Do Christians worship a suicide victim?

[madog]

1) sorry didn't catch the sarcasm, wasn't looking for it ... I took it as now as in the present day ....

2)  If "God" or "Jesus" recorded nothing, there is nothing other than historical hearsay as regards a "message" ... [1]

3) see  (2) above ... [2]

4) I can't personally show any changes from the original story tellers .... as you can't show anything recorded from the apparent messenger ... You trust hearsay because of the Joker in the pack "faith", that doesn't impress me ...  [3]

My "faith" that man would write to further his own ends has as much weight as your "faith" that those writing someone else's message would do so without any agenda ... the difference is my opinion does not try to invoke a supernatural master .... [4]

5) Back to games ... I don't think there is an authentic message .... There was certainly nothing recorded by the alleged messenger .... [5]

By the way I can discuss someones fictional message without believing in the credibility of the message ... stop being silly   [6]

6) see (5) above ....

7) Basically you can verify that some people told a story and everything following the story telling .... Sort of like building a city on sand ....

8) Yes you need faith to believe a God and his son would leave the recording of their message to semi-illiterate tribesmen that would pass on their stories to churches that would enslave humanity with their own agendas .... 

9) ....

10) Yes I consider that whoever wrote the story went one step further than sacrificing a goat .... but a goat has no choice, the character they invented did, so they inadvertently created a suicide victim ...

1) OR, there is an Apostolic message about God and Jesus. That much is not hearsay, that is historically verifiable, and does not require faith.

2) Any message which claims to be Christian is an implicit and simultaneous claim that it is apostolic. You can fail to be convinced that this apostolic message actually communicates the authentic message of Christ, but the evidence cannot lead to the rejection that the message is apostolic. Why does this matter in our discussion? Because my original comments were given in the context of the apostolic message alone:

"The narrative, instead, tells us that he lays down his own life . . . He chose this way to communicate something to us about ourselves and about God." -Me HERE

Why would you think I would force an atheist to accept that the Gospel message is authentically Christ's and therefore God's? There is a narrative about Christ's message passed down from the Apostles. Faith tells you it's Christ's message. History tells you it's the Apostles' message. Either way, the common denominator is the text of the New Testament and the transmission of the message over time. I am not trying to demonstrate to you that it is Christ's message, I was originally trying to offer an interpretation of the historical message about Christ which does not conclude that Jesus was a suicide. Even if the apostles made it up, your interpretation of the details of the message cannot account for the whole message.

3) I never imagined it would. I also never imagined that faith would be such a surprising aspect of a discussion about Christianity. I also never imagined that a critical examination of the account-as-provided-by-the-apostolic-community (invented or not) would be so dismissive of any interpretation which takes the point of view of that apostolic community into account. Even if they made it up, literary criticism of the texts, within the framework of the authors' own invented reality, cannot (in my view) rationally conclude that they inadvertently composed a tale of vicarious suicide. To do so is irrational (at least if your goal is to understand something), and your other posts clearly show that you are better than that.

4) Both of which are irrelevant when attempting an interpretive conclusion about a text. Whatever man's ends may have been in inventing a tale, ignoring that man's invented frame of reference for telling the story seldom leads to adequate conclusions.

5) That is fine, as I've said several times. But to deny that there is a message at all, or to deny that such a message has its own internal frame of reference won't lead you to a rational understanding of the object of your inquiry.

6) Of course you can. And if you have ever discussed fictional messages with people who are well versed in them, I am sure you have found that those who understand the inner workings of that fiction are typically those who can offer fruitful discussion about it. Criticisms from those outside-the-know of a particular fiction are usually received as highly inadequate by those who are in the know. You won't find many serious scholars (atheist or theist) who conclude the same thing that you do about the Gospel narrative.

1) When you pass on someone else's message and that message can't be verified its hearsay ... 

2) That they are apostles is their claim and again can't be verified other than with further hearsay .... 

Laying down his own life purposefully is suicide ...  

3) You are trying to use apostles to prove "Jesus the son of God", without a "Jesus" there are no apostles 


So basically all your evidence and faith for the most extraordinary claims imaginable are based on some Fishermen claiming to have been disciples of the son of God decades after his apparent Crucifixion .....

4)  I am not trying to interpret text as it didn't come from the alleged messenger .... you keep trying to make me go forward in time and work back ....

5) I don't deny fishermen wrote stories, set decades after the main character died, that propelled them into scriptures as apostles, all that tells me is they made themselves pretty important with their claims of being the disciples of the son of God. Yes that would further their own ends ...

6) Very few theists or atheists agree on anything so nothing new there ....