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@FMF
I jumped through a couple of your hoops.
How about finally you proposing a more impressive example of a candidate for perfect moral life then Jesus.
What do you have to lose?
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@sonship saidI have no reason to think Jesus actually represented "perfectly morality" during his life. We only have a carefully constructed story written decades and decades after his death by people who never met him and who were trying to create a cult of personality and breakaway religion centred on him.
How about finally you proposing a more impressive example of a candidate for perfect moral life then Jesus.
What do you have to lose?
There's no onus on me to come up with a superstition-based sense of morality or mythological figure that beats whatever superstition-based sense of morality and mythological figure that appeals to you. I have no reason to believe there is any such thing as "perfect morality".
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I am an atheist.
But atheism leaves too many totally unanswered problems.
Why is there something at all rather than nothing ?
See?
With atheism, too many unanswered (and in some cases UNATTEMPTED to answer, ) questions.
Notice how your mind is laboring to render the question I asked above irrelevant.
@sonship saidSome problems are unanswered, it's true. You have faith in the answers you have settled for, and that's fine. The issue remains: how can there possibly be no evidence to substantiate the supernatural claims you make about yourself?
But atheism leaves too many totally unanswered problems.
@sonship said"The question" you are now asking is an obvious sidestepping of the question I am asking about the claims you make about yourself. It takes no "labouring" of the mind to spot this.
Notice how your mind is laboring to render the question I asked above irrelevant.
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We only have a carefully constructed story written decades and decades after his death by people who never met him and who were trying to create a cult of personality and breakaway religion centred on him.
Take the for the most part rather un-miraculous sayings of Jesus in Matthew 5 through 8.
Could you take just one of those chapters and separate out the fabricated sayings added decades latter from the authentic ones? Do so on the 48 verses to Matthew chapter five.
Demonstrate to us where the fictional words were added in with the more likely authentic ones.
For example - "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens" (v.3)
Authentic or fabricated?
Proof ?
Now go through the rest of the verses there at least until we are impressed with your method of textural criticism.
@sonship saidFor me, the credibility of the narrative is as I have described it. I have no desire to divest you of what you believe. That aside, what evidence do you have about the aforementioned supernatural claims you repeatedly make about yourself? Or are you still denying you have ever made them?
@FMFWe only have a carefully constructed story written decades and decades after his death by people who never met him and who were trying to create a cult of personality and breakaway religion centred on him.
Take the for the most part rather un-miraculous sayings of Jesus in Matthew 5 through 8.
Could you take just one of those chapters an ...[text shortened]... the rest of the verses there at least until we are impressed with your method of textural criticism.
@FMF
I still expect you to back up your bluster on NT construction.
But, hey, you're so smart, you can field this one too in your spare moment.
Some problems are unanswered, it's true. You have faith in the answers you have settled for, and that's fine. The issue remains: how can there possibly be no evidence to substantiate the supernatural claims you make about yourself?
Take a stab. Why is there anything at all instead of nothing?
What's your atheism answer ?
Humour us. Be daft.
Oh, while you are concerned about supernatural claims, you're going to take a stab at where the entire natural world came from without anything outside of the natural world to be its cause.
Do you believe in a natural world that existed from eternity ?
Are you going to reach for the "No onus" hat?
@sonship saidI have absolutely no idea who thought up or wrote "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens" or when it was written.
Don't worry about divesting me of what I believe. Just back up your bluster about textural criticism with some demonstration of your skills.