Reply #130: Must it be factual? [View All]

[LeahMira]

So the story recounted in all four Gospels is a lie. Is that your position? Yes or no, please. If yes, then what merit does Christianity have whatsoever? It'd be a total fraud.

I have mentioned before that there is fact and there is truth. The stories in the gospels do not contain a great deal of fact. They do contain a great deal of truth. If Christianity has merit, it lies in its understanding of the truth contained in the gospels.

I've googled the subject thoroughly and found no contention to the contrary

Hmmm... I looked quickly yesterday just for the heck of it and found one among the first five citations.

Virtually all of the non-Christians I've met, who express any appreciation at all towards Jesus of Nazareth, do so because of the "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" statement (ignoring the "go and sin no more" admonition to the prostitute two verses later), and the "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" beatitude.

Both of those statements are found, albeit in slightly different wording, in the sacred books of many of the religions that have sacred books (as opposed to those with oral traditions).

If the story of Jesus Christ is a fraud, then those letters and correspondence are nothing more than the idiot ramblings of delusional idiots and lunatics, who believed so strongly that a man rose from the dead that they did not resist their own martyrdom.

People have died for all sorts of beliefs throughout history. The fact that people are willing to die for them has no correlation whatsoever with the truth or value of the beliefs.