It must have been some other body
uh uh, baby, it wasn’t me
That’s a good start, the Beatitudes. I am Christian and I’d say your vote counts.
One of the biggest converts was Paul/Saul of the New Testament. He lived to persecute the early Christians before seeing the error of his ways. So, it does happen. Much of the New Testament is his writings.
So much so that one begins to wonder how much of the religion is actually about Paul, rather than the other guy (who, so far as we know, wrote nothing—nothing in the Bible at least—and might not have even said many of the things attributed to him by later authors).
Never heard of her. Seems like when she was born, a god was there. Didn’t like the adherents, so now god go bye bye. After a while, didn’t like that either, so now god magically recreated. Seems legit.
IIRC, Paul would never have been able to read the Gospels because they hadn’t yet been compiled in their present form at the time he was preaching, so there’s quite a bit of difference between what the Gospels say about Jesus and what he was teaching.
A very generous way of saying “the gospels didn’t exist yet.”
Your reasoning is faulty, there. He doesn’t have to read about them to know, right? There are other ways.
And they did not.
Oddly if someone reads a Red Letter book of Gospels, the ones that highlight what Jesus actually said, you will find that the preaching of the Right Wing church totally at odds with Him.
And many of Pauls writing go diametrically the opposite of what Jesus taught.
Yep.
He likely had some reference to the Q documents.
Very close. The oldest Gospel came out about the time Paul died. But Paul pushed intolerance, and Jesus taught tolerance.
I don’t have a source handy, but ISTR that Paul wasn’t even aware of the Gospels during the time he was writing, as he speaks of Jesus as being knowable only through supernatural revelation and not as a living being that his contemporaries could have met in the flesh, implying that he was informed about Jesus by pre-Gospel sources that regarded him as a celestial entity and not a human being.
My take on Ali:
For many of us religion fulfils a fundamental psychological need - it’s why we invented it in the first place. Ali walked away from Islam and tried to define herself through Atheism, but found out that while lack of belief may be better in so many ways, it still doesn’t scratch that religious itch. So now she’s trying something else. Not because of the specifics of Christianity, but because she needs some sort of religion in her life, and why not do that?
I find atheism unsatisfying too. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong. The universe is not required to cater to my personal satisfaction.
I’m related to four evangelical Christian head pastors. I’ve read their doctrines and many commentaries but have found a) the spiritual salvation and b) sacrificing one’s motivation each day themes to be jive. My relatives know I think it and have told me it is to an almost overwhelming extent. They’ve each said privately to me it’s not a spirit from a god but really their spouses telling them to do things, be kind, gentle, patient, generous and other good qualities.
As to people trying to justify things with religion, my employer’s CEOs sent out the corniest letter each year on the employees’ anniversaries where it says as an aside " we’re on a mission from God." Since our team members are on contracts with the US govt, they’ve been reminded by lawyers that they can no longer espouse that. I’m glad they’ve figured that out.
Probably because he was jealous that the OG. guys got to go on road trips with the fleshy Jesus and all he got were some fried eyes and a big spooky voice.
That’s really a semantics issue. What I means is that she doesn’t find an atheistic world view to be a satisfactory explanation for the reality she observes. Not that she is dissatisfied with the way things actually are.
The main reason I posted was that I thought the posters were misreading her letter. She does seem to actually believe in God, and is not becoming a Christian for social reasons.
I’m willing to bet that it is not because of anything she read or because of anything anyone said but because of the things she has seen true Christians do.
And they would be who exactly? Give us the names.
We shouldn’t mock others for their beliefs but rather concentrate on living up to our own to the best of our abilities.
Would that be like claiming that there are professing Christians that are not “true Christians”?
I mean, for “true Christians” to be a coherent concept there by necessity there must be, what, false Christians? Less than true Christians? It clearly can’t be all Christians or you wouldn’t have modified Christians with true.
I won’t address that “question” because this is a classic example a thread mentioning religion being hijacked and turned into one of those “religious wars” kind of threads, and we certainly have an ample number of those. Besides, you already know the answer.