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Appreciate your thoughts peoples. Just to add something else. Not only has the divinity of Christ been given up, but his existence as a person and his death is being more and more seriously questioned. The question is one of tremendous importance. For both the Freethinker, as well as for the Christian, it is of the weightiest significance. The question is -- what does history say? And that question must be settled in the judgement of historical criticism. If the thinking world is to hold to the position that Christ was a real character, and that his death was 'real', there must be sufficient evidence to warrant that belief. Something else that is interesting and significant is that it took Christianity 800 years to develop the symbol of its suffering Savior. How should we explain the fact that within the first eight centuries of the evolution of Christianity, Christian art represented a lamb, and not a man, as suffering on the cross for the salvation of the world? The human figure on the cross was never pictured on the paintings in the Catacombs nor the sculptures on Christian tombs. Everywhere a lamb was shown as the Christian. Why then should we believe in the Crucifixion. If Christ performed the 'miracles' that the New Testament speaks so fondly about, then why would people want Jesus to be crucified. Is this history or fiction!? Also, the early Gnostic sects even denied the physical existence of Jesus. Germany's great ecclesiastical historian, says: "The Christ of early Christianity was not a human being, but an "appearance," an illusion, a character in miracle, not in reality -- a myth. The Christian church is older than the oldest Christian writings. Christ did not produce the church. The church produced the story of Christ. Hence leaving, the freethinker to question the reliability of writers of christianity. Perhaps, this leaves it to scientific inquiry. If no evidence for his existence and death can be found, perhaps Jesus then belongs to the mythical fictitious 'heroes' of the past.
"The summit is just a halfway point"
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