Quote Originally Posted by pacfan View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing View Post
So a minor event two thousand years ago in an age when the population was vastly more uneducated/ignorant/credulous/manipulable than today could be written any way you want five minutes after it happened. Fifty years later and it's guaranteed to contain as much truth as any fairy story, which is really all any religion is.
When asked if they should pay taxes to the Roman invaders, Jesus answered in this manner: he asked for a coin and asked who's image was on it, and the disciples answer Caesar. So Jesus answered, 'give to Caeser what belongs to him.'

In another case, Jesus was asked if a woman sinner should be stoned to death. He answered, 'let those without sin be the first to cast the stone,' and they all left because they were all sinners.

Frankly, I couldn't find anyone today who can answer such question with such intelligence and wit, not even Obama. So to use your line of reasoning, if there was such genius during those days when, as you say, population was 'vastly more uneducated/ignorant/credulous/manipulative,' then that person must have been a superhuman.

What I'm pointing out is that you can be certain that almost nothing in the New Testament ever happened the way it's described, even the crucifixion of somebody who was so superhuman that he could barely persuade twelve people to follow him in an age when there were hundreds of religions with thousands of followers each.


What made Christianity the market leader in religions was the Ray Kroc* guy/s, the man/men who took the crucifiction story and the carcass of one of hundreds of religions at that time and built the elaborate fairy tale of Christianity around it, creating the market-leading franchise we see today. Christianity was just another failed startup till the Kroc guy saw the potential in the crucifixion story and went about building the franchise.


The "let he who is without sin"/"give unto Caesar" bits have their equivalents in all the major world religions. Every religion has a big bunch of moral fables/parables etc. that show the wiseness and munificence of their particular god/s. Things that push the buttons in your head that make you think, yep, this is the religion for me. This, out of the thousands of different franchises available is the one I'm going to follow.

*Ray Kroc was the salesman who walked into a California restaurant run by the McDonald brothers, saw the potential, bought them out and built replica restaurants all over America, eventually creating the multinational we all know and love today.