Could have fooled me. It's a ripoff of the Egyptian sun god Ra, who performed miracles, died, and then was resurrected three days later.
Can you point me in the direction of somewhere that I can read about this supposed Ra story? I can't find a single thing about it. (I am familiar with Ra, but not this particular story).
Regardless of whether or not the Ra story pans out, I have heard the claims that Christianity is just a mash-up other religions, but the Bible as a whole is much too cohesive for this to be a legitimate argument. It was written over multiple centuries (millennia actually), by dozens of authors from different social, professional, and cultural backgrounds, yet the story reads like a singular composition. Furthermore, the message contained in the Bible remains amazingly relevant when considered against modern culture, while all of these "mystery" religions of the past have long since vanished and are generally not even historically and factually verifiable anywhere even close to the degree that the Bible is.
Furthermore, you're leaving Jesus out of it entirely, who is a historical figure written about not only by Christian authors, but whose existence is also corroborated by secular authors from the same time period.
Even further still, consider the disciples who actually spent time with Jesus. Aside from Judas (who hung himself after betraying Jesus), and John, all were martyred for their faith. These people had nothing to gain, and
they died gruesome, horrible deaths, which no man would have died only to preserve a lie about a Jesus who didn't actually exist or wasn't actually legitimate.
On the most fundamental level, it's the same as any other religion on several fronts:
1) Don't kill each other, unless the religion needs it, then have at it! (see Ireland for confirmation)
Right, solely because Ireland claims to be a Christian nation and there's lots of sectarian killing in that country, this is proof that Christianity says killing is okay when you get really, really pissed at someone else. Brilliant evidence.
2) Christianity is the one TRUE religion, the only path to God. All other religions are false. Wait... doesn't every other religion say the exact same thing?
And you're using this as evidence that Christianity is illegitimate? Whether or not I start a religion and claim it to be true says nothing of whether or not Christianity is actually true.
3) If you don't believe in Jesus, you'll suffer for eternity. But he loves you.
You've got it wrong... God loves us, so much so, that he is offering a way out of eternal suffering, despite the fact that we are all depraved and deserve nothing from him. Christianity is drastically different than your description.
I'm going to write about the old testament for all of you since it seems to be such a tremendous hangup, but I'm out of time right now.
uke:
