I’m just curious. Did you attend Seminary School or are you self learned in Theology?
You’re the only one, that I know of, who will wade neck deep into the Christianity threads and provide a countering argument to the conversation.
Again, I’m just curious about how you came by the word of God.
🦫
Evening Beaver,
I've primarily learned through self study, but do have a bit of formal education on the subject.
At 17 I joined the Army National Guard and did basic the summer between my Junior and senior year. In Basic the only reading materials allowed were the Soldiers Manual of Army Testing and Training (SMART Book) and religious works. It didn't take long to basically memorize the Smart Book, so I got a pocket sized copy of the New Testament and started reading that.
My freshman year of college I dated a nice Pentecostal girl and started attending church and Bible study with her. They lay instructors claimed to have all the proof regarding Biblical truths etc. As a new convert I thought this was great. I planned to learn all the indisputable proof for God so I could learn the best arguments to convert wayward souls.
The lay teacher claimed to have 100 proofs the Bible was true, with foot notes to independent sources. I was pretty excited about this, unfortunately, when presented with the "proof", it consisted of 100 circular references claiming "This part of the Bible is true, because it agrees with this other part of the Bible". From there their arguments quickly degenerated to "you just got to have faith", and "you don't want to go to hell".
Of course I didn't just give I. I figured, hey, these idiots can't produce the evidence, I'll just have to go find it myself, and started reading the Bible, from the beginning. I made it to Second Kings before I can to the inescapable conclusion there was no evidence, and even worse, the Christian God was an immoral prick who couldn't even measure up to the standard taught by my own father.
I figured there was more to the story then the common narrative. Years later I was introduced to the works of Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, beginning with their first book, Holy Blood Holy Grail. The popular series The Da Vinci Code is based on their work, but I'd concluded much of it was bunk, but these works introduced me to key idea such as the role of Constantine in the formation of the early Church and The early Church Councils, such as the Council of Nicaea and their role in shaping Christianity. History's always interested me, so this just opened up additional aspects of it to study. From here I started a deep dive into the origins of Christianity all the way to it's predecessor religions, following those to their origins, and each origin in it's turn, until I was all the was back to the oldest know archeological evidence of a ceremonial burial, which wasn't performed by humans, but Neanderthals about 100,000 years ago.
When I went back to school I took logic, comparative religion, philosophy, and an anthropology class which covered the science behind evolution, the relationships between humans and hominoids, and other species, how to tell the fossils apart, how DNA developed, etc.
Along the way I found Dawkins, Hitchens, Ehrman, and other authors, and now have a fairly decent library on the subject.
Once you've studied the evolution of religion, the births and deaths of religious beliefs, you begin to see how patterns found in Christianity and other modern religions rhyme with so many of the clearly made up dead religions of the past.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
