The Historical Jesus: Did He Create the Universe?

For me, it was the wider picture of religiosity across all humanity. I suddenly realized that a Muslim or a Hindu probably believed just as strongly as any Christian. I also realized that if I had been born in some other country I may very well believe in the local religion as much as I believed in the local Christian beliefs that I actually was born into. It struck me that truth, if it exists, shouldn't be determined by geography.

According to some (e.g. Kellyanne Conway), there are alternative facts. It sounds a lot like alternative medicine. If it worked, they would just call it medicine.

I, for one, don't need other people on my team in order to believe, or not believe, as I do.I say to you, keep being human. I think it's pretty obvious that religious belief is part of the human experience for a majority of humans through time, at least in civilized time.If you want to understand why atheists don't believe, we are more than willing to discuss it. However, I don't feel the need to make theists feel as though they are believing in the wrong thing, as if that goal could ever be achieved strictly by atheist arguments. I have found that personal experiences play a much stronger role in the path people take.

I can't help but hear George Carlin in my head whenever I see someone write about Hell."Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want You to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you."--George Carlin

What I find informative is all of the claimed fulfillments of prophecy could easily be faked without anyone knowing. Is there something about 30 pieces of silver? Well, just write it into the story.The Messiah was actually supposed to conquer the enemies of the Jews. That didn't happen. People would have noticed that one. Instead, the enemy of the Jews killed the alleged Messiah, and then destroyed the Temple not long after that. That's enough to show that Jesus did not fulfill the Messianic prophecies, at least in my eyes.

That assumes the evolutionary process would be ongoing. It could be that evolutionary processes resulting in the physical laws we are familiar with only occur at really extreme energy densities and temperatures which no longer exist in our universe.Newton's laws are a decent example. Those laws work for low velocity, low gravity, and low mass environments. However, Newton's laws break down in more extreme environments. For example, Mercury's orbit "breaks" Newton's laws due to the more extreme gravitational well it finds itself in (i.e. the massive Sun right next door). Actually, all planetary orbits have a precession in their orbit, they are just harder to measure.Quantum mechanics and general relativity are the two pillars of physics and cosmology, but a lot of physicists I have heard from think they are both wrong because they break down in extreme conditions. Just the inability to unify the two shows that they are probably wrong in some sense.So I think it is naive of us to think that physics behaves the same in all conditions. These are common beliefs, but the thrust of this thread was to find some evidence for these beliefs.