Matt4000-
Your arguments are appreciated for bringing in opposing views, for attepmting to weigh evidence (as such exists or not), for remaining balanced, on an even emotional keel.
Nevertheless you draw sweeping conclusions from scant evidence.
My head hurts literally with too much to say but too much else to do.
Paul entered the Greek world, and therein adopted their ways of thinking into his own in so many ways. The ancient greeks first thought about the cosmos and man's place within it at least 5000 years ago. There appeared to be a common belief in the atom ( a greek word meaning the smallest part ). Greek sensibilities were adopted into Paul's writings, his thinking. Good move.
Superstitions were in flux, and there many who at that time were exhausted from the new gods, the flavors of the week, the promises to relieve the tribulations of life and living.
Christianity no longer has the benefit of the state and the sword to uphold it any longer. Only for 100 years has it been under scrutiny and attack that threatens its existence, its sustainability in a modern and more widely educated world.
If one grows up here in the Americas it takes more effort to unteach, uneducate yourself. Christianity has not made real inroads in prosetelizing the masses in Asia. Modern Europeans simply pass by the huge cathedrals as skeletons of another era, with little relevance to their lives.
They (Asians and their oriental philosophies--hinduism and buddism--and today's Europeans( will defeat christianity by ignoring it. Mithra and Horus and scores of others are within one's own mind, and as much as they likely appear real and serve a purpose, they lose their linkage and connection from one era to the next.
If christianity is harmful, it needs to be abolished. It has served to kill, to torture, to serve the corrupt, to NOT keep its believers morally straight. It has splintered into a thousand sects--many of them sprung up in the 1880s in America. But this new skin is losing its luster. What it will become none of us know for sure.
The last stronghold is America, the land of optimists and idealists, the best and the worst there is. Let's see what happens.
"ample evidence = the bible"
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