Is Christianity based on older myths?

[robvalue]

If I turned up in jesus times, landed a fighter jet, got out and blew some stuff up with a rocket launcher, then told all the cave men or whatever that I was God... Would they argue? Especially if I have an assault rifle and shoot anyone who says I'm not?

The "God of the bible" is just some floaty words on a page. How can you possibly connect those dots to form a comprehensive model of what Yahweh is? If two God-looking guys turn up and both claim to be Yahweh, which one is right?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

The one that lives, clearly.

[Alex K]

If I turned up in jesus times, landed a fighter jet, got out and blew some stuff up with a rocket launcher, then told all the cave men or whatever that I was God... Would they argue? Especially if I have an assault rifle and shoot anyone who says I'm not?

The "God of the bible" is just some floaty words on a page. How can you possibly connect those dots to form a comprehensive model of what Yahweh is? If two God-looking guys turn up and both claim to be Yahweh, which one is right?

There will be a prime time casting show "The world's next top deity", where they have to perform several tasks like creating worlds, smiting, high speed parallel prayer answering etc., and then a jury consisting of theologians, B list celebrities and Donald Trump decides.

[SteveII]

Some assumptions have to be made for discussion purposes. If you want to argue that these things are not so, that's fine but I am going with the people who make this their life's work.

A. Scholars believe Jesus existed.
B. Scholars believe the Pauline epistles to be written in the 50s and the 4 gospels between 60-100.
C. There are at least 8 different authors of 27 separate documents. Don't make the mistake of combining them all into one book. They are not.

Okay, to sum up whether Christianity is based on myths, I am hearing the following reasoning:

1. The gospels are not accurate or are complete fiction
2. Paul, Peter, John, and James had motives other than truth to write their letters
3. Therefore the narrative is fiction and the source must be recycled myths.

First, why would we not assume the 8 separate writers believed what they wrote until we have evidence or a plausible motive for a significant conspiracy? Do we assign this type of scrutiny to other historical documents? Can you give me an example of even a group of 5 historical documents that are attesting to something that are all thought to be intentionally false?

Or is it that you think that a plausible motive for this level of falsehood and conspiracy was to start a new belief system based on self-sacrifice, love, and humility in a political climate that was hostile to it?

Lastly, the conclusion 3 does not follow from the premises 1 and 2. To get to this conclusion, you would have to insert and prove probability of the premise that the early church conspirators had access to extinct and eastern religious characters, stories, and philosophies. I would argue that if premise 1 and 2 are true, it is far more probable that any similarity to myths is coincidence.

[robvalue]

Belief is not truth. I don't care how much they believed what they are saying.

Can you understand the difference between a guy believing something, and the thing he believed actually being true?

People believe all kinds of crazy shit. Why do you care what they believed if you don't actually know if it's true? You just want to emulate their beliefs regardless?

[SteveII]

Belief is not truth. I don't care how much they believed what they are saying.

Can you understand the difference between a guy believing something, and the thing he believes actually being true?

Yet you are saying that somewhere in this causal chain of belief, multiple people were intentionally deceitful. This would include Paul, John, James, and Peter since they signed their letters.

[Cato]

Can you give me an example of even a group of 5 historical documents that are attesting to something that are all thought to be intentionally false?

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Thomas.

[robvalue]

I don't know if you genuinely can't understand this point, or are being deliberately difficult because you desperately want to cling to your beliefs.

You seem to think that the initial reporting of events was absolutely especially totally true. The people who saw it not only told the absolute truth, but also understood everything that was happening, including correctly attributing supernatural causations. And that's assuming they didn't just make it up, and why should we assume that? And not just that, but that the reports were passed on entirely accurately.

We wouldn't give anyone even today such credibility, why are you giving it to superstitious warmongers with an agenda? People make stuff up, people get deluded and people make up explanations. So what someone believes happened, and why it happened, is entirely irrelelevant if it cannot be independently demonstrated.

That is, if you care at all about the truth of the claims.

Would you believe people who say they've been abducted by aliens? Even if they really believe what they are saying? They pass a lie detector test?

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You really have to decide if you are argueing for a historical Jesus "the man" or "the God". The level of evidence any honest person would require to establish these two seperate claims would be vastly different.

[SteveII]

I don't know if you genuinely can't understand this point, or are being deliberately difficult because you desperately want to cling to your beliefs.

You seem to think that the initial reporting of events was absolutely especially totally true. The people who saw it not only told the absolute truth, but also understood everything that was happening, including correctly attributing supernatural causations. And not just that, but that the reports were passed on entirely accurately.

We wouldn't give anyone even today such credibility, why are you giving it to superstitious warmongers with an agenda? People make stuff up, people get deluded and people make up explanations. So what someone believes happened, and why it happened, is entirely irrelelevant if it cannot be independently demonstrated.

That is, if you care at all about the truth of the claims.

You seem to think that Paul was a generation removed from the events. He was not. He would have been a child or young man when Jesus died. He didn't get his info from the telephone game. He knew, met with, and corresponded with actual disciples of Jesus. So for your theory to work, the actual eyewitnesses to Jesus' life would have had to lie to Paul who passed it on in his letters. The eyewitnesses also wrote letters (at least John, Peter, and James' survived) where they lied.

[Faith No More]

I would argue that if premise 1 and 2 are true, it is far more probable that any similarity to myths is coincidence.

Coincidence? Are you saying god is a plagiarist?

You do realize that the people that could actually read and write back then were the elite that usually had access to libraries of material so the authors having access to previous myths is not only plausible but probable?