[...]Even the miracles of Jesus were spread word of mouth and may or may not have been embellished, we don't have an exact historical account.
But what's amazing is those stories and their message have been preserved intact over thousands of years, even before they were written down. The message hasn't changed. If you don't think that's astounding then I don't know what to tell you. Most histories get lost between just a couple generations if they aren't written in stone. I feel there is some divine guidance for the message there.
Do you see any contradictions between the final part of that paragraph, and the next?
For the record, everything in the Bible has been edited, rewritten and/or selected for inclusion/exclusion many, many times. To give a quick summary:
- El (later merged with Yahweh) used to be the chief deity of the Canaanite pantheon, and married to Ashurah. Baal was alternately his brother or his son.
- Genesis has been (rather crudely) edited to contain two different creation stories which originally grew out of Egyptian and Mesopotamian creation stories (ref. the Sumerian/Babylonian creation story/ies). Which is natural, considering how the Canaanites were ruled by either of those for most of their history.
- The books telling of the early Jewish kingdoms have been edited and (re)written to claim that Judah and Israel were originally the same kingdom (they never were, but it was a useful way to integrate Israeli refugees after the Assyrian invasion).
- The polytheistic faith become henotheistic and later monolatristic to strengthen the power of the state and the king in Judah.
- Things were given a relatively final edit during the captivity in Babylon, and under the influence of Zoroastrianism the monolatristic faith became monotheistic. Since Zoroastrianism had an evil god as well, the angel (minor god?) Satan was recast as an evil minor god responsible for all evil.
- Cyrus the Great was referred to as Messiah (even though he wasn't Jewish!) when he allowed the Jews to return back to Jerusalem and helped them rebuild their temple.
- The editing of the Jewish religion only finished sometime in the 4th century BC.
- The early Christians spent about 400 years trying to decide upon what they believed and which text to edit, rewrite, plagiarise, insert or remove, and when the Protestants appeared they threw out stuff from the Bible.
- And if you want to continue, the early Muslims took what they wanted from this and ran with it (still took them 2-300 years to agree on a final version of the Koran though), and later both Mormons and Bahais have added to and edited the story.
This notion that the religious texts or messages have been preserved intact, simply has no basis in reality.
But beyond that I've seen all those shows of oh we found Jesus's bones he didn't really rise, haven't those all been debunked?
Yes. There are no physical evidence that any rebellious Jewish carpenter named Ieshua existed or did anything. It is however, more likely than not that he did exist, considering that a movement formed after him. It is somewhat strange that there is no real evidence of him existing, considering there were at least four other proclaimed Messiahs around that time, all of whom rebelled against the Romans and had their defeats and deaths recorded by historians, but explaining the existence of Christianity without Ieshua is even more far-fetched.
Has science found out what happens to our spirits when we die? Can science say we don't have a spirit?
There is no evidence of whatever is called spirits. As far as I know, they're a neo-Platonic idea, which was incorporated into Christianity as the religion formed.
No one knows. That's the real answer. The religious say there are things out there beyond our understanding and we seek spiritual enlightenment and have faith in the unknown. The atheist says there is nothing beyond my understanding, therefor when you die you die.
Tell me which is more crazy? Assuming you know everything or having faith in the unknown?
The atheist says that we don't have any reason to think that there are such things as Jinns, spirits, life after death, demons, or whatever else religions have come up with. Atheism never states that we already know everything.
And just claiming that there are things outside our understanding is an intellectual cop-out. It's just a way of defending the indefensible, cause there is no reason to think any of it exists.
