"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." -- Albert Einstein -- Written in 1954 to Jewish philosopher Erik Gutkind.
No, not at all.liamconnor wrote: Question: Do you think this is a good/plausible explanation for Christianity's origins?
To the contrary, you are attempting to include the Christian Gospels as "needing" to be explained in every claim they make. That's your mistake right there.
IMHO, the best explanation for the origins of Christianity is that they started as superstitious rumors about some events that may or may not have occurred. From there they grew to become more elaborate rumors over many years. And this is in perfect harmony with what we actually see in the time line of the writing of the Gospels.
Therefore you demand that all these rumors must be accounted for holds no merit. And therefore it is a straw man position.
This was C. S. Lewis' mistake. C. S. Lewis proclaim a false dichotomy as well. He proclaimed that either Jesus would need to be an absolute raving lunatic or he was the son of God. But that's a false dichotomy precisely because C. S. Lewis is only considering a Jesus character who actually said all the things attributed to him in the Gospels as if they were the "Gospel Truth".
That's the part you need to drop.
Once we realize that the Gospels are fabricated rumors that were constructed over many years there is no longer any reason to demand that ever word in the Gospels must be accounted for as if it is the "Gospel Truth".
To the contrary, once we recognize these writings are fabricated exaggerated rumors there's no longer any need to trust anything they have to say.
So here's my "Best Non-Divine Explanation for Christianity".
And this is radically different from yours.
1. There probably was some sort of wandering preacher named Jesus (or whatever)
2. He probably did reject orthodox Judaism as the Gospel rumors have him doing.
3. He probably did argue with the Jewish Chief Priests and publicly call them hypocrites as the Gospel rumors have him doing.
4. He probably was executed for apostasy in some horrible fashion.
From this event rumors started and were methodically built up over some decades after this event.
Your approach where you make out like every rumor within the Gospels must be taken to be true and explained, is simply unnecessary. The bulk of those rumors were no doubt made up and therefore no explanation for them is necessary.
In other words, you include the tomb being discovered empty as needing to be explained. I don't. I see no need to explain that to be anything more than a belated rumor. There's no good reason to believe that any actual tomb had ever even been discovered to be empty.
So the very simple explanation that all of these writings are nothing more than exaggerated rumors is sufficient.
There is simply no further need to explain them.
So the "BEST" non-divine explanation is that they are nothing more than exaggerated rumors. Period.
No further explanation is required and everything that needs to be explained has been explained.
So we're done. And there's nothing left unexplained.
They were never anything more than superstitious exaggerated rumors. Period.
That's all they ever were. Possibly even crafted by people who were indeed trying to create a believable religion. So motivation for the exaggerated rumors is explained as well.
Dismissing them as nothing more than exaggerated rumors works just fine.
