In addition to this, certain people witnessed a miraculous event 2000 years ago and wrote down what they saw - or passed their recollections to others who wrote them down. They seem to have been so convinced that what they saw really happened that they died maintaining that it really had. They were also sufficiently convincing to others that within 30 years of that event, many groups of people who also believed existed in multiple locations.
Who are these certain people? You do not know. We do not even know who wrote the gospels. They are just assigned arbitrary names, ?according? to so and so. What are the dates on the earliest fragments of these texts? Not until 2 hundred years after events. No historian, Roman or Jewish historian of around the time Jesus supposedly existed wrote a single word about him. Other than the forgery to the work of Josephus made by the Bishop Eusebius, inserting 2 paragraphs in the work The Antiquities of the Jews.
There are no eye witness accounts of what happened 2,000 years ago. The gospels are based solely on hearsay and legends passed down.
That this event should happen also fits with the character of God that I 'expect' given what I see in and around me.
A god appearing in a remote desert with no one taking him seriously, except 12 men some still doubting, claiming there was a flood, Jonah lived in a fish, that a mustard seem was the smallest of seeds, stating how slaves were to be punished, claiming if you believed in him snake bites or poison will not affect you, or you could move mountains, is hardly someone who fits the character of a God as I would expect.
What about all the people in the America?s, Africa, Asia, Australasia? Does this god not feel it necessary to also make an equal opportunities appearance to all mankind?
If I haven't really found an objective source of right and wrong, I should say - 'well dear, we don't yet know whether right and wrong really exist so just do your best until we can work it out'.
And you think the bible is an objective source of right and wrong.
So slavery is right? Because it is sanctioned in the bible.
Stoning to death a non-virgin girl on her wedding night is right?
Stoning to death your child that accepts another religion, is right?
Stoning to death your disobedient child is right?
Destroying the altars of non-believers is right?
Selling your daughter who has been raped to the rapist for 50 shekels, is right?
Killing witches is right?
Polygamy is fine, because all the main men of the bible had many wives?
These are hardly what I call an objective source of right and wrong. Don?t forget Jesus never refuted any of these laws. On the contrary in Matthew 5:17 he says all the laws are to followed to the letter until the end of time.
And of course we know Jesus predicted the end of time within the lifetimes of the people he was talking to. But that is a whole other subject.
Topic: Why the world makes more sense if you take god out of the equation.