Jan,
I've very much enjoyed some of your other posts on this board, but I have to say your remarks in this thread are disappointingly arrogant and unworthy of someone of your high intellectual attainment.
1. Your schoolboyish ad hominem attacks on bigboi, Scorpion, et al., do not help your case any. And they are strangely reminiscent of Watchtower tactics--"agree with me or be damned."
2. Supercilious hyperbole and blanket condemnations advance your cause no further, either:
--"We're talking a simple, backwards group of followers of a religious conman, and this was 2000 years ago! Those were the most credulous of the credulous, in a world full of superstition. And yet, hardly any of them believed Jesus. Perhaps that should tell you something? Only people far distant in time and space started to believe those fantasy stories about a magic-worker in Palestine who also happened to be the Son of God."--
"Backwards"? What does that really mean? Another ad hominem device here that begs the question of whether an uneducated person can recognize moral goodness, or the difference between a lie and a truth. I believe that many of them can, even if they aren't as well-read as you or I, Jan. Let's not be snobs.
"Only people far distant in time and space" believed? Flat-out wrong.
"Magic-worker"? "A religious con man"? Come now, Jan. Both terms imply self-serving dishonesty like that of Simon Magus. But surely your own experience of life has shown you that a man who operates like that could never produce the sublime teaching of, say, the Sermon on the Mount. And were the miracles recorded of Jesus used for his self-aggrandizement? Were they not almost always of immediate practical benefit to someone in need of help? And was Jesus really out for power, money, adulation?
Even if you disbelieve all the miracles, most non-believers through the centuries--including many greater minds than yours or mine, my friend--have agreed that Christ was one of mankind's great teachers and place him, at the very least, on a par with Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, etc.
Your arguments lack ethos, Jan. You seem to be speaking from emotion, not cold, lucid reason. In fact, you sound like Judge Rutherford on a bad day, lashing out wildly at everyone who disagrees with you, and insulting their intelligence and most cherished beliefs indiscriminately.
But I think all of us on this board have had *quite* enough of that from the faithful and discreet slavedrivers.
Which is why I am not about to get into the "misquoted" texts with you now. Your mind is obviously shut tight against any contradiction, so what would be the point? I don't get into it with JW's on my doorstep for the same reason.
As a freed WT slave, I heartily support your right to believe whatever seems good to you, Christian, pagan, or atheist. I welcome the opportunity to compare all kinds of views with my fellow survivors. But please don't try to beat me or the rest of us over the head with YOUR "absolute Truth," Jan.
You should know better--we've all been THERE before.
Why don't you go pick on somebody your own size--I heartily recommend C. S. Lewis, for starters. He'll give you a run for your money, and a clean fight, too.
Peace, Jan.
"If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)