Theists: would you view the truth?

[Ignorant]

I mean, I already don't eat meat on Fridays. But why don't you? [1] Does it benefit you in this life? [2] If so, why would you stop? [3] If not, I guess it's about ensuring the best afterlife... I guess? [4] I'm not sure why else anyone does these religious practices. [5] If it's about thanking God or whatever, it seems over the top considering he is usually described as expending zero energy in doing all this. [6] Or am I thanking him for not coming back and turning it off? Not breaking my legs?

I'd be happy to talk to you about some of these things!

1) Primarily, it is a "penance" which calls to mind Jesus's death on Good Friday. By mindfully taking care to give up meat on Friday, we try to honor Jesus who gave up his "flesh" for our salvation. Secondarily, the community of Christians (i.e. the Church) asks its members to do this. In this secondary way, I can act in solidarity with all Christians, and together with them, call to mind the Lord's Passion.

Even so, the modern world has made these food selections arbitrary. Today, Catholics may choose some other form of "penance" to engage in every Friday rather than not eating meat.

2) Yes. It is a concrete way to enter into more abstract realities, i.e. it is a very simple concrete act which draws your attention to the more abstract contemplation of salvation on the cross, and it is a very simple concrete act which draws you into the more abstract communion with people all over the world. Both of these things bring me into a deeper understanding of human life.

3) If there is no Passion to contemplate or "tap into", and there is no real Christian community which that Passion creates, then the practice loses its meaning and its source. I might still refrain from eating meat on Fridays, but for completely different reasons. Or, I may treat Friday like any other day. Who knows?

4) Well that is one of the absurd things about Christianity. If Jesus is God incarnate, then this is another way of saying that Jesus brought our afterlife TO THIS life. We believe that our religious liturgies and practices allow us to "taste" that afterlife, HERE in THIS life. That is what the Kingdom of God in Jesus's preaching is about. That is why we go to Mass. That is why we participate in the sacraments. God comes to earth in those sacraments, and brings the eternal life for which we hope with him. It's absurd, I know! But it is also the good news!

5) See 4. Through Jesus, his community, and the religion he established, heaven is overflowing into our life, while we wait for its fulfillment at the resurrection. In other words, we don't do these things to "score points" for a good afterlife. We do them to experience that afterlife, here and now, WHILE we wait for it! That's the "good news". Hopefully, by doing these things, other people will be invited to share in that life.

6) Thanking god is part of it, sure. But we thank god in the way that Jesus thanked god, and we are united to that thanking act, and that union brings us into real contact with god himself, here on earth. In other words, united to Christ's act of thanking (in Greek, eucharistia), the liturgy draws us into the divine life itself, which is eternal life, the afterlife, experienced here in this life.

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They might have been less interested in the importance of the DATE and more interested in the importance of the SELF-PREDICTED RESURRECTION OF A MAN.

More likely they were just assholes who fell for a cock and bull story they heard around a campfire. [1]

I know you think your boy is special.... but he wasn't.  There were similar 'gods' all over the ANE at the time. [2]

1) Yup. Does that usually lead to a global religion of the scale of Judeo-Christianity, or are we just a 3000 year series of unfortunate events?

2) Fair enough.