Christianity

I want to start this debate by saying that I am open to changing my mind if I am proven wrong. My three reasons for believing in Christianity would be one, there a very few eyewitness account that are written in such close proximity to the event they record. Some of the new testament is written within twenty years of the death of Jesus Christ. Secondly, these men and women died horrific deaths for their beliefs, they were stoned, hung, eaten by lions, and crucified upside down. And lastly the Shroud of Turin, according to radio metric dating, the Shroud of Turin was in the same time period Jesus Christ died. But there is something else about the Shroud of Turin that science can't explain. They can't explain how the image of the Man got there. It seems to be a one to the image of a Man that was crucified.

These "eyewitness accounts" are actually words on a piece of paper that we are reading 2000 years after the supposed events that transpired. We actually have no way of knowing what the real timeline was or what really happened, we only have the texts that the ancient roman government and church allowed to exist or the ones that gnostics were able to hide. The gnostics were the real ones being persecuted before "christianity" actually existed, and then the roman ruling-class bloodlines invented the catholic church to bolster their authority and spread their influence throughout europe. This is a more likely interpretation of what happened because this is the actual effect that Christianity has had on the world. For most of Christian history it has been the catholic church spreading it's influence, destroying everyone and everything that doesn't agree with it's narrative or obey it's authority. The protestant denominations didn't actually exist until much later, "Christianity" was literally just an extension of the roman government originally.

I have studied the shroud of turin and what struck me is the lack of consistency between what different sources say about it. It's like the ones who believe in it's authenticity and the ones who don't are studying two completely different artifacts.

In response to you saying there are just words on a piece of paper, how do we know anything about history. We could say that about anything. We could say that for Alexander the Great. You may also say, history is written by the victor, Christians sure weren't the victor. And we don't just have new testament eyewitness accounts, other eyewitness accounts describe a "magician" going around healing ailments. This is exactly what they described Jesus as in the Bible, casting out demons by the prince of demons because they didn't understand his divinity. But I made a point in my previous debate and I will restate that. No other document in history written that close to the event they record. We also have thousands and thousands of Greek and Latin manuscripts. And one of the things we are almost positive of is that Jesus existed. But we have found his tomb, possibly found his burial clothe, but have found no remains. 

Actually the new testament is so accurate they use it to make maps of the land around that time. Imagine sitting in your geography class and hearing, "alright class open up to Acts chapter two verse thirty-eight." But besides all that evidence, there has been miracles in my own life. You can choose to believe me if you want, if not that's fine. But my grandpa was given three months to live, put on morphine and sent home in a hospital bed. It is now fifteen years later, he has a zero cancer count and no addiction to any pain killer. It's just, how can you explain miracles like that? And archeological discoveries also prove the Bible, they have found numerous things to support the Bible. It is just to much evidence for me not to believe. And if God didn't exist, what would I believe in? That something set off a big bang, everything came from nothing, the small clumps of material smashed together creating a perfectly balanced gravitational pull between the planets? Then what? On the off chance that natural events hit something on earth ,creating amino acid that evolved in to prokaryotes. Then evolved in to eukaryotes which took almost 2 billion years. Then the Great Uncomformity happened where it looks like barely anything was slice for a billion years. Then the Cambrian explosion where almost every modern living creature evolved in 25 million years. I just can't my friend.

Christians weren't the victor? Christianity is the largest world religion and all of Europe has had Christian leadership for over a thousand years. You are basically conceding by saying that we don't know anything for sure, because you are the one asserting the validity of something you admit you don't know.

Your personal anecdotes are meaningless because I could point to 100 examples from my own life that prove that God either hates me or doesn't exist. For every grandpa that "miraculously" survives cancer there are 10,000 that didn't make it.

The gospels are contradictory, for example Judas was killed by being hanged in one gospel and had was disemboweled in another. Even if there are accurate things in the Bible that doesn't make up for contradictions and inaccuracies. Are you going to tell me that the entire earth was flooded without leaving undeniable evidence or that the universe was created in 7 days?

As for "what would you believe in" there are countless other things to believe in. You have decided that Christianity is the default option for whatever reason and this makes you susceptible to confirmation bias.

You have made good points. When I say Christians weren't the victor, I meant they were killed on a large scale for their beliefs. And Christianity was an extension of the Roman government? Do you know who killed the Christians? As I said you don't have to believe what I said about my grandfather. And you brought up a good point, Christianity is the worlds largest religion, you think that billions of people would follow someone who was crazy or lying? Highly unlikely. And I have chosen Christianity because it has the most evidence. Now the supposed contradiction. I will give you an example, let us say you and I went to watch a movie, lets use Inception, for example. And I went back and told my friends, Leonardo DiCaprio fell into limbo where you can't get out of. And you went and told your friends Leonardo DiCaprio got out of limbo. Both of these claims are true, they are just recorded from different stand points. Tradition says Judas hung himself over a hill, the branch broke he fell and his inners spilled out. Another example is some people say the Titanic went down whole, and some people said it was it was split in two. You know what they agree on? The Titanic sunk. But let me say one more thing, even if God doesn't exist, it is proven it is better to raise children with the sense of a higher power. And I am assuming you are a moral relativist, correct me if I am wrong, but according to moral relativism, everyone has a truth. So  it would be better raise children with a concept of God. The point of me saying on this? Having a sense of a higher power, true or not, is better than having no religion at all.

I personally think that early Christianity was more like gnosticism and that the "official" version of the Bible we have today was cultivated by the catholic church/roman government and later narrowed down into the protestant version.

I actually do think billions of people would follow someone who is crazy or lying. Look at how many people follow dictators or follow religions like Islam. Was Joseph Stalin a sane and honest person? Was Muhammad a sane and honest person?

Even if there is a way to explain the Judas thing without it being a contradiction, the biggest and most irrefutable contradiction of all is portraying God as good. God set humanity up to fail, built "sin" into our very nature, encouraged Israel to commit genocide and take slaves, God is a racist who favored one group of humans over every other, God tells us pleasure is evil and suffering is good. The only way he could think of to fix everything was to torture his own son to death and he STILL is going to send most of us to hell for eternity just for being human.

Even if people are better off believing in a God, it doesn't have to be your God and it doesn't prove that ANY God is actually real. It is probably better for you to believe your wife loves you too until she cheats on you 30 times, divorces you and takes all your money because God didn't make you tall enough and didn't make your face look a certain way.