What you need to understand is that what you take for the utmost in journalistic standards — the Bible — is nothing more than a very late anthology of anonymously-authored stories that did nothing more than reset well-worn Greek mythology in Judea.
And you can very easily confirm that by examining the actual evidence for yourself.
You’d think that the people living in the area at the time the greatest story ever told happened might have noticed something, no? And yet, though we’ve got copious documentation from just those people, not a one noticed even a hint of everything. The Dead Sea Scrolls are literally an entire library’s worth of original pieces of paper written before, during, and after the time by Jews living in and around Jerusalem; not a hint of Jesus or the events of the Gospels. Same story with Philo, brother-in-law of Herod Agrippa (the King Herod the Gospels mention as reigning at the time of the Crucifixion), the philosopher who first incorporated the Logos from Hellenism into Judaism, Jewish ambassador to Rome, and a prolific author. Or the Roman Satirists, whose stock in trade was political intrigue and humiliation (think of the fodder Pilate offered!), or Pliny the Elder, or any of dozens of others.
Instead, what we have are the Gospels, which talk about events that didn’t happen until the Roman conquest of Judea in 70 CE and which were, most realistically, written a century or so later still. And we have the Pauline epistles, apologetically dated to a number of decades after the “facts,” and in which the author describes his hallucinations and offers up as biography rituals indistinguishable from then-common pagan religious ceremonies.
And we have a small smattering of fifth-hand (or worse) accounts from pagans not even born until well after the “facts” and who are only describing the beliefs and practices of Christians — Christians whom they described the same way you’d describe a modern lunatic whack-job cult like the Raelians.
So, sorry to break the news to you, but Christianity is pure bullshit. The only thing it’s got going on all those other religions you don’t even have to think about to know they’re bullshit is that the lunatics took over the Roman Empire, got their cult turned into the state religion, and made membership compulsory with the power of the greatest pre-modern empire the planet has ever seen.
The good news is that, if you stop wasting your life on that childish nonsense, you’ll free up a great amount of your own resources and have the opportunity to make the world a better place. And chances are good you’ll be happier for it, too. Growing up is scary, but only to those who’ve yet to grow up.
Cheers,
b&
Oh and [name and phone number regretfully redacted] here is a bible verse you might want to re-read: “When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish things.” Go thou and do likewise, my son."
