The Craziest Christian Apologetic

[Baruch]

I'll need to put it on my "wish list."

If somebody did find Jesus' skeleton, I doubt if it would be the end of Christianity. Apologists would dig into the trenches ready to fight the discovery coming up with reasons to deny it. I suppose it would be hard to prove even to honest people that any skeleton belonged to Jesus.

I said as much in the OP.

Decades ago, a bishop confirmed this.  His notion of Jesus is metaphysical.

[Baruch]

This guy I worked with specialized in the existence of Jesus. Talked about it all the time. Finally I asked "what is your best piece of evidence? His answer "Jesus came to me in a dream".

This warped thinking reminded me a bit of the Native American's "Ghost Dance", so I told him instead of waiting for boring dreams, I prefer dancing.

They told the people they could dance a new world into being. There would be landslides, earthquakes, and big winds. Hills would pile up on each other. The earth would roll up like a carpet with all the white man's ugly things â€" the stinking new animals, sheep and pigs, the fences, the telegraph poles, the mines and factories. Underneath would be the wonderful old-new world as it had been before the white fat-takers came. ...The white men will be rolled up, disappear, go back to their own continent.
â€" Lame Deer From Wiki Ghost Dance Page

I have unusual dreams too.  Even met Jesus once.  But I don't go around preaching that.

[Baruch]

I can't remember where it was that I read a detailed description of the Ghost Dance. The Native Americans were being wiped out, and they had neither the numbers or the technology to do anything about it.  In desperation, they turned to the supernatural and decided they could dance their way to invulnerability.  The white man's bullets would pass right through them as if they had immaterial bodies, and they would prevail.  I don't know who cooked up the idea of the Ghost Dance.  It may have been a well intended medicine man who just wanted to give his brothers one last experience of hope.  I don't know if he believed it or not.  It didn't make any difference if it was true.  The Indians were going to die whether they danced or just offered themselves up to be shot.  I imagine their dying thoughts would have been, "This Ghost Dance thing was supposed to work."  But I would guess that some with a more healthy skepticism would be saying, "Yeah, I thought this thing was probably bullshit."

Christians deal with their own mortality by denying it; "The body rots, but I live on, maybe with a new Mormon body on a different planet, or as some Startrek energy based life form that floats around the universe."  When it comes to head games, modern man isn't much more advanced than Native Americans were with one foot still in the stone age.

Natives didn't come to the Ghost Dance as atheists, they were pagan believers already.  My Lakota friend still does.

[Cassia]

Yea, the European followers of Christ and their offspring killed off about 130 million Americans, mostly with their disease and proceeded to enslave Africans in the Americas... all in a fabricated pretext to save their savage souls.

I heard some whining on YT but it was just William Lane Craigslist apologizing...something stupid about god and morality, LOL. What a joke.

[SGOS]

Yea, the European followers of Christ and their offspring killed off about 130 million Americans, mostly with their disease and proceeded to enslave Africans in the Americas... all in a fabricated pretext to save their savage souls.

I heard some whining on YT but it was just William Lane Craigslist apologizing...something stupid about god and morality, LOL. What a joke.

Once way back, during some controversy about making reparations to Native Americans, a friend told me that his father said, "We never stole land from any Indians.  We won it from them fair and square in battle."

[Baruch]

Yea, the European followers of Christ and their offspring killed off about 130 million Americans, mostly with their disease and proceeded to enslave Africans in the Americas... all in a fabricated pretext to save their savage souls.

I heard some whining on YT but it was just William Lane Craigslist apologizing...something stupid about god and morality, LOL. What a joke.

Would it have been better for Africans if only other Africans and the Arabs enslaved them?  Native Americans were busy killing each other.  Why is it wrong for Europeans to be violent?  Do you prefer Aztec conquest of Europe?

Of course, Christian morality is hypocritical.  All morality and ethics is.  It is virtue signaling by predators distracting their prey.  Camouflage.  Even vegetarians are predators on plant life.  Do you prefer race-free slavery for debt and POW as was the norm in all societies for millennia?

Navajos originally were Apaches, but they stole some sheep from Spanish colonizers, that they didn't eat.  That technical borrowing separated them from the Apaches.  Of course Apaches continued to predate on anyone they could predate on (hunter gatherers predate on humans too).  And Navajos became violently competitive with the Hopis and Pueblos because of competition for grazing in a desert climate.

[Baruch]

Once way back, during some controversy about making reparations to Native Americans, a friend told me that his father said, "We never stole land from any Indians.  We won it from them fair and square in battle."

And China will conquer the US, fair and square too.  Humans are violent monkeys.

[Cassia]

Would it have been better for Africans if only other Africans and the Arabs enslaved them?

Yes, much much much better. There is a theist for you. Brain all fuzzy with lofty idealism. Atheists understand vey well that primates (sorry Ken 'ride a T-Rex' Ham) are violent, thankyou. However modern secular humanists don't get to ditch our responsibility onto a scapegoat by getting on our knees and proverbially blowing some greasy preacher or guy wearing a robe. God's representatives. Lets hear a moral defense for vicarious redemption? _______________________________.

[Baruch]

Would it have been better for Africans if only other Africans and the Arabs enslaved them?

Yes, much much much better. There is a theist for you. Brain all fuzzy with lofty idealism. Atheists understand vey well that primates (sorry Ken 'ride a T-Rex' Ham) are violent, thankyou. However modern secular humanists don't get to ditch our responsibility onto a scapegoat by getting on our knees and proverbially blowing some greasy preacher or guy wearing a robe. God's representatives. Lets hear a moral defense for vicarious redemption? _______________________________.

Well, prejudice is OK.  Given no morality, no ethics.  Do I support fake preachers?  Nope.  So you support Black slavery of Blacks?  Most Africans who came to the US were sold to our slavers by other Blacks.  Most of those being POW from Black-on-Black tribal warfare.  So you give non-Europeans a break, because they weren't civilized?

[Unbeliever]

There was the Maji Maji revolt in Africa, when the natives rebelled against the German colonialists, after being told by a spiritual advisor that the German bullets would turn into water. They didn't.

[Mike Cl]

There was the Maji Maji revolt in Africa, when the natives rebelled against the German colonialists, after being told by a spiritual advisor that the German bullets would turn into water. They didn't.

Ghost Dancing anyone??

[Jagella]

This guy I worked with specialized in the existence of Jesus. Talked about it all the time. Finally I asked "what is your best piece of evidence? His answer "Jesus came to me in a dream".

This warped thinking reminded me a bit of the Native American's "Ghost Dance", so I told him instead of waiting for boring dreams, I prefer dancing.

They told the people they could dance a new world into being. There would be landslides, earthquakes, and big winds. Hills would pile up on each other. The earth would roll up like a carpet with all the white man's ugly things â€" the stinking new animals, sheep and pigs, the fences, the telegraph poles, the mines and factories. Underneath would be the wonderful old-new world as it had been before the white fat-takers came. ...The white men will be rolled up, disappear, go back to their own continent.
â€" Lame Deer From Wiki Ghost Dance Page

Your fellow worker is not alone in his "knowing" that Jesus existed based on what he thinks he saw. Nowadays scholars will with a straight face tell us that Jesus existed because Paul of Tarsus said so. And what was the basis for Paul's knowledge of Christ? He had dreams and visions of Jesus! I wonder why Paul didn't ask James about Jesus. After all, Bart Ehrman and other real-Jesus apologists assure us that James was the brother of Jesus. As such, James would have been a great source of information about Jesus.

Speaking of Paul, who the heck was he? All we know is that he wrote some epistles. His story in Acts contradicts what he said in Galatians 1-2 and is unlikely to be historical.

See how wacky apologetics can get?

[Cassia]

Well, prejudice is OK.  Given no morality, no ethics.  Do I support fake preachers?  Nope.  So you support Black slavery of Blacks?  Most Africans who came to the US were sold to our slavers by other Blacks.  Most of those being POW from Black-on-Black tribal warfare.  So you give non-Europeans a break, because they weren't civilized?

Would I have preferred if the only slave holders were limited to inter-African trade? Damm right. Africans never came close to the large scale industrialized European slave trade that led to the American Civil War? Dealing in absolutes is for children and theists. Similar brain function, prone to incorrect assumptions and magic thinking.

[Baruch]

There was the Maji Maji revolt in Africa, when the natives rebelled against the German colonialists, after being told by a spiritual advisor that the German bullets would turn into water. They didn't.

Memes are amazing.  Twitter is full of them.  Dems think that Trump Twitter posts will bounce right off of them ;-)

[Baruch]

Would I have preferred if the only slave holders were limited to inter-African trade? Damm right. Africans never came close to the large scale industrialized European slave trade that led to the American Civil War? Dealing in absolutes is for children and theists. Similar brain function, prone to incorrect assumptions and magic thinking.

So, Americans are to be pacifist Jains who won't kill an insect?  You could avoid ail evil, by simply preventing humans in the first place.  As a misanthrope, I prefer the Thanos way, only timed in the past.  A perfect world (of animals still eating animals) is if there are no humans at all.  Seriously?

And yes, it seems you ideologically privilege non-European aka primitive cultures.  They aren't evil, they can't help themselves.  But we can?  That is White of you ;-)

As a person however, I would probably not go around enslaving people, any more than you would.