Hello Oldballardlibrary, thanks for responding.
You said:
"That's a complete contradiction which is It because it cannot be both. That is talking out of two sides of ones mouth To support and create intellectual fantasy "I believe" or "I don't believe" take your pick same thing. Neither have anything to do with anything."
My friend, the ancient world often used poetry to store and retrieve important information.
Nowadays, poetry is primarily entertainment, and often fictional.
It was quite different, back then.
If you want to see it laid out in detail, consult Dr. Ken Bailey's work on how oral cultures preserved and transmitted vital cultural data from one generation to the next: https://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_tradition_bailey.html
You said:
"I realized a long time ago on Paul(s) road to Damascus experience he was one of two things. Either he was completely delusional eyeball experience literally hallucinating or he is expressing something not very clear intensionally. It took a long time for me to understand. And a long time not reading the text."
I would recommend that you go back and read the text again.
Paul is quite clear about what happened. There's no sense in which he's being "not very clear intensionally." Paul goes to great lengths to describe the experience in intelligible ways.
When you do read it again, you'll also see that those with Paul saw and heard Jesus, but didn't comprehend Him in the same way. Therefore, it wasn't a mere hallucination, as that would only have been witnessed by Paul. If everyone with him witnessed the event, then it was a real event. Groups don't hallucinate the same thing.
You said:
"It challenges the reader. What you Say it is, reveals who you are regardless. This isn't written by "a believer". It's written for "believers" and "non believers". Belief has zero to do with expirerience factually."
Do you believe that you ate breakfast today?
Why?
Do you appeal to your experience of breakfast to justify your belief that you did, indeed, have breakfast?
Or do you deny your experience, and refuse to consult your memory about whether you actually experienced eating breakfast?
As you see, my friend, belief has everything to do with experience. If you experienced it, you believe it happened.
You said:
"Your comment reminds me of Terrance McKenna after taking DMT. He said that aliens spoke to him.. literally? You claim yes factually I totally disagree that s not even wrong."
Again, one person claiming something can be a hallucination.
But a group of people all witnessing the same thing at the same time is not a hallucination. Whatever they're perceiving, it's external to them, as it appears to all of them at the same time.
