OK, so I too will continue under the impression that he was a real person and certainly a philosopher of some sort. (Somehow Josh Blue's character on Feast 3 comes to mind, but that is a different story. ) I'm not sure I am going to buy into the calendar part of this. Who created the calendar we use today? (Plus, we are all going to die next year from those Know It All Mayan's calendar and this will all be for nothing.)

**Please keep in mind my comments in ( ) are for humor only.

In the first few centuries after Jesus, people had a hard time believing Jesus was human but totally accepted Him as God where today its the opposite people are challenged when Christians claim him as something more than just a moral teacher, as Lord and Savior. As others have said the ressurection (Easter story) is crucial here. Christianity in how is spread like widfire all over the world and even migrated away from its "birth place" unlike all other religions (historical fact) was really because what happened on the cross and specifically when it is claimed Jesus rose from the dead.

Talking about the resurrection is hard. Because to go there, I have to believe in miracles. The Enlightment of the twentith century that so pervades our Western culture now says this is an impossibility, miracles don't happen everything has a scientific creation. The fact is, this part of the story will always go beyond human reason. But Christianity would have been dead in its tracks if Christ did not rise from the grave.

Either he never died, his death was faked, or someone lied about it. Only 2 of the gospels deal with the resurrection, and I know each gospel has it's own account of Jesus' last words...one of the gospels says he was put in a rock-hewn tomb by Joseph of Arimithea, another says he was placed in a new garden tomb....in Luke he is not offered any wine but in all of the other ones he is....in acts he stayed with the spostles for forty days but in luke he went right up into heaven....just too many inconsistencies for any of that to be reliable.
You think they would have at least gotten their stories straight.

I make no assumption that he existed at all. There were many people at the time that made claims to be the messiah of Jewish tradition. Each with similiar stories and followers. We have archeolgical records of numerous messiah cults at the time, but no records of Jesus. A supposedly famous (or infamous) name of the time, in the literary and social center of human civilization at the time, but no archeological evidence of a Jesus.

I think the stories about Jesus are the same as the stories about Robin Hood. Folklore that probably had an origin in multiple sources, but doesn't represent any actual historical person.

Jesus was a victim of a crazy unwed mother who kept telling the lie of her virginity, despite her pregnancy, even to her own son, who believed her lies of his divine heritage. He then basically lived a lie leading to his pathetic murder at the tender age of 33. Other crazy, deluded people hopped on the bandwagon, and then this Paul guy, who professionally murdered those crazetards for the government, cooked up a scheme to pervert their delusion into something useful for controlling the masses. "Repentance," a word that Jesus never uttered, became the new watchword, and Christianity became the government religion. The end.

Not to mention the myriad other "books" that didn't make it into the Bible. Basically, at a certain point in Catholicism's past, they gathered up the scripture books they wanted and the books they didn't want. That is indisputable fact.

Now, for all you "other denomination" Christians, how do you justify following the work of the Catholic Church (the Bible was compiled by the Church) but feeling like you don't need to be part of the Church, can change the rules to suit whatever denomination you belong to, and still go on about how it's "divine truth."

Look, I don't have any problem with following the Bible figuratively. I can get that. But literally? C'mon now.

Not sure where you are coming from with this as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John each deal with it in detail. Did you glance through them before writing this. Let's do our homework before tossing error out at fact.

If I say to one person "I went to the park Saturday evening with my wife and ran into a mutual friend" and to another person, "I went with my kids to the park Saturday evening to watch a little league game", are those by necessity contradictory? Are they automatically deceitful?

It is weaksauce to manufacture contradictions and suspicions where they do not necessarily exist. ......And it is weaksauce to lean too heavily on trying to harmonize things that are contradictions that do not have a clear resolution.

I could not help thinking about the changing accounts we are hearing from the US Gvt about the events leading to OBL's death (and following)......and all the stories of conjecture about if this is all even real......and it is not even 1 week after the event.

I do not mean to start a way off topic rabbit trail here (there are threads on this topic on the main forum for that - that I have not read), but if held at gunpoint I would bet it all that OBL's death was at the hands of Americans in that compound on that night.

^^I'm in this camp as well. Like Thomas Jefferson, I think Jesus was a sublime teacher of morals.

The facts of what happened 2000-2100 years ago in the Middle East are, AFAIC, sufficiently obscured by time and the retelling and retranslation of stories to be legend.

My question is, if Christianity posits a godly way of life, then is the fact of Jesus' existence necessary to its living? (I expect that for some people it is, and for others it isn't. Interested to hear various viewpoints ....)