Who are these hundreds of people who saw Jesus resurrected from the dead? Citation, please. Also the gospels were written decades after Jesus’s death. There are no contemporaneous accounts of his ministry. Why is that?
In fact, there is no record of anyone saying that they saw, with their own eyes, Jesus rise from the dead. If you have evidence otherwise, please present it.
I’m no biblical scholar, but so far as I can tell, Christianity was basically invented by St. Paul and ought rightly to be named Paulism.
Jesus, if he existed, was a Jew. There is no evidence from the gospels that he envisioned or advocated any church in his name and in fact he counseled people to pray in private and not make a big show of it. I am sure if he were to travel in a time machine to the present day he would be quite appalled at what Christianity became in his name, especially the evangelical variant, and would disavow the whole enterprise in toto. This is of course based on my views of the ministry of christ presented in the gospels, written by people who never even met Jesus, assuming he existed at all.
The Gospels were written within the lifetimes of the Apostles. That’s VERY early for ancient history.
Here are some good articles:
You sure?
Jesus said to Peter “upon this rock, I build my Church.”
Peter then went to Rome and became the first Pope.
But not in the lifetime of Christ.
Now I ask you: please substantiate your claim that there were “hundreds” of eyewitnesses to Jesus’s supposed resurrection. Short answer: there were not. Please also address my point that there are no contemporaneous accounts of his ministry. Are you denying that? If so, present your evidence,
There doesn’t need to be accounts of Christ within his lifetime for the Gospels to be accurate. The first biography of Alexander the Great was written centuries after his lifetime yet the atheists don’t question that.
Here’s more info on the Gospels:
How did this thread deteriorate to debate over the existence of Jesus? I thought it was about Pascal’s wager. Is belief in Jesus as God a necessary aspect of the wager? If so, the wager denies Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus any right to opt for eternal life.
Here’s a different way to think about Hell:
The duration of the time it takes to commit the crime doesn’t match the punishment.
For example, it only takes a few seconds to murder someone. Does that mean the murderer should only receive a few seconds of jail time? Of course not.
One could shoot up a kindergarten class in 1 minute. Should they receive 1 minute of jail time as punishment
No.
This explains more:
catholic.com/video/is-etern … punishment
Lastly, the Bible had dozens of passages about rewards for Christians.
openbible.info/topics/reward[/quote}
You continue to confuse man’s sense of time and justice with what eternity can entail. Do you still believe an eye for an eye is justice?
On the wager, once again–“Do not put us to the test”–Jesus in what is called the Lord’s prayer.
You seem to have a reasonable grasp of the problem of the historical Jesus and are reading the texts metaphorically. Your point of view is secular whereas free spirit is looking at it from within the Roman Catholic tradition. Hence the impasse. I wonder what if anything can be gained from the dialogue? Do your positions somehow get clarified in your own minds?
Paul says somewhere that there were 500 witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. I know of no historical confirmation of that claim anywhere.
Free spirit.
How do you reconcile the proposition of eternal torture in hell with the proposition that God is love?
duplicate
Because Hell is a result of our free will. It has nothing to do with God forcing us there.
We choose it.
TS,
All of that is a lie. I’ve been to thousands of hell realms. Not one being chose it.
Technically, every being in existence is in a hell realm (having their consent violated), some MUCH worse than others.
The definition of hell is having your consent violated, and the definition of consent violation is what you don’t want and don’t choose.
That’s right, Paul said that, and there is no historical confirmation of that claim anywhere. Therefore it is an unsubstantiated assertion and cannot be evidence for anything.
There’s a “Pascal’s wager” for every religion which preaches eternal punishment for not believing their religion. So there’s a Christian Pascal’s wager, and there’s a Muslim Pascal’s wager, and if you bet for one then you inherently bet against the other. You cannot win all bets, you just have to hope your specific bet was the right one.
Eternal life eh?
The Bible never states that eternal life is good (heavenly), just that if you believe, you’ll live forever. This is in red print by the way.
Another thing in red print in the Bible is that heaven and earth shall someday pass, no mention of hell. I guess for all of us, that doesn’t pass! We all live forever and go to hell forever.
The Bible is so demonic, not even a demon would say it.
Surely you are aware of the infinite regress of responsibilities that argument implies. I hope you won’t ask me to spell it out for you. It’s so tedious and has been run through so many times on ILP.
Instead I will point you to the irreconcilable opposites that present themselves in the experience of human existence. These all find their resolution in the infinite eternal one we call God.
You do know that Pascal was a Jansenist and those were ruled heretics by your Catholic Church. Right?
Felix. I’m not going to read your mind and you’re a much older poster than me - even a mod.
Spell it out simply.
I have lived experience and I’ve read the red text in the Bible.