A God That Never Changes???

@fmf said
I don't "hate Christ". Don't be so silly.

I see something different based on how you engage the topic of Christianity. Of course you will see yourself as too profound for such an emotion, but I do not see you as a guru behind a computer screen.

@fmf said
It is just as much evidence of the narrative I am talking about as it is evidence of the narrative you are talking about.

This is how the atheist perspective on this works: the witnesses to Christ are all invalid - they are biased because they believed in Him.

So, now there's no witnesses. All opinions become equal in their absence.

(And, of course, they will never want to hear at all about the miracles peformed in the Church in the subsequent centuries - don't even go there, do not even try to talk about the transformative power of Christ).

@fmf said
I am sure the writers who created Christianity decades after Jesus was executed by the Romans were acutely aware of how they needed to link the texts they were producing to the pre-existing ideas of Judaism.

And so there is this sophisticated operation in Roman MI6 to fabricate the story of Christ...? And they're just great at it, and all the O. G. Christians buy it hook, line, and sinker, never seeking to meet the witnesses of the OT, or seeking to verify it among the people of Jerusalem... The Jerusalem church forms out of thin air, but prior to the toppling of the second temple and sometime after the crucifixion popularly believed to be in 30-33 AD)...

Quite a scenario.

Very implausible, [i]of course, but that is no barrier to what the atheist wills for himself.

@philokalia said
I see something different based on how you engage the topic of Christianity. Of course you will see yourself as too profound for such an emotion, but I do not see you as a guru behind a computer screen.

"A guru behind a computer screen"?

What are you blathering about now?

@philokalia said
This is how the atheist perspective on this works: the witnesses to Christ are all invalid - they are biased because they believed in Him.

So, now there's no witnesses. All opinions become equal in their absence.

(And, of course, they will never want to hear at all about the miracles peformed in the Church in the subsequent centuries - don't even go there, do not even try to talk about the transformative power of Christ).

The Gospels were not written by people who met Christ. Paul wrote most of the books in the NT and he didn't meet Christ either.

@philokalia said
The atheist will never want to hear at all about the miracles peformed in the Church in the subsequent centuries - don't even go there, do not even try to talk about the transformative power of Christ.

I am well aware of "the transformative power of Christ". It's even possible that I am more aware of it than you are. But, "all the miracles performed in the Church in the subsequent centuries"... you believe they were all for real?

@philokalia said
But it is not evidence - it is a plausible narrative to you and people who hate Christ.

Oh no, we believe different things, so you have said you think I "hate Christ"!

You sound no different to a leftwing snowflake, immersed in their identity politics, lashing out at someone for not believing the same thing as you, attributing the difference to "hate" or some other personal deficiency.

@philokalia said
And so there is this sophisticated operation in Roman MI6 to fabricate the story of Christ...? And they're just great at it, and all the O. G. Christians buy it hook, line, and sinker, never seeking to meet the witnesses of the OT, or seeking to verify it among the people of Jerusalem... The Jerusalem church forms out of thin air, but prior to the toppling of the second ...[text shortened]...

Very implausible, [i]of course, but that is no barrier to what the atheist wills for himself.

"The Jerusalem church forms out of thin air"

Who has claimed this?

Why do you immediately resort to strawmen?

@philokalia said
I see something different based on how you engage the topic of Christianity. Of course you will see yourself as too profound for such an emotion, but I do not see you as a guru behind a computer screen.

I see something different based on how you engage the topic of Christianity.

The way I "engage the topic of Christianity" hurts your feelings ~ and makes you want to lash out?

@fmf said
"A guru behind a computer screen"?

What are you blathering about now?

You know what I am talking about. ^^

@philokalia said
You know what I am talking about. ^^

You blabbering on about "a guru behind a computer screen" in an effort to land some sort of feeble blow in a message board conversation smacks of an inferiority complex.

It reminds me of how you once "dealt" with stuff I believe that you disagreed with by abandoning the conversation and suggesting, instead, that I had a "neckbeard". Just calm down a bit.

@fmf said
The Gospels were not written by people who met Christ. Paul wrote most of the books in the NT and he didn't meet Christ either.

St. Matthew met and followed Christ, and the Gospel of Mark relays specifically the story of St. Peter. The Gospel of John, of course, is written by the Apostle John, who was the Beloved of Christ...

Three of the four Gospels are clearly and absolutely based on people who were first hand witnesses to Christ.

The epistles are subsidiary to the gospels - some of them are from people who met Christ, but you are right: St. Paul was not there for Christ's ministry on earth. Rather, he was a zealot Jewish persecutor of Christians who had a conversion moment from God.

@fmf said
I am well aware of "the transformative power of Christ". It's even possible that I am more aware of it than you are. But, "all the miracles performed in the Church in the subsequent centuries"... you believe they were all for real?

There will always be frauds wherever humans are involved but there are, of course, many genuine miracles - I have been able to be a witness, and know others who have witnessed them.

@fmf said
Oh no, we believe different things, so you have said you think I "hate Christ"!

You sound no different to a leftwing snowflake, immersed in their identity politics, lashing out at someone for not believing the same thing as you, attributing the difference to "hate" or some other personal deficiency.

I am rather left wing in many ways. It is fine by me if people say it.

I also believe in the importance of identity, as racism persists in being a problem to this very day.

@philokalia said
Three of the four Gospels are clearly and absolutely based on people who were first hand witnesses to Christ.

I accept that they are named after people that the Gospels claim met him.