Christianity is a religion that should have been dead in it's track even before it started according to the conditions of they, yet somehow it managed to survive. This is a massive contradiction, since it is a religion based on facts and what people saw at the time. If you can't trust eyewitness accounts then you can't trust any thing. If you want to get to the last paragraph for a summary of why we can believe Jesus' claim to be divine.
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose.html There are several factor shown that Christianity should have been dead and buried even before it tried to get of the ground.
Factor #1 -- Who Would Buy One Crucified? - In other religions the messiah like figures is a person of great strength and would never allow himself to be humiliated by the hands of man like being crucified. Also since people of "the way" claim he was god, this is even more nonsense, since for one God can never become man and also God will never allow himself to be treated in such a manner, and yet this is the primary claim of Christian, that we believe in a crucified saviour. That is an extraordinary claim and most people see it as foolishness
Factor #2 -- Neither Here Nor There: Or, A Man from Galilee?? - The stigma of where you were born was still around then. Galilee was a backwater of a backwater. Jews weren't highly regarded and even among Jews, Galilee was some sort of redneck place.
Factor #3 -- Getting Physical! The Wrong "Resurrection" - Quite simply dead people stay dead. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Also the prevailing believe at the time that was that physical was evil and thus having it destroyed and living in a spiritual plane is the ultimate goal of humanity.
Factor #4 -- What's New? What's Not Good - It's all about the ancients. Christianity was a new religion and that meant it couldn't be trusted. The Jews also had problems with it since they were stooped in their genealogies that trace their root back to their forefathers and thus they always compared Jesus with Abraham.
Factor #5 -- Don't Demand Behaviour - How dare you tell me what to do with my life. Christianity tells us to live a pure life, but most lives then as now are based on living life to the fullest.
Factor #6 -- Tolerance is a Virtue - Christianity was upsetting the usual order of the time about spirituality. (The title of this one is a bit confusing to try and explain.)
Factor #7 -- Stepping Into History - This is about reports of things that happened back then that could be verifiable and thus if anyone of these reports found in the Bible, like things recorded in Acts, then you could point to the falsehood and then be suspicious of the rest of what is being written. There are so many things that happen in Acts that if they didn't happen, distractors could point to them, but we don't see that happening. Man even described are seen by countless people. Th Passover was often attended by millions of people and thus if you get anything wrong, it is easy to pick and discredit the rest of your story.
Factor #8 -- Do Martyrs Matter, and More? - You fight for your religion, you don't simply allow yourself to be killed for your cause. Persecution was the primary method on how Christianity spread. And rather than fight the persecution, you just simply submitted to it.
Factor #9 -- Human vs. Divine: Never the Twain Shall Meet! - God becoming man is simply madness.
Factor #10 -- No Class! - Everyone is equal in this religion. Utter nonsense since they knew that some people superior to others. Even now we try our best to separate people into little boxes.
Factor #11 -- Don't Rely on Women! - Women were considered to be reliable witness, and yet in the Bible women are some of the most important witnesses to some of the most important events in the Bible. These Christians are simply mad.
Factor #12 -- Don't Rely on Bumpkins, Either! - Fishermen and shepherds are low lives. Yet we see many important things as result of people who were considered to be unimportant in the scheme of things. The primary preachers of the gospel were ignorant fishermen. :crazeyes:
Factor #13 -- You Can't Keep a Secret! - Society back then was group orientated, which is still the case in some parts of the world today. Thus it would be impossible to keep anything secret, unlike the way we value our privacy here in the West. So any claims would have been check up by those who are keeping an eye on making sure society ran smoothly.
Factor #14 -- An Ignorant Deity?? - If you want a decent deity, at least make him respectable.
Factor #15 -- A Prophet Without Honour - At least make him honourable, not make him die like some common thief. Everything about his death and burial showed he died dishonourably. Not fitting for a messiah.
Factor #16 -- Miscellaneous Contrarium - There are various other things that are talked about that are contrary to normal life of a 1st century person. Just look at the article for them. Christianity was simply contrary to the lives lived back then and those are the demands it placed.
Acts 17:6,7 And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; 7 Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.
Factor #17 -- Encouraging People to Check the Facts for Themselves - There are just so many things that happened in the NT that could simply be debunked at the time because so many could check up on the facts of the story. Everywhere Jesus went he was amongst a crowd. SO things like healing people would have been se b thousands. There are even stories of Romans who had things done to the people around them, like the healing of his servant. A centurion is a highly respectable position and relying on his word when it didn't happen, that is a big problem. The fact is that the Bible makes many claims that could be verifiable by the people of the time. All it took was for one of the to be false and the people could refute the claims easily, but in many cases the people had to resort to outright lies to try and discredit the claims the early Christians made. The claims of Jesus' divinity could easily be shown false since he did many things to show he was Messiah. These were witnessed thousands and we never see any one event of Jesus being discredited by those who were there.
The whole point is this: Christianity makes extraordinary claims that could easily been stopped at the time if any one of them was proven to be false. Yet Christianity flourished under the conditions it was placed in. If the things recorded in the Gospel and Acts didn't happen, then there was ample opportunity to show them to be false by the people around them, since they were in plain view of crowds. Christianity is a life changer and without any facts to back it up, it would have dead in the water, and yet we are here now. Something extraordinary had to have happened for it to be still around now.
