RE: Confessions of a former Christian fundamentalist.
December 27, 2015 at 9:13 am
(This post was last modified: December 27, 2015 at 9:16 am by Jehanne.)
(December 26, 2015 at 10:57 pm)RaphielDrake Wrote:(December 24, 2015 at 9:49 am)Jehanne Wrote: For awhile, I complied, being led by my weiner; however, the multimedia era in which we live caught up with me (not to mention my college education) and overcame my desire to date feminine, skirt-wearing fundamentalist Christian women. In the end, I had no choice but to conclude that Biblical fundamentalism was pure bullshit; my abandonment of theism would come later on.
WOO! I want a second chapter. I demand you date a punk chick.
Sorry; this was over two decades ago. Eventually, I did get married. Point of this thread is that Christian fundamentalism uses cult-like tactics to recruit and retain individuals. Like all other religions, it is just a meme. The ground game has, however, changed since the late 80s, when I was involved in it. While a lot of Christian fundamentalists don't care (say, about evolutionary science or higher Biblical criticism), making such knowledge available online to the masses will at least keep the "religious right" from becoming a majority ever again. Hopefully, they can be driven to near-extinction, if not complete extinction over time.
(December 27, 2015 at 5:44 am)Delicate Wrote: Why would evangelicals reject that miracle account? I don't see why that must be the case. I haven't investigated it, but I don't know that it's false either.
Likewise with the assumptions undergirding Jesus' bodily resurrection. What exactly is the problem with these assumptions? You haven't shown that they are problematic.
As for Matthew 27, that is one of the more challenging passages of the account. But it's not challenging for the reasons you've mentioned. There is no evidence for your claim that nobody but believers noticed the body.
The assumption that if a Roman soldier saw it they would automatically make it part of secular historical canon is absurd: historical writings were very difficult to perform at that point in time, and not all monumental, even miraculous events of the time were recorded. I think you need to put a finer point on your objection here. Are you saying the Bible ought to confirm it?
As it is, it's not obvious what the problem is for the religious believer.
There were a lot of so-called "miracle workers" in first century Judea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honi_ha-M'agel
The Romans wrote Jesus off just like they did all the other loons of their day.
