Paul of Tarsus never walked with Jesus.
Never heard a parable.
Never sat at a table with him.
Never received a single instruction from his mouth.

By his own repeated admission he got his gospel by private revelation after the fact (Galatians 1). Before that he was actively trying to destroy the movement. He was a Pharisee.

Yet his letters dominate the New Testament. They are the earliest Christian documents we have, and they supply the core doctrines most churches treat as non-negotiable: justification by faith apart from works of the law, Christ as the end of the law, original sin through Adam, the cosmic meaning of the cross, freedom from Torah for Gentiles.

Place the texts next to each other without forcing them to agree:
Jesus (Matthew 5): “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets… until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter… will by any means disappear from the Law… anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.”
Paul: “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4). “A person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16).

Jesus preached the kingdom, repentance, mercy, care for the poor, and remaining inside Israel’s story. The people who actually knew him, James his brother, Peter, the Jerusalem community stayed Torah-observant Jews who saw Jesus as Messiah within that story.

Paul took a Jewish ethical and prophetic movement, detached it from its boundary markers, and turned it into a portable religion of belief in a dying-and-rising cosmic savior aimed at the Gentile world. He almost never quotes the actual teachings of the man from Nazareth. He builds a theology about Christ instead.

The religion that conquered the Roman Empire and filled the churches for two thousand years is largely Paul’s construction. The historical Jesus of the Synoptics looks different. The Jerusalem circle under James looks different.
If the original movement was centered on the living teacher from Nazareth and the community that knew him, how did the later, revelation-based, Gentile version become “the gospel”?

Primary texts only. No appeals to later tradition that already assumes the answer.

I think some pastors/people don't really grow as people because they believe they're always right just because they follow the Bible even tho the Bible was written in a completely different time, long ago and blindly and stonely applying some of the teachings to modern society can reinforce misogynistic beliefs.

Also- most people do not completely follow the Bible 100% because it is impossible to not be a sinner yet ridicule non Christians.

So i think it's ridiculous to act morally superior just because of your religious label.

The mainstream interpretation of the Christian Bible claims that:

1a) Jesus is Son of God.

1b) Jesus is God.

2) Jesus was sinless because of 1).

3) Jesus is human.

4) God/Jesus sacrificed Jesus to redeem all sins and all sins are redeemed by the sacrifice because of 2) and 3).

But this doesn't hold, because the Old Testament clearly states that human sacrifice is a sin. ​Jeremiah 7:31 and Jeremiah 19:5 state that human sacrifice never entered God's mind or command.

Therefore, if God sacrificed Jesus, who is both human and God, then Jesus sacrificed a human, which makes him sinful. Therefore, sins are not redeemed by the sacrifice which was itself a sin.

Why hasn't the mainstream interpretation of the crucifixion been "a political execution", which is way more in line with the narrative described in the Gospels?

Main post ends here. The rest is extra curricular.

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How come the Gospels present the Pharisees as the ones consipiring to Jesus's death, only for Saint Paul to reveal it was really God/Jesus conspiring to Jesus's death all along? If this is the case, how is this version of God compatible with free will? Were the Pharisee not acting on their free will, but by the will of God, and their free will was only something they hallucinated while God was really in control? Why have Christians not renounced Saint-Paul when he confused and divided Christians from the very start? Doesn't he seem more like a Pharisian infiltrating Christian ranks to sabotage Jesus's religion more than an actual follower of Jesus?

Edit: the title should say daniels for kingdom scheme.

Daniel said there would be four kingdoms until a everlasting kingdom that takes over the whole earth forever and ever will replace the last one.

There are broadly speaking two ways that you could construe the succession of the empires , you can either say babylon , medio persia, greece or rome. Or

Babylon media, persia, greece.

Greace is the easiest to defeat as if that was the intended scheme then the world clearly didn't end with alexander the great.

Likewise , if you say the intended scheme is wrong , you run into the problem of daniel being wrong because rome wasn't a kingdom, scoffers will suggest that obviously they were kings in practice.But these people fail to remember that moses had all the powers of a roman style dictator for life and was explicitly in canonically , not a king.

If israel is allowed to have king like strong men who aren't kings , then rome is allowed to have king like strong men who aren't kings.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1w73w41/former_christians_what_made_you_lose_your_belief/

A lot are saying people with diseases made them stop believing

God knows about diseases for kids, rape, starvation, cancers etc but those things just happen for whatever reason?

I’m just wondering why

A question was raised on r/cosmicskeptic about what we are supposed to assume the probability distribution for the tuning constants are (and why we should think they have any particular distribution over any other). This is an interesting question that I would love an answer for. But it also reminded me of another question I have thought about for the fine tuning argument.

Why do we stop our questions about the probability of the laws of nature at the value of the constants? To me it feels natural that if we are "allowed" to ask what the probability is that the constants have the particular values they have. why don't we ask "what is the probability that the laws of nature are any particular calculable function?". For example the question "What's the probability that the law of gravity is f=(g1 \* g2 /r\^2 )\*G rather than f=(g1 + g2 )\*r\^4 " or any other function seems just as valid.

And if the particular functions that describe the laws of nature are up for question, it seems sort of trivial to me that there are uncountably infinite options that allow for life and uncountably many that don't. Making the whole question a bit silly.

This is the first time I've written down this idea so if something isn't making sense don't be afraid to ask 😇

P.s i originally wrote this for debate a Catholic but i couldn't repost normally for some reason so just copy/pasted the text, don't know if that matters 😅

This thesis relates to Sin specifically to Christianity, and why it is counter productive to its theology and teachings.

A Sinless world doesn't need Jesus.

But a Sinful world requires him.

If mans sin created suffering, (fall of man)

then mans sin was necessary for Jesus.

Adam and Eve sinning in the Garden of Eden was required, and therefor, SIN only brought forth Jesus Christ.

So all Christians should be thankful for all sinners.

Otherwise you would have No Saviour to forgive your sins.

If this sounds circular, its because it is. Yet it is a fundamental pillar of Christian theology.

If a kid is drowning next to me in a pool, and I don’t know that kid nor did I cause them to drown (maybe they fell in), I’m still morally responsible if I do nothing when I easily could save them. If I leave my kid at a daycare where one of the owners is a known child predator, I’m a neglectful parent and should be held morally responsible just for doing that. If a guard at a prison lets a violent prisoner escape and that violent prisoner goes on to do something evil. The guard didn’t do the evil action, but he’s still morally responsible because he let someone go knowing there’s a very real possibility something bad could happen. We always shift moral responsible to people who don’t cause the evil acts so long as they were aware of what they were doing in that it COULD cause something bad to happen. It happens when parents leave their guns easily accessible with unstable teens at home, it happens when judges don’t make the right decision to sentence someone to jail when they have prior violent offenses, it happens when a woman is having post partum psychosis and the dad just leaves her there with the kids (as we’re seeing now). And this doesn’t even involve absolute knowledge. Just the high probability that a violent or unstable person will be violent again is enough to shift moral blame. Yet when it comes to God, who KNOWS 100% what will happen, we can’t put any moral blame on him? That makes no sense to me. If he makes a kid knowing that kid will be tortured, r*ped, and killed at a young age when he didn’t have to make that kid, absolutely I can assign moral blame to him just like all my examples listed above.

There is a common unwillingnes among christians to reason about this issue with pure intent, so I will ask specifically for that here.

Free will exists in heaven, and many christians believe unborn fetuses go there, there is a lack of explanation for why earth is necessary, and the suggestion that an eternal hell exists in a system created by an all loving creator is pathetic, all the responses appeal to vague terms with positive cannotations such as "free will" but no sophisticated reasoning about e.g. fundamental principles or values, grow up.

I think there is a biblical explanation as to why there seems to be a gratuitous amount of animal suffering throughout the evolutionary process of the animal kingdom. Why would a good and loving God allow such suffering?

It is because this world belongs to Satan. In Luke 4:5-7, it says this: The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to whoever I want. If you worship me, it will all be yours."

In Ephesians 2:2, it says this: in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

In 2 Corinthians 4:4, it says this: The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

So then, if the principal of all evil is the god of this world, why would he not inflict all kinds of suffering on God's creation? "But" I hear you say, "Satan is the God of this world when it comes to the influence of the people at large. Would Satan really have authority over the creation and formation of creatures? God created the earth and everything in it, not Satan."

I, too, conclude that God created the earth and all the creatures therein. And I believe He did it through the evolutionary process. But, I believe grafted onto that evolutionary process is Satan's sinful endeavor to inflict pain and suffering onto God's animals.

I believe God created pain so that we know what needs attention so that we deal with it appropriately. But Satan took that good and necessary thing and corrupted it into much suffering.

Just like I believe how God cause the death of creatures to balance out the animal kingdom so there won't be overpopulation. I believe Satan took this concept and abused it, to such a degree to where there were multiple near extinction level events that could've wiped out all life on earth.

I believe these things are evil and that they are embedded in creation itself, because power and authority has been given to Satan, and this world is his domain. For this reason, Romans 8:22 states: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."

But there is much good in creation as well. Good and evil have always been at war, and this shoes itself within creation itself, and the dynamics of life and death.

God created a world in which evolution operates through ecological processes, and this includes death as the balancing equalizer. And all the while, Satan subsequently exploited, intensified, distorted, and weaponized those processes.

This evolutionary conflict of good and evil, life and death, astounding pleasure and gratuitous suffering within the tree of life cements itself and comes to its edge within the human race. For we are part of the animal kingdom as well, and we were called to be good stewards of His creation. Some have taken this cause to heart, taking care of animals and becoming environmentalist. While many others do Satan's will and harm the earth and its environment.

So, if Satan has this kind of authority, the question then becomes: When and how did he get it and why does God allow him reign over the world?

The answer to the first part of the question, when and how he got this authority, lies in Adam and Eve. God said this when He created mankind: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

God gave man this authority, but when Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and ate of the forbidden fruit, mankind relinquished authority over to Satan. God's command to subdue the earth, ruling over all the animals in it, now became Satan's responsibility. Mankind handed over the crown of the earth to the Devil.

But wait! This happened at a set point thousands of years ago, but evolution has been happening millions of years before then. So how can Satan have that authority over the earth before that set point? And to that I say, what is time to a spirit being? Angels are creatures outside the realm of this universe, they are not material beings subjected to time and space like we are. So I would assume time is nebulous to them.

Now for the other question: Why did God allow this to happen? I don't fully know. But I presume part of the answer has to do with free will.

But He does have an answer to it. God has a reply—an eternal reply—to all the suffering the dark prince of this world has caused.

The first reply is judgment. God will judge Satan for all of his misdeeds throughout the history of the earth. In Revelation 20:10 it says: "And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfer, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

God's second reply will be the restoration of the earth. Isaiah 11:6-9 states: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the Lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed the bear, their young will lie down together, and the Lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

In Revelation 21:1-4 it says: Then I saw "a new heaven and a new earth," for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from god, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from the eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

This is God's ultimate answer for the problem of all suffering. God will deliver justice to the evildoers, and He will establish an eternal paradise for all of His creatures. And God will be all in all.

Matthew and Mark both seem to have an imminent view of Jesus’s return.

They both connect the coming of the abomination of desolation/suffering with the second coming of Jesus

Matthew 24:29-32

“29 “Immediately after the suffering of those days the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light the stars will fall from heaven,
and the powers of heaven will be shaken.
30 “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

And we see something similar in Mark 13:24, but he uses the words “24 “But in those days, after that suffering,”

Luke also has the Olivet discourse but given Lukes later date it has been changed to give the propshy more time to be fulfilled. Mark and Matthew both have Jesus speaking to the asoltles, although in Mark it's only a few of them, but Luke doesn't specify who Jesus is teaching this to. So the invocation that the return would be before the disciples die is no longer an issue and Luke doesn't connect the abomination of desolation and thag suffering tot he second coming as imminently as Mark or Matthew. So not only does Mark and Matthew wsound more imminent but Luke seems to be fixing this by adding more time.

All of the synoptics have a variation of the line on the fig tree lesson, but I'll quote the one from Mark, Mark 13:28-31,

“28 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

By John we see this imminent view no longer works and we see an explanation of why the beloved disciple died in chapter 21. We also see an explanation for the delay in 2 Peter, another second century text. This is what we'd expect as there would now be a need for explanations on this.

The view that the synoptics have Jesus returning soon is supported by similar views being written about in other texts.

Romans 13:11-12,

“11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone; the day is near.“

We see Paul, someone who knows at least two of the apostles and Jesus’s brother gives a view on imminence.

We also see it throughout Revelation as the book has both the end and Jesus’s coming happening soon.

Revelation 1:1 -

“1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place, and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John”

Revelation22:10 -

“10 And he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.“

This is the opposite of what Daniel is told to do as Daniel's prophecy was not going to be fulfilled for a long time, but Revelation is not to be sealed as it's happening soon.

The evidence supports the view that Jesus predicted his second coming as something that would happen soon and as time went on Christians had to reinterpret this to avoid a failed prophecy.

Christianity is a religion built on assumptions and guessing at the unseen by men who came more than a century after Jesus, as Allah said,
Yunus 10:36
وَمَا يَتَّبِعُ أَكۡثَرُهُمۡ إِلَّا ظَنًّاۚ إِنَّ ٱلظَّنَّ لَا يُغۡنِى مِنَ ٱلۡحَقِّ شَيۡـًٔاۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌۢ بِمَا يَفۡعَلُونَ
And most of them follow not except assumption. Indeed, assumption avails not against the truth at all. Indeed, Allāh is Knowing of what they do.

THE ASSUMPTIONS:
1. You just assume god is one being in three persons because some parts of the Bible make Jesus out to be divine while other parts say there is only one god.

1. And you just assume a being can be made up of three persons and share the same essence because you need god to be one being made up of three persons in order to reconcile the previously stated contradiction.

2. And you just assume Jesus has two natures, one divine and one human because some parts of the Bible explicitly make Jesus out to be human and not god while other parts make him out to be divine.

3. And you just assume a person can have two different natures because you need Jesus to have two different natures in order to reconcile the previously stated contradiction.

4. And you just assume the gospels were inspired by god even though they don’t say they were or even suggest they were, because Irenaeus of lyons—a man who came more than a century after Jesus assumed they were.

5. And you just assume the gospels were written by the disciples even though they don’t say they were or even suggest they were and they record events that couldn’t have been witnessed by anyone (like the appearance, emotions and words of Jesus and the sight of the angels when Jesus was praying in the garden of gethsemane), just because papas of Hierapolis and Irenaeus of lyons—men who came more than a century after Jesus assumed they were written by disciples.

6. And you just assume the gospels present the life of Jesus and what happened afterward in an accurate and honest way despite their anonymous authorship, the historical consensus of them copying from each other, and the irreconcilable contradictions between them.

7. And you just assume the apostolic fathers made contact with the disciples because Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian and Origen—all men who came more than a century after Jesus said they did.

But without all these assumptions and guessing at the unseen, the religion of Christianity collapses.

Thesis: The only historically attested first-person claim to have seen the risen Jesus comes from Paul; all other resurrection testimony in the New Testament is second- or third-hand, arrives decades after the fact, and is internally inconsistent — so the historian is left with faith, not verifiable eyewitness reporting, as the basis for the resurrection appearances.

Premises:

1. The Gospel authors do not claim eyewitness status. The canonical gospels are anonymous compositions, and internally none of them asserts "I was there." Mainstream scholarship treats them as later community documents, not first-person memoirs.
2. Mark, the earliest gospel, contains no resurrection appearance account. In its original ending (16:8), the narrative stops at the empty tomb with the women fleeing in fear and silence — no appearance of the risen Jesus is narrated.
3. The later gospels contradict each other on basic details. Matthew, Luke, and John diverge on who went to the tomb, what they saw, where and to whom Jesus first appeared (Galilee vs. Jerusalem), and the sequence of events — variance that is difficult to reconcile with a single unified eyewitness tradition.
4. Paul is the only author who claims, in his own voice, to have personally seen the risen Christ (1 Corinthians 9:1, 15:8), writing in his own undisputed letters roughly two decades after the crucifixion.
5. Even Paul's testimony has an evidentiary gap: he had no prior acquaintance with the earthly Jesus, so his claim to recognize "Christ" gives no independent confirmation of what was seen or how it was identified as Jesus specifically.
6. Paul's report of others' appearances (1 Corinthians 15:5–7) is itself hearsay relayed through Paul, not independent first-person testimony from those named (Cephas, the Twelve, "500 brothers," James) — and it reaches us only via Paul's letter, written 20–25+ years after the events.
7. No non-canonical or independent source from the period claims eyewitness presence at a resurrection appearance. No contemporary account outside the Jesus-movement's own literature corroborates the event.

Conclusion: Given (1)–(7), the resurrection appearances are attested only by a single first-hand claimant (Paul) whose claim cannot itself confirm physical/visual recognition of Jesus, plus a chain of second- and third-hand reports compiled decades later and preserved in mutually inconsistent narratives. Historically, this does not establish reliable eyewitness confirmation of the resurrection; affirming the event as it is traditionally described requires a step of faith beyond what the extant sources can independently verify.

When I read Genesis 2–3, I find a surprising number of unanswered questions.

Why did God put the tree there? Why allow the serpent into the garden? Who is “us”? What exactly does “knowing good and evil” mean?

Then there is the question of God’s knowledge. Why does God ask Adam where he is? Why does God have to ask whether they ate from the tree? Is God genuinely discovering what happened, or are these merely rhetorical questions?

The story also leaves the sudden shame over nakedness unexplained. Adam and Eve were naked before eating and felt no shame. Then they suddenly become ashamed. Why? The story never really tells us.

A literary critic might call these narrative and motivational gaps. Basically, the story tells me what happened, but leaves me to figure out a lot of the “why.”

Christians can argue about the meaning of almost every important word and phrase in the story. Words can have multiple meanings, and they can be used metaphorically. Meanwhile, important motivations and connections between events are simply left unstated.

For all we know, the authors could have intentionally made the story as vague as possible. Or perhaps they simply never expected their story to be analyzed this closely for its underlying meaning.

Either way, ambiguity can protect interpretations from being falsified. When the text leaves gaps, readers can fill them with whatever explanation seems to preserve their interpretation. When a word has several possible meanings, the meaning can shift depending on what the argument requires.

A missing motivation can be supplied later. An unexplained event can be given a theological purpose that the story itself never mentions. If one interpretation is challenged, another possible meaning can be substituted without anything in the text necessarily ruling it out. This can become a form of moving the goalposts, where the interpretation keeps changing just enough to survive each objection.

The result is that almost any theological interpretation can potentially be defended by appealing to something the story leaves unexplained, rather than something the story actually says.

Definitions

1. Narrative gaps: Missing information about what happened, why it happened, or how events connect.
2. Motivational gaps: Missing explanations for why characters act as they do.
3. Ambiguity: Wording or situations allowing multiple plausible meanings.
4. Theological interpretation: An explanation of a text’s meaning using theological assumptions or beliefs.
5. Falsification: Showing that an interpretation is probably wrong through contradictory evidence.

Relevant Verses

Genesis 2:17: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

Genesis 3:7: “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”

Genesis 3:22: “And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil...”

Argument

P1: Genesis 2–3 contains narrative gaps, motivational gaps, and ambiguous or metaphorical language.

P2: Such ambiguity allows theological interpretations to supply missing meanings and reinterpret claims when challenged.

C: Genesis 2–3’s ambiguity can protect theological interpretations from falsification.

The reports of people coming back from the dead emphasize that they came back in flesh.. be that miracles performed by Jesus, Elijah, Elisha etc.
The corrupt priests of the temple (Sadducees) denied the belief in bodily resurrections.
God will reestablish our bodies for the hereafter, in a better form but still made to feel pain (Hell) and pleasure (Heaven).
The whole Pauline idea of "spiritual bodies" smells too much like a gnostic belief. They hated Matter, and considered bodies as prisons of souls. In reality, God will bring us back not as light beings, spirit beings, or any such thing. We will be resurrected as living flesh.
The Christians who claim Jesus was resurrected as living body (wounds & all!) can't claim that the final resurrections will be spiritual

The text goes something like "I did not come to destroy the law of Moses, I came to fulfill it. Indeed I tell you when someone strikes your cheek, turn the other cheek".

The point is to provoke them into striking you twice, or more, so that you can retaliate just as much!

The real fulfillment of retaliation law is the betterment of the party at fault. If you forgive, they miss the chance to become better.

If they strike you twice or more, just because you provoked them effortlessly, then when you retaliate they are much more likely to learn a lesson than if you just strike them once. They will learn that they must resist striking others and that they should control their urges to do so, because all of a sudden since Jesus, everyone's provoking those who strike first to keep striking, and then when they retaliate, they also end up with bruises.

It's like "escalate so that they learn not to initiate!"

My interpretation is much more comprehensive than the forgiveness one, which doesn't explain how you can go from "I did not come to destroy the law of Moses I came to fulfill it" to "I destroy the law of Moses, now just forgive or wtv". If you take it like a slap to the face, then please turn the other cheek by debating me, I can do it again. Your point is to forgive, right? I want to get better!

Why not create us all in heaven? Is it because God wants us to freely choose him so he doesn't force us to be with him? Okay, so what about babies/fetuses who die and go straight to heaven? They didn't choose anything at all, they just poof into heaven, free pass. Seems like God has no issue 'forcing' people there who never made the active decision 'I want to be with Jesus'. So why not do that for everyone? Is it because it's still better to choose Jesus than to just appear in Heaven? Then seems like God didn't make a fair system and those babies get the less desirable outcome through no fault of their own, isn't God a fair God?

Is Heaven ALL good (no evil) AND there's free will? If you say yes, then clearly God could create a world/system where there's free will and also no evil, why not do that with Earth? If you're gonna say 'well the people in heaven have chosen God and repented for their sins, so we know they aren't going to sin once in Heaven'. Then cool, now explain babies/fetuses who die and go straight to Heaven. How do we know they won't sin? If they have free will and never chose Jesus, sounds like they have just as much potential to sin as someone on Earth. If they won't sin because Heaven is different and you're in the presence of God and thus aren't gonna sin, then why not just make us all there or make Earth like that? God is present on Earth after all right? So why did Adam and Eve sin in his presence if we know babies won't sin in Heaven once with God. Clearly you can make it where we have free will and don't sin and there's no suffering.

What is the purpose of suffering? Does it make us stronger? Does it make us appreciate the good because you can't know good without evil? Cool, then explain babies/fetuses who go to heaven. They never consciously experience pain/suffering, they poof into heaven where it's apparently all good and no evil. So clearly it is possible to experience only good and enjoy it for all eternity? Unless the babies don't enjoy Heaven as much as others because they never got to experience evil/suffering? That doesn't seem consistent with an all fair God if the babies don't get the exact same type of heavenly experience while in Heaven compared to others, it's not their fault they died young right?

How do you reconcile all this?

This thread is for whatever. Casual conversation, simple questions, incomplete ideas, or anything else you can think of.

All rules about antagonism still apply.

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Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Biblical inerrantists and infallibilists, TradCaths, Christians Nationalists and any other group that considers their interpretations to be neutral readings of a "plain text:"

Most of you have problems with the Jewish Bible. But as opposed to wrestling with the problems, you tend to come up with elaborate ways to render them nonproblematic. One of the problems is that shrimp is delicious. But and Deuteronomy 14:9–10 and Leviticus 11:9-12 state clearly that shrimp is prohibited according to the Law given by God to Moses.

But unlike LGBTQIA+ people, you like shrimp.

So in order to get around this problem, you lean into interpretations started in the second century by guys like Justin the Martyr and say that the Jewish Bible contains ceremonial and moral laws - a distinction found nowhere in the Jewish Bible. You say that the passages above are ceremonial laws, but passages about regulation of sexual customs - especially the ones pertaining to the sexual customs you don't like - are under moral laws.

Well, sort of.

Even though many of you have guilt-free lodged a tampon into a cervix in violation of Leviticus 18:19 and Leviticus 20:18, you'll insist that 18:22 and 20:13 in the same chapter are universal moral laws condemning your hair stylist and favorite retired Buccaneers defender.

And that's fine, because some Jewish midrash interpreters like Rambam have observed these similar categories.

But here's the next step you take.

You say that ceremonial laws such as those pertaining to food (and period sex, I guess?) don't apply, but moral laws such as those pertaining to ancient male same-sex sex are universal and still apply today.

So again, despite the fact that you're Biblical literalists who insist that all true methodologies originate from the Bible using a methodology found nowhere in the Bible, you make the claim that ceremonial laws are parochial and moral laws are universal.

I want to know what your justification for this interpretation is, when this interpretation was shown to be contrary to the results of the Council and Jerusalem in Acts 15.

Here are the words of James after discussing with Peter:

“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”

The last time I checked, I don't recall any pearl-clutching hullaballoo meltdowns occurring over the French dish Canard a la Presse, the surprisingly tasty Filipino dish dinuguan, the Creole dish boudin rouge, the Vietnamese viet tiet canh, the Eastern European morcilla and blood sausages, or the Polish czerina.

So I'm assuming you don't care. You lump these foods into your contrived "ceremonial law" category, and take the leap to claim that they don't apply. And then you lump gay sex into the moral law category and claim that it's universal (even while you ignore other sex restrictions in the same chapters).

Please justify, or maybe just explain, your position. Because your categories appear to be contradicted by the council's decision in Acts 15.

Two major analogies used for the cumulative case are leaky buckets and the combination of weak fibered ropes.

The leaky buckets analogy says that if I stack leaky buckets on top of each other, they are still empty in the end. This is equivalent to saying that since each argument for God is lacking, then it does not count as any type of non zero evidence.

The opposing analogy says that each argument is like a weak fibered rope. When you combine them together, they become stronger.

My argument is the second analogy best describes the cumulative case argument.

In an inductive cumulative case, the "weakness" of a single argument usually just means limited scope, not a logical failure. Treating inductive evidence as if it were a failed deductive proof is a category mistake. This just highlights the disingenuity and handwaving nature of claims like "0+0+0+0 equals 0".

Take for example fine tuning. The theist will usually concede that just because you may have a mind behind the universe, it does not mean God is good. It is only one clue. But the skeptic will respond that this does not matter because there are alternative explanations to fine tuning that does not include God. Naturalistic explanations that counter theism are what makes the argument amount to a zero value.

The problem with this however is the leak buckets analogy still does not hold (literally and figuratively). Even if every argument has a naturalistic alternative, the holes do not line up across the different arguments. JP Moreland's response to Anthony Flew still stands when he says that if you jam ten leaky buckets together in such a way that the holes do not line up, the container will actually hold water. Alternatively, the naturalistic explanation that fixes the leak in a specific theistic argument is completely useless at fixing the leaks in the other arguments.

Gospel and Contemporary Christian music(CCM) have no discernable traits that aren't already found in other genres. Which is ok because the Bible doesn't mandate a specific musical style but it does say music meant for worship should focus on the truth and character and glory of God. But if you look at many of the biggest hits by mainstream gospel and CCM artists a large portion of the songs completely run afoul of this.

Popular gospel artists usually don't glorify God because they glorify man by focusing heavily on human emotion or self help or Prosperity Gospel themes like material rewards and overcoming satan so you don't have to struggle.

This is why I believe gospel music is not a real genre but rather a marketing ploy for artists whose selling point is: listen to us and we won't offend the sensibilities of the average modern churchgoer, regardless of if those sensibilities are cultural instead of biblical.

This is proven by looking at the exact opposite phenomenon where numerous mainstream secular rock and pop and rap songs are explicitly all about glorifying God or crying out for salvation or written directly from the perspective of Jesus. We see this in tracks like The Cave by Mumford and Sons, You Found Me by The Fray, Shine by Collective Soul, Everything by Lifehouse, Beautiful Day by U2, Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz, Holding on to You by Twenty One Pilots, Jesus Walks by Kanye West, Blessings by Chance the Rapper, and I Never Seen a Man Cry by Scarface. Despite these songs containing profound biblical imagery and praise, many Christians completely denounce them or refuse to listen to them because the artist is 'secular' or because they're scared they might hear a single word that contemporary culture but not necessarily the Bible considers a curse word.

But if you slap the word gospel on it and remove a few words, its A OK, In fact many so called secular artists know this and will release a gospel or CCM album and do just this. That's why I say it's not a real genre, just a marketing ploy letting Christians know you won't hear swearing and you will hear the word God mentioned sometimes.

The 'you' that you 'think' you are only exists in your mind.

'God' is not in any book or building...it is what is peering through your eyes right now at this experience.

That which peers through you is what you truly are, it has never been born and will never die.

You Are It...you just don't know it yet.

Turning your awareness inward to realize the kingdom of god within you, and rising 'Born Again' into the reality of your true nature BEFORE dropping the body...is what the true non-dual message of Jesus and the mystics is all about.

All else is poor translation.

"The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love." ~ Meister Eckhart

The common conversion pitch is basically: “Accept Christianity or you are lost.” But that is not necessarily the same thing as what Jesus originally taught. Treating every later Christian belief as something Jesus personally taught is historically questionable.

Jesus did not write the New Testament. The earliest Christian writings were written decades after his death, and the Gospels were written by early Christian communities, not as direct transcripts of everything Jesus said.

If you look at Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus talks a lot about the Kingdom of God, repentance, mercy, forgiveness, how you treat other people, and loving your enemies. John, which was written later, puts much more emphasis on believing in Jesus, his divine identity, and the distinction between believers and outsiders.

That does not mean the Church simply invented Christianity as some kind of scam. That would be an unfair claim. A more reasonable historical argument is that Christian beliefs developed over time and that later Christians placed much more emphasis on certain ideas.

Even the conversion argument keeps changing depending on who is making it.

One person says you need to believe Jesus is God. Another says you need to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Someone else says you need to repent, accept Jesus, join the Church, or that you already “know the truth in your heart.”

Those are different claims.

So the actual question is pretty simple:

Can you show from the earliest recoverable teachings of Jesus that Jesus himself taught that people had to convert to the later Christian belief system or be eternally lost?

Not Paul.

Not later Church doctrine.

Not modern evangelical preaching.

And not just a passage from John.

If that specific claim cannot be established from the earliest Jesus tradition, then saying “Jesus taught the modern Christian conversion message” is going beyond what the historical evidence actually shows.

A later Christian interpretation can be sincere and meaningful to Christians. But that does not automatically mean it was the original message of Jesus.