Who are happier -- Christians or Atheists?
February 7th, 2015 at 11:36:08 AM permalink | |
FrGamble Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 67 Posts: 7596 |
Sorry for the onslaught of posts, but I finished a long week and have a little bit of time before the weekend Masses. Let me ask you if you consider the law a crutch? Why do we need laws to not commit murder for example? Are these laws only written for Christians who need an extra crutch in case the eternal judgement and possible punishment of God was not enough? Or are laws in the secular world the crutch we need to keep people in line? Do you think we could do just fine if we got rid of all laws and punishments, except for Christians of course? “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” ( |
February 7th, 2015 at 12:34:04 PM permalink | |
Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25013 |
That's because they didn't. It's what the urban legend morphed into. 'And they knew he was truly risen', or so the legend says. Imagine living in a time when there were no newspapers, no magazines, no media at all. No libraries, no books to check out, no almanacs or encyclopedias. Every bit of news you got was by unreliable word of mouth. I talked before of Candid Camera. They would tell a story to someone and they would tell it as accurately as possible to someone else. The 2nd person would tell it to a 3rd. By the time it got to the 5th, the story was almost nothing like the original. Imagine 2000 years ago. By the time of the umteenth telling, Jesus was god and the real details were lost forever. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |
February 7th, 2015 at 2:51:24 PM permalink | |
FrGamble Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 67 Posts: 7596 | Another perfect example of an atheist exaggeration. Were the disciples playing a game of telephone? If you didn't understand would you ask for clarification? We're Christians only allowed to say their message once and never repeat it? Could they not correct someone who said the wrong thing? Of course not. They lived in a culture that was very orally based for communication. Messages were taken seriously, repeated continually, corrected if needed, and accurately passed on. Forgive me, but your comparison to a game of telephone is more laughable than Candid Camera ever was. “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” ( |
February 7th, 2015 at 3:15:01 PM permalink | |
Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25013 |
Which would be pretty much everyone. Word of mouth is the absolute worst way to preserve a story. All you ever end up with is a legend, which bears little or no resemblance to what really happened. Couple that with the fact that nothing was written down for decades, and you have about a zero percent chance for accuracy. Native Americans had oral traditions in their tribes. Stories handed down from generation to generation. They ended up being all myth and legend, just like story of Jesus. As I said, in modern times it's a big problem because Christians have to keep insisting everything is a fact, when it's obvious that it's not. It was easy to fool an ignorant and uneducated public, but those days are long gone. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |
February 7th, 2015 at 3:31:13 PM permalink | |
Nareed Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 346 Posts: 12545 |
That's a small difference. Given billions upon billions of unresurrected dead people, saying "people resurrect" and "people resurrect often" are equally false. It's kind of like saying 2+2= 5 and 2+2= ten trillion are equally false.
A conclusion based on the collective observations of tens of billions of deaths, none of which can be proved to have resulted in a resurrection. The premise "The Sun rises always in the East" is also a conclusion based on observation.
Constantine by inexplicably embracing Christianity changed the world. But I'll concede they contributed to it. It still makes not a single claim of theirs true.
Because his ideas proved popular. Let me give you an example: a roman emperor, such as Justinian I, could promote himself by building a large, monumental temple and gain in piety and, ironically, humility, by doing so. This, mind you, after brutally suppressing a riot by massacring as many rioters as his thugs could manage. Then he was free to engage in disastrous wars of conquest. A pre-Christian emperor, such as Nero, would have had to be twice as brutal towards his own people after a massacre like that, which would have left him no time, money or man-power to pursue conquests. So much easier to build a magnificent church, right? The debt incurred will be the next guy's problem, and he'll also be remembered fondly for providing jobs. Much more civilized to be uncivilized under Christianity. Hey, you asked.
This is not about popularity but fact. How many people do you suppose would resurrect if it were possible? And still all people die and none have resurrected. The point is not what they think or believe, but what happened to them.
And it would also make Julienne fries? Every religion claims miracles. You dismissed the resurrection of Osiris, a god, out of hand. Do you not believe he was reassembled by his wife years after his murder and resurrected? Why not? Millions of Egyptians believed it for 3,200 years. Why would so many people believe something for so long if it wasn't true? Why would you doubt the power of the goddess Ist, or her devotion and love for her husband?
Too bad, because that would have a slim chance of being true.
No idea who that is, even after a brief Google search (on Yahoo! Did you know you can Google on Yahoo!?) Actually I mean Eric Arthur Blair. You may know him by his pen name: George Orwell. Donald Trump is a one-term LOSER |
February 7th, 2015 at 4:01:43 PM permalink | |
Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25013 |
That's part of it. The early Church was run by very smart people with an agenda. They put the NT together with the exact idea of what they wanted it to say. Everything else was tossed. It was the start of the modern era of religious quest for power. No religion in history wielded as much power and sheer force as the Catholic Church. They ran everything, especially the royalty that was supposedly in charge. This was not an accident. It had little to do with the story of Jesus being true or not, it was their job to make it true and deal with anybody who opposed them. They're only opposition were pagans, who were unorganized and uneducated. Those they couldn't assimilate into the Church, they destroyed. This is why Jesus 'stuck', they forced him on people for a thousand years. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |
February 7th, 2015 at 6:45:27 PM permalink | |
FrGamble Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 67 Posts: 7596 |
This is simply not true. You are thinking again of a simplistic game of telephone. In the real world you can repeat yourself, correct misinterpretations, have multiple people telling the same story so you can notice if something gets lost or misunderstood, you can ask questions, clarify, repeat again. If we played telephone and I was allowed to repeat the phrase to you many times and walk with you to the next person to emphasize the right phrase and correct the mistakes if there was any and then you could do the same thing there is about a zero percent chance that the last person on the line would not receive the accurate phrase. To use another example, do you know what your grandfather did for a living or any stories from his childhood? If you do chances are they at least began as an oral tradition and are very accurate. Also as you mentioned things were written down within a decade or two of the events, which at that time was quite extraordinary. Considering that the Bible is the best historical document bar none of that time you are pretty much saying that all of ancient history is zero percent accurate and that would be silly. Finally, if I ever invent a time machine I'm going to bring back someone from those ancient times to smack you across the face for continuing to insult them. “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” ( |
February 7th, 2015 at 6:52:23 PM permalink | |
FrGamble Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 67 Posts: 7596 |
Will you please stop it. The early Church was the opposite of a quest for power. These humble followers of Jesus, without a scholar among them before Paul, were going against the powerful Roman Empire, Jewish scholars and a pagan polytheistic culture that was the basis of their way of life and economy. They were persecuted by everyone and yet the message and truth of the risen Lord Jesus continued to spread. Not so that any single Christian would be exalted, in fact if you were found to be a Christian you would lose everything. The Catholic Church at its beginning was a poor, humble, and pure group who had nothing but love and hope to offer to people because of Jesus Christ. They had no power, wealth, or control of anything and people joined them by the thousands day by day. Oh how I long for those days again! “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” ( |
February 7th, 2015 at 6:58:39 PM permalink | |
FrGamble Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 67 Posts: 7596 |
Um... did you mean to say that that? 5 and 10 trillion are both false, but not equally so. One is a little closer to right than the other one.
You might not believe in the Resurrection of Jesus but you are happy to resurrect many arguments you considered dead when used against you. So now the collective observations of billions of people is valid. "The Son has risen" is a conclusion based on observation.
I'd like to quote Yoda here because I don't follow you.
I doubt it because I live in the 21st century and nobody believes such things anymore. Why don't they? Probably because even then there was no historical proof of it every happening. “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” ( |
February 7th, 2015 at 7:42:41 PM permalink | |
Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25013 |
Too bad real life isn't that efficient. You're talking about a perfect case scenario, and when has that ever been the case. The stories would soon be out of hand and things added and taken away, and no amount of word of mouth 'correction' would make it right. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |