• Flax
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    5 months ago

    To be fair, if someone said Jesus never existed, they clearly wouldn’t be Christian 🤣

    • Baahb@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      It really isn’t so clearcut. You don’t need an actual Jesus for the words attributed to him to be true. “Jesus” works perfectly fine as a container for an idea.

      • Flax
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        5 months ago

        Thing is, it goes against man’s desires. The other religions that took off generally allow men to take more than one wife, fight wars, etc. Christianity basically asks of one to be poor and selfless and pure

        • Baahb@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          The context within which you are raised matters so much more than what’s written in your chosen scripture. That and self interest. Between those two, pretty much anyone can wrangle themselves into believing anything they want. The history of how we got here from there is similarly irrelevant.

          • Flax
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            5 months ago

            There’s quite a bit of contrast between Christianity and Islam in terms of how scripture is presented, as Islam teaches that the Qur’an is literally the words of God. As for Judaism, it’s unfulfilled, and if the New Testament about Jesus is actually true to what happened, then the Jewish prophecies clearly point to Him. Other than that it’s a very elaborate scam made by well educated people which doesn’t really give them any benefit.

            • Baahb@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Comfort and well-being, or so they believe… for some reason. Personally I like knowing I only get one shot

              • Flax
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                5 months ago

                They were all executed horribly

                • Baahb@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  My parents weren’t executed horribly, what are you talking about about? I’m still talking about contemporary Christian belief. Thesis: You can consider yourself Christian without belief in Jesus as a historical figure. Many Christians are happy to understand Jesus as metaphors and an ideal. Like if you took the actually good Superman stories and removed all the context, you could idealize the individual to the point of worship without believing he’s real.

                  • Flax
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                    5 months ago

                    The whole point of Christianity isn’t just to “do good”. The foundation is that we aren’t good enough by nature and are flawed by our own fault, but by trusting in and following God, we can be forgiven. Because Jesus literally existed and was executed for our sins.