Craigart14

I teach in the Bible Belt with college students who have been, for the most part, "raised in the church." Most don't have the foggiest idea what their particular church's doctrine might be, and only know the Bible as a sort of oral folklore. Their leaders may be literal, but most of my students, even in casual conversation, will say that they don't believe that the Bible is 100% true. Yet their churches are Fundamentalists, and their pastors will defend Biblical inerrancy, which for them is easy because even they don't know the Bible well and often seem to know even less about logical thinking, so an apparent contradiction or error in the Bible can be explained by spontaneous flights of fancy. Point out that Judas hanged himself in the Gospel and fell down and exploded in Acts, and without batting an eye they will say that maybe he hanged himself and then fell down, so there is no contradiction. Point out that Jesus has three different sets of last words, and they say that not all three were his LAST words, even though in each case the Gospel states that he said X, then died. Point out that the cosmology of Genesis describes a sky that is a solid dome and stars that are tiny, and they will ask how you know it wasn't really like that "back in the day."

Most Christians--all that I know--believe there was a real Jesus "back in the day." Personally, I don't care. The existence of a wandering rabbi named Yeshua is not an extraordinary claim, so I don't demand extraordinary evidence. As there are a couple of hundred pilgrims to Jerusalem each year who are so moved that they experience psychotic breaks and think they are the reincarnation, I don't even find it surprising or worth arguing that Yeshua thought he was the son of God. But when they start talking about miracles, virgin births, resurrections . . . that's where I get off the train. I would rather believe the reasonable--that credulous theists had hallucinations and invented stories--than the impossible.

Craig

Minimalist

Belief is a poor substitute for tangible evidence in any case.

One first-century pottery sherd with his name inscribed on it (that was not a product of the later xtian forgery machine) would account for far more than all of their "Hallelujahs."

credoconsolans

You should start your own church. :Cheeky:
Most all the ones I know do and most vehemently, too. Society supports their belief as well, seeing as our time line is focused around the date he was 'born' and events are referenced as happening before or after that date.

Clivedurdle

On alleged derails about chimera, we are looking at a sample of one - a godman.

Now what category does this unique beastie more likely match?

Historical? Please show me another historical godman

Chimera? Loads of these, including St Christopher.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynocephaly

Clivedurdle

Maybe phantoms, gods, ghosts and spirits should all be classified as chimera, but one legged versions, having lost their second aspect, like a body.

Sheshbazzar

לא־כן ואל־נא
No, that is for those who know no better .

gurugeorge

Well to be fair I think early Christians probably did do a lot of those sorts of good things to start off with, as most religions probably did. It's really only when politics proper (as opposed to mere "internal politics", which is corrupting enough) mixes with religion that you get the really bad stuff. Before that, it's just a cult, and (like cults today) probably beneficial for many (who might have been even crazier without it - it levels them out, and eases social intercourse, gives them some sort of "family" and a sense of belonging).

I agree with Shezbazzar to some extent: leave your common or garden religious people alone, you don't know them or their lives, you don't know what pain they've been through, and to what extent their religion is a coping response to that; most religious people are in fact harmless, and their beliefs of no great consequence for the world, and even somewhat beneficial in terms of good works. It's the True Believers that you have to watch out for - those for whom religion is clique, and a weapon to browbeat others with, in order to shore up their own insecurities.

Anyway, yes, I rejected Roman Catholicism when I was exposed to more detail about religious beliefs via Catechism at age 5 or 6, or whenever it was, on the basis that the "secondary" (and by implication subordinate) role implied to women by the story of Adam's Rib was without support in my experience (women seemed roughly equal to men so far as I could see, even at 5), and a disgustingly sly piece of propaganda to boot (I didn't know the word "propaganda" of course, I just felt that the idea was meant to subtly influence me, and I rejected that influence, and vehemently rejected what I felt to be an evil mindset behind that attempted influence), plus also it was insulting to my mother.

Where did that innate, imperious and decisive sense of morality come from in a child aged 5 or 6? Search me, but it was there, it came out from me and judged something in the world (religion) and found it wanting.

Now, how many religious people actually, in their heart of hearts, believe any of it? Not unless they've had some kind of visionary or mystical experience will they believe any of it. All religions are shams, Potemkin religions. The "underground" is always that people don't fundamentally believe in their culture's religion, they just have to go along with it because it's tied to political power.

It seems to me that we are a moral animal, and it's "religious ideas gone wrong" that actually make us do bad things (and that goes for tribal religions and primitive religions too). The undoubted good religions (as grand social institutions) sometimes do is outweighed by the bad, on balance.

That implies that I think there are "right" religious ideas - I do, and as Sam Harris and a few other notable freethinkers believe, I think it's in the area of certain kinds of experiments in consciousness held by mystical traditions within the various religions - and those were what kicked them off in the first place, before all the religio-political crap came in.