Why I am not a Christian

There are many ways to say what existence is like, but no way to say what it is.

 

Yes!

 

But perhaps we can eliminate what it is not.
Religions have confused and corrupted what wise men like Jesus have said...
not always deliberately, but at times to reflect their own personal biases.
This idea that we have "free will" is one example of an assumption that
people claim Jesus said. I can not think of a single thing that we can just "will"
into reality regardless of circumstances.
Likewise Jesus never preached "personal responsibility". If that idea was so important
he would have made a point of addressing it.
People should be held accountable for breaking the laws set forth by their government...
but to blame them personally for everything that occurs in their lives
as if they have "free will" to change whatever they want is not the same as accountability.

 

You seem familiar enough with Bible content...
how much "free will" did Job or Jonah have?

 

Was Job not tested?

What does the test itself imply?

 

A good example of how a person can make the best choices...do all the right things
and still suffer. He brought none of it on himself by being irresponsible.

 

But isn't suffering a part of life? In some way a consequence of being alive? The way of heaven favors good conduct but suffering happens.

 

Yes. That would be my interpretation too....but there are some here that claim humans can just "will" anything to happen.
Therefore if some thing bad happens to them...it's their own fault because...
they are lazy.....irresponsible........or "they didn't pull their bootstraps up far enough".

 

My free will wants to be immortal but it is restricted by a God from a sin so many years ago they didn't have a number for it.

 

I was raised under that philosophy. The problem was guilt suffered because of the suspicion I was doing something wrong. This only added to my suffering.

 

what about when its not 'their' guv but a bunch of kleptocratic bullies?

 

There is no historical evidence that supports the Gospel of Thomas. The apostles lived with Christ and they were persecuting for preaching their faith in him and they didn't recant. People in those times would have executed if they wrote the wrong historical information. The Gospels were written like historical documents. https://bible.org/article/historical-reliability-gospels

https://reasonsforjesus.com/is-the-gospel-of-thomas-authentic/

 

The Adam & Eve story illustrates the First Commandment =Exodus 34:11-16, specifically verse 14.

 

This is from your source, reasons for Jesus, ." New Testament scholar, Dr. Craig Blomberg, writes, "Despite two centuries of skeptical onslaught, it is fair to say that all the alleged inconsistencies among the Gospels have received at least plausible resolutions."1 Another scholar, Murray Harris, emphasizes, "Even then the presence of discrepancies in circumstantial detail is no proof that the central fact is unhistorical."2 The four Gospels give us a complementary, not a contradictory, account."

New Testament scholars that are not evangelists or fundamentalists disagree. Bart Ehrman, a former evangelical Christian who lost his faith and is a leading authority on the Bible and the
life of Jesus says this, " "The New Testament is riddled with contradictory views about who Jesus was and the significance of his life. Ehrman reveals that many of the books were written
in the names of the apostles by Christians living decades later, and that central Christian doctrines were the inventions of still later theologians. Although this has been the standard and
widespread view of scholars for two centuries, most people have never learned of it." That quote is from the back of his book, "Jesus,Interrupted". Chapter 2 of that book covers some of the
contradictions and Chapter 3 covers the mass of variant views presented among the 4 Gospels and the letters of Paul.

Some or all of the apostles may have been persecuted but that isn't evidence for the truth of the Biblical accounts in the Gospels.Plenty of modern day Christians face persecution for their beliefs,
but that isn't evidence that their beliefs are grounded in truth.

I don't agree that people in those times would have been executed for writing fictionalized histories. The 4 canonized Gospels were all unsigned so no one, except for a small community,
would have known who authored the Gospels. I doubt if the Roman government would have an interest in executing the authors of Gospels if they were aware of their existence.

The Gospel of Mark is written as a series of stories that are not in chronological order and don't flow in a unified manner. There are no resurrection appearances in the oldest Gospel of
Mark. The resurrection appearances were later added on (Mark 16:9-20). Mark is the oldest Gospel and the most primitive. It gives a very different view of Jesus than the Gospel of
John.

Many scholars view the: nativity/birth of Jesus, trial of Jesus, resurrection of Jesus, miracles attributed to Jesus, temptation by the devil, and the cleansing of the temple to be fictional
accounts. The Gospel of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount only appears in that 1 Gospel. Why wouldn't something of that significance be in all Gospel accounts? The Gospel of
Matthew also tells a story of the saints rising out of their graves and appearing to many, but this story doesn't appear in other Gospels. The miracle stories have close parallels
with pagan mythical stories and some resemble Old Testament stories. Scholars have determined that the writers of all 4 Gospels used the Old Testament as a source for
fabricating the biography of Jesus. They were not eyewitnesses and they did not have access to anyone who was an eyewitness. Since they didn't have much biographical
information they went to the OT to look for evidence of Jesus fulfilling prophecies.

 

The details that seem like discrepancies complement one another. https://christiananswers.net/q-comfort/contradictions-bible.html

 

How do the nativity stories of Matthew and Luke compliment each other? They are entirely different. Actually, the Gospels often correct an earlier Gospel such as the Gospel of Mark. Both
writers of Matthew and Luke had a copy of Mark and often disagreed with the words that were put into the mouth of Jesus by the writer of Mark.

In the Gospel of Mark, the emphasis is on "the.Son of Man" a cosmic judge who will soon arrive on earth and create a Kingdom of God. A future kingdom of God where all of the evil
forces will be destroyed, the sick will be healed, the lame would be able to walk, the blind would be able to see, and peace will reign. Jesus doesn't talk about himself except to say
that he must go to Jerusalem to be executed. Jesus doesn't identify himself as the Son of Man and he is just a person chosen to be a messenger of God. The stories of Jesus healing
people is a prelude to the coming Kingdom of God - which never came.

In the Gospel of John, there is no talk of a coming Kingdom of God. Jesus is God and he talks about himself frequently. The emphasis is on the "I am" sayings.
I am the way , the truth, and the life. I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world. No one comes to the Father but by me. There is no mention of a baptism
by John because that would place this cosmic Jesus below John the baptist, something that this gospel writer would have nothing to do with. This was a different Jesus.

 

The meaning of life is to know God and make God known. https://www.gotquestions.org/meaning-of-life.html

 

Personally, the interesting thing would be to contemplate that there is only the "here and now", and that, even more, that is the sense of "I Am". If there is "a meaning to life", it is to experience life rather than the diversions of materialism.

 

Not wanting to know God is like not wanting to know your parents.

 

I think what David is saying to you in his statement above...is that the "here and now" and "the sense of I am"
is the same thing as "to know God"

"Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"

 

You seem to be assuming the existence of a god and also that there is any purpose to life.I don't assume either. I know that my parents existed but I have
no evidence for the existence of a Creator. Life appears to me to be entirely meaningless and I mean the existence of all life on earth, not just humans.
This is consistent with the theory of evolution. One can find meaning in life without there being any ultimate purpose in life.

I want to know the truth and have a worldview that is comprehensible. The existence of a supernatural being that caused the creation of life and intercedes
in the affairs of humans makes it difficult to have any comprehensible worldview. It also doesn't appear to me to answer the question about whether or not
there is any ultimate meaning to life. Why would a god create such a flawed creature like a human being? Why would a god create anything? Doesn't a
god know how this creation is going to turn out. What is the point of god's existence? All that the hypothesis of god does is to complicate our understanding
of the world and give us more difficult questions to answer. Why not dispense with the god concept altogether?

 

I think the word god originally referred to something other than human...and incomprehensible.
Then humans assigned god attributes...essentially creating god in their own image.
If you could get rid of the word "god" what would you use instead?

 

We don't see God, but we see His creation. Look around you. The heavens declare the glory of God. Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament sheweth his handywork. The meaning of life is to know God and to make God known and to live for God's glory. I believe in having a relationship with God, not in religion. James 1:27 uses the term pure and undefiled religion, but it would be more accurate to say Christianity is the only pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father. Religion isn't a good term to use when referring to knowing God.

https://christianity.stackexchange....es-the-concept-of-a-god-shaped-hole-originate

 

The desire God put in us to know God is why people seek distractions to find meaning and purpose and making a god out of themselves. https://www.gotquestions.org/God-shaped-hole.html

 

I see no need for anything to replace the word "god". I think that gods were created in the image of humans -they controlled things that humans didn't understand like
lightning, storms, earthquakes, major flooding events. They accounted for the origin of the earth and life. Now we have science to explain these things.