- Many Christians believe that God himself impregnated Mary and that her son, Jesus, was God Incarnate. Yet, they don’t accept that numerous others, including Perseus, Buddha and Vishnu, who were all fathered by gods, are in any way divine. Why not?
- Evangelicals and other Christians believe that Jesus performed many miracles. However, they dismiss other miracle workers as frauds or mythical beings. As John Oakes puts it on the Evidence for Christianity website, ‘religious figures (such) as Osiris, Empedocles or Krishna almost certainly were not real people, making stories of supposed miracles they worked irrelevant’. Why?
- Christians believe Jesus fed 5,000 people with 5 fish and 2 loaves. They don’t believe the Qur’an’s story that Muhammed did much the same thing. Why not?
- Christians believe Jesus was visited by the long-dead Moses and Elijah. They believe Paul saw Jesus after he died. Yet they dismiss the Mormon claim that Joseph Smith saw Jesus and God himself. Why?
- Christians believe Jesus came back to life a day and a half after he was killed. However, they regard the resurrection stories of Dionysus, Osiris and Attis as counterfeit. Why?
- Christians believe Jesus rose into the sky to take up his place in heaven. Yet they think it preposterous that Muhammed went there on a flying horse. Why?
When it comes to their own stories Christians are adamant that they are reliable accounts of events that really happened. Jesus really was God’s son. He really did do magic; really did feed 5,000 people with a few scraps; really did rise from the dead, and really did beam up to heaven. Paul really met him on the road to Damascus.
….
If it’s constructed like a story, has all the components of a story, and reads like a story, then that’s exactly what it is.
— Neil Robinson, Rejecting Jesus, Stories, November 4, 2020
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I remember being proselytized to about 25 years ago by some folks who were Bahai. They told their miracle narrative. It sounded like horse sh!t to me, but it made me realize that Christianity sounds like horse sh!t to non-Christians.
The Orthodox church struggled so mightily with the resurrection story, with many claiming that it was just a copy of so many others, that they made up the story that Satan, in the past but seeing the future injected those stories of past resurrections to try to undermine the church in the future!
Now, Satan is Christianity’s whipping boy, but they make it seem as if Old Yahweh were all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful but not able to put the kibosh on Satan’s plans with just a wink and a nod. The minute someone calls “Bullshit” on one of their stories, they make up something even more fanciful and the Bullshit Callers just get worn out.
The only advantage to growing up evangelical was that I had already rejected the nonsense of all other religions by the time I deconverted so I didn’t need to waste my time considering other religions
Thanks for the repost, Bruce! Christians of all stripes are blind to the mythic nature of their Godman. Of course everyone else’s deity is just that, or even worse.