Last time I watch the movie Se7en “pride” was one of the deadly sins. Yet the most important thing is “belief” for the sake of belief.
Glad I read your link about The Black Hole Police because my mind was going in an entirely different direction… 
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Understand your point to a degree but if we simply obey and love him he loves us back…. We are t he one screwing it up imho
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Luckily it’s only 1,000,000 miles away or four times further away than the moon. Hopefully somebody filled out the warranty card.
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It’s just a flesh wound…
well shit that took quite a hit. imagine a manned spacecraft. although I do hope we eventually make it to mars. Hell if I was a billionaire I’d be having them figuring out how to drop me off on europa or titan.
And function in close to absolute zero conditions with almost laser like precision.
Telephone is fine…but use the whole example.
At the end of the game, the person who originated the story hears the disrupted story at the end and compares notes…everyone has a laugh…good times.
These accounts were written by different people in different places in different times, but there was plenty of overlap between them. If Paul got things so wrong, well there were a lot of other churches and Apostles still banging about that can back verify or back deny his story or distortions. Same w the Gospels…there’s 4 if them, mostly congruent and overlapping.
If one guy or church went off the reservation and started making up things like Son of God, Resurrection, chatting with Jesus afterwards…plenty of people and opportunity for them to say" Hey! Waitup! Still Alive??? Thats not what we understand."…etc.
Now magic parlor tricks? Transmogrifying water/wine, Endless Fish and Bread Buffet…that stuff? That smells of Old Testament style Olde Tyme Religion Stories that are the abracadabra in many an ancient religion and to me are irrelevant and should be looked at as probable street cred stories and embellishment.
There’s also the possibility of ‘oh yea me too’. Imagine you have a guru you follow that you love and believe in and he’s murdered.
One of the followers tells people their spirit visited them - That’s pretty special. Then another does and another. Who wants to be the disciple who didn’t get visited?
Ever go to a church that does speaking in tongues? I have. Our church when I was young had us travel to Appalachia for volunteer work and went to a local church in the boon docks. It’s pretty whacko. One person starts gibberish. Then another. Then another. Before you know it nearly everyone is flailing and jabbering nonsense. It’s like a hillbilly rave
Do people think everyone there was actually channeling the native voice of God?
Yes Jesus came to me. He came to me too. Yes he came to me too. Me too. Me too…
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That would not look good on your credit card statement…
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The best theory IMO is life starting at thermal vents deep under the ocean. If we find life on Europa (also believed to have deep sea thermal vents), that would lead one to believe that life will exist throughout the galaxy/universe.
It doesn’t matter how low a probably you calculate for life to spontaneously happen. Those odds are infinitely more probable than a supernatural explanation.
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It wasnt sequential and separated in time and place, so again, its not like telephone or peer pressure.
It was to duos and groups of apostles, then to a crowd of 500.
I cant speak to the veracity of any of it, nor can anyone else…nor against it.
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And yet you told us what you believe. So I will as well.
In the course of our debate on the origins of the universe, I offered specific personal experience as my own reason for belief in an intelligent Designer. Casting aspersions in the general direction of religion is not a argument against God’s existence. I’m not arguing for religion. I know Christ today spiritually, personally, primarily because my past life was so intensely flawed and dark. And still today, I find CS Lewis’ Shakespeare analogy tremendously compelling. It has the ring of truth:
“If Shakespeare and Hamlet could ever meet,” he wrote, “it must be Shakespeare’s doing. Hamlet could initiate nothing. Shakespeare could, in principle, make himself appear as Author within the play, and write a dialogue between Hamlet and himself. The ‘Shakespeare’ within the play would of course be at once Shakespeare and one of Shakespeare’s creatures. It would bear some analogy to Incarnation.”
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The first written record we have of a “Jesus” being crucified was written by someone that wasn’t alive when the crucifixion took place. He would have had access to official Roman records of the time so in all probability, someone named Jesus did exist and was crucified.
There are no written records of 1st hand accounts.
The “cross” that most Christians consider a holy symbol likely wasn’t what Jesus was crucified on and is just another example of how a story changes over time.
This was copied from Gotquestions.org:
Jesus was on the cross for about six hours. “The chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, “I am the Son of God”’” (Matthew 27:41–43). Crucifixion was a method the ancient Roman Empire used to carry out the death penalty for those found guilty of a capital offense. Crucifixion was usually reserved for slaves, foreigners, insurrectionists, and those guilty of the vilest crimes.
The Jewish theocrats, in order to eliminate Jesus and maintain their power, devised a plan to convince Roman authorities that Jesus must be killed (Mark 14:1; cf. John 19:12; 19:15). The Jewish leaders accused Christ of encouraging rebellion and proclaiming Himself as King. This charge of insurrection is how Jesus ended up on a Roman cross rather than being stoned to death, the ancient Jewish method of execution.
Crucifixion was designed not only to kill but to dissuade others from criminal actions. Victims of crucifixion were to be humiliated, often left to hang completely naked. The cross carried a stigma, and Jewish Law said it brought a curse (Galatians 3:13; 5:11). The term excruciating literally means “out of crucifying”; crucifixion was an “excruciating” way to die because it was a very slow and painful means to death. Depending on the circumstance, some people could live for days after being nailed to a cross.
Answering the question of how long Jesus was on the cross is complicated by the fact that two systems of marking time are used in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke use the Jewish system of marking time. John uses the Roman system. Using the Jewish system, Mark says, “They crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him” (Mark 15:24–25, ESV). According to this, Christ’s crucifixion began at 9:00 A.M.
Also using the Jewish system of marking time, Matthew says that “from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour” (Matthew 27:45, ESV). That is, the darkness lasted from 12:00 noon to 3:00 P.M. This was Jesus’ final three hours on the cross. At the end of that time, “when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit” (Matthew 27:50). After that a Roman soldier made sure of His death (John 19:34), and Jesus’ body was taken down. Jesus had been on the cross from approximately 9:00 A.M. until 3:00 P.M., a total of six hours.
John adds the detail that Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate was taking place, according to Roman time, “about the sixth hour” (John 19:14, ESV). Since the Romans started counting their hours at midnight, the “sixth hour” would start at 6:00 A.M.
So, using the Roman system:
“about the sixth hour” = about 6:00 A.M. Jesus is sentenced by Pilate.
Then, using the Jewish system:
“the third hour” = 9:00 A.M. The crucifixion begins.
“the sixth hour” = 12:00 P.M. (noon). Darkness begins.
“the ninth hour” = 3:00 P.M. Jesus dies.
Putting it all together, Jesus’ trial ended about 6:00 A.M. His crucifixion began about three hours later, and He died about six hours after that.
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Long ago, twenty rings existed: three for elves, seven for dwarves, nine for men, and one made by the Dark Lord Sauron, in Mordor, which would rule all the others. Sauron poured all his evil and his will to dominate into this ring. An alliance of elves and humans resisted Sauron’s ring and fought against Mordor. They won the battle and the ring fell to Isildur, the son of the king of Gondor, but just as he was about to destroy the ring in Mount Doom, he changed his mind and held on to it for himself. Later he was killed, and the ring fell to the bottom of the sea. The creature Gollum discovered it and brought it to his cave. Then he lost it to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
Other than the fact that Tolkien and Jackson tell us this is fiction, couldn’t one make the proclamation that this story is true too? Had it been written hundreds or thousands of years ago, with no context that it was fiction but instead was referenced as historical fact, couldn’t we make the case that the Lord of the Rings was real? It is odd that on one hand, when evidence is produced to refute the existence of Jesus and the stories of the Bible, the response is “well I have faith”. But on the other hand, believers are constantly on the lookout for evidence or proof that Jesus did exist and the stories are actual accounts. I’m sorry, but words written on a paper do not prove that Jesus was real. Do you really think that if you were born in India or China that you would feel this strongly about Jesus? The people in those regions feel just as strongly about their religion as you do about yours. Are they wrong? The overwhelming odds are that you would believe one of the many religions in those countries if you were born and raised there.
Isn’t the JWST amazing?
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You can’t use the bible to confirm the bible.
There’s little doubt that Jesus was an actual historical figure. But it the days before cameras, telephones, computers, and very little paper, stories told and retold over time Im sure were conflated with existing mythology. I’m not trying to discredit anyone’s beliefs, I find it all interesting
From what I’ve read there’s some similarities between the writings of Jesus life and existing older Egyptian mythology -
Mithras - The name means the God Light of Truth. It was claimed that he was born on December 25 and conceived by a virgin, but he was only originally born out of solid rock, having a hole on the side of the mountain.
Dionysus - ancient Greek god of wine and drunkenness and Patron saint of Jim Morrison. The miracle Jesus did was turning water into wine during the wedding at Cana. This bears a resemblance to that of Dionysus, who turned water into wine for a poor herdsman in the Greek novel Leukippe and Kleitophon.
Osiris - The father of Horus. It was claimed that Osiris died but came back to life. His body was dismembered and scattered all over the world, but goddess Isis (Horus’ mom) collected and rejoined his body.
Some other Christianity parallels -
The Holy Trinity concept parallels triads in ancient religions from Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian among several others. The ancient Babylonians recognized the doctrine of three persons in one god
Accounts of the baby Jesus may be influenced from Horus-Shed (the saviour), and the imagery of various ‘cippi’ (devotional healing stelae of Horus-the-Saviour) showing the child Horus trampling reptiles and squishing snakes reflects the imagery of bruising the head of the snake in Genesis (poor snakes always vilified)
Icons of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus resemble images of Mut and Khnonsu and Isis and Horus.
The Latin Cross (the now-standard Christian cross) derived from the Egyptian ankh symbol, first used as a cross by Coptic Christians, and co-opted from Egyptian religion. The real cross of Jesus would have been a T-bar, not a cross as we have it today.
The flood myth has earlier origins and is paralleled in other religions and cultures. Notably The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh dates back nearly 5,000 years and is thought to be perhaps the oldest written tale on the planet.
In it, there is an account of the great sage Utnapishtim, who is warned of an imminent flood to be unleashed by wrathful gods. He builds a massive circular-shaped boat, reinforced with tar and pitch, that carries his relatives, grains and animals. After enduring days of storms, Utnapishtim, like Noah in Genesis, releases a bird in search of dry land
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I’ve always considered the rotting corpse of the recently deceased, which happens every time, pretty good evidence of our final fate. That’s real hard evidence right before our eyes. Dead. That’s when you have to smoke a bowl…
Ummm do we need to send someone to check your basement freezers?
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