[tomohawk]

Jesus makes several truth claims, that if true, are extremely compelling for why someone may want to pay attention today. One of these is His claim to be God. You can either dismiss Jesus as a lunatic, dismiss Jesus as a liar, or accept Jesus for who He claimed to be. If Jesus was merely a good man, He would not have claimed to be God. That is not something good people do.

[darksaints]

We have no first hand accounts from Jesus himself. We have a couple of first hand accounts from followers. Most of them don't reconcile with each other very well. And even if they did, humans have a long history of collectively believing and participating in supernatural bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbCzb_FWpi4

Lots of people have claimed to be god. Some are even widely recognized as good people. Do we need to give them all our attention? Cause I'm pretty content living my life without believing in wild fairy tales.

[weare138]

The problem with this argument is we don't have first hand accounts of most historical events and people we accept as having occurred and existed.

[tomohawk]

Does your belief system require you to be so disparaging to people who believe differently?

If you don't want to pay any attention to the claims of Christianity, then by all means don't.

[darksaints]

No, but I'm pretty happy with seeking its demise. Christianity, along with the rest of the abrahamic religions, are a corrupting plague on our planet and society. That which is good about it is not unique to it, and that which is unique to it is not good. We are stagnant in our progress as humans to the degree that we still believe in it.

[tomohawk]

So, intolerance is the way forward?

[catalogia]

It's not intolerant to state that you do not believe in somebody else's religion. Nothing above is even "disparaging", even that fairy tale remark. It's not disparaging to state that, without good evidence, you believe fantastic stories from thousands of years ago to be fairy tails.

[guidance]

> 'It's not intolerant to state that you do not believe in somebody else's religion.'

Stating that you are, quote, "seeking its demise", is the very definition of intolerance.

> 'Nothing above is even "disparaging", even that fairy tale remark. It's not disparaging to state that, without good evidence, you believe fantastic stories from thousands of years ago to be fairy tails.'

This is the very definition of disparagement.

If I were to refer to your atheistic beliefs as 'the ignorance of children, raised by a wicked society that is under the influence of psychopathic demons', would you view that as disparaging? Of course you would.

The difference between that way of viewing things and your way of viewing things is simply a matter of perspective. The difference is, one viewpoint is based on knowledge, whereas the other is based in ignorance.

Source: I used to be an atheist also. As a teenager. In the Bible Belt.

[WillDaSilva]

Intolerance of bad ideas, not intolerance of those who hold them.

[goto11]

A fourth option is that he never actually claimed to be God.