Don't forget that the first gospel to be written down, Mark, wasn't scribed until about 50 years after Jesus supposedly died. You would also be wise to recall that Jesus was a Jew and that it was the converted, Grecian-educated Paul who changed the focus from God to his proclaimed son, Jesus, and in so doing gave birth to Christianity (the Cliff Notes version).
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There's more than one mixup in the New Testament (not to mention the contradictions) one of which is that King Herod of Judea died before Jesus was allegedly born.
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I can't believe how supposedly educated priests, ministers, presbyters, whatever, can claim with a straight face that there is evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and of His taking the Heavenly Elevator. First they have to prove that an historical Jesus was born, grew up and did some pretty funky stuff. Then, after He died, He came alive again, did more stuff and then disappeared into the sky (which was so amazing that nobody at the time thought that it was significant enough to bother writing down). After the ascension you have the tricky task of proving that Jesus had STOPPED existing (in a material sense). In fact all of the events of the life and very existence of Jesus were so amazing that it took from about 50-200 years for the four canonical gospels to be written. That is like dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and it didn't show up in a newspaper until this morning. And that time gap only gets us to after the first gospel ("Mark") was set down.
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Theology is rarely theological.
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(A Rant…)
Herod the Great's father may indeed have been a king for he was certainly an aristocrat, but not in Judea. The Biblical Herod could not have had anything to do with Jesus as Herod died in the spring of 4 BCE. But the Bible is a compendium of mythology shaped to serve a particular path of theology and not a history text. It's rife with multiple different accounts of the same event, self-contradictions, historical errors and, most misleadingly, it's been censored and abridged to suit the goals of the Church hierarchy over past generations. The piles of scripture that the early Church elders burned were vastly greater than the arbitrary pittance that they authorised and deemed fitting for their needs. To add insult to injury, they also burned all of the books that they could gather and so destroyed the recorded knowledge of mankind irregardless of whether the books addressed religion, mathematics, botany, astronomy, etc etc. We have Christianity to thank for the Dark Ages in Europe and the Arabs for preserving as much of the ancient knowledge as they did, knowledge that eventually triggered the Renaissance.
(A YouTuber speaks of Destiny & Creation and I:)
There is no Destiny for destiny or fate or anything you wish to call it, has no use or need for free will. An afterlife is something that you have chosen to believe in without any proof whatsoever. But that is the very definition of faith: belief in the absence of proof. Since in the Christian religion salvation is a matter of faith, proof is anathema to salvation. This is why God will not provide concrete, existential, proof of His existence. Should God do that, manifest Himself in the reality of our world, everyone on Earth would KNOW that God exists. In the face of knowledge belief becomes irrelevant, for knowledge transcends mere belief. And with the exit of belief from the stage, faith becomes unnecessary and that is just another way of saying that faith is irrelevant. These are dominoes. With faith neutered the entire Plan of Salvation would be revealed like the small man with the big voice who had been hidden by the curtain. God would have to create a new game to play.
(And they blah blah blah)
Have you ever been introduced to the concept of critical thinking? Or do you spend your vacations in a creationist theme park in Florida admiring the dioramas of Adam and Eve sitting in their saddles atop dinosaurs, just riding around taking in the scenery? And that quotation from Romans? "…what can be known about God.…" It's a phrase with grammar, syntax and no content. So, what CAN be known about God? The only answer provided is that the undefined "what" can be clearly seen by those who have already been indoctrinated by their cult as to what to see when there is nothing to see. What to hear when there is no sound. To internalise what their leaders teach them and to attribute those "teachings" to the central deity of just another mystery cult in a part of the world that was rife with them. The basic tenets of this new cult had been part of and central to religions all over the eastern half (more or less) of the Mediterranean for thousands of years, right down to details such as a lowly birth accompanied by signs and portents, performing miracles, coming to a judgment, execution, resurrection after the passage of three days, finally joining the great powers that exist outside of time in some spiritual plane until the Cosmic Egg Timer rings in the end of the age. From Egypt, across the crescent, the Seleucids and then north and west through Greece, to the Balkans and the north shore of the sea. Everywhere, gods of different names, variations in rituals but the same patterns in the core beliefs and origin stories. A large part of our world allows for freedom of religion, so believe whatever turns your crank or soothes your soul. Just don't fall into your own navel and imagine that you are practicing a religion that is unique or the first in anything. The ministers and rabbi under whose tutelage I studied were both very learned and devout practitioners and leaders within their own faiths. They had the most open minds towards this potentially divisive topic and never suffered from cognitive dissonance when current archaeology or forensic linguistics generated differences between science and holy books. The holy books were originally written by humans, were copied by hand from the time of the Pharaohs to the time of Gutenberg (roughly). Education is a truly liberating experience.
At the tolling of the bell of our day, while I find both theology and psychopathy intriguing, neither troubles me as I am a solipsist and I find it strangely comforting to know that when I die so does everything else.
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