Talking about "faith" and "belief" is completely missing the point. The point is that following religion penetrates most aspects of one's life. As I said, atheism is just a philosophical position -- the only way it "penetrates most aspects one's life" is negatively, that is, by the fact that their life is not penetrated by religion. Yes, for example, being spiritually amazed by the beauty of the observable world or by how Nature works perfectly might very well "penetrate most aspects of one's life", but that doesn't mean it is a religion. It might be analogous to how a religious person views the world, but the right conclusion is that they descend from the same set of human experiences -- in the same way that a beech and a pine are both trees, yet a beech is not a pine.
CrazyCatLord wrote:
But if you define Christians as followers of Jesus, the first disciples would already have been Christians, assuming that the gospel stories are based on historical events. I'm not really convinced that there was a historical Jesus.
There is no real reason not to believe this. The story of the 30-year old bastard son of a cobbler's wife being set as yet another Messiah by a bunch of depressed Jews during one of the many tragic periods of Jewish history (namely, shortly after the Roman conquest), teaching about on the whole relatively sensible things, is quite plausible. I see no reason not to believe that some random Jesus lookalike could have said to be "Jesus, back from the dead", then be accepted by Jesus's followers because they just wanted a Jesus figure, not necessarly Jesus himself; and any respectable attempt at resurrection would include hiding the previous body if possible. I mean, the Russians had
three false Dmitrys. The rest of the non-sense in the Gospels is easily explained by the 50-100 years between the events and their writing, and by the many imperfections of hagiography. It is not much more or less believable than medieval
Vitae.
Also, "based on historical events" is exactly like "based on the novel". You can have
The Lord of the Rings (keeps almost all the major plot points, respectfully follows the spirit of the work), you can have
The Count of Monte Cristo (the basic premise is similar, several events recall others in the original work), and you can have
Moonraker (the title is the same, the main character is the same, that's it).
06 May 2012, 1:20 pm
I usually shake my head and sigh while I'm wondering.
