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Assuming he is a white American, his culture's traditional religion is Christianity, and it has been since before there was his culture.
Well it depends how far back you go. White Americans came from somewhere, and there were plenty of European traditions before Christianity displaced or co-opted them. Returning to the "tradition" of Christianity seems a little unsatisfying, considering that it's really a generic set of traditions that are practiced by Christians all over the world, rather than something unique and local to a particular culture. It seems like the idea of traditionalism is that "our ancestors were right." Christianity says that our ancestors were all wrong, for thousands of years, and then a guy in the middle east figured out the truth, and from that point on it's been a steady march toward enlightenment as the Truth is spread throughout the world. That seems like the antithesis of tradition.
You're getting pretty strong pushback on this phrasing, for good reason. Most are arguing the "ancestors were wrong" angle, which is very fair. I'd like to push back on the idea that the Christian's claim is that Jesus claims he figured out the truth.
Jesus never said he figured out the truth. He said he IS the Truth. He isn't a sage in the desert who discovered something outside himself. He said that he is sent. He says that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The way to salvation isn't to learn what he has learned, it is to follow him. "No one can get to the Father except through me." Not "through my teachings." "Through me."
This is absolutely bizzare, if you have studied global religions. Jesus is unique in this regard. He doesn't claim to have brought fire from the gods, he claims to be the flame. He doesn't claim to have received divine revelation, his followers claim that he is the divine revelation.
His teaching is secondary - a nice lovely tantalizing icing - compared to his life, death, and resurrection.
Interesting, though that seems like a very abstract distinction, and not something that really contradicts what I said. From my point of view, Jesus was just a guy who claims to know everything about how the universe works. If a guy like that appeared in 2025, we would call him mentally ill.
It's not a very abstract decision. It's what makes the "Liar, Lord, Lunatic" trilemma distinct about Jesus compared to the Buddha. The Buddha could simply be earnestly mistaken. He fasted and meditated, entered some weird mental/physical state, thought he understood something no one else did, passed it along. With Jesus, "earnestly mistaken" isn't an option.
If a guy like Jesus appeared in 2025, healing the sick and raising the dead and multiplying food in front of crowds of 5,000, some would call him mentally ill. But I don't think they'd be right to do so.
Well if he actually did magic and people took videos of it on their cell phones, there wouldn't be any faith required. At that point it wouldn't really be a religion anymore.
So you say. Or it's all a trick like David Blaine. There's always room for doubt. The hundreds of miraculous healings with good medical documentation that occurred at Lourdes and at every saint canonization hasn't convinced you. https://www.lourdes-france.com/en/miraculous-healings/
Not sure what you mean by, "it wouldn't be a religion anymore." Is your definition of religion, "cannot be proven or argued for unless someone already irrationally believes it?"
Well I think being untestable and unfalsifiable is a pretty big component of all religions. One has to believe in the religion even if there's no evidence. If there were evidence, anyone could believe it, and the true faithful wouldn't be doing anything very impressive or unique.
Is this random list of names supposed to convince me of something?
If you would like something more like a newspaper article, this is a good summary of several cases: https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/A_Protestant_Looks_at_Lourdes.pdf
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