The Reality Of Christ And Christianity

By John Prytz

So you have faith in Christianity and Christian theology (and therefore in the central figure of Jesus / Christ). How so, and why? Everything must be examined and questioned. Everything is grist for the mill. Nothing is sacred.

Table of Contents:

General Observations and Comments

The Gospels

The Resurrection

The Second Coming

Conclusion

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS and COMMENTS

The Reality of Christ and Therefore of Christianity: True or False?

*First and foremost, you weren't there all those 2000+ years ago. All you know and understand is hearsay and are just a load of claims made from 2000 years ago by pretty much the great unwashed of the times. It's all somebody told somebody told somebody.

*If there is any one trait that defines the human species is that we love telling tall tales. We are seemingly hardwired to be storytellers. Think of the literally millions of novels, short stories, plays, poems, campfire tales, TV shows / episodes, films, operas, even other visual forms of storytelling like paintings, cartoons - the list is nearly endless. That trait goes back tens of thousands of years if you think of those cave art paintings in Europe or Australia. Even stories that have a grain of truth in them are prone to exaggeration, especially with retellings. Biblical stories tend to be just that - stories. The entire Bible is really just an anthology of quasi-connected tall tales.

*Since it is quite easy to establish a religion, as is evident by how many different religions past and present exist or have existed, the rise of Christianity is nothing historically special.

*None, not one of the supernaturally themed events linked to or with Jesus can be historically confirmed or verified by any existing independent (i.e. - non-Biblical) source material(s).

*There are no original source materials available, just copies of copies and translations of translations. Further, these copies of copies and translations of translations were all handwritten and hand transcribed copies of copies and translations of translations. Errors, minor and major, are bound to have crept in.

*Witnesses often have hidden agendas and eyewitness testimony isn't always reliable as has been often proven in courts of law and in psychology classes. That of course also included the witnesses to Biblical events as related in that holy book.

*All images of Jesus are just artistic inventions. Nobody really has a clue.

*If genetics are anything to go by is that Jesus should have been born a female since Joseph had no actual contribution to the genetics inherent in Jesus.

*There are enough actual pieces of that one True Cross in existence to rebuild Noah's (fictional) Ark. And if memory serves, there are roughly four or five true Spears in existence in various churches and museums around the world each claiming to be THE Spear (John 19: 34). And Allah only knows where the Holy Grail resides - just probably in the minds of the True Believers. Otherwise, to rational people it's just another mythical religious artefact.

*The Shroud of Turin has been proven by radioactive / carbon-14 dating to be a total (albeit it well done) forgery.

THE GOSPELS

*The four Gospels don't even agree on what happened and when it happened and in what order things happened and who saw what happened.

*Not all Near and Middle Eastern, Christian religious and ancient Biblical history academics agree that even a mortal flesh-and-blood Jesus existed, far less a supernatural Jesus, though I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt on that one. I'll acknowledge that an actual mortal human being, called Jesus, existed where and when he is said to have existed some 2000 years ago.

*Nobody has a clue or any real idea who the authors of the Gospels were. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were just names invented by and assigned to these texts by ancient church officials.

*The Gospels weren't originally penned until 40 to 70 years after-the-fact. What might that suggest in terms of accuracy of the events described?

*While you get hundreds of "Jesus said" quotes, no scribe(s) have been ever identified who was concerned or charged with writing down his statements on the spot and in real time. Further, there are times and places where no scribes could have been present and yet we still somehow know what "Jesus said".

*When it comes down to his own ego, Jesus has no family values (Matthew 10: 34-38) and his image, Revelation aside, that Jesus is a lover and not a fighter is incorrect (Matthew 10: 34).

*There's only a 1 in 365.25 chance that Jesus was born on the 25th of December. This date was just another fiction invented by those ancient church officials.

*The actual number of wise men at the Nativity isn't actually specified contrary to popular opinion. It's just assumed to be three since there were three gifts (all totally unsuitable for a brand new baby).

*The "star" of Bethlehem couldn't have been a celestial object and therefore can only be regarded as a bona-fide UFO event - or a total work of fiction since the "star" only is related in just one Gospel. The only text that mentions this is in Matthew 2.

*There was an astronomically impossible solar 'eclipse' associated with the crucifixion event. Is this yet another example of more made up shit, those tall tales alluded to above?

*And we still have absolutely no idea what happened to all those zombies (the walking dead as related in Matthew 27: 52-53. The walking dead are only mentioned that once. Maybe Mark, Luke and John weren't horror fans. Anyway, perhaps they still shuffle around to this very day. By the way, if Jesus arose from the dead, doesn't that make him a zombie, one of the walking dead too?

THE RESURRECTION

*Now if the absolute most singular event and facet in all of Christianity is the alleged resurrection of Jesus, the Son, event, then you'd have to assume that the Master Planner (i.e. - God, the Father) would have seen to it that the actual evidence for this was ironclad and atheist-proof. Alas...

*If you compare and contrast highly unlikely but mutually exclusive events, the one you reject is the greater unlikeliness of the two unlikely events. For example, which is more unlikely, that someone actually died and rose again from the dead (a resurrection event) or that the details of the alleged resurrection event were incorrect - the eyewitnesses were either lying and/or honestly mistaken.

THE SECOND COMING

*In addition to there being lots of Biblical references to the day of the Lord is at hand or is near (Ezekiel 30: 3; Joel 1: 15; Joel 2: 1; Joel 3: 14; Obadiah 1: 15; Zephaniah 1: 7; Zephaniah 1: 14; Isaiah 13: 6; Matthew 3: 2; Matthew 4: 17; Matthew 10: 7; Book of 1 Thessalonians; and Book of 2 Thessalonians), the Gospels make it clear that the Second Coming should have happened by roughly 100 AD / CE (Matthew 16: 28; Mark 9: 1; Luke 9: 27). So Jesus is now roughly some 1900 years behind schedule.

*Further, 100% of Second Coming prophecies have been 100% wrong. That's more than sufficient cause to believe that the next prophecy that comes alone (at rather frequent intervals too I might add)...

CONCLUSION

*Finally, it's okay to talk to Jesus, but is Jesus answers or talks back to you, methinks that something is well and truly screwy somewhere.

Science librarian; retired.

Article Source:  The Reality Of Christ And Christianity