Religious Background

[TheBeardedDude]

I) special pleading

II) I don't automatically accept any and all other "historical" accounts. Straw man

III) appeal to consensus. A lot of people believing something only tells me that they believe it. It says literally nothing about the validity or accuracy of their beliefs

IV) Paul founded the Christian church. So how does one explain the existence of multiple sects of a religious cult running around the Middle East? Pretty easy, they believed the tales/legends/myths being presented to them

V) magic doesn't exist. Sorry to break that to you

*evidence refers to a piece of information that logically connects to a conclusion. There is no evidence of supernature or supernatural processes

**and the churches of Scientology, Islam, Mormonism, etc, all spread within either the lifetime of their messiah or shortly after their death. Once again, all this tells us is that people believed it. Not that what they believed is true. If the spread of an idea is more likely to be true the closer the spread is to the lifetime of the messiah, then Christianity would lose to those previously mentioned. You going to convert to Scientology based on your logic here?

1) miracles aren't really, sorry. Magic still doesn't exist, sorry. And when it comes to a god spreading their message via stories that require interpretation (with no direction this is the case nor any guidance as to how to correctly interpret them as evidenced by the conflicting interpretations out there), that's a rather stupid way for a perfect being to spread their message. It makes much more sense that ignorant humans wrote a series of myths because that's what humans had been doing and continued to do.

2) theological bs doesn't convince me of anything other than the ability for people to argue and debate over fictional stories. You can see literally the same thing on any given message-board for any other fictional universe (lord of the rings, Harry Potter, etc). Once again, a god divining information to primitive humans and expecting them to write a message that would apply to humanity 2,000 years later, requires some special pleading (something you constantly accuse me of but appear to engage in regularly). Why would a god choose these ignorant humans for spreading its message via stories that some take literal, and others don't? (and those that don't will have multiple conflicting interpretations)

I don't care about the "teachings" of the NT. I care about the context of these stories and the accuracy and validity of the whole story. I can get meaningful life lessons from Harry Potter but that doesn't mean I think Harry Potter was real.

3) you're straw men of my arguments are tiring and boring. You should refrain from so many logical errors

Cheers
TheBeardedDude

I don't like to repeat myself more than once so for most of this I am content to let you have the last word. 

However, I will point out one last time your special pleading about the facts surrounding the NT does not constitute evidence that God works in the world. Starting with your words, 'evidence refers to a piece of information that logically connects to a conclusion', I would certainly agree BUT there certainly is a component that the conclusion does not have to be proven--because really, most things cannot be proven and we rely on all kinds of thresholds of proof to assess truth in our everyday life. We are always left with a subjective assessment of the strength of the evidence. Denying that the churches, letters, gospels and subsequent events are not evidence that Jesus said and did the things people report is simply silly and juvenile. 

Again, I don't care if you don't find the evidence compelling. Billions and billions of people have and do--which before you say is an appeal to popularity, I am simply pointing out a huge example of the subjective nature of assessing evidence.

Once again, large groups of people believing in magic, doesn't mean magic is real. Regardless of whether or not they lived 10 years after the magic trick, or 2000 years. Evidence that people believed the stories/rumors/legends/myths from the 1st century, provide no truth value to Christianity's claims.


Cheers
TheBeardedDude