Wiser

A bit of the fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers. - Chinese proverb

There is an accredited US university named ◦Maharishi University of Management, MUM. The word 'management' in the title stands for managing one's life through deep meditation and quality education hand in hand.

Don't believe to your harm; make sure instead.

A wandering, non-scathing miracle of a star

If heaven made it, earth may find some use for it.

Is the nativity story in the first two gospels of Matthew just fabricated, a folk tale that was current at the time, and dressed up in new feathers in Matthew? You may not think so, but the Jesus scholar Geza Vermes does, after years of research. He writes:

A contemporary of Matthew, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37–c.100 CE), reports, and later rabbinic literature confirms, a folk tale which was in circulation in New Testament times. It relates to the birth of Moses and his miraculous escape from the hands of Pharaoh of Egypt. (Vermes 2010:84, 85)

We are led . . . to this conclusion: that the awesomely influential Nativity story in the first book of the New Testament is a speculative, rather than a historical text. Far from being a report of a literal happening, it is an amalgam of flawed Greek-Christian scriptural references, and of 'birth tales' current in Judaism in the first century CE. The story with which we are all so familiar is not fact, but folklore. (Vermes 2010, 87)

The tale of wise men and a wandering star in the first two gospels of Matthew (from about 80-90 CE) is a folk tale, says Dr Vermes. The Nativity tale is missing in the Gospels of Mark and John, and appearing in a radically different form in Luke, where there is no mention of a star, wise men or Herod, nor of the murder of the innocents and Jesus' escape to Egypt. (Vermes 2010:84). Matthew's Gospel was written for Christians who were not Jewish. [More Bible criticism]

Unproven tales and a said folktale

Before preparing to improve the world, first look around your own home three times. - Chinese proverb

Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar - these names "apparently derive from a Greek manuscript probably composed in Alexandria around 500 . . . Another Greek document from the 8th century, of presumed Irish origin and translated into Latin with the title Collectanea et Flores, continues the tradition of three kings and their names and gives additional details." (EB, Encyclopedia Britannica. Highlighting added).

To base one's faith on many assumptions is stupid. Better be uncertain than taken in. [Space-saver].

It may not be important who were around at the birth of Jesus, how many and so on, if they were just figures of a canonised folktale with a wandering star that lit up just a bit of the area and did not burn earth to cinders in it, in part as Dr Vermes says.

Some claims are clearly not in step with astronomy.

Adjust to "There are better things to be occupied with than unproven claims or soap"

It is wise when dealing with the fanatic or fantastic to ask very politely for evidence to avoid being taken in and perhaps outsmarted from there by steps and degrees.

Claims about this and that may not be wholly lies, but can contain some morsels of truth and fact in them, for example.

For the lack of clear-cut and good evidence, also consider you may not have any real evidence to the contrary, and settle the matter by shelving it, so to speak. Be resonable or as scientific-minded as you can be.