The Apostle's Creed

Non-rationalists love to think they can have fallacious "shortcuts" to knowledge, such as racial stereotypes that supposedly dictate how a white or black person will act or hearsay about a historical event they did not witness.  True knowledge, that of absolute certainty derived from the necessary truths of logic, is foreign to them, but that woll accept almost anything else as long as they are subjectively persuaded (such as with cumulative but still hearsay evidence in a court case) or find something personally appealing about it (like their conscience feeling as if something is immoral).  With consensus-based ideas about morality or religious metaphysics, some non-rationalists think they have other shortcuts to "knowledge" of a given theology like Christianity in the form of whatever their pastor claims, whatever they have heard the majority of times from other Christians, or what is consistent with broader church tradition.

Whatever some figure says about the Bible, is what they believe Christianity to be.  This could pertain to someone living or dead.  If the early church believed it, then it must be Biblical, they might think, whether or not this is actually the case--and even separate from the objective fact that agreement or tradition is not what makes something true, someone had to first discover a given Biblical teaching, so it is nothing but irrational to focus on whether something is already historically "approved" or has been previously put forth by a popular figure.  Take the Apostle's Creed, the seeming earliest of the creeds.  Now, it is blatantly erroneous in its reference to Jesus descending into hell--no one is or will be in hell according to the Bible until the wicked are resurrected (Revelation 20:10-15), and the dead are unconscious or nonexistent in Sheol until this revival (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10).  The only thing that Jesus perhaps descended into is what Peter calls Tartarus to speak to imprisoned demonic beings (compare 1 Peter 3:18-20, which might be referencing him conversing with spirits after his resurrection, with 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 1:6).  

Aside from this obvious Biblical error in the Apostle's Creed, it is an accurate but very loose, incomplete summary of Christianity.  It still says nothing about the specifics of Biblical morality, far more important than salvation without which there could be no sin and thus no redemption, instead touching upon the unspecified forgiveness of sins.  It leaves out details about cosmic justice of annihilation in hell and the nature of eternal life with God, the gift received through reconciliation to Yahweh.  Had this creed addressed any of these things, however, and when it comes to what it does happen to accurately address, one absolutely cannot know anything about Christianity from this, as opposed to what someone identifying as a Christian claimed at some point when creating the Creed.  Anyone at all who looks to the Apostle's Creed (or any other extra-Biblical statement) instead of the Bible itself has no idea what the fuck Christianity actually entails and, even if the creed overlapped with all of the vital parts of Christianity in full, it is the Bible one would have to assess free of all assumptions.

The present and historic church has believed many plainly unbiblical ideas that are often embraced due to the familiarity of tradition, that asinine ideological basis that Jesus condemned over and over (such as in Matthew 15:1-12).  As common as it is for people to insist otherwise, no one Biblically goes to heaven or hell upon biological death before their bodily resurrection (Job 3:11-19, Daniel 12:2, 13), and heaven and hell are not what many people have heard.  Heaven, where God's dwelling place resides, is brought to Earth through New Jerusalem (Revelation 21-22) and hell is a place where the wicked are ultimately exterminated (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6, John 3:16).  Contrary to another miscellaneous concept falsely associated with Christianity, the Bible does not condemn homosexual feelings, only interpersonal actions like intercourse (Leviticus 18:22, 20:10).  Moreover, Jesus does not nullify Mosaic Law to prescribe new, evolved obligations that are contrary to Mosaic Law or higher than Yahweh's complete moral revelation (Matthew 5:17-19).  Conventional Trinitarianism is absolute nonsense logically and even Biblically (Matthew 24:36).  There are numerous other key examples that could be given of things misunderstood by likely the majority of contemporary or historical "adherents" of Christianity.

If something like the Apostle's Creed is accurate, then it is the book it appeals to that dictates if the creed is accurate.  If it is not accurate, it is irrelevant anyway.  Even so, its accuracy in representing Biblical Christianity (whether the ideas behind the words are actually true is another issue) could never be known from the creed itself.  One would have to read the Bible, which renders appeals to tradition, including creeds, pointless either way when it comes to learning the real philosophical doctrines of Christianity.  Only a fool thinks they can discover what the Quran says by looking to the Hadiths, collections of statements from scholars, and the same is true with the Bible and the creeds, no matter how historically entrenched they are in some people's beliefs about Christianity.  Churchgoers and general Christians who think pastors or creeds or any such thing are necessary to know Christianity are imbeciles.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.