(January 28, 2015 at 6:46 pm)SteveII Wrote: I think the difference is what are the early members attesting to. One side they attesting to teachings from someone who claimed to be God and then witness a death and resurrection that then is explained to them by the person they believe to be God. With Mormons and Muslims, early members would be attesting to a man claiming to have a message from God.
It really says a lot about a person's beliefs when he justifies them based on uncritically accepting the traditionally-held word of anonymous characters who must have had even lower standards of evidence than he himself does.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'