This is reasonable. I'm not going to argue with it. Who is in possession of the Josephus documents? Not the Vatican, I would hope. You either put the relevant section up here once, or was it a link? never mind I googled and found it.
I like to think that everyone on earth is misguided, because they think that any of the past means anything for their future. A study of commodity futures proves that studying the past is only of so much help for the future. So while studying the thousands of years of religious history, the past performance of those religions will not guarantee future results. This is especially true if you subscribe to the idea that there is no afterlife, no nothing after death. There is no pre-birth, and no after-death. That is it. When we die, that is all. We're done. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Think about it. What was there before we were born? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Why has nobody ever spoken about pre-birth experiences? It is all just after-death experiences. Humans can be dumb and not logical. If you really really think you are going to have an afterlife, then you better try and wrangle your head around the idea of having a pre-life. If in your head a pre-life is not possible, then an afterlife cannot be possible as well. So you are back to the root of the problem. There is no pre or post. There is only the now.
That's true, basically. However, many souls would like to do a little bit more in order to improve the happiness of life for their next generations, including concurrently to reduce any potential unhappiness/ suffering. I think both philosophy and religion were created mainly for (re)solving serious life-happiness/ unhappiness issues. Perhaps, for any (truly blessed) person who has seldom/never encountered any serious happiness/ unhappiness problems, all the concepts/ terms usually used in religion/philosophy would most likely have minimum meaning.
was there a "before" or "outside" the big bang. Are there other universes? other dimensions? Higher states of consciousness. Existence outside of our timeline? Can a human life just begin for the first time? A Creator? Science can't rule out any of these things... so I don't you are I can know any of these either. Its takes faith to say there is Creator or there is no Creator or an afterlife or no afterlife.
That someone sincerely believes in something (divine or not) now, doesn't surely mean someone's future (overnight, afterlife, etc.) is under her/his control! What Would a Stoic Do?
If you need faith to say there is a God and faith to say there is an after life, then there must be an absence of faith to say differently. If you need faith to say both there is and there isn't something, then faith is a complete dead end. That does a massive injustice to faith. Blind faith is a better rationalization for the absurd ideas of God and afterlife than the insane justifications they otherwise invite.
you have been trying that canard on and off for about a decade. Where there is a very complex creation... there is a very reasonable chance there was a creator. I have proven to you many times out of the mouths of some of the most respected scientists in the world that a Creator is one of the possibilities to explain our very unnatural, very fine tuned universe. The explanation that most scientists resort to is faith in an an unproven unseen multiverse in which everything is possible. (in a sense the multiverse is the equivalent of a Creator.)