Summations Only

If you put a group of fervent and decent people of various Christian and other religious sects together they would all say the same sort of thing. Particularly religious leaders, they all have a calling and believe that they are doing god's bidding.Your problem Faith, is explaining why God is giving umpteen different messages. Why would God call an individual into your hated Catholic priesthood? Let alone in a Muslim or Jainist one?

The only 'difference' is the fact that you believe that YOU are right and everyone else is wrong. That's what you can't explain to anyone other than yourself. You can't explain at all, why others think and feel exactly the same as you, but believe something quite different.

You missed one.e) No. God does not exist therefore can not inspire anything.

Well obviously he can't be known in either event. But more importantly, he can't be known for another reason - he doesn't exist. obviously.

UThis really isn't the point.The real life situation is that children are taught that John wrote this and that. They are led to believe that John was actually there. I suspect that if you asked, 8 out of 10 Christians would tell you that John was an apostle. Neither children nor adults are taught that the authors of the bible weren't the people who are named. If fact we know that John didn't write these things and we don't actually know who did. Or even when he or they did. It's an odd kind of dishonesty.The stories may well be believed by the ignorant but without provenance why should they be? If Rembradt didn't actually paint the picture would you still buy it?

It may or it may not - as has been said, we can't know their motives. I'm not sure about that. If you take the view that before you instruct people on something as important as the salvation of their eternal soul, they should be in full control of the facts, then those that do it out of ignorance could reasonably called culpable. I understand the point. My point is rather different - the fact that the bible wasn't written by those named as the authors isn't generally known is interesting in itself. (If true, which I suspect it is). It's a small conspiracy - best not mention it, it might get laity thinking.

I'm not particularly interested in the detail of who is said to have written what and when, nor whether it was originally deceitful or not to pretend to be one of the fab four. I'm just wondering aloud how how many Christians actually know that the new testament was not written by M, M, L & J and why that knowledge is not universally known. No, just that if it's known that M,M, L & J didn't write the bibles, it shouldn't be taught that they did. We wouldn't do that with any other subject matter. I'm not at all sure that's true. I suspect most Christians are blissfully unaware of it - why would they know? Sure, just speculating. However, I shared a flat at uni with a girl who was studying theology, she was astounded to be told that none of the lecturers believed in the virgin birth but were quite happy to preach it from their pulpits. They had one set of beliefs for themselves based on the historicity of the bible and another that they thought the laity could cope with. It sounded like a conspiracy to me. The kind of stuff that parents do with young children - except the church does it with adults.

As is the bible.

Yes that's how the myth continue. Just like Santa Clause - the adults don't believe it but they make sure their children do.

It's by far the majority that do it. Evangelicals that believe in the literal truth of the bible are thankfully a small minority.Over this holiday the nativity story was repeatedly told from pulpits all over the land despite the fact that it's all known to be a nonsense historically. Why do we do this when it's no more factual than Rudolf's story? Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

How many times does this need to be said and demonstrated? Those that believe in the inerrancy of the bible are a very small minority. The majority churches of mainstream Catholicism and Anglicism accept such things as evolution and the alegorical nature of the bible. I don't have access to the statistics atm, but you've been shown them many times. (And please don't resort to the tautology of defining a Christian as someone who believes in what you believe in.)

Yes, very silly of you. You self define, then claim to be in the majority. You never cease to amaze.

The nativity story IS a legend. It's a backstory entered as a narratory device. You don't really believe it literally happened that way. Or do you?

Which isn't, of course, the point. The point is that it's all taught as truth regardless of what is actually known. 'Good enough for the proles, but we know better'.

Oh come on, there's thousands of books that convey truths greater than the story itself - that's the job fiction writers. The whole point of the bible is that it's not just another book, it's the word of god. The book is being taught as if it was entirely true but those reponsible for teaching it know is untrue. That's a deliberate deceit. It's exactly the same as teaching children about Santa Clause, the only difference is that many adults never actually hear the truth of it.