went back to the time of Christ, and it turned out that Jesus was just a human being. Maybe he had some followers and some good ethical things to say, but it turned out in the hypothetical that our hypothetical time travelers filmed him saying he wasn't God, he was just a rabbi with some interesting ideas, a holy guy, but not the guy we think he was in terms of being God, being the Messiah, and so on and so forth. In the hypothetical, we can surmise that it was after his death that people started labeling him God and the Messiah and so on and so forth. He wouldn't have lied and said he was all those things- it's just stuff that people attributed to him later without his knowledge or consent.

So, the time traveler fills you in and shows you absolute proof- whatever you need to believe what they tell you, no matter what you ask for from them to prove it, they can come up with and you believe they're telling the truth.

What happens next? Do become an atheist? An agnostic? A Jew? Something else? Or do you just keep on being Christian because you like the moral principles and the rituals and the traditions associated with it, and the time travels did show that Jesus was a legitimately good fellow, and sort of believe it's worth doing even if Jesus is just sort of represents the way you think God is, or the way you think God should be?

If you pick something else, why do you pick it? If you stay Christian, do you want to keep Christianity the way it is, or do you immediately advocate for some changes in the Catholic Church (or whatever church you go to, if non-Catholics want to chime in) figuring that since you no longer think God forbids such and such or whatever, you are free to rethink some basic moral questions? If you keep it the same, how come? If you change it, what do you change about it and why?

For the sake of the hypothetical, we'll say the time machine breaks, and the blueprints were lost or something, so the time travelers aren't going to be able to check out the other major religions anytime soon. You could decide to be a member of any major or minor religion or whatever, but you won't know if they are true or false in a literal sense. It'd be just like today, except for the new findings about Jesus. We'll also say for the sake of the hypothetical that nothing the time travelers find when they go back to film Jesus gives any evidence or clues for or against any other religion's claims in general.

I wouldn't change a thing. My faith gives me a framework to live within and that framework is my choice. I can carry on choosing it, even if the historical basis for it changes. What matters is how I relate to those around me; whether that ultimately proves to be true or not is irrelevant.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

I wouldn't change a thing. My faith gives me a framework to live within and that framework is my choice. I can carry on choosing it, even if the historical basis for it changes. What matters is how I relate to those around me; whether that ultimately proves to be true or not is irrelevant.

BIG SMILE
Because I think the best answer - Before I read your answer I was thinking that
even if anything turned out to be false, anything or everything about Jesus,
which of course is impossible,
but 'hypothetically'
then still NOTHING ELSE is as good as Christianity. Nothing else is TRUE or HELPFUL or RIGHT as Christianity is, so there is nothing else to do instead ! (nothing else good to do)

 

[anjelica]

I think it is hard to think hypothetically and imagine what we would do. It is hard to put out of our heads and gearts what we have learned and experienced. And for me, nothing matches the teachings of Jesus and I try to live my life by them. I feeel that He is the only one who gives meaning to suffering and that h elps me greatly. So ultimately I think it likely that nothing would change for me.

 

[Vicomte13]

I think I'm the minority report here. I was pretty happy as a secular pantheist. I didn't need God, and I don't like the strictures of religion. Some of the things that Jesus says, particularly about lust are pretty restricting. Also, I generally find Christians (present company excepted, of course, which is why I post the most here on this particular forum) to be among the most self-righteous, priggish, unpleasant people around.

So if Jesus were disproven, I would rather happily drop the corset of moral restrictions that he places upon me. It is not natural to me to be COMPLETELY honest, COMPLETELY monogamous, particularly forgiving or at all charitable. It is in my nature to look out for me, to enjoy sexual relations with different, interesting partners, to get even with people who do me wrong, and to invest my money at interest so that I can enjoy a more pleasant life for myself and for my descendants.

Christianity is a corset for me, and a binding one. It pinches, it rubs, it restricts. I don't like it. I don't like it and I would not be a Christian, let alone a Catholic, if I had not scientifically proven to my own eyes that they are literally true.

This is one of the reasons that I roll my eyes with derision at people who say "you just gotta have FAITH - religion cannot be proven." That's false and I know it. ONE religion can be proven - Catholic Christianity. That's the ONLY REASON that I stick to its quite straightened and quite narrow path, not because I like it - I DON'T - not because there is nothing better - secular humanism and indulging my passions is MUCH more pleasant - not because I like the "fellowship" - present company excepted, expressive Christians are annoying prigs. I'm a Catholic BECAUSE it's True, scientifically proven, by me, to me. That's why. That's the ONLY reason why.

Jesus' yoke is easy and his burden is light for many, apparently. Not for me. Catholicism is really restrictive for me. I don't like it. The path is narrow and constricted, and there are thorns in the bushes on all sides! Ouch! I follow Jesus because he's real, and there is a Heaven - I've SEEN a gate of it, from below and afar - and there IS a black abyss utterly cut off from God - I've been there. I've been there and I do not want to go back.

So, I'm motivated as much by the fear of God as the love of God, and I really have to work at the whole forgiveness and charity thing. They are not natural to me, and I wouldn't bother with them if I didn't know it was true.

Disprove Jesus, and you set me free of a lot of rules I'd rather be free of. Obviously I would not then leave this religion, with its human god, and go running off into any other religion, all of which are just gross stupidity and ancient superstition. The Roman pantheon of gods is more appealing than the riotous Hindu nonsense or the pious vapidity of Bhuddism. Take Christ out of the picture and I'd just as soon release weaponized anthrax in the Muslim world and kill them all, because they are utter barbarians driven along by a demon god, as far as I can tell.

So, the reality of Jesus is pretty central, really. Knock him out of the picture, and you will have knocked all of the external physical scientifically-examinable proof of the existence of God out of the world, and then you are left with Zeus, Athena, Allah, Krishna, Buddha and all of the other cranky superstitious nonsense of the ages.

 

[Occams Barber]

I thought this would be a good hypothetical question to get some interesting discussion out of.

Just remember, it's a hypothetical. So, even if you believe the premise is impossible, you pretend it's possible and it's happened and then go from there if you want to play the game, so to speak.

Let's say tomorrow someone invented a time machine, went back to the time of Christ, and it turned out that Jesus was just a human being. Maybe he had some followers and some good ethical things to say, but it turned out in the hypothetical that our hypothetical time travelers filmed him saying he wasn't God, he was just a rabbi with some interesting ideas, a holy guy, but not the guy we think he was in terms of being God, being the Messiah, and so on and so forth. In the hypothetical, we can surmise that it was after his death that people started labeling him God and the Messiah and so on and so forth. He wouldn't have lied and said he was all those things- it's just stuff that people attributed to him later without his knowledge or consent.

So, the time traveler fills you in and shows you absolute proof- whatever you need to believe what they tell you, no matter what you ask for from them to prove it, they can come up with and you believe they're telling the truth.

What happens next? Do become an atheist? An agnostic? A Jew? Something else? Or do you just keep on being Christian because you like the moral principles and the rituals and the traditions associated with it, and the time travels did show that Jesus was a legitimately good fellow, and sort of believe it's worth doing even if Jesus is just sort of represents the way you think God is, or the way you think God should be?

If you pick something else, why do you pick it? If you stay Christian, do you want to keep Christianity the way it is, or do you immediately advocate for some changes in the Catholic Church (or whatever church you go to, if non-Catholics want to chime in) figuring that since you no longer think God forbids such and such or whatever, you are free to rethink some basic moral questions? If you keep it the same, how come? If you change it, what do you change about it and why?

For the sake of the hypothetical, we'll say the time machine breaks, and the blueprints were lost or something, so the time travelers aren't going to be able to check out the other major religions anytime soon. You could decide to be a member of any major or minor religion or whatever, but you won't know if they are true or false in a literal sense. It'd be just like today, except for the new findings about Jesus. We'll also say for the sake of the hypothetical that nothing the time travelers find when they go back to film Jesus gives any evidence or clues for or against any other religion's claims in general.

Welcome to my world.

I've never had a god. Life is really not that difficult without one.
OB