Expert: Brenda Martin - 12/19/2008

Question
My question is how can we prove Christianity or any religion is right? Can we prove that laws were handed from God or is it just common sense for suvival?

I myself was a follower of Christ for over 20yrs but in getting older and a little more skeptical, questions arose. Don't you think a man who did all those things would be written about a little more than he was? And no, Josephus,Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and others were not right. These men, especialy Josephus, were since proven wrong and that part of the writtings were rewritten by the roman catholic church to fit their needs, yet people still cling to them. It seems to me, and must occur to any thinking person, that feeding thousands with two fish and two loaves would gain the attention of even the most blind of historians. That fastening whips and beating everyone in the temple with it would surely be noted in the annals of the temple and written down by its scribes. That any of the miracles Jesus performed would be written down by ANY of the hundreds if not thousands of historians and scholars living in the area at the time.

One way we prove history is to study the event and the region in which it happened and then to also study the surrounding areas to see what those other people might say. An example would be several historians of different areas would all write about the same earthquake or an eclipse. No one writes about a man who fed thousands with two fish, healed the sick and even raised some from the dead but the gospels. We already know the gospels were writen many years after Jesus died. Most of them over a hundred years later! Think about how dicombobbled a story can get in just a few days of its original telling, let alone the fact of 40-50 years after Jesus's death, which is when the first of the christian writtings is known to have surfaced.

I am by no means a christian hater or of any sort that belittles people for what they believe, as I have already said, I worshiped Christ for over 20yrs, but I feel it is time to stop with the self-delusionment.

It is time for people to open their eyes and set themselves free of this religious prison. Lets take a step back from Jesus and look at religion period.

One of the things said is if Jesus wasn't real, could he have influinced us so much? Even going as far as changing the way we veiw time? (B.C.-A.D.)

Let us not forget that most religions had this power. The religions of the Greeks the Romans the Babylonians the Sumerians and so on ALL had influencial power over the peoples that lived within their scope of reality, and even today. The ancient Sumner writing of Gilgamesh, which stretches back to 5,000yrs ago was so prominent that the story was passed down for millinia...ever read the book of Noah? Another example of influencial knowledge would be the Egyptian book of the dead which is where we can see how the Ten Commandments came about. Expl= "I have not killed" became "Thou shal not kill". "I have not stolen" became "Thou shall not steal" and so on. So to say "if Jesus wasn't real, could he have..." doesnt prove anything. Are not ALL gods, ancient or otherwise influential in some way. Our very own basis of government was addopted by the Romans and Greeks, who's knowledge was handed down to them, so they believed, by their gods, who in their eyes, ruled EVERY aspect of life. Are we to say the reason we have fire is because Promethius gave it to us? Fire is the basis for many of our technologies, steam power, light, rocket propulsion and so on. Fire is very influincial. Was it because of Promethius? Now we don't believe in Zeus or any other deity of theirs, we call it mythology, but we use a system of government which was directly brought about by pegan polytheisim. Let us not forget that in their time the gods they worshiped, to them atleast, were very real. They believed in them so much that their branch of religion survived for well over two milinia! Does this prove that Vishnu was real, just because millions of Indians are influenced by its teachings? And what about Santa Claus? Look at the influence he has on society today. Is he real?

What about Mithra the sun god of persia? This religion is practicly identical to christianity and was practied 600yrs before christ! Born of a virgin. Brilliant teacher with 12 followers. Born on Dec. 25th. Died and rose again on the third day. Performed many miracles. BTW the egyptian god Horus has all these attributes also, as well as many many other gods from ancient times.

The fact is that alot of ancient peoples came from the surrounding areas of Mesopotamia, and they took the oral traditions with them. Everyone did this. Moving about the earth, trading stories and traditions, absorbing the things that are usefull and discarding the things that are not. Adam and Eve is a story that goes back to ancient mesopotamia, as well as the flood as well as the garden of eden. Even the trees of good and evil and eternal life have their origins well before the first five books of the bible. And what of the Roman Catholic church? Can ANYONE deny the influence of this sect? They changed the sabbath to saturday,(which BTW is from the god Saturn)they worship the dead,(saints) they practice the rosary (which can be dated back to egypt and babylon before that)they worship a vigin,(thousands of religions have a virginal mother)and practice many many other traditions which can all be gleened from one religion or another throughout time. They influence millions on our planet today and the basis for their religion is not even Christ. When Constantine made Christianity the national religion of rome it was for political purposes. If the reigning cult back then had been Buddhism then today we in the west, because we take almost all of our concepts from the romans, would have been buddhists. Let us remember that the reason for Constintines religious change was not because he felt his heart strings pulled by god, it was because christianity was a force to be rekoned with in his time and he needed communal cohesion. Its what was popular back then in his time and in the society he ran so he had to concied to it. Think thats all a bunch of malarky? Imagine if our president came on t.v. one day and said we will all be Buddists." Here in America it's predominatly christian so we would raise teetotal hell. Now imagine you're Constantine and the majority of your populace worshiped a dead man named Jesus, and by the way your populace was becoming unruly and tired of the old ways of the gods and wanted something new. Do you yell Jupiter? Or Zeus? No. You adopt what your people want and whatever will quiet them down as well as gain you favor in their eyes.

Mankind is an inventful and imaginitive creature. When we don't understand something and can come up with no decerning answer...we make one up. We do it so much we invented a word for it...theory. Imagine early man, seeing the sun go down and night approching. Now he doesn't know what the sun is but he does know it brings light, makes him warm and makes the crops grow. It must be good. But at night when the sun is down it is dark, colder, scarier. So it is bad. Religion was born from this concept. Light vs. Dark. Good vs. Evil. Now of course this is a most rudementary of explanations but you can gather the concept. ALL religions share this concept of Good vs. Evil. Good is the light and Evil is the darkness. They didn't know the earth rotated around the sun which caused this "light or dark". All they knew was that one seemed good to them and one didn't so they filled in the gaps with theories otherwise known as beliefs.

Now imagine you dont understand the concept of death, as surely all of prehistoric man did not. They knew that they were there, in existance and they knew that they were not, when they died. What would you think? How would you deal with the fact that one minute the person next to you is alive and through one reason or another, in the next minute is dead? They did know that standing infront of a charging wooly mammoth would get you killed. They knew that you can't bath in a bubbling tar pit. They passed down to the younger of their society these things that are safe and not safe, and the ways to best go about living that would indeed be best for everyone. The earliest known burial sites were from cavemen. Does this tells us that at least they had a belief of life after death because personal belongings were found with the body or was it because they thought they were one with the planet and it was natural to return to it? Or was it because a body left lying around will rot and smell and gather flies as well as any other preditors out there? Was it a mixture of it all?

Prehistoric peoples, the founders of society and civilization knew that in order to live and perform cohesivly as a group there needed to be laws, or rules. You cant have a conductive society if everyone can just go around killing and stealing and sleeping with everyone elses mates. Everyone in the society was important. Everyone was needed to hunt and gather and grow crops and survive. Now imagine if you could just go around killing off the people who performed these tasks? Imagine the discontent of the tribal leader when he comes from the field and sees everyone having relations with his mate? Imagine if it were ok to steal the stores of food that were gathered for the survival of the rest of the tribe? It would not be good. Thus laws were invented, litteral exstensions of our feelings of how to live properly and which made the most sense. Whatever those laws might have been back in prehistoric times we dont know, but the basic premis is the same...killing is bad, stealing is bad...etc. The survival of any group, beit now or back then, depends on cohessivness, the ability to get along with others. Since man has a plethora of ideas of what is right or wrong, a central basis had to be inveted. It is not good for the comunity if it's members went around killing and stealing or disrupting the flow of things by sleeping with the chiefs wife. One can plainly see the need of a construct that keeps the majority in line and fit for suvival.

The concepts of religion come from the need to have peace, understanding and survivability. Remember, we as mankind invented religion. If Jesus was real then that must mean that everyone else is wrong. Is 20,000 plus years of civilisation wrong? Yes, they are ALL wrong. Mankind has constantly reinvented beliefs to fit his views and needs. Who is right? Lets take a look at some of those who thought they were...

The Egyptian empire lasted for more than 3,000yrs. This was a people who had a god for EVERYTHING! Now, surely to them it all seemed real, they even whent to great lengths in their religion to build massive tombs and temples to their gods. They even believed that their ruler the Pharoh WAS a god. Imagine living in a society that was thousands of years old. What your elders believed and told you...you would believe. I mean, can 3,000yrs of worship really be wrong? Next lets visit the Buddhists. Buddhism is 2,500yrs old and has over 300million followers around the world. Are they right? How about Islam? This religion not only mirrors Christianity but has been around just as long. Are they right? The point I'm making is regional traditions and infuence have everything to do with how most of us believe. And the fact that a practiced religion has 1,000 plus years under it's belt does not mean it is the one true religion. And what of that point? Christianity is a baby compared to the length of time other traditions have been observed. I'm speaking of the Jesus idea. We know that christianity has it's roots in hundreds of other religions which are far older but for this purpose I'm talking about Jesus himself. He has only been worshiped for 2,000yrs, pretty short time when compared to the other traditions and mythologies around the world.

All of the ancient peoples believed the way they did things was right. They all believed that their gods were the true gods. We in todays society know that fire is a process of combustion between fuel and eccelerants. A chemical and molecular process. None of us believe that it was handed down from a god named Promethious. But certain ancient peoples did. They believed they were 100% right. But their time has come and gone and we can now look back and see that while interesting, their beliefs were wrong. It is time and perception that help guide our beliefs. We nolonger live in a time with a 1000 gods or a scientific ignorance such as they did. Our perseptions have changed because we have the ability to prove how fire works and how the sun rises and where the rain comes from and we nolonger have the need to invent such answers. Their time was their time. And though what they believed in that time was right and good in their eyes, it did not make it fact.

Believe me, I wish it were as simple as accepting Christ and I'd be saved and have a wonderful god to look after me and bless my life. The fact is that Jesus was yet another god to arise from the minds of men in order to help us understand and make us feel safe. Noone wants to think that we are just floating out here in the abyss with no purpose or reason and noone wants to believe we just die and thats it and that the bad people of this world will go unpunished and that being good has no benifit.

We as a species need something bigger than ourselves to believe in. We are fragile and at times helpless and at times cruel. We want answers and reassurance that there is order to this chaos. I want these things as well, and for awhile I believed in Christianty because it gave me these delusions. The fact is we all need to feel in control and the world we live in is in constant opposition of those needs. This has been the same since man began.

It is easy to see why religion came about, not only is it a form of control but also a form of hope, hope that we are not alone in this struggle to survive. Hope that in this vast universe something else is responsible for us other than ourselves. I only wish it were true. But wishing and inventing fantastical stories does not make it so.

Answer
"wishing and inventing fantastical stories does not make it so"

No your right it wouldnt, but that is not what TRUE Christianity is based on.

Some say that Jesus never lived—that he is, in effect, a creation of some first-century men.

Answering such skeptics, the respected historian Will Durant argued: “That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.”

The Historians’ History of the World observed: “The historical result of Jesus’ activities was more momentous, even from a strictly secular standpoint, than the deeds of any other character of history. A new era, recognised by the chief civilisations of the world, dates from his birth.”

The New Encyclopædia Britannica thus concludes: “..independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.”

Now add to that;-

1. The Bible was written over a 1,600-year period. Its writers lived at different times and came from many walks of life. Some were farmers, fishermen, and shepherds. Others were prophets, judges, and kings. The Gospel writer Luke was a doctor. Despite the varied backgrounds of its writers, the Bible is harmonious from beginning to end.

2. The Bible is scientifically accurate. It even contains information that was far ahead of its time.

3. The Bible is also historically accurate and reliable. Its accounts are specific. They include not only the names but also the ancestry of individuals.

4. The Bible contains numerous prophecies, many of which have already been fulfilled.



all the best
Brenda