What is Christianity?
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Thoreau
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............ Um..... Yeah..... Ok........
[video=youtube;R7FF25iFnqo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7FF25iFnqo&list=PL5A63E3F8F5E88BA2&index=48[/video]
Christianty is different things for different people. If Christianity were a spectrum of data, various groups often cherry pick only the limited data that satisfies their premises and expections. This is true of both Christians and Atheists. Atheists tend fixate on the symbolic mythology and say that is not supported by science. Which has truth. That is their data field. They don't all look at the philosophy, which is based on peace, love and unity. That would not allow the same curve to be drawn, since you will add more data points and may need a new curve with a different angle. The same is true of Christians who fixate on one aspect of the bible like doom and gloom, or creation, or whatever. It may cause one to lose the true meaning in context of all the data.
Let me give an analogy. Say I have a large photo. What I will do is mask off the majority of the photo leaving only a small section revealed. This is our limited data field. In this case, what is revealed is the face of a woman. Although we can tell this is a face of a woman, we have no context for how she is connected to the big picture, since it is not part of out picture. But we do see a face. It is up to our imaginations to fill it in the rest, but without the entire context. Although there is a right answer, without the larger context, there is no way to prove anything. It may come down to consensus, faith, either of which may be wrong.
Next, I will open up the scope of the picture, by revealing more of the picture. Now we can see the woman is dressed in a torn sweat suit. With this new information added, our inferences start to change and become funneled in different ways. But still there is not enough data to know if this is entirely correct. There are those with charisma, who can sell a good sell, and convince the many.
Next, I will peel off more of the mask to reveal more even data. Now I notice dancers. Our woman in the torn sweats is a dancer and she is being yelled at by a man. Now the context has changed again, as the data content increases.
Finally the entire picture is revealed. It is the stage of the metropolitan opera house in NY and the woman, well, she is the prima ballerina, being pushed by her coach. If this had been guessed at the beginning, it would have been called just another opinion.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
Let me give an analogy. Say I have a large photo. What I will do is mask off the majority of the photo leaving only a small section revealed. This is our limited data field. In this case, what is revealed is the face of a woman. Although we can tell this is a face of a woman, we have no context for how she is connected to the big picture, since it is not part of out picture. But we do see a face. It is up to our imaginations to fill it in the rest, but without the entire context. Although there is a right answer, without the larger context, there is no way to prove anything. It may come down to consensus, faith, either of which may be wrong.
Next, I will open up the scope of the picture, by revealing more of the picture. Now we can see the woman is dressed in a torn sweat suit. With this new information added, our inferences start to change and become funneled in different ways. But still there is not enough data to know if this is entirely correct. There are those with charisma, who can sell a good sell, and convince the many.
Next, I will peel off more of the mask to reveal more even data. Now I notice dancers. Our woman in the torn sweats is a dancer and she is being yelled at by a man. Now the context has changed again, as the data content increases.
Finally the entire picture is revealed. It is the stage of the metropolitan opera house in NY and the woman, well, she is the prima ballerina, being pushed by her coach. If this had been guessed at the beginning, it would have been called just another opinion.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
Christianity is a religion that is based on the belief that a guy that may or may not have lived about 2000 years ago was god. The christian religion holds that everybody is inherently evil but if you believe that the guy that may or may not have lived 2000 years ago was god then you get to go to this great place to live after you die.
It is kind of like santa claus only for adults.
It is kind of like santa claus only for adults.
Let me follow your way doubting Jesus birth , Now what would you say about His teaching in Matthiew 5, 6, 7, . Is that good for humanity and to live in peace and harmony ? Please exclude the millennium of man hijacker and perverted teaching of Christ.
Peace and harmony is a good thing. I just don't know if Jesus existed or if any of the ideas attributed to him were his or simply good ideas incorporated into christian dogma. I do know that the whole 'Jesus is God and if you don't beleive it then you are evil', is silly though.
I don't go along with the idea " because you don't believe in him you are evil " Many so called christian do evil thing, and if they continually practice doing evil they are evil. We are not supposed to judge anyone .
What is Christianity? The belief in vicarious redemption of sin by human sacrifice.
I don't know what you mean by human sacrifice ? the way I understand is to reduce our carnal desires which might inflict pain to others.
arauca, can I talk to you about Jesus?
Sure, why not.
That was a rhetorical question.
. . . though this is the creed of the Church of Rome, from whence the Protestants borrowed it, it is a creed which that Church has manufactured of itself, for it is not contained in nor derived from, the book called the New Testament.
The four books called the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which give, or pretend to give, the birth, sayings, life, preaching, and death of Jesus Christ, make no mention of what is called the fall of man; nor is the name of Adam to be found in any of those books, which it certainly would be if the writers of them believed that Jesus was begotten, born, and died for the purpose of redeeming mankind from the sin which Adam had brought into the world. Jesus never speaks of Adam himself, of the garden of Eden, nor of what is called the fall of man.
. . . As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin.
. . .It is a doctrine not only dangerous to morals in this world, but to our happiness in the next world, because it holds out such a cheap, easy, and lazy way of getting to heaven, as has a tendency to induce men to hug the delusion of it to their own injury.
. . . Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.
The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds everything that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was told could prove it himself.
But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.
-Thomas Paine (Deism and The Age of Reason).
I have noted you are a reasonable person; but there are some problem. You are asking for books and writing , keep in mind , books were written by hand , the press was developed in the year about 1600 , Jesus started his preaching at the age about 30 years old and preached for 3 years or so, to walk from town to town there were no cars nor airplanes, imagine if you walk 3 miles per hour , at this speed you will not get to far , and you stop to eat to talk to people go to the bathroom beside there was no electricity to write at night your memoirs. An other thing to keep in mind at the beginning the movement ( campaign ) was not large , there was no news paper to publicize. An other thing , his apostols were simple people fisherman an peasants, Matthiew and Luke apparently were literate, and during the preaching there was not much time . So your expectation that there should be voluminous are not valid . Taking all that in account the writing must have taken place after Jesus was gone .
As for Thomas we are all nonbelievers until a fact is presented to us , but , the fact is If the movement was from God it will prevail as the literate Pharisee of the time said " Gamaliel " if is not from God it will fade away . Well his movement is present today 2000 years.
It's doesn't matter why there isn't more contemporary information about Jesus. Your second argument is one from popularity, and I could make the same case about Hinduism which is older.
I don't have any problem with others , I don't care what name they give to thir God , there is only one God but different society or regional groups have given to the Deity different name., so I don't have a argument with that .
I happened to pick an older religion that has a superficial resemblance to Christianity, but there are other religions which are also older than Christianity, still popular, and don't have a concept of God, like Japanese animism. Do you still think that being popular means it's correct?
I don;t know what you mean popular , but Old beliefs modern called religion . The Inhabitant in Patagonia or the American indian they believed in a supreme spirit . I would not thumb them down . My point is I believe there is some power beyond us , and as long people respect the other human-being that is good . The American indian welcomed the pilgrims , they had some humanitarian feeling and the believed in the great spirit, and that is an old belief but we would call it in modern time religion.
No, I'm aware of the history of the various writings.
Written in Latin, the Gutenberg Bible is an edition of the Vulgate, printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz, Germany, in the 1450s.
The Vulgate was the Catholic version, probably considered heresy by the person who prepared the video referenced in the OP. The Vulgate was commissioned in the year 382, meaning it was the actual Christian scripture for over 1,000 years.
Ah, it hadn't occurred to me that the Son of God was too busy to write anything down. Do you suppose he was able to read and write?
People witnessed and wrote about many things taking place in Jerusalem during the time. Yes not even one of them mentions that they witnessed the ascent of a man int the sky on a cloud.
Yet the Romans were documenting facts at that time, as were educated Jews. Not one of these people mentions that a man was seen floating in the sky.
It's Thomas Paine's point, not mine, but I pass it along for the scientific method applied to analyzing a fact set. It's not a historical fact. If it were, both Romans and Jews would have recorded it. It would have been much more important a fact to commit to writing than some of the trifling matters actually recorded. But your point is well-taken: no witness wrote down any of the facts in real time. It's all hearsay.
One of the problems with identifying church history with God's intent is this: It would require us to believe that horrific segments of that history, such as the massacres, genocide and the Inquisition, were ordained by God.