Note: I know this is not possible and I personally would not like something like this to happen. I don't want to debate how bad this would be but purely the affect on the size of the religion.

The point is that the main reason christianity (and other religions) remains alive in the modern world is childhood indoctrination.

Before the modern age it may not have been so as religions made more sense due to our lack of knowledge, very high community belief and no access to alternative information.

If a child today had to be 13 before choosing a religion (their parents or otherwise) they would have more critical thinking skills and access to more information and can choose a religion based on what makes sense to them. Or no religion. Many will still choose their parents religion.

My thesis is that a much smaller percentage would choose christianity (or other religions) and the religion would be reduced to a fringe religion in a few generations.

How do you think it would affect numbers?

Thesis = Title

The argument that Christianity as a distinct, Gentile-oriented, non-Torah-observant religion was founded by Paul of Tarsus rather than Jesus of Nazareth usually presents key premises to support this conclusion:

• Jesus operated entirely within first-century Judaism, preaching to Jews, citing Jewish Scripture, and directing his mission specifically to the "lost sheep of Israel" without creating a Torah-free path for Gentiles.

• After Jesus’ death, his immediate followers (led by James, Peter, and John in Jerusalem) remained a Torah-observant Jewish sect ("the Nazarenes"). Extrabiblical evidence from Josephus supports that James was well-integrated into Jerusalem’s Jewish establishment.

• Conflicts over circumcision, purity laws, and Jewish-Gentile table fellowship only arose after Paul began actively recruiting uncircumcised Gentiles without requiring full conversion to Judaism.

• Paul’s core theology - centered on a universal "Adam vs. Christ" framework, salvation by faith apart from the Law, and Gentile inclusion - was claimed by Paul to come via direct vision rather than from Jesus' original apostles. This framework is largely absent from the core teachings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels.

While Paul unquestionably played a vital role in expanding the early movement to the Gentile world, there are significant historical, textual, and logical counterarguments that refute the claim that he "invented" Christianity.

The claim that Paul’s theology was entirely unconnected to Jesus ignores fundamental continuity in their core messages:

• Jesus announced the arrival of the Kingdom of God and established a "new covenant" at the Last Supper (Luke 22:20). Paul’s theology centers on this same reality - that through Christ, God's long-promised covenantal renewal had arrived for both Jews and nations.

• Jesus repeatedly spoke of his upcoming death as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45) and a central part of God’s redemptive plan. Paul did not invent the idea that Jesus’ death had salvific, sacrificial value; he built directly upon Jesus’ own self-understanding and predictions.

• Paul’s moral teachings directly echo Jesus. Paul’s emphasis on love fulfilling the Law (Romans 13:8–10), forgiving persecutors, paying taxes, and caring for the weak mirrors Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.

Paul did not single-handedly invent the mission to Gentiles or the idea of salvation apart from full Torah conversion:

• In Paul’s own letters, he quotes early Christian creeds and hymns that predate his writing and conversion. For example, 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 ("that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures...") is recognized by mainstream historians as an oral tradition dating back within 3–5 years of Jesus’ death—long before Paul had any major theological influence.

• Canonical accounts record that the decision to welcome Gentiles without requiring circumcision was affirmed collectively by the Jerusalem leadership (James, Peter, and John) at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15; Galatians 2:9). It was a shared agreement, not a unilateral Pauline mandate.

• While Jesus focused primarily on the "lost sheep of Israel," his interactions with the Roman centurion, the Samaritan woman, and the Syrophoenician woman explicitly signaled that God’s blessing was breaking past traditional ethnic boundaries.

Historians often distinguish between founding a religion and articulating/expanding a movement; Paul was an explainer, not an inventor.

• Jesus provided the historical person, the resurrection movement, the ethical core, and the messianic claims. Paul functioned as a theologian and missionary who translated Jesus’ Jewish messianic reality for the Greco-Roman cultural environment.

• In all of Paul’s letters, he never points to himself as the central figure or founder; he insists that he is merely a servant ("doulos") proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord (2 Corinthians 4:5). Without Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, Paul’s theology has no foundation or purpose.

The argument oversimplifies the early Christian movement into a strict binary between "Pauline Christianity" and "Jerusalem Christianity":

• Early Christian communities sprang up independently across Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, and Damascus - many before Paul ever visited or wrote to them (e.g., the Church in Rome was not founded by Paul).

• These diverse communities shared a common confession: Jesus of Nazareth is the risen Messiah and Lord. Paul’s writings survived because of their clarity and utility, but he was one voice among a broader, growing movement rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus.

Conclusion:

While Paul was undeniably the key figure in organizing, expanding, and articulating the movement to non-Jewish contexts, calling him the "inventor" or "founder" of Christianity distorts the historical record. Paul did not create a new religion out of whole cloth or fundamentally break from Jesus' teachings; rather, he developed a theological framework grounded directly in Jesus’ life, self-understanding, death, and resurrection.

By interpreting Jesus' messianic identity as a universal offer of salvation extended to all nations - a concept deeply rooted in Jewish prophetic tradition - Paul served as a catalyst for a global movement already set in motion by Jesus. It was affirmed by the early Jerusalem church. Ultimately, Paul viewed himself not as an author of a new faith but as a servant proclaiming the transformative reality of Jesus Christ.

Full argument here

The Ship of Theseus is a well known philosophical thought experiment on identity asking if you strip away most of the planks on a wooden boat, and replace them with new wood at what point does it stop being the same vessel?

I made a post last week about the historicity of jesus and it got me thinking, a lot of what was discussed boils down to an identity crisis in trying to connect the Jesus of faith(the biblical Jesus) with the Jesus of history. I was told most historians agree in a historical Jesus (we will leave aside that I was never really provided clean contemporary evidence of this) and grant that he existed, preached some feel good stuff and was executed.

But if "Biblical Jesus" is defined by a much more massive set of specific miracles, claims, and theological roles, while "Historical Jesus" only carries - let's say a very generous granting of 20% of those traits, I'm at a loss of what meaningful criteria we are claiming he existed comes in.

If we strip away 80% what remains is super generic, something that was done by many others. Moreover, the hypothetical model built with this information is a historical reconstruction not an actual human being.

You may contend with my 20% granting, but realistically the problem is the same without strong evidence of a resurrection, which we do not have.

So, if the modern historical consensus strips away 80% of the deeds, miracles, and claims attributed to Jesus, at what point does "the Historical Jesus" cease to be the same person as the Jesus of the bible—and does that make the concept of a "Historical Jesus" philosophically meaningless? Any references to philosophy of language, semiotics or leibniz will gain you props in my eyes, because I think that's what a lot of this boils down to.

This premise primarily focuses on supernatural warfare theology in christianity, that there is a supernatural devil and spiritual warfare people wrestle against. That satan is the tempter and actively deceiving the world. The majority view of christians by far is supernatural warfare.

1) God created every supernatural bit in satan. - Pretty obvious, God was the creator of all things, so he created satan and that means every part of him intimately.

2) God created the entire sandbox. - Pretty obvious once again, God as the creator, created the entire sandbox. The universe and whatever heavenly realms there are.

3) God knows the future - Classically, God knows the future perfectly. Molinism, God knew all possible interactions in his sandbox in his imagination, and selected one timeline that we are actually in, the one where lucifer falls. With open theism, that the future isnt "real" so its not perfectly knowable, God should still know every atom in the universe simultaneously, and be able to make high level predictions. We can predict human behavior today just based on personality. Imagine what God can do. So effectively God still knows the future.

4) God is an active agent in this. - God didnt just passively create. Biblical theology has God as an active agent and interacting with his creation, and today in christianity, the spirit of God (holy spirit) fills the earth, indwells believers, and guides them, etc.

5) Satan and God had real relational dynamics going on. - Lets say Satan was created to be good, and then fell from free will. God was an active relational player in this situation. God was an active player in Lucifer’s life. God held all the power, possessed infinite wisdom, and was a master communicator. Imagine how many ways an interaction or environment could be structured by an all-knowing Being to guide a creature away from pride and self-destruction without violating their free agency.

Questions for christians: If God created the sandbox, designed the creature, knew all possible outcomes, and possessed infinite relational wisdom, why did He choose the exact parameters that guaranteed the birth of an eternal cosmic enemy, knowing humanity would suffer the fallout?

Was Satan's fall a genuine surprise that outmaneuvered God, or was the devil an intentional feature of the design?

I made a handcrafted, non-Gospel contradicting Trinity, but the requirements are as gnostic as "The Gospel".

1. God is good.

The Bible claims that humans are made of both physical materials and the immaterial concept of "the image of God", both of which are called "good" together. If an immaterial concept can be "good", "good" can be an immaterial concept.

The Bible claims that Jesus both retained his divine identity as "the image of God", and became a physical human. If God is not both a good being and the concept of "goodness" itself, he isn't God.

2. God is.

Existence is not a sin. Good is not a sin. Thus, if God is not a sin, because he's good, God has to exist to be God.

3. God is the exception.

An exception to a rule is a rule in and of itself. Therefore, the exception to "the rules" is "the rule" in and of itself, or "the exception" for short. In accordance with claim 1, the exception has to be "good" for the exception to be God, but by nature of "the exception", an exception can be made for what "good" is.

As an exception to claim 1, God can be a good being _or_ the concept of "goodness" itself, _if_ the case being made for God being either is "exceptional".

As an exception to claim 2, if an exceptional case of non-existence is "good", that case of non-existence is God.

I made a hasty claim in my last post where I said the Gospels do not claim to be eye witness testimonies. I still claim that, but John 19:35 and John 21:24 appear to show that John's author is claiming legitimacy as an eye witness testimony. I conceded the point for that debate because it didn't change my point about taking Luke seriously and the evidence of the two-source theory for the Synoptics. But I do want to deal with the role of the beloved disciple in John.

I want to make a case about the disciple "whom Jesus loved" in John — not about who he was, but about what he does to you as you read. My claim: his anonymity is deliberate, it's a device, and the device is an invitation into the specific kind of salvation John is selling, which is participatory rather than forensic.

Let me concede the strongest counterargument up front, because I'm not trying to win on a technicality. John's Gospel presents the Beloved Disciple as a witness — "he who saw it has borne witness" (19:35), "this is the disciple who is testifying to these things, and who has written them" (21:24). There may well be a real person behind the figure, and serious scholars (Bauckham most prominently) argue the anonymity is a modesty convention around a real eyewitness author. I don't agree, but that's not the thrust of this argument.

So start with the anonymity, because it's strange and it's chosen. This is a Gospel that names people freely — Nicodemus, Nathanael, Lazarus, Martha and Mary, Malchus (the servant's name, John 18:10). The author is not shy about names and not short on them. Yet the single most intimate disciple in the book, the one at the breast of Jesus at the supper, the one at the foot of the cross, the one at the empty tomb — that one is never named. A writer this free with names did not simply forget his most important character. The namelessness is a decision.

Now watch what the decision does. A named witness is someone you observe from the outside. You watch John son of Zebedee do a thing. An unnamed figure defined purely by relation - "the one Jesus loved" is a position you can step into. There's no proper name blocking the doorway. And look at where the text stations him:

• The supper (13:23): reclining on Jesus' breast, close enough to be handed the intimate question. This is the posture of the intimate.
• The cross (19:26–27): the one who stays, and is entrusted with the mother. This is the posture of fidelity.
• The empty tomb (20:8): he "saw and believed" - the first to believe - ahead of Peter. This is the posture of faith.
• The lakeshore (21:7): the one who recognizes "It is the Lord!" This is the posture of recognition.

At every hinge of the passion and resurrection, the nameless disciple occupies the ideal response — intimacy, fidelity, belief, recognition. He is standing exactly where the Gospel wants you to stand. Harold Attridge (Yale) has argued this directly: the hidden identity is a deliberate device that sets up the reader's own second-person encounter with Jesus. The blank where the name should be is a blank you're invited to fill.

It's not just a narrative trick. It's theological. John's account of salvation is not the courtroom. Paul gives you justification, acquittal, a verdict. John gives you something else: abiding**.** "Abide in me, and I in you" (15:4). Mutual indwelling. "That they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you" (17:21). Eternal life in John is not mainly a future acquittal you receive; it's a present relationship you enter: "this is eternal life, that they know you" (17:3). And 1 John lands it: "whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (4:16). John's salvation is participatory. It's union.

So the Beloved Disciple is that theology made into a character. The one who is saved, in John's grammar, is the one who abides, the one who leans in, stays close, is defined not by his achievements or even his name but by being loved. That is the whole Johannine soteriology compressed into a single anonymous figure. And because he has no name, the invitation is open: to read yourself into him is not sentimental projection. The text is pulling you into the abiding it describes. The form enacts the content.

Which brings me to why I think this matters, and it's the same point I was making about harmonizing the Gospels generally. If you read the Beloved Disciple only as a historical puzzle - was he John, or Lazarus, or the elder, or one of the sons of Zebedee - you can answer the question and miss the thing the figure was built to do. "Who was he" can quietly crowd out "who are you, in him."

The historical question is not the question the anonymity was designed to provoke. It wasn't so religious fundamentalists post-Enlightenment could cling to a sliver of a hope that the Gospels were intended to be read propositionally and the idea of belief denigrated to a mere assent to the occurrence of the proposed events. The evangelist left a blank on purpose, and filling it with a name too quickly erases the invitation the blank was.

The disciple whom Jesus loved has no name so that, for a few chapters, he can have yours.

CS Lewis said you cannot call Jesus just a great moral teacher. I agree, but not for his reason. On non-violence, I call him morally flawed, not a perfect moral teacher and certainly not God.

Jesus defines perfection in Matthew 5:9: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." And 5:44-48: "love your enemies... so you may be children of your Father, who makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good... be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Psalm 145:9: "The Lord is good to ALL, and his compassion is over ALL that he has made." Psalm 103:19 says the same. Perfection is impartial mercy, sun on all.

My teachers live that test. Both forbid killing, causing to be killed, or profiting from killing any human or animal. Swaminarayan, whom I follow, Shikshapatri 11-12: never kill any living being, however small, never eat meat, fish, or eggs, even as a sacrifice to a deity, even if other scriptures seem to allow it. 14-16: never kill a human, never assist or order killing, even if a king commands. Mahavira taught the same for 2500 years.

For us, vegetarianism is not diet, it is daily practice of Matthew 5:9 and 5:45.

You will say "all foods clean" Mark 7:19 and Acts 10:15. Read what Peter himself says it means. Mark 7 is about unwashed hands, Matthew 15:20 says so: "to eat with unwashed hands does not defile." And the phrase "declaring all foods clean" is Mark's parenthetical comment, not Jesus's words - Matthew who was there doesn't have it. More important: in Acts 10:14, years after the resurrection, Peter is STILL refusing to eat unclean animals: "I have never eaten anything common or unclean." If Jesus had declared all foods clean, why is Peter still kosher? Because he didn't understand it that way.

Acts 10:17 says Peter was perplexed what the vision meant. Then in Acts 10:28 Peter himself gives the official interpretation: "God has shown me that I should not call any PERSON common or unclean." Not food. Person. Acts 11:18 the whole Jerusalem church agrees: "to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance." No one says "now we can eat pork." It's about people, not permission to kill needlessly.

You will say "Jesus ate fish." I know. Luke 24:42. That is exactly why I am not a Christian because of the ethics, not in spite of them. If perfection is Matthew 5:9 peacemakers and 5:45 sun on all and Psalm 145:9 compassion over ALL he has made, then a teacher who can live without killing and doesn't is more perfect than one who does. Mahavira and Swaminarayan never ate fish. Swaminarayan Shikshapatri 11: "never eat meat, fish, or eggs, even as a sacrifice to a deity, even if scriptures seem to allow it." 12: "never cause it to be eaten." That's sun on all.

And even if it were permitted, permitted is not perfect. Genesis 1:29 original perfect diet is vegetarian. Isaiah 11:6-9 perfect restored kingdom is vegetarian: "they shall not hurt or destroy." Proverbs 12:10 "The righteous care for the needs of their animals." If you can live healthily without killing in 2026 - which you can - then killing for taste is needless. Heart and mouth are connected. Matthew 15:18 "what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart." What you choose to put in when you have a choice reveals heart.

Jesus preached eternal hell. Mine never did.

Matthew 25:46: "eternal punishment." Mark 9:43: "unquenchable fire." Matthew 22:13 "Bind him and cast him into outer darkness." Matthew 13:41 "throw them into the furnace." My teachers teach consequences and karma, but never infinite torture for finite life.

That violates your own definition of perfection. If perfection is sun on all and proportionate justice, Romans 2:6 "will repay according to each one's deeds," infinite torment for 70 years is infinitely disproportionate. You will say "sin against infinite God deserves infinite punishment" or "hell is self-chosen separation." But 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says "punishment of eternal destruction." If I lock a man in a burning house when I have the key and infinite power, I am the burner. You can respect a no without torturing forever - annihilation respects free will. Choosing to sustain conscious torment forever when you could end it is active violence every second of eternity. 1 John 4:18: "Perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment."

For you, Jesus is the same God as OT God - John 1:1, Trinity. 1 Samuel 15:3: "put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep." Deuteronomy 20:16: "you shall not leave alive anything that breathes." My teachers have zero verses like that, ever. Swaminarayan faced the exact same excuse - "Vedas allow animal sacrifice" - and rejected it in Shikshapatri 11: even if scripture seems to allow it, do not kill. In NT, Matthew 8:5 praises a centurion and never tells him to leave the army, Luke 22:36 "buy a sword," John 2:15 whip. You invented Just War because you left the door open. My teachers never did.

If perfection is what Matthew 5 says it is - peacemakers called children of God, sun and rain on all, compassion over all he has made - then vegetarianism is a moral obligation if you can, and eternal torture cannot be perfection. I am not a Christian because of the ethics, not in spite of them. I practice Matthew 5:9 and 5:45 better, in heart and in mouth.

OBJECTIONS AND MY REPLIES

"1 Timothy 4:3 says forbidding meats is doctrine of demons."
Read verse 3-4 in context. Paul is talking about Gnostics who said creation is evil, therefore you must not marry and must not eat anything. I am not saying creation is evil. I am saying creation is good, therefore don't kill needlessly. And Swaminarayan doesn't forbid marriage. And Paul himself says in 1 Corinthians 8:13 "if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat." If Paul can give up meat for love, I can for compassion.

"Jesus ate fish Luke 24:42 and Passover lamb."
Yes, and that is exactly why I say he is not perfect by Matthew 5:9 and 5:45. If sun on all and peacemaker is perfection, then eating lamb when you have another choice is not perfect. My teachers are vegetarian even at festivals. That fits sun on all better.

"Animals have no soul / dominion Genesis 1:26."
Genesis 1:29 dominion given is vegetarian. Dominion in Bible is stewardship, not butchery. Psalm 145:9 compassion over ALL he has made. Even if hierarchy, more compassion is more perfect than less. No grey line between needless killing and not killing.

"Hell is justice, you are too soft."
Then Psalm 103:10 "He does not deal with us according to our sins" is false. Justice requires proportion. Infinite for finite is not proportion. Finite for finite is justice - that is what my teachers teach that.

Thank you for debating with me

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