Self-Mutation

If the New Testament letters (such as Paul's letters to the romans, galatians, titus etc) do not prove Christianity, then I want an atheist to show me the following:

Letters from the greeks and romans to various people explaining about their gods.

Letters from muslim people around the time of muhammad talking about Allah.

Letters from Hindu people to each other telling of their gods.

Letters from Jews to each other talking about their God.

Would we ever find a letter written about "the grace and peace of hercules be with you" or "the grace and peace of shiva be with you?" The answer is NO.

Yet, Christianity has all these letters written by REAL PEOPLE to EACH OTHER about JESUS. No other religion has such letters. They only have holy books describing it. Christianity has real letters, which proves it.

Dogfish

:rolling::rolling:

Archaeopath

Wait, what????

Because some people wrote to each other about their religion, that proves what about said religion?

That people wrote about it? That the religion existed? That it's what?

show_no_mercy

lol...

Clivedurdle

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=205276

What was that about irony?

Self-Mutation

Not to mention, Christianity is VERY unique when it comes to things in the religion: For example, take this paragraph taken from here: http://www.godandscience.org/apologe...not_false.html

Skeptics often claim that the New Testament was fabricated by the disciples. Although the Bible contains many stories of miracles, it also includes doctrines that the average male would not have included, if they were making up a religion. For example, in other religions, heaven consists of males engaging in eternal sex with multiple virgins. However, in the Bible there are no sexual relationships in heaven, but believers are "married" to Jesus. Realistically, no males I know of (including myself) would ever make up the Christian concept of heaven.

To make the picture complete, the members of the Church are described as being female. How insulting that would be to the average male ego? Another doctrine that would be considered offensive in first century Jewish culture is the virgin birth of Jesus.

In addition, first century Jewish culture considered women to be unreliable witnesses, making the discovery of the empty tomb by women unlikely to have been fabricated. The leaders in the Bible are presented realistically, with all their faults and shortcomings. When presenting themselves, most people tend to tell about their positive traits, eliminating negative traits, such as drunkenness, adultery, and murder.

The inclusion of the good and the bad of God's leaders indicate that the biblical accounts are not just fabricated stories.

Archaeopath

Self-Mutation, are you actually going to respond to anyone's post here? Or are you just preaching to yourself?

Please answer my questions, as this is one of the most baffling threads of yours I've read so far.

Kapyong

Gday,

Really?

I'm a sceptic,
I've never claimed that,
and I've never heard a sceptic make that argument.

That is simply NOT what sceptics argue at all (of course, there are many sceptics who argue various things.)

This is simply the BELIEVER'S straw-man of what sceptics believe.

So,
can you show a single sceptic who argues that "the New Testament was fabricated by the disciples. " ?


Kapyong

Toto

So maybe the gospels were originally written by women. There are serious theories that do maintain that. And only one other religion says that heaven consists of men having eternal sex with virgins. But aside from that -

The gospels were written after 70 CE by the calculation of most religious scholars, skeptical or not, and that would rule out anyone who knew Jesus being an author. So I doubt that any skeptics think that the gospels were written by the disciples.

No modern male would invent the Christian concept of heaven, but that doesn't speak to first century men, or the many women who were followers of early Christianity. In addition, "male" and "female" were sometimes used in symbolic senses. In one of the gnostic gospels, Jesus announced that he will make Mary a man. This had nothing to do with a sex change operation. Bart Ehrman explains that the culture of the time thought of women as incomplete or imperfect men, so making them men only meant that they would be perfected.

Richard Carrier has debunked the idea that women were unreliable witnesses, or the idea that women discovering the empty tomb was "embarrassing." This all seems to be based on the much discreditied criterion of embarrassment, but we know that an embarrassing detail is no guarantee of truth, from many examples. This is especially true with the gospels, where many of the embarrassing details about the disciples were probably inserted by one theological faction to discredit another.

So you know that Shakespeare is true for similar reasons?

ChuckE99

I don't think Self-Mutation is listening (or reading), guys.