I Don't Know if I'm a Deist

[ThePainefulTruth]

That having been said, there is a great deal in the Bible about the person of Jesus Christ. I believe Jesus existed, and I believe he may very well have been the son of a heavenly father. I have seen many things in my life that would lead me to that conclusion. Therefore, I eschew Christianity and other formal religions, but I believe in the person of Jesus Christ.

I believe that Jesus existed. The existence of his brother James, the epistles of Paul (however corrupt), the many Gnostic references, the citations of Josephus (of which is there are two though one was added to), and the Roman historian Tacitus, are external evidence that he existed. The question is who Jesus really was. That he was a "prince of peace" doesn't fit with his statement that "I come not to bring peace, but a sword".

Jesus and John the Baptist were a team on the Jordan R. teaching salvation through repentance. Jesus dying for our sins makes no sense to begin with (not even God can die to correct our lack of repentance as Paul instituted), and it smacks of pagan salvific human sacrifice which has roots in the OT, and in mystical Mithraism which Paul grew up with in Tarsus.

As for Christ's statement that "I and the Father are one," he had already said his father was heavenly, so the only "blasphemy" he committed was in reaffirming that he had come from his father (sharing the same "flesh" or DNA, so to speak).

God as a male, and father reflects the human anthropomorphism that was used in the invention of the world's "revealed" divinities. Gender is a function of biological reproduction, not a Lord who is One.

There will never be (most likely) any verifiable, objective evidence to support the existence of a deity. Your beliefs are just that, beliefs. It's okay to believe, without evidence.

I agree that there'll probably be no evidence, most likely due to design. If there is a God, we're meant not to be able to have any confirmation of It's existence in order to protect our free will. On the other hand, if the universe came into existence spontaneously, you'd expect there to be some evidence of it unless a Will was obscuring it. The Great Question Mark in the Sky is the complete fire wall that is the Big Bang, which so completely separates us from whatever is "outside" or happened "before".

Belief is problematic due to its ambiguous definition. It encompasses everything from 100% blind faith in something completely lacking in evidence (or worse), to virtually proven theories where the evidence for it is massive and against it, zero.

 

[Deadtroopers]

There is no evidence for Jesus outside the NT. Josephus is an accidental interpolation, Tacitus contains nothing that can't be accounted for as other than Christian hearsay. Paul's Christ is killed by demons who don't know who he is. That is what he writes. Hebrews portrays Christ as High Priest sacrificing in heaven and makes statment that this priesthood could not happen on earth. It might be possible to square such things with an earthly Jesus; but it goes against the reading of the texts and Occam's Razor.