re: Is this how atheists think Christianity started?

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Then faltered and sank beneath the waves because he lacked faith. Throughout the four gospels there is a narrative of the 12 not understanding Jesus' message and role. The apostles were human with all of our flaws. They saw their teacher brutally executed and I'm sure they questioned if what they had experienced was real or not.

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After experiencing all of that, would you deny Jesus?

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MFn GIMP

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I hear ya. As a reminder, the context of this thread is a Christian making fun of non believers. My goal was to refute the premise of the mockery

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There’s a huge gulf between “I’m a human who acquiesced to shitty things” and “I have experienced literal miracles, but frick that, I don’t know that dude.”

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There’s also a huge gulf between any actual evidence for Jesus and some of the general circumstances of his life - and him actually being an all-powerful deity in the flesh.

There’s plenty of evidence for Joseph Smith, but I still don’t believe he had divine visions, encounters with angels, and found golden plates.

We know Bo Jackson exists, was very fast in his prime, and ran a 40 at Auburn for some scouts, but I still don’t believe he had legit 4.13 speed at 6’1” 225-230 lbs. with only a 10.39 100 m. PR.

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Humans are flawed.

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From a Biblical standpoint, how many miracles did the Israelites see coming out of Egypt and during their journey? They still worshiped the golden calf.

In the modern world, how many people when under stress as a POW or civilian captured, betrayed their families, lovers, or country to avoid pain?

On another point brought up on this thread, arguing that Paul and the apostles didn’t exist is really going out of your way not to believe something. Christianity spread throughout Europe and there is not any push back from historians that the churches were started by Paul. There is a lot of archeological and historical evidence that backs this up and we have his writings. Paul and Luke, who documented Paul’s journeys in the letter called Acts, both discuss Paul’s interactions with the disciples.

Regarding the existence of Jesus, Paul was thrown in prison several times and was prevented from visiting churches, due to non-Christian Jews creating charges against him. Why did they create charges? Because they refused to accept that Jesus was the Christ. The beef that the Jews had against Paul and the disciples was not that Jesus didn’t exist, it was their proclamation that he was the Christ. The point of the video is, why go through all of what they did for someone that didn’t exist or was a scam?

Believing Paul existed, but not the other people referenced in his and Luke’s account, would be like someone in a couple thousand years believing there was a Thomas Jefferson but not believing the other founding fathers existed. You may not accept that Jesus was the Christ or that all the events noted about the disciples is true, but arguing they didn’t exist is really going out of your way to discredit everything about Christianity that you can.

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but theres a distinct difference between religion and cults

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First of all, the video references a time in the very early days of the Christian faith - which wouldn’t have been too different from the Heaven’s Gate cult.

Why might Christ’s followers have been willing to die? I don’t know. Why might the Heaven’s Gate cult members have been willing to die? I don’t know. But I do know people doing crazy shite in this world happens a lot more often than we get confirmed sightings of deities and alien spacecraft - which is never.

Second, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all have over a billion adherents in spite of contradictory claims. Clearly a belief doesn’t have to be true to gain a large following.

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While I get you in theory, these motherfrickers experienced miracles.

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Again, you are assuming this alters basic human frailty

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There’s a huge gulf between “I’m a human who acquiesced to shitty things” and “I have experienced literal miracles, but frick that, I don’t know that dude.”

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I disagree, completely.

He was still a believer, he denied Jesus 3 times because he felt he would be arrested or killed by the mob.

Once he got out of there, he proclaimed the Gospel all over Israel.

Agnostic is popular term these days as well

I think the real beef came in interpretations. The apostles saw Jesus as someone coming for the Jews and the Jews only and if you were going to be a Jew, you must follow the Law as well. The Law was the Mosaic Law and the subsequent Deuteronomical rules that sprung up. Paul finally came to the conclusion that Christ had come and a new age was upon us and as such the laws had to be amended and some discarded altogether. So now if you wanted to be a Christian Jew, you no longer needed to be circumcised, etc..Dietary laws were no longer necessary.

Paul had distilled Christ's message overall. From a practical standpoint, Paul got his interpretation out before the Gospels could be assembled....and it resonated moreso than the apostles' version.