(December 15, 2017 at 9:36 am)SteveII Wrote:

(December 15, 2017 at 1:05 am)Dnte Wrote: Yes, I've read the new testament. You can bookmark bible passages on biblegateway.com and I'm looking at it and I have almost 1000 favorite passages of the new and old testament bookmarked on my account. I used to quote some of the NT passages in order to justify my catholic faith against protestants (those pesky people out of the only true and real church.) 

But the miracles in the NT don't make any sense if you don't have faith. In my opinion, Jesus was like any other human person: unable to do miracles.

Here's the thing. You don't have ANY evidence of your theory. The only reason you believe it is that you don't think miracles can happen. So that makes your whole idea question begging. 

1. Miracles can't happen
2. The NT can't be true because miracles can't happen
3. Therefore miracles never happened--must be a scam

Quote:...

Some prophets are extremely capable of brainwashing their followers.

Let's assume we are Jesus followers. We help him stage a lot of his miracles so people will start believing in him (otherwise people would've been uninterested.) We want our "master" to be the prophet who will triumph over other prophets. Brainwash session after brainwash session, Jesus offers us many things (like the way Mohammed promised 72 virgins to whomever blew himself up in the name of his religion.) Jesus is so convincing that he makes us believe he's special but... he needs a little of help in order to convert the unbelievers. So we stage his miracles, hire people there and there and our sect keeps growing every day.

This shows your ignorance of Judaism. The teachings of Jesus and his disciples (that Jesus was the messiah) would have been an anathema to first century Jews. So, your theory hinges on Jesus picking the most objectionable thing to a Jew to base his scam on. Good thinking!

Quote:Romans and jews get annoyed, they kill our master, he doesn't resurrect (obviously), so what do we do? Do we tell people: "hey, Jesus was an ordinary man, there were no miracles, our sect is a fraud!" OR we remove his body from the tomb and (probably) stage his resurecction hiring a man who looks like him to act like Jesus "you don't believe me? touch my wounds! Hey, it's real!!!!" and continue his sect even after his death. 

What do we get? Well, we don't have to work hard during our lifetime, we preach to other people from town to town, people gives us food and money, we earn power and fame. But... along the road someone notices it and sentences us to death. Do we act like this?: "but it was a fraud! I helped Jesus stage his miracles! I didn't mean to, I'm an honest person!" Our executioners AND the people who believed in our lies would get pretty mad at us (they would kill us anyway), so we'd rather shut up and accept our fate knowing that people will consider us martyrs after our death (most disciples were already old men, so they probably thought "my time has come" before dieing.) 

Some of the followers are so brainwashed that they'll die even knowing it was a fraud to begin with. Because Jesus' words were so convincing they started to believe he was the messiah. So they accept their death sentence with devotion (has anyone seen this elsewhere?)

We, Jesus' followers end up getting killed, but our lies, our scam lives on. It perpetuates itself, it gains more followers and people who believe in it. Until some of the sectarians decide to write down all those lies. If you've read Biblical apocrypha, you'll notice they're full of mythology and things that go against the mainline gospels. So centuries later (people still don't have access to the gospels, they hear everything from the mouths of the sectarians), all the clergy gets together in order to decide which books are going to be accepted by all the members of the church, so there will be no conflicts between the gospels. That's why many gospels were left out and the ones that didn't have many contradictions (because even though the mainline gospels were picked carefully, they still contradict each other in some parts) are chosen to be part of the new testament. The gathering ends and the lie is secured once again (they also chose the books that didn't portray romans as evil people because romans were the ruling power at the time.)

You are making up things or you're just repeating atheist bullshit you read somewhere. The the books and letters of the NT were recognized as having authority hundreds of years before being recognized by any formal body. 

Quote:Justin Martyr
In the mid-2nd century, Justin Martyr (whose writings span the period from c. 145 to 163) mentions the "memoirs of the apostles", which Christians called "gospels" and which were regarded as on par with the Old Testament.[5][34][35] Scholars are divided on whether there is any evidence that Justin included the Gospel of John among the "memoirs of the apostles", or whether, on the contrary, he based his doctrine of the Logos on it.[36][37] Justin quotes the letters of Paul, 1 Peter, and Acts in his writings.[38]

In Justin's works, distinct references are found to Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, and possible ones to Philippians, Titus, and 1 Timothy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmen...tin_Martyr

Read the other sections from this Wikipedia article and you can see there is an unbroken chain of discussion on what was considered authoritative since the first century. 

Quote:Many people think, we'll.... it's the word of God! It never changes! But it does change! Translation after translation, copy after copy. I bet protestants don't have the same bible christians used to have back in the 3rd century. Even the Catholic church introduced new dogmas as late as the 19th century (marian dogmas anyone?) The lie is so big it cannot be destroyed anymore. Jesus, the human prophet's story, has been so distorted by countless people that we don't even know who the real person was. Sadly, it was distorted out of petty interests, thirst of money and power, desires to oppress generations of people, or just by flagrant zealotry. Or.... FEAR (If you don't believe he's the son of God, you will go to HELL) and devotion (blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed!!!)

You are confusing several things together. First, for over 100 years we have been using textual reconstruction/analysis to compare very old copies of the NT that we know came from different "lineages" of copies to ascertain what the original said:

Quote:There are more manuscripts that preserve the New Testament than there are for any other ancient writing. Although the exact form of the text preserved in later manuscripts may not be identical to the form of the text as it existed in antiquity, it is agreed by most scholars to be 99.5% identical in content, with the rest being minor variations such as spelling. Such variations are not seen to affect the meaning or interpretation of the scriptures and are usually given reference to as in-page footnotes in most of today's bibles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_m...anuscripts

Second, you confuse the Catholic church adding their specific beliefs about Christianity with that of original Christianity. That objection pertains specifically to the Catholic Church then and does nothing to support your thread title/premise.

Quote:But why did Jesus start all of this? Well, maybe he was a very religious person who was very concerned about jewish people and the way they were behaving during his lifetime. He might have also believed that the end was soon, so he did everything in his power to mend their ways. Some people have psychiatric disorders that make them hear voices or see things, what if Jesus had a psychiatric condition that allowed him to get in touch with "supernatural entities."

I could name countless reasons why christianity still exists nowadays, but that's not what's being discussed here. I want christians to give their point of view about why they think christianity is not a scam, why they think that Jesus is the son of God and that he did all those miracles for real. 

I don't want them to think that this is an attack on their religion. I'm trying to use my logic. This might as well be the Gospel according to me, but my logical mind is always trying to find a feasable answer. I don't want to believe in fairy tales, I want to believe in a religion in a logical way. But I can't when it comes to christianity.  

This whole thread was a poorly thought out premise with nothing to back it up but inaccuracies, opinion, and question-begging assumptions. Hardly a reflection of "I don't want them to think that this is an attack on their religion. I'm trying to use my logic. "

I agree, his proposition sucks.

Not believing is one thing. Making up conspiracy theories that don't make sense, especially those based on ignorance, is a whole other story.

(December 13, 2017 at 2:12 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: But Jihadists actually think Mohammed is who he says he is though. If Jesus' friends were helping him set up all these hoax miracles, clearly they'd know He was a fraud. Not sure why they'd die for Him then.

Well I think you'll find the human psyche is more complex than that. I made my wife aware of the chicanery of the original spiritualists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_sisters

But she said that she thought that they were real spiritualists who "helped along" the faith by small hoaxes because it was such a worthy cause.

My wife sees herself as a medium.

Even if my proposition is not true and the Bible has remained unaltered for centuries, so far you Christians have not given me any reason why Jesus’ miracles did in fact happen and I’m still waiting!

My theory is more plausible in the real world.

Let’s see what is more likely to happen somewhere in the world:

-A virgin gives birth to the son of God vs A man is born from a human woman.
-A man goes around doing miracles vs A man goes around staging miracles.
-Religious books are translated and copied and not a single word of them is altered since the 1st century vs Religious books are mistranslated and during the copying process they suffer many alterations over the centuries.
-A cripple is healed by the intervention of the son of God vs Someone gets paid to act like a cripple and fakes his condition, he gets touched by some “prophet” and he’s magically cured.
-People start believing because the real son of God has revealed himself to them vs People start believing because they were duped and because they need something to believe in.

People, we’re talking about this world. I don’t know what world or dimension you believe we’re living in. Maybe everything in the bible happened in another dimension where those kind of things can happen. But in this world I highly doubt it. So let’s talk about why you believe Jesus’ miracles did happen instead of attacking my theory. Of course you have the right to question my theory because I wasn’t there! and I’m just guessing. But I’d also like to hear why you as christians believe the bible is true. Why? "Because the bible says so" is not a valid argument.

Were Jesus' miracles true? The question remains unanswered and no christian dares answer that question.

Should I blindly believe in the bible? That means I would have to throw logic out the window. I might as well believe fairies and unicorns are true!

And yes, my guess definitely makes no sense and is very ignorant because virgin births, healing sick people with magic and everything the bible says makes perfect sense and believing in it is not ignorant at all. lol

---

(December 15, 2017 at 9:36 am)SteveII Wrote:

(December 15, 2017 at 1:05 am)Dnte Wrote: Yes, I've read the new testament. You can bookmark bible passages on biblegateway.com and I'm looking at it and I have almost 1000 favorite passages of the new and old testament bookmarked on my account. I used to quote some of the NT passages in order to justify my catholic faith against protestants (those pesky people out of the only true and real church.) 

But the miracles in the NT don't make any sense if you don't have faith. In my opinion, Jesus was like any other human person: unable to do miracles.

Here's the thing. You don't have ANY evidence of your theory. The only reason you believe it is that you don't think miracles can happen. So that makes your whole idea question begging. 

1. Miracles can't happen
2. The NT can't be true because miracles can't happen
3. Therefore miracles never happened--must be a scam

Quote:...

Some prophets are extremely capable of brainwashing their followers.

Let's assume we are Jesus followers. We help him stage a lot of his miracles so people will start believing in him (otherwise people would've been uninterested.) We want our "master" to be the prophet who will triumph over other prophets. Brainwash session after brainwash session, Jesus offers us many things (like the way Mohammed promised 72 virgins to whomever blew himself up in the name of his religion.) Jesus is so convincing that he makes us believe he's special but... he needs a little of help in order to convert the unbelievers. So we stage his miracles, hire people there and there and our sect keeps growing every day.

This shows your ignorance of Judaism. The teachings of Jesus and his disciples (that Jesus was the messiah) would have been an anathema to first century Jews. So, your theory hinges on Jesus picking the most objectionable thing to a Jew to base his scam on. Good thinking!

Quote:Romans and jews get annoyed, they kill our master, he doesn't resurrect (obviously), so what do we do? Do we tell people: "hey, Jesus was an ordinary man, there were no miracles, our sect is a fraud!" OR we remove his body from the tomb and (probably) stage his resurecction hiring a man who looks like him to act like Jesus "you don't believe me? touch my wounds! Hey, it's real!!!!" and continue his sect even after his death. 

What do we get? Well, we don't have to work hard during our lifetime, we preach to other people from town to town, people gives us food and money, we earn power and fame. But... along the road someone notices it and sentences us to death. Do we act like this?: "but it was a fraud! I helped Jesus stage his miracles! I didn't mean to, I'm an honest person!" Our executioners AND the people who believed in our lies would get pretty mad at us (they would kill us anyway), so we'd rather shut up and accept our fate knowing that people will consider us martyrs after our death (most disciples were already old men, so they probably thought "my time has come" before dieing.) 

Some of the followers are so brainwashed that they'll die even knowing it was a fraud to begin with. Because Jesus' words were so convincing they started to believe he was the messiah. So they accept their death sentence with devotion (has anyone seen this elsewhere?)

We, Jesus' followers end up getting killed, but our lies, our scam lives on. It perpetuates itself, it gains more followers and people who believe in it. Until some of the sectarians decide to write down all those lies. If you've read Biblical apocrypha, you'll notice they're full of mythology and things that go against the mainline gospels. So centuries later (people still don't have access to the gospels, they hear everything from the mouths of the sectarians), all the clergy gets together in order to decide which books are going to be accepted by all the members of the church, so there will be no conflicts between the gospels. That's why many gospels were left out and the ones that didn't have many contradictions (because even though the mainline gospels were picked carefully, they still contradict each other in some parts) are chosen to be part of the new testament. The gathering ends and the lie is secured once again (they also chose the books that didn't portray romans as evil people because romans were the ruling power at the time.)

You are making up things or you're just repeating atheist bullshit you read somewhere. The the books and letters of the NT were recognized as having authority hundreds of years before being recognized by any formal body. 

Quote:Justin Martyr
In the mid-2nd century, Justin Martyr (whose writings span the period from c. 145 to 163) mentions the "memoirs of the apostles", which Christians called "gospels" and which were regarded as on par with the Old Testament.[5][34][35] Scholars are divided on whether there is any evidence that Justin included the Gospel of John among the "memoirs of the apostles", or whether, on the contrary, he based his doctrine of the Logos on it.[36][37] Justin quotes the letters of Paul, 1 Peter, and Acts in his writings.[38]

In Justin's works, distinct references are found to Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, and possible ones to Philippians, Titus, and 1 Timothy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmen...tin_Martyr

Read the other sections from this Wikipedia article and you can see there is an unbroken chain of discussion on what was considered authoritative since the first century. 

Quote:Many people think, we'll.... it's the word of God! It never changes! But it does change! Translation after translation, copy after copy. I bet protestants don't have the same bible christians used to have back in the 3rd century. Even the Catholic church introduced new dogmas as late as the 19th century (marian dogmas anyone?) The lie is so big it cannot be destroyed anymore. Jesus, the human prophet's story, has been so distorted by countless people that we don't even know who the real person was. Sadly, it was distorted out of petty interests, thirst of money and power, desires to oppress generations of people, or just by flagrant zealotry. Or.... FEAR (If you don't believe he's the son of God, you will go to HELL) and devotion (blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed!!!)

You are confusing several things together. First, for over 100 years we have been using textual reconstruction/analysis to compare very old copies of the NT that we know came from different "lineages" of copies to ascertain what the original said:

Quote:There are more manuscripts that preserve the New Testament than there are for any other ancient writing. Although the exact form of the text preserved in later manuscripts may not be identical to the form of the text as it existed in antiquity, it is agreed by most scholars to be 99.5% identical in content, with the rest being minor variations such as spelling. Such variations are not seen to affect the meaning or interpretation of the scriptures and are usually given reference to as in-page footnotes in most of today's bibles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_m...anuscripts

Second, you confuse the Catholic church adding their specific beliefs about Christianity with that of original Christianity. That objection pertains specifically to the Catholic Church then and does nothing to support your thread title/premise.

Quote:But why did Jesus start all of this? Well, maybe he was a very religious person who was very concerned about jewish people and the way they were behaving during his lifetime. He might have also believed that the end was soon, so he did everything in his power to mend their ways. Some people have psychiatric disorders that make them hear voices or see things, what if Jesus had a psychiatric condition that allowed him to get in touch with "supernatural entities."

I could name countless reasons why christianity still exists nowadays, but that's not what's being discussed here. I want christians to give their point of view about why they think christianity is not a scam, why they think that Jesus is the son of God and that he did all those miracles for real. 

I don't want them to think that this is an attack on their religion. I'm trying to use my logic. This might as well be the Gospel according to me, but my logical mind is always trying to find a feasable answer. I don't want to believe in fairy tales, I want to believe in a religion in a logical way. But I can't when it comes to christianity.  

This whole thread was a poorly thought out premise with nothing to back it up but inaccuracies, opinion, and question-begging assumptions. Hardly a reflection of "I don't want them to think that this is an attack on their religion. I'm trying to use my logic. "

Well, why should I believe anything you say anyway? You think the following event did happen for real:

Matthew 27

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and[e] went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

There's no record of this event outside your bible. :/

Quote:This whole thread was a poorly thought out premise with nothing to back it up but inaccuracies, opinion, and question-begging assumptions.

The same could be said about the bible.

(December 15, 2017 at 11:58 am)Dnte Wrote: Even if my proposition is not true and the Bible has remained unaltered for centuries, so far you Christians have not given me any reason why Jesus’ miracles did in fact happen and I’m still waiting!

I'll pick one line of reasoning... Inductive:

a. Jesus most certainly was born, baptized, and died in the time period claimed. (other sources)
b. Pete, James and John were known eyewitnesses to both the public and private events of Jesus' three year ministry
c. They presided over the early church
d. This early church instructed Paul
e. As evidenced by Paul's letters, this early church believed the claims later outlined in the gospels (long before they where written)
f. Peter, James and John eventually wrote letters emphasizing the themes found in the gospels
g. Luke wrote Luke and Acts with the purpose of outlining the events from the birth of Christ through his present day
h. The editors of Matthew, Mark, and John were all alive during the lifetimes of these people above (it is unknown if the actual people with the pen were eyewitnesses)
i. The editors would have been know to the recipients of the gospels. The books were name by which apostle influenced that particular book
j. The early church, who we know believed the claims of Jesus already, accepted the gospels. There is nothing in the early church writings that questioned them.
k. The gospels dovetail nicely with Paul's writings based on his training directly from all the eyewitnesses (completing a loop)
THEREFORE it is reasonable to infer that the events of the gospels are at the very least good representations of what really happened.

Before you jump all over some of the statements above, please realize 1) you do not have proof against any of them (finding someone to agree with you is not proof) and 2) it is inductive reasoning and therefore it is not claiming the list is proof of anything--it is only claiming the inference is reasonable. It is NOT a deductive argument which claims fact, fact, therefore fact. So it is a matter of opinion whether you think the list supports the conclusion or not.

Why might one believe the inference? Like I said many time, it is part of a cumulative case. There are a host of reasons not related to the NT why one might be less skeptical than you.

Quote:My theory is more plausible in the real world.

Let’s see what is more likely to happen somewhere in the world:

-A virgin gives birth to the son of God vs A man is born from a human woman.
-A man goes around doing miracles vs A man goes around staging miracles.
-Religious books are translated and copied and not a single word of them is altered since the 1st century vs Religious books are mistranslated and during the copying process they suffer many alterations over the centuries.
-A cripple is healed by the intervention of the son of God vs Someone gets paid to act like a cripple and fakes his condition, he gets touched by some “prophet” and he’s magically cured.
-People start believing because the real son of God has revealed himself to them vs People start believing because they were duped and because they need something to believe on.

People, we’re talking about this world. I don’t know what world or dimension you believe we’re living in. Maybe everything in the bible happened in another dimension where those kind of things can happen. But in this world I highly doubt it. So let’s talk about why you believe Jesus’ miracles did happen instead of attacking my theory. Of course you have the right to question my theory because I wasn’t there! and I’m just guessing. But I’d also like to hear why you as christians believe the bible is true. Why? "Because the bible says so" is not a valid argument.

Were  Jesus' miracles true? The question remains unanswered and no Christian dares answer that question.

Should I blindly believe in the bible? That means I would have to throw logic out the windows. I might as well believe fairies and unicorns are true!

And yes, my guess definitely makes no sense and is very ignorant because virgin births, healing sick people with magic and everything the bible says makes perfect sense and believing in it is not ignorant at all. lol

see bold

You don't have to throw logic out the window to believe the NT. There is nothing at all illogical about the supernatural per se. If the supernatural exists, there is nothing illogical about supernatural causation in the natural world. The fact that you don't believe it is your opinion as to the reliability of the NT and not based on logic. Like I said before, if you use the argument that there is no such thing as miracles therefore the NT does not refer to actual miracles, you are engaging in question-begging/circular reasoning--which is very bad logic. Half of your post above is an argument from personal incredulity -- more bad logic

Fairies and unicorns? Thinking that's a good comparison to the events of the NT shows that you are ignorant of facts and argumentation and your thoughts on the matter are overly simplistic.

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding of the proposition: that the founder of Christianity, a rabbi known as Yeshua, may have been a scam artist. This does not imply that the devoted followers of Yeshua were in on the scam. A cult leader who has his followers so convinced that they would die for him is not something we don't still see today. An apostle sacrificing himself for his faith almost certainly did so sincerely, but that does not contradict the idea that the originator of the teachings was performing a scam. And there were multiple wonder-working messiahs wandering around Palestine in those days, apparently.

So it's possible that one of them was a scammer who hit pay-dirt and started something lasting.

Is it probable? I don't think so.

Even if the 'wonder-working' was tricks, it doesn't mean Yeshua was insincere. Apparently you had to perform some wonders to get taken seriously by the masses in that time and place. It's only a scam if it's for personal gain, if the aim was really to spread sincerely believed doctrine, the wonder-working tricks would have been showmanship in service to a genuinely believed-in cause.

Or Yeshua could have been a simple teacher, and the wonders were added later as embellishment of oft-told stories. That's pretty common as well (ascribing miraculous events to venerated individuals), and is also something we continue to see today. Legends have a tendency to grow until they're larger-than-life, especially in oral tradition.

Or if there is such a thing as the supernatural, Yeshua could have really been performing the miraculous feats ascribed to him.

Or he was a composite holy figure, with stories about different religious leaders being conflated together and consolidated under one name.

Or he was originally a figurative spiritual character who was later ret-conned into having lived as a real, physical person.

There are too many possibilities combined with too little evidence to say more about the 'scam artist hypothesis' than that it's one of the possibilities. Many atheists don't believe there ever was a real, historical Yeshua, of course if they're correct, if he wasn't real, he definitely wasn't a scam artist. A figure so shrouded by only being reported by those who venerated him as the actual son of the creator of the universe is always going to be mysterious unless relevant evidence that clarifies who he really was comes to light. And of course it won't seem unclear at all to someone who takes all the stories about him at face value, provided they're the stories recorded in the biblical canon.

(December 15, 2017 at 11:58 am)Dnte Wrote: Well, why should I believe anything you say anyway? You think the following event did happen for real:

Matthew 27

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and[e] went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

There's no record of this event outside your bible. :/

Your argument is that there is no record? Jerusalem was totally destroyed in 70AD. In fact, wouldn't you say that 99% of all ancient documents did not survive the march of time. Haven't you ever heard that 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'? 

Quote:

Quote:This whole thread was a poorly thought out premise with nothing to back it up but inaccuracies, opinion, and question-begging assumptions.

The same could be said about the bible.

Difference is: I provided legit reasons to support my claim. Still waiting for you to.

^This^

And I think one's own disposition toward conspiracies will decide just how strongly tempting that hypothesis will be.


Oops, I was ninja'd. It was Mr A I was agreeing with.

Quote:Haven't you ever heard that 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'?

Absence of evidence also cannot be used to support a position.  Do try to remember that no first century writer ever heard of your silly godboy.  Early second century Greco-Roman writers heard of 'christos' ( or at least 'chrestus') but not any 'jesus.'  It would thus appear that 'jesus' and his bullshit story is a mid-to-late second century invention.

Most of Jesus' miracles could've been staged. He didn't end the world's hunger, he didn't erradicate a disease or something of extreme importance and other sources didn't mention his "feats" outside the bible.

He didn't reveal anything of scientific importance, or something that could make humanity progress and enter a new era of prosperity. There were many impostors in that time, why would I have to believe that Jesus was any different? Where are the sources that mention his greatness outside the bible? I need to read what people OUTSIDE his sect experienced during his lifetime.

If you want to justify this scam with the sect's own scriptures that would be like mormons justifying their faith with their own holy books. And it doesn't work that way.

These miracles were in line with superstitious beliefs of that era (raising from the dead, casting out demons, healing sick people) and their account was written by fanatical and religious zealots who were also human and part of a SECT. And as humans they also had their personal interests: money, power, authority, influence, prestige, etc.

Just because Paul, Peter or John Doe said it happened, doesn't make it real. And like most fantastical stories ever written in ancient times, there's a high likelihood that they are the product of someone's imagination.

I won't believe in christianity until there's scientific evidence that anything of that happened. Maybe it's time for you dear Lord to show himself up, he's been 2000 years late!

(December 15, 2017 at 9:36 am)SteveII Wrote: [edit]

You are making up things or you're just repeating atheist bullshit you read somewhere. The the books and letters of the NT were recognized as having authority hundreds of years before being recognized by any formal body. 

[edit]

Recognized as having authority by who and how? Ones that wanted the fantasy myth to be true? Ones that said "this is a story that's floating around"?
Not much authority there.