garvey0 said:
sapphi_snake said:
garvey0 said:
FaRmLaNd said:
Many people who were in many cases born in countries dominated by one theology all persist that theirs is the right theology over others. Add on top of that, all of the dead theologies that had people that thought just the same way in their time (and yet people laugh off thor for example now). Many theologies also existed long before monotheism (just being in the spirit of this thread) aswell.
I ask the question of religious people in this thread (who happen to be mainly Christian because thats what this thread is about), how do you reconcile that different cultures both dead and existing in many cases have/had different dominant religions and all of them think/thought that theirs is the correct faith at the time. I found that very difficult to reconcile intellectually when I was a Christian.
Of course I'd assume that faith, is the answer. But seemingly every different theist from every theology has just as much faith as the next and they all claim to have personal experiences with their God/Gods.
Does this huge number of active and dead religions weigh heavily on any of the Christians in this thread?
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My main answer to you is very simple: If one of those dead religions had been true, then I very strongly believe that God (or goddess, or gods, depending on the religion) would have preserved it and not allowed it to die out. I can't imagine that God (or gods or goddesses) would give a true communication to humans through a religion and then allow it to be completely forgotten.
As far as existing religions go, I'll say this. I became a believer in God about 3 and a half years ago. I did not immediately go to Christianity. I feel that God wants us to worship Him according to His true character, and in order to find out which religious text (if any) described who God actually is I listened a huge number religious texts in audio. The God that I had experienced was perfectly characterized in the Bible. Bare in mind that I was very unfamiliar with the Bible, nor was I even subconsciously in line with its principals or characterization of God (for the most part, and I did examine myself fairly.)
I don't take God's character lightly. I was sure to explore every alternative with an open mind and an open heart. Without an open mind and an open heart, the believers of Jesus' time would have never accepted Him.
On top of this, I will provide another very strong evidence (proof in my opinion) for Christianity's validity. All of the 10 of the 11 apostles who claimed to see and speak with the resurrected Jesus were martyred (john, the brother of james, was the only one who died a natural death - and he still faced hardships due to his claims.) These men were not acting based on a religion that someone had told them about, they were acting based on something (the resurrected Jesus) that they claimed to have saw. They either truly saw Jesus resurrected, or they had created a lie. I find it very unlikely that 10 men would be willing to go to their graves based on a story that they had made up. Also we have paul who claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus on the occasion where he was struck blind. He lived a difficult life and spent a great deal of time in prison before he was eventually put to death. Again, I don't believe he would have gone through all that for the sake of a vision that he made up.
Also, we have the fact that Christianity was heavily persecuted for the first 300 years of its existence yet it grew like crazy. No other religion that I'm aware of began in such a way. Most religions grew in their infant years by governmental force. Christianity was exactly the opposite, it grew in spite of a government that was very hostile towards it. It did not become accepted by the government until the year 313 AD. Christianity continues to grow in countries like china in a very similar fashion. Pbs, which is hardly a pro-Christian channel, did a documentary called "Jesus in china" on Christianity's amazing growth in the officially atheist nation of china which you can watch for free on their website (http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/china_705/video/video_index.html) I believe that in order for the religion to have grown in the way that it did, the hand of God had to have been the driving force.
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Drop the persecution card, it gets old. Christians persecuted many more and caused more atrocities that were caused to them. And you're wrong saying that Chrisitanity grew in spite of the government. While the Roman government persecuted christians initially, the same government eventually made Christianity legal and the only official religion of the empire. People who didn't want to convert were persecuted, tortured, and treasures from pagan temples were confiscated in order to build churches. If it wasn't for the Roman Government chrisitanity wouldn't be at all widespread today.
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My point was that the religion was born and grew in the midst of persecution. Jesus, his apostles, and all of the believers for the first 300 years were persecuted. Before the government legalized the religion it had already grown exponentially against all odds. What happened after that first 300 years cannot not erase for cancel out what happened during it.
What is currently happening in china is worth mentioning again too, because it's truly astonishing and the chinese government has tried all they can to stop or (more recently) contain and regulate the growth but they cannot.
Also, this is a little bit off topic and has little to do with the point that I made, but I'd like to add something. During the historical time periods where persecution was done in the name of Christ, it's important to keep in mind that not least amongst the persecuted were those who tried to promote true Christianity. I highly doubt that the persecutors were true believers because if they were then they wouldn't have blatantly disobeyed Christ. There were many Christians who stood up and tried to promote true Christianity but were put to death. Those, for the most part, are the true believers. And from that perspective, (true) Christianity has always been persecuted at least to some extent.
The most shameful part of all of this is that much of the religious persecution in history could have been stopped if only us humans had the courage to merely speak up on behalf of the oppressed. That's all it ever would have taken for the persecution to stop was enough people to merely voice their opinion against it. How can we blame God for this when we have been the ones who have time and time again seen injustice and thought to ourselves "well it's none of my business." And then we look back in the history books and instead of blaming our human ancestors we blame intangible things such as religions/ideas when we are indisputably the ones who thought up the idea of hatred.
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