SS
When I used to ask childish questions about questionable Bible passages, I was typically told not to worry my little head about such doubts, just rest assured that there are smart people who understand what the Bible writers really meant by their confusing or conflicting statements. Now that I am older & wiser, I realize that those "smart" people argue among themselves about the interpretation of almost everything in the Bible. Consequently, I no longer accept the Christian or Muslim propaganda that the Bible/Koran writers were directly inspired by God. Instead, it's obvious to me that they were ordinary humans grappling with the same problems that were discussed in ancient Greek myths, and in the Hindu scriptures. So my current position is to lump the Christian Bible into the same category as all other ancient literature : some good moral lessons, some bad moral examples, and lots of erroneous portrayals of humanoid deities.
Fundamentalist Christians are adamant that the biblical miracles were real, and that prophecies were fulfilled. But after years of seeing different perspectives on such supernatural events, I find them no more believable than the magic & divinations in Egyptian & Greek myths. I don't know if Jesus actually accompanied his sermons with magic tricks, or if they were attributed to him later to make him seem to have supernatural gifts. Most great religious personalities of all cultures had magical powers, if you believe the myths that arose after their deaths . Many were said to have virgin births (note 1). But you'll have to choose which of those various fictionalized stories (note 2) you want to accept as true. Because they are mutually incompatible, and Christianity explicitly denies the validity of any unauthorized "gospels".
Some Deists believe in an afterlife, so they may also accept the notion of Ghosts hanging around to spook or comfort the living. But, since I have no revelation from God on the topic, I remain agnostic about life after life, and skeptical about ghosts. It seems much more likely, that bereaved people would imagine that their loved ones are still out there, even though their bodies have crumbled into dust. Popular psychic channelers seem to me to be con-artists, making money by telling survivors what they want to hear : that emotional ties remain unbroken, even after the physical forms have vanished.
My worldview is no longer Jesus-centric, but like Deist Thomas Jefferson, I find many of his teachings to be useful even in our modern world, so far removed from the donkey-dung streets of Jerusalem. In my opinion though, Jesus has no more supernatural wisdom than the Buddha, but both had some practical advice for coping with the stresses of life.
Note 1 : Virgin birth myths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_births
Note 2 : Remember that the fiction section of your local bookstore, or video store, is many times larger than the non-fiction. What does that tell you about human interest in mundane facts?
