Last month Trump vowed to defend Christianity and urged Christians to vote for him

“This is really a battle between good and evil,” evangelical TV preacher Hank Kunneman says of the slew of criminal charges facing Donald Trump. “There’s something on President Trump that the enemy fears: It’s called the anointing.”

The Nebraska pastor, who was speaking on cable news show “FlashPoint” last summer, is among several voices in Christian media pressing a message of Biblical proportions: The 2024 presidential race is a fight for America’s soul, and a persecuted Trump has God’s protection.

“They’re just trying to bankrupt him. They’re trying to take everything he’s got. They’re trying to put him in prison,” author, media personality and self-proclaimed prophet Lance Wallnau said in October on “The Jim Bakker Show”, an hour-long daily broadcast that focuses on news and revelations about the end times that it says we are living in.

        • Keith@lemmy.zip
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          8 months ago

          You don’t have to deny Jesus’ existence, which is overtly true, to deny that what he taught was true— or the same as modern day Christianity

            • Keith@lemmy.zip
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              8 months ago

              How is “some guy existed and said something about religion but idk what he said” extraordinary?

              • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                Very well. Explain where all the traditions about his acts and sayings came from. There is evidence of attestation and you should be able to address that.

                Because the whole thing is a con explanation does address that. They were running a grift and that was it. Of course the stories and sayings are all mixed up, liars need amazing memories. And of course the Jerusalem church was doing well they could draw in the crowds each week with yet another amazing adventure of Jesus.

          • Keith@lemmy.zip
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            8 months ago

            We aren’t saying Jesus was a messiah or in any way divine, but he was there and did things (probably different from what Christianity claims)

            You can dislike and oppose Christianity w/o denying the fact that Jesus exists.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              And? 95% of the humans race believes in some form of God. About 66% of biblical scholars believe the Resurrection was a true historical event as well as the gospel author citations being accurate

              • Keith@lemmy.zip
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                8 months ago

                Are you being intentionally clueless? The image specifically says “modern scholars”, whereas all of your examples are of unqualified people. Moreover, most scholars of antiquity are not Christian.

                • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Yes modern scholars. The typical modern scholar of the bible believes the events really happened and the attributions are correct.

                  How much longer are you going to continue to use the circular logic of something is true because it is believed to be true and it is believed to be true because people believe that it is true?

                  Present evidence, not arguments from authority or No True Scotsmen. I can demonstrate vaccines work by data not be invoking some doctor who said something one time.

        • Keith@lemmy.zip
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          8 months ago

          Yes. Was he the son of god or messiah? No. Be he was around and did spread something religious.

        • wjrii@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Nobody’s “sure”, but there are enough records and accounts to be reasonably confident that among the many traveling rabbis collecting followers in Roman Judaea was one from Nazareth named Joshua/Jesus, and that he was executed for political activities.

          That’s it though.

          Beyond that, his story is largely a creation of his followers, some of whom were apocalyptically charismatic enough in their own right to keep an ember alive, and eventually it sort of spread among the Jewish diaspora and the military, and happened to be in (relative) ascendance with the latter when an Eastern emperor needed to rethink some political strategies.

          After that, it’s largely survivorship bias, with every hint of writing about him being preserved, transcribed, recreated, or invented from whole cloth, and anything from his contemporary itinerant preachers being ignored or suppressed.

          • kromem@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            After that, it’s largely survivorship bias, with every hint of writing about him being preserved, transcribed, recreated, or invented from whole cloth, and anything from his contemporary itinerant preachers being ignored or suppressed.

            Not quite. In fact, there’s a rather significant survivorship bias around the versions of Jesus. Literally the very earliest primary documents involve someone known for persecuting Christians telling Christians in an area he has no authority to persecute that they should abandon other versions of Jesus they accepted or other gospels in favor of the version he claimed based on spiritual visions of someone he never met in life.

            We have nothing but fragments recorded by its critics of the Gospel of the Egyptians, for example, and the Gospel of Thomas we only have because of a single person burying it in a jar around the time it became punishable by death to possess.

            The version of Jesus with female disciples that was talking about Greek atomism and Epicurean proto-evolutionary thought is actually super interesting historically given the overall philosophy, but it’s barely extant and only is because of archeological discoveries after the church lost effectively mega-monarchal status to just become a mega corporation instead.

            And even in the modern era discoveries the church has any purview over like the Mar Saba letter abruptly go missing before it can be further validated by scholars.

            The survivorship around “other versions” of Jesus look like they were conducted by Stalin with a two millennia reach. It involved literally burning down the successor to the library of Alexandria (and with it sources potentially related to a “Gospel of the Egyptians”).

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            May I see those records? Contemporary first hand please.

            Also I was wondering if you could explain why Paul never mentions Nazareth or anyone else until Mark needs a name of smallest toen he can find in the area. Man, Mark could really set a scene well.

        • Keith@lemmy.zip
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          8 months ago

          You don’t have to deny Jesus’ existence, which is overtly true, to deny that what he taught was true— or the same as modern day Christianity

                • Keith@lemmy.zip
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                  8 months ago

                  Our messiah? accepting Jesus’ existence historically does not mean we are Christians

                  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    Fine you are not a Christian. Cool. Now do you have evidence of your weakened claim or are you just going to point to other people to make your argument for you?

                • grue@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  I don’t give a flying fuck about a “messiah.” I just don’t see any good reason to deny the existence of a historical figure (in this case, a Jewish carpenter who pissed people off and got executed for it) out of pure delusional spite.

                  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago
                    • total lack of relics
                    • Total lack of any contemporary records
                    • A timeline of events that are way too short and full of contradictions
                    • The ability of anyone with some basic knowledge of the texts at the time to find where each line of the NT was stolen from
                    • The most prolific writer about the guy admits he got his ideas from dreams not from witnesses
                    • No royal lineage established

                    There are reasons to believe the man didn’t exist and you have not provided a single shred of evidence that he did exist.

        • Keith@lemmy.zip
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          8 months ago

          You don’t have to deny Jesus’ existence, which is overtly true, to deny that what he taught was true— or the same as modern day Christianity

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        The historical existence of several Jewish reformers of the era baked into a singular allegory is not disputed.

      • kromem@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        It’s not worth arguing with the folk that push this narrative.

        If they are as poorly informed to make the argument it’s likely in large part because of an affinity for the concept greater than an affinity for knowledge of any details surrounding it.

        So providing a counterpoint or more details just falls on willfully deaf ears.

        To be fair though, the blame falls more on proselytizers deafening so many ears with their bullshit than on the people with such an acquired distaste for the canonical Jesus that they feel the need to throw out historical Jesus with the bathwater. I definitely get the sentiment, even if the historical Jesus became one of my hyperfocus interests over the past few years.