curious In the end it is just a waste of time and energy to engage in such a debate.
I Disagree
The problem is it requires effort and work to understand the universe and the world we live in and decide on a course of action for any given situation. It is easier to follow a leader who appears to have the answers and accept any and all of their explanations, even when they don’t appear to make sense or even go against their particular moral code.
It is easier to accept such statements as:
Max9 No trustworthy historian doubts the existance of Jesus.
without fact checking.
Just for shits and giggles I decided to fact check that statement and not surprisingly the consensus turned out to be:
This statement is not entirely accurate. While the existence of Jesus of Nazareth is considered to be a historical fact by the majority of historians and scholars, there is a small minority of scholars who question or dispute the historical existence of Jesus. It would be more accurate to say that the majority of historians and scholars believe in the historical existence of Jesus, but the statement "No trustworthy historian doubts the existence of Jesus" is not entirely accurate.
But perhaps a more interesting question is: Do the majority of trustworthy Historians believe Jesus was the son of God?
Not too surprisingly the consensus answer seems to be:
The majority of historians and scholars do not believe that Jesus was the Son of God in the divine sense as understood by Christians. While the majority of historians and scholars believe that Jesus existed as a historical figure, the question of whether Jesus was the Son of God is a matter of religious belief and interpretation. The historical evidence does not provide a definitive answer to this question, as it is primarily focused on the historical context and events of Jesus' life rather than his divinity.
So much for Jesus, seems he may have been a carpenter's son after all! 🤣
One thing that doesn’t seem up for debate is that many of the world’s evils arise because of religion and religious teachings. When people blindly believe in myths and magic without questioning, there is a significant danger to others. And the greater the number of followers of any particular brand of religion, the easier it is to justify their faiths to non-believers and to recruit more of them to accept their nonsense. Sadly, this gives more power to their leaders who have the power to control them and make them do things as group, they would never condone on their own. It doesn’t seem to matter which of the faiths (I define faith as belief without hard repeatable evidence) you look at, all that have significant followings have the potential to make other non-believers lives miserable.
The only way to resist these ills is to constantly fight these cults with reason and science and I am pleased that in my lifetime, agnostics, atheists and humanists have been fairly successful in reducing the power of various religions. At least in the west. I agree it isn’t much fun to constantly debate these blind followers of utter nonsense, but it would be a shame to lose the gains we have made in the last 100 years.
In my view, making the world a better place to live, is never a waste of time!
