Common misconceptions about Christianity.

[sapphi_snake]

garvey0 said:

Haha "seems reasonable" is better than nothing, I'll take it!

Most founders of religions seem to gain great personal benefit, usually in the form of wealth and power.  It goes without saying that this was probably their main motivation for making up the religion in the first place, and perhaps they even felt justified because they believed that the religion they'd made up was good for society.  The Biblical prophets didn't have as easy of a ride.  As I noted earlier, God killed moses and gave most of the rest of the old testament prophets over to a miserable existence on this earth.  People might note king david as an exception to this, but david wasn't exactly a prophet (though his psalms are considered to be inspired by God.)  He was weak both physically and morally yet God turned him into something wonderful in order to prove His glory.  And even david didn't make it through life without having to suffer some very harsh punishments.

Some cult leaders are truly puzzling cases, though I haven't looked into them very much I admit.  It does seem though, that some of them did seem to actually believe in whatever it was they were brainwashing their followers with and then they all ended up killing themselves or whatever.  Needless to say, these cults never found widespread success (thank God.)

The unique thing about the apostles is that there were 11 of them that would have had to have either been all in on the same lie that Jesus had risen from the dead and spoken to them.  They would have also had to have lived and died (besides john) according to this lie.  And if it were a delusion, then all 11 would have had to have had the exact same delusion.  And then the cherry on top is that their story of Jesus' resurrection has now been spread over almost the entire earth.  Furthermore, the old testament stated that the whole world would come to faith in the jewish God because of the messiah! And it happened!  This would have to be one mighty coincidence.  It is these facts and other facts, which work in combination with my own experiences and perceptions, that easily gives me more than adequate reason to believe.

How exactly has "the whole world come to faith in the jewish God because of the messiah"?  2/3 of the world is not christian, and in most places of the world people believe in the jewish God because powerful entitites (leaders in Europe, and powerful European states that colonised Africa and the Amercas) forced peopel to convert (there's no way you can say that indigenous people from central and south America converted wilfully to chrstianity), not because of the messiah.

And if you're going to say that "the story of Jesus' ressurection has now been spread over almost the entire world" then you might as well say that about stories from any religion nowadays. Thanks to the internet you can pretty much find out information regarding any religion wahtsoever.

And the idea of the apostoles all lying and dying for their lie isn't at all that hard to believe. People had different attitudes towards death back then.