I was wondering what people think about the first part of this - are there any non-Christian religions that have a public origin? I’m not so interested in nit-picking about the later parts of this.
https://www.facebook.com/wespeakthetruth/videos/1355264144490217/
Transcript:
I know you’re not looking for nit-picking about the “origin of Christianity” story. But I think to tease out the public/private distinction we have to do a bit of that. Jesus’s miracles and teachings were of course preceded by Jesus’s ideas, which were private. And in fact the gospels confirm this, with Jesus’s period of reflection in the wilderness (very private, that) preceding the launch of his public ministry. So, in his public ministry, he was apparently teaching others the ideas that had come to him privately.
In other words, I’m not sure that this private/public distinction holds up. In so far as any religion involves a doctrine of any kind, then somebody has to conceive of that doctrine before they can teach it, and thinking it is necessarily private.
In the Christian origin story, we move from private to public very quickly - Jesus comes back from the wilderness and immediately starts to gather disciples, teach, preach and work signs. But that wouldn’t be uncommon; somethings similar is true of every religion with an individual founder-figure. The Buddha experienced enlightenment before he began to teach about it. The Baha’i faith originated when the Baha’u’llah claimed to be the Mahdi prophesied by Islam, but presumably he realised he was the Mahdi at some point before he made the claim. And so forth.
In short, I think there’s less in this private/public distinction than meets the eye.
Christ wouldn’t have been born if His mother hadn’t said “well… uh… ok then I guess?” when she had that private meeting with an angel 
Does whoever posted that glurge think the Annunciation took place in the middle of the public square?
Yes Christianity isn’t free of private element… but do other religions claim that the public witnessed hard to believe events such as miracles? Are the witnesses named like the apostles are?
Well… yeah. Jewish myth has stuff like the parting of the Red Sea and many other fairly widely-observed phenomena.
I’m not sure, though, that this would make Christianity more testable, as the quote in the OP suggests. The point about miracles, surely, is that they are not testable? You can’t repeat the experiment. Or, if you do, you can’t draw any reliable conclusions from what you observe.
If we compare Islam with Christianity, in both cases the founding figure are set to have insights or revelations. We can’t really test whether they did or not. Or, if we accept that they did, we can’t test the validity, authority, etc, of the insights or revelations.
In both cases it’s also claimed that the founding figures then preached, gathered followers, established some kind of community, exercised a leadership role. Those claims can be tested, at least in principle, in the same way that we can test other claims about historical events - we can critically assess the sources, etc, and form a view as to how likely it is that the claimed events in fact occurred.
But, to the extent that Christianity also rests on claims about the Resurrection, that’s an additional element that, being miraculous, can’t be tested. We could use historical techniques to form a view as to how old belief in the Resurrection is, how widespread the belief was, and how early. But that doesn’t tell us whether the belief is actually correct or not.
Thus it seems to me that, all in all, Christianity is less testable than religions which don’t base their validity on publicly-attested miracles. In both cases we have (untestable) teachings which are accepted by the founding generation of the faith. In the case of Islam, the initial adherents are taken to have accepted the teachings because they found the teachings convincing or appealing, and because they themselves (a Muslim would say) were wise, humble and well-disposed - no supernatural claims there. In the case of Christianity, we have teachings being accepted by a first generation at least in part because they are convinced of the reality of the Resurrection, which is clearly an additional supernatural (and untestable) claim.
Apparently Jesus is accepted as a historical person by mainstream experts and so is his crucifixion. I don’t think the Old Testament miracles are as supported. Jesus is the main part of Christianity.
Jesus’s existence and crucifixion are not miracles.
It doesn’t completely prove whether it happened or not but it provides some evidence about it.
I was also talking about this in my comments about “God’s Not Dead 2”
“…I thought some of the arguments in this movie were quite convincing though particularly the ones by a cold case guy that was an atheist until he investigated the gospels…His point about Jesus being blindfolded was quite convincing. (about Matthew 26:65-68 compared to other passages - it doesn’t make sense in Matthew that it didn’t mention he was blindfolded)”
Like I said in my previous post, in “God’s Not Dead 2” an actual cold case expert was an atheist and then investigated whether the gospels seemed to be based on actual eye witness testimony…
So anyway, if it was clearly established that Jesus was executed, how did an overwhelming number of people come to believe that he came back to life and were prepared to die for that belief? Apparently the tomb was empty - did the disciples steal the body, etc? (“Risen” is an interesting Christian movie about that from the point of view of an initially unbelieving Roman soldier).
But you’re talking about public events in this thread, right? The crucifixion, which you admit was non-miraculous, may have been public, but the resurrection was not. The fact that many people came to believe in it means nothing. Just as many people believe that Mohammed flew a winged camel to heaven from the top of the Temple Mount. Does that mean you believe that happened?
The NT names several people (the apostles) that were apparently eye witnesses to seeing Jesus alive after he was killed. It also says most of them died for their belief. Is anyone named that apparently was an eye witness to Mohammed’s ascension? Also like I said, a cold case expert also came to believe that the gospels were based on eye witness testimony.
FWIW Joseph Smith I believe had signed witness statements as to his discovery of the Book of Mormon, so there’s that. As to the NT Apostles, witness testimony copied secondhand 40+ years later by followers seeking to proselytize is at best more than jacksquat nothing, but how much more?
Gautama Buddha preached publicly and his philosophy/religion is still around, older than Christianity, and IIRC he had named disciples too. But again, what records exist are several generations removed.
In the end, the claim that Christianity’s particular origin story was somehow on some sort of “public record” hardly endows it with superior evidence than that for other religions (beside said “public record” being thin). In the end it only matters to the believer – and one could even make the argument that we should focus on the content of the teaching more than on how its presentation impresses us thousands of years later.
Looks to me like Buddhist records are full of miracles performed publicly.
Judaism has the public revelation at Sinai, in which the entire nation of 600,000+ fighting-age men, plus their wives and children, heard the word of G-d for themselves.
Actually, the reports of Jesus’s miracles are suspect for the very fact that they supposedly took place in public.
Jesus walked on water in front of numerous witnesses? Jesus produced enough food to feed a large crowd of people? Jesus healed sick people and even brought a dead person back to life in front of witnesses? Jesus himself came back from the dead? All of these are amazing events.
So how come nobody outside of Jesus’s followers ever documented them? Why aren’t there any Jewish or Roman records of these miracles? Isn’t it a little suspicious that the only eyewitness statements we have of Jesus’s miracles - which were supposedly performed in front of thousands of people - happen to all be written by Jesus’s immediate followers?
Heck, when the Egyptian priests turned their sticks into snakes, Moses demonstrated his god’s greater power by turning his stick into a snake and his snake ate theirs. I’m still impressed that the Egyptians had that ability, since latter-day monotheism maintains that no gods other than the one actually exist.
Other gods may not exist, but magic does. The bible even had a witch who could speak with the dead.
Alessan:
Moreover, other beings of power (e.g., demons) may indeed exist, but they are not gods - i. e., they have no power independently of what G-d allows.
More and more it seems like your actual question is “Has any other religion had exactly the same origins as Christianity?”, the answer of course being “No, of course not…but you could substitute any other religion ever thought of and get the exact same response.”