Why Christianity?

[JackRussell]

Having read Randy as a lurker for a long while, I think he truly doesn't see what a piss-poor job he's doing. Comparing us to tricking dog's into taking a pill with bacon, well he should know that dealing with atheists is more like herding cats.

[abaris]

I keep hoping for actual interaction...

As soon as you decide on being an actual person instead of a quotemining robot, you might just get that.

[Randy Carson]

You're impossible to engage with Randy - you are sooo condescending, like you know things that nobody else does - something I see in a lot of Christians that you take to a new level. You're a poster child for why theists can be so damn hard to get along with.
And you still haven't gotten that the Bible is not proof of its own stories - you have these oh so very obvious failsafes built into your brain that makes critical thinking apparently impossible. But for all of your prolific posting, I still get the feeling that you're doing it mainly to keep yourself convinced.

Let me get this straight...and I hope others besides you are listening...

When I posted a comment saying that based on what I read from him, I think rob might have the potential to become a Christian one day, I was being condescending, right?

But when you post a comment saying that based on what you read from me, I'm only doing it to keep myself convinced...but that's NOT condescending.

But we're both just speculating about someone we don't know except through this forum...

Could you help me to understand why what you're doing is okay, but what I did is not?

Thanks in advance.

Oh, one other point...you still haven't gotten it into your head that the Bible is not one single book...it is 73 books by 40+ authors over a 1,500-year period. And the NT specifically is 27 different books with the four gospels providing independent, multiple attestation from eyewitnesses, so, yeah, they pretty much are proof of their common material. We also have non-canonical material from non-Christian sources providing additional corroboration...something you have not thought critically about, apparently.

[Shuffle]

1. The argument which is unique to Christianity is that Jesus prophesied that he would die and rise from the dead and that this resurrection gives us a reason to believe his claims of divinity. Scholars who have studied the dying and rising gods genre have determined that Jesus is not the copy-cat god; it is the other gods of the middle east that began to claim bodily resurrection in the first and second century AFTER Jesus. IOW, they are the copy-cats - not Jesus.
Jews and Muslims do not make similar claims for the major figures of their respective faiths.

2. It could have been one of them; therefore, it would be reasonable for you to examine what can be known about Thor, Ba'al and others to determine which God is the most likely candidate. Since it is also reasonable to assume that others have made a similar examination throughout the course of human history, starting with the largest religions - Christianity, Islam and Hinduism - would be most efficient. Further, you might ask yourself whether monotheism is more plausible than polytheism; if so, you could put Hinduism on the back burner.

3. Yahweh and Allah are the same God. The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not seem to qualify as an all-powerful God since it has been argued by its followers that the reason people are taller today on average than they were in the past is that as the population of the planet has grown over the past few centuries, the FSM's noodly appendages have not been able to push people down as much as before. IOW, the FSM does not appear to be omnipotent, and the idea that a god who is not omnipotent created EVERYTHING from nothing fails to persuade.  

4. If you are interested in a lot of interaction with your questions, you will get more and better responses to them at the Catholic Answers Forum.

1. You are funny! None that predate Jesus? How about the ancient Near Eastern and Greek deities Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Attis, Tammuz, Asclepius, Orpheus, Krishna, Ra, Osiris, Jesus, Zalmoxis, Dionysus, Odin, Inanna, also known as Ishtar, whose cult dates to 4000 BCE, and Persephone, the central figure of the Eleusinian Mysteries, whose cult may date to 1700 BCE as the unnamed goddess worshiped in Crete.

2. There are an infinite amount of gods. Thats going to take a while to go through!

3. There are no official doctrines for the church of the Flying Spaghetti doctrines. Try again.

4. Maybe, if I have the time. Two forums are a lot to keep up with.

[Randy Carson]

I think your judgement is a little harsh.

Randy isn't an intellectual, he's a salesman, it's what he does.  When he's selling whatever he's selling, he doesn't need to understand what he's selling, he's just got to try to get his sales methodology right.

It's the same when he's selling Jesus - for heaven's sake he can't even see the curious contradiction that, while he's a Protestant who switched to Catholicism, all his sales materials and methodology are Protestant Evangelical.

So, Randy doesn't have discussions, he has sales methodologies.

Yah, but on a 'discussion' forum that's not really very helpful. I actually think my analysis is spot on. He is not interested in the main reason this forum is here, to 'talk', and as such, people lost interest in him a long time ago.

I ain't got no time for entertaining the delusions of a simpleton, salesman or not. If other folks want to that's their choice, but I still think, for the reasons both you and I cite above, his ability to interact is so low it's next to dinosaur bones.

If you've been paying attention, you will have noticed that at no time during her membership in this forum (prompted by her truly unfortunate suspension at CAF for the same empty snarkiness we're witnessing here) has kaninchen ever bothered to take one of my posts apart by quoting scholars, scripture, popular articles or any other source she could possibly use to demonstrate the validity of her own position. This is because she has no position. That's not why she's here.

Kaninchen's sole purpose for being here is to attack me. Now, this could be argued as violating rules 3 and/or 4 of the forum, but if these rules were to be enforced, half the membership would be banned...beginnning with Minimalist who lives to troll/flame - it's just who he is. But I digress.

Kaninchen has no arguments of her own to offer; she will never present an actual defense of her position nor will she counter any material that I post. That would require thought and effort - and a bit of time at the very least.

She's just is a snipe - a specialist in the art of the petty verbal attack. An clanging gong with no melody or rhythm. And her pettiness could not be demonstrated more clearly than by the fact that having gotten herself suspended at CAF, she couldn't help following me here to continue her ad hominem attacks. That this reveals her to be a small-minded and vindictive person either didn't occur to her...or she simply didn't care so blinded was she by her own need to spew her surprisingly venom-less bile at me.

Women can be like that at times.

What Kaninchen has overlooked is that if she take her own Jewish faith seriously, then eventually none of the atheist members of this forum will treat her with any more respect than they do any other serious theist. Catholic_Lady was far more pleasant than Kaninchen will ever know how to be...and look how that turned out.

However, this may be the reason why she doesn't bother to defend the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: she doesn't actually believe in him, either.

[Shuffle]

Forget all the other denominations and focus on mine. There, I gave you three.

We need to finish the below conversation before we can continue.
I have no problem assuming the existence of something for the sake of argument.  I don't need to believe in the FSM in order to test the logic of the argumentation of his/her/its existence.
That's true.  I'm sorry for confusing claims made about the FSM with the FSM.  I agree that I would object if people were claiming something inconsistent with the revelation of the Biblical God.  What does the FSM claim about him/her/itself?
@Shuffle
We need to determine if you are a false prophet of the FSM before we can continue.

No we don't.
The FSM claims that you are an idiot.
I like spaghetti... does that count?

---

Hey Shuffle,  I think we have to consider.....

What? Are you just putting that to avoid our previous discussion, which you have already cowardly avoided?

---

You're impossible to engage with Randy - you are sooo condescending, like you know things that nobody else does - something I see in a lot of Christians that you take to a new level. You're a poster child for why theists can be so damn hard to get along with.
And you still haven't gotten that the Bible is not proof of its own stories - you have these oh so very obvious failsafes built into your brain that makes critical thinking apparently impossible. But for all of your prolific posting, I still get the feeling that you're doing it mainly to keep yourself convinced.

Let me get this straight...and I hope others besides you are listening...

When I posted a comment saying that based on what I read from him, I think rob might have the potential to become a Christian one day, I was being condescending, right?

But when you post a comment saying that based on what you read from me, I'm only doing it to keep myself convinced...but that's NOT condescending.

But we're both just speculating about someone we don't know except through this forum...

Could you help me to understand why what you're doing is okay, but what I did is not?

Thanks in advance.

Oh, one other point...you still haven't gotten it into your head that the Bible is not one single book...it is 73 books by 40+ authors over a 1,500-year period. And the NT specifically is 27 different books with the four gospels providing independent, multiple attestation from eyewitnesses, so, yeah, they pretty much are proof of their common material. We also have non-canonical material from non-Christian sources providing additional corroboration...something you have not thought critically about, apparently.

So, if I put all of the Harry Potter book in one, then there is MAGICALLY proof for Harry Potter? No.

[Randy Carson]

1. The argument which is unique to Christianity is that Jesus prophesied that he would die and rise from the dead and that this resurrection gives us a reason to believe his claims of divinity. Scholars who have studied the dying and rising gods genre have determined that Jesus is not the copy-cat god; it is the other gods of the middle east that began to claim bodily resurrection in the first and second century AFTER Jesus. IOW, they are the copy-cats - not Jesus.
Jews and Muslims do not make similar claims for the major figures of their respective faiths.

2. It could have been one of them; therefore, it would be reasonable for you to examine what can be known about Thor, Ba'al and others to determine which God is the most likely candidate. Since it is also reasonable to assume that others have made a similar examination throughout the course of human history, starting with the largest religions - Christianity, Islam and Hinduism - would be most efficient. Further, you might ask yourself whether monotheism is more plausible than polytheism; if so, you could put Hinduism on the back burner.

3. Yahweh and Allah are the same God. The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not seem to qualify as an all-powerful God since it has been argued by its followers that the reason people are taller today on average than they were in the past is that as the population of the planet has grown over the past few centuries, the FSM's noodly appendages have not been able to push people down as much as before. IOW, the FSM does not appear to be omnipotent, and the idea that a god who is not omnipotent created EVERYTHING from nothing fails to persuade.  

4. If you are interested in a lot of interaction with your questions, you will get more and better responses to them at the Catholic Answers Forum.

1. You are funny! None that predate Jesus? How about the ancient Near Eastern and Greek deities Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Attis, Tammuz, Asclepius, Orpheus, Krishna, Ra, Osiris, Jesus, Zalmoxis, Dionysus, Odin, Inanna, also known as Ishtar, whose cult dates to 4000 BCE, and Persephone, the central figure of the Eleusinian Mysteries, whose cult may date to 1700 BCE as the unnamed goddess worshiped in Crete.

This is an old and not uncommon attack on Christianity. Consequently, a lot of scholarship and research has been put into evaluating the validity of the "copy-cat" accusation. The bottom line is that Christians have nothing to fear from those who claim that the disciples simply borrowed ideas from gods that existed prior to Jesus' day. The fact is that while there are a few parallels here and there, there is no ancient god who provided the prototype for Jesus. In point of fact, the claims of dying and rising gods actually appeared in these other religions AFTER Jesus. Gods who died and rose with the seasons or who continued to live on but in another world, etc. are NOT the same as Jesus who died and physically rose to life again ONCE in this world before ascending to heaven.

Now, I am well aware of the fact that you may have read books and/or Internet postings that claim the opposite of this, but as Dr. Yamauchi (a legitimate scholar in this area of specialization) has noted, none of these authors have real academic credentials. There are plenty of good books refuting this nonsense which you can read if you are so inclined.

2. There are an infinite amount of gods. Thats going to take a while to go through!

Agreed. That's why I proposed that you start with the largest and work your way down the list till you get to something that makes sense to you.

3. There are no official doctrines for the church of the Flying Spaghetti doctrines. Try again.

Okay, thanks. What has the FSM actually revealed about itself? I ask because apart from any revelation, the FSM would be a deistic god and not a theistic one because if you don't know that it has interacted with creation, you have to conclude that the silence is intentionally deistic.

It also seems reasonable that if we accept that the FSM exists, then it must have certain characteristics that any religion would ascribe to its god(s), and these would form the basis of some theological doctrines however limited they might be.

4. Maybe, if I have the time. Two forums are a lot to keep up with.

Believe me, there's not going to be enough substantive material in this forum to keep you occupied. If you're an adult who still laughs at fart jokes, however, you may fit right in.

[Randy Carson]

So your response to the accusation of having no interest in real interaction on here at all is to prove that point?

Are you suggesting that I should post MORE frequently, Steve?

I'm sure the other members of the forum will be thrilled to hear you've encouraged me...

[Shuffle]

1. This is an old and not uncommon attack on Christianity. Consequently, a lot of scholarship and research has been put into evaluating the validity of the "copy-cat" accusation. The bottom line is that Christians have nothing to fear from those who claim that the disciples simply borrowed ideas from gods that existed prior to Jesus' day. The fact is that while there are a few parallels here and there, there is no ancient god who provided the prototype for Jesus. In point of fact, the claims of dying and rising gods actually appeared in these other religions AFTER Jesus. Gods who died and rose with the seasons or who continued to live on but in another world, etc. are NOT the same as Jesus who died and physically rose to life again ONCE in this world before ascending to heaven.

2. Now, I am well aware of the fact that you may have read books and/or Internet postings that claim the opposite of this, but as Dr. Yamauchi (a legitimate scholar in this area of specialization) has noted, none of these authors have real academic credentials. There are plenty of good books refuting this nonsense which you can read if you are so inclined.



3. Agreed. That's why I proposed that you start with the largest and work your way down the list till you get to something that makes sense to you.

4. Okay, thanks. What has the FSM actually revealed about itself? I ask because apart from any revelation, the FSM would be a deistic god and not a theistic one because if you don't know that it has interacted with creation, you have to conclude that the silence is intentionally deistic.
It also seems reasonable that if we accept that the FSM exists, then it must have certain characteristics that any religion would ascribe to its god(s), and these would form the basis of some theological doctrines however limited they might be.

5. Believe me, there's not going to be enough substantive material in this forum to keep you occupied. If you're an adult who still laughs at fart jokes, however, you may fit right in.

1. I was not claiming that anyone borrowed anything from anyone. All I was pointing out was that you are wrong when you said no god was ever purported to have resurrected before Jesus. Are you claiming that every single god I mentioned did not supposedly resurrect before Jesus? We can go through each one and see if that is true.

2. I don't need to read anything except the list I posted earlier to know that you are an idiot.

3. Since when did my "sense" make things true?

4. He has revealed many things to me. Would you like me to list a few?

5. I haven't encountered any fart jokes yet, but my eyes are peeled.

[Randy Carson]

Answer: None.

To which post and question are you responding?

For an argument to hold any significant weight it'd need actual evidence from an unbiased source to support it, and none of them have it.

Hardly. EVERYONE is biased; the question is whether you are aware of your bias or not. The authors of the gospels WERE biased, but then, so are the authors of textbooks about biology or the origin of the universe. What matters, Tori, is whether you can recognize the bias (yours and theirs) and sort the facts from the fiction, so to speak. Professional historians do this all the time, and yet, they have no problem with accepting the gospels are historical documents which provide important information about the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

If they did and one day reached the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that their beliefs are true, then they'd cease being beliefs and would turn into facts.

Hmmm...if you were sitting on a jury listening to a murder trial, you might determine in your mind that the evidence presented by the prosecutor had proven the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. But would this mean that you knew with absolute certitude that the person on trial had committed the crime? Or would it simply mean that the probability that the defendant was guilty had reached the level of being much more probable than his innocence?

Is our understanding of Christianity any different? Aren't we making a decision about what we believe to be more probable than not?

That's why I never understood why Christians try so hard to prove their religion true, it'd ruin all the importance they put in faith. Not only that, but even if they could, that wouldn't convert non-believers. It'd just turn them anti-theists if they weren't already.

Not really. We put our faith in God based upon what we know about God. There's nothing wrong with gathering the data and making an informed decision to believe and trust God.

And in case you're wondering, I thought that even when I identified as a Christian. Well, the latter years, anyway.

Maybe it's worth taking a second look now that you're older.