RE: What do the conservative Christians here think of Professor Bart Ehrman?
February 15, 2019 at 9:03 pm
(This post was last modified: February 15, 2019 at 10:03 pm by fredd bear.)
I sympathise:
In a devout Irish catholic family, I was educated (if you'll forgive the expression ) in a De La Salle Academy of applied brutality.
Having an IQ above room temperature, I asked questions. Me: Dad, what's X Y Z ? "Shut up" he would explain. At school, say a question on the trinity. Response" Oh, that's a mystery of faith, we just believe" Don't think the notion of 'cognitive dissonance 'was even around in the 1960's
I left that alleged school without having finished high school. Finished at night. That was the beginning of 13 years of part time study (I worked full time) ending with a diploma in Human Resource Management, and later a BA.
I parted company with the Church in 1967, when I was conscripted. I could no longer accept some of the especially fatuous claims of the Church. Took me another 20 years before I realised I was an atheist.
I have different take on Jesus; a very ordinary, devout wondering Rabbi of his time. The organisation he founded was a minor Jewish sect which would have faded away after about a generation. However the figure** of Paul arrived and invented Christianity by eliminating the Mitzva concerned with ritual. eg circumcision and food laws. Despite Jesus' claim that he not not come to change the law by "a jot or a tittle" (English translation) Matthew 35, I think
PLUS by simply checking the Jewish prophecy about Messiah, it would have been transparently clear that Jesus was not the Messiah.
EG He; Is NOT divine, a warrior priest in the tradition of David, he will not die and will usher in a period of world peace. There's a lot more.
The intellectual sleight of hand by apologist christians on these matters is one reason I have no time for that species
** scholars already agree that several of the epistles are forgeries, and the are doubts about others. Paul is sounding more and more apocryphal.
In a devout Irish catholic family, I was educated (if you'll forgive the expression ) in a De La Salle Academy of applied brutality.
Having an IQ above room temperature, I asked questions. Me: Dad, what's X Y Z ? "Shut up" he would explain. At school, say a question on the trinity. Response" Oh, that's a mystery of faith, we just believe" Don't think the notion of 'cognitive dissonance 'was even around in the 1960's
I left that alleged school without having finished high school. Finished at night. That was the beginning of 13 years of part time study (I worked full time) ending with a diploma in Human Resource Management, and later a BA.
I parted company with the Church in 1967, when I was conscripted. I could no longer accept some of the especially fatuous claims of the Church. Took me another 20 years before I realised I was an atheist.
I have different take on Jesus; a very ordinary, devout wondering Rabbi of his time. The organisation he founded was a minor Jewish sect which would have faded away after about a generation. However the figure** of Paul arrived and invented Christianity by eliminating the Mitzva concerned with ritual. eg circumcision and food laws. Despite Jesus' claim that he not not come to change the law by "a jot or a tittle" (English translation) Matthew 35, I think
PLUS by simply checking the Jewish prophecy about Messiah, it would have been transparently clear that Jesus was not the Messiah.
EG He; Is NOT divine, a warrior priest in the tradition of David, he will not die and will usher in a period of world peace. There's a lot more.
The intellectual sleight of hand by apologist christians on these matters is one reason I have no time for that species
** scholars already agree that several of the epistles are forgeries, and the are doubts about others. Paul is sounding more and more apocryphal.
