1) We can start with the fact that Historians believe Christ existed.
2) I can grant you he might have just been a harmless mentally ill person.
3) You must now grant me that we crucified someone for that.
4) The above is evil. There is your proof. If you need more, you can check out Nazism.
5) This mentally ill person was pretty adamant about the nature of sin.
6) At the very least , it’s worth considering if he might have been right about a few things.
7) At the very least, one should be slightly freaked out that he actually existed and most likely died due the very reasons he suggested - that something is utterly wrong with humans.
8) I’d let the whole true date of physical reality go. We literally reinvented time after he died. I won’t hold the Old Testament to the test of carbon dating, and reconsider that those books told us all the nature of how things began (from a big explosion).
9) And then we find the miraculous Dead Sea Scrolls proving that those books were not altered through the course of time.
10) The books say your soul is quite important. Christ was also one of the first to suggest your morality is from within (the thing atheist often suggest).
11) I’d finally suggest the following about science:
Imagine I take a shit in a toilet. Imagine you are a brilliant scientist that sits around and figures out every measurement of how the shit moves around the toilet, down to the physics, down to the chemical composition of the shit. You would have figured out the physics of the universe of your toilet, but you will never ever know that I took the shit because I ate a lot of Taco Bell.
12) Hubris would be thinking our constant measuring (science) proves anything about our purpose.
13) Given the above hypothetical, it would be humble to accept the fear of god scripture puts into us, since we would have never even come close to figuring out our purpose via science (finding the true nature of God’s Taco Bell order) without these goofy books.
14) Last but not least:
If the Big Bang was the moment of creation, you can believe one of two things:
A) Something caused it
B) Space was a vacuum and something came from nothing.
If you believe A (You believe in God), our very existence is contingent on the sequence, A lead to B, then to C, and so on, so the entire chain of us talking here was deliberate (plus or minus all the free will decisions of humans, mostly a rounding error in the grand scheme).
15) And my personal favorite, everyone one of our births was a miracle given how sexual reproduction works (we all beat a million other possibilities). Faith is not hard when you truly see just how insane the odds are for so many things. Therefore, I’m quite open to the ridiculousness of the Galileans story. Another way to put it is, I am in awe of God.
>2) I can grant you he might have just been a harmless mentally ill person.
The same could be said for the "prophets" of any major religion. Muhammadﷻ (SWT) arguably went into a state of psychosis after the premature deaths of both of his sons. Joseph Smith, a local drunk in a small western NY town, said a magical rock in a hat that only he could see told him the garden of Eden was in St. Louis and that the native Americans weren't native Americans, but rather, the real original Israelites.
3) You must now grant me that we crucified someone for that.
Sure.
4) The above is evil. There is your proof. If you need more, you can check out Nazism.
Sure. However, some pretty fucked up stuff has been done in the names of God, Jesus, Allah, Muhammadﷻ (SWT), Israel, Buddha, and so on. Doesn't justify anything.
5) This mentally ill person was pretty adamant about the nature of sin.
So was MLK Jr. He got shot.
6) At the very least , it’s worth considering if he might have been right about a few things.
Sure. Which is why his message is also a cornerstone of Islam.
7) At the very least, one should be slightly freaked out that he actually existed and most likely died due the very reasons he suggested - that something is utterly wrong with humans.
It actually gives me reason to reject religion as a whole. If God made man in his own image, and man treats his fellow man with disdain, hatred, violence, etc, what does that say about God? If God was so perfect, why would he create beings that have free will to destroy the life of another? Paradoxical at best, a fallacy at worst.
If God was so perfect, why would he create beings that have free will to destroy the life of another?
That is the ultimate intellectual question. But pay attention to the key word, intellectual. You cannot get spiritual answers from an intellectual question. That's what makes faith rather hard at times and often requires meditation.
It actually gives me reason to reject religion as a whole.
Christ, allegedly, died due to the pride of religion. He was very much on a mission to call out the pride, power and arrogance of organized religion. Again, the answers are simply not available in the intellectual domain and must be sought in the spiritual domain.
I'm not even a member of a Church as I mostly do my reading on my own and do my own reflection. I think one of the main things God tries to hammer home is that we are to all have an eternal life in the after-life (which is mercy, because he could just erase us). If eternity is what is at stake, it is probably in our interest to cleanse our soul of whatever makes us shitty humans, lest we enter eternity tainted and unreformed, for a soul like that will be shitty for all eternity.
>That's what makes faith rather hard at times and often requires meditation.
Faith. Key word, faith. There is no reason for faith, because you're placing faith and (fleeting) hope that some dude in a desert a few thousand years ago found the ultimate way to interact with (his understanding of) humanity's creator, if we even have one. What makes you so 1000000% sure that this guy's understanding of the supernatural is correct? You're assuming that there actually is some omnipresent being that manifested existence, and that same being actually divinely created humanity on purpose, and not only that, gave humanity free will, and not only that, also simultaneously loves and hates you, and will condemn you to eternal hellfire if you don't worship him enough. Oh yeah, according to some, he's got a son too, born of humanity but with magical powers.
2) I can grant you he might have just been a harmless mentally ill person.
3) You must now grant me that we crucified someone for that.
4) The above is evil. There is your proof. If you need more, you can check out Nazism.
5) This mentally ill person was pretty adamant about the nature of sin.
6) At the very least , it’s worth considering if he might have been right about a few things.
7) At the very least, one should be slightly freaked out that he actually existed and most likely died due the very reasons he suggested - that something is utterly wrong with humans.
8) I’d let the whole true date of physical reality go. We literally reinvented time after he died. I won’t hold the Old Testament to the test of carbon dating, and reconsider that those books told us all the nature of how things began (from a big explosion).
9) And then we find the miraculous Dead Sea Scrolls proving that those books were not altered through the course of time.
10) The books say your soul is quite important. Christ was also one of the first to suggest your morality is from within (the thing atheist often suggest).
11) I’d finally suggest the following about science:
Imagine I take a shit in a toilet. Imagine you are a brilliant scientist that sits around and figures out every measurement of how the shit moves around the toilet, down to the physics, down to the chemical composition of the shit. You would have figured out the physics of the universe of your toilet, but you will never ever know that I took the shit because I ate a lot of Taco Bell.
12) Hubris would be thinking our constant measuring (science) proves anything about our purpose.
13) Given the above hypothetical, it would be humble to accept the fear of god scripture puts into us, since we would have never even come close to figuring out our purpose via science (finding the true nature of God’s Taco Bell order) without these goofy books.
14) Last but not least:
If the Big Bang was the moment of creation, you can believe one of two things:
A) Something caused it
B) Space was a vacuum and something came from nothing.
If you believe A (You believe in God), our very existence is contingent on the sequence, A lead to B, then to C, and so on, so the entire chain of us talking here was deliberate (plus or minus all the free will decisions of humans, mostly a rounding error in the grand scheme).
15) And my personal favorite, everyone one of our births was a miracle given how sexual reproduction works (we all beat a million other possibilities). Faith is not hard when you truly see just how insane the odds are for so many things. Therefore, I’m quite open to the ridiculousness of the Galileans story. Another way to put it is, I am in awe of God.