ChristFags explain this shit to me

Dude, just start with the Greeks, there's no easy answer for your questions.

Can you only speak in quirky comebacks or did you want to say something substantial here?

We know the spirit bro.
Books don't tell us that God exists.

>it just wasn't clear until science proved us wrong
This is a modern Protestant phenomenon.
People have viewed the OT as allegorical since Christianity's conception:
For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars?... I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.
t. Origen of Alexandria c. 200 A.D.

>Why do natural disasters constantly fuck with people's livelihood ( Mostly the more religious countries and regions I might add) and how is that necessary?
This is just the problem of evil.

>Like, Imagine if all Bibles were indestructible. That would be the fucking checkmate atheists right?
Matthew 16:4 - “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah.”

Consider that almost the entirety of the Old Testament is prophesy for the Passion: the Pentateuch main themes are God's desire to be with man and the need for salvation, Jonah spends 3 days in the belly of the whale to foretell Christ descending to hell, God commands Abraham to bind Isaac to test his loyalty (illustrating that to being willing send your son to die as the Father did is the ultimate sign of love), etc.

I'm not saying that any portion of the Old Testament happened or didn't happen, but the significance just remains the same.

Memes are shit. I think we can all agree on that. They were acceptable, like, 5-or-so years ago. Essentially they were slightly amusing inside jokes on the internet. Of course, at the height of their popularity (around 2010 - 2012), they started appearing everywhere; not just on the internet but occasionally on TV or in video games and movies. Your friends, coworkers and classmates would laugh at memes now. And they weren't funny anymore. This site is testament to that fact.

So who's to blame?

Well, mainly sites like Reddit, Memebase, 9gag, etc. And I'm not just saying that because it's cool to hate on those sites; they all spread shitty memes like a cancerous growth in a survivor of the Chernobyl disaster. These websites are where memes went to die, in a way.

But you can't blame them entirely, really. It's human nature to want to fit in with everyone else, and if everyone else likes memes, then you should probably check 'em out, too! And you did, and you laughed for a while, or at least pretended to. And then, when people finally bored of memes, which was inevitable, people started to dislike them. And then hate them.

So here we are, in 2016, and it is now a social norm (at least on the internet) to mock and hate memes because they're so mainstream. The ultimate irony is that hating memes is now mainstream. And yes, while I do personally think memes are shitty and should die a horrible death, and Reddit, 9gag and Memebase are all terrible, I feel the same way about the stupid people who think they're being cool and funny by making faux-channels called shit like "le epic reddit mememaster" with an avatar of a fedora neckbeard guy, spamming comments like "redditors unite!" in an "ironic" sense.

Didn't the catholic church take it literally for many years? You know, during that angelology phase?

>This is just the problem of evil.
I know.

>Matthew 16:4 - “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah.”

So basically god's answer to "Hey, could I get some proof here" is "fuck you that's evil/just have faith bro".

Is this some new copypasta that I'm not aware of?

Catholics are pagans.

OP, start with the Greeks. Ask yourself: how did a Jewish messiah cult go from scratching a living in the desert to a force of education and service throughout the early middle ages and up to the present? It is a radical transformation, and one that is little understood today. What happened? How did the Platonists create Christian philosophy, the metaphor of the Christ, and install the form of the good as something for man to emulate? Matthew 5:48 Be perfect on earth as your Father in heaven is perfect. Matthew is one of the synoptic gospels. The New Testament is Socratic parable retold as moral instruction. Did a man ever walk on water? Did he really make two fish and a few loaves feed five thousand? Or is it a metaphor? And what is a fish but a man caught by the interior life? How is a fisher of men like Jesus alike to God, the first being-in-itself and unknowable? Ask Jung. Ask your shadow.

Remember that there was no Christianity before the supposed Resurrection. Jesus died on a cross, the cross we are all on. Of course his message was heresy in the ears of a corrupt Sanhedrin. The messiah was shut down, but he was indeed resurrected by his later students. It wasn't until Nicea and Augustine who anthropomorphised God into a Deity that the message of love was lost amid bowing and scraping and "right practice."

>Why is it that a Bible can burn like any other book?
It is a book.

>Why can it be tempered with and mistranslated?
This is a failure of man and language.

>That would be the fucking checkmate atheists right?
Atheists are unimportant.

>For starters, Empirical evidence basically goes against every claim made by Abrahamic religions.

Nope.

Continuing on, don't worry too much about how you or later Catholics (or Protestants) misinterpret the book. Your anguish is based in their misunderstanding. Just reject it and move on. Read the material yourself. Start with the Greeks.

>Didn't the catholic church take it literally for many years? You know, during that angelology phase?

I'm not that user but I will tell you that a literal interpretation of angels, or repeating the nonsensical fantasy of an ancient, is braindead wrong. The church lost its reason a long, long time ago. Theologians developed a Christian cosmology by dissecting the Bible literally, and have been wrangling with their own misconceptions ever since. Read them, but ignore them. They aren't thinking clearly, and burdened by nonsense dogma.

I know it's a book and I know it's the failure of human language. Which begs the question: Why did god ,despite his omnipotence, chose to make his message heard in the most unreliable way possible? A message, I might add, that could be the difference between an eternity of suffering and an eternity in heaven.

>Atheists are unimportant.

How so? Isn't every human gods children? How are they unimportant? How am I unimportant?

Sorry but the New Testament offers a very sound moral system. Some of the teaching are very deep and timeless truths

>How would anybody be able to argue against god's existence if the Bible was made out of something entirely unique that broke the laws that bind the rest of the material world. It would set itself a part from other religious texts and be impossible to argue against.

>Matthew 7
Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Read as: A human being does not test the generator of all things. The generator of all things uses the human to explore its own infinity.

>And what is a fish but a man caught by the interior life?
Pic related.

>So basically god's answer to "Hey, could I get some proof here" is "fuck you that's evil/just have faith bro".
No, God's answer is the consistent written accounts and oral tradition of Christ's resurrection and the martyrdom of the Apostles and the rest of Christ's disciples.

Like anything else, people will believe what they want to convince themselves of. Most would rather try to escape the tenets of unwavering love/selflessness/charity than to soften their heart.

Read Maps of Meaning. There is a free pdf online.

not shitposting here, go eat some shrooms with this on your mind and new doors of understanding and research into this topic will be opened for you, there is more to the "holy spirit" than you can normally pick up on

Let me rephrase. The status of you being atheist is unimportant. It does not make you better or worse than me. And the creator would have no opinion as far as I can tell.

For me, however, atheist is just another word for ignorant. Which is why you started this thread with so many good questions I guess, so good on you.

>chose to make his message
>his message
God is not a person.

>could be the difference between an eternity of suffering and an eternity in heaven
This is not what you think it is. Now is the moment of salvation. There is no heaven or hell but what you find in this life. Pic related. Read it carefully and keep my other posts about a metaphorical Christ in mind.

I've read Terence Mckenna, so I'm already interested in trying DMT. Just don't know where to get some, not something your standard weed dealer carries with him,

Isn't that faulty reasoning? The Bible is true because the Bible says so?

Go to /pol/
Watch Jordan Peterson
Go to the Christianity generals on /pol/
Go to your local church

Deus Vult and praise kek

This thread is so sad. The masses of humanity of may never understand Christianity. They'll only know the fairy tale version, and the corruption of mortal churches.

don't do this, you fucking degenerate unless you want false idol.

The scripture is not literal, as in the major thing you are supposed to get from it is not about what things are, but what to do. The world presented in it is one of value and action, not a cold scientific description.

How is that valuable? As you said, the entire western civilization rests on it, our world view and morality is entirely Christian. You even have atheists being incredulous that somebody might need God to tell them what is wrong and what is right, while they act out the Christian value system completely without realizing it.
Now look at communism or fascism, ideologies based completely on rational thought - they proved themselves utterly unfeasible and failed within a few generations. The smilingly primitive and irrational civilizations like the Egyptian or Sumerian actually managed to last thousands of years.

Read the Meditations.

clearly havent done it, have you?

I hope you're not trying to deny the Resurrection, user.

Where did I say that?
They asked what evidence God has given, the accounts of the death and resurrection of Christ in the canonical gospels are evidence. In addition the fact that the Apostles and the disciples volunteered to be crucified for their writings should lend evidence to their veracity.

cringe

no, because I'm not a degenerate drug user. fucking redpill yourself and don't be foolwed by phony gods

...

>Read the Meditations.

Give me a quick summary or at least tell me what I should be looking for in there.

Go. Read. Descartes. Now.

failure to do so will forever brand you as a pseud

>the accounts of the death and resurrection of Christ in the canonical gospels are evidence.

No, they are not...

>t. pseud
then you have absolutely no room to talk about the subject, there is nothing phony about it retard

They're accounts of events. Why trust, say, Herodotus and not trust the Gospels?

>From my point of view, It's just seems so silly to believe that a god that would communicate his message the same way a normal human would. Through fragile and vulnerable sheets of paper stacked together that have to be transported and often time poorly translated in many languages.

If you're interested in exploring this, I suggest you start with the Resurrection, as there is a surprisingly strong case to be made for it.

Some suggested reading here: archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/134814184/#134820661

>I kinda want to believe in god but...I'm having a few mental blocks.

Consider this. What's the alternative? That everything evolved out of nothing? How plausible is that?

On the other hand, one can entertain the idea of believing in God. A God who could create a Mozart and a Shakespeare, the complexities of your own psyche, and body ("fearfully and wonderfully made" is an apt description), pic related, and the earth in all its complexity and beauty.

What kind of God can do that? A God something greater than which the mind cannot conceive, perhaps?

But then there's problem of evil.

>Why do natural disasters constantly fuck with people's livelihood ( Mostly the more religious countries and regions I might add) and how is that necessary?

Aye, there's the rub. And too, there is the problem of salvation history -- why did God choose the particular and peculiar methods he did?

Along these lines, you might try something like Introduction to Christianity by Josef Ratzinger. It's rather a good book that spends its opening chapter addressing the issue of modern skepticism, with the kind of beautiful analysis and comprehension that's characteristic of Ratzinger, a world-class theologian.

I can't find that chapter online, but here is his treatment of the article of the creed "descended into hell."

castelotscripture.com/descent-into-hell-pope.pdf

>Thus the article about the Lord's descent into hell reminds us that not only God's speech but also his silence is part of the Christian revelation. God is not only the comprehensible word that comes to us; he is also the silent, inaccessible, uncomprehended, and incomprehensible ground that eludes us. To be sure, in Christianity there is a primacy of the logos, of the word, over silence; God has spoken. God is word. But this does not entitle us to forget the truth of God's abiding concealment.

Finally, user, don't forget to pray, and ask God (even if you're not sure you believe in God) for the gift of faith. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Pray God to lead you forward, step by step, even if the steps are very small. The frustration you express in starting this thread may itself be the product of God's grace working within you - a vexing grain of sand. Pray Him to lead you forward. "Lead kindly light, lead Thou me on."

>le fedora meme
not an argument. what is it with the flood of retarded christcucks? christians used to be one of the better classes of ppl on this board

I do deny it. The ghost of Jesus is a metaphor. His coming to Saul is an allegorical retelling of the foundation of the Catholic church. His words to Mary Magdalene in John 20:17 who recognized him after the resurrection: "noli me tangere." Do not cling to me. ie, Do not cling to the myth, listen to the word of the apostles. The passage from Corinthians I posted above: .

>"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ... We are therefore Christ's ambassadors"

Jesus may have been a man, and a messiah. The Sanhedrin condemned him and he died for his heresy. But his example became a light to the world, through the apostles and later philosophers (1st para. here: ). That was his resurrection, and in no way literal.

Nothing can be objectively proven. Evidence? pfft

>yeah, epic dude this drug that has been scientifically shown to rearrange brain cells and distort reality totally showing me the truth about reality
drugs like this gave us the hippies who gave us feminism, sjw bullshit and the civil rights act. it was created by a jew.

Because Herodotus can be proven or disproven. I've never seen a furry gold-digging ant, but Herodotus thought he did. I've never seen a man walking on water outside of my boat, but the apostles did. You've got to at least pretend you have a functioning brain in your head come on now.

That's not what Paul says.

>But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is worthless, and so is your faith. In that case, we are also exposed as false witnesses about God. For we have testified about God that He raised Christ from the dead, but He did not raise Him if in fact the dead are not raised.

>For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ is for this life alone, we are to be pitied more than all men.

I'm pretty sure Historians don't blindly believe Herodotus and his claims.

But what about the Quran? It has its own claims, doesn't it? What makes those so different from the ones in the Bible?

I'm almost happy that you'll never do it. We need proles, too, after all.

Because Muhammad was a false prophet. The Bible warns against this.

>hurr reality is objective
you have an outdated understanding of consciousness, pseud

You've never seen Hannibal Barca, yet you probably trust his existence and historical career based on an account from over 50 years after his death.

>mushrooms were created by jews

you are literally retarded

>Didn't the catholic church take it literally for many years? You know, during that angelology phase?
No, this is pure mythology. Read some Christian thinkers.

No, but you see Jesus was not the son of god and was only a precursor of Mohammed. The Quran tells us of this.

Honest mistake.

"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them."

Christianity has given us the Western Civilization. Islam has given us... hmm.. must be something...

You seem interesting. What's your take on Gnosticism?

Humanism gave us western civilization. Christianity gave us burning at the stake.

Why do you suppose the books say he was called Christos? The anointed one, in Greek. My other post here is hinting pretty strongly that the apostles invented the resurrected Christ myth, AND its own antidote should people not understand the hidden meaning. Their idea of a body, immortal soul or intellect, and connection to a heavenly being correlates perfectly with Neoplatonist ideas of the time. The apostles (Paul et al) dispensed their philosophy using the Christ as a vehicle. What do you think they were doing, but running around everywhere and spreading their wisdom? Later theologians fetishized the he-was-a-man myth and fucked it all up, and now we've got OP asking why an OT style anthropomorphic deity doesn't make His books indestructible.

Muhammad probably said what the Qur'an and various hadith states. Yet there is no reason to believe what his teachings were true. What Muhammad taught is antithetical to the old and new testament. No one even purports to any miracle or sign that reveals him to be a true prophet, unlike Christ.

Look at this guy, with one bold statement he proved Nietzsche and the rest of philosophy completely wrong

I should add that under this system the soul/intellect was believed to return to the unknowable at time of death. A man whose soul did not return but stayed, Bodhisattva-like, to teach his fellow man is exactly the Marvel capeshit people would have gobbled up.

That's nonsense. Christ's resurrection as a literal thing is as old as Christianity itself.

Gnosticism is a big area. I subscribe to Plotinus, who believed there was no such thing as evil in the world. Only the absence of good. Like being on the bad end of Aristotle's golden mean. I haven't thoroughly compared the two though. It is too easy to understand evil as an object, rather than the absence of responsible right action (which is difficult to do, or even perceive in the moment).

Wasn't the Quran written when god whispered it into his ears? Seems like a pretty good sign to me.

This was embarrassing and just betrays how insecure about your beliefs you really are.

No, it spoken by Muhammad after supposed divine inspiration however it was not written down until a number of years later.

Oh, really? Tell me, why do you believe in empirical evidence? What reason do you have to believe that the world is rational and comprehensible by the human mind? That's right, the idea of God stands at the roots of empirical idea itself.

rly mks me thnk

Of course it is. The apostles wrote it that way. They specifically wrote that he looked and felt just like he did in life. They say he was really real in life again, before apotheosis. This was a huge mistake on their part. Generations of philosophers, believers and laymen that followed latched onto the mystical part of the story rather than the message of the Christ figure and redemption of the individual in this life. Read again. Be reconciled to God, not the figure the apostles used to illustrate God's greatness. Set that one aside.

Yes, but the Quran says that it was the word of god though? How can you even argue with evidence like that? That's bloody airtight. Like the Bible claiming all those things happened despite no historian documenting those monumental events.

>1 Corinthians 15:12-19

There are very few serious Bible scholars who dispute that 1 Corinthians was written by Paul, and that it was written in the early to mid 50s AD.

In chapter 15, Paul refers to a very early creed which he had passed on to the Corinthians. Its clauses are all marked by the word *that*:

>For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received,
>that Christ died for our sins in accordance
with the Scriptures,
>that he was buried,
>that he was raised on the third day in
accordance with the scriptures,
>and that he appeared to Cephas (Peter),
then to the twelve...

Those four thats enshrine a precious kernel of Christian belief from the very earliest days of the church. Paul reminds the Corinthians that he had told them all this when he first evangelized them (circa AD 49).

But it was much older than that. He tells us that he received it when he was converted, which was at least fifteen years earlier (see Galatians 1:18, 2:1). We are getting back perilously close to the resurrection itself if we are forced to place Paul's conversion somewhere in the mid-30s AD.

But Paul still has not finished. In the words "I delivered... I received" (1 Cor 15:3) he is using the language of received tradition and its transmission. In other words, the resurrection creed he cites here was already traditional in Christian circles before Paul became a Christian. It takes us back to the very first days of the church.

There's not much chance for legend and embellishment to have crept in here.

C.S. Lewis was, initially at least, a most reluctant convert to Christianity. A respected professor of literature at Oxford, when he became convinced of the existence of God in his early thirties he began an intensive study of various world religions. Of the New Testament he wrote: "I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste."

The historical record is such that it doesn't force anyone's hand; you can't prove Christianity in a mathematical sense. But there *is* sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable foundation for Christian faith.

There are historians to talk about the Bible. There is historical evidence for the Bible. The Quran is the only contemporary document to talk about Muhammad, most of it from the first person.

At no point does any of that the draw us to say that therefore a hodgepodge of text written in Hebrew and Greek in Ancient Judea should be taken as divine truth, though. To argue in favour of a God is one thing, but to then claim that his will is known to us is completely without any basis. The jump from Deism to Theism is not possible.

But I can't tell if you were taking the piss or not.

"noli me tangere" is Christ foretelling his ascension. He's saying for his disciples to not rely on his physical presence after the brief period he remains on earth following his resurrection.

Paul using Christ as a vehicle for his stoic (?) philosophy seems unlikely due to majority of his epistles revolving around and the churches in Corinth, Galatia, Phillippi, etc and liturgy, specific traditions, etc.

Gnosticism is mostly a modern construct with no historical basis.

>"noli me tangere" is Christ foretelling his ascension

This is a later theologian's reading, one that attempts to justify the literalness of the resurrection. Because:

>He's saying for his disciples to not rely on his physical presence after the brief period he remains on earth following his resurrection.

This is precisely the same way I see it. Jesus' sermon, parables, and acts illustrated the way. Then he conveniently vanishes. The apostles wrote this scene specifically to take authority from the magical symbol of Jesus and invest it in the noble, earthly work of the early Church.

DEUS VULT

>There is historical evidence for the Bible

The first mentions of Christianity by an historian was made by Josephus nearly 100 years after the supposed events. I don't really count that as evidence.

Whatever you say bucko. You act out the Christian value system already, however your rational mind (aka Satan) twists it. I can see that I speak with a mere persona, a feigned individuality, a compromise between the individual an society: you're acting out a cliched role. Something which you do not see, protects you from something you do not understand; the thing you can not see is culture, the thing you do not understand - chaos.

Just because you met some hippies who refused to read doesnt make tryptamines not a chemical catalyst for exploring consciousness.

Whoops, looks like you were just taking the piss. *facepalm* xD !!1!!

...

I'm doing both, genius. I don't expect you to understand.

1 The Bible isn't a science book. 2 The Bible isn't necessary.

This is not a very thought out reading of the Gospels. Even if the Gospels could be read in such a way that the story of the Passion was purely allegorical, it's clear the fathers of the Church (who were under the influence of the Apostles) believed that the resurrection was literal. It does not seem likely the faith was so severely manipulated over even a few generations of tradition.

Read St. Ignatius' epistle to the Smyrnaeans for example. St. Ignatius studied under St. John, and it would seem that by your reading of the Gospels, John's would be the most likely to fit this view.

"Now, He suffered all these things for our sakes, that we might be saved. And He suffered truly, even as also He truly raised up Himself, not, as certain unbelievers maintain, that He only seemed to suffer, as they themselves only seem to be [Christians]."
"For I know that after His resurrection also He was still possessed of flesh, and I believe that He is so now. When, for instance, He came to those who were with Peter, He said to them, "Lay hold, handle Me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit." And immediately they touched Him, and believed, being convinced both by His flesh and spirit"
I encourage you to read the rest of the Epistle because it continues to emphasize the literal nature of the accounts: newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm

I should add that I do believe an unknowable something is the generator of all things, and -- as beings -- we are all one in it. Call it a monad, call it a demiurge, whatever. I am satisfied the Greeks proved we did not come from nothing. I also know the apostles did not create the new Church in a vacuum and Plato and the Tanakh were the holy books in their day. Indeed, Augustine was heavily influenced by Plotinus, and his interpretation of God as 'someone' steered the Church in a bad direction.

I am a theist. But I can't believe in the Church's literalist dogma because it leads to this kind of thinking:

>your rational mind (aka Satan)
>Hell, sometimes I feel like I could run this shit better than god.
>so silly to believe that a god that would communicate his message the same way a normal human would
and
>magic trick statues weeping blood
>going into a building for the light of truth and walking out with literal fire

It's moronic, and superstition is not what the apostles intended.

Listen to all Bishop Barron podcasts and read Aquinas, no jokes. For the natural disasters, read Job. Keep studying theology and philosophy, open yourself and with time you will see Christ as the nexus for all meaning

Genesis was never taken literally except by literal plebs. Read Augustine and church fathers of the second centuries. Don't project texan fundamentalism into the past of all religious intellectual. Start with the greeks too, and the jews.

I have read it, and confirm it here: . The apostles tell the story of a literal resurrection. That's clear. But I don't believe they were being honest in telling their ghost story. Practical for the sake of spreading their beliefs to the ignorant, sure, and even philosophically true. But not literally true.

>fathers of the Church
They were also under the influence of the Greek idea of a body-soul-god union in man, and man owing part of himself to an unknowable form (of the g[o]od). aka the Father, who is perfect in heaven. That which is true and beautiful and just (Phaedrus, Symposium).

Both sides, atheists and believers, are causing the "degeneration" of Western Civilization (I'm not so convinced that this is a phenomenon as much as /pol/ is). Stop romanticizing the past you brainlet.

>your rational mind (aka Satan)
>It's moronic, and superstition is not what the apostles intended.

You are moronic instead, ever read Paradise Lost? Satan is the highest angel in the court, yet he is rebellious .

Both those groups adhere to the main ideology of their own time anyway, you can't escape that.

Yes I have read Paradist Lost. It was too long. Milton's a genius though. I'm not saying you can't have your superstition. It's just not for me, and probably bad for the species.

>It was too long. Milton's a genius though.
pseud detected, not like anyone believes a word you say but now you are completely discredited

go away

Heh, okay. I actually have read it though. *hides your post*