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I Have Ocd And Am Going Crazy Trying To Figure This Out!


born1ce

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Hi Everyone, I have been reading your posts and testimonials over the past few days. I actually started reading this site a few years ago, but I keep being pulled back to Christianity. I am really in a dark place right now because I just can't stand the uncertainty of not knowing the truth. The problem with having OCD is that uncertainty is intolerable and causes a lot of anxiety. Right now my panic attacks are ridiculous and I am so tormented from all my questions and confusion.

 

This summer I had pretty much convinced myself that Christianity is not true and I was feeling good about it to the point that I was exploring other religions and then BAM! suddenly the doubt and fear smacked me upside the head and I went running back and then BAM! I suddenly started being tormented about the thought that I had if only for a short time turned my back on Christianity and here I am now shaking and quaking and can't hold food down because of my fear, getting more and more off kilter!

 

I almost wrote to you guys a year ago but I didn't--no I waited until it has become a crisis.

 

Here is my story and questions and I am so grateful to anyone who has any insight.

 

I was not raised Christian. In fact I remember crying when I was about 10 because I wanted to go to church like all my friends and my parents said no because they didn't want me to be brainwashed. However, I always felt that there is a God and I would lay in bed at night and say prayers and it was very comforting. Of course then  I didn't understand the story of salvation etc., I just knew there was a benevolent entity who felt like he was kind to me. 

 

In high school I had some friends have me say the salvation prayer and I was "saved" but I still didn't understand the salvation story and I still wasn't technically Christian. 

 

Fast forward to adulthood: I was not Christian yet and I had an abortion (pretty much against my will) and this led me to a pit of desperation and mental anguish I can never describe. I was so afraid and then I was taught by some well-meaning people that I would be forgiven by God if I confessed my sins and repented and accepted Christ. So I did and ended up going to RCIA in the Catholic church for two years and then becoming a full-fledged Catholic. I became a strict rosary-saying Catholic who went to Mass several times  a week. I had already been married and divorced before I became Catholic and I was on my second marriage with a husband who was Catholic. When I was in RCIA preparing for baptism and confirmation I was told that I did not need an anulment from my first husband because I had not been Christian and hadn't even been baptised. 

One night at Mass it was my second husband's and my anniversary and the priest blessed us and said some nice things about our marriage, etc. HOWEVER, a few days later I was watching a show on EWTN (Catholic Network) in which viewers send in questions and 2 priests give their canon law advice. Well, one question was the same as mine about not being baptised when getting married and did they need an annulment or not and these priests said yes, they did! I was floored. So I was living in sin with my husband because I had not had an annulment and the church I had RCIA at had told me wrong?? I was really freaked out and I started seeking answers to what was true and then that was when I started realizing the Catholic church doesn't have agreement from one diocese to the next etc. I started doing intense research (ok--obsessive research) on the history of the Catholic church and I found out the idea of the infallibility of the Pope is a recent thing and other things made me realize that the Catholic church was not right. So after an intense mental struggle I left the Catholic church and started going to Protestant churches. However, there were so many ideas it was confusing and it was hard to find the right church and years later I still don't have a church or denomination because there was always problems with the theology to me. Many times I wanted to go back to the Catholic church, but I intellectually couldn't do it.

 

Now I am thinking that maybe the whole thing is wrong. But this is ETERNAL, you know? Something that can't be taken so lightly so it's driving me crazy!!!!

I absolutely intellectually believe all the things I've read here and other places (and I always thought the story of Adam and Eve was allegorical and then realizing if that story falls apart then the whole thing falls apart.....) but emotionally I can't let go and there are some things that are plaguing my doubting mind:

 

1.) How is the state of Israel protected if not by supernatural God forces and it was prophesied in the Bible (this is the one thing that keeps me staying, because it is too hard to understand how it is coincidence, but maybe someone has some insight?)

2.) Jesus prophecies about earthquakes and wars and the heart of man growing cold and that is exactly what is happening?

3.) I've had a few dreams that come true I mean really vivid dreams that really came true. How could I be doing that if God wasn't giving me that ability.

4.) weren't the Gospels written within 30 years of Jesus death? I have read that isn't true, but I swear when I was doing my research to become a Christian I remember reading that and thinking then this must be true because some of his contemporaries might still be living and could dispute any discrepancies.

5.) Why in the world would Paul give up his Jewish status and life to dedicate to someone who did not really appear to him in a vision?????????That is the hardest to understand!!

 

 

My sister was raised like me and she became a Christian for a while but was able to let it go and I think that is because she doesn't have OCD which is a doubting disease that makes uncertainty unbearable and she doesn't have issues with anxiety and depression that make it seem so scary to leave something like this.

 

Thank you for reading this and I really really appreciate any insight. 

 

 

 

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Hi and welcome, we're glad you're here.  There are several people here with OCD who have similar struggles with Christianity.  Are you seeing good health professionals and getting the best treatment for your condition?  You might find this info helpful:

http://ocdla.com/scrupulosity-ocd-religion-faith-belief-2107

https://iocdf.org/about-ocd/

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Hi born1CE. Welcome to ex-c.  

 

 I can't be of much help, but I can give you the approximate dates that the gospels were written.  Not everyone agrees, of course, but this is the general consensus.

(Jesus, according to the bible, would have died in 32 or 33 c.e.)

 

Mark (first gospel to be written)  65 to 80 c.e. 

Matthew  80 to 100 c.e. 

Luke  80 to 130 c.e.

John  90 to 120 c.e.

 

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/index.html

 

If you go to this index you will see a couple of things.  There were lots and lots of things written back then that most christians know very little about.  And, the way the books are arranged in the biblical new testament are not chronological.  The earliest New Testament writings were the epistles of Paul.  

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Hi Thank you both for responding. 

FreeThinkerNZ...yes, I do have professional help for my OCD, but this religious "obsession" is a hard nut to crack because there is no certainty. I think that's why I avoid dealing it with it and it keeps coming back stronger every time.

 

Thank you for that link Mythra....if Paul wrote so close to the time of Jesus then maybe there is some validity to his claims? (I'm not debating, just swirling the possibilities around my brain!).

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Hi Thank you both for responding. 

FreeThinkerNZ...yes, I do have professional help for my OCD, but this religious "obsession" is a hard nut to crack because there is no certainty. I think that's why I avoid dealing it with it and it keeps coming back stronger every time.

 

Thank you for that link Mythra....if Paul wrote so close to the time of Jesus then maybe there is some validity to his claims? (I'm not debating, just swirling the possibilities around my brain!).

You probably don't want to know what I think about that.  Tell you what - just take a look at the Christ Myth Theory thread in the General Theological Issues category.  You'll see what I think about that. 

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"I am really in a dark place right now because I just can't stand the uncertainty of not knowing the truth."

 

It is the unknown that makes Life interresting. Wouldn't it be extremely boring to know everything? Believing without evidence is the opposite of Knowledge.

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As far as Paul goes, there is nothing outstanding about someone having a radical religious conversion.  That happens all of the time.  For a variety of reasons.

http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/conversion.html

 

The Damascus road conversion accounts are in the book of Acts, not in Paul's writings.  And the book of Acts overall is not considered to be historically accurate. 

http://www.academia.edu/3305696/The_Historical_Reliability_of_the_Book_of_Acts

 

In that time, people who had dreams and visions were revered.  Even Peter had a vision which told him that Christianity should include gentiles.  Paul admits that his teachings came directly from Christ in the form of visions.  So, you can retain the christian view that God operated that way back then, and then he quit doing that after that time.

 

Or, you can adopt the view of a rationalist.  That visions are dreams and hallucinations come from the mind of the individual and not from God.

 

And don't dismiss the idea that sometimes people lie.  And saying something came directly from God gave authority to your words.  People were amazing gullible back then. http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/kooks.html

 

Nowadays if someone tells you they had a vision, and want to reveal the truth to you, you'd probably say - alrighty then.  And question their sanity.

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I would recommend checking out this thread: http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/44234-top-ten-reasons-not-to-fear-biblical-end-times-scenarios/#.VlBGJ79FarY

 

I discovered this a while back, when I was still a newbie around here. Quite a bit of what is written here might be of some help to you. It's been a while since I originally looked through everything, so I don't remember much, but there was definitely a lot of good info.

 

As for my thoughts on these:

 

1.) How is the state of Israel protected if not by supernatural God forces and it was prophesied in the Bible (this is the one thing that keeps me staying, because it is too hard to understand how it is coincidence, but maybe someone has some insight?)

2.) Jesus prophecies about earthquakes and wars and the heart of man growing cold and that is exactly what is happening?

3.) I've had a few dreams that come true I mean really vivid dreams that really came true. How could I be doing that if God wasn't giving me that ability.

4.) weren't the Gospels written within 30 years of Jesus death? I have read that isn't true, but I swear when I was doing my research to become a Christian I remember reading that and thinking then this must be true because some of his contemporaries might still be living and could dispute any discrepancies.

5.) Why in the world would Paul give up his Jewish status and life to dedicate to someone who did not really appear to him in a vision?????????That is the hardest to understand!!

 

1) The thread that I linked to contains some very good information about this. Post #69 on page 4 is definitely worth reading. I quite enjoyed reading it all over again, since it has been years since I last went through everything in this thread.

 

2) I hardly consider Jesus' predictions of earthquakes, wars, and rumors of wars to be worth anything, considering such things have always been happening since before his alleged virgin birth, death and resurrection.

 

3) What sort of dreams have you had that came true? If you're willing to share, it would be interesting to take a look at your experiences. However, even without knowing about your experiences, I think a better question to ask would be, "What good reason do I have to think that the Abrahamic god is responsible for me having this ability?" For all we know, this ability could come from an entirely different deity than what members of Abrahamic faiths worship. Or, there is the possibility that having dreams that come true just happens, with no deity involved whatsoever.

 

4) I only know as much about this subject as Mythra does, so I don't know that I could really help much in this area.

 

5) It's always possible that Paul hallucinated or made up the story entirely so he could go off and start his own cult. Yes, it can be difficult to understand at first when you're still trapped in the Christian way of thinking, but when you discover other ways of looking at this issue, it becomes far less complicated than it appears.

 

Hopefully this helps and welcome to the site. 3.gif

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If Paul's conversion must be accepted at face value, because he had a vision or experience that changed him and changed history, then one must also accept at face value the account of Joseph Smith.  Because they are remarkably similar. 

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Congratulations on your abortion!  Congratulations on your divorce!  There were no doubt good things about both of them, and they led to consequences that were good.  Just because the world is uncertain does not mean that it is unsecure.  What if uncertainty -- Quantum Uncertainty, perhaps -- is the fount out of which everything that you cherish, came?  OCD sucks, but the route through this hell is carved by coming to welcome uncertainty as your source of comfort.  John Dewey wrote:

 

"Man finds himself living in an aleatory world; his existence involves, to put it baldly, a gamble. The world is a scene of risk; it is uncertain, unstable, uncannily unstable. Its dangers are irregular, inconsistent, not to be counted upon as to their times and seasons... Our magical safeguard against the uncertain character of the world is to deny the existence of chance, to mumble universal and necessary law, the ubiquity of cause and effect, the uniformity of nature, universal progress, and the inherent rationality of the universe. Those magic formulae borrow their potency from conditions that are not magical. Through science we have secured a degree of power of prediction and control ... But when all is said and done, the fundamentally hazardous character of the world is not seriously modified, much less eliminated."—Experience and Nature.

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Thank you for the helpful links. It's a lot to absorb. Oh about my dreams-- they were nothing wthat is newsworthy -- just i would dream about something and then within in a few days it would happen just like I dreamed it...sort of like precognition. Because I have this ability it made me start reading about these sorts of things which got me to reading about children who remember past lives, which was one of the catalysts for me thinking away from Christianity. That was right before my latest OCD relapse.

I do have a question: in the threads you sent me links to I am reading that the modern Jews in Israel are mostly later converts. Forgive me for my ignorance but I didn't know that in history there were mass conversions to Judaism? I always have read that it was the other way around--- that the Jews were forced to convert to Christianity or Islam depending on time and place...

 

Mythra-- that is a salient point about Joseph Smith and Paul. I used to live in an area with a large Mormon population and I could never understand how they could believe that junk.

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1.) How is the state of Israel protected if not by supernatural God forces and it was prophesied in the Bible (this is the one thing that keeps me staying, because it is too hard to understand how it is coincidence, but maybe someone has some insight?)

2.) Jesus prophecies about earthquakes and wars and the heart of man growing cold and that is exactly what is happening?

3.) I've had a few dreams that come true I mean really vivid dreams that really came true. How could I be doing that if God wasn't giving me that ability.

4.) weren't the Gospels written within 30 years of Jesus death? I have read that isn't true, but I swear when I was doing my research to become a Christian I remember reading that and thinking then this must be true because some of his contemporaries might still be living and could dispute any discrepancies.

5.) Why in the world would Paul give up his Jewish status and life to dedicate to someone who did not really appear to him in a vision?????????That is the hardest to understand!!

 

 

 

Welcome to the forum, born1ce.

 

1.  Israel isn't protected.  When European refugees created the nation in the late 1940's they simply gave the new country an old name found in a religious text.  Nothing supernatural is going on.

 

2.  Earthquakes have been going on for billions of years and will continue for billions more.  Wars have been going on ever since humans learned how to fight in teams.  Pick any point in history or any point in the future and both earthquakes and wars are happening.  It isn't a prediction or prophesy.  If I were to tell you that tomorrow morning the sun will rise in the East and it actually happened would that prove that I have magic powers?

 

3.  Isn't it more likely that your mind is playing tricks on you?  God is absurd.

 

4.  We do not know who wrote the gospels or when.  Christian propaganda will tell you all kinds of things to trick you into joining their religion.  The Gospel of Thomas is probably the oldest surviving gospel but the gospels found in the Bible were probably all written after the Roman Jewish war and the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. 

 

5.  Paul might have suffered from delusions and hallucinations.  The world is full of crazy people who will do all kinds of crazy things.

 

 

I understand how hard it is to get the emotions to believe something even through the facts are understood.  I've been there.  I wish you the best of luck.

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Hi born1ce, I chime in with everyone else in welcoming you. I don't have first-hand experience with OCD, but I know people who have it. I agree with others that the OCD is probably an issue separate from the questions you posed. If you get answers for those, will other questions like them then start to bedevil you? If there's a way you can laugh gently at the OCD part of your mind, that seems best to me.

 

But as to your questions:

 

1. Israel was destroyed already by the Romans. They obliterated the Temple, and the priestly aristocracy based on it died out. Rabbinic Judaism is not identical to the type of Judaism practiced up to 70 A.D. (And there were many changes in Judaism before that.) So it's not the case that God protected the nation of Israel.

 

The nation state that was begun in 1948, using land provided under the Balfour Declaration back in World War I, is a creation of western powers. Some religious Jews, such as the Satmar Hasidim, still refuse to recognize its legitimacy. They think Israel can only be legitimately resurrected when the Messiah returns.

 

As to divine protection: well, the Holocaust is a pretty powerful argument against any divine protection of the Jewish people. To say that some of them survived, so God must be protecting them, is really abhorrent in the face of the 6 million who were killed.

 

2. I think people have dealt with 2. already on here. Many centuries have been wracked by the calamities Jesus is portrayed as predicting.

 

3. Don't know what to say, but not a proof of Christianity. It's just as easily consistent with spirit worship among "tribesmen," or perhaps with the human ability to see patterns in what is only coincidence.

 

4. General consensus about the gospels is that they are no earlier than 70 A.D. Whether there were oral traditions before them is up for endless debate.

 

5. No way to answer this. Why does any founder of a religion give up status in the old group, from which he/she breaks away? There is always some sort of gain, or at least, perceived gain.

 

Cheers!

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Welcome...I'm glad you decided to share your story.

 

One night at Mass it was my second husband's and my anniversary and the priest blessed us and said some nice things about our marriage, etc. HOWEVER, a few days later I was watching a show on EWTN (Catholic Network) in which viewers send in questions and 2 priests give their canon law advice. Well, one question was the same as mine about not being baptised when getting married and did they need an annulment or not and these priests said yes, they did! I was floored. So I was living in sin with my husband because I had not had an annulment and the church I had RCIA at had told me wrong?? I was really freaked out and I started seeking answers to what was true and then that was when I started realizing the Catholic church doesn't have agreement from one diocese to the next etc. I started doing intense research (ok--obsessive research) on the history of the Catholic church and I found out the idea of the infallibility of the Pope is a recent thing and other things made me realize that the Catholic church was not right.

 

I can relate to this. I went through something similar after my divorce. There were so many conflicting opinions about it and I also went through a period of being completely consumed by finding answers. It's terrible and lonely. I think you are already taking steps in the right direction.

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I don't know what your particular brand of OCD looks like, but here are my thoughts on OCD in general:

 

I know this will sound like a very weak advice and you're probably aware of it anyways, but really: brooding over religion (or anything really) while caught up in an anxiety-laden thought-loop won't lead you anywhere, ever, no matter how sure you are that it might.

 

"This time, this time will be different and I'll break through", nope, sorry, but no.

The trick, to my experience, is to avoid playing ball with ones thoughts while at the same time not actively avoiding it. Yeah, that's a hard one, I know.

 

I wrote about this in another thread, last post at the bottom: http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/70088-hell-fire-uh-gain/?hl=uh-gain

 

 

Anxiety pretty much works like this: an object or a thought is conditioned with bad feelings, which makes us fear them. Our brains are wired to have us avoid things we fear because they are potentially dangerous*, but the avoidance reinforces the conditioning with even more fear. Avoiding or attempting to counteract the fear may give some short-term relief, but in the end it only reinforces it further. It's like playing ball with a concrete wall, or scratching a sore spot: the harder you throw, the harder the rebound, and that scratching will eventually lead to a bloody infection!

 

If this or other things like it disturbs you deeply on a recurring basis, I'd suggest talking to a professional. However, to my experience, accepting the fear and then letting it pass without trying to neutralize it works pretty well.

 

*This is probably the result of an old beneficial instinct that aided in survival gone haywire.

 

 

 

 

Now, don't take my word on anything, I'm not a psychiatrist. In fact, I feel I may be stepping over the line since I'm not sure if my advice is beneficial, or if it might even prove detrimental but since I have OCD-symptoms myself, I feel obliged to at least try and help. 

 

Lastly, here are few words of wisdom:

"I will not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
- Litany against fear, Frank Herbert's Dune

 

Yeah, it's from a damn sci-fi novel, but who cares? ;)

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Thanks All...rjn I really really appreciate you giving me that link to that discussion. I was sitting here having that "hell anxiety" and this post helped so much. The crazy thing is that I actually have agreed with the doctrine that hell just means "annihilation" ( like on the Tent maker website ) but there's always that "what if?". It sounds like you are very well versed in how to deal with anxiety, because everything you said is what the professionals advise. Thanks for the poem too-- makes a lot of sense.

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Giving my two cents worth of words in reply to your question about Pauls writings being likely evidence to the validity of the Christian story. If you read Paul's books as a stand alone as they were when he wrote them earlier before the 4 Gospels that followed later. You will learn that Paul never wrote about Virgin and Bethlehem born Jesus of Nazareth. Paul wrote about Christ the Messiah that was revealed in time, whom he saw in his visions. This revealed Christ to Paul was then the fulfillment of the promise. It is with this vision in mind that Paul now launches a new Era in Judaism of a people who no longer are waiting for the Messiah but are now saved having the Messiah already exalted to glory and sitted next to God. Paul never necessarily left Judaism more than that he ushered a new "Way" of moving Judaism forward. And just because Paul was really convinced by his visions and and was charismatic and engaging enough to win new followers over to his new "Way"of Judaism does not change the fact that visions are always nothing but hallucinations. Scholars and researchers in the field also suspect that Paul could have been an epileptic sufferer and therefore his visions and vigorous writting. And you will note that he does at times allude to some spells of suffering that he comes under but accepts them as "God's strength is enough for me" and that could be the epileptic attacks that would have come from time to time. Paul is in no way responsible for the "Jesus of Nazareth"stories that were later written to give a physical existence to the Saviour of the Jew. But he is probably if not the founder of this new sect, the one who took it to its sophisticated level. So even though the God and Saviour stories are mythical and were copied from previos regional know religions, the Christian religion itself is historical. Human's have never had an evidence of any of all the Gods and Goddeses that have been invented and worshipped throughout the know age of human and religion but they have always sought console themselves with answers to any event even to they own existence by inventing an answer.

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Thank you, Nyami. I didn't know about the epileptic theory about Paul. It does make sense. I was watching a video on You Tube and I believe it was Bart Ehrmann debating a Christian and the Christian pointed out that those early Christian martyrs would not have died for something unless they knew it 100% true. Then he made some argument that those martyrs were not deluded in the same as the  Islamic martyrs of today. Which got my mind all in a turmoil again! sigh...but I just don't see how it's not the same unless those martyrs absolutely saw the resurrection then it is just faith...

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Thank you, Nyami. I didn't know about the epileptic theory about Paul. It does make sense. I was watching a video on You Tube and I believe it was Bart Ehrmann debating a Christian and the Christian pointed out that those early Christian martyrs would not have died for something unless they knew it 100% true. Then he made some argument that those martyrs were not deluded in the same as the Islamic martyrs of today. Which got my mind all in a turmoil again! sigh...but I just don't see how it's not the same unless those martyrs absolutely saw the resurrection then it is just faith...

Hey there born once. I recently asked the same question in the theology section.

 

http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/70104-why-did-the-disciples-die-if-it-were-not-true/page-1

 

I got some very good answers including the fact that just as there are only debatable scraps of information about whether a person called Jesus of Nazareth was crucified around 33/40AD there is even less evidence of Matthew, Peter and all those guys existing, let alone being martyed.

 

They were legends. Even if they did exist and were killed by the Romans it would be for being 'known ringleaders' of a disruptive sect. Even is they said 'Oh actually Mr Centurian, I don't believe it anymore - the guy never came back to life and we stole his body' the Roman response would not be "oh, OK then. Off you go about your business. Have a nice day". Killed anyway. So even if Peter died kicking and screaming in Gallillee "that was ten years ago, man! I'm a fisherman again - I don't believe that shit!" He would still be immortalised as a martyr by those whose purposes would suit.

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Nowadays if someone tells you they had a vision, and want to reveal the truth to you, you'd probably say - alrighty then.  And question their sanity.

This is key. Because the bible stuff happened so long ago, people tend not to be as critical of its claims as they would be nowadays. For example, you'd think someone was off their meds if they stood on a street corner and started yelling at you to repent. If you heard Paul's story today, you'd think he was nuts. But somehow, because its ancient you now give it more authenticity? That's silly.

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Thank you, Nyami. I didn't know about the epileptic theory about Paul. It does make sense. I was watching a video on You Tube and I believe it was Bart Ehrmann debating a Christian and the Christian pointed out that those early Christian martyrs would not have died for something unless they knew it 100% true. Then he made some argument that those martyrs were not deluded in the same as the Islamic martyrs of today. Which got my mind all in a turmoil again! sigh...but I just don't see how it's not the same unless those martyrs absolutely saw the resurrection then it is just faith...

So many people have died for a lie by now, I'm shocked that xtians still dare to use this argument! Even Catholic and Protestant xtians died for their different beliefs - killed by EACH OTHER !! By the tens of thousands. And they supposedly believed in the EXACT SAME GOD!!

 

Mormons died for their beliefs and their founder is a known fraudster, even convicted in a court of law. Are you tempted to be a Mormon because so many have suffered and died over this lie?

 

And why the heck are Muslims different than xtians in dying for their faith? Just because most modern xtians would never die for Jesus, doesn't mean they can arbitrarily argue that somehow Muslims who are dying for their faith, don't really believe. That's hog wash.

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Thank you, Nyami. I didn't know about the epileptic theory about Paul. It does make sense. I was watching a video on You Tube and I believe it was Bart Ehrmann debating a Christian and the Christian pointed out that those early Christian martyrs would not have died for something unless they knew it 100% true. Then he made some argument that those martyrs were not deluded in the same as the Islamic martyrs of today. Which got my mind all in a turmoil again! sigh...but I just don't see how it's not the same unless those martyrs absolutely saw the resurrection then it is just faith...

So many people have died for a lie by now, I'm shocked that xtians still dare to use this argument! Even Catholic and Protestant xtians died for their different beliefs - killed by EACH OTHER !! By the tens of thousands. And they supposedly believed in the EXACT SAME GOD!!

 

Mormons died for their beliefs and their founder is a known fraudster, even convicted in a court of law. Are you tempted to be a Mormon because so many have suffered and died over this lie?

 

And why the heck are Muslims different than xtians in dying for their faith? Just because most modern xtians would never die for Jesus, doesn't mean they can arbitrarily argue that somehow Muslims who are dying for their faith, don't really believe. That's hog wash.

Burny, what convinced me was not that they died for a belief - we all know people die for beliefs that are not true. The convincing thing is that as rational people we know that no one would die for something THEY THEMSELVES KNEW TO BE a pack of lies.

 

I only learnt on this forum that Matthew did not write the first gospel etc. I had even less idea that the disciples very existence was questionable, much less the manner of their deaths.

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The "wouldn't die for what they knew was a lie" argument just came up on another thread on here. I can't remember where. A big problem with that argument is that we don't know that the apostles underwent martyrdoms for their faith.

 

1. the stories about their martyrdoms are even newer than the gospels are. We don't have reliable accounts of the apostles' deaths. From the mid-second century on for about two hundred years, martyr stories were a major literary production, even outside of Christianity (there are ancient Jewish and pagan martyr stories). Usually the martyr is accused by evil men, gets hauled before a tribunal, is given a chance to recant, makes an eloquent speech, is then put to death, often with very macabre tortures. All this stuff is too late to count as solid evidence for how any apostle died.

 

See Candida Moss' book on the fabrication of martyr stories:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Persecution

 

 

2. We don't know that IF any apostle was put to death, he was given a chance to recant. If he was executed for sedition, there may have been no chance for him to save himself. In that case, the apostle would have had no choice about whether to go ahead and die for what he might have known was a lie.

 

Research I did on the tomb of St. Peter, below the Vatican, supposedly on the spot where he was martyred. indicates that it can't be older than the 130s A.D. That's because of the way the materials are set in relation to other tombs in the same cemetary, some of which have dated bricks.  Christian traditionalists can claim that there must have been earlier traditions that showed Christians in the 130s where to locate this tomb, but there is no evidence about that.

 

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