You Have Not Done Your Homework

Here is an email I received in response to one of my essays.

You Have Not Done Your Homework

It seems to me that you haven’t done your homework, Roedy. If you were to take an objective, unbiased look at the evidence you would see that there is a wealth of evidence showing that Jesus was an actual person and that He and His followers believed he was God.

From what I have read, there is no mention at all of Jesus in the historical record other than the Bible. Ironically, there is mention of other messiah-like figures. There is also the Mithras cult, which came before Christianity. It seems like Christians liberally borrowed from the Mythraic legends. We have faith healers today who claim to heal by the power of God. They won’t make it into the history books for the same reason Jesus did not. Their deeds were not all that out of the ordinary.

The arguments Christians present seem childish and irrational to everyone but those who were spoon fed them as infants. If the arguments had inherent merit, that would not be.

(But I think you already know that. If you don’t think He ever even existed it’s kinda silly to claim that you’re a real Christian, or to say Jesus would turn in His grave if he knew what Pat Robertson was up to.)

I agree that Benny Hinn and Pat Robertson and their like are disgraceful blasphemers. But it is unfair to blame God for their actions. He gave us free-will and we are responsible for what we do with it.

I don’t blame God. I blame hypocritical Kristians who go along with this malarkey. Keep in mind that there are two entirely different questions,

1. Does God exist?
2. Is the Christian depiction of Him accurate.

You seem like a pretty smart guy to me, Roedy. I’m sure if you let go of some of the bitterness you have towards God (and I mean God, not just some idea you have about how you’d like a god to be) and got to personally know Jesus Christ you could do great things for the world. But watching crooked televangelists won’t help you know Him better. Why don’t you open your mind a little, pray for help in finding the truth and then see what happens.

By their fruits you shall know them. I just find church-bred Christians are the more likely to be self-righteous, smug and dogmatic than non-Christians. They are more likely to torment homosexuals. They are more likely to treat women as second class citizens, (granted that Islam is even worse). If people generally adopted the Sermon on the Mount it would be a wonderful thing, but I strong suspect if that ever happens, it will be the Christians who will be the last to do it. Christianity is justified with tall tales. Goodness should not need lies to shore it up. To use Christian imagery, building your reasons for righteousness on children’s stories is bulding your house on sand.

I regret that I can’t spend more time going into detail about some of the points you raised but I’ve got important homework to do. Actually, I didn’t even get to read all of your essay, but I intend to soon. I would give you my e-mail address if I had one, but I don’t. But if you have any questions or anything put them somewhere on your site and I’ll do my best to answer them.

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