It works for me!
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Faith in Jesus works for me - it's exciting. I love the Bible and believe all of it - though there is mystery. There is mystery everywhere though, right? I am a incredibly happy believer in Jesus. I'm not a theologian, I just believe in Jesus.
I understand you can't make anybody believe in Jesus and the Bible, and I don't personally try to do that. But I highly recommend it from my experience with it. I can't get enough of the Bible or Jesus. I can't imagine trying to navigate through life without it at this point in my life.
I don't think Jesus or God is a thing you can prove to somebody. I heard about it a large percentage of my life and it didn't mean anything to me until a certain point - then that all changed.
So do you guys think that I'm fooling myself, not really happy, you don't believe me, or do you really think I can't be as happy or enlightened as you - are you evangelistic in that sense or what? What is the purpose of this site? Do you have something better to offer? If so, what is your gospel?
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Offline Why make a religion?
1. It provides an explanation for natural phenomena based on limited scientific knowledge.
2. It's a way to grapple with large concepts where one doesn't see another answer.
3. It's an excuse for some people to do atrociously evil things.
4. It's an incentive for some people to do good things.
5. It provides comfort and the occasional warm fuzzy feeling to feel like an all-powerful thing gives a rip about you.
Need more?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
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Offline If you belonged to Christ, then I have perfect faith as well that you will return to him. The Spirit is merely God's seal upon us, guaranteeing what is to come (2Co1:22, Eph 4:30).
I have confidence that, unless I become afflicted with some disorder that severely compromises my ability to reason, I will not "return to him".
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
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Offline Yes, Luke was most likely a physician, which would have made him an exception among the Apostles. Similarly, he likely was a Gentile... but that still leaves the other 11 Apostles and Paul, so perhaps I should say 'mostly' simple men, and all Jews except 1.As to the authorship of the gospels, I think we have far more than speculation. We have the letters themselves, which often identify or otherwise give clues as to the identities of their authors. We also have early Christian writings, which affirm authorship (ie Irenaeus, Muratorian Canon, etc.)
For the authorship of the gospels, I think that what we mostly have is tradition. Mark is considered to be the oldest of the four gospels and the earliest evidence that identifies "Mark" as the author comes from Papias of Hierapolis in the 2nd century. So, the information is necessarily second hand, at best. Matthew and Luke are widely thought to have been based on Mark. As for the books attributed to John, their authorship has been disputed from as far back as at least the 3rd century.
Biblical scholars are pretty confident that Paul wrote most of the letters attributed to him. There is significant doubt about Colossians and there is strong agreement that Hebrews was not written by Paul but the authorship of the rest of the Pauline works seems fairly secure.
"Lots of religions have martyrs."Why was there a 'religion' though? To say that these people were martyrs for their faith, is also to say that they HAD incredibly strong faith.
Why would they have that faith if their 'religion' was merely the creation of a crazy Jew Saul?
The origins of Mormonism are plainly ridiculous and yet it it has grown very impressively. Peter Popoff was exposed as a fraud in the '80s and declared bankruptcy but he has become a millionaire again because he has been able to persuade so many people to believe in him to the point that they sacrifice their savings for him (his strategies mostly target the poor). Many millions of people believe in obviously nonsensical ideas such as astrology and homeopathy. Parents who are Jehovah's Witnesses have been willing to let their children die rather than allow them to receive medical treatments that are forbidden by their church doctrines. There is something about the human brain that tends to make us eager to believe, even sometimes at a horrible cost.
Why would they have faith if their leader was recently crucified? Even if Jesus was crucified a decade or two before, this would certainly still be 'recent' in the minds of those around him. Look at how long the death of JFK, Martin Luther King, and even Jim Morrison resonate across the decades. More importantly, there would still be living eye-witnesses able to contradict any falsehoods attributed to Jesus by these writers.
The growth of early Christianity occurred mostly outside of Israel and the authors of the gospels are not thought to have done their writing in Israel. Paul certainly focused his work on Gentiles. Since people of that time didn't have the Internet or even newspapers and the writers were working at a distance from the location of the purported events they were describing, it seems unlikely to me that the authors of most of the books of the New Testament needed to worry much about being contradicted by potential eye witnesses.
Why exactly would Saul; a Jew among Jews, trained under Gamelial, zealous for the law... why would he found a 'new' religion in opposition to Judaism? If he did, why would those he persecuted adopt HIS religion? I think Paul's own account rings more true. Something incredible happened to him on the road to Damascus, and there he accepted that the one he was persecuting was the Messiah.
The account of Paul's conversion experience reads very much like a psychotic break, which really would explain a lot. The bout of what sounds a lot like hysterical blindness following the "encounter" on the road to Damascus certainly fits that hypothesis. In ancient times, episodes of psychosis were not understood as well as they are today and were generally believed to be of supernatural origin. In the mind of the person experiencing them, hallucinations and delusions can be as "real" as the ordinary experience of our senses is to you and me. Taking all that together, I think we have a reasonable explanation of why Paul might have completely believed his own story and why others would have also believed in him.
We have very few ancient historical accounts of 'great' events in history from 2000 years ago. We have only Caesar's rather self serving account for the seige of Alesia for example. To claim that we have no records of Jesus from 'the time' is rather a false analogy. The Gospels may have been put to pen a few decades later, but as evidenced by the hypothetical 'Q' gospel, it is generally recognized that they were based upon previous accounts. These accounts may well have been oral, and only put down in written form later.
To compare the events surrounding the supposed crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus to accounts of ancient kings and battles and such is a false analogy. Unlike the Jesus story, those events describe ordinary events -- that is, they are events that are not significantly different from our ordinary experience of human life. Claims about ordinary events can be provisionally accepted on weaker evidence than claims about extraordinary events. Since I live in northern British Columbia, if I told you I saw a moose crossing the road recently, it would be quite reasonable for you to accept that story at face value. However, if I told you I saw a Sasquatch, I hope that you'd be rather skeptical about it. (The line between ordinary and extraordinary may be a bit fuzzy but the supernatural events described in the various stories about Jesus clearly are not close to the gray area.)
From the rapid spread of 'Christianity' though, we can surely say that the subject of Jesus' crucifiction was well and surely 'discussed' by contemporaries.
Yes but, as I explained above, not necessarily by potential eye witnesses.
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
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Offline Perhaps you should have made it more clear that what you were saying is that it's not good to go against your conscience. That's something I can agree with with. Because I value truth and reason and because I respect scientific methods of investigation, for me to accept something purely on faith, as you clearly do, would be to violate my conscience in such a way that I could no longer respect myself. If I were to espouse your beliefs, I would have to consider myself untrustworthy and morally corrupt.
NoDeity,
The supports for real faith are very real. They are just spiritual rather than material or "feeling based".
Your avatar is a man playing a guitar - don't know if that's you or not - but music is musically supported and musically discerned. You can discern a supporting cord or a discord.
Faith is also supported - but by spiritual things that are spiritually discerned. Those who don't have the gift of the Spirit aren't equipped to discern them - and confidence won't change that any more than those auditioning on American Idol that can't sing but are confident.
The gift of the Spirit is received by faith - you can get it but by your own admission you don't have the faith at the moment to get it. It could be given to you but your pride in your own ideas would be a barrier to that.
If God ignites it in you the struggle will begin, because you will discern your true spiritual state and your need for help fighting through it and your enemies arrayed against you - including your old self. And then you would be beyond the laughter of men in your following Christ. As it is you are unawake to the building being on aflame with respect to your spiritual condition. To you I'm just a casual annoyance, but someday you'll know you had a real friend trying to share the way of escape with you. Hopefully sooner than later, more rather than less.
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Offline NoDeity wrote:Perhaps you should have made it more clear that what you were saying is that it's not good to go against your conscience. That's something I can agree with with. Because I value truth and reason and because I respect scientific methods of investigation, for me to accept something purely on faith, as you clearly do, would be to violate my conscience in such a way that I could no longer respect myself. If I were to espouse your beliefs, I would have to consider myself untrustworthy and morally corrupt.
NoDeity,
The supports for real faith are very real. They are just spiritual rather than material or "feeling based".
Your avatar is a man playing a guitar - don't know if that's you or not - but music is musically supported and musically discerned. You can discern a supporting cord or a discord.
Yes, that's me in the photo. While musical tastes are subjective, the actual music is not. The characteristics of music can be measured very precisely. In structure, music is mathematical. To compare music to faith in this context is plainly ridiculous.
Reality is the graveyard of the gods.
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Why would an eye-witness wait 40 years to write about such important people and events? Especially when contemporary historians didn't mention them at all?
Did Paul create a religion? As his works existed decades before the gospels, it leads that way. Would they follow the religion of a former persecutor? Probably not - that's why I consider that story an embellishment to show the power of the new religion. Kind of like the testimonies that start out with how rotten of a sinner the testifier used to be before god miraculously changed them. Add in that Mark was likely written by John Mark (Paul's fellow traveler) anonymously and more strength comes to that argument.
You asked a good question there - did the apostles believe Jesus was Messiah? Or did they write up a character which borrowed liberally from the resurrection stories of other gods to make a teacher they liked more special? They could have done both. So yes you can have it both ways. Their martyrdoms were not for the beliefs as much as they ticked off those in power. Rome didn't care about their beliefs until they needed to protect against their own incompetence. They were scapegoated, yes, but not for the belief in their particular brand of magic.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Yes, Luke was most likely a physician, which would have made him an exception among the Apostles. Similarly, he likely was a Gentile... but that still leaves the other 11 Apostles and Paul, so perhaps I should say 'mostly' simple men, and all Jews except 1.
As to the authorship of the gospels, I think we have far more than speculation. We have the letters themselves, which often identify or otherwise give clues as to the identities of their authors. We also have early Christian writings, which affirm authorship (ie Irenaeus, Muratorian Canon, etc.)
Lots of religions have martyrs.
Why was there a 'religion' though? To say that these people were martyrs for their faith, is also to say that they HAD incredibly strong faith.
Why would they have that faith if their 'religion' was merely the creation of a crazy Jew Saul? Why would they have faith if their leader was recently crucified? Even if Jesus was crucified a decade or two before, this would certainly still be 'recent' in the minds of those around him. Look at how long the death of JFK, Martin Luther King, and even Jim Morrison resonate across the decades. More importantly, there would still be living eye-witnesses able to contradict any falsehoods attributed to Jesus by these writers.
Why exactly would Saul; a Jew among Jews, trained under Gamelial, zealous for the law... why would he found a 'new' religion in opposition to Judaism? If he did, why would those he persecuted adopt HIS religion? I think Paul's own account rings more true. Something incredible happened to him on the road to Damascus, and there he accepted that the one he was persecuting was the Messiah.
We have very few ancient historical accounts of 'great' events in history from 2000 years ago. We have only Caesar's rather self serving account for the seige of Alesia for example. To claim that we have no records of Jesus from 'the time' is rather a false analogy. The Gospels may have been put to pen a few decades later, but as evidenced by the hypothetical 'Q' gospel, it is generally recognized that they were based upon previous accounts. These accounts may well have been oral, and only put down in written form later. From the rapid spread of 'Christianity' though, we can surely say that the subject of Jesus' crucifiction was well and surely 'discussed' by contemporaries.