It is a bit frustrating reading through Ecclesiastes

[emjay]

Ehrman for the nt, finkelstein for the ot.  They're good summarizers and communicators, and if you want to know more starting with the sources and authors they reference isn't the worst.

Thing is, it doesn't really matter to christianity how or whether the story is true as told.  A person could believe it all happened exactly as every jot and tittle describes and this does not make them a christian.  Credulous, superstitious, borderline braindead...sure..but not christian.  To be a christian a person has to hear the pitch and agree with it.  Not just that it happened.  That it's right and good and proper and they want a piece.  Hallelujah!

People who think maybe there might be a god, and maybe some of the stuff happened in some way you could call accurate if you glimpsed at it in the right light on the right day of the lunar cycle, and so they call themselves christians.  So they go through the motions - but aren't filled with the spirit?  Matthew 7:21 tells us how that ends in the christian cinematic universe...and there, without any doubt, magic book got something right.

Yes, what you're saying plays a big part in what I've been going through. I neither respect nor trust the God as I understand it, and therefore if Christianity is true I'm destined for hell, it's that simple. Like you I do not agree with the pitch as you put it, and therefore could never join Christianity in spirit even if I was convinced of the accuracy of it or took some sort of Pascal's Wager approach to it. But I was, and still am, fearing it's truth because of what has turned out to be the withdrawal symptoms of a particular drug they had me on and too rapidly removed me from. What it caused was extreme depression and intense, overwhelming, and all-covering emotional moods that I've never experienced before and hope to never again. Apparently they're due to end about two weeks if I eat right and sleep right, and ride it out right. At it's worst I was basically running round in these terrified circles, thinking about and being fed so much about Christianity, but eventually I decided enough was enough and I had to make a stand of some sort, just get back on my feet, so I decided that I would focus my life going forward on Buddhist meditation and Buddhist compassion, things that help with enduring pain both in life, and potentially in afterlife too if it exists... what ChatGPT called a similar concept to Pascal's Wager. After making that 'stand', it seemed to change the character of this depression from the specific to something else; wide ranging and overwhelming feelings/moods that just cover my whole mind, which is where I am now, and can change in an instant, thankfully sometimes to positive feelings, but the negative ones when they come are simply the worst feelings I've ever felt. Full stop. Just a total sense of something like sadness, which I could neither pin down but at the same time, in meditation for instance, could not fail to notice either because it was just everywhere in my mind. Anyway, at the moment I'm just hoping that feeling doesn't come back, and hoping I only have to ride this out for two more weeks like predicted, but who knows how long it could last, sadly.

I still don't understand what you were trying to say to me the other day, but I'm betting it has something to do with this. That you and I are actually very similar, in the sense of expecting to go to hell if it turns out that it exists. Thankfully my mind does seem to be getting a bit clearer these days, at least when I don't have these overwhelming moods/feelings, and gradually I'm starting to rebuild my confidence that Christianity isn't true, but it's going to take some time. But if it does turn out to be true, I guess the only thing we can take comfort in, maybe, is the compassion we... people... have for each other in there. It may be powerless, in an eternal Christian hell compared to impermanent Buddhist hells, as some Buddhists seek to compassionately enter and not leave until they've freed everyone, but nonetheless I think it could help. Anyway I'm sorry if I sound silly with all this, I certainly didn't expect to be going through any of this, but hopefully I'll start making more sense again soon