Name an episode where the Greek gods decide to punish the Greeks for a wrongdoing against them, and then decide they love the people so much they take the punishment upon themselves.
There are several (especially in the more tragic of the Gods and their offspring) but I don't recall details offhand. You can look them up as easily as I can. I don't have the time to go digging again right now. Sifting through classical Greek mythology is not my favorite of past-times. Regardless, the idea of a God saving individuals from thesemlves is not one that Christianity invented, merely adopted.
Name one such cult that has been such an unstoppable force to have endured for over two millenia.
[...] only to have been proven wrong by God?
*blink* That doesn't even address the point. Arguably, Christianity endured because of the social circumstances of the period, much in the same way that Islam has endured, and Judaism has endured, and so on in the Eastern religions. As for being proven wrong by God, you call it God, I'll call it the forces of social change... *shrug*
It's from the Bible, yes
Not interested unless you've got other factual evidence. I'm not debating the intricacies of theology.
Also, I fail to see your connection between Jonah and Christ.
Jonah's story is the original metaphorical resurrection/redemption myth in Christianity. There are others from other cultures before him as well.
The same could be said, however, about any Greek god, because they all have qualities that are are attributed by Christians to the work of God.
Did you even read what I've been posting, or are you so deep in that fairy tale of yours that you aren't comprehending? Visual depictions of Jesus in the 3rd and 4th century CE = visual depictions of Apollo. They changed again in the Byzantine Empire to a more familiar bearded Christ (though of a different quality in the depictions, e.e Hagia Sophia in Istanbul) we see today.
So then, you'd say it's the species that has the drive to survive, not the individual. Ghengis, then, at least on an evolutionary instinctual level, didn't care much for his own survival, but rather the passing on of his genes. Is that right?
Tell you what, you go educate yourself on evolution and then we'll discuss Khan's genetic heritage. Ditto goes for your quip at testing a little later.
Are you kidding me? So all of the Jews alive today, and all of the Arabians who call Jacob and Ishmael their ancestors are not proof enough?
Uh, no. People can call themselves whatever they like, and do so frequently for political purposes.
FYI, to believe in common ancestry on a species level is to believe in common ancestry on the level of racial and ethnic groups.
No, it's not. But good try.
That may be, but according to said Bible, Joseph at first didn't believe Mary, he thought she had had sex with some random person (they weren't even married yet, btw), and Joseph was going to call off the marriage quietly (which, btw, was opposite of the custom. Most men, when they found out their wives-to-be were messing around, embarassed and disgraced them publicly), but then had a sudden, inexplicable change of heart. IDK how much you know about Jewish culture, but from what I understand, sex sealed the deal on marriage, especially at that time. If Mary had had sex with someone else, her marriage to Joseph would then be less meaningful. Neither of them would be able to take it as true marriage, because of their cultural background.
I sincerely hope you find a girl as innocent and naive as yourself my friend, because otherwise you're in for a world of nastiness. It's called lies, deceit, deception, pick your word. People did it then just as now.
However, Christ was not simply a good moral teacher. He claimed to be God.
According to the faith my parents attempted to raise me in, Christ is the son of God. The Trinity is a particularly Catholic thing. Claiming Christ IS god is fallacious, because there is no consensus even among Christians.
You say you have no evidence that they are willful beings, but do you have any evidence to the contrary? You say we can't begin to understand them. Then why is one easier to believe than the other?
I have no evidence that says aliens didn't populate the Earth. Should I believe that then? Come on. No evidence against something doesn't mean it should be believed as a matter of Faith. I see no logical evidence against gravity, but I don't think the theory of gravity is a perfect understanding.
I was once an atheist.
You're 18.
No offense, but at 18 most people know precisely squat about the world. I daresay you didn't understand atheism nor do you probably understand all of your religion or its history, or even science for that matter, as is becoming more and more evident.
But for three days, all I could think about was "why not live forever? Why not be loved? Why should death be the end of it all? Why shouldn't there be a point to life?" I didn't have an answer. I still don't. Do you?
Alternatively:
The matter and energy that make me up do exist forever (thermodynamics). I'm loved by many people in my life; the opinions of mythical beings don't really matter a damn to me. Deaht is not the end of it all, merely the end of a single human life as it is so simply defined. There is a point to live - to live, and to allow your children and their children to live.
I don't need to put on my irrationality cap and hop on the Faith bandwagon to justify my existence, and frankly I don't understand people who do. I fully admit that I don't know everything, nor can I ever know everything, and a God, Gods, higher powers, flying spaghetti monsters, whatever may exist out there somewhere - but I'm not going to live my life as if their opinion (should they indeed have one) counts, especially as its preached to us by other people on Earth so wrapped up in their insecurities and power games that they could never be trusted.
Insecurity seems a pretty poor reason to shove rational thinking to the wind and jump on the bandwagon of what amounts to a 2000-year-old-cult-turned-political-bureaucracy.
