Is Christianity something other than a religion?

Thank you for admitting that the bible is NOT the infallible "word of god".

 

Because you do not understand how it is done in real life, you believe fantasy.

You have heard (maybe even participated in) the experiment where the teacher tells one student something, that student tells the next student, etc. and the last student tells the teacher what he heard and it is wildly different from what the teacher told the first student.

That's fantasy. That's not how its done.

To better represent reality, the teacher would teach 3 students the phrase, they would repeat it back to her and to each other until they all had it down. Then the 3 students teach it to 3 more who repeat back and to each other. And so on. In the end, the last 3 students have the exact same phrase the teacher started with.

Errors do creep in over centuries. But not nearly as many as you think, an original book of the Iliad does not turn into Alice in Wonderland.

 

Mark was written at best 3 decades later.

 

https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/census.htm

 

No they didn't. They all built off of previous writings.

 

More irony coming from someone who believes in a fantasy!

 

OP

My comment is that practising 'religion' is better than having to work for a living. And a lot more lucrative too, I shouldn't wonder. I'll bet 95% couldn't GAF about religion.

 

Well, it always has in the past.

I suppose that you could conjure up a hypothetical instance in which it would not.

But so far, the track record is pretty good...

Would you care to explain, please?

 

Most people consider "religion" to be an anachronistic set of beliefs, passed down by tradition--but devoid of anything objective in which it is rooted.

I think that my former pastor was suggesting that he does not believe in anything like that.

 

Would you care to explain, please?

 

I "admit[ed]" no such thing.

The Bible nowhere claims--or even hints--that it was written by Jesus.

Where did you ever get such an outlandish idea?

(Even fundamentalists--as regarding which, I am not one--do not believe this.)

 

I rather doubt it.

For instance, Mark 13 (which parallels "the little apocalypse, known as Matthew 24; and Luke 17 and 21) prophesies the destruction of the Temple. This occurred in 70 AD, under the army of Titus. And this is hardly "3 decades" later.

Even if you were correct, however, why should we believe that no eyewitnesses would remain alive just three decades later?

 

It was written after the destruction of the Temple. Pretty easy to “prophesize” an event that already occurred.

 

If, by "previous writings," you are alluding to the "Four-Source Q Theory" (which I mentioned elsewhere), I would agree with that.

But so what?

 

That means they aren’t first hand accounts. They are, as I said, at best third hand accounts.

 

Perhaps I should have been a bit more precise: What I would really like is a neutral source.

A book that is subtitled, "Case Against Evangelical Rationalism" is not exactly what I had in mind...

 

Yet the information within is sourced and footnoted.

The census in Luke contradicts literally everything known about Roman censuses. They invented that story so they could have an excuse to have Jesus born in Bethlehem and then imply he was descended from David and thus fulfills prophecy.

 

And your "proof" of this is...what, exactly?

 

Not Mark. (The other Synoptists apparently borrow from Mark, plus other sources.)

 

Before becoming too smug in this belief, you might want to read the following: http://crossexamined.org/really-census-time-caesar-augustus/

 

It’s the consensus of the scholarly community. All of the Gospels were written after the destruction of the Temple.

 

A *ministry* is a neutral source?

 

No, most people are religious and very much do believe their religion to be objective and objectively true. There is no definition in the world that defines "religion" as not objectively true. A religion is simply a type of belief and some beliefs are true and some beliefs aren't like any type of belief.

 

Which does nothing to prove that Jesus was resurrected.

An ad hominem is making another the topic when the other is not the topic of the debate. An ad hominem attack is the same as the previous definition but with an added insult thus the attack in the ad hominem attack.

 

Your OP is an example of your own confirmation bias!