> But Christianity is not just a useful lifeboat for stranded intellectuals.<p>An intellectual need not be stranded, nor if stranded be in want of a lifeboat… but it’s entirely possible for it to “just” be a useful lifeboat if that’s all one needs of it.<p>> If it isn’t literally true, it isn’t valuable.<p>It can certainly be valuable without being true. Or, to be more precise, if valuable at all then it certainly must be valuable without being literally true, because what it certainly is not is literally true.<p>> Whether Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead matters.<p>To those who have predicated their meaning on that fact. It’s perfectly workable to have meaning without it.<p>> It mattered to St Paul.<p>Who never met Jesus in person, and who Jesus never said or implied Jesus would appear to.<p>> ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.’<p>Ahh, good old Saul of Tarsus… always and ever skewing the word to reflect the meaning he wants it to have.<p>> And it should matter to us.<p>No, it should not. It could do, but should is an overstep unless the literal truth of any and every other religious text “should” also matter to us.<p>> C.S. Lewis wrote<p>… absolutely nothing of moral value to anyone not already smoking from the same weed.