Quote:1. I believe that an honest skeptic would rather believe that Jesus Christ existed, but that people started to combine his story with lots of magical fairytales.
Yeah, Z, and one can find that as a pretty standard fallback position among non-fundie xtians who understand the problems with their gospels. It's the "there must be a grain of historical truth" argument.
However, when you go on to say,
Quote: b) I do believe that people are rather to take a historical person and fill him with fairytales, rather than creating one from scratch.
most xtians will draw the line as soon as you say "so, then you think that Zeus and Osiris and Thor and Quetzlcoatl and Shiva and Enki and Borvo and Asshur and Astarte and Sin and Marduk, etc., etc, etc. also have an actual person behind them. At that point they bail out and resort to special pleading that they only mean the "real god." You, I must admit, have gone them one better. Let's open a bottle of wine and raise a toast to Dyonisius! The problem is that xtians do not worship the name. They worship the magic tricks. There had to be 100 people named Jesus, son of Joseph wandering around 1st Century Palestine. The fact still remains that we have no historical record of any of them doing anything....least of all coming back from the dead after being crucified by a Roman magistrate.
Secondly, "sons of god" walking around was far from a foreign concept in the Greco-Roman world.
Asclepius was the son of Apollo who in turn was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman. Hercules was also a son of Zeus and another mortal woman.....randy old goat that Zeus! These were far from unique examples. One might almost think of this as part of the "sales pitch" to a Greco-Roman audience. As indeed the early xtian writer Justin Martyr wrote to Emperor Antoninus Pius c 160.
Quote:And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; AEsculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus.
Can you imagine a later xtian equating jesus to pagan gods and not being declared a heretic for it?
As far as the messiah goes, the Jews expected a military leader who would vanquish their enemies and gather all jews together and rebuild the temple. One can hardly blame them for rejecting what they were handed by the rather inept jesus.
If you take the time to read Bart Ehrman you'll see that the growing anti-semitic tendencies of xtians follow an increasing tone of vehemence. And why not? The Jews were exceedingly unpopular. Between 66 and 135 there were 3 serious revolts which the Romans had to suppress. By the end of it they were a stateless people. As the second century writer Celsus wrote:
Quote:"You are fond of saying that in the old days this same most high god made these and greater promises to those who gave heed to his commandments and worshipped him. But at the risk of appearing unkind, I ask how much good has been done by those promises have done either the Jews before you or you in your present circumstances. And would you have us put out faith in such a god? Instead of being masters of the whole world, the jews today have no home of any kind."
Definitely an unpopular group!
Finally, because I don't want to get this too long.
Quote:If all was from 100% fairytale, and there never existed ANY Jesus Christ, then all of it would have lasted only a few years, and most surely developed as a sect, in a secluded single place, rather than everywhere throughout the empire.
Again we come full circle to the idea of a "founder." Was Osiris real? If not, explain how Egyptian religion lasted from sometime before 3000 BC to the 4th century AD when it was forcibly stamped out by xtians? Greek mythology begins in the Middle Bronze Age and continues for 2 millenia....how could it have done so without an actual Zeus?
In the 4th century, Constantine rewarded his xtian supporters in the war against Maxentius. While he legalized xtianity it was not until after the reign of Julian the Apostate that xtians realized they had to take steps to secure their livelihood. The pograms against the pagans began in that time period. When you give a church a sword control becomes simple. If you give me the power to torture and kill people I could have millions believing in a holy toaster in 20 years. "Greet with joy the warm bread which is the staff of life, brothers..... And if you argue I'll tie you to a stake and burn your ass."
Terrorism is not a new phenomenon.
