Is Christianity man-made?

[Zzyzx]

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Straight-forward question:

Did humans make (develop, invent, construct) the religions known collectively as Christianity?

Cite supporting evidence.

[JoeyKnothead]

From the OP:

Did humans make (develop, invent, construct) the religions known collectively as Christianity?

Certainly.

No concept ever got it thought up, lest there was a human a-doin' it, unless we consider the anchovies' hatred of pizza.

Supporting evidence'd be that none have ever sold a god beyond the concept stage, unlike Ford, who went ahead with the Pinto.

[Divine Insight]

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Straight-forward question:

Did humans make (develop, invent, construct) the religions known collectively as Christianity?

Straight-forward answer:

It is my conclusion after years of contemplating and studying this religion that this is the only rational conclusion.

Cite supporting evidence.

Well, that could basically require the writing of a book to explain why I have come to this conclusion.

To begin with I can only offer that this is indeed my personal conclusion. However, I will argue that I also feel that I have sufficient and overwhelming reasons to come to this conclusion.

In an attempt to make a long story as short as possible allow me to try to give a brief bullet outline of my own personal experience with the religion.

However, before I begin, allow me to clarify one thing. You stated, "Religions known collectively as Christianity?" However, I would like to expand on that to include all of the Abrahamic religions from whence they myriad of Christianity themselves evolved.

Allow me to attempt a bullet history as briefly as I can. This is still going to be fairly long, but trust me this is in bullet form. It can't be reduced much further. It already going to be lacking tons of solid reasons for rejecting Christianity and the Abrahamic religions in general.


I began life born into a Free Methodist denomination of Christianity.

As a young child I accepted on faith that the religion was true.

My faith was not placed in God (which would have been impossible at that time), but instead it was a faith placed in my parents, elders, clergy, etc. In other words, I originally had no reason to believe that these people didn't know what they were talking about.

In fact, I become so convinced that the Bible was the "Word of God" that I decided to study it for myself and help God spread his word just as we are told he wants us to do.

I even recognized that various pastors of our very own denomination of Christianity would often have discussions where they would disagree on what this God expects from people and various other interpretations of the Bible. This was very clear to me because several of my uncles were Free Methodist Pastors and so I saw these pastors having after-dinner discussions quite often.

It quickly became apparent to me that I cannot seek out these pastors for answers to question since it's already crystal clear that they aren't in agreement with each other on many of the more important question. Therefore if I was to understand "God's Word" I would clearly need to read it for myself.

Moreover, I was also taught to believe that with God's help and the help of the Holy Spirit I should be able to understand the Bible clearly and all my questions will be answered.

Well, that turned out to be totally false. The more I read the Bible the more questions I had. And the questions I did have were not being answered sufficiently by either the Bible or by pastors. In fact, the further I would did the more unreasonable excuses I was given. Like "We just need to believe on faith that God has an explanation for that", etc. But that is not an explanation, it also violates what I had been taught. I had been taught that the Bible has answers to all our questions.

At that point in my life I was quite naive. By this I mean that I was indeed just looking at all of this from the Free Methodist point of view and through the lens of the King James Bible. So I decided to seek out a bigger picture. Maybe the Free Methodists don't have a good understanding of Christianity? In fact, it quickly dawned on me that maybe Catholicism was the "True Christianity" and all the Protestantisms were just protesting offshoots.

So I looked into Catholicism only to find confusion on a similar scale or greater. Even Catholic Popes can't agree on what the Bible means, etc.

So ok, here's another question? Maybe Christianity itself has it all wrong? From whence did Christianity come from? Well that's easy. It came from Jesus who was a Jew and so it originally came from ancient orthodox Judaism. So maybe the original religion has some truth in it?

But no, I found just as many contradictions and absurdities in the Old Testament etc. Not only that but the Jews are apparently just as confused and in disagreement with each other as the Christians are, so no help there either.

Then of course there is Islam, another offshoot from this same religion, supposedly inspired by the same foundational God.

Well, I confess by the time I got to this point I was already beginning to fully realize that the whole shebang is nothing more than a fable that evolved in many different directions. In fact, at that point I could even see that many of the superstitions in the Abrahamic religions were the same old superstitions in most other religions from the Mediterranean region. Things like Gods being appeased by blood sacrifices right up to demigods being born of virgin women. It became crystal clear to me that these religions aren't hardly any different from all the others at all.



And now for the good stuff. The deeper thoughts that cleared away any doubts in my mind whatsoever:


Why am I trying so hard to make this religion work?

That's when it dawned on me. It's not because I "need" for there to be a God or that I "need" to believe in an afterlife or anything like that. The main reason I was trying so hard to make sense of the religion is because the religion itself seems to be demanding that it is paramount that we believe in it lest we be judged in some negative way by this supposedly judgmental God.

The other thing that helped to bring me to my senses actually came from evangelists. They were often preaching that we need to have FAITH!

Ironically that got me thinking and I started to ask, "Just what is it that I need to have faith in? And why is it important?"

Well to begin with, anyone who knows the fundamental story behind Christianity knows that what we need to place our faith in if we are to believe this religion on pure faith alone, is to believe that we have all turned against God and that we are all so unworthy of God that he had to have his only begotten son crucified to pay for our unworthiness.

I hold that anyone who disagrees with this fundamental summary of Christianity isn't paying attention at all to what the religion is basically saying.

So then I had to ask myself, "Is this something that I would even want to place my faith in?". And my answer is quite simply, "Of course not!". Why would I want to place my faith in the idea that I am unworthy of my creator and he had to have his only begotten son crucified to pay for my unworthiness?

That's ridiculous. On the contrary I would be far more pleased if this was not the truth. Moreover, here I was trying to do "God's Work" by learning his word so I could help others understand it. How in the world does that equate to being so unworthy of this God that he had to have his only begotten son crucified to pay for my unworthiness?

After thinking about this for a while I realized that I would never want to believe in Christianity as a matter of pure faith. And then I also began to realize that it's the religious dogma that is demanding that we believe in it on pure faith. And this is not limited to Christianity, but is certainly true of Islam as well (which IMHO is basically the same fundamental religion really).

Also after going over and over these for many years I finally realized that, IMHO, no divine God worthy of respect would behave the way these religions claim, nor would he demand that people believe in utterly absurd things lest he'll cast them into a hell fire.

It has become crystal clear to me that these religions are indeed the work of men. And IMHO, they are the work of unethical men who will stoop to all levels of immorality to try to convince people to join, follow and support their particular cults which, IMHO are really nothing more than political agendas disguised as religions about a God.

Now this doesn't mean that all modern day clergy and religious fanatics are immoral people who are knowingly trying to use religion to control people. I'm willing to accept that many modern day religious fanatics do indeed believe in these religions and are just spouting what the religions have already claimed in their dogmas.

But are these dogmas from any all-wise, or all-righteous God?

IMHO, absolutely not. I am absolutely certain of this beyond any shadow of a doubt in my mind. These religions are simply too caustic and demeaning to be the works of any moral entity.

I mean, Jesus might have seemed like a fairly nice guy, but the religion of Christianity as a whole basically takes this nice man and makes him into a monster who will condemn to hell anyone who doesn't join and support Christianity.

IMHO, if the man named Jesus actually existed, and if he was indeed a nice guy, the religion of Christianity did not preserve those traits at all. They have turned Jesus into a hateful monster who hates everyone who doesn't join the Christian club. Christianity is an exclusive club that excludes anyone who doesn't believe that Jesus is their "Christ" along with all the religious bigotries that go along with that.

Of course to be fair there are modern day Christians who do try to salvage a "Nice Jesus" from this religion. But in truth, it was the authors of the New Testament that made Jesus into a monster when they nailed him to the Old Testament.

I always say that Jesus was crucified twice. The first time he was crucified physically by the Jewish priest (assuming those rumors are true). The second time he was crucified in character by the authors of the New Testament adding insult to injury.

That's my view. And I clearly confess that all of this is based upon my own personal experience and studies. But I seriously see no reason to give any of the Abrahamic religions any more merit than, say, Greek Mythology.

I am totally convinced that the religion is entirely man made fables. And IMHO it's not even ethical or moral fables. It doesn't' represent intelligence, and I would not recommend using the Bible as a whole as a guide for morality, and certainly not as a guide for parenting.

[connermt]

[Replying to post 1 by Zzyzx]

Did humans make (develop, invent, construct) the religions known collectively as Christianity?

Because you said religionS, then IME yes. After reading/researching/investigating/etc various other religions, history and alternative ideas, it's my opinion that YES, christianty, as it stands today, is man made.
That does not mean god is man made (as christianity and god don't need to go hand-n-hand) - that's a different question entirely.

[1213]

Did humans make (develop, invent, construct) the religions known collectively as Christianity?

I don’t think so, because in my opinion there is no good motive for people to do so. Many claim that it was made so that some people could get money or power, but I think there is no proof for that and it seems to me that the “founders� of Christianity were in many cases killed.

[Zzyzx]

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Did humans make (develop, invent, construct) the religions known collectively as Christianity?

I don’t think so, because in my opinion there is no good motive for people to do so.

If you cannot think of a motive for someone to do something do you conclude that they did not do it? Could people have motives of which you are not aware?

Many claim that it was made so that some people could get money or power, but I think there is no proof for that and it seems to me that the “founders� of Christianity were in many cases killed.

Who, exactly, are the "founders" of Christianity to whom you refer and how were they killed? Evidence please -- not mere repetition of church dogma and tradition.

[Divine Insight]

Did humans make (develop, invent, construct) the religions known collectively as Christianity?

I don’t think so, because in my opinion there is no good motive for people to do so. Many claim that it was made so that some people could get money or power, but I think there is no proof for that and it seems to me that the “founders� of Christianity were in many cases killed.

I think it goes far deeper than this. The authors of the New Testament cannot truly be said to be the "founders" of Christianity since Christianity depends also on a believe in all of the tales of the Old Testament that supposedly lead up to the need for Jesus.

You ask what the motivation can be. For me it is extremely obvious.

In the early going a large part of the motivation was in part male-chauvinism. The early religion begins using God as an excuse to belittle women and demand that they be subservient to their husbands. And this appears to have been a strong motivation through much of the Old Testament.

Another motivation is to simply scare people into obeying the authority of these authors of this religion. The religion clearly uses many fear tactics aimed toward anyone who refuses to obey this authority.

Another motivation yet is to create a cultural religion that trumps the religions of neighboring tribes. And of course the Old Testament is filled with this from the very beginning it pronounces that God is a jealous God and "Thou Shalt have no other Gods before him".

So it clearly has political agendas.

Now, moving on to the New Testament, the motivation there could be nothing more than pure superstition. These men who wrote the New Testament may simply believed in their superstitions. I wouldn't doubt that one bit.

We see Christians today proclaiming that they would rather die than renounce Jesus. Yet they have no more reason to believe in Jesus than their own superstition that these ancient fables might be true.

So evidently it doesn't take much for humans to be willing to die for superstitions that they happen to believe in.

The idea that Muslims would be willing to die for their Allah is pretty clear in the actions of suicide bombers. So superstitious beliefs in religions are clearly more than sufficient motivation for people being willing to die.

And there we have complete explanations of all motivations without any need to resort to anything more than this.

[mwtech]

Did humans make (develop, invent, construct) the religions known collectively as Christianity?

I don’t think so, because in my opinion there is no good motive for people to do so. Many claim that it was made so that some people could get money or power, but I think there is no proof for that and it seems to me that the “founders� of Christianity were in many cases killed.

There is actually evolutionary motive for the creation of God, as well as a cultural motive. The evolutionary reason was best explained by Michael Shermer.
Imagine you are a primitive human sitting in the grass and the grass starts to rustle. You assume it was a predator and run away, when it was actually just the wind. This kind of outcome is called a false positive. You saw danger where there was none. Now imagine the same situation, except you assume the rustle was just the wind, when it was actually a predator. This is a false negative, and you are killed. Through the process of natural selection the instinct to assume a false negative died out (everyone who made that assumption was killed by a predator).
Now, as advanced humans, that instinct to assume a false positive is still with us. That is where the belief of God comes in. We don't know how to explain the universe, so we assume it was created by God. We also have the instinct to asume that this thing is dangerous. So we assume that if we don't do what it says we will suffer the consequences.

You pair this with the fact that the bible was written in a place and time where slaves were owned, women were oppressed, and sex was taboo, you get the absurd laws that they have in the old testament. It favors those in power. The way of thinking changes a few centuries later and New testament laws are different. Thinking is more philosophical and concentrates on your character rather than just actions. New testament laws reflect that.

As for a social motive, religion is the only way humans have of escaping death. Without religion, we have to face the fact that once we die, we no longer exist. Most people don't like to think that. It is much more comforting to think that when a loved on dies, they go to be with their loving creator in a realm with no more suffering or sadness. You might notice at a funeral that no matter the character of the deceased person, their loved ones don't assume they went to Hell in most cases. They always talk about the person being in Heaven. My own family thought this way about my grandfather when he died, even though he was never a "saved Christian." But one night my cousin had a dream about him in heaven and assumed that was a sign from God. It makes so much more sense that she longed to believe it, so her mind conjured it up, but that is not as comforting so that is not what she chose to believe.

[DanieltheDragon]

Did humans make (develop, invent, construct) the religions known collectively as Christianity?

I don’t think so, because in my opinion there is no good motive for people to do so. Many claim that it was made so that some people could get money or power, but I think there is no proof for that and it seems to me that the “founders� of Christianity were in many cases killed.

There doesn't need to be a motive to begin with. All it takes is a populace that is somewhat uneducated and a charismatic speaker who believes in what he is preaching. Soon more and more people follow him/her over a period of many generations this snowballs and more and more people add to the religion and soon enough it is so far removed from its origins it is nigh impossible to determine whence it came.

If you can tell me who wrote the earliest manuscript of the bible you could prove my assertion dead wrong.

[Wootah]

I don't think it was mad made.

- The religion is logically flawless. The concept of love, justice and goodness is only found in the Christian concept of God.

- The religion focusses on love as the most important thing.

- The religion prospers no one in the religion, unless you count the rising tide phenomenon.

- The religion is the single most obvious explanation for growth in science and cooperative behaviour.