What if no one had ever heard of Jesus? What if something happened and, over time, the story of Jesus Christ, along with all reference to him and anything to do with Christianity, was eventually and entirely lost from all human memory, and not a single shred of evidence existed anywhere about him, or the Christian God?
This is the problem with the idea that we must "believe" in a story of a God-man, who died for our sins and rose again. It is also the problem with all such "stories" that any religion has to offer. It never considers what happens if humanity on the whole exercises as much amnesia about Jesus as it does about everything else. Think about it.
If ALL of the stories of the Bible were suddenly wiped from both human memory and from our entire universe, then there would obviously be no way for anyone to "believe" in a man, or a story, or even our fall and redemption, even though they needed to "believe" such a story to save themselves from an eternal damnation.
What, then, would that mean, or tell us, about the story itself?
At the very least, it would strongly suggest just how purely HUMAN such stories really are. For if the story of Jesus, and the entire Bible, had all come directly from God, and were necessary (or even just very useful) tools for working out our salvation, then shouldn't God have found a way to ensure that each person on the planet was born with such information already pre-installed in their minds when they were born?
After all, isn't that the exact same way religion wants us to believe that we are all born with the stain of "original sin" pre-installed in our soul?
Why, in other words, does God chose to create us with the curse of sin preinstalled but not the cure, with the stain of original sin but not with pre-knowledge of the story of God, Christ, or even the necessary foreknowledge that we must all join a particular church or religion to be "saved"?
Instead, according to the experts in religion, God assures we are each born with the cancer of original sin, but rather than being born with also the means of completely overcoming such a condition, we are born with only a capacity to struggle against it over the course of our entire lives. We are not even born with any knowledge of any of this, by the way, but are forced to accept the word of a Church and a religion that claims to speak "the word of God."
But what kind of "loving father" chooses to create children in this way, and all for the purpose of trying to use their broken condition to foster ever more dependence upon the "father" who decided to create them as such moral invalids in the first place? Why would God create servants that he wants to become increasing MORE DEPENDENT upon him, when the object of every other parent on the planet is to raise children who are LESS DEPENDENT upon their parents and more INDEPENDENT upon themselves? Hell, isn't foster this kind of "dependence" on a higher institution exactly what Conservatives 'Christian" Republicans complain about??
That God chooses NOT to assure that each of us is born with the CORRECT interpretation of the Christian story, along with the ability for EACH OF US to have an INFALLIBLE understanding of his will and love and moral laws, and so on, can only lead one to conclude that the entire story is a ruse, or that God is more devilish than the devil himself.
Indeed, why did God want us all to necessarily depend upon a Church made up of only fallible men, that has not only lead to fragmentation and disagreement about God and the bible, which Christians have slaughtered each other over for centuries, but to corruption, greed, child rape, torture, war, crusades, etc etc etc?
How the HELL is this anything close to a "perfect plan"?
That God wants us ALL to understand the story of his (alleged) son, Jesus Christ, while at the same time wanting us to simply accept that, even though all of the death, disease, murder, evil, etc in the world (and even in his Holy Church) makes absolutely NO SENSE WHATSOEVER, it's all part of his "perfect plan."
This is like trusting Charles Manson when he says his "plan" has a larger purpose, and will all work out in the end.
What's even more troubling is that such questions never seem to occur to Christians, or never cause those Christians to whom they do occur to ever question whether their "beliefs" and their "religion" are truly divine or purely man made charlatanism?
And worse, if you ever ask a Christian such questions directly, they NEVER GIVE YOU AN ANSWER, or they give you an answer that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Or they tell you to talk to someone else who might be able to answer such a question.
But when you ask them why such a question doesn't causes them to ever reconsider their OWN beliefs, they quite honestly explain it is because they simply do not choose to think about it. Hence, they are admitting that they ONLY use their intellect to support "beliefs" they may hold for largely, if not exclusively, emotional reasons.
The fact that God chose to create each of us with "original sin" but with out the cure, even though the most powerful being imaginable could clearly have chosen to do it the other way around, should tell us a lot about the benevolence of the manufacturer. Would anyone buy Microsoft Windows, or any other product or service, if it was sold to us in the same condition? I can just hear Bill Gates telling everyone that Windows Works great, but we've prepackaged it with viruses, the cures for which you must buy from us as well.
So, back to our question - what if no one had ever heard of Jesus Christ, and there were no bibles or reference of him at all in human memory?
Do we really KNOW that, say, 10,000 years from now, or even 100,000 years from now, or a million or more years from now (if humans last that long) that the story of Jesus will survive, and even in its present form (which is what the most conservative priests of all see as the reason for their very existence)? Really? Even though the story has changed so much over just the last 2000 years? Ever heard of the "telephone game?"
What's really interesting about this idea, of course, is that humanity has been around for roughly 300,000 years, while even Judaism has only been around for roughly 4000 years, give or take.
So not only did none of the people who lived in the 298,000 years prior to Christ ever hear of the Jesus story, but we have never heard of any of the stories about God or Gods that any of 98% of humanity may have believed in since the beginning of human existence.
Why God took 300,000 years to evolve the human mind to the point God "believed" humanity would be ready to believe in a story about how a man who humans once killed was actually a God (a God who came to be murdered so he could rise from the dead to forgive his dutiful assassins), while allowing all the people who had lived for 300,000 years or more prior to this episode, to simply wallow around in limbo or fry like a hotdog in purgatory, is a question only a Christian can ignore.
So, if no one had ever heard of Christ, would God have to come back to earth and kill himself all over again for our salvation? Does God have to go to every "earth" in every universe in our potential multiverse ( and there could be an infinite number of universes in the multiverse) and die the same way in all of them?
Would he have to do so for every species he decided to give a soul, and in every universe they inhabit, on every single planet they occupy? Wouldn't it have been easier to simply get rid of the soul altogether, rather than having to put himself thru all of this, again and again, for creatures he knows simply can't appreciate his efforts, in part because he made them with such limited and fallible capacities that they can't even fathom who or what he is?
But instead of all of that, God wants us to offer up our sufferings to him, in unity with the suffering of Christ, so we can all see how truly wonderful He is. And the Christian can't understand for the life of them, why such an idea only evokes in the minds of atheists, images of Ted Bundy.
This is the problem with the idea that we must "believe" in a story of a God-man, who died for our sins and rose again. It is also the problem with all such "stories" that any religion has to offer. It never considers what happens if humanity on the whole exercises as much amnesia about Jesus as it does about everything else. Think about it.
If ALL of the stories of the Bible were suddenly wiped from both human memory and from our entire universe, then there would obviously be no way for anyone to "believe" in a man, or a story, or even our fall and redemption, even though they needed to "believe" such a story to save themselves from an eternal damnation.
What, then, would that mean, or tell us, about the story itself?
At the very least, it would strongly suggest just how purely HUMAN such stories really are. For if the story of Jesus, and the entire Bible, had all come directly from God, and were necessary (or even just very useful) tools for working out our salvation, then shouldn't God have found a way to ensure that each person on the planet was born with such information already pre-installed in their minds when they were born?
After all, isn't that the exact same way religion wants us to believe that we are all born with the stain of "original sin" pre-installed in our soul?
Why, in other words, does God chose to create us with the curse of sin preinstalled but not the cure, with the stain of original sin but not with pre-knowledge of the story of God, Christ, or even the necessary foreknowledge that we must all join a particular church or religion to be "saved"?
Instead, according to the experts in religion, God assures we are each born with the cancer of original sin, but rather than being born with also the means of completely overcoming such a condition, we are born with only a capacity to struggle against it over the course of our entire lives. We are not even born with any knowledge of any of this, by the way, but are forced to accept the word of a Church and a religion that claims to speak "the word of God."
But what kind of "loving father" chooses to create children in this way, and all for the purpose of trying to use their broken condition to foster ever more dependence upon the "father" who decided to create them as such moral invalids in the first place? Why would God create servants that he wants to become increasing MORE DEPENDENT upon him, when the object of every other parent on the planet is to raise children who are LESS DEPENDENT upon their parents and more INDEPENDENT upon themselves? Hell, isn't foster this kind of "dependence" on a higher institution exactly what Conservatives 'Christian" Republicans complain about??
That God chooses NOT to assure that each of us is born with the CORRECT interpretation of the Christian story, along with the ability for EACH OF US to have an INFALLIBLE understanding of his will and love and moral laws, and so on, can only lead one to conclude that the entire story is a ruse, or that God is more devilish than the devil himself.
Indeed, why did God want us all to necessarily depend upon a Church made up of only fallible men, that has not only lead to fragmentation and disagreement about God and the bible, which Christians have slaughtered each other over for centuries, but to corruption, greed, child rape, torture, war, crusades, etc etc etc?
How the HELL is this anything close to a "perfect plan"?
That God wants us ALL to understand the story of his (alleged) son, Jesus Christ, while at the same time wanting us to simply accept that, even though all of the death, disease, murder, evil, etc in the world (and even in his Holy Church) makes absolutely NO SENSE WHATSOEVER, it's all part of his "perfect plan."
This is like trusting Charles Manson when he says his "plan" has a larger purpose, and will all work out in the end.
What's even more troubling is that such questions never seem to occur to Christians, or never cause those Christians to whom they do occur to ever question whether their "beliefs" and their "religion" are truly divine or purely man made charlatanism?
And worse, if you ever ask a Christian such questions directly, they NEVER GIVE YOU AN ANSWER, or they give you an answer that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Or they tell you to talk to someone else who might be able to answer such a question.
But when you ask them why such a question doesn't causes them to ever reconsider their OWN beliefs, they quite honestly explain it is because they simply do not choose to think about it. Hence, they are admitting that they ONLY use their intellect to support "beliefs" they may hold for largely, if not exclusively, emotional reasons.
The fact that God chose to create each of us with "original sin" but with out the cure, even though the most powerful being imaginable could clearly have chosen to do it the other way around, should tell us a lot about the benevolence of the manufacturer. Would anyone buy Microsoft Windows, or any other product or service, if it was sold to us in the same condition? I can just hear Bill Gates telling everyone that Windows Works great, but we've prepackaged it with viruses, the cures for which you must buy from us as well.
So, back to our question - what if no one had ever heard of Jesus Christ, and there were no bibles or reference of him at all in human memory?
Do we really KNOW that, say, 10,000 years from now, or even 100,000 years from now, or a million or more years from now (if humans last that long) that the story of Jesus will survive, and even in its present form (which is what the most conservative priests of all see as the reason for their very existence)? Really? Even though the story has changed so much over just the last 2000 years? Ever heard of the "telephone game?"
What's really interesting about this idea, of course, is that humanity has been around for roughly 300,000 years, while even Judaism has only been around for roughly 4000 years, give or take.
So not only did none of the people who lived in the 298,000 years prior to Christ ever hear of the Jesus story, but we have never heard of any of the stories about God or Gods that any of 98% of humanity may have believed in since the beginning of human existence.
Why God took 300,000 years to evolve the human mind to the point God "believed" humanity would be ready to believe in a story about how a man who humans once killed was actually a God (a God who came to be murdered so he could rise from the dead to forgive his dutiful assassins), while allowing all the people who had lived for 300,000 years or more prior to this episode, to simply wallow around in limbo or fry like a hotdog in purgatory, is a question only a Christian can ignore.
So, if no one had ever heard of Christ, would God have to come back to earth and kill himself all over again for our salvation? Does God have to go to every "earth" in every universe in our potential multiverse ( and there could be an infinite number of universes in the multiverse) and die the same way in all of them?
Would he have to do so for every species he decided to give a soul, and in every universe they inhabit, on every single planet they occupy? Wouldn't it have been easier to simply get rid of the soul altogether, rather than having to put himself thru all of this, again and again, for creatures he knows simply can't appreciate his efforts, in part because he made them with such limited and fallible capacities that they can't even fathom who or what he is?
But instead of all of that, God wants us to offer up our sufferings to him, in unity with the suffering of Christ, so we can all see how truly wonderful He is. And the Christian can't understand for the life of them, why such an idea only evokes in the minds of atheists, images of Ted Bundy.
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