"The United States is a Christian-founded nation"

[DeistPaladin]

OK, back the truck up. We need to get a few things straight before we go any further. You seem to be running wild with a lot of assumptions about me that just aren't so.

First of all, skepticism is not a worldview. It is the natural response to outlandish claims made with either no evidence or insufficient evidence. If I were to tell you that 100 winged monkeys just flew out of my ass, you'd be right to have some doubts about that claim. It would not be because you subscribe to a worldview that monkeys don't fly out of asses. It would be because I made an extraordinary claim and didn't provide extraordinary evidence.

Second, naturalism is not something I subscribe to out of some "avid" or stubborn need to deny the existence of the supernatural. It is because from the moment we wake to the moment we go to sleep, the natural universe is all we encounter. Further, every time a phenomena is thought to be supernatural, such as lightning or the movement of the tides, our expanding knowledge eventually allows us to replace superstition with science. There is no time in history where a natural explanation has been replaced with a magical one but the reverse has been quite common over the course of human history.

That said, if you ever show me evidence of angels, miracles, demons or other supernatural occurrences, I will be quite happy to evaluate it with an open mind. Occam's Razor may direct me to rule out a natural explanation first but this is only because natural explanations are both simpler and consistent with the universe we experience.

The fact is you apply the same skepticism to any outlandish claim that falls outside the bounds of your favorite religion. You are skeptical of Muslim claims about the Koran as I am. I simply believe in one less bundle of superstition than you do.

Third, we need to review the logical fallacy of The Loaded Question. This is where you ask questions that are burdened with unwarranted presuppositions, such as "when did you stop beating your spouse?" That classic loaded question implies an assumption that you (a) are married and (b) have a history of beating your spouse. Let's be careful to start with what we know first and then make arguments and suppositions on that basis. If you need to speculate, be sure to label it as such and not as an accepted fact.

OK, with all that sorted out...

I think it's a fair assessment that someone at some point got excited over some kind of an experience with something that happened to them. Either they were nuts or something or they had an encounter with God/Christ.

When did you stop beating your spouse?

There is absolutely zero reasons for making this assumption. Religions start all the time, sometimes by people excited about their ideas and sometimes by people who pretend to be excited about their ideas. There is no reason to speculate on any supernatural encounter.

Materialism is reasonably easy to argue against imo though without a decent revelation you can't land the killing blow.

Not necessary. The burden of proof is not on me to show that a new religion wasn't inspired by a supernatural event. Logically, you can't prove a negative. This is why the logical fallacy "Argument from Ignorance" exists.

Take the Muhammad example. If we are so charitable as to assume he really existed and really had his revelation in a cave, we can still speculate that he either hallucinated or lied about his experience for his own ends. I can't prove either is the case but that is not necessary. The burden of proof lies with the Muslim to show me evidence that the angel Gabriel (Jabril) really did contact him.

Combine the arguments in favour of God with the arguments in favour of the Biblical revelation you have a tag team worthy of taking down atheistic assumptions.

First, I've never seen an example of either one that isn't riddled with logical fallacies. Second, atheism isn't an assumption. It's a lack of belief about something.

Either it was an experience of God and the transcendent or it was a materialist explanation which will be some kind of mass hysteria and people working themselves up into visions or whatever.

Typical with other apologetic argument (see the Trilemma), you feel the need to invent straw men alternatives to your desired conclusion in order to fit them into a false dilemma that allows you to work back from what you've already decided to believe. "Mass hysteria" is not essential to the creation of a new religion, even a cult which tragically ends in the death of its leaders and followers.

Certainly St Paul experienced something like this

There is no certainty about this event. It's folklore.

But whoever or whatever he [Jesus] was he had a colossal life changing impact on people at the time and this deserves a decent explanation.

Such drama. Yet, when we look for historical accounts of this colossal life changing impact on people, we find nothing contemporary. The best Christians can offer is a 2nd century passage from the Annals of Tacitus. Even this is so oblique that it doesn't even mention Jesus by name. Bart Ehrman and other secular historists are convinced there was some sort of historical Jesus that may or may not have inspired some parts of the Gospels but even they can't get more specific than some-religious-leader-named-Yeshua.

Confronted with the dearth of evidence about any details regarding either the life or ministry of Jesus, apologists quickly shrink Jesus down from such lofty descriptions like the one you provided to some insignificant wandering rabbi noticed only by his select followers. Yet, if this is so, it has little to do with the Gospel character, who shook the political and religious foundations of his time and whose ministry spead like wildfire, not just among the masses but among the rich and powerful.

But the God of the Bible/Torah is something in order of magnitude different, what you have there is a sacred text regarding something the Jews and Christians held to be as the greatest treasure imaginable. You don't get any of that with Zeus.

Ironic, since modern Christian understandings of Yahweh/Satan have more to do with the Greek gods than Hebrew scripture. The popular vision of Yahweh as the old-yet-youthful bearded man in flowing robes who sits upon a throne in Heaven and smites the sinners with lightning bears a striking resemblance to Zeus.

Did you know, for example, that the Yahweh of OT scripture never once smote anyone with lightning? Not once. He used columns of fire, he sent plagues, he used invading armies, he might open the ground and have the sinner swallowed up in the earth but he never once used a thunderbolt. So why do modern Christians associate lightning strikes with God's wrath? That was Zeus' schtick.

Satan, meanwhile, does not have the arch-nemesis of God role that he gains in the NT. To the Hebrews, he was the tempter and punisher working for Yahweh, and a relatively minor character in the OT. His only significant screen time was in Job. In this book, he was part of the court of Yahweh and the exchange between them was quite pleasant, even friendly, though Satan had a far more cynical view. At worst, this suggest a "loyal opposition" in Yahweh's court more than that of an arch-nemesis. But in his character rewrite in the NT, he gains horns, a tail and cloven feet, a reasonable description of Pan, the Greek god of passion. The Christian Satan seems like a cross between Hades and Pan.

This blending between Greek and Christian concepts is no accident. Christianity itself is less the successor of Judaism and more the bastard offspring of Judaism and Paganism. The maladjusted child grew to hate both parents and persecuted them both. So much for the 5th commandment. The religion collectively violated that just like the 4th when the Sabbath was moved from Saturday to Sunday, the holy day of the Roman gods.

It was a collaborative effort, some of it written by Paul and some written by Paul's followers who attributed their writings to him.

More likely, Paul, if he existed, was a preacher of more Marcionite concepts and he was later re-worked by the triumphant proto-orthodox Christians following Nicaea. I highly doubt Marcion would have touted Paul otherwise.

Further evidence of the tampering of Paul is when we contrast the bombastic bully of Galatians with the meek team player of the later book, Acts of the Apostles. In Galatians, Paul makes it clear he is on a mission from on high and he answers to no earthly authority. In Acts, Paul is passively "sent here" and "summoned there". This Paul exists in the shadow of Peter, the poster boy for the triumphant Catholic Church. In one memorable symbolic moment, Peter is mistaken for Zeus while Paul is mistaken for Mercury. The pecking order could not be more clear.

Essentially, what the early Christians did to their rivals, the followers of John the Baptist is precisely what they later did to Paul, the symbol of the Marcionites, and what the Muslims would later do to Jesus: incorporate and reinvent in submissive form. John the Baptist knelt before Jesus, Paul before Peter, Jesus before Muhammad.

The gospel of John was written around 95 AD so no-one alive at the time will have known Jesus personal that was over 60 years ago. In fact no-one who wrote the synoptic gospels will have ever known Jesus personally either it was the recording of an oral tradition.

Even so, the idea that a prominent man in such a small community could be seriously thought to be a mere apparition should be silly. It would be like modern Americans believing Elvis never existed except as an image. Did Jesus not have nephews and nieces that could have testified to his real existence? Did his extended family not have neighbors in the tiny hamlet of Nazareth? It all seems rather strange to me and lends credence to the idea that if he existed at all, it was only as an insignificant also-ran who somehow was deified among later generations.

Atheism is your living torment right there if you seriously believe in that as the reality.

In your mind perhaps but atheism is nothing more than a lack of belief.

Christianity began as a Jewish sect so hence the disagreement with having to keep the Jewish Laws but that's just a historical detail.

Actually, Christianity began as a hybrid religion and most of its sects claimed a Jewish origin. The combination of contradictory ideas in Judaism and Paganism, and its subsequent problems in Christology, is no matter of details but a serious controversy that has stymied some of the greatest Christian minds through the ages. The messy and obtuse articles of theology such as "The Trinity" and "Wholly Man and Wholly God" are the net result of trying to ram together strict Jewish monotheism with Pagan ideas of the intercessor deity and its promise of salvation.

Consider how the OT god forbids an intercessor (1st commandment, Isaiah 43:10-12) and the NT god requires an intercessor (John 14:6). So which is it? If we need Jesus to forgive us our sins that we may reach God, how is this consistent with a Jewish god that thought such intercession was neither necessary nor tolerated? But if Jesus is God, than who is he praying to? The Jesus of Matthew, Mark and Luke is clearly a separate and subordinate being to his Father, who speaks of him in 3rd person and to him in 2nd person, who does not know what his Father knows, who does the will of the Father instead his own.

The crude solution was to say that Jesus was God when the story required it and not-God when required. He can be the intercessor because he's the very same god he being an intercessor for. No man comes unto him but by him. He's both and yet neither at the same time. He is a separate person but part of the same triune god. Babble, babble, babble. Barking madness.

We're all in the same boat when it comes to the more ultimate questions.

True but questions are easier to address when you don't clutter up the landscape with needless complication. The first step should be to clear the field of red herrings and nonsense.

Yes there were other Christian sects who had different views like this but it's all a bit academic. Not something you really need to worry yourself about but of historical interest.

The existence of such controversy demolishes the Christian dreamscape of a single united theology that got off the ground quickly and spread rapidly in the face of persecution.

I wouldn't worry about the bloodline of David business, the Jewish Messiah technically had to be but it's not that Jesus quite fulfilled all the requirements anyway...

Sorry, that's a whole other can of worms. I'll be brief and say the Jews were looking for a glorious warlord that would lead Israel to victory over her enemies, not a lamb of god for the salvation of all off humanity.

Revelation was the earliest book of the NT and best represents proto-Christianity in its birth pangs. The Jesus of this book bears little resemblance to his later developed character, either in personality or in his history. In Revelation, he is born in Heaven to rule on earth. In the Gospels, he is born on earth to rule in Heaven. The rest of the book is nonsensical except in its bile against its Roman oppressors who were to meet a long, painful and violent end. To me, it best represents a more compelling scenario of how Christianity got started: The Jews were chaffing under Roman rule, wondering WTF happened to Yahweh's promise to David and decided their promised Messiah lived in a higher realm.

There is a source that's what matters here. The source is God and experience of humanity in relationship to God and that's your source.

Then your god can't keep his story straight.

Are you sure you haven't been indoctrinated into the materialist mindset?

LOL, Wut? You can't be indoctrinated to believe in reality.