The entire universe was created so God could make one planet with a race of biped sentient mammals, then way later...

>Y-you just don't understand!
>You have to believe in the bible even if it makes sense c-c-uz God works in mysterious ways!

Doesn't prove the bible to be more than a cultural historical document. All this amounts to is an assertion that God is beyond our understanding. It doesn't make the myriad assertions of the Christian faith correct.

A Muslim could very well make the same assertions about God in order to get me to trust the Quran more.

The mirror of omniscience is perspective. As an ongoing show,God is watching us,Rhinegold in one hand,adjusting His nuts with the other. To our Creator,we Created are only partially real,of fleeting interest, good only for the passing introspective insight and a few belly laughs. We need not be anything more for Him,so what we need to do is be More for ourselves.

So on with the show.

neato magneto, we agree to your veto, feed us the cheeto burrito

The bible was written by men.
Keep that in mind when you read it.

It really baffles me when Christians connect the sacrifice of Jesus to the earlier tradition of animal sacrifice. I mean, yeah, the connection is obviously there, but why, as a 21st century Christian, would you want to remind people that your religion is rooted in the barbaric logic of burning animal corpses because it produces an odor pleasing to Yahweh and will therefore invoke divine favor? How does that fit with the image of God they're trying to portray?

>Tips

LMao, I'm going to watch this show now. Thanks.

>I know, if I describe the opposition's viewpoint, but in a mocking and sarcastic way, it'll show how smart I am!

Uhum... You just refuted 2000 years of history, philosophy and traditions in an argument on Veeky Forums with less than 5 lines. Congratulations genius, you just proved christianity is wrong and stripped billions of people of their meaning in life as well as completely destroying the works of Aquinas, Anselm, Augustine, Scotus, Lane Craig, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Newton and others.

And what's most impressive is that you did it all without doing any further research on the subject, just based on your instinctive doubts. What a truly genius.

Damn you're insecure.

(1) The arbitrary part (though the incarnation wasn't logically necessary for the World to exist, it is fitting that the incarnation happened, see Aquinas)

(2) The part where God created people just to damn them (that's Calvinism). People choose to damn themselves. If they didn't have a choice in the matter, then they're not culpable. Whether moral culpability exists in a given person is up for debate and ultimately only known by God.

(3) The part where hell contains literal torture (it may, but torture may just be a metaphor for what eternal seperation of God would be like)

(4) The incarnation occurred at the height of the Roman Empire, during a period a high learning and civilization, right in the middle of the Med. The groups closest to the incarnation, Jews and Greeks, were already used to the idea of monotheism (Jews from the OT, Greeks from Platonism). From the Levant Christianity was well positioned to spread to the rest of the Roman Empire, as well as Ethopia, and with mixed success to points east. It wasn't just some random place at some random time.

Correct

christposters such as OP are actually existing autism

Am I? Or is it the guy who thinks he refuted christianity in less than 5 fucking lines? Don't you have anything better to do than post shit on Veeky Forums? If you had a genuine interest on theology you should be studying that instead of trolling here.

>Aquinas, Anselm, Augustine, Scotus, Lane Craig, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Newton and others.
Which of the 8 is least like the others?

You know Newton wrote more on religion than physics or math, right?

What made you take it as an attempt to refute all of Christianity? It's just an observation. Most people today rightly see ritual sacrifice as a stupid and primitive idea, therefore it's odd that some Christians highlight that aspect of their religion.

...

Most people today have pre-marital sex, doesn't mean it should be accepted by the Church.

Pro-tip: If you have some doubt about christianity that is as simplistic and stupid as the one you posted, just do some research and you'll most likely find someone who already adressed it in the past. Again, it's a 2000 years old doctrine, your little brain won't find any 'mistakes' in it without some proper and extensive knowledge of the subject.

This is why nobody likes you theists. Chill out man.

Greatest philosopher alive, why?

All societies have rituals. Even modern America has all the pageantry involved in "civic religion". The idea of sacrifice is related to pretty straightforward. So what's odd about ritual sacrifice? And even if it is odd to people today, clearly the modern West is the exception in World history in this regard.

He's not nearly on the same level as the others you mentioned. Hence the one that least belongs.

>Someone offends the entire meaning in the lives of billions and the doctrine that helped shape western civilization without even taking the proper care of research his stupid doubt before posting it as an irrefutable fact
>Another idiot tells you to chill out

If you didn't want a debate and a lesson on the subject, why the fuck did you post about it?

You're right, the important thing about religion is making it hip and modern, much more important than remembering history and the big picture. Let's just be neo-christians who don't actually believe or read the Bible, but kinda think the story of Jesus is pretty neat

Why not? Have you read his works? Lane Craig and Edward Feser are the most important theologists alive.

>Veeky Forums was created so idiots like this could point out the holes in an overly literal, fundamentalist, strawman interpretation of Christianity

What is allegory? What are mystical interpretations of the Bible?

Saying shit like this is so stupid. You really think that it's all meant to be just some huge metaphor? All those INCREDIBLY clear, simple, and direct statements written by several different people over a long period of time is actually just kind of a big allegory for something, ignoring all of those VERY clear, unambiguous, and straightforward passages that could be interpreted as literally nothing else besides their face value?

if you think the original poster was sincere you're a fag

This. Calling holy texts a bunch of metaphors is the coward's way out.

lmao. It's not a "doubt" about Christianity; I'm not Christian. Yeah, I'm sure it's been thoroughly rationalized, but that's not the point. No amount of medieval philosophy is going to change the fact that the portrayal of God as a loving, transcendental, universal father figure is incongruous with killing animals for no reason except God likes it when you kill animals for him. And then burning them because it produces a pleasing odor to Yahweh.

>a lesson on the subject
You still haven't made an argument except that there is an argument somewhere out there that will blow me the fuck out if I find it. At least cite a text related to this or I'll start to think you haven't even read these texts you're implying exist.

You want to understand more about the definition of love than God Himself which is, by definition, omniscient? You really think your knowledge on nature is bigger than those of God? If you don't believe God is omniscient than we're not talking about the christian God but just some random deity you created to support your ad hominem.

Honestly, you can tell the writers or at least the editors of the Old Testament probably didn't take most of it literally simply because of how full of contradictions it is. I mean the people who edited these books weren't retarded and they weren't committed to the idea that everything in them was infallible, since after all they were the ones deciding what would be in them. They could have done more to eliminate contradictions, but instead they chose in many cases to preserve multiple traditions despite their contradictions, which makes sense if you take them to be primarily just allegories/morality tales. Of course, there was some stuff they definitely did believe. The Jewish faith very much depends on the idea that Yahweh literally rescued the Israelites as slaves from Egypt and literally gave them the Promised Land and made this covenant with them that they're supposed to follow literally. But then, the amount of contradictions actually makes it easy to distinguish between the two. If something is mentioned and then immediately contradicted, it's probably not important or meant to be taken seriously as history. If something is repeated frequently and never contradicted, it is a real belief.

You forgot

The "editors" didn't edit content, they decided which books were legitimate and compiled them together. There's plenty of shit out there that imitators wrote, you can't just include everything that claims to be from God, you have to have discernment. You also haven't given any information on what this "allegory" is supposed to be that is somehow conveyed through multiple books worth of cut and dry statements that could have no other meaning read into them, and you don't have any examples of said contradictions that were left in. You're just making a vague statement that you haven't researched at all because it feels good to you.

OP here. Sincere as can be.

It amazes me that people can assert so many things with so little evidence

1) The universe was created
2) The universe did not form
3) The universe is finite
4) God always existed
5) God was not created
6) God did not form
7) God, not Gods
8) God, not Goddess
9) Chose to appear to specific people at specific points in history to convey very specific messages, instead of just broadcasting the message to all humans at once.
10) Chose to flood the whole Earth
11) Chose to appear to humans as himself/his son in order to sacrifice himself so that everyone could be saved by this blood sacrifice

It's tiresome hearing all the assertions, and then being told that the fucking bible, a smorgasbord of traditional stories and folklore mashed in with the gospels, is the infallible answer to the entire fucking physical universe, and all its galaxies, and stars, and planetary systems.

It's lazy.
It's a byproduct of culture.
It has a grip on billions.
It needs threats of apocalypse and hell to even keep its intellectual grip on people.

Why is animal sacrifice considered barbaric? It's a complex idea for people with limited knowledge and observatory tools to come up with.

I agree with this, but this is an argument coming from a place of absolute and unprecedented luxury. Trust me when the world gets tribal you’d better hope you believe in the same ‘god’ as the physically fitter tribe coming to dismember you. Of course this is proof enough for me against the idea of god but it is still a means to an end that people only think is useless when they’re completely comfortable and safe. Life even at it’s worse being homeless and an alcoholic is still so much safer than it ever was in human history.

Are you off your meds m8?

The Bible and Christian ideas speak to me on an existential, experiential level that seem right to me. Much more than the athiest position.

Religion isn't an argument. Religion isn't a formula. Religion isn't a thesis. Religion isn't a science.

I sincerely doubt people ever talk to you about religion unless you're the edgy atheist kid in your family. You can live your life completely free of religion if you choose to. But you'd rather start arguments instead.

you slobbering retard, who gave you a fucking keyboard? please die

>but if he is perfect why would god-
Stop right there bucko God is perfect and as we are imperfect we can never understand what a perfect being might do. Checkmate atheists...

This

Are you talking to someone?

I am not what most would call a Christian, I don't think the entire Bible is objective truth (especially because it has no single writer and is rather a compilation of writings), but I think there's a lot of beauty and wisdom in there, and to believe in God or that there were people in past history who had revelations/mystical experiences, some inklings of knowledge of God, doesn't mean you need to wholesale believe in some sort of wacko fundamentalist Christianity.

For instance, the idea that Christ's sacrifice was to save all humanity/wash away our sins, and all we need to do is believe in him to be saved, was an idea that mostly came after the Gospels, from Paul (in my opinion, St. Paul kind of ruined Christianity). I also don't believe Christ was literally God; rather, I think he was a human who reached Godlike status, the same way other people could if they persevere and seek wisdom. Most "Christians" think this is blasphemous, but in the Gospels themselves it's said we're all called upon to be Godlike and to be brothers of Christ/sons of God.

>9) Chose to appear to specific people at specific points in history to convey very specific messages, instead of just broadcasting the message to all humans at once.
Well, you could say there's been a lot of messengers throughout history, we just don't listen to them. Some people may cringe at what they see as my New Age/hippie views, but from Native American shamanistic beliefs to Buddhists to Sufis to Hindus, there's been a lot of evidence of spiritually enlightened people trying to better the lives of those around them and change society for the better. It seems that they may have simply changed some of the message/external regulations based on the time and place they were in and societies they were in.

>Saying shit like this is so stupid. You really think that it's all meant to be just some huge metaphor? All those INCREDIBLY clear, simple, and direct statements written by several different people over a long period of time is actually just kind of a big allegory for something, ignoring all of those VERY clear, unambiguous, and straightforward passages that could be interpreted as literally nothing else besides their face value?
I'm not saying it's all allegory of course, and I'm not even saying everything in the Bible is sacred/represents truth. Rather that at least some of it is allegory, and at least some of it has beautiful and profound truths.

>The "editors" didn't edit content
They certainly did. Most of the books, at least the Pentateuch and the historical books, clearly had multiple authors and were probably edited together from multiple preexisting works.

>You also haven't given any information on what this "allegory" is supposed to be that is somehow conveyed through multiple books
I'm not claiming any thing like that. There's no single message of the Bible, but a lot of the stories have clear morals like "Obey God" or "if you don't obey God he'll fucking kill you" or something. Another thing to remember is the idea with history being as accurate and objective as possible is really a western academic thing. For most of history, history has not aspired to be anything other than propaganda and people knew it, so the smart ones would take it with a grain of salt anyway.

>you don't have any examples of said contradictions that were left in.
How about the two different creation stories or the two different stories of how David met Saul. Not to mention little things where it's clear two different versions of a story have been combined, like Yahweh telling Balaam to go to the king and then immediately getting mad at him for doing it.

Yes, the good old "you think you know better than GOD?" argument. The perfect way for Christians to dismiss any challenge to the idea that God exists and is what they believe him to be because if God exists is what they believe him to be you can't argue with him.

>Yes, the good old "you think you know better than GOD?" argument. The perfect way for Christians to dismiss any challenge to the idea that God exists and is what they believe him to be because if God exists is what they believe him to be you can't argue with him.

But you can't run away from it in regards to the question you made.

You asked: 'How can God be satisfied with such a primitive act of love?', if we assume God is omnipotent and omniscient then it's evident that his knowledge on 'love' or 'traditions' are bigger and, therefore, more correct than yours. This is the last thing you should be asking about when it comes to religion, there's nothing else to expect because in the end those kinds of questions always comes down to the definition we're using of God and in this case it's the omnipotent and omniscient christian God.

>8) God, not Goddess
God the Father is without gender. We refer to Him as a Him because of the cultural connotations that come with the masculine. To give God gender is to place him in flesh and time, which was done through the Second Person of the Trinity.
>10) Chose to flood the whole Earth
Allegory
>is the infallible answer to the entire fucking physical universe, and all its galaxies, and stars, and planetary systems.
This is the meme I wish most to die.

Christianity is completely and utterly unconcerned with physical reality. How many stars there are, or whether the sun revolves around the Eart or vice versa, or by what means God made man are irrelevant to Christianity. These are appearances, the base physical HOW of the universe, the processes of the universe. Christianity is completely and utterly unconcerned with HOW, it is concerned with WHY.

With the possible exception of (10), there's literally thousands of books written that address at least one of these points, all by people who are smarter and better educated than either of us. This doesn't make Christianity or some other form of theism true (there's plenty of smart, well-read Marxists, for instance), but it does make you the lazy one for rejecting them out of hand. How is your atheism not a byproduct of modern culture?

>clearly had multiple authors and were probably edited together from multiple preexisting works.
If you get mad at Christians for presenting statements without evidence then you can't immediately turn around and do the same thing.

>"Obey God" or "if you don't obey God he'll fucking kill you" or something
So instead of allegory, you're trying to say that their purpose is to subjugate. Perhaps you could make that argument for the Old Testament (or parts of it), but the New Testament is pretty anti-authoritarian and half of it is people telling the leaders of the church to fuck off, so that wouldn't do a very good job. I'm willing to accept your understanding of ancient history because what you say is true in terms of how people used to see things, but rarely did people simply make up events when recording histories, they simply exaggerated things they saw, such as numbers of soldiers. Saying that it's completely made up but also is meant to serve as history is contradictory.

>two creation stories
I always took Genesis 1 as an overview and Genesis 2 as a more personal look at what happened, I don't see any contradictions between the two accounts.

> two different stories of how David met Saul

>Yahweh telling Balaam to go to the king and then immediately getting mad at him for doing it.
Don't have offhand knowledge of these so I can't answer in any way beyond copy pasting some article I find

No

>Sincere

Start with the Resurrection, and then work backwards and/or forwards (i.e., through questions 1-11) from that.

N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

>strangenotions.com/from-atheist-professor-to-catholic-an-interview-with-dr-holly-ordway/

Sure, you can always assume that all the weird stuff God does in the Bible is ultimately benevolent. I'm not trying to refute Christianity I'm just saying there's going to be cognitive dissonance there and focusing on those aspects that produce cognitive dissonance isn't a very good way to present your religion to people, even to less extreme believers. Like I think most people would find it hard to imagine this dude telling you to slaughter a bull without eating it just for his pleasure.

You're retarded.

Why did Jesus have long hair? Bit gay desu.

newton believed in a self-made version of Maimonides-inspired deism and utterly rejected the trinity you raging faggot

>>The entire universe was created so God could make one planet with a race of biped sentient mammals,
This is, of course, not the significance of man which Christians believe, but who cares right?
>then way later, after a flood and some tragedies, take the avatar of an ethno-religious minority in a far-flung province of the Roman empire,
Why is this a problem? Would it be okay if it was a famous person in a metropolitan hub?
>perform an arbitrary blood-sacrifice of himself by means of an antiquated method of execution,
So if it was a modern method of execution it would be better? At this point you're only criticizing God for actually acting in time since at whatever point he acts in, things at that point will eventually become antiquated.
>come back to life three days later, and ascend to heaven. This arbitrary blood sacrifice can save your eternal soul, but only if you claim without any wavering or uncertainty or room for speculation that it absolutely happened, and swear an oath of eternal fealty to it.
Why would it save someone? Could there be a reason? Do you know? Do you care?
>Anyone who questions this is an unenlightened heretic who God has created in advance to be tortured forever in a realm of unlimited suffering.
Why would they be punished? Do you know? etc.
This type of criticism is stupid and obnoxious since it's based in nothing more than relative statements ("this is antiquated") and assertions that it should have been done a different way (according to your preferences I suppose?), while demonstrating ignorance about what anyone actually believes about these subjects and the reasons behind them.

He didn't. That's just some pagan nonsense.

He didn't. Robert Powell did.

So what, it's my responsibility to make people understand that paintings of Jesus aren't representative of his entire nature? The entire religion is supposed to just shut down because people have the wrong image of it in their head? Do you realize how completely ridiculous that sounds?

Animal sacrifice served the exact same purpose that a monetary tithe does now. People bartered instead of exchanging currency. Sacrifice of an animal was a symbol of faith, that even if you gave away some of your possessions, God would provide for you. Attempting to make this seem terrible and barbaric by using words like slaughter is idiotic. The world was such a dramatically different place back then that you aren't even attempting to comprehend it. The law was in place for THOSE people, not us.

If you actually wanted answers, you'd study the Bible to get these answers. Whether you're satisfied with the answers the Bible provides I don't care, but the answers are there. Jesus wasn't a hippie who went around hugging baby sheep like you seem to think he was, so trying to use that picture to assert cognitive dissonance is just ignorance in the highest form

No, he wasn't a deist, but a christian, he just had some orthodox views like you said for instance not believing in the Holy Trinity, but that doesn't diminishes the credits he deserves for his works.

Nu-uh, you can't argue against me because my beliefs are OLD. Like, very old, dude. Yep, you can't disagree. Non-believers back to plebbit please.

> telling you to slaughter a bull without eating it

Multiple different kinds of sacrifice involved either the priests or the person sacrificing it to eat part of it.

Do you want to have a conversation, or do you want to talk to a strawman all day long?

Just like most of christendom :^)

>The world was such a dramatically different place back then that you aren't even attempting to comprehend it. The law was in place for THOSE people, not us.
Fuck off relativist.

>Do you want to have a conversation, or do you want to talk to a strawman all day long?
I literally just hopped in to make fun of your retarded long ab auctoritate.

You're a fucking retard. There's no deeper significance to the bible if it's all supposed to be interpreted literally. The bible is diverse and extremely dense. Jesus literally says "Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand." You're just a buttmad fedora who got called out on your juvenile understanding of Christianity and doubled down. 'N-NO YOU DON'T GET TO APPROACH THE BIBLE THAT WAY, THAT'S NOT FAIR'

St Augustine's take on this:

>Often, a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, … and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.

>The shame is not so much that an ignorant person is laughed at, but rather that people outside the faith believe that we hold such opinions, and thus our teachings are rejected as ignorant and unlearned. If they find a Christian mistaken in a subject that they know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions as based on our teachings, how are they going to believe these teachings in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think these teachings are filled with fallacies about facts which they have learnt from experience and reason.

>Reckless and presumptuous expounders of Scripture bring about much harm when they are caught in their mischievous false opinions by those not bound by our sacred texts. And even more so when they then try to defend their rash and obviously untrue statements by quoting a shower of words from Scripture and even recite from memory passages which they think will support their case ‘without understanding either what they are saying or what they assert with such assurance.’ (1 Timothy 1:7)

What are you trying to say? The old testament is full of writings about new believers not needing to follow Israelite law.

> Jesus literally says "Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."
That's because he LITERALLY SAYS "OK I'M GONNA TELL YOU A PARABLE NOW" AND THEN DOES IT. That doesn't mean that literally the entire Bible is a parable. Where do you people even get this shit from, do you just make it up as you go? Nothing you quoted from Augustine says anything about the Bible being a big allegory or to not be taken literally. Trying to use the Bible as the only source of knowledge is the issue that he speaks about there. Truth can exist outside the Bible. The issue is with people saying stupid shit about celestial bodies because they literally think that everything outside the Bible is wrong

>old testament

New testament*

Specifically try reading Galatians

>clearly had multiple authors and were probably edited together from multiple preexisting works.
>If you get mad at Christians for presenting statements without evidence then you can't immediately turn around and do the same thing.
That's the scholarly consensus right now. If you want to see the evidence in detail I'd recommend reading the Oxford Annotated Bible, but the long and short of it is that hardly a chapter goes by without some redundancy or inconsistency that you wouldn't expect from a single author.

>I always took Genesis 1 as an overview and Genesis 2 as a more personal look at what happened, I don't see any contradictions between the two accounts.
The order of creation is different. Genesis 1 starts with God creating the universe from water and creating land to separate the waters. 2 starts with dry ground and God brings water up from the ground.

More importantly, in 1, humans are created after all the animals and represent the pinnacle of creation. In 2 God creates Adam, then creates all other animals to try to make a companion for him, but they aren't enough, so he finally creates woman as the perfect companion. The two accounts not only differ in the concrete specifics, they're making different statements about humanity, hence why it was considered worthwhile to include both of them.

>but rarely did people simply make up events when recording histories
When events weren't written down until hundreds of years after they supposedly happened, it wouldn't be hard to just make things up. In cases where the history is more recent, they would be restricted from getting too farfetched, but the way you spin or exaggerate real events can create almost any narrative you want, so can tell an allegorical tale without inventing new events.

>So what, it's my responsibility to make people understand that paintings of Jesus aren't representative of his entire nature? The entire religion is supposed to just shut down because people have the wrong image of it in their head?
I'm not giving any advice. I'm aware there are parts of the Bible that paint Jesus as more of a badass, I just don't think it's an easy sell to tie a supposedly transcendent and omnibenevolent God to a form of worship that's usually associated with savages.

>People bartered instead of exchanging currency.
user, that's just wrong. It seems it's you who do not read the Bible or you'd be aware that people in ancient Israel usually paid for things with silver.

>Multiple different kinds of sacrifice involved either the priests or the person sacrificing it to eat part of it.
True, but not all and the primary justification was still to please God.

>What are you trying to say?
Nothing. I was just shitposting.

The thing most people don't understand is that the Old Testament was written around 5000 years ago, in a time where the stories were all told in parables and not in literal ways. You can't expect to teach about values, morals etc in a direct, literal way during those times, cause the men wouldn't understand it.

Fine, people bartered IN ADDITION TO exchanging currency. What I said still stands and answers everything you said. Your points about sacrifice are shallow and stupid.

>Be an atheist
>Google arguments against Christianity
>Find one that looks damaging
>"Hmm... I wonder if any Christian in the past 2,000 years has written any type of answer to this..."
>"Nah."
>...heh... Just wait til I can post this on Veeky Forums; that'll show those stupid Christians.

>be a Christian
>hear an argument against your faith
>don't know how to refute it
>"Hmm... well I'm sure someone in the past 2,000 years has thought of a good counterargument to this, so there's no need for me to give one."
>"I'll just tell those stupid atheists to do more research. That'll show 'em."

Out of curiosity, what would you find convincing? Because, as others have pointed out, there is a history of philosophical thought on all of these topics ranging from the time of the old testament to now.

Anyways, I'll take a stab.

1) this is consistent with all scientific evidence we have.
2) same
3) the exact opposite is asserted by the Bible, but both outcomes are consistent with all scientific evidence
4) wouldn't be good if he didn't
5) same
6) if everything is caused/moved/contingent/etc, there must be an uncaused/prime mover/non-contingent thing. That thing is called god. Read Aquinas.
7) if there were Gods, whatever rules/law/power they obeyed, whatever granted them power, would be god. The Greek gods were subject to fate, which shows that the Greeks knew there must be something more. Read Plato.
8) very minor point, but no major religion has a female god at the top. One interpretation is that God revealed himself in masculine form, but is beyond gender categories
9) God does both, according to every major religion. Natural law is "broadcast" to all. There are cross cultural values that we intrinsically share. Christ in particular lived in one place, but that's what humans do.
10) "whole earth" has meant different things at different times. Sounds like the more general problem of evil is your real concern. Read Augustine.
11) Well, if you gloss over all the miracles and nearly universally acknowledged truth he preached, then sure, it's just a dude dying. The resurrection was an act of forgiveness because it manifested as an unconquerable force that humans could not destroy. It brought life to a world where there was only death. Of course we would murder the way the truth the life if we ever saw it. The miracle is the resurrection and redemption.

It's tiresome hearing all these casual opinions, and then being told that one person's opinions trump 3000 years of philosophy, discussion and literature.

Christianity is difficult. It overcomes culture. It gives hope to billions. It gives people hope and faith in a love that is greater than any conceivable idea of hell or apocalypse.

I don't think it's any more stupid or shallow than "you can't argue against it if you assume it's true" which is pretty much what I'm having to deal with here

Not OP but thanks for actually giving arguments and recommending literature instead of saying "theology exists therefore u r wrong"

>Christianity is difficult. It overcomes culture. It gives hope to billions.

Because people chose to believe without evidence. People give themselves hope by rallying around a dumb idea to do great things.

Christians are always saying how "thousands of years of philosophy and literature" back up what they say, but it's mostly just people who started with the assumption that the bible is correct about everything, and set out to "prove it" by making their own assertions axiomatic, and then using their position as disciplined clergymen as a form of authoritative confirmation of their own assertive axioms.

Never is actual convincing evidence provided. Just assertions on top of assertions.

Thinkers start by admitting they don't know. Dogmatists start by insisting the assertions of past dogmatists have always been and always will be correct on their own merit

>Start with the resurrection.

So start with believing. The same way Muslims start with mohammed.

Don't you get it? I start with "I don't know" and others bare the burden of proving their assertions.

Replace christians with atheists or scientists or philosophers or mathematicians in your post and consider whether it has any merit.

Feser is a boss but he's mostly just a popularizer. I don't think anyone will read him in 100 years, they would just read the earlier Neo-Thomists he draws from

You don't know how scientific research works, honey

When a scientist tried to prove a theory, he's not supposed to prove it's absolutely right, no, unlike the clergy or whatever religious orders
He has to prove it's wrong by any means , and if he can't, then he can start to think about it being right

>Scientists are always saying how "thousands of years of thought and experimental results" back up what they say, but it's mostly just people who started with the assumption that scientific narratives are correct about everything, and set out to "prove it" by making their own assertions axiomatic, and then using their position as disciplined professors as a form of authoritative confirmation of their own assertive axioms.

>Never is actual convincing evidence provided. Just assertions on top of assertions

See what I mean? Plenty of people don't understand math, but that doesn't mean it's all just made up. You're just appealing to the "it's not intuitive to me so it's wrong" argument

not OP but I genuinely don't see what you mean here user, the word scientist doesn't even make sense in the sentence - the core principle on which science functions is basically "make an assumption, then keep trying to prove it WRONG"
Theological arguments argue the inverse; "(with the assumption that god is real), prove that he is real"

Only like 3 people on Veeky Forums actually believe in the Judeo-Christian God, everyone else is joking or trying to make those 3 people look dumb by posing shitty arguments.

yes, but it makes me happy.

>this is consistent with all scientific evidence we have.
This is being real sly with language. Something being consistent with evidence doesn't mean it's proven by evidence or even that it's unfalsifiable. Invisible, immortal unicorns existing on Saturn isn't inconsistent with scientific evidence, it just hasn't been(and possibly can't be) proved or disproved. Saying something is "consistent with all evidence" is intellectually dishonest at best and all but completely meaningless on any day ending with 'y'.