Hi, my name is JoJo

[Jojo77]

So lately, I have youtubed the truth behind religion or christianity and have been utterly shocked to my findings of the parallelism with other previous religions and the pagans. So here I am looking for more answers, and hopefully meet some friends to help me along the way. . .

hi JoJo, welcome aboard. Christianity's just rehashed ideas from earlier religions and philosophies, but they don't ever tell you that in church!

Hi JoJo.

So right now my current relationship with christianity is to view it as an affliction or disease.  I feel the most effective treatment for this sickness, at least for me, is a study on the origin and evolution of this religion through history.  More damning then books about the evolution of life or the origin of the universe, the actual history of the bible and its believers has got to be the most effective path to atheist enlightenment.  But like you, I have only gotten to this information through youtube videos and following threads on forums.  I think anyone who has a strong religious background is in desperate need of an authoritative compendium of all things considered about how christianity really happened.

That is an interesting point. What is sad, is i feel kinda hypocritical. Cause i still been going to church and Such. Does that make me a hypocrite or is it just me searching for the answers? Is it normal?


EDIT: Sorted out post. Jojo you inadvertantly dropped your reply into the body of xm1's post rather than afther the last [/quote] tag. happens to the best of us  - Tank 

[xm1]

So lately, I have youtubed the truth behind religion or christianity and have been utterly shocked to my findings of the parallelism with other previous religions and the pagans. So here I am looking for more answers, and hopefully meet some friends to help me along the way. . .

hi JoJo, welcome aboard. Christianity's just rehashed ideas from earlier religions and philosophies, but they don't ever tell you that in church!

Hi JoJo.

So right now my current relationship with christianity is to view it as an affliction or disease.  I feel the most effective treatment for this sickness, at least for me, is a study on the origin and evolution of this religion through history.  More damning then books about the evolution of life or the origin of the universe, the actual history of the bible and its believers has got to be the most effective path to atheist enlightenment.  But like you, I have only gotten to this information through youtube videos and following threads on forums.  I think anyone who has a strong religious background is in desperate need of an authoritative compendium of all things considered about how christianity really happened.

That is an interesting point. What is sad, is i feel kinda hypocritical. Cause i still been going to church and Such. Does that make me a hypocrite or is it just me searching for the answers? Is it normal?

Well, you are not barring others from going to church or chastising people who go currently so you have not met the definition of hypocrite.  If you still feel reasons to go to church you should keep going, and when you don't feel the need to go anymore you shouldn't bother going.  That should be entirely about how you want to direct your life.

Is it normal?

Is normal relevant?

[Too Few Lions]

I think anyone who has a strong religious background is in desperate need of an authoritative compendium of all things considered about how christianity really happened.

Unfortunately, I think it'll be a long time before that actually happens. It's surprising how little we really know about early Christianity, the earliest archaeological evidence currently dates to the third century, and even that's fairly sketchy and minimal. The same goes for Christian writings, the earliest radiocarbon dated copies we have are from that period, and there's just a bit of an assumption that the New Testament texts originally date to the first century. Part of the trouble is that pretty much everyone involved in biblical study is a Christian, who else would bother to devote their life to studying a book of myths?

On top of that, the Christian authorities in the fourth century did a good job of banning and destroying all Christian works they deemed 'heretical' and pretty much all 'pagan' religious and philosophical writings they could lay their hands on. The early Christians also had a habit of adding things to older works when they copied them to promote what they deemed orthodox belief, and creating new scripture under the name of apostles and earlier famous Christians in order to try and give these new teachings some sort of authority.

The vast majority of the evidence we have of early Christianity dates from the fourth century or later. Quite what it was like in the mid first century (or even if it actually existed back then) is pure speculation IMHO until we actually find some hard evidence.