Zed

Christianity is based on historic claims that are wrong. It's a simple conclusion and I see no need to complicate it.

It's nothing unusual either. We all make decisions and take actions based on wrong beliefs.

From a tactical point of view, it just so happens to be beneficial that we concede the historicity issue to the fundamentalists. I discuss religion with fundamentalists all the time, and I find that the allegorical approach comes across as a timid one that legitimizes their very destructive position. Imagine trying to find alternative, more acceptable understandings of, say, fundamentalist Islam, instead of taking it for the brutal, cruel bloody ideology that it really is.

My stance on Christianity is this: It is as dumb as it sounds. Its ideas are in fact ridiculous. We can't let our shock by that realization lead us to seek alternative ways of seeing it in order to lessen its sting.

bacht

That they were crazy?

The strictly historical approach actually makes the first Christians look worse imo. If the mythicists are right and it all started with visions or dreams about a near-future Christ, isn't this better than people like Mark making claims about a Jewish superman who already came and went?

The last couple of centuries of academic work has picked apart the gospel story pretty thoroughly. If it all started with Jewish apocalyptic with a dash of midrash, this seems more authentic to me than bald fabrication of facts out of nothing, which seems to be the case for Mark's narrative.

spamandham

Clearly, the conclusion would need to be that the authors were recording somethign someone else made up (to include myth and legend making).

Russellonius

That's your not-very-well-received assumption. Christianity could just as well be based on mythic claims that are true.

Christianity claims that it is not necessary to sacrifice animals at a temple to appease an angry god anymore. True! We'll just drink some wine and say that covers it.

Christianity claims that it is not necessary to obey laws just because they're old and obeying them is a time-honored custom. True! We will use our conscience which the formerly angry god has now told us is higher than laws written on paper, wood or stone.

Maybe people today don't really need anymore to blindly accept the substitutes Christians concocted to replace the need for living sacrifice and other ritual habits of theirs. But that doesn't mean the substitute was not needed at that time to wean human culture off of their perceived need to do those things.

Anybody got a replacement? It's not likely that the religious economy will be suppressed by objective scientific discovery because they are two different things that can be pursued simultaneously. How could you develop a replacement that would appeal to consumers? I don't know, but Christianity accomplished this feat.

It is your choice as a consumer in the marketplace to not buy the product.

From an objective point of view we see that the product has great value because we observe that it sells well. A franchise that has continued to operate globally for nearly two thousands years may seem 'dumb' when you are debating as a consumer whether or not to buy the product.

A market analysis produces a very different result. Few organizations have had greater success.

The explanation of the origin and growth of Christianity cannot be that they were dumb or crazy. That is just an expression of your consumer choice to not buy the product. Maybe you are evaluating the product incorrectly. Maybe the time you spend on the topic is a cost associated with purchasing it.

Zed

Christianity may have ended animal sacrifice, but it gave us a god who won't forgive without killing his own son as a sacrifice, and anyone who disagrees burns in hell forever.

That is an idea that is poisonous, not worthy of being sugar-coated, and should be fought and rejected literally and as an allegory.

That happens to be my opinion.