Still a Christian - ask me questions/tell me about yourselves

[pocaracas]

There are a couple of reasons I'm here - first, I want to help people come to Christ, because having been on both sides, I can say this is the less miserable one. It's not always sunshine and rainbows, but the tough times are less tough, and there's way more direction.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you won't help people "come to Christ" here.

Regarding what you said and what chimp3 got at, have you guys ever heard of "bridge theory"? It's the idea that God is infinitely good, so sin is infinitely bad, and that, to reconcile the broken relationship between God and man (since the Jews couldn't keep the covenant God gave them), something infinite needed to happen to replace all the finite works (which is all we as people are capable of) of the covenant of the Old Testament (which goes waay beyond the 10 Commandments). All the animal sacrifices given by the people were flawed and never kept, so something perfect needed to be given to reconcile all the sin for all time, and that was Jesus' sinless life. 

God didn't allow Jesus to sin so we could have relationship with Him, to answer that question, and to answer the next, we should expect everything from Him BECAUSE He did that. We couldn't atone for ourselves, so Jesus did, and that is an act of extreme sacrificial love such as has never been seen in literature or other religions or in the real world, because sin is infinitely bad in the eyes of God, and yet He sacrificed Jesus for us despite how bad sin mars us in His eyes. And yet we have a hard time seeing people who we disagree with in a loving way (yes, I struggle with that, too).

You know it's not true when you make up a reason for the made up thing. It's one of the ways to spot a con artist - if they try to sell you a solution to a problem only they know exists, then the problem is not real... and the solution is snake oil.

Define sin without referring to a god.

You have the floor.

This is hardly enough space (and I have hardly enough time) to get into all of it. BUT I'll start off with this:

There is extra-Biblical evidence of Jesus' existence (look up the historian "Josephus", he is I think the main historian who wrote about Jesus, besides Luke, who wrote one of the gospels)

Josephus only ever mentions Christians. It's as if the myth was already existing... As if it didn't really originate on 33ad, nor 60ad.... but 100~200bc... and only got renamed... hmmm, kinda around the time of the Teacher of Righteousness... and a very similar message.

All 12 of Jesus' disciples (13 if you include Judas) were real people, and all of them died under execution, proclaiming Christ to their deaths (minus John, who died in exile), which Jesus actually told them would happen to them (not "You are all going to die for my sake", but He said "In the world you will have tribulation", among other references)

A Teacher and his disciples.... interesting...

There is an extreme LACK of "alternative events" of the NT, and there are actually over 25k manuscripts of the gospels, which is more copies than "The Iliad" and the works of the ancient Greek philosphers, and with greater consistency

How about all the gospels that didn't make the cut?
Many more than the ones that actually made it to the NT.
Aren't those representative of such "alternative events"?

There's a book detailing some of them called "Lost Christianities" by Bart Ehrman. It would do you good do educate yourself before perpetuating false news.

The book of Acts, which follows the Gospels and proceeds Paul's letters, was considered a historical record

Perhaps parts of it, yes.
But the whole thing?? I'd take extreme caution with such blanket statements.

There are the occasional scientific and historical predictions in the NT (there's more in the OT, and I would encourage you to Google these yourself), BUT the most interesting is that it predicts that Christianity will be a big trend and many will come to believe (that's more in Revelation)

Was that the part written after Christianity was adopted by the Roman Empire?

The major religions you hear of with other people who headed them, Islam, Buddhism, and Hindu (those are the main ones that come to mind) all have the graves of their respective leaders available. Considering the extreme impact of Christianity on our world and culture, and I know this isn't evidence so much as just interesting and powerful, it's worth noting that Christ's grave and body are nowhere to be found

Could it be that the man was never a real man, but a mythological figure?
Could it be that the real man behind the myth lived well before the events portrayed?
Could there have been various real men, whose stories got cobbled together into a single person, with some extra magical glue to account for the extraordinary miracles?

Pontius Pilate (who put Jesus to death) was a real person, the Roman government was indeed an occupying force in the Jewish nation at the time, and there was a significant movement around the time of Jesus' precahing that's never really stopped, even if it's at times slowed, changed, or taken steps in wrong directions

Yes, a real person that held that real position... not exactly when the book claims... by quite a few years.


And New York exists for real, hence Spiderman stories must also be real, huh?