Better reasons to quit Christianity

[FallentoReason]

Well, I suppose it would save me a lot of time if I could determine that it is impossible for any being to be perfectly and completely powerful, and at the same time perfectly and completely loving, and at the same time perfectly and completely wise. That feat would fell a full house of God concepts! Please explain how you know these three attributes to be incompatible. Or would you like to talk with me about it in the other discussion thread?

No, that's fine, we can discuss here.

I think the 3 omnis are incompatible with what the Bible says. An all knowing god would be able to create man in a way that wouldn't have sinned. If he knew this was going to happen then he's not all loving because he didn't care enough to avoid it. Alternatively, he did care and is all knowing but just not all powerful and couldn't create us how he wanted to. This notion that we weren't supposed to have fallen is justified by Jesus himself. God clearly wanted us to be back up to 'his level' hence why Jesus supposedly died for our sins.

May I ask, what do you think God's attributes are, based on the Bible? For example, Drich has shown me that his love is not unconditional but actually conditional (John 3:16). To me, that's saying the god of the Bible is actually benevolent and not omnibenevolent. What do you think about the 3 omnis? Are the other two also misrepresented according to the Bible?

Because that gives rise to the possibility that he used Mark as the basis for his work, which it seems like he did. The Synoptics are best understood with a Markan priority type approach. That helps to explain why Mark is so short compared to the other two, why it misses out on important things like a birth narrative and witness accounts of a resurrected Christ, and why Matthew + Luke are more incredible sounding (because Mark toning down the miracles wouldn't really make much sense.. at least to me).

Not sure I understand. Seems to me that all this suggests is that Matthew might have plagiarized Mark. It does not appear to demonstrate Matthew never not wrote the gospel bearing his name. Am I missing something, or have I correctly state the point you are trying to make?

I think you are backing up my point, but you haven't connected the dots in your mind. I think because we can say that Matthew most likely plagiarized it, it then greatly undermines the claim that the Apostle Matthew who witnessed Jesus for himself wrote his own Gospel, the Gospel of Matthew. I think a witness would have no logical reason to not use his own experience as the basis for his work.

Never said John's evidence was more substantial; just tried to make the point that John's information is additional. He added details of Jesus' life the others left out of their gospels. We see the same today, don't we? Some journalist writes a biography of some president. It sells a lot of copies, and the public becomes interested. A former member of the president's administration writes another biography, with details not found in the previous one. People buy that one, too--not because the new biography rehashes the same old details of the man's life, but because the new biography has additional information not presented in the previous biography. See what I mean?

Ok, I see what you're saying in this case. If we use your metaphor, then what I understood (wrongly?) last time was that a younger journalist would be getting more/better information than an older journalist. I didn't see anything to do with the person's position. Maybe I misunderstood.

Either way, let's go with what you have written here. I can see how it would be reasonable to expect John to have more information. Is it coincidence though that his Gospel was the last one written as well? It seems to me like the content in it is the icing on the cake where the cake is simply a shaky foundation consisting of the dubious Synoptics. So I guess my question would be how much did 'John' know of the others and how much did he stretch the truth? I'm sure you're familiar with all the instances where Jesus seems to be a lot more divine than in the Synoptics.

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