Recycled Human - introduction

[Recycled Human]

Hello. My name is Chris though I prefer to go by my username, I'm 26 years old and I've been finding that the only things that captivate my attention thus far have been video games and religion. I was raised Lutheran, attended confirmation, and have never really left the church. I don't attend church for many reasons but I don't discredit it's value or merit. Instead I feel that I've reached the point where I have a fair understanding of my religion and my beliefs about it and have decided I would be best put to use engaging the community instead of just engaging other Lutherans, and comparing car sizes to status.

I've dabbled in Catholicism when my ex wanted to see what it was like. I've lived with a family of Jews for almost 3 years and I've had some connection with many other religions through close friends.

My reason for joining this community is because I'm looking to engage in conversation with others who are better equipped to look at my ideas and concepts about religion and explain to me if anything I've concocted has merit before I run around preaching understanding of something I don't understand.

An example of my ideas include but are certainly not limited to :

A present yet silent God.
The separation of God and the dimension of time.
Bad things that happen to good people are really good things.
Free will as a perception.
And lastly, organized religion and the state of Christians in society.

Also if anyone can tell me what the best step is to proceed into these areas of interest please let me know.

[Question Everything]

@Lucia : great suggestions! I will have to look into those. I think maybe the dogma section is where I need to go. Since most of my beliefs are based in Christianity it stands to reason that I shouldn't get involved in conversations where the ground rules themselves are questionable. I don't know nearly enough about philosophy to propose any ideas there but I will probably lurk around that forum just to glean whatever tidbits I can. Thanks.

I highly recommend you browse through this forum and read lots of different things that interest you. There is a staggering amount of stuff here.

@ question everything : when I went through confirmation my pastor discussed Jesus' opinion on himself and one of the things he said that stuck with me was that Jesus wants you to question everything. I wish I remembered the passage he quoted but I found it powerful that he was so confident in what he was saying.

If you find it, let me know, even if by private message.

Do you mind if I ask about the history of Christianity? I only have a vague understanding of it and can sort of guess the areas where you might consider it to be shaky but yeah I keep getting mixed answers on the history so I'd really love to hear what you found.

Let me start out by saying how I used to think it went. Jesus was born sometime around 0 AD just as the Bible said, was largely unknown until sometime around 30 AD when he started his ministry. He was well recorded in history. As he spoke and did things, his disciples wrote down what he said and did. After his death and resurrection (certainly within a year of it), these gospels went out throughout the world. The first ones to go out were Matthew, Mark, and Luke - they were more or less written and distributed at the same time. John came out a year or two later because the first three gospels missed important things about Jesus that needed to be included to make the Gospel story complete. (This probably happened because they were in such a rush to get the story out.)

Christianity, more or less what it is now, started spreading throughout the world as recorded in the Book of Acts. The Romans saw it as a threat and tried to stamp it out. One of the people sent to do this converted to Christianity and became the apostle Paul.

Three centuries passed. Naturally heresies started creeping in, and this became such a problem that the First Council of Nicaea was formed in 325 AD to deal with them, as well as decide when to celebrate Easter and other such matters. Wikipedia says this about it:

The First Council of Nicaea is commonly regarded to have been the first Ecumenical council of the Christian Church. Most significantly, it resulted in the first uniform Christian doctrine, called the Creed of Nicaea. With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent general (ecumenical) councils of Bishops (Synods) to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy— the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom.

The council did not create the doctrine of the deity of Christ (as is sometimes claimed) but it did settle to some degree the debate within the Early Christian communities regarding the divinity of Christ. This idea of the divinity of Christ along with the idea of Christ as a messenger from the one God ("The Father") had long existed in various parts of the Roman empire. The divinity of Christ had also been widely endorsed by the Christian community in the otherwise pagan city of Rome.[5] The council affirmed and defined what it believed to be the teachings of the Apostles regarding who Christ is: that Christ is the one true God in deity with the Father.

Derived from Greek oikoumenikos, "ecumenical" means "worldwide" but generally is assumed to be limited to the Roman Empire in this context as in Augustus' claim to be ruler of the oikoumene/world; the earliest extant uses of the term for a council are Eusebius' Life of Constantine 3.6[6] around 338, which states "[Greek writing]" (he convoked an Ecumenical council); Athanasius' Ad Afros Epistola Synodica in 369;[7] and the Letter in 382 to Pope Damasus I and the Latin bishops from the First Council of Constantinople.[8]

One purpose of the council was to resolve disagreements arising from within the Church of Alexandria over the nature of Jesus in relationship to God the Father; in particular, whether Jesus was the literal son of God or was he a figurative son, like the other "Sons of God" in the Bible. St. Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius claimed to take the first position; the popular presbyter Arius, from whom the term Arianism comes, is said to have taken the second. The council decided against the Arians overwhelmingly (of the estimated 250–318 attendees, all but two voted against Arius.[9])

Another result of the council was an agreement on when to celebrate Easter, the most important feast of the ecclesiastical calendar. The council decided in favour of celebrating Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, independent of the Hebrew Calendar (see also Quartodecimanism and Easter controversy). It authorized the Bishop of Alexandria (presumably using the Alexandrian calendar) to announce annually the exact date to his fellow bishops.

Historically significant as the first effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom,[2] the Council was the first occasion where the technical aspects of Christology were discussed.[2] Through it a precedent was set for subsequent general councils to adopt creeds and canons. This council is generally considered the beginning of the period of the First seven Ecumenical Councils in the History of Christianity.

Now for what really happened, at least the way I now understand it. BTW, if anyone wants to debate me on this, don't do so on this thread, but start a new thread in the proper debate section. We will debate there, and I need to warn you that this is something I have researched very well.

The gospels were not written until after AD 70, with Mark being the first, and the others not until decades later. There are about a dozen or so of them, with four of them getting in the Bible, and the rest (for example the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Judas) were forgotten.

It was about 20 years earlier that the earliest known reference to Jesus was written - the Pauline Epistles. Paul talks about a "Christ Jesus" who was "born of a woman" (in other words a human who walked the face of the Earth), crucified for our sins, and rose from the dead. Most people think that he was talking about the Jesus of the Gospels, but those weren't written until decades later. Is the Jesus they speak of the same as the Jesus Paul speaks of? Who knows? Paul says nothing of where Jesus was born, where he lived, (Paul NEVER says " Jesus of Nazareth" the way the Gospels do very frequently), anything Jesus said, or any miracles he performed.

BTW, there is no Roman record of the Crucifixion, even though the Romans carefully kept records of every one. If the Bible is to be believed, they had no reason to crucify Jesus, either. Saying you were God was not against Roman law (The Romans did not care at all what Jewish law said.), and crucifixion was reserved only for the worst of crimes, such as killing a Roman soldier or plotting to overthrow the government. Even then it would not happen without a trial.

The Jewish leaders also did not meet on Passover Eve, this was forbidden.

Prior to AD 70, there was definitely some kind of Jesus religion out there, exactly what may never be known. It may have been very different from what we have today.

Then came the Jewish revolt of AD 70, and the great temple was destroyed. The Jews were devastated and wanted justice. Wouldn't it be great if God were to come and set things right! The Gospel of Mark was written at that time to address this need. It combined whatever the existing Jesus story was at the time with Old Testament prophecies being fulfilled, and the idea of this being God's plan all along. Other gospels followed suit.

Because there were so many gospels out there (If I remember correctly one of them said Jesus was crucified by King Herod!), Christianity was composed of many squabbling factions. Was Jesus God? Did he have a virgin birth? The debate raged until the First Council of Nicaea settled matters by voting on them, and even then many of the losers felt that the winners were heretics who perverted the true gospel.

I don't presume to understand what you've been through in your search for God. I hope that you are satisfied with your answer and that's genuine.

I will say this, if God does exist he is not unhappy with me. I sought him as hard as I could for a very long time. I came up empty handed.

Anyway, i like to think that God's a smart individual and the phrase 'work smarter not harder' comes to mind. As for not answering prayers or revealing the answers to you I've got to say, you've done remarkably well for the past 25 years. Whatever problems or questions you had have gone unanswered for all this time but somehow you pulled through without it. Maybe God though you could handle it?

Maybe God does not want me to believe in him, or care whether or not I do. The simplest explanation is that he never existed at all.