I don't think Christianity has that much influence over Hollywood, but there is heaps of material out there on literal creation & dinosaur stuff for kids. Whether a church or Christian subscribes to creationism is another battle.
Good questions & I'd agree that only one can possibly be correct. Studying them all would be tiresome if not impossible, so should I just give up & use this as an excuse if there was a god? I don't expect to gain knowledge of all of them & I don't claim to have or will try to, but it is reasonable to check out a few main ones if you must. I'll only try to give reasonable argument(s) for my belief in Christianity, as requested. And sorry again, this didn't turn out to be a brief answer...
A particular reason to think Christianity is worth checking out is that it is alone amongst the main religions in having a central figure that claims to actually be God, all the rest are supposedly at pains to state that they are just people.
It revolves around a 'Christ' person. Was this a real person in history? The vast majority of people accept this person as historical fact through accounts given by historians, emperors etc. from around the time & locality. These included many opponents & neutrals, not just some crazy followers.
People then want to say he was a great teacher or prophet, this is a position another major religion mistakenly makes of him. It might well be the maximum (in Fernando Alonso voice please
) that most people are willing to accept, but can it even be an option? He said & did things that deny this choice; he claimed to be God (the same sort of people from earlier back this point up). It was not a misunderstanding either; it was the whole reason the Jews got Pilate to crucify him.Anyone that claims to be God can only be: God, a liar, or a lunatic. A great moral teacher or prophet does not work. He doesn't fit into a lunatic profile; the psychologically sound moral things that he said, lunatics with nothing to back up their claims history keeps them as insignificant blips. He fulfilled many (over 300 I just Google'd) ancient prophesies of the Jewish writings. For anyone to do a few might be doable, but so many? These weren't just little things that were within the control of an ordinary man. Liar's don't come back to life after death as he himself said would happen.
Everything, Christianity itself rests on this final point. Its late, this was the last bit I wrote of this reply, but if anyone got through this post & really wanted I could attempt to delve into this, but a decent book or a good website may do it more justice. Maybe there's a battle in my head wanting me to avoid writing this bit seeing as its the most important bit, but meh.
In quick response to Becky's point about the woman from man's rib, I read a nice thing the other day about this; a man's rib is close to his heart & protects it. Also, it is not from his head so she can control the man, nor from his feet so that he can walk all over her, it is from his side, a companion. Digressing further; ribs I believe are the only bone that can regrow after having been entirely removed, there is some special lining in there, just a curiosity maybe? Further, man's body was created from dust, that's hardly a step up in things for us blokes & I don't have any real objections with that.
The word 'homosexual' entry in 1957 thing, if its even true (many different bible translations exist & I'm no expert), I'm not entirely convinced it is of as great importance as the people that like to raise the point want to make it. Having briefly looked at it though, the prior words might be 'strange flesh'. The Bible certainly has to be updated to try to ensure it is making the correct points as per the oldest text sources, these being written in a dead language hence aren't subject to changes like living languages, isn't that handy? I probably wouldn't be readily able to understand an important English document from even a few hundred years ago because language 'evolves' for lack of a better word. The context of things & referencing against other moral teachings & understandings in the Bible are what would be used to keep the message accurate.
Also the Christmas date thing; no half-wit Christian would say that Christmas or Easter is actually his birthday date, its just a date chosen due to dates in history always being difficult to define precisely but there are reasonable guestimates. It also served to usurp old pagan periods of worshipping midwinter feasting or something & the earth for fertility & stuff in spring. The early church had influence enough to do this, this does not necessitate there being evil motivations if their aim is to turn people away from what they believe to be wrong & unhealthy.
Beyond what I've written above I'd not claim to be able to answer every question about the Bible, particularly weird OT doctrinal stuff, but to ignore the entire thing due to not liking or feeling comfortable with the difficult bits doesn't seem that good a reason to me, who would accept an entirely agreeable God anyway? Christianity is somewhat the most difficult religion, it does not allow anyone (any longer anyway) to earn their salvation through works. This actually goes against human nature; we want to do things for ourselves, to work it all out by behaving in a certain way or following a strict set of rules, or figuring it out without any help, or to just to be 'good' enough (whatever we may define that to be, although Christianity teaches that we all have been given a set of morals built-in). To have to struggle with accepting a free gift I know I don't deserve for one second is a freaking nightmare.
That's the beauty of science: it tries to explain our world, but if it fails to do so in one point, it isn't shaken to it's foundations or even cast aside, but simply that one aspect is legitimately worked on, because, unlike religion, science doesn't claim to deliver undisputable truths, but merely the best explanations we have up to date.
Secular science has long since thrown out even the possibility of there being a God. Miracles etc. are not allowed for, but if there was a God would that be a wise thing to do? Science can do much good, and the Bible encourages us to use the world & study it, but as with all things, from a Christian standpoint at least, it can be misused and/or just wrong. Also, science does not even attempt to answer the 'why' questions, only the 'how' ones. Science changes all the time so to use it to form our world-view isn't very wise, nasty things can result from doing this too strongly.
I hope nothing I'm saying oversteps the mark in terms of the forum rules: I am staying away from saying anything nasty about other religions or people, I am simply giving a few salient points about one religion & not trying to force anything on anyone, I hope it reads that way. I hope the above was relatively clear & not wafflicious, nor merely a “wall of text”!
