Octavius, wouldn�t a bit of objective analysis come in useful occasionally? Is it wise to believe something merely because someone wrote it down nearly 2000 years ago? Is there not some value in calculating probabilities? If we look critically at the story of what is now called the Eucharist how likely is it to be true?
1. We have only Paul�s word for it. (The gospels, written later, will have got the idea from him, though �John� produces a very different version.) And Paul heard about it only in a dream or vision. How much do you trust dreams? And why should Jesus go to the trouble of explaining it to Paul in a dream when there were at least 12 people (the disciples and maybe some servants) who could have given, would surely have been giving, first-hand testimony years before Paul started writing his gospels in AD55?
But they didn�t, did they? There is not one eye-witness account; no disciple ever wrote anything about anything. Doesn�t that cause doubts?
2. The following is from John 6 53 and 56:
�Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you� He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him.�
Now look at this:
�He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation.�
The latter is by the (fictional, of course) pagan god-man Mithras, introduced into Roman mythology about a century before Jesus had been heard of. Coincidence? I think not. It�s not difficult to see where Paul got the initial idea, bulked out later by the gospels.
I could add more, but even that is surely enough for any rational person to look very doubtfully at the tale.