How Many Times Can a Religion Bluff and Not Itself Get Burned
Poker is a game of psychology with each player trying to make the other players think something other than the truth. There have been fortunes made by bluffing one had cards he/she did not have.
I've been reading The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World (2018) by Catherine Nixey. She has studied how Christians were successful at pushing Pagans out of the Roman Empire where Pagans had been the dominant religion for centuries.
To study the bluff of Christianity we need to go back to the writers of the Bible who claimed they knew the exact words of Jesus. None of these writers claimed to have been present when Jesus said these things and many were not born until a generation or two later. One thing they claimed Jesus said was that the world would end in his lifetime.
This claim the world would end momentarily was dropped later because it became apparent the public was not buying the bluff. If people were told over and over again, "Repent, give me your money because the world will end shortly" and it did not end people began to wise up.
The next bluff is one still being used. It is "Repent or you will suffer for eternity in a the fires of hell." I myself have had this bluff tried on me dozens of times.
I know this threat to be a bluff because no one has ever testified they suffered in the fires of hell. This bluff has been called.
Christians gained millions of Pagan converts with the threat of a fiery hell. The question today is whether this bluff which has worked so well for two thousand years can continue to be used on people when the threat is never carried through.
My view is the general public has called this bluff. The faith will one day fold its cards and leave the table.
I've been reading The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World (2018) by Catherine Nixey. She has studied how Christians were successful at pushing Pagans out of the Roman Empire where Pagans had been the dominant religion for centuries.
To study the bluff of Christianity we need to go back to the writers of the Bible who claimed they knew the exact words of Jesus. None of these writers claimed to have been present when Jesus said these things and many were not born until a generation or two later. One thing they claimed Jesus said was that the world would end in his lifetime.
This claim the world would end momentarily was dropped later because it became apparent the public was not buying the bluff. If people were told over and over again, "Repent, give me your money because the world will end shortly" and it did not end people began to wise up.
The next bluff is one still being used. It is "Repent or you will suffer for eternity in a the fires of hell." I myself have had this bluff tried on me dozens of times.
I know this threat to be a bluff because no one has ever testified they suffered in the fires of hell. This bluff has been called.
Christians gained millions of Pagan converts with the threat of a fiery hell. The question today is whether this bluff which has worked so well for two thousand years can continue to be used on people when the threat is never carried through.
My view is the general public has called this bluff. The faith will one day fold its cards and leave the table.
Jon Lindgren doesn't want to go to heaven so he's not going there. His goal is to deny ANY evidence that Jesus is the Son of God and is therefore qualified to tell the world what happens after we die. So there's no point in presenting any more evidence to him since denial of that evidence is what he has spent the latter part of is life doing. It's not easy to deny evidence which is why Lindgren never stops talking about Jesus and Christianity. He simply cannot make Jesus go away as he will SADLY find out after he dies.
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