From: cctr114@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Rea)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: There is no god
Date: 19 Nov 92 07:20:17 GMT
Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

-Unknown- (msh9848@hertz.njit.edu) wrote:
>This is a challenge to Xtians out here. Convince me to believe in Xtianity 
>without quoting the bible. If you prefer , do it by email. 
>
>I do not believe that "god" gave man the bible nor do I believe in
>god, heaven or hell. Also I can not be convinced using hell fire and
>brimstone fear tactics.

I think that it was the British Philosopher Bertrand Russell who said
``either all of the earth's religions are equally wrong or one of them
is right''.  Today a large proportion of people are choosing either the
first option or taking the option that all the world's religions are
equally right and hence making no personal commitment to any particular
religion. The poster has essentially thrown out a challenge which can
not be answered. I think that it is important to set out what makes
Christianity different from other religions. Do do this requires a
good knowledge of many other religions, which I admit I do not have.
But it seems to me that Christianity is different from other monotheistic
religions in that it relies totally on the grace of God for salvation,
whereas the others rely on a combination of grace and good works.


The other religions I know about expect
that people should be good but that if they fail in being good then
they can recieve the grace of God by repenting or praying or whatever.
In these religions the grace of God is basically there only to
fill in the gaps when people aren't good enough on their own.
To me this would only be a vaild approach if the gap between God and
people was small. But it seems to me that God is infinite and totally
pure and holy so that the gap between God and people is unbridgeable
by man's good works or acts of piety. So to me religions like Judaism,
Benai Noach, and Islam, and eastern religions that beleive in reincarnation
are based on assumption that people are capable of being sufficiently
good to be accepted by God, or in the case of reincarnation, of moving
up the ladder toward God. This assumption seems to me to be false.
By contrast, in Christianity the grace of God is one and only thing
which brings us salvation. People are totally dependant on God freely
forgiving us and accepting us even though we are not worthy to be accepted.
In this way I think Christianity is more valid than the other religions
I know of.

This brings us to the place of Jesus within Christianity. His death and
resurrection is unique in world religions. There were other religions
in existence at the time when Christianity started that also beleived
in dieing and resurrecting gods. What seperates Christianity from these
other religions is that the others all occur in unverifiable times and
places, and are clearly mythlogical. We can pin point to with in a
very few days within a give year when the death and resurection took
place and also to a very small number of years as well. We also have
a number of people who have left us accounts, Paul at one point tells
us of 500 people who had seen Jesus after his resurrection. These people
did not beleive that they were making up a new mythology, no matter how
much the very liberal branch of Christianity would like to think they
were.  This rootedness in  history is in keeping with the whole of the
Judeo-Christian tradition which dates back nearly 4,000 years now.

>Matt Harelick
 

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Bill Rea                                                            (o o)
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