Why Faith is Important

What I claimed is that we can't be completely sure who wrote the four gospels.

No, the average life expectancy for those who did not die as children was about 50 years, in the civilized parts, not Judea which was relatively uncivilized so most probably died before age 50.

No, the literacy rate in the Roman empire averaged about 5-10% with the most educated areas being no more than 20%. Widespread education and the age of reasoning was a long way off especially in the outskirts of the empire. GDP per capita was about $500 per year, much lower than most African countries today.

Look at how we have instant access to virtually all the information in the world. We can fact-check any claim and are highly educated. Back then no such thing existed and the world was full of superstition and myth with the craziest stories easily spreading like wildfire. Even with our ability to fact check it seems like fake news still spreads as easily as ever and we have 15 million Mormons (I am an ex-Mormon) and that number is growing even when you can easily see its claims refuted by just a little bit of fact-checking online. Imagine how much worse it would have been with just word of mouth in villages. Just because somebody made a supernatural claim in ancient Judea doesn't mean we should assume it is true.

Paul never got to work with Jesus and Jesus was long dead when Paul became a Christian. There is no hard evidence that any of the supernatural claims happened and just because a book says a good of friends claimed to have seen the supernatural doesn't mean we should just assume this is true. "Eyewitness" accounts are everywhere for all sorts of crazy stuff and that doesn't make them all true.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

 

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You are wrong on life expectancy.
https://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-constant-2-000-years.html

Discussions about life expectancy often involve how it has improved over time.........But the inclusion of infant mortality rates in calculating life expectancy creates the mistaken impression that earlier generations died at a young age; Americans were not dying en masse at the age of 46 in 1907. The fact is that the maximum human lifespan — a concept often confused with "life expectancy" — has remained more or less the same for thousands of years. The idea that our ancestors routinely died young (say, at age 40) has no basis in scientific fact.​

On illiteracy, you talk of the Roman Empire, a population which spanned most of the known world at that time - North Africa, Asia, Europe. That's irrelevant. Jesus lived his entire life in the Galilee-Jerusalem area, a very small area, and he was a Jew. Jews were very literate, the community Jesus lived in was the Jewish community, all were literate.

As to the rest, you have made up your mind independent of evidence. If God Himself appeared before you and performed a miracle, you would claim it was a trick.

 

Nah, just telling the truth.

 

More people heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ because of Constantine, but in no way is he the Bedrock of Christianity. Don't confuse that. Jesus made it very clear there is a separation of God and government. Hopefully the Kingdom of God will influence government, but never by coercion.

 

I just don't even slightly accept that kind of nonsense.

We are a whole bunch of individual humans. We trust ourselves. We form relationships. We understand that the world isn't fair. We work together to have systems that mitigate various dangers and provide for various needs.

I don't see a justification for insisting that there be this "faith" thing.

 

Constantine is the reason Christianity gained dominance. Without him Christianity would have remained a niche religion in the Mediterranean. Jesus never said that there was a separation of Government and in fact the new testament is very clear that the government gets their power from God:
Romans 13:
13 All of you must obey the government rulers. Everyone who rules was given the power to rule by God. And all those who rule now were given that power by God. 2 So anyone who is against the government is really against something God has commanded. Those who are against the government bring punishment on themselves. 3 People who do right don’t have to fear the rulers. But those who do wrong must fear them. Do you want to be free from fearing them? Then do only what is right, and they will praise you.
4 Rulers are God’s servants to help you. But if you do wrong, you have reason to be afraid. They have the power to punish, and they will use it. They are God’s servants to punish those who do wrong. 5 So you must obey the government, not just because you might be punished, but because you know it is the right thing to do.
6 And this is why you pay taxes too. Those rulers are working for God, and they give all their time to the work of ruling. 7 Give everyone what you owe them. If you owe them any kind of tax, then pay it. Show respect to those you should respect. And show honor to those you should honor.

In the Old Testament when there was a truly God-run society it was a theocracy governed by a strict religious law of Moses.

 

You have not really addressed my major points refuting your claims we should assume ancient books of legend with claims in the books of eyewitnesses and what people did in those books. Now you are mostly debating ancient society and I just don't see how it is relevant to this debate. If God appeared to my I would believe in him. Why does God hide himself like this from his own Children especially when there is no much confusion that he exists? How can people choose to obey him if they can't even be sure he even exists or what the right religion is? Why doesn't he just show up on tv or in a football game just to give his children a visit? Isn't this what a good Dad would do? If I got confused who my Dad it would be very nice of him to give me a visit in a way that is very obvious like actually visiting not communicating with "feelings" or lucky events.

 

When there are too many topics in a post, I choose the points I want to reply to. Replying to all of them is impractical.

You claimed the Bible was unreliable because ancient societies were ignorant, illiterate, had very short life spans, and essentially did not have well functioning social, economic, and technological systems. I pointed out the error in that argument.

Good questions.

If God appeared during a football game, would you really accept Him? Or would you claim it was tv special effects, and the eye witnesses were unreliable?

Many people choose to accept Jesus so its not at all an insurmountable task. God's presence is all around you, maybe you aren't looking for it, or you just choose not to see it or not to recognize it.

Why doesn't God just appear to you personally and blatantly and do something that convinces you that God is real? Thats a hard question, and I don't have a simple answer that will satisfy you. If you really want to go into it, try starting here https://www.gotquestions.org/God-hidden.html but that's from a religious perspective (but your question is a religious question), and you seem to reject out of hand all Biblical based arguments.

 

You are a non-believer right? They quote scripture seemingly far more often than those in the Body of Christ.

The Scripture you quote is fine and accurate. However....the separation I am talking about is when Jesus said "render unto Caesar what is Caesars and give to God what is His. Corporately we are under the hand of government. Individually we seek the Kingdom of God. Constantine was a tool of God. Doesn't mean anything as to his own personal motive. Jesus gave us water Baptism by way of immersion, Constantine gave us "sprinkling" a quick, non symbolic easy fix for his army. Sure many came to know Jesus thru Constantine, but many are "God-like in form but deny the power thereof".