Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Do the religious people on here actually believe in Christianity? Like do you actually believe that Christ rose from the dead, Garden of Eden, Jesus is the son of God, the Trinity, virgin birth, etc? Or is more Deism and you like the community from going to church? I have a hard time believing most adult converts i.e. JD Vance actually believe these things, but I'm curious if I'm wrong here.
Yes. "Christ rose from the dead" is a very believable claim, just on the historical evidence - the rest of the core claims of Christianity are not particularly hard to believe if you believe that (e.g. if Christ rose from the dead then He certainly was not an ordinary human; thus believing that He is the Son of God, was born of a virgin, and are coming back again as He claimed aren't very difficult to swallow).
The one exception would be that while I tend to believe in a ~literal Garden of Eden, it's not really skin off of my nose if the Genesis account(s), not being written for 21st century scientists, was not intended to be interpreted as 21st century scientists would prefer to interpret them. (Notwithstanding this I toy with ideas that harmonize the Eden account with what 21st century scientists have deduced about the nature of early man, but that's more because I find it interesting than that I need to understand everything written in Scripture to believe in it.)
I agree that if one can accept the Resurrection as related in the Gospels, the rest is small potatoes.
But I also agree with @sun_the_second. A miracle of this grade provides evidence against the historical record. How much other, non-Christian mystery hits the same threshold of evidence?
A decent question - while I am not familiar with any non-Christian mysteries from the premodern period with comparable documentation, I assume there are a lot of non-Christian mysteries with at least similarly persuasive levels of evidence, since I think the supernatural is real and encounters with it are not limited to the Christian tradition.
For instance, I don't consider Michael Shermer's poltergeist-y experience a "Christian mystery" and there's good evidence that it's it really happened (admission against interest, multiple witnesses).
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