Is Satan Real

Quote: Nareed

You're on. Would you like to hire an accountant to determine my net worth, or would you take my word for it? :)

Depending on your net worth you might have inadvertently made a big donation to the Church, thank you in advance.

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So the invention of morality and marriage was an exaggeration?

Morality and marriage are both natural to us as human beings. Christians just healed, honed, helped, and heightened our understanding of these natural gifts.

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I know full well Fr. Lemaitre came up with the BBT. But that was a theoretical physics development, not a Christian one. Or would you claim he came up with after reading the Bible and talking to Jesus, without as much as looking at any data?

Like an good scientist he looked at the evidence and went where it lead him. It is pretty much a given now, after more discoveries and confirmations, that the universe began to exist. There might be a few atheist holdouts worried about what such a scientific fact might do to bolster an argument for God. I feel sad for them, like I do the creationists, they have an ideology that won't let them freely follow the truth.

Quote: Nareed

Have you ever seen a TV commercial? In particular a campaign commercial?

Sustained life changing relationships are not made by any material product or politician. There is a flash in the pan and then they are gone. The same item or person doesn't sustain a following of immense importance for more than a few minutes much less a few millennium.

Quote: FrGamble

However we are talking about billions of people who not just think they know something about Jesus, but that they know Jesus. .

This is the least convincing argument you
could make, come up with a better one.
Or shall we go back in history and find
all the the other false things lots of people
believed too..

Quote: FrGamble

The same item or person doesn't sustain a following of immense importance for more than a few minutes.

You act like every member of the Church has
a burning for the religion, a rock solid belief
in it. Not hardly, most as lukewarm at best,
just along for the ride because they're lazy,
or don't know any better. Or both.

Quote: FrGamble

However we are talking about billions of people who not just think they know something about Jesus, but that they know Jesus. You can fool people into thinking certain things, but how do you fool people into feeling certain things. All around the world and throughout history people of every different race, culture, language, and backgrounds all speak of the same personal experience of Jesus Christ.

And billions believe(d) in Muhammed. And Vishnu. And Buddha. And billions more believe(d) in nothing at all. And every one of them thinks they're right.

Maybe they all are.

Quote: Face

And billions believe(d) in Muhammed. And Vishnu. And Buddha. And billions more believe(d) in nothing at all. And every one of them thinks they're right.

Maybe they all are.

They are all partly right.

Quote: Face

Maybe they all are.

To them, in the reality they're creating at
that moment, they're right. If you have a
strong enough belief, all religions are
right. But the universe is bigger and more
complicated than could ever be explained
is in a religion. Or ever be explained at all.

I'm betting if we ever have contact with an
alien intelligence, they won't have any more
of a clue than we do. They'll have some
weirdo belief system and think all of ours
are whacko. Which of course they are..

Quote: FrGamble

Depending on your net worth you might have inadvertently made a big donation to the Church, thank you in advance.

That'll be the day.

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Morality and marriage are both natural to us as human beings. Christians just healed, honed, helped, and heightened our understanding of these natural gifts.

As I said, the essence of apologia is to claim it all and blow it out of proportion.

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It is pretty much a given now, after more discoveries and confirmations, that the universe began to exist.

That depends: are you privy to more information than the whole of the cosmological and astrophysical communities have access to?

Quote: FrGamble

Sustained life changing relationships are not made by any material product or politician. There is a flash in the pan and then they are gone. The same item or person doesn't sustain a following of immense importance for more than a few minutes much less a few millennium.

Have you seen a TV commercial or not?

The principle is the same. The difference is time and relevance. The tools used are the same.

Quote: Nareed

In reality, some early Hebrews invented Jehovah, who morphed in time and eventually was appropriated by the followers of Jesus to undo the innate modesty of their dead leader (very likely in imitation of the Roman practice of deifying dead emperors).

I can't believe no one has called me on that last parenthetical.

Augustus and Jesus were pretty much contemporaries, or nearly so. The practice of deifying Roman Emperors wasn't entrenched until much, much, much later (and it didn't help the next two emperors were so despised one had his body desecrated after his death and the next one was killed by his guards).

This naturally brings up the question: whose practices were being imitated, if not the Romans?

Well, there are a number of possibilities. Other influential civilizations of the era regarded their living kings as living gods. The Egyptians, the Persians and others. In particular the Persians used a title for their monarch which coincidentally matches one used in the New testament: King of Kings. Then, too, the most admired and remembered man who ever lived, up to that time, Alexander of Macedon, at one time adopted the Eastern practice of living deification.

Surely the early Christians would have their savior be no less. A common general outrank the messiah? Never!

Ergo the deification of Jesus, plus the need for a holy trinity to make it fit with notions in the Old Testament.