Dan

You are ascribing journalistic integrity to your sources by your own admission, who are writing 2000 years after the fact. Where is your justification? It comes down to a question of who do you believe? I am aware that a lot of lies were tossed about during the last election, that is a red herring. During the Trump era there were as many voices speaking the truth (if not more) as there were speaking lies lies. Where are the counter testimonials from the apostolic era? Surely the Roman government had an interest in suppressing this upstart movement, where are the investigative documents attesting to it's falsehood? And your assertion that the Rosetta Stone just works and bible stories don't is just that, an unsupported assertion.

Yes I am, and that is a reasonable conjecture. The new testament changed only negligibly after it's initial authorship as I am sure you know. I am trusting documents that have remained unchanged over 2000 years based on the fact that the authors were within 40 years of the actual events and this is far more reasonable than trusting conjectures from authors 2000 years removed from the events who are using the same source documents anyway. Do you trust the authenticity of the Rosetta Stone?

The authors I believe wrote what they had to say about Jesus within 40 years of his ministry, when the witnesses were still alive. Your sources are offering their conjectures 2000 years after the fact. Who do you think is the more reliable witness?

As an engineer, I've always found the telialogical argument for a creator God pretty convincing. The fact that the universe exists in all it's complexity is NOT self justifying, the whole thing is outrageously unlikely without some sort of guiding consciousness behind it. The idea that there is some sort of barrier between us and our creator is also easy to accept. There is evidence of him all around us and remaining in us, but we just can't to see him directly. The notion that the creator would desire fellowship with us is not all that hard to buy, after all, what creator wouldn't want to converse with sentient creations? The conclusion that we are driven to is that there is something about God's nature and ours that keeps him from doing what he want's to do, fellowship with us. The Christian position is that our current nature is so repugnant to God that he withholds his direct presence from us to keep himself from destroying us on the spot in spite of his desire to be with us. Hence Christ's ministry as atoning sacrifice and the Holy spirit's ministry as transforming agent. The thrust of the Christian message is that God exists and he desperately want's to transform us into beings who can enter directly into his presence and experience his approval instead of his disgust. Because of where we are starting from this is a painful process, so the church exists to support us during the process.

What is your justification for claiming that Jesus never claimed to be God incarnate? The Pharisees heard him claim that he and the father were one and were ready to stone him for what they perceived was blasphemy, and our of anybody else's mouth it would have been. You are right in asserting that Christ's crucifixion came as a horrifying shock to his followers, but it was only because they were slow to understand the nature of his ministry. Christ himself predicted it several times during his ministry, he knew it was coming, and even welcomed it, as the consummation of his work and his opportunity to return home to his rightful place in Glory. If this is hard for you to swallow, look at it this way. You believe in God. You believe God loves us. Do you believe he loves us enough to do something like what Christ did for us? I do.

There are a lot of Christians (and others) who are seeking perfection, or even just an acceptable level of effort, in an effort to achieve rightousness. There are even some annoying ones who think they have attained it. Christ had some comforting words for those who were making an effort to work their way into acceptability and some hard words for those who thought they had attained it and were lording it over everybody else. Basically he said let go of these attempts and notions of perfection. It's got to be by me and through me. Christ claimed to be God incarnate and I believe it. This is the hard part for the skeptic to believe, but he was perfect, and was therefor an acceptable sacrifice. His ministry goes beyond atoning for my sins, by faith he invests me with his nature and has given me a down payment on the life I will one day have with him and the entire believing host in glory. This does NOT relieve me of my responsibility to be a comfort and succor to those in this world, regardless of whether they believe as I do or not. It's a matter of motive. I do not work for the betterment of my community or myself in any effort to justify myself in the eyes of my neighbors or my God, but because it pleases and glorifies my creator and savior.

I come from a tradition that acknowledges that hate and racism are endemic in the entire human race, regardless of what philosophical system or spiritual disciplines you embrace in an admittedly commendable effort to combat it in yourself or in you community. I had to be brought to a point where I acknowledged that all such efforts by myself or others were hopeless. Neighbors, we cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. The nature of Christ's ministry was to do more than model a good life for us, it was to earn a perfect merit that he could impute to us after enduring the penalty we deserved at the cross. This is the ancient tenet of the faith that must always be accepted as an antecedent to trying to adopt any code of conduct you perceive in the word. Even a regenerate Christian is incapable of leading a perfectly Christ like life in this world, but because he rose, we will also rise at the end of time and enter into a truly perfect society, where love and mutual respect will be integral to all our characters.