Sense the date is now out the window, it makes no point to use it as a point. As for the adopted holidays, you should know that Christianity didn't adopt these ideas in the early days of the church but instead after it was in full march across the known world, with full doctrine already established. Following that the early Church was indeed faced with false jewish and pagan doctrine, the letters of Paul prove it, how ever the letters also prove that the church was effectivley fighting off these opposing gospels.
And I do find quite a difference between wise men and shepherd as opposed to celestial beings
The EXACT date is out of the window, and always was. The timing of all these saviours birth is, again, too surreal to be coincidence.
Oh I see, the false Jewish and Pagan doctrine. Might I be so bold as to request evidence that makes either of those doctrines any less or more viable than that of Christianity?
You must bear evidence, a virgin birth can mean different things, such as the child born from a young woman as opposed to a child born from a women who has never known a man. What of the difference in the conception. This can make the world of difference. was it of spirit, did the gods come down and mate with the women? were the gods involved at all? simply drawing connections from a quick leep can cause you to fall.
I'm sorry but I had to stifle a dispairing chuckle after reading that. If I overcome my 'bias against the supernatural' for a moment and take what you wrote seriously, I can answer it for you:
A virgin birth in a virgin birth. The sheer audacity of and self-important out-of-place confidence with which the church propells such an insane notion makes the debate of the viability of a virgin birth utterly inane. Shiva's 'virgin mother' gave birth to him from a slit in her side, whereas Jesus was born from the normal orifice. Sure, the method of the 'virgin birth' was different but do you not understand that neither the method of birth NOR whether the mother was a girl or a woman, makes no difference whatsoever to my initial claim in their similarity and that key pillars of Christian doctrine are picked from other, earlier beliefs.
Interesing Idea, if not worn out. Let's start out with the "Chinese Whisper." Simply and correct me if I'm wrong, Jesus did something worthy of recognition, the people hearing about this satrted to spread his recognition and his tale along with it, this left unchecked grew into Christianity or at least Christianities core beliefe Of Christ.
I never claimed that Jesus did not to something worthy of recognition. I said in the very text you quoted that he was likely a caring, humanist do-gooder, like a modern mother Theresa if you will. (Her 'goodness' is debatable too btw, I simply used her name to convey a contemporary comparison).
Jesus did something worthy of recognition, the people hearing about this satrted to spread his recognition and his tale along with it
Now I totally agree with this, but where we differ is that you say the things he did that were worthy of recognition - like miraculously healing the sick, calming storms and other such nonsense - are gospel, facts, truths.
This is the difference between the intoxicated and the sober. You are drunk on religion and understandably so if you were brought up beeing spoon-fed the alcohol of dogma.
The problem with this is that Jesus' fame did not go unchallenged. The Pharisees or "keepers of the Law" were constantly nagging Jesus about his teachings and tried many time to trap him in his words as to discrace him. However they never denied his miracles, instead they said that he did them by satan. What about the Jewish leaders and the High Priests, why did they not shoot down these outrageous claims of miracles as non-sense.
If I ask you for a source for all of this info, you'll likely quote the bible, something which to you, no doubt, is irrefutable fact. However I beg you to at least aknowledge that relying on words written by politiscised human figures of that time is hardly reliable. I simply cannot fathom where you get the logic from that enables you to read these things and just swallow them lock, stock and barrel without a flicker of curiosity at the utter implausible irrationalities they present. Until I am capable of fathoming that, or rather until you can convince me that your reasons for believing such evident tripe, I'm afraid I am either incapable of or unwilling to debate such absurdities. Forgive me if I sound a bit extreme but maintaining a 50-50 'could be, couldn't be' stance (which even you are not doing since you're saying what you say is right) when debating such points it's fruitless.
And as for your poor, "uneducated", "Desperate" followers of Christ. Not all were ignorant and desperate. The Roman centurion was not a uneducated man, neither was Paul.
Yes, educated
for the day. Perhaps i should have used the term 'enlightened' to better ram home my point.
And what would you call desperate, the Four and five thousand. Hungry maybe but desperate i think not. What of the water to wine, none even knew of that miracle execpt the servants and Jesus' mother.
Desperate are people who live hand to mouth, have little or no time nor funds for luxuries and their daily life consists of working to survive. The time of Jesus was full of these people and thus such a society tend to collectivly gobble up any redeeming tripe, anything that gives their life some meaning or provides them with some higher purpose - to follow, like sheep. Today the developed and increasingly the developed world is not full of such 'desperate people' and it is an abominable disservice to humanity that such things still go on.
When (if?) Jesus returns to us in the second coming, raps on my door and proceeds to turn water into wine before me, then, and only then, will I lay down my arguments and say yes, it would seem you are right. But as long as my only source of such 'miracles' are texts written by a myriad of potentially bitter men with grudges and, ultimately, flawed human beings with personal agendas, noone can be expected to unquestioningly swallow so faithfully such gobbledigook unless they have some sort of neurological disorder.
And what of this probably, he probably didn't discourage this. Actually to the contrary, multiple times jesus told those he healed not to mention him but instead proclaim what God has done for them. This would go along with not wanting to draw a specific kind of attention.
What of those who witnessed the Ascenscion, were they all desperate at the same time for the sane thing, ehich happened to be a man riding on a cloud.
As once again I must say Jesus did things differently then any before him. Jesus miracles came from his own authority, he did not need to sing songs or evoke names, Jesus said come out, the demons came out. He said to the water be still and it did, to the men he said men, be helaed and they were healed. No rituals no, songs, rings, chants or relics. Just come out, None of Jesus' contemporary "Messiahs" could do this nor could the healers and priests.
These differences make the difference between those who claimed to be "Christ" as oppesed to the actual Christ.
'' :-O '' at the text in bold. You do not need songs, rings, chants or relics to make something nonsense.
You in believing that the miracles are outlandish shows that have preconcieved notions against the supernatural, which means your thinkning about such things would be biased. but to say in the least that these things are possible is to note that events of supernatural nature are reported all around the world sense the beginning of the age. from third world countires to the superpowers, to numerable are these accounts to be simply pushed aside as outlandish, and if they are not to pushed aside to day, why should they be pushed aside from history.
Having preconcieved ideas about notions that are so unlikely to the point of impossibility is perfectly justified. Again, religion does not debate with reason on a 50-50 basis, it does not defend it's corner with arguments of equal viability or substance. AT ALL. Therefore accusing me of snobbery and unjustified bias is an utimate hypocrisy.
