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Ohhhh you're a crusader. Ok well carry on. It just seems like a constant dark head space to spend SO much time on something you hate.
Au contraire. I enjoy my work. Holding a mirror to the dark spirit, cold heart, and blinkered thinking of fundamentalists is one of my favourite things.
The doctrine of eternal damnation in hell for not believing in/accepting Jesus has been at the cornerstone of Christian belief for 2000 years. It has been used at every stop to bludgeon people into being terrified they will suffer eternally if they don't accept Jesus. But I am here to tell you it is a false doctrine that you have no reason to fear and I can prove it. Listen carefully:
Jesus died in 30CE. At his death nothing he ever said was recorded either by the apostles or secular historians while he was alive. We have no historical records of any of the apostles so we cannot prove they even lived, much less that they wrote anything including the gospels.
The first gospel, Mark's gospel didn't get written until sometime after the fall of Jerusalem in 70CE, so say the gospel was written about 75-80 CE. That's being generous since we haven't a single scrap of the gospel with which to actually date it until the mid 2nd Century.
The first mention of anything that resembles hell comes in Mark 9:43: "If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out."
Historians don't know who wrote Mark's gospel but they're certain it wasn't John Mark, Peter's supposed companion. We haven't a single mention of John Mark in the historical record. This is all church tradition. And if historians cannot trace Mark's gospel to John Mark, then they cannot trace it to Peter, and if they cannot trace it to Peter then they cannot trace it to Jesus. So there is no proof Jesus ever said this.
Same with Matthew. Matthew did not write the gospel that bears his name according to historians. The way his name landed on his gospel is basically in the late 2nd century Irenæus threw a lot of 1st century names into a hat and drew out four names to which he assigned these names to the four gospels.
So this is what we end up with: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
The gospels were written 50-100 years after Jesus by anonymous highly-educated Greeks who didn't have any sources of Jesus' sayings to work from. They relied mostly on stories circulating around the Roman empire for up to a century that supposedly came from some great prophet in Judea who was crucified, little else. With no sources from which to draw, the gospel writers had to make up Jesus' words. So everything you read in the gospels about hell came from the minds of former pagan Greeks newly converted to Christianity who still had the Greek beliefs of Hades and the fiery River Phlegethon from which the Christian beliefs on hell originated.
Bottom line: it cannot be proved with the slightest degree of certainty that Jesus' threats in John 3:16, John 14:6 and John 8:24 originated with Jesus. The best evidence, the ONLY evidence we have shows that ALL of Jesus words in the gospels were made up in the fertile minds of Greek writers trying to spread a new faith called Christianity.
So people have no reason at all to fear they will go to hell and suffer eternally if they do not accept Jesus.
The far simpler reason, of course, is that hell is a fictitious place.
Here's the thing about Lee Strobel and others of his ilk: Strobel et al. has found a way to milk gullible Christians of their $$$'s by first setting up a good story of how they came to Christ, then making a cottage industry out of writing books that use his pet phrase, "The Case For...." Looks at this list:
The Case For Christ (original)
The Case For Faith
The Case For a Creator
The Case For Grace
The Case For Miracles
The Case For the Real Jesus
The Case For Christianity
The Case For Christmas! (for God's sake!)
The Case For Hope
The Case For a Creator for Cretins....er..Kids
The Case For Easter
I mean anyone who can't see what Strobel is doing here--using books as a cash cow to generate money for his lavish lifestyle--has either got to be a moron....or a Christian.
The truth is, Christianity has devolved into a circus where a few smart con artists simply label themselves Christians and then proceed to bilk hapless losers out of the few bucks they have to support their opulent lifestyles. People don't know that Stroble has a team of ghost writers who crank out these "The Case For..." books like clockwork and then he sells them on the strength of his name using his tagline "hard-hitting (love that phrase) investigative reporter who set out to prove Jesus false and then came to believe in him." If you were a half-wit and fell for this kind of slop wouldn't you spend money on him too???????
Since these scam artists cannot offer any real proof for Jesus they merely recycle the same tired old stories and excuses for why Jesus is real in an effort to keep the green rolling in. Simply put, if there's no proof for Jesus, then there is no proof he ever said any of the things attributed to him, including the man-made teachings on hell and who will go there.
Yes! Yes! "The Case Against the Case" I'd forgotten all about that.
Quote:
I can't imagine any thinking skeptic being taken in by it, and I'm sure that Strobel realized that. But he's not selling the book to skeptics. He's selling it to Christians who either want to reinforce their faith, or think they're going to convince their skeptic friends with it.
<<cut>>
Last edited by mensaguy; 06-24-2019 at 02:19 PM..
Reason: Tsk. Tsk. Please don't equate morons and Christians.
I don't believe in UFOs, but I also don't spend large chunks on time on websites talking about it.
This obsession is quite revealing.
There are people who do not believe in UFOs that spend time on UFO discussions.
There are people who do not believe in Bigfoot who watch every TV program and go to conventions.
There are people who think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone that jump into every conspiracy discussion.
Some people simply find those topics interesting, so that spend their free time doing things like that.
Same here. Some non-believers simply find religion an interesting topic for discussion. There are probably lots of different reasons that they come here.
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investigative reporter who set out to prove Jesus false and then came to believe in him." If you were a half-wit and fell for this kind of slop wouldn't you spend money on him too??????? 
