"The United States is a Christian-founded nation"

[Sword of Christ]

Shared experienced? This is sound like a group of people around a table, and each person is injecting themselves with heroine.

If you go on the premise that God exists then you have the potential for a shared experience of God to a group of people through a man who himself was in God in some mysterious sense. There is a possibility that Yeshua didn't have an Earthly presence and it was some kind of Platonic realm kind of thing but I see no good reason why a literal historical flesh and blood Earthly teacher couldn't exist. He even says the odd thing that Christians find embarrassing or uncomfortable but they recorded it anyway showing they took pains to try and preserve the oral tradition and there were many religious preachers, healers and magic workers with their following around at the time so there is nothing at all historically out of place about it.

If you go on the materialist premise then humans can just be nuts for no reason and can believe in all kinds of bull. The trick is demonstrate that the material premise doesn't really hold a lot of water if you really consider it. If you have an eternal purposeful creator of the universe then certainly you have scope for interaction and revelation however that is achieved and what better revelation than to have God himself in the form of a man? This is a God we can relate to, he's a God who is right here among us and can experience human life and suffering he isn't just out there distant in outer space with a booming voice.

[Dragonetti]

LSD has the same effect.

[Boris Karloff]

I relate to unicorns and Santa myself

[DeistPaladin]

Evidence that people had an experience with the full glory of the risen Christ? We have evidence of that certainly, I can point you towards the text. It doesn't prove they didn't have a collective mass hallucination or something but I don't know how you would prove something like that. All the people involved are dead at this point as well so that would hinder that line inquiry but we have what the wrote. Here you go.

You're using folklore to prove mythology.

It's not necessary to speculate on "mass hallucinations" or any such things. The apostles and their supposed experiences and personal transformations are, at best, matters of folklore. We don't need to explain away that which is not yet proven.

I'm being sympathetic here because I know you view the Bible as a collection of "historical documents" written by "reliable eye-witness accounts". For me, it's no better or worse than the Koran or the Iliad as far as stories go.

We do know there was a Trojan War. The ruins of Troy have confirmed this. Does that mean Zeus and other gods, whose activities were recorded in The Iliad, are also true? Does that mean we take seriously the legend of Achilles and how he was impervious to harm except in his heel? Does that mean we believe the fanciful tales of Odysseus and his ten year journey home?

"But that's different," you might object, "The Iliad and The Odyssey were written by anonymous bards long after the events."

Guess what, the New Testament is just as dubious as source material.

Half of the epistles of Paul, much of which document the supposed "early church", are considered to be of dubious authorship by modern scholars. In these days, the problem of pseudo-epigraphy (i.e. forgery) and interpolation (alteration of authentic documents) were rampant in religious circles. If you had an idea about God you wanted to promote, the easiest way to do it is to take the name of a noted theologian and then "discover" a letter of his. Alternatively, you could take an authentic work and add to it, as we're all but certain bishop Eseubius did to Josephus' Antiquities where a highly questionable paragraph about Jesus was added.

Christianity at that time was actually composed of many rival groups which had radically different ideas about Jesus. Some believed he was born of a virgin, some that he was born the way all babies are born and only later became divine after being adopted by God as a son (Ebionites) and some believed he was never born but rather a higher god who came down to earth one day (Marcionites) and some believed he was never really on earth at all but only appeared as an apparition (Docetics).

Echoes of the early struggles among rival Christian groups is found in the canonical Bible, specifically 1John 4:1-3 and 2John 1:7, where John, supposedly a disciple of Christ, condemns the Docetics as anti-Christians working for evil spirits and that we should have faith that Jesus existed in the flesh.

The "beloved disciple" John appealed to faith? Shouldn't he have appealed to recent history that many people would have remembered?

These early Christians also differed on many other points of theology, including how many gods there were, whether the OT laws should be kept and what the proper path to salvation was.

Modern Christians like to dismiss the "heterodox" Christians as schismatics and insignificant splinter groups but it's clear that they first warranted mention in the canonical scriptures and later the full force of the Roman Empire following Nicaea. The Christian faction that emerged triumphant became what we know today and the others were forcefully stamped out.

So how about this Paul character? Who was he again?

He was the poster boy for the Marcionite Christians. His writings were originally "discovered" by Marcion, a leader of a powerful rival sect of Christians that preached that Jesus was a higher god, superior to that inept demiurge Yahweh, and he rejected all things Jewish. For him, there was no Old Testament, no Mary and Joseph and Jesus was never a baby or "born" on this earth. Jesus was a higher god who appeared on earth as all other gods do, as a fully grown adult in the temple one day to preach a new message of salvation from that inept idiot god, Yahweh. Paul was the man held up by Marion as the prophet who had seen this superior god, Jesus, and pointed the way to salvation by faith.

Strange that the writings of Paul we have today suggest a Trinitarian godman Jesus who was born of a woman and of the bloodline of David, no?

It's almost like Marcion never actually read the writings of the man he held up as the principle prophet of his sect...

...or maybe he did read the letters of Paul and was just hoping no one else would...

...or maybe we don't have "clean" copies of what Marcion originally discovered.

Remember the problems of pseudo-epigraphy and interpolation I told you about earlier?

OK, so what about the Gospels themselves?

Mark: Non-witness, attributed to be the author by "tradition", who only heard about the story of Jesus from Peter, who in turn was not a witness to all of the events (hearsay upon hearsay) and all of this was written down 70 CE, four decades later. Subsequent Gospels were clearly derived from this dubious source.

Matthew: Matthew, or whoever the author was, was clearly a liar from his misquotes of the Old Testament, trying to create "prophecy" where none existed. This source is hardly reliable.

Luke: Non-witness, a companion of Paul.

John: This strange Gospel doesn't agree with any of the others and its "advanced" theology, including referring to "The Jews" as a separate hostile group, suggest a much later date of publication.

And even among these sources, they contradict each other on exactly what Jesus was, when he lived and what he did but that's a more involved discussion. And this is on the life of Jesus. We have even less reliable information on the apostles or how they died. Good luck ever separating any truth, if there even is any to be found, from fanciful legends and myths.

Don't use folklore to try to prove mythology. It won't work with anyone not already indoctrinated by Christianity.

[Sword of Christ]

LSD has the same effect.

I don't think anyone reports a mystical or religious experience from using LSD though DMT seems to do something like that. I think it may facilitate the interaction between matter and consciousness hence the experience people will get when they take larger than natural occurring amounts of it. Also large amounts of DMT are present in the brain after someone experiences a near (or temporary) death experience. There's an interesting book about it here.



Also the Doors of Perception that's a fairly well known book.



Anything you would like to mention I will have something that will go into the relevant the details.

[Minimalist]

The claim is that some people historically had an experience of some kind of experience with someone and something they took to be God.

Does that apply to worshipers of Odin or Quetzlcoatl or this is strictly xtian special pleading?

[DeistPaladin]

If you go on the materialist premise then humans can just be nuts for no reason and can believe in all kinds of bull.

Would I be right in thinking this is how you see the cult of Jim Jones, the Branch Davidians or the Heaven's Gate cult?

They all died for their lies too.

And they lived in the modern age, not in a more superstitious time when ancient Judea chaffed under Roman rule and was desperately searching for their messiah.

Even if you COULD prove that the apostles all died for their beliefs (folklore), it would be special pleading to accept this as proof of the truth of their beliefs and yet dismiss Jim Jones or David Koresh as crazy.

[Chad32]

The claim is that some people historically had an experience of some kind of experience with someone and something they took to be God.

Does that apply to worshipers of Odin or Quetzlcoatl or this is strictly xtian special pleading?

Of course not, silly. Those invisible sky people aren't real.

[Sword of Christ]

Evidence that people had an experience with the full glory of the risen Christ?

I think it's a fair assessment that someone at some point got excited over some kind of an experience with something that happened to them. Either they were nuts or something or they had an encounter with God/Christ. It depends whether you approach it in the avid materialist or transcendental mindset. There are other religious claims and revelations out there though you will notice they tend to centre one individual but here we have a collective experience. And the same can be said to some extent about the Old Testament Torah that's a shared revelation there to an entire culture of people. So there's plenty of credibility to this if you're insisting upon pure materialism. Materialism is reasonably easy to argue against imo though without a decent revelation you can't land the killing blow. Combine the arguments in favour of God with the arguments in favour of the Biblical revelation you have a tag team worthy of taking down atheistic assumptions.

You're using folklore to prove mythology.

There's plenty of folklore and myth in the Bible but it's used to represent the reality of God which was experience in history by his people and later the revelation of Jesus Christ the Messiah in whatever form that historically took. But again it depends on the initial assumptions you're deciding to go in with.

It's not necessary to speculate on "mass hallucinations" or any such things.

Either it was an experience of God and the transcendent or it was a materialist explanation which will be some kind of mass hysteria and people working themselves up into visions or whatever. Certainly St Paul experienced something like this and he claimed there were hundreds of other people who had a similar experience to him. There will be explanation for this as you have something that historically occurred and has been recorded by real people at the time. We have nothing written by Jesus himself or anyone who knew him in life but the man himself is somewhat of a mystery and an enigma, there isn't a lot we can know for certain about him specifically. But whoever or whatever he was he had a colossal life changing impact on people at the time and this deserves a decent explanation.

The apostles and their supposed experiences and personal transformations are, at best, matters of folklore.

You have a real community of people who did experience something in a specific place and time this is historically factual and is based on something. So we can't know exactly what but it's not as easy to dismiss as "folklore" as you like to believe to be. Particularly as what you believe depends on a prior assumption you have and you fit anything that happens into that assumption, when that assumption could easily be completely wrong seeing as you don't know.

We don't need to explain away that which is not yet proven.

There is something there to explain so you will have to explain it within your materialist framework of mass hysteria and hallucinations. There is an alternative explanation for it, its a perfectly good explanation as well.

I'm being sympathetic here because I know you view the Bible as a collection of "historical documents" written by "reliable eye-witness accounts".

No not really the Bible is a revelation from God to man and is a spiritual tool in mans relationship to God and his fellow man. It is a revelation that was revealed during a period of historical time and compiled in it's final form by the 4th century AD. But it's not a history book and it isn't a science book either.

For me, it's no better or worse than the Koran or the Iliad as far as stories go.

It's possible that Mohammed had some kind of mystical experience himself when he was doing his meditation a cave. But I have a number of concerns about him and his religion/political ideology that would tend to rule him out as a genuine prophet. Essentially the Quran is a remixed and confusing to read version of the Biblical stories but it's a valid religion to have faith in if that's what you prefer.

The Illiad is part history seeing as there was a real battle of Troy, part philosophy on the nature of the human condition. I suppose people sort of did believe in those gods at the time or they were open minded about it but it was more excuse to have some sacrifices, ceremonies and whatever it wasn't anything much like the religion of the ancient Jews and their God, so I don't think you can really do a direct comparison though they did have a shared cultural heritage.

We do know there was a Trojan War. The ruins of Troy have confirmed this. Does that mean Zeus and other gods, whose activities were recorded in The Iliad, are also true?

Even the ancient Greeks had doubts about the gods in later years, it was often pointed out that they all kind of looked like the kind of things people would invent or they were based on deified ancient kings and such. So they were really maintained for traditional purposes, ceremonies and state occasions and festivals. Personal religion was focused more around the Mystery Cults which offered some kind of personal experience of the transcendent. Christianity may be some kind of relation to all this given certain similarities but we can't really know entirely to what extent.

Does that mean we take seriously the legend of Achilles and how he was impervious to harm except in his heel?

It's just a moral to the tale, it's officially classed as a secular rather than a religious text. European pagans didn't really have anything equivalent to the Bible.

Does that mean we believe the fanciful tales of Odysseus and his ten year journey home?

No but that's just an exiting adventure story people liked at the time they didn't revere the text as sacred as far as I know therefore it's classed as a secular epic. You can compare to a Shakespearean play.

"But that's different," you might object, "The Iliad and The Odyssey were written by anonymous bards long after the events."

They're different but not for the reasons you said. They did have some kind of revered cultural status for the Greeks and the classical world but only the same sense that we revere the works Shakespeare, Shakespeare wasn't a religious figure he wrote secular plays. Sure people did believe in the gods but they didn't really care, they were useful for oracles, auguries and bringing a curse down on someone you hate or whatever. But the God of the Bible/Torah is something in order of magnitude different, what you have there is a sacred text regarding something the Jews and Christians held to be as the greatest treasure imaginable. You don't get any of that with Zeus.

Guess what, the New Testament is just as dubious as source material.

The New Testament is a religious/sacred text with an agenda assembled by a community of people much the same way as the Old Testament was. There are other sacred texts like the Quran and Vedas or whatever you can compare the Bible to those certainly. I don't really mind other religions though particularly if they are based on God or a purpose giving creator I know what I like.

Half of the epistles of Paul, much of which document the supposed "early church", are considered to be of dubious authorship by modern scholars.

It was a collaborative effort, some of it written by Paul and some written by Paul's followers who attributed their writings to him. That was a tradition at the time much like when Plato wrote through the mouth of Socrates.

In these days, the problem of pseudo-epigraphy (i.e. forgery) and interpolation (alteration of authentic documents) were rampant in religious circles. If you had an idea about God you wanted to promote, the easiest way to do it is to take the name of a noted theologian and then "discover" a letter of his. Alternatively, you could take an authentic work and add to it, as we're all but certain bishop Eseubius did to Josephus' Antiquities where a highly questionable paragraph about Jesus was added.

Bible scholars are aware of all of this it's not a huge deal.

Christianity at that time was actually composed of many rival groups which had radically different ideas about Jesus.

Very true but this isn't anything startlingly new.

Some believed he was born of a virgin, some that he was born the way all babies are born and only later became divine after being adopted by God as a son (Ebionites) and some believed he was never born but rather a higher god who came down to earth one day (Marcionites) and some believed he was never really on earth at all but only appeared as an apparition (Docetics).

I don't really have much against any of these alternate to the orthodox views of Jesus, there is quite a lot of possibility there. It's all a bit academic though you just need to worry about the vital specifics of the message. What matters is whether there is a real God, a real revelation from this God and a real eternal relationship you can have with this God. You can worry about the historical and supernatural specifics once you have mastered the basics.

Echoes of the early struggles among rival Christian groups is found in the canonical Bible, specifically 1John 4:1-3 and 2John 1:7, where John, supposedly a disciple of Christ, condemns the Docetics as anti-Christians working for evil spirits and that we should have faith that Jesus existed in the flesh.

That's fair enough, I believe Jesus did exist in the flesh though I'm not really all that bothered if he didn't. As long as God exists and this was God revealing himself to us in some form then that's locked and loaded and ready to rock, I'm fully on board for this.

The "beloved disciple" John appealed to faith? Shouldn't he have appealed to recent history that many people would have remembered?

The gospel of John was written around 95 AD so no-one alive at the time will have known Jesus personal that was over 60 years ago. In fact no-one who wrote the synoptic gospels will have ever known Jesus personally either it was the recording of an oral tradition.

These early Christians also differed on many other points of theology, including how many gods there were, whether the OT laws should be kept and what the proper path to salvation was.

There was only ever one true God, the was demiurge in the case of the Gnostics who created the physical universe and that's why you have evil/suffering in the world. Personally I would put down to a combination the natural process required to create human life to begin with and human freewill. The universe/life is good not something evil to endure. It is a little rough but you can see it as an opportunity to grow spiritually in God/Christ rather than some kind of a living torment. Atheism is your living torment right there if you seriously believe in that as the reality.

Christianity began as a Jewish sect so hence the disagreement with having to keep the Jewish Laws but that's just a historical detail. The Muslims seem to have decide to bring back the Jewish Laws to some degree though I don't agree that it's really necessary, a relationship with God through Christ is your only necessity. Everything else is optional.

Modern Christians like to dismiss the "heterodox" Christians as schismatics and insignificant splinter groups but it's clear that they first warranted mention in the canonical scriptures and later the full force of the Roman Empire following Nicaea.

Religion is a social gathering of people with shared beliefs, views on life and moral standards as well as a relationship with God so that why all that stuff really matters to a lot of Christians have all these different sects. It's not hugely relevant though to be honest the only relevance you need worry about is

1) Whether God exists and your relationship to God

2) The revelation of God through Christ the gospels and the Torah

3) The impact it has on your life, who you are and everything you do

You just go for whatever church you find to be suitable to yourself based on your upbringing, values and family background. You have plenty of choice there.

The Christian faction that emerged triumphant became what we know today and the others were forcefully stamped out.

True but it doesn't really matter if you're following the three step plan of full God relationship as a cell in the living body of Christ. That's what will do you some good. Ok so it's a faith not something you know as a certain fact but that's something you just have to deal with. We're all in the same boat when it comes to the more ultimate questions.

He was the poster boy for the Marcionite Christians. His writings were originally "discovered" by Marcion, a leader of a powerful rival sect of Christians that preached that Jesus was a higher god, superior to that inept demiurge Yahweh, and he rejected all things Jewish.

I don't really agree that the universe was created by a demiurge but I'm not really bothered if it was. If someone wants to believe that it's fine and they could be right I wouldn't know. If they still believe in the supreme God Jesus embodied then that's still good to rock it will do very nicely.

For him, there was no Old Testament, no Mary and Joseph and Jesus was never a baby or "born" on this earth.

He doesn't mention any of these things in his letters that were written before the gospel accounts so whatever you want to suggest is technically possible. I'd be fine with it regardless as I'm only concerned of the basic faith and message at the core, you have God, you have Christ (in whatever form he took) and you have the relationship directly with that God which can be experienced in this life and beyond. That's more than enough to get on with there.

Jesus was a higher god who appeared on earth as all other gods do, as a fully grown adult in the temple one day to preach a new message of salvation from that inept idiot god, Yahweh. Paul was the man held up by Marion as the prophet who had seen this superior god, Jesus, and pointed the way to salvation by faith.

Yes there were other Christian sects who had different views like this but it's all a bit academic. Not something you really need to worry yourself about but of historical interest.

Strange that the writings of Paul we have today suggest a Trinitarian godman Jesus who was born of a woman and of the bloodline of David, no?

I take the Trinity as being mystically symbolic of the totality of God. Representing the divine as a Trinity or a Triad is something deeply rooted in human history so I would say it has some significance. Take a look at the depiction of Hindu deities here for instance, perhaps it all ties in on some level.



I wouldn't worry about the bloodline of David business, the Jewish Messiah technically had to be but it's not that Jesus quite fulfilled all the requirements anyway, you'll notice Jews still exist.

It's almost like Marcion never actually read the writings of the man he held up as the principle prophet of his sect...

Mark: Non-witness, attributed to be the author by "tradition", who only heard about the story of Jesus from Peter, who in turn was not a witness to all of the events (hearsay upon hearsay) and all of this was written down 70 CE, four decades later. Subsequent Gospels were clearly derived from this dubious source.

There is a source that's what matters here. The source is God and experience of humanity in relationship to God and that's your source. Unless you want to assert materialism but that can be demolished fairly easily if you want to try it.

And even among these sources, they contradict each other on exactly what Jesus was, when he lived and what he did but that's a more involved discussion.

Well we can be open minded as to who or what Jesus was in the historical setting as long as the understanding that Jesus was in some sense fully God and fully man, Jesus he remains at the core of the revelation and people such as Saint Paul had a direct experience with this man/God. I believe Jesus did physically exist as do most historians but this isn't something we can ever know.

And this is on the life of Jesus. We have even less reliable information on the apostles or how they died. Good luck ever separating any truth, if there even is any to be found, from fanciful legends and myths.

These are all academic details of minor historical interest. Historically Jesus and his disciples are an enigmatic bunch but a lot of historical people are anyway.

Don't use folklore to try to prove mythology. It won't work with anyone not already indoctrinated by Christianity.

Are you sure you haven't been indoctrinated into the materialist mindset? And much of the Bible clearly isn't meant to be taken literally as historical fact but that doesn't render it folklore it has a deeper significance and meaning, an underlying message at the heart for all humanity.

Does that apply to worshipers of Odin or Quetzlcoatl or this is strictly xtian special pleading?

The pagan gods were probably based on revered ancestors and deified ancient kings/tribal chiefs or whatever or they were used like the Hindu deities and so were symbolic in some way it depends on their level of sophistication it tended to vary. They weren't atheist at least all cultures of all people had a belief in something regardless of how primitive and ill defined.

[Minimalist]

Of course they did....they were primitive assholes, too.

It's possible that Mohammed had some kind of mystical experience himself when he was doing his meditation a cave.

There is no more evidence that mohammed existed than there is for jesus. In fact, in both cases the evidence is the same. Later scribblings by believers.

Terribly unconvincing.