Convince me why i should be a Christian?

I'm open to it and want to believe, but can't bring myself to accept a literal account of the New Testament, especially when elements were taken from prior religions. The problem with liberally interpreting all of it is it doesn't inspire you to be Christian in a general sense (as in church).

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=-XKOlOnRsD4
pastebin.com/xMQ9wAwW
youtube.com/watch?v=BXlBCZ_5OYw&ab_channel=CSLewisDoodle
youtu.be/dtQ2TS1CiDY
earlychristianwritings.com
plato.stanford.edu/entries/david-lewis/
plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-modal/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

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>especially when elements were taken from prior religions
Like?

You have to understand the Bible was created slowly over time hundreds of years after the crucifixion of Christ. I doubt it's perfect, but his apostles and the early christians did an incredible job of keeping the story of the life of Jesus in tact even against incredible persecution. 11 of the 12 apostles accepted torture and execution rather than deny what they knew to be true about Jesus and his life.

This is a broken world, and humans are by nature sinful. Jesus came to not to sugar coat things. He showed that suffering in this life was unavoidable, but tilted our eyes beyond this world. By accepting the imperfection in the world and ourselves, we can better live a miraculous life. People today do everything they can to avoid suffering and self sacrifice. We worship comfort and ease.

Jesus accepted the worst of humanity upon himself as a symbol of his forgiveness, and the forgiveness he knows we are all capable. People unjustly tortured and killed him, and he loved them anyway.

Forgiveness like that could end the wars in the middle East instantly.

Jesus is much larger than any Church. He also isn't only to be found in the Bible. Part of being a Christian is having a personal relationship with him throughout your life. Being Christian isn't about feeling morally superior to others and judging degenerates, its about understanding our limitation and weakness so we can grow humbly.

People arrogantly believe their minds and control systems have the power to transform the world. Christians know humans cannot do that alone, and hand that responsibility to God.

I had to read this twice to realize there is no useful evidence for OP.

>elements were taken from prior religions
listen to this debate:
youtube.com/watch?v=-XKOlOnRsD4
it's pretty long but you can listen to it while doing other things (that's how i watch them)
the atheist guy (dan barker) brings up arguments along these lines, but the arguments get absolutely unequivocally eviscerated by james white.

or if you feel this post is a cop-out, and you'd like to engage someone on the issue, you can post the zeitgeist infographs with osiris dionysus and mithras and i can laugh at you ITT if you like.

pastebin.com/xMQ9wAwW

Why don't you first ask God to convince you and hold him to his promise that if you seek you shall find?

Why? Because the mere fact you're trying to rationalize the doubts you have on being baptized (that's how you begin being a Christian) are a proof of God's Providence: in His infinite wisdom he has made each of us to be His creatures and become His sons by believing in His Only Son, Jesus Christ, or the second person of the Holy Trinity, and receiving the baptism in His name.

This is our faith, the faith passed to us by two thousand years of Catholic tradition. That's why you don't need to accept any literal interpretation of man made books (that's what Muslims do with respect to their novel the koran) but use the New Testament mediated by the successors and the tradition that Jesus who is God established in first person... by the Catholic Church.

The only Church is the Catholic Church.

>when elements were taken from prior religions
Aaaahaha you damn fedoras will believe literally any retarded thing you read in "enlightened" forums and blogs.

Every single year, every single one, some retarded atheist tries to say "n-no, Christianity really comes from this other religion!". Every single year, a new retarded theory that crumbles the moment someone with knowledge looks at it.

But you fedoras will swallow anything that allows you to keep a life of pride, hedonism, apathy and nihilism.

Yeah I mean he could watch one debate regarding theism v atheism, or you could give him evidence to support your god and he could agree or disagree with it and give his evidence.

Are you claiming atheists will believe anything without evidence?

Just remember what the cross represents

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Ask and you shall receive.

Ask to God for faith in Him and He will give you that.

Well I remember reading a history essay about how Christianity is the best religion that preserves culture.

Every other dogmatic religion, once it conquers a territory changes the culture. (Islam promotes Arab culture, Jews all look the same and must speak Hebrew, etc.)

But if you look at Christians around the world, all of them still indulge in their cultures without forsaking it.

There's a story written by the historian Josephus writing about how the Christians are almost impossible to spot because they blend in to the culture

Not saying Christianity is the true religion, but I do like this aspect of it.

Worship Kek

See: Acts 17:26

Our God has mandated that we never ever attempt to reach Him in one voice and as One Nation

it's not an atheism vs theism debate, it's a debate about whether or not the story of jesus grabbed themes from earlier mythologies.

it sounded like the main obstacle was 'elements were taken from prior religions.'
i'd have to hear what silly things he's talking about specifically first in order to shoot those down.

but i thought it would be more intellectually stimulating to see a top-tier atheist intellectual vs a christian scholar throw the best arguments back and forth each side has to offer on the subject, and watch how they interact with it.

James white is a loser puppet Calvinist.

>literal account
This is a very modern idea. Even in 300AD, Augustine understood most of the Bible to be metaphor. The problem is that most people don't take the time to learn what the Bible is and its context, so religion seems to be something that feels silly.

James White is a loser. He is not a scholar but a Calvinist scum hackpologist

>You have to understand the Bible was created slowly over time hundreds of years after the crucifixion of Christ

This is totally wrong, the NT was finished before the fall of the Temple in 70AD and 24 of the books had been affirmed by Ireneus by 185AD.

I hope this video may well make you a Christian:

youtube.com/watch?v=BXlBCZ_5OYw&ab_channel=CSLewisDoodle

Christ is the bridge to eternal life.

How could that which is mortal become one with God if he is not remade?

We are remade in the image of Christ that we may know the glory of heaven.

Irenaeus of course affirms doctrines that are contradictory to today's Protestants

No. The Pastorals weren't even written until 100AD. Revelation probably around 95AD.

Yes. They don't know what evidence is to begin with. They try to apply the only thing they know: empirism, science. So they fail miserably.

They accept materialism, even though they know nothing about reality, about the world, or even about what they are. Yet they dare to say what is real and what isn't

> debate about whether or not the story of jesus grabbed themes from earlier mythologies

Not everything has to be literally true. That's asking too much of it.

It doesn't matter that it's just stories. They've shown their usefulness for keeping society together for centuries while we get on with more important things.

St. John would have been old as fuck. None of the books were written after 70 otherwise the Temple destruction would have been mentioned somewhere.

If [Christianity] is true, being of [Christian] belief is objectively good.

Something having a vague abstract resemblance to other concepts has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth or falsity of that something.

you are in literally every Christian thread bashing James White and Calvinism.

I don't care for either, but why are you so butthurt by these two things?

meant for

If anyone is serious about learning about the NT and the historical context for the Bible, as well as the authors, etc, Yale has a great free course: youtu.be/dtQ2TS1CiDY

Determinism is literally cancer.

doesn't explain the malay who only pops in when James White is mentioned

You shouldn't, it's a load of bull, a bunch of universalist trash. These scum put God and their co-religionists above their own family and people. Who do you think is importing the third world sub-humans?

Here's a great resource, lad: earlychristianwritings.com

Maybe he's just dedicated.

It really takes somebody with an evil intent to persecute Christians.

What are you going to do next, piss off the Buhddists?

Because I had been fooled by his lies and deceit once as a Calvinist. Never again.

That is true, descriptively. But *ought* he become a Christian? (As the thread title suggests he's after)

Fiction is used in other fiction sometimes. Regardless of whether it did or didn't, it means nothing of what hes asking as a whole. If you're going to persuade someone towards a god it means nothing whether something piggy backed off of their ideas.

I understand what you're asking, and I would like to see on the subject of what is taken from other religions, but the overall point is offering evidence for OP to prove of christianity.

>This is a broken world, and humans are by nature sinful
This is another one of the horrible parts of this bullshit. They claim Man is inherently bad and needs some outside force to fix him.

>Who do you think is importing the third world sub-humans?

People who don't believe in the Bible

See

Gotchya that makes sense. So what are you now?

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If [Christianity] is true, then he ought to become a [Christian], yes.

A kekoid, just for the keks from Lord Kek

Ought one put his faith in Christianity then?

>"They don't know what evidence is to begin with."
Explain?

>they know nothing about reality, about the world, or even about what they are.
.....science hasn't given honest explanations that contradict the bible and given more viable proof towards its position?

Are you claiming God is real? What are you basing that off of, other than JUST the bible?

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Assuming Christianity is true - yes.

Do you believe god is all knowing, all powerful and the creator of everything? Then how does anything but determinism make sense?

Same way as if you study analysis (that's a mathematical field) then you can prove that somet things are unprovable ("paradoxes") given your chosen precepts ("axioms")

QED

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Then one ought'n't be Christian because there's no reason to assume its true?

I believe one ought to assume it's true as well

For reasons of psycho-social health

Our moral maxims and their axiomatic absoluteness are exclusively conducive to a healthy European society, regardless of their epistemological merit

That's Swedish art if I've ever seen it

inspiring

plato.stanford.edu/entries/david-lewis/
plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-modal/
Through some brilliant apologetic metaphysical work utilizing the above.
Gist:
p1) wills exist
p2) wills can make (and do make) all possible choices over all possible worlds
----
c) Even if God knows what choices you can/will make (which is all possible choices), one cannot possibly be more free than a reality in which you can - and do - make any - and all - decisions

That's the very bare bones of it.

I wouldn't expect an american to be able to read

Denial

Of course there [can be] reason to assume it's true. I'm doing it right now for a very real reason - that reason being I desire to assume so.

I think they are, but other people can argue they're not based on your terms "exclusively" and "healthy" there.

>that reason being I desire to assume so.

Ought you not pin your philosophical inclinations to something more absolute than a potentially shifting desire?

It would be if it wasn't total bullshit.

Would if I could senpai.
But being that I would have to assume other things that would *THEMSELVES* impinge on arbitrary preference commitments in order to do that, it wouldn't be any better.

>implying killing is bad
Everything has to eat and has territory to maintain. Death is a part of life, everything dies. Some things must die so others may live. That's good, it's how life is, a constant struggle between and amongst living things to continue living.

On health I'm a lot more confident than on arguing on the term "exclusively", especially in contrast to the current suicidal socialist liberal ideologies - the psychosocial impact of:

relativism/nihilism/ subjectivism
positivism/scientism
naturalism/physicalism/ strict empirism

I'm not going to convince you to believe in The Great Lie peddled by modern Jewish mysticism, along with Islam. Your call though.

Religion is literally a blue pill

In God there is life.

In mortality, there is only death.

Heal the bond.

One can argue things that you don't consider healthy at all are, in fact, healthy, where "healthy" is defined as being conducive toward some value set (which can be any value set).

No worries, mates. We Christians won't start tossing you from the tops of buildings or thinking that you're no better than animals for disagreeing with us.

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Unless you completely gave yourself up to assuming the [fundamental] things to your conception

It is says philosophy seeks evidence for what you fundamentally believe in, while science constructs beliefs from what you're currently knowing

And I don't care much for the scientific method to begin with

>it is said*

>Unless you completely gave yourself up to assuming the [fundamental] things to your conception
Which you do out of preference. Which means you're not actually doing something different than I (or anyone else).

a religion of peace and tolerance?!?

p. cray cray if u ask me

>In God there is life.
No, God isn't real.
>In mortality, there is only death.
Nothing can die what wasn't living first. That's life, that's the important thing, living. Things live and then they die. That's all, there's no you continuing after you die.

Healthy is that which is in concordance to both the individual's and society's mental and physical natural functioning

And I consider its societal impact more thoroughly than what a particular isolated individual's concordance with the natural is

>especially when elements were taken from prior religions.

G.K. Chesterton's got you bro

This preference (or its origin as a preference) becomes subsumed easily beneath your conception, as your conception becomes internalised

What may have become as a whim (however intensely that desire) becomes a way of being as time passes

"Natural functioning"? A retard is "naturally" retarded, my friend, and functions as such.

I don't know who "society" is either~

>Yes goy, keep fighting with each other and worshipping our Jewish false god, while we destroy your societies and take everything behind the scenes.

Christian nationalists are the biggest morons, almost as bad as the Islamic Migrants.

>This preference (or its origin as a preference) becomes subsumed easily beneath your conception, as your conception becomes internalized

A person's refusal to accept/ignorance of the fact that one's preference is the ultimate determinate in axiomatic commitments does not negate the fact that it's nevertheless based in preference~

Excellent item, it really goes with Lewis's "parallel morality" case in Abolition of Man.

> That's life, that's the important thing, living.

In spite of others, because life is of no consequence in a universe defined by death.

>we destroy your societies

Whatchu talkin about? You mean when I referenced treating people outside of the tribe like animals?

Well, as men are social in nature, there must be fundamental and essential things that need to be guarded against deviance (degeneracy) in order for that society to exist

Fundamental essential things such as the stability of the family

what if got it wrong

Even weirdass psychedelic practices, such as those documented by Carlos Castaneda, or even just hallucinated for book money purposes if that's what it really was all about, recognize the importance of death.

Death is the ultimate equalizer. We all die. Everybody we've ever known will die, and most of them in our lifetimes if we don't die first. Death gets your ship back on keel. Death teaches you to respect life.

>as men are social in nature
I don't think that's true.

It does not negate that *fact*, but it does utterly negate the perception of that fact

Nay, the very utility of the perception of [and obsession with] that fact

The fruits of Christianity, as seen here in old Europe, torturing Europeans and caused greater harm than anything the migrants have done so far. You guys think you're edgy and badass and someone going against globalism and the system for being a Christian, where you're just perpetuating the exact thing you're fighting against... Jewish mysticism.

We're talking about truth though. Perception is irrelevant. People believe patently false things based on their perception constantly, since either their interpretation of their experiences, the experiences themselves, or their perception can easily betray them.

Have you felt not the natural rewards of being social? Think back to your childhood, at the playground with other kids

Being rewarded by your teacher for listening to her

Et cetera.

>Death teaches you to respect life.

It also teaches you to disdain it.