Lost faith

Cabaal wrote: »

Eyewitnjesses more often then not don't always produce the most accurate representation of what was said or done by a person.

You've only to ask several witnesses at an event what they saw, for example a crime and you'll generally get different stories

What you've said here is fine and generally true but it's important to note that the gospels aren't even eyewitness accounts or derived from eyewitness accounts so the point, though well made, doesn't hold for the gospels.

theological wrote: »

People have responded on the editing point many times. It isn't true. We can compare thousands manuscripts and see that there haven't been significant changes to the New Testament or Old Testament manuscripts.

Well this is wrong. For several reasons.



First the point about there being thousands of manuscripts is irrelevant. When people make the claim about there being over 5000 manuscripts of the New Testament, most people making that argument are either unaware or unwilling to acknowledge that these 5000 manuscripts are the manuscripts between the 2nd and 16th centuries. The earliest manuscript we have (Rylands P52) is only from the latter half of the 2nd century and is about the size of a credit card. We don't start getting complete gospel manuscripts until the 3rd century and there are entire books of the New Testmaent that we don't have manuscripts for prior to Codex Sinaiticus in the 4th century like 1 & 2 Timothy and 3 John. In fact, there are only 48 manuscripts older than Codex Sinaiticus. Which means for the first 250 years after the gospels of written we have no idea what changes were made to the text.



But what we do know is that there are several significant later interpolations in the text.



Mark 16:9-20 is not present in the earliest copies of Mark and removing it gives the chapter and the gospel as a whole a more natural ending.
The two main trinitarian references in the NT are also later interpolations. 1 John 5:7-8 is a later addition not found in any manuscript before the 14th century. Matthew 28:19 is also a later addition. It goes against the evidence of Acts 19:5, where people are being baptized in the name of Jesus alone and further, Eusebius writing in the 4th century quotes Matthew's text but only makes reference to Jesus and not the trinity.



There are in fact quite a lot of additions to the text with many passages being missing from the earliest manuscripts including John 7:53-8:11, Acts 15:34, Acts 18:37, 1 Corinthians 14:33-35, Luke 23:34, 24:12 etc.



Then there are deliberate changes to the text often to "correct" mistakes made by the gospel authors. For example, the early manuscripts of Mark 1:2 read "as it is written in Isaiah the prophet" which is strange because the text that follows is actually a conflation of Malachi 3:1 with Isaiah 40:3. This lead later scribes to rewrite the passage as "as it is written in the prophets".

Of course sometimes these alterations are to embellish or exaggerate the text, to improve the character of Jesus like the addition of "to repentance" in later copies of Matthew 9:13 or the insertion of Luke 23:34 as noted above.


Then there are copying errors although these are less significant than the additions listed above.
Most of the copying errors that occur between New Testament manuscripts (about 300,000 individual variations in total) are minor and of a technical nature.
One type of variation is that of haplography and dittography, the omission or repetition of text where two different sentences begin with (homoeoarcton) or end with (homoeoteleuton) the same string of letters. This is seen in Matthew 5:19-20 where the presence of the same string of letters: ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν at the end of the first and last sentence of verse 19 and the last sentence of verse 20 has given rise to a haplographic omission in both the Codex Sinaiticus (where most of verse 19 is deleted) and the Codex Bezae (where everything between the end of the first sentence of verse 19 and the end of verse 20 is deleted).
Another example of variation is Romans 5:1 where homophonous words in Greek have created manuscript variations. In the verse:

"Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ"

the phrase "we have" above is translated as we have in some manuscripts and we might have in others with the split seemingly fairly even between both interpretations. This arises from the similarity between ἔχομεν and ἔχωμεν in Greek.
Most of the other forms of textual variation are unintentional and very minor and involve spelling errors, word sequence adjustments, corrections to grammar and word substitutions. However, that is not to say that aren't some intentional and in some ways significant alterations to the text.
One example of an intentional and non-trivial alteration to the text is the retroactive harmonization of the text of Mark 9:31 and 10:34. In Mark 9:31 and 10:34, the foretelling of Jesus' death predicts that he will arise "after three days" or "three days later" (μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας). This stands in contrast to Matthew 17:20 (and Luke) where the verse is rendered "on the third day"(τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ). Later copies of Mark use the wording from Matthew in order to try and gloss over Mark's seeming mistake.
Another intentional change is found in Luke 23:32. The verse is translated in modern bibles as:

"Two others also, who were criminals, were being led away to be put to death with Him."

The majority of manuscripts agree with this translation, however, the older manuscripts (P75, Sinaiticus etc.) render the verse as:

"And also other criminals, two, were led away to be put to death with Him."

The text was changed in later manuscripts to avoid the implication that Jesus was a criminal.

Then, there are passages which are inserted into gospels different from those where they are originally found as a duplication error such as Matthew 17:21 (a duplicate of Mark 9:29) or Matthew 18:11 (a duplicate of Luke 19:10).

Finally, we have other evidence of the alteration of the NT, like this scribal note from Hebrews 1:3 in Codex Vaticanus:






The scribal note in the margin reads: "Fool and knave, leave the old reading alone. Don't change it."


And then we have the warning in the bible itself about people interpolating the text in Revelation 22:18-19:

"I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll."

theological wrote: »

The authoritative source concerning Jesus are the eyewitnesses who saw what happened and who were with Him, yes. What other source are you suggesting is better?

Well, that would be important if we did have eyewitness accounts but we don't. None of the biographical accounts for Jesus are eyewitness accounts. We don't know who wrote any of the gospels, the first time names were put on the gospels wasn't until Irenaeus in 180CE. We also know that the gospels aren't historical accounts because they bear none of the hallmarks of historical works of the time such as authorial presence in the narrative, clear citation of sources and discussion of their merits, attempts to reconcile contradictions between sources or other works etc. etc.

What would be more authoritative would be a contempraneous account by an actual eyewitness, or better yet a contempraneous account by a third party not disposed towards Jesus or even better first hand writings by Jesus. But we don't have any of those.

theological wrote: »

Your first paragraph is an argument from absence, not an argument from presence.

No, it really isn't. There are several reasons for this.



First, an argument from silence would require drawing a positive conclusion from negative evidence. I am not making that argument. I am saying that based on the lack of manuscripts prior to Codex Sinaiticus we cannot say one way or another whether the text was changed. We don't have the original manuscripts. So, you cannot say that the text has not been significantly altered from the original because we don't have the original.



Second, an argument from silence carries a burden of expectation. For example Nicolaus of Damascus was the court historian of King Herod the Great and was in his service at the time Jesus is supposedly born in Matthew's gospel. So the lack of mention of Jesus' birth or any of the other events in Matthew's gospel is an argument against the veracity of Matthew's gospel since we would have expected such a figure to record the visit of the Magi etc. However, in a discussion on the historical Jesus, quoting Nicolaus of Damascus silence would be fallacious since, if Jesus were just an obscure preacher, there would be no expectation for him to mention Jesus. In this case, if the gospels we have today were recognised as such early on we should expect to have copies closer to the dates of the originals.



We cannot say that there haven't been significant interpolations in the text because we don't have originals. We have a 100-250 year gap between the composition of the texts in question and the first copies we have. We know from the texts that we do have that there are alterations, copying errors, deliberate changes, additions and deletions. We also know from scholarship that interpolations and forgeries were common at the time and we know that interpolations get less frequent the more time elapses from the time of writing. So the argument that the original accounts haven't been significantly altered is wrong because we don't have the evidence to determine that.

theological wrote: »

On comparison - we can still determine that the vast majority of the text is consistent even if there are minor copying errors in some manuscripts. Copying errors are not edits and can be easily weeded out on comparison to see where the uniformity is.

Again, this bolsters the case of the authenticity of the Scriptures because we can compare and determine what coheres in the large number of manuscripts. Cases like you described are caught red handed, precisely because we can compare the texts.

Again, no. The authenticity of what is written in the gospels is in no way bolstered or affected by how many manuscripts we have or how closely they align. Even if we had the original texts and our modern texts were identical, that still doesn't tell us whether what the author originally wrote was true. The principal reason for this is that the gospels are all written anonymously by second generation Christians in another place, in another language and which contain internal and external contradictions, fabricated stories, and a litany of mistakes concerning geography, history, Jewish law and customs and references to fictional characters as if they were historical figures.

What is in the gospels has a far more detrimental effect on the authenticity argument than any discussion on coherent transmission.


As a side note, as I pointed out in my last post but you seem to have ignored in your response, there aren't just copying errors and there aren't just minor edits. There are significant later additions which alter the tone of certain stories (e.g. Mark 16:9-20)

one world order wrote: »

All across the western world as society has moved away from Christianity, there has been a large increase in depression and suicide. It is the biggest killer of men under 45.

I doubt it's even close to being the biggest killer, but that's beside the point - even if it was, there is zero evidence to link the 2 things. Correlation / causation and all that.

Isn't there something similar going around linking global warming to the fall in pirate numbers? Just because 2 things happen at the same time doesn't mean they are in any way connected!

oldrnwisr wrote: »

But what we do know is that there are several significant later interpolations in the text.

Mark 16:9-20 is not present in the earliest copies of Mark and removing it gives the chapter and the gospel as a whole a more natural ending.
The two main trinitarian references in the NT are also later interpolations. 1 John 5:7-8 is a later addition not found in any manuscript before the 14th century. Matthew 28:19 is also a later addition. It goes against the evidence of Acts 19:5, where people are being baptized in the name of Jesus alone and further, Eusebius writing in the 4th century quotes Matthew's text but only makes reference to Jesus and not the trinity.

There are in fact quite a lot of additions to the text with many passages being missing from the earliest manuscripts including John 7:53-8:11, Acts 15:34, Acts 18:37, 1 Corinthians 14:33-35, Luke 23:34, 24:12 etc.

I think you are exaggerating the significance of this. The textual criticism of the verses you mention is well known and recognised in any modern bible translation. I have several different bible translations, and they all call out these verses, with a footnote along the line of "the earliest manuscripts do not contain" or "some manuscripts add" etc.

Two of your examples are worth mentioning in more detail, both related to the trinity:

• None of my bibles include the longer form of John 5:7-8, nor is it mentioned in the footnotes, as it is well known as a later addition.
• The contention that Matthew 28:19 is a later edit is fringe at best, even among non-Christian critical scholars. Eusebius does use a shorter form or summary of the verse in one place (the only ancient usage of it as far as I know), but uses the longer form elsewhere in his writing.

The other important point is that none of these errors / additions change any doctrine of the faith. They simply aren't significant in the way you are making them out to be, nor are they something that Christians are unaware of or try to suppress.

And none of this can be reasonably be taken to imply that there are other, more significant, changes or edits that we aren't aware of; that does sound like an argument from silence. All the available textual evidence points to the fact that the biblical text we have today reflects the original autographs.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Well I can't comment on which bibles you personally have but the Johannine comma is still present in the Douay-Rheims, KJV, RGT and Young's Literal Translation, to name a few. Since there are quite a few KJV-only Christians and a lot of Catholics wedded to their Douay-Rheims bibles, it's worth noting this.

Oh definitely, it is important to note. I think we should be glad that textual scholarship has improved in the last 500 years, and that our modern translations (ESV, NIV, RSV etc.) are measurably better than what went before. That said, I don't think you are going to come to any different doctrinal conclusions by using the KJV (which is the translation from your list that I'm most familiar with).

oldrnwisr wrote: »

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Not really a fringe position, not at least unless you consider NT Wright and Raymond Brown to be fringe scholars and good luck with that. I'm not sure what the mention of Eusebius adds to the discussion. Even before Eusebius there is extant references to the triple formula (as it has become known) in the Didache and in the writings of Tertullian. But that is not the point. The point is that the phrase as is is unlikely to be original to Matthew. The principal reason for this is that both Luke and Matthew writing before and after Matthew's time are unaware of this formulation. Paul only refers to baptism in the name of Jesus (Romans 6:3, Galatians 3:27, Colossians 3:17). Then later Luke, who borrows from Matthew's gospel in his own also shows no familiarity with Matthew's formulation (Acts 2:38, 8:16, 10:48, 19:5). So it is very unlikely that this formulation is original to Matthew.

Not familiar with Browns work, but I've not seen this in N T Wright - which of his works are you referring to?

Even if both do think that a shorter form of Matthew 28:19 is original, I would still say that two scholars, even notable ones, holding this position is a fringe. There is zero textual evidence that there is a lost, original, shorter wording for Matthew 28:19, and it certainly is not a mainstream position among any scholars / commentaries I have seen.

On the other gospel writers, we can't assume that Mark and Luke are unaware of this wording: all we can say is that they didn't include it in their gospels. Since we know that all the gospel writers were selective in the material they included, it is too much to conclude that Matthew couldn't have originally written it either.

With regard to Paul writing of baptising in the name of Jesus, the New Testament is clear that Jesus is how we know and relate to the Father; it is equally clear that the Father and the Son have sent the Spirit. That leads me to conclude that Paul's wording is shorthand for Matthews formulation. There certainly isn't any conflict or contradiction between the two.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

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Well, not really. If the trinitarian references are later interpolations then that's a major change for trinitarian Christians because that doctrine lacks authentic biblical support.

The doctrine of the trinity does not stand or fall on those verses, even in the slightest. If anything, the argument seems to be that if the wording was modified it was done to reinforce the doctrine of the trinity, not prove or establish it.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

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Further, without the long ending to Mark there's no post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, no Great commission and no exorcism of demons, speaking in tongues or handling snakes. So if you're a pentecostal Christian the impact of this longer ending being a later interpolation is significant.

In Mark's gospel, but we have post resurrection appearances and the great commission from the other gospel writers. Pentecostal snake handlers might well have to reconsider their position, but I'm ok with that

oldrnwisr wrote: »

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I'm not claiming that there were significant changes that we aren't aware of. Like I have already said we simply don't know one way or the other. Yes, we can't say that the text was changed but we can't say that the text wasn't changed either.
What we do know is that there were changes. We also know that the frequency and magnitude of changes decreases as time lapses from the original. So if there were major changes they were likely in the blackout period where we don't have extant documents as Bruce Metzger points out in The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration.
We can't say that the text we have today reflects the original autographs because we just don't know. There's a 150 year window in the textual evidence that makes any conclusion tenuous at best.

This is pure speculation and bordering on conspiracy theory territory. Where is the evidence? All the available evidence indicates that the biblical text as we have it is in essence identical to what was originally written.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

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Edit: FWIW, I don't think that all of the textual variants, interpolations, copying errors, when taken as a whole are a massive problem. They're fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things because, as I explained already, even if the texts we have now were identical to the original autographs or even if we had the original autographs, the coherency of transmission means nothing when we are trying to answer the veracity of what is written in the gospels. The problems with the gospels themselves and the gap between the events they describe and when they were written are far more relevant issues.

I agree with you here. The bible as we have it trustworthy, and Christians don't need to worry that about its transmission or its reliability as a historical document. The real question doesn't relate to matters of textual criticism, but on whether Jesus is who the new testament writers say he is.

ChrisJ84 wrote: »

Not familiar with Browns work, but I've not seen this in N T Wright - which of his works are you referring to?

Brown makes the case for interpolation in Introduction to Christology. Wright comments in The Resurrection of the Son of God that neither Paul nor Luke speak of a trinitarian God. As Wright points out, when Paul and later Luke speak of "son of God" that they do so in the context of the Jewish messiah and not as the second person of the trinity. This makes its use in Matthew an odd disconnect.

ChrisJ84 wrote: »

Even if both do think that a shorter form of Matthew 28:19 is original, I would still say that two scholars, even notable ones, holding this position is a fringe. There is zero textual evidence that there is a lost, original, shorter wording for Matthew 28:19, and it certainly is not a mainstream position among any scholars / commentaries I have seen.

Well, actually there is textual evidence of this being an interpolation. In Greek when Matthew talks about baptising in the name of he uses the greek word onoma in its singular form and yet the passage refers to three entities. This would make no sense to a greek reader and would just be confusing.

ChrisJ84 wrote: »

In Mark's gospel, but we have post resurrection appearances and the great commission from the other gospel writers. Pentecostal snake handlers might well have to reconsider their position, but I'm ok with that

Since the other gospel writers, particularly Luke and Matthew copy their story from Mark, the post resurrection appearances and great commission in those are not independent corroboration.

ChrisJ84 wrote: »

This is pure speculation and bordering on conspiracy theory territory. Where is the evidence? All the available evidence indicates that the biblical text as we have it is in essence identical to what was originally written.

I'm not speculating at all. That seems to be the point you're missing. "All the available evidence" is insufficient to make a claim like the one you're making that " the biblical text as we have it is in essence identical to what was originally written". We don't have the original copies to compare. Neither do we have the first 150 years of copies to check against. There is a massive hole in our available textual evidence.
Somebody who says the text was altered during the blackout period is speaking beyond the evidence. By the same token, somebody (like you) who says that the text we have now is essentially identical to the originals is also speaking beyond the evidence. We don't know either way.


But let's say, hypothetically, we tried to assess whether there were alterations to text during the blackout period. How would be make such an assessment. Well we would start by examining the alterations in the copies that we do have. If we were to graph the alterations and changes to the copies with time on the x-axis and the magnitude of the change on the y-axis (i.e. additions and deletions vs. copying mistakes), then what you would see is a large cluster of deliberate changes in the earliest copies. You would also see a rapid fall-off in the frequency and magnitude of alterations with increasing time. This is unsurprising. We would expect to see more changes and more significant changes the closer we are to the original. 300 years after the text was written it would easily have been regarded as scripture and the idea of making changes to it would have been anathema. But that wouldn't have been the case 2 years after its writing or 5 or 10. If someone was going to make a change to the text its likely to happen earlier rather than later.


Finally, I'm not sure you've grasped just how little evidence is actually available. Matthew, according to the mainstream opinion was written in 80CE. The oldest manuscript we have for Matthew is P104 from about 150CE. This only contains pieces of 6 verses. That's 6 out of 1071 or 0.56%. 50 years after that we have 4 manuscripts and about 3% of the verses. 50 years after that we're now up to 9 manuscripts and 13% of the verses. 50 years after that we're up to 13 manuscripts and 16% of all verses. Finally by the time Codex Sinaiticus comes along in the middle of the 4th century we get our first complete manuscript of Matthew and we still have only 20 fragmentary manuscripts. For the vast majority of verses in Matthew we have nothing older than Codex Sinaiticus. That's 270 years after it was written. And let's not forget that when we talk about a manuscript containing x number of verses, we're not talking about that manuscript containing the entire verse. It simply means that it contains one or more words from that verse. For example, Papyrus P62 looks like this:




This is one of the later manuscripts we've been talking about, from the 4th century. It contains six verses (Matthew 11:25-30) But each of those six verses are incomplete. We don't have the complete text of any of them. This is how fragmentary the evidence is.


So when you say that the text we have now is essentially the the same as the original, there is no evidentiary basis for this. It is merely speculation. We don't have enough evidence to say this.

ChrisJ84 wrote: »

I agree with you here. The bible as we have it trustworthy, and Christians don't need to worry that about its transmission or its reliability as a historical document. The real question doesn't relate to matters of textual criticism, but on whether Jesus is who the new testament writers say he is.

You're not agreeing with me. Yes, its true that the transmission of the text matters less than what is actually written in the bible. But the bible, specifically the gospels, is in no way trustworthy. The gospels are not reliable as historical documents because they aren't historical documents, they're theological documents. The gospels don't look like historical works of the time. They don't name their author, the author doesn't place himself in the story, there's no clear citation of sources nor any discussion of their merits, there's no attempt to reconcile disparate sources or accounts, there's no indication when the author may be speculating on content such as when quoting direct speech. Then you have all the internal contradictions, external contradictions, factual mistakes and fabricated stories. So the idea that the gospels are in any sense a reliable picture of what Jesus said, did, condoned or condemned is fantasy.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Brown makes the case for interpolation in Introduction to Christology. Wright comments in The Resurrection of the Son of God that neither Paul nor Luke speak of a trinitarian God. As Wright points out, when Paul and later Luke speak of "son of God" that they do so in the context of the Jewish messiah and not as the second person of the trinity. This makes its use in Matthew an odd disconnect.

Thanks, I'll look up the reference in Wright. It's not surprising that Luke and Paul talk about Jesus in terms of the messiah; but both are equally clear clear that he is God. The whole new testament witness is consistent in this.

In any case, none of that is proof that the extant wording in Matthew 28:19 is a later addition. That would need to be demonstrated through inconsistencies in the available sources, of which there are none. And even if, for the sake of argument, we discovered new manuscripts that cast doubt on Matthew 28:19, it would change neither the doctrine of the trinity nor baptism.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Well, actually there is textual evidence of this being an interpolation. In Greek when Matthew talks about baptising in the name of he uses the greek word onoma in its singular form and yet the passage refers to three entities. This would make no sense to a greek reader and would just be confusing.

Onoma is also not textual evidence of an alteration; it is textual evidence of an unusual Greek rendering. Again, not surprising as we understand God to be singular, one God in three persons. The fact that the Greek usage is odd is hardly surprising in relation to the doctrine of the trinity, which was a new development in our understanding of God and was only coming into full focus at the time Matthew was writing, and later.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Since the other gospel writers, particularly Luke and Matthew copy their story from Mark, the post resurrection appearances and great commission in those are not independent corroboration.

Not sure what point you're trying to make here - that unless an event is corroborated by more than one gospel we should assume it is unreliable? That is a strange way to read scripture.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

I'm not speculating at all...

Sorry, but you are speculating. There is no evidence of the kinds of significant changes, additions or editing you are implying. In fact, the evidence we do have points in the other direction. The available sources, both copies / fragments of scripture and secondary (where scripture is referenced or quoted) are remarkably consistent, and as well attested as any other ancient document.

Ironically, the leaps you are making in the absence of any evidence is exactly the kind of thing Christians are regularly accused of doing.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Finally, I'm not sure you've grasped just how little evidence is actually available....So when you say that the text we have now is essentially the the same as the original, there is no evidentiary basis for this. It is merely speculation. We don't have enough evidence to say this.

No-one is denying that the bible is an ancient document, and that the oldest available copies of it are fragmentary. I am fully aware of the fact; but it isn't a problem for Christians, or our confidence in scripture. Not because we are ignorant, but because it really isn't an issue. As above, we have no reason to believe that the bible we read today is substantially different to what was originally written. In fact, by the standards applied to any other ancient document the bible is remarkably well attested to.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

You're not agreeing with me. Yes, its true that the transmission of the text matters less than what is actually written in the bible. But the bible, specifically the gospels, is in no way trustworthy. The gospels are not reliable as historical documents because they aren't historical documents, they're theological documents. The gospels don't look like historical works of the time. They don't name their author, the author doesn't place himself in the story, there's no clear citation of sources nor any discussion of their merits, there's no attempt to reconcile disparate sources or accounts, there's no indication when the author may be speculating on content such as when quoting direct speech. Then you have all the internal contradictions, external contradictions, factual mistakes and fabricated stories. So the idea that the gospels are in any sense a reliable picture of what Jesus said, did, condoned or condemned is fantasy.

Sorry, when I said historical document I meant as an artifact. Again as above, scripture is as well attested to in terms of its transmission as any other ancient document. As regards the events the gospels record, they plainly present them as things that actually happened. You're right that they aren't written in the style of ancient history, but that's because the gospel writers are witnesses (or recording the testimony of witnesses), describing the things they have seen. This is especially true of Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Christians believe that scripture is God's word, and has been faithfully and accurately transmitted down to us today. That is something you are free to disagree with of course, but textual criticism simply does not support your position in the way you want to make it.

Oh, and on contradictions is there a specific one you'd care to point out?

The Devil exists but it's amazing how many people in today's society think he doesn't. Ronald Bernard gave a good insight into those who exert control over the world through the financial system and mass produced mainstream media. They worship lucifer in their satanic rituals and sacrifice children. Not surprisingly they killed Ronald after he exposed them.

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I'm always intrigued by this kind of mindset.

Riddle me this....Lets assume there is a Devil, and lets assume he pulls his strings and influences someone, say a non believer like myself into doing something really heinous, like murder or rape or something like that.

Who's fault is that?

This is no small question. My answer to you is, the Bible tells us that Satan has drawn a veil over the eyes and minds of those who are Non-believers. The only way to remove that veil is the word of God. So if you want to understand how the Devil operates in the world and how he influences your life personally, there is only one way to find that out, and that is for you to read the word of God. To be open to it, and to meditate upon it daily.

Cabaal wrote: »

Because it/he/she doesn't, no more then Thor does.
I'd wager even a vast amount of Christians incl Catholics don't even agree

You seem determined "To be right". But what you dont get is that for most christians, its not about trying to prove anybody wrong and win an argument, its about getting people to come to Christ. You may think that the devil is a ridiculous notion, that everyone should be more intelligent and sensible now, but thats how the enemy operates: Through pride in our own intellect. Theres a reason why Pride is one of the deadly sins because its through human pride that satan can destroy peoples lives. And he does it because we are accomplices to our own downfall.
Let me appeal to you one last time, its not about who wins the argument, its about your well being. If you were just willing to read the Gospel of John, thats it, nothing else, then I think you would start to see things you didnt notice before. And dont let your ego take over here, and start getting defensive, please just take time to read that one gospel, its not long at all.

smacl wrote: »

in getting others to 'come to Christ' which I'd generally associate with door to door Jehovah's witnesses and foreign missionaries.

And what do you think would happen if you came to Christ? Do you honestly believe we're trying to get you to do something that will cause you harm? Coming to Christ will only make your life better! Its like you have €5 and you are holding on for dear life to that money because you think thats all there is but all the while you could have €1,000,000. Isnt it worth the risk to even check all this stuff out for yourself to see if theres any truth to it? Isnt it worth it for even the remote possibility that the promises of God are real?