July 01, 2004
Notes on Christianity
(notes that I took at Church)
The argument is rather simple really - prove that what is in the gospels actually happened. (The exercise of proving that this means something is left to the reader)
There are 2 main arguments: the stories were made up, or they were an accurate record of a legend written later.
In order for the stories to be true, they have not be made up. In order for the stores to be made up, you have to find the people who made them up, criminal-style: they must have had a motive.
You have to gain something from your crime in order to have a motive. All of them were killed for what they wrote - this removes their motive.
Also, if the stories are made up, then they are very precise in that all four books records the same events with varying emphasis, etc. based on the personal memories of the 'witnesses'. So, there must have been a conspiracy. The motive factor comes in here again, and also makes you wonder why they would have added the inconsistencies if they in fact were conspiring - perhaps they were intelligent. But you still have to deal with when. If they made up a bunch of stories then the stories never would have gone anywhere because people who witnessed the events would have called them out. So, the conspiracy happened much later, after all the witnesses were dead.
This moves us to the legend argument. This says that the stories were made up much later as a record of popular oral histories of a popular man. This is when we get secular. There have been studies that say that for a typical oral history to become a legend it takes two generations. Also, roman historians record that the emperor of Rome burned the city and blamed it on the Christians around 50 AD. So, in order for there to have been a group of people large enough to blame it on 2 things may have gone on in the emperor's mind - a) He had heard of them b) They were unpopular. In order for them to be that large, that fast it must have been written down by then.
So unless it was a different group of writings, and then all copies were destroyed and years later a group of people risked their lives to tell a carefully made-up story, it appears that a large number of people saw the events happen, some recorded them and they are the gospels.
Interesting point - The teachings of Jesus were not radical in many ways - they are simply good moral philosophy. They did not agree with Judaism at the time, but that alone is not enough to set the fire that it caused in so many people and to lead to his death. Not that many people would have followed him around and listened to him talk about being nice to people except that he was healing people and bringing people back from the dead. These witnesses are what is important, and what most don't want to stomach when they read the Bible.
So, this leaves us with Christianity as the truth, which is interesting because of its differences from the other religions. The main difference is that you must accept Jesus - according to scripture it is the only way to heaven. People say that this is not fair, dramatic moment: What is more fair than this: a) All are accepted regardless of background, nation, sin b) Your way has already been paid