We call ourselves Christians and followers of Jesus. FedUp American keeps telling us that there's some doubt about His existence, that he was an idiot, loser, etc. Who do we think he was, and why?
I'll take exception with your last statement...I'll guess that a true expert in this historical area could most probably construct reasonable arguments both against and for the factual existence of Jesus Christ. Personally, I've never had any trouble believing that he existed, but then I also believe that Krishna and Buddha existed.
There are historical records of Buddah, Jesus, and Mohammad existing...so I have to go along with that, and say yes they existed.
Yes Jesus of Nazareth existed, but finding his "true teachings" from pouring over canonical and non-canonical gospels and writings of early christian formations is a sueless task that for some reason or another has gained a huge following, especially in america, that even has their own scholary journals...
Jesus was a jew who became a yogi in the eastern tradition. Some well meaning people started a religion after his death to honor his teachings. But without his guidence, the teachings fell apart as interpretation crept into their meaning. Is this so hard to believe? x
I'll even throw Bob Marley in the mix. I think he existed too. But yeah. Jesus the Nazarene existed and stories are still told about the dude. Even if he was just a guy, he's immortalized by trillians of people who believe he had something important to say.
...and believe he was God. And i know this is a little bit superficial considering the world doesn't even have "trillions" of people, but according to religioustolerance.org Christians number about 2,039 million and decreasing
I think you can still believe the Bible literally and not be a fundamentalist, but then again, I'm not a big fan of the whole "academia=atheism" double think we force students into.
I defenitly agree on both points. I agree that the bible can be taken literally and not be a fundamentalist. One of the tricks to this wording is what you mean by literal? Do you mean Biblical inerrancy meaning that in the bible's "original" form nothing contradicts and all matters of faith, history and science are true, or it could mean Biblical infallibility where the bible is literal on all matters of faith, but not science or history etc?
