Was there really a Jesus? Or is that just a Fantasy

I hear all of these born again people claiming that Jesus died for our sins,
which I find kind of strange since I wasnt born yet when he was supposedly here
and how can "Adam and Eve" make all of humankind "sin" with their ways?
Doesnt make any sense

Put to death by the Romans under Caeser Augustus. Or was it Tiberius? At any rate it is written down in Roman court records written by Tacitus.

As for the magic tricks and divinity...that I don't buy.

"court records"? TIA...

"Tacitus wrote at least four historic treatises. Around 115 AD, he published Annals in which he explicitly states that Nero prosecuted the Christians in order to draw attention away from himself for Rome's devastating fire of 64 AD. In that context, he mentions Christus who was put to death by Pontius Pilate."

"Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome..."

http://www.jesus-institute.org/life-of-jesus-ancient/jesus-tacitus.shtml

Tacitus was born in 56 AD in Gaul, so he didn't overlap with the time Christ is supposed to have lived. He was repeating what he had heard to explain current actions of Christians, so in all likelihood he was repeating what the Christians were claiming. Notice he thinks of them as evil.

There are earlier reference to Jesus, but nothing contemporary. The Gospels were written down decades after Jesus's death (which would be in 33AD if the Gospel stories of John the Baptist and the other events sourrounding his death are accurate--and they are at least consistent with history, unlike the details of his birth), but they seem to be oral histories and stories. Many of them may date to the time around 33 AD. IIRC, some of Paul's letters, which mention people who know Jesus, survive from within a couple of decades of Jesus's time.

In short, there is no contemporary record of Jesus's birth or death, nor of the historical events (namely the census and the slaughter) around his birth. The birth story fits common god-myths so closely that it seems likely either the whole thing was made up, or else the actual story was told in a way that it fit contemporary mythologies. There are written records within a century of Jesus's death, and some of them are copies of documents (mainly letters) written while people who knew Jesus would still be alive--sometimes written by people who claimed to know Jesus.

So I think it highly likely he really lived, and that many of the stories in the Gospels, especially towards the end of his life, reflect accurate stories about him. Others probably reflect myths that had sprung up about him (think of the different stories about Clinton and Bush believed by either side). There are some who believe the whole thing was a myth developed in the late first century by a segment of Israel who needed a figure to support the beliefs they were developing. I don't buy that, but it's possible. There is as much evidence that Jesus lived as that Muhammad lived, or many Egyptian Pharoahs, or many medieval kings.

As for the rest of the question of who he was, whether he had anything in common with the guy people worship today, or any of the religious stuff, that's hard to say. He's a shadowy figure at best. He may have been a rebel leader who claimed to be the King of the Jews. He may have been a prophet and healer (there are hints to link him to the Essenes). He was probably an impressive, charasmatic man for people to have remembered him for so long, although on the other hand, he could have been just a name that someone pulled out of memory to justify their own religious movement.

That's my summary.

Caiaphas and Tiberius were over a hundred years apart, I believe. That would mean that the year is actually 2105 or later.

;)

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It's called having faith. I believe.

Claims that Tacitus wrote a record of it have been demonstrated to have been forged.

That said, Yishua was the most common name amongst males in the region at the time, and hundreds of messiahs were crucified byt the Romans. It stands to reason the the Yshua ben Yusef of the New Testament is an amalgem of many of those crucified.

but even if there was, it doesn't validate the mythology in the bible.

if he lived, he was just a Roman Empire version of Pat Robertson. Monty Python's Life of Brian probably has it all closer to truth.

And no, Jesus never existed. He is an allegory for the movements of the sun through the heavens, born on the first day the sun begins rising further south when viewed from north of the equator and his epiphany happens on or about the Spring equinox. The exact same story shared by literally dozens of other god-men that predate him by hundreds and even thousands of years. There is NOTHING unique about the story of "Jesus that is the Christ".

-- the first century.

We pick up the story for real when he's around 30 or so. He is probably incredibly bright and is deeply moved and disheartened by the way local governance suppresses individual liberties and/or spiritual freedoms.

He gathers like-minded friends and enjoins them on roughly a 3-year ministry to speak essential truths to people generally and the exiled and downtrodden particularly.

It is entirely possible and believable that he was extraordinarily kind and accepting, far-seeing and inclusive.

I personally do not believe he was transhuman.

Like all authority figures, the local version of Roman law did NOT care for the challenge to their reign and nailed him to a board. Of note is the fact that when he is arrested in the Garden, the apostles are armed.

There is a provocative article on the Gospel of Thomas and the Jefferson Bible in the current issue of HARPER'S that might address some of the points you raise in your post.

The question of whether or not Jesus actually existed is not necessarily relevant to belief. Consider for example, these three excerpts from three (free to the public) chapters from a book called "Common Sense Christianity" --


Who Is Jesus of Nazareth? (Chapter 9)

But if we don’t say that Jesus is divine, how do we explain his central importance for us as Christians?

Most of the traditional titles for Jesus do not work for many of us today.

“Savior” is too tied to the theory of divine blood satisfaction.

“Lord and Master” belong to a different age, and they also encourage “triumphalism,” not Christian servanthood.

The “Messiah” was to be a conquering warrior-king -- which Jesus was not.

“Son of God” means too many different things to different people.

But if I cannot ascribe to these traditional titles, who do I say that Jesus is?

I proclaim Jesus of Nazareth as “the Christ.” Because we think of this as his second name, it is less burdened with traditional meanings.

By calling Jesus “the Christ,” I don’t mean that he is divine, or that has a special “being” or “nature.”

Rather, I mean that he fulfills the role for us of focus and guide to our understanding of God and reality and how we should live.

Thus, I proclaim Jesus as the “functional Christ.” (See the next chapter.)



Jesus as the (Functional) Christ: Indisputable, Sufficient, and Sacred (Chapter 10)

If we consciously make Jesus of Nazareth the focal point of our life, the source of our deepest values, then he functions as the Christ for us. This does not depend on his having a divine nature.

To claim him as our focus, and form our lives accordingly, indisputably gives him this function for us.

To claim that Jesus was right, to say that he provides the answers to our deepest questions and the focus of our faith, is sufficient because it is the most that can possibly be claimed for another. (It is not claiming more for Jesus to describe in a way that uses high-sounding language but makes no sense.)

And Jesus as the functional Christ fulfills a sacred role for us, as the focus through which we form our relationship with God.



Why Jesus of Nazareth? (Chapter 13)

To recognize Jesus’ authority, we have to take three steps:

First, to seriously confront his teaching. We are called to love God and love our neighbor.

Second, to decide that Jesus was right -- this love of God and neighbor is the most important thing.

Then, third, we have to decide that we will try to live that way -- with Jesus as our focus, our compass. This is what makes us Christians -- the decision to follow him, to make him function as the Christ in our lives.

But if Jesus of Nazareth is not divine but human like us -- then why should we try to follow his teachings? Why should we recognize his “authority” as the Christ?

There are several logical, circumstantial reasons of historical accident -- but in the end, it depends on the response of our hearts. Our claim is that -- partly because of these circumstances ‑- Jesus can function as the Christ for us, and does function this way for those who choose him.

So why Jesus of Nazareth? Because his example and his teachings first grab us and then prove themselves over time. Because we find that the attitude, the faith, embodied in him leads to right relationship.

And because we know, in our deepest heart of hearts, that his call to love and service is the call to that which is right and true in a way that transcends all other rights and all other truths. This is why we confess Jesus as the Christ.


------------------------

This way of thinging about the significants of the idea of Jesus means that it is not really a great pressing issue to me to debate whether or not he really lived or was part of a myth. The teachings that I have are valuble and informative for living and they have served me well. Many of them give me insight into a bit of the nature of the divine life that I believe is real. And that's all that really matters.

It doesn't especially matter if he existed or not.

Most likely.

but for me what is most important about Jesus is what he preached and how he lived out what he preached, even when abandoned by his followers and threatened with execution.

Did Jesus exist? I personally believe he did, but there are those who question whether there was ever a historical Jesus. :shrug:

As for Adam and Eve, I see them as mythical attempts to understand why we're here in the situation we're in. "Myth", incidentally, does not mean the same as "fantasy" or "lies" for me. Myth tries to express the inexpressible through symbol and metaphor.

Just my two cents.

I will describe someone. You tell me who it is.

This "being" saw suffering among humans.
This "being" decided to "go to the underworld" for the sake of humans. (a.k.a. die)
This "being" then "came back from the underworld" three days later. (a.k.a. rose from the dead)

Who is this "being" ?


(scroll down for answer)

































































This being is "The Goddess", the female god-type figure of ancient Pagan culture, and pre-dates the story of Jesus Christ by 5000 years.

Ta Da !

You're not talking about the Wiccan Goddess, are you? Wicca is only about 50 or 60 years old.

:evilgrin:

More seriously, the goddess described sounds to me like Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love and war. The Sumerian pantheon was considered mythological even in Roman times - there were literally no active worshippers of anything Sumerian by the time Rome was rising in the west, and only a handful of people even remembered that Sumer had been a civilization anyway.

In fact, the historical record is remarkably SILENT on the existence of jesus and the scant writings propped up as "Proof" have long since been debunked as spurious or outright forgeries. So just exactly WHAT historical record?

And, BTW...the bible is NOT a historical document. It doesnt qualify in any way, shape or form.

places, people, and age of humans (unless you suspend ALL credulity and buy the idea that men lived to be 900 years old.)

For instance, the city of Nazareth didnt exist until well into the 2nd century. Just one of many things in the bible that are wrong.

so ypur trusting memory that was no doubt lousy - It was all pretend - a conspiracy - but atheists are able to see through it.

If you were a historian, it would not be a PRIMARY source.

Olafr

no matter how you arrive at it, i.e. Buddha, Hindu, Jesus... The groundbreaking thing about Jesus is that for the first time here was someone who held up the "least among" us as an example to the rest of us: to humble, grateful and charitable. Look at the Sermon on the Mount.

As I tell everyone, especially my astonished "Christian" friends and relatives: "Christ had a lot of good ideas. If they ever catch on it'll change the world."

A lot of the "Jesus died for your sins" teachings come from Paul, not Jesus himself. Paul had a lot of guilt over his practices before he saw the light on the road to Damascus-he was actively assisting the corrupt jewish religious authorities persecute christians. He assisted in the martyrdom of St. Stephen (Acts refers to him as sort of the coat check guy for those throwing the stones at the martyr). Paul also had trouble getting laid, probably because he had a repulsive appearance, hence his obvious issues with women. This appeals to many people, especially those who feel great guilt about real or imagined sins.

The Adam and Eve/Original Sin thing is complicated. Fundamentalists would like to preach Adam/Eve and creation. When it comes to man's fall, I also agree with you-why am I responsible for sins of people who existed hundreds of thousands of years ago? They will tell you that the fall of man is both literally true and an allegory of the human condition. My belief is that both stories are allegories, including the creation story.

Fundamentalists also will say that Jesus dying for the sins of mankind is the heart of the christian story. It's the heart of christian commentary after Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension.

I suggest reading the New Testament for yourself and coming to your own conclusions regarding these issues. The New Revised Standard Version is a good modern translation, although I enjoy the original King James Version for the beauty of the language.

Actually, if you hold the Adam and Eve story to be true, it was only six to ten thousand years ago, not hundreds.

or at least not exactly 2005 years ago. The biblical history conflicts with real history and even the writings that support his existence weren't written for four decades after his supposed death. Other literary references of the same time placed him as far back as 140 years prior to the BCE/CE date, and most odd fact of all is that something that supposedly took the region by such storm, complete with miracles, VERY public executions, resurrections, and ascensions didn't have a peep mentioned about it anywhere else for forty years, while they were recording how many flagons of wine and sheep billie bob bought from jebediah each time they went to market.

Most notable of all about the time of the first writings was that in a literary and "heroic" context it was a time of literary heroic allegory designed to teach moral lessons. While everyone else nudge nudge wink winked about their "gods", the christian version of mithras had the audacity to add, "but no, fer real!!!".

I think most modern enlightened christians believe in the idea of Jesus and the ideas of christianity and are not threatened by what they can't prove anyway, so their faith isn't threatened with oddities like this. Literalists - they'll probably be a little more unhappy with the undeniable results of real historical research.

This is getting dumb

It's not meant to challenge anyone's faith in christian ideas. Just in the literal history of christianity.

I think anyone who is secure in their faith would be willing to acknowledge that things as written down by the goatherders got a little murky considering the day and age, but that's okay.

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No, seriously.

I suspect Jesus was a real person, who lived about the time that is claimed, and said many of the things that are attributed to him, more or less.

The problem is, I suspect he said such obvious truths, and said them in such a clear way, that it worried a lot of that (and later) eras power brokers.

So they wrapped a simple, truthful man in a cryptically mystic dogma, such that ordinary people would be forced to go to larger organizations to get explanations, and, through those explanations, be controlled.

Thus, they claim, you can be guilty for the sins of people who died thousands of years before you. And one man could have died for the sins of billions of people who are born after he died. And it all makes sense, if you go to the right people and accept their dogma as whole truth, and show up every Sunday for a couple hours worth of lecturing...

At least that's my take on it.

Some scholars assert this Gospel pre-dates the Synoptic Gospels and may even have been a source for them.

It basically has sayings attributed to Jesus, and lacks the "cryptically mystic dogma" you mention.

Christians during the Ancient and Medieval times, much as fundamentalist Christians today, tended to rewrite documents to legitimize their faith. They made up entire documents, artifacts, relics of the saints (Shroud of Turin is one of thousands of examples). The Josephus debate goes back and forth.

then it transpired that the piece taken for carbon dating was sewn in by nuns at about that time. Since then there were no carbon-dating permitted, and that's that. It is a highly intriguing mystery.

Of course it was a common name so there were many "Jesuses" or "Jesi". Is all the stuff they wrote about him true? :shrug: Who really knows, but until I see a single shred of evidence supporting those claims I choose to believe it's myth. There were so many religious myths at that time it's impossible to tell. After studying the Christian religion it seems to have been cobbled together from bits and pieces of other religions into "the one, true religion". :eyes:

So many people go around saying there was historical evidence of a person named Jesus at that time, but I've never actually seen the evidence, or anything close to it. Even if there was a person named Jesus alive at the right time, it's still just a rather common name!


Honestly, the entire thing is one giant leap of faith and abandonment of reason anyhow - why would the existance of Jesus be any different?

:-)

Josephus - found BY BIBLICAL SCHOLARS to be a forgery.

When challenged, notice that dogmatic believers who insist the Jesus of the bible existed will only say "___ says he did" or some other cop-out, but won't actually link to any - ANY - of the purported evidence.

Probably because it, uh, doesn't exist.

I'm not even sure why some believers insist on Jesus having existed, since I thought the whole idea of faith is that proof wasn't necessary for them. I'm reminded of the Babel Fish argument in the first Hitchiker's Guide book.

In my opinion, the answer, following professional historians, is that yes, there was an historical Jesus. That does not confirm the magical/religious acts or even much of the doctrine surrounding him.

A great start is Croson's "The Historical Jesus." It is true that most of the texts that mention him were written down some time after his death. But if you have ever done historical work in predominantly non-literate societies, you have had to rely on oral history. Surprisingly, much of oral history, passed down over a limited few decades, tends to be mostly correct.

Croson has created a kind of matrix of texts to determine their likely validity. How soon were they written? Do they agree with other texts? Etc. And from this he concludes there was undoubtedly a person named Jesus who preached around the time that the Bible has him preaching. But the vast majority of what we think he said and stood for is probably not correct.

Interestingly, after Croson parses what he probably really did say, much of the message that remains is very enlightened and progressive: Feed the poor; take care of the ill; love your neighbor, even if he is a rat bastard.

Joshua bar-Joseph in Palestine at the time I find to be a highly credible assertion. I take the Jeffersonian view, though. Jesus was an advanced moral thinker and apostle of peace and brotherhood, but there was nothing supernatural about him. He was as human as the Buddha or the Dalai Lama.

As a Catholic Christian I enjoy believing that Jesus did exist and that many of the bible stories about Jesus and the Apostles are true (then there's a whole lot in there that I can't accept).

But that's the good part.

I don't care if a person is a Christian or not. I don't care how they came about their belief system as long as they believe in doing good for others. I am unable to see the world w/out believing in a higher power or being and for me that is God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Maybe it means I could just be bat-shit crazy or an easy mark for the Catholic Church. But it works for me and keeps me wanting to be a better person.

So, when someone who doesn't believe as I do says, "Prove it" I don't have to prove it to them. It is there for them to accept or not. That won't change how I feel about them (except for the fact that they won't let me have my belief system...why not?).


Was there a real human being named Jesus? I don't know, but whether or not a man named Jesus existed isn't as important to my faith as believing that he may have existed.

Have you actively learned of any that have a solid foundation in evidence from the world and are totally welcoming of science instead of disregarding science and reason as an ememy?

Buddhism requires no faith whatsoever. It is the ultimate in 'Show Me' religions. If you meditate in the manner suggested, you will achieve the effects advertised.

Keep in mind, that the 'benefits' that (mainline*) Buddhism says it provides are far short of 'eternal bliss at the right hand of God' -- merely that you will be able to both cope with the suffering in the world, and be equipped to lessen that suffering.

*Yes, there are schools of Buddhism that advertise far more 'flashy' benefits, such as reincarnation, super powers, etc... but those seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

and Buddhism is part of life

so right now I just sit here on this bank of sand and watch the river flow.

How so? I don't have faith that I'm alive, for example - clearly, I know that I'm alive.

What does your post mean, exactly?

Everybody has faith in something, if we look at the real definitions of faith. These discussions always break down at the point of language, because we are saying different things when we use the same words.

Do I have to go get the definitions again? Part of the endless circle of these atheist vs. believer discussions (though atheists are also believers, too, for that matter).

You have faith in science or reason or whatever. Everyone has faith in something.

here we go again:

faith ( P ) Pronunciation Key (fth)
n.
1) Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2) Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief. See Synonyms at trust.
3) Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4) often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5) The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
6) A set of principles or beliefs.

Atheists generally only use faith in the sense of Definition #2. I see atheists as faith believers in Defintions #1 and #6.

Any question?

in the past you acknowledged the great difficulty in defining a Christian, yet you have no problem whatsoever applying definitions to everything that you are NOT.

The reader may speculate as to why that might be.

if you didn't go around hinting at motives, and were direct, instead.

If you have something to say, say it.

I am not applying definitions, by the way, as I utilize ALL the definitions of "faith", not just one or two. I also recognize the many defintions of the word "Christian".

Despite atheists telling you they don't have the kind of "faith" you think they do, you persist in using it, because it fits your preconceived notions about what different people are like.

I've grown to expect it from the more dogmatic you-are-what-I-say-you are types.

It isn't my preconceived notion, it is my judgment of their behavior, as seen here and elsewhere. I just don't buy the "lack of belief" argument, which I see as just a different belief, and a different kind of faith, though not necessarily a religious faith.

I know you don't like it when I say that.

Of course, we define the word athiesm and faith differently, so it is pointless to argue. I'm stuck on those old-fashioned dictionary definitions.

in a manner that atheists are telling you is incorrect. Most liberals I know, when confronted by members of a group and told that they are referring to said group inappropriately, are sensitive enough to adjust their language and accommodate differences.

If I use the word "Christian" according to a definition *I* pick straight out of the dictionary, I can equate you to all sorts of nasty people. Doesn't make me right, though, does it?

That's OK, I understand from our long history of arguing on this topic that you don't care what others WANT to be called, you'll label them as you see fit.

In effect, you call us liars.

That's up to you. I never called you a liar.

I have a lack of belief in all kinds of things, it doesn't define what I am in the least.

and since we been down this rathole many times before .... I don't expect you to change your mind, and I don't expect you to change mine. It is unutterably boring to repeat all the same arguments again.

Or, if you like, a double-standard.

Some of them seem to think they truly are exempt from the standards they impose on others. They have rationalized it quite well.

All the rationalizations from some aside, they are just like you and I - they just happen to believe in things for which there is no objective evidence. I wouldn't argue that believers in the Loch Ness monster are different from us, and that's got as much 'evidence' behind it as the purported existence of gods.

Believers are certainly capable of hypocrisy, as we've both just seen.

I certainly would like to see your evidence of it.

I'd just be repeating his accurate observation - which is that you happily allow believers (including yourself) to define themselves, but not atheists.

That's both a double-standard, and hypocrisy. If you can't understand that, I suggest you consult the dictionary again.

There are two arguments I pose:

1) There is a common usage for the word "atheist". The atheists here use it quite differently. Prepare to be misunderstood by the world at large. If that is your choice, so be it, but if someone else is judging you, they are judging you by what their perception of the word "athiest" means, which isn't your definition. I personally don't understand why y'all don't come up with a new word that actually desribes your belief, rather than one in use for other purposes.

2) I also don't think that anyone defines themselves by their lack of belief, but by what they do believe. You will not shake me from that idea.

I do not understand what, exactly, you mean when you say "life requires faith".

Do you mean that without faith in at least one thing, humans can't live? If so, I don't know how one could know that, since as you say everyone has at least a little faith in something, even if it's something like the sun rising tomorrow instead of exploding (which, unlike faith in never-proven gods, is based on science showing that, without an unforeseen event, the sun will continue to operate for a couple more billion years).

But this may not be your argument, so if it's not, can you clarify?

The intermediate step is hope. Hope is based on faith that there are positive things ahead.

But let me use one of millions of examples to hash this out a bit more: as far as we can tell, viruses (lacking a cerebral cortex, thus lacking cognition and sentience) don't feel hope, or faith, and yet they're very much alive.

Clearly, this invalidates an argument that hope and faith are required to live, so I must again ask what you mean by "life requires hope".

I am talking of human life, of course, and life as an experience, not the physical-breathing heart-pumping aspect of this. I am making a philosophical statement.

Don't tell me you couldn't figure that one out. Why are you picking at this???

How, exactly, do you know that you are alive?

every now and then!"

:crazy:

for one to be logical, one must abandon hope? Please....

That fairy tales really come true?

Logic and faith are about as far apart as atheism and religion.

Or science and deities.

Why do some believers try so desperately to pretend otherwise?

I think the truly faithful don't need to replace science with god or insist that atheists are religious.

Hope that x happens. Hope that y will occur. Use your imagination.

It has nothing to do with fairy tales. It has to do with life.

On science and deities...Ancient Greece had quite a few deities, as did Ancient Egypt; they were the scientific masters of their day. Think about that for awhile.

It seems logic and unnecessary comments from atheists are quite far apart, while faith can be built on logic.

Perhaps you will figure some things out someday. I can only hope....

faith: noun: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

That is one definition of many. Others include...

"Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing."

"A set of principles or beliefs."

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=faith

No reference to a specific lack of logic.

Definitions using "belief" in know way imply logic. Why don't you tell me what logic your "faith" is built on.

They do not imply logic. I did not imply faith MUST be built on logic, but that it CAN be built on logic. Try reading my post next time.

Since it does not imply a lack of logic, there can be logic involved. It does not specify a limitation, and therefore, there is none.

This isn't about my faith (or whatever you want to call it) persay, but about the general concept.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !

Thanks, I needed that.

Why do you think that religions need to indoctrinate their sheep when they're just little kiddies?

Because when they're old enough to know better, they'll call bullshit.

If an adult thinks, they can make decisions about their faith (I was confirmed when I was 13, I think. At 14, I had already started to delve into the religion I'm a part of now). Furthermore, kids develop ideas of god and divinity naturally (a poster, heavenandearth, I believe, had that exact experience). There is no bullsh*t to call.

You also display no grasp of many religions. How many times do you see Buddhists holding sunday school? Does Shinto indoctrinate? Ask an American Hindu kid what they know about their religion, and odds are, they won't know a lot. Generalizations are bad.

I was raised on The Nectar of the Godless.
That reminds me, I must remember thank my father again for that...


So unfortunately my take on your beliefs isn't muddled by silly sentimentality as is that of many other atheists.

Sucks, doesn't it?

I have to approach religion from a logical perspective because I started from one.

Walked into a trap I never set up.

"I was raised on The Nectar of the Godless.
That reminds me, I must remember thank my father again for that..."

So, you were indoctrinated, no?

What sucks is your inability to address my comments, as well as the lack of any formulated thought in your response.

My take on your beliefs is not muddled by the same delusion you display.

Reality?

A world based on reason and logic?

Yeah, I was brainwashed all right.

Those evil scientists had their way with me.

:rofl:

atheism. Into believing that god does not exist.

Your "world of logic" is on display here, and it is quite atrocious.

Please, don't make me laugh anymore, it's starting to hurt.

See, my parents brought me up WITHOUT religion.

Get it?

WITHOUT.

One more time:

WITHOUT RELIGION


Do you need me to define that for you or do you have a dictionary?

I didn't know about gods-yours or any of the other ones invented by man, until some brainwashed kids told me about them at camp.

And I was old enough to realize their stories reminded me of what science fiction would be like if Harlequin Romance authors decided to broaden their horizons.


I was taught to use reason and logic, not look at things through the kaleidescope of belief.


I'm sure that that went over your head just like everything else my fellow atheists have explained to you.

I just wanted to be sure that you didn't miss it because I was being too vague.

even atheism.

Perhaps you have forgotten your upbringing, for "logic" is in short supply throughout your posts.

Yep.

I should have put money on that prediction.

Its amazing that people think that not speaking about gods, not talking about the bible and just living life without a discussion of these things is somehow akin to "indoctrination"

in·doc·tri·nate P Pronunciation Key (n-dktr-nt)
tr.v. in·doc·tri·nat·ed, in·doc·tri·nat·ing, in·doc·tri·nates
To instruct in a body of doctrine or principles.

If people want to know about indoctrination, think "sunday school" "CCD" "missionary work" That is indoctrination.

Religion *requires* indoctrination. Atheism requires *nothing*

How disconnected from reality does one have to be to believe that all atheist parents are rabid anti-god zealots that need to "indoctrinate" their children?

:crazy:

That almost pegs you as a Salt Lake City atheist...

;)

The most I can be "pegged" with is being a literary snob.

Did my people move to Salt Lake City and not tell me?

Sorry, carry on...

My best friend throughout childhood was a mormon.

The subject of god never once came up between us, believe it or not.

I guess we were both lucky that our parents had enough respect for each other not to interfere with the the spiritual upbringing of another's child.

I now reside in Zealotville USA and I can't begin to tell you how much I miss New England.

Wow.

You're right.

That's totally grounded in logic.

The point was that life is about hope. No matter what that hope is. It doesn't have to be religious or even spiritual.

I also said that faith CAN have logic. Try reading next time.

Since your memory is faulty, I suggest YOU try reading your post next time.

Your snarky little attempts to correct others will be much more effective if you check your facts first.

the part you conveniently forgot.

I was correcting you because you were wrong. I corrected your view on what I said. I paraphrased myself, but the main idea was intact, something that was not in your summary.

Good job trying to divert the topic. I said faith CAN be built on logic. That is in direct opposition to what you said I asserted.

Care to actually make an argument?

I have no idea what you just said.

I'll tell you what, you repeat that but make it coherent this time and I'll try to find something to argue about.

Faith can not be based on logic, since logic is based on facts. Faith is based on wishful thinking (or "hope", if you will), facts not withstanding. So faith exists despite the facts, logic exists because of them.

Clear enough?

Logic is based on deductive reasoning. It does not have to be based on facts.

log·ic Audio pronunciation of "logic" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ljk)
n.

1. The study of the principles of reasoning, especially of the structure of propositions as distinguished from their content and of method and validity in deductive reasoning.
2.
1. A system of reasoning: Aristotle's logic.
2. A mode of reasoning: By that logic, we should sell the company tomorrow.
3. The formal, guiding principles of a discipline, school, or science.
3. Valid reasoning: Your paper lacks the logic to prove your thesis.
4. The relationship between elements and between an element and the whole in a set of objects, individuals, principles, or events: There's a certain logic to the motion of rush-hour traffic.
5. Computer Science.
1. The nonarithmetic operations performed by a computer, such as sorting, comparing, and matching, that involve yes-no decisions.
2. Computer circuitry.
3. Graphic representation of computer circuitry.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=logic

In saying that logic can operate without facts. But logic applied to a premise that is not fact will yield nothing applicable to reality, and the result of it can have no value, save perhaps as an entertainment. Indeed, a great deal of theological writing illustrates the latter proposition, as does a great deal of archaic scientific and historical writing.

Your belief that life requres hope, and that hope both leads to and is predicated on faith, interests me somewhat. It does not seem to be a constant of life, but merely an attribute of temperament, which varies greatly among persons. A good deal of proverbial weight can be found on the other side of the proposition, ranging from "Hope is a cheat" to "Expect the worst and you will be seldom disappointed."

There are also things that can be mistaken for hope, but properly speaking are not related to it at all. An understanding of probablitites is one such item. If you are in a dice game, for instance, in which you will gain some stake if the dice fall with eight or less showing, it is not hope to await the result with some confidence, for by mathematical law you will see a favorable outcome roughly three times out of four. It would be hope for your opponent to anticipate the unlikely event of a favorable outcome, but in the great majority of trials, that hope will be disappointed, and a person pressing on in such a contest on the basis of such hope will inevitably end up broke.

Logic that comes from abstract ideas can be applied to reality. Just ask every artist since Braque and Picasso.

I did defend someone when they were criticized for saying that life requires hope, but it may not be my personal belief right now. Hope does contribute much progress to life and reality, for only the greatest of idealists can work for something more.

In a dice game, hope may not be a large factor. However, hope is what may keep the person with the bad odds playing. Perhaps s/he will find a bit of luck, perhaps not, but hope is still an integral part of such an activity.

Personally, I would believe that one's path and role in life plays the central role. Yes, hope is always a great factor, and it is perhaps the fuel of the soul that keeps us working for improvement, but assuming one's role in the world is the primary part of life, IMO. If this is achieved, harmony and justice can be reached, and hope is fully realized.

Is that it is best abandoned when passing the gate into this place here below. Different people will have differing temperaments and constitutions, and so such standards cannot apply universally.

Hope should never be abandoned. Many a holocaust survivor said that hope was the one thing that got them through the unspeakable ordeal. Hope is what kept abolitionists fighting. Hope is why there is justice in SOME 3rd world countries. Hope has fueled every bit of progress we have seen. Hope is eternal, and to ignore it is to let go of one of the most potent forces an individual possesses.

Ask a homosexual gentleman why he does not desire to get a good deal closer to Ms. Catherine Deneuve. We have different outlooks and temperaments, formed by different experiences and meditations on them.

different experiences, different individuals.

(...Lamarck was right!)

Anyway, there are things that are pervasive throughout all existence. Truth, justice, hope and other entities are eternal, just as we are. They take different forms, as we do. One can only forget or ignore this, never completely separate oneself from what s/he/it truly is and what s/he/it is truly connected to (everything).

Just my opinion.

You say "Faith CAN be built on logic"
I say "Internet pills CAN increase sexual prowess"

It doesn't guarantee that EITHER statement is true. In fact, when you say "It can", that's just like that "Professional Driver. Do not Attempt" bullshit at the bottom of cars ads on TV.

For the sake of this flame-fest, I'm using the following definition of "faith":
"Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence."

Which definition are YOU using?

Generalizing is bad, and so that is why I deliberately chose that word.

I say that there are exceptions, and there are many different types of faith. Do you think I am going to say that fundy faith is as logic based as Taoist, or Shintoist or Hindu? Of course not, because that is simply not true. Many religions have a great amount of logic behind their beliefs, while many others have none or very little.

I believe I posted the dictionary entry of "faith" in here somewhere. There are a few definitions.

However, using your definition, Galileo had "faith" in vacuums. What do you think of that?

Therefore, another bullshit statement.

Taoist "faith" is logic-based? :rofl:

I'm done with you. Build your post count off of somebody else, or come back when the drugs wear off.

was not proved until later, after his death.

"Following work by Galileo, Evangelista Torricelli argued in 1643 that there was a vacuum at the top of a mercury barometer. Some people believe that although Torricelli produced the first vacuum, it was Blaise Pascal who recognized it for what it was."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum

"From about this time Pascal began a series of experiments on atmospheric pressure. By 1647 he had proved to his satisfaction that a vacuum existed."
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Pascal.html

Galileo died in 1642.

Oh, please. You never started.

..and I keep reading this whole 'faith can be based on logic' argument yet never have you supplied an explanation. Even though the fact that the statement makes no sense whatsoever, I'll give you a chance to explain.

Also, I 'hope' you're not so naive that you can't see the difference between hope and faith. Then again, my hope of that is not logically based - which is why I'm probably going to be disappointed!

I don't think faith can be proven by science, so why use science to tear down faith?

I don't agree with all the Church states, but I (like I stated in my post) can't believe that there isn't something greater out there than me and my fellow man.

That's faith as far as I'm concerned.

I happen to be another one of those "bat-shit" crazy Catholics. I also believe I have have a pretty solid foundation in "science and reason."

One of my hobbies is evolutionary biology, and I have an undergraduate degree in that. It's been my experience that the subject doesn't bother the Catholic Church... well at least not since they got burned so badly on the whole Galileo affair.

Why look at that, Galileo was right! Sorry dude. (Sometimes it's nice to have an immortal soul you can apologize to.)

As I reflect upon my public school education, grades K-12, I realize that George Washington or Ben Franklin were characters just as mythical as Jesus -- especially Ben Franklin, the guy wearing the bifocal granny glasses.

After I graduated from high school I read most of Ben Franklin's published papers, and I realized that this guy was really wild -- the sort of fellow one might find sitting between two buxom women in a Cadillac convertible headed for Las Vegas. I'm sure Ben Franklin and Richard Feynman are in heaven right now having some kind of wild party with bongo drums, quantum colored flashing lights, and very exotic dancers.

From the myths I've read in the New Testament, which are fully equivalent to the myths I read in my high school history texts about George Washington and Ben Franklin, I don't think it's a great stretch to imagine John the Baptist and Jesus Christ as real people. The difference is that we don't have more documentation. But then again, we are missing much documentation of George Washington and Ben Franklin too because it was, much like Biblical history, delibrately disposed of.

The human universe is an absurd place. At the moment your fundanmentalist Christian neighbor is driving around in his SUV with a symbol of a vagina proudly displayed on the back hatch. He thinks it's a fish. Meanwhile, you, being a person who puts their faith in "science and reason," maybe one reads about the latest musings on quantum gravity, dark energy, or string theory in Scientific American, you think that is some kind of real too.

Reality is actually more fluid than any of us would like to believe. Human beings have great difficulty seeing beyond the metaphors our minds operate by.

It's all metaphors, even the hardest sciences.

What's 3.1415926.....?

Is it little spots of light and not-so-light on your computer screen?

No it's not even that.

You didn't think it was anything more complicated did you? Without "application" it is nothing. But damned if I didn't use it as a metaphor for something else.

There is a kind of fundamentalism that is fundamentalism without the god. Everyone has faith that the universe will work in predictable ways. Nobody tries to walk through walls; even the most foaming-at-the mouth Bible thumping fundamentalist will make sure a door is open before he steps across the threshold.

Occasionally a metaphor will fail spectacularly, and entire communities or civiliztions will fall because of that, but for the most part metaphors die quiet unremarkable deaths every day as they are replaced by other metaphors that seem more suited for our purposes.

I think some of us carry more sophisticated metaphors in our mental toolboxes than others, but even someone with a very sophisticated mental toolkit can be missing something basic like a hammer, and the guy who carries little more than dusty old rocks in his own mental toolkit is better equipped to hammer whatever needs hammering.

As an amateur scientist I have a mental toolkit fool of sophisticated scientific metaphors, but I never assume my toolkit is complete. My real world toolkit is never complete, so why would the toolkit in my head be complete?

I am often surprised when people who I assume are carrying little more than a bag of old rocks around accomplish more than I can with my "reason."

and yes, all that what we "sense" is only a tiny sample of drastically filtered abstraction of the world. For the purposes of rational discussion, people agree on what set of metaphors they are handling, rather than saying everything is a metaphor.

"You didn't think it was anything more complicated did you?"
Incorrect.

My simple non-metaphorical point was that reason works and it doesn't require faith.

It is unnecessarily pedantic to miss the point and say, for example, that humans have traveled to the moon by manipulating metaphors. It's like piping up during the discussion of the melodic structure of a song to say "I bet you didn't know that this so-called music is only an alternation in pressure, particle displacement, or particle velocity propagated in an elastic material".


btw: You didn't know that we manipulate metaphors using reason and logic, did you? ;)

It's not enough to replace some ancient notion of "God Willed It" with some modern notion of "Reason and Logic." Both of these are metaphors. Neither one of these provides a solid foundation upon which you may rest. We are pretty much floating free in the storm.

Funny you should mention the moon... My grandfather was one of the many engineers who worked on the Apollo project. To him, a guy who was very much grounded in science, a guy who could "do the math," there was something very spiritual about it. In his entire life this engineering project was the one that most pleased him. After so much struggle, after so much heartbreak, mankind reached out and touched the moon.

I often think about spiritual things when I attend weddings and funerals. Science doesn't have a lot to say about the structure of those rituals, but various religions do. I've found the character of a wedding or funeral usually depends more upon the character of the families involved than the character of the religion or non-religion, or even anti-religion. I have attended church weddings and funerals that were hideous empty rituals, and at the other extreme I've attended ceremonies performed by mail-order "flying spaghetti monster" atheist preachers that were intensely spiritual celebrations. It is a rare person who does not recognize the metaphor of "spirituality" in these situations, even if they attribute the very intense feelings expressed to some simple kind of human biology.

I've seen many instances where religion has hurt people, especially my own religion in the context of homosexuality. But I have also seen many instances where people who claim to live by "reason and logic" have hurt people too.

Ah well, it's the old banter between Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock, isn't it?

Several points seem worth commenting on.

It seems to me what you call "a fundamentalism without the god" is materialism, or the ruling out of court of any supernatural existances or influences. It would probably be fair enough to describe me as a fundamentalist materialist, though to me that would seem to omit some nuances of the actual view. The most important of these is that my exclusion of such items does not strike me as an exercise in faith, but a natural result of the inability to prove that any such things exist. Further, it seems to me that, by the very characteristics claimed for supernatural existances or influences by their proponents, such proofs would be impossible. Those offered generally boil down a claim no material proof for some claimed phenomenon can be found, a claim that can be at most a contingent one held hostage to future investigation, and that requires acceptance the phenomenon occured in the first place, or to a statement that, for one reason or another, such a thing or things simply "must" exist, and this is really, at best, simply a declaration that one's taste in thought runs in a particular direction, which another might well fail to share.

A good part of my inclination towards this view stems from a conviction that it is a safer view for me to hold, that will give me less warrant for doing damage, since it seems to me that a great deal of harm has been done by people convinced of things they acknowledge to be immaterial, to the point that they value them well above mundane concerns of material well-being and comity. But what seems best suited to my own character does not necessarily make a good general foundation for everyone. You are quite correct that a great deal of damage has been done by people acting in the name of reason and with impeccable logic guiding the act. Neither side in this debate can make the claim evil is done only by those hewing to the opposite view.

Your tale of your grandfather reminds me of a common stream in Taoist literature, that opens a spiritual element in the most mundane and material of experience and existance. There are many tales of a Sage observing some person working at a trade or occupation, be it a butcher or a ditch-digger, and remarking that the fellow is so immersed in the experience of it that he has reached a degree of enlightenment the listening student canot nearly emulate in his studies, and frequently finding that, when asked about his work, the man replies in a way that indicates a joyful awareness of that immersion and one-ness in and with his doings. To me, at least, an important element of this is that it does not require any belief, either in a supernatural exitance, or even in the spiritual practice itself, to be efficacious on the mind experiencing it. The experience of being at one with all, and even a great joy in it, does not seem to me the least bit incompatible with a materialist view, that accepts as existing nothing beyond the natural and mundane matter that exists all around us.

to put it efficiently.

Oh my!

I thought it was telling in Dogma (don't laugh) when they were talking about the difference between believing in a thing or believing in an idea. So when it turned out that god was a "she" it wasn't the fact of god's maleness or femaleness that mattered but the idea of god.

I get that - I'm a complete atheist in the intellectual sense but also very spiritual as a human at the same time.

:hi:

Maybe for me it's that God is a simple idea to wrap my mind around rather than other sources of enlightenment - the Catholic Church has it all written out for me in black and white and I don't have to to any thinking (except for when I don't agree or I do something against the Church, then I gotta work through that).

:hug: Thanks for understanding where I'm coming from.

...but he wasn't the son of a God. He was someone who believed himself to be a Messiah (not uncommon for Jews of the time) to rid the Jews of Roman Occupation, was incorrect and was nailed to the Cross. He was a charismatic religious and political leader during his day, and his teachings became a threat to Roman Occupation. Paul (formerly Saul), then made up stories some years later long after the death of Jesus and formed the basis of the Church. It was Paul who created all that we know of today as Christianity, and it was Paul who battled the other emerging sects who believed Jesus was a Messiah or a Prophet.

That's the truth of the matter. The whole virgin birth, the trinity, the son of God, all of that was Paul's work to spice it up for the Gentiles.

Anyway, Christianity is a misnomer it should be called Paulianity. Jesus was Jewish and he died Jewish and he had no interest in starting his own religion.

get ready for the Attack on Paulsmas.

:silly:

of christians. I hadn't thought of terms like "Paulsmas". LOL.

interpretations/bias laced through out.

Indeed your basic facts are correct relative to many at the time claiming to be the Messiah, his being a charismatic religious and political leader during his day, and his teachings becoming a threat to Roman Occupation.

But as to the virgin birth, the trinity, and the son of God, one can not say it is not true - again it is a matter of faith. But you are correct that Jesus never says "I am God".

Jesus was indeed Jewish and did indeed die Jewish. The early Christians did not think they were starting a new religion - and indeed worshiped at the Temple as yet another Jewish sect.

Mostly he had trouble understanding what Jesus was about. When he did figure something out, he was compelled to write it down. Paul's work is highly flavored by his prejudices, but this may (sort of perversely :) ) make it more accessible to readers with Western sorts of bias.

Compare it to John.

There does not seem to be any reason to suppose this Jesus and his followers constituted any threat to Roman rule in Judea, before or after his death. That is a sort of thing that would have been recorded contemporaneously, as the Romans reacted rather energeticaly to threats against their rule.

The cultus of Messianistic beliefs that had reached a fever-pitch among Jews by the days of Augustus and Tiberius was certainly a threat to Roman rule. It led to several major, and many minor, episodes of revolutionary outbreak during and after those Emperors' reigns, that were bloodily suppressed and recorded at the time, before the cataclysmic Jewish Revolt late in the first century and the Bar Kochba rebellion early in the second century. What came to be called Christianity was simply a small splnter in this movement, distinuished by its belief the Messiah had already come, died and ascended to Heaven, the End of Days was already upon mankind, and that its leadership were the viceroys of the Messiah until the day of his return in Power. It is clear the Romans did not distinuish this splinter from the rest, and again, had they felt it at that time a threat, they would certainly have done so.

The role of Paul is much different than commonly presented here. The idea that he distorted some pure doctrine that would be much more palatable than what has been handed down to our day is quite without foundation: the doctrine of the Jesus movement was not esentially different than that of any other ultra-orthodox Jewish sectarianism, and very few people who consider themselves progressives would find much agreeable within it, save perhaps a measure of pacifism. Paul's leading contribution was to reason out a way by which the sect could expand its recruitment beyond the Jewish people, which the original doctrine limited it to, and among which the sect was having little success in achieving conversions. The gist of his innovation was to emphasize the distinction between Israel (the people of God) and Judah (the people of the Covenant), and to claim that, by rejecting the Messiah he believed had come, the latter had broken with the Covenant, and opened the way to recruit a believing Israel from among the Gentiles, which was necessary because there had to be a certain number of Israelites before the return of the Messiah could occur. The rest was simply what had to be done to overcome resistance to conversion, most noteably the foregoing of circumcision and adherence to the whole of Mosaic Law as requirements for entry into the new Israel, and the harmonization of various Jewish mystical doctriines with the "science" of the world in that day, Neo-Platonism and other elements of current philosophy. Because the recruiting of people into groups that met privately was closely watched by the Roman authorities, since it could be a precursor to rebellion, and was certainly an indespensible pre-condition for same, Paul took care to make clear in his teachings that he was no rebel against Rome. In regard to such things as the status of women, he simply expressed in the gentile world of Rome the normal cultural practices of his own upbringing.

The primacy of "Pauline" doctrine came about more by accident of history than anyone's plan or skullduggery. When the Romans did eventually move decisively against the Messianist rebellion in Judea, their military victory crushed all Jewish authority in Jerusalem and Judea, and the splinter of the Jesus movement were simply caught up in the mangle, and even attracted a little extra because of their claim that they had connection with the old Davidic ruling house. Thus the movement was decapitated, and all that was left were congregations in Gentile areas descended from the conversions of Paul. His writings, larded with injunctions to obey the authorities, were of particular value to leaders of these congregations in convincing officials there was indeed a great difference between them and these Jewish rebels off to the East.

I, not being so civilized as yourself, would say that Paul applied a Roman sensibility to a faith that was "bat-shit crazy."

I do not disagree with much of what you have said, in fact I think we agree more than disagree. I am basing much of my understanding of Jesus and Jewish history off books written by Hyam Maccoby.

Hyam Maccoby writes (8/5/01): "I write on Christian origins from the standpoint of a scholar of the ancient Jewish writings, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Midrashim. My view on Christian origins is that Jesus was a Jewish messiah-figure who had no intention of starting a new religion. The real founder of Christianity as a separate religion was Paul. Jesus died on a Roman cross because he was considered a threat to the Roman occupation of Judaea, not because he was regarded as heretical or blasphemous by the Jewish religious authorities, the Pharisees. His Jewish opponent was the High Priest, who was a Roman appointee, who acted for political, not religious motives, in arresting Jesus. Jesus was not a military figure, but, like Theudas, and some other contemporary messiah-figures, relied on the hope of divine intervention, which he thought would take place on the Mount of Olives."

---

In his book "The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity" he lays out the following points (taken from the book):


1 Paul was never a Pharisee rabbi, but was an adventurer of undistinguished background. He was attached to the Sadducees, as a police officer under the authority of the High Priest, before his conversion to belief in Jesus. His mastery of the kind of learning associated with the Pharisees was not great. He deliberately misrepresented his own biography in order to increase the effectiveness of missionary activities.

2 Jesus and his immediate followers were Pharisees. Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion. He regarded himself as the Messiah in the normal Jewish sense of the term, i.e. a human leader who would restore the Jewish monarchy, drive out the Roman invaders, set up an independent Jewish state, and inaugurate an era of peace, justice and prosperity (known as 'the kingdom of God,) for the whole world. Jesus believed himself to be the figure prophesied in the Hebrew Bible who would do all these things. He was not a militarist and did not build up an army to fight the Romans, since he believed that God would perform a great miracle to break the power of Rome. This miracle would take place on the Mount of Olives, as prophesied in the book of Zechariah. When this miracle did not occur, his mission had failed. He had no intention of being crucified in order to save mankind from eternal damnation by his sacrifice. He never regarded himself as a divine being, and would have regarded such an idea as pagan and idolatrous, an infringement of the first of the Ten Commandments.

3 The first followers of Jesus, under James and Peter, founded the Jerusalem Church after Jesus's death. They were called the Nazarenes, and in all their beliefs they were indistinguishable from the Pharisees, except that they believed in the resurrection of Jesus, and that Jesus was still the promised Messiah. They did not believe that Jesus was a divine person, but that, by a miracle from God, he had been brought back to life after his death on the cross, and would soon come back to complete his mission of overthrowing the Romans and setting up the Messianic kingdom. The Nazarenes did not believe that Jesus had abrogated the Jewish religion, or Torah. Having known Jesus personally, they were aware that he had observed the Jewish religious law all his life and had never rebelled against it. His sabbath cures were not against Pharisee law. The Nazarenes were themselves very observant of Jewish religious law. They practiced circumcision, did not eat the forbidden foods and showed great respect to the Temple. The Nazarenes did not regard themselves as belonging to a new religion; their religion was Judaism. They set up synagogues of their own, but they also attended non-Nazarene synagogues on occasion, and performed the same kind of worship in their own synagogues as was practiced by all observant Jews. The Nazarenes became suspicious of Paul when they heard that he was preaching that Jesus was the founder of a new religion and that he had abrogated the Torah. After an attempt to reach an understanding with Paul, the Nazarenes (i.e. the Jerusalem Church under James and Peter) broke irrevocably with Paul and disowned him.

4 Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity as a new religion which developed away from both normal Judaism and the Nazarene variety of Judaism. In this new religion, the Torah was abrogated as having had only temporary validity. The central myth of the new religion was that of an atoning death of a divine being. Belief in this sacrifice, and a mystical sharing of the death of the deity, formed the only path to salvation. Paul derived this religion from Hellenistic sources, chiefly by a fusion of concepts taken from Gnosticism and concepts taken from the mystery religions, particularly from that of Attis. The combination of these elements with features derived from Judaism, particularly the incorporation of the Jewish scriptures, reinterpreted to provide a background of sacred history for the new myth, was unique; and Paul alone was the creator of this amalgam. Jesus himself had no idea of it, and would have been amazed and shocked at the role assigned to him by Paul as a suffering deity. Nor did Paul have any predecessors among the Nazarenes though later mythography tried to assign this role to Stephen, and modern scholars have discovered equally mythical predecessors for Paul in a group called the 'Hellenists'. Paul, as the personal begetter of the Christian myth, has never been given sufficient credit for his originality. The reverence paid through the centuries to the great Saint Paul has quite obscured the more colourful features of his personality. Like many evangelical leaders, he was a compound of sincerity and charlatanry. Evangelical leaders of his kind were common at this time in the Greco-Roman world (e.g. Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana).

5 A source of information about Paul that has never been taken seriously enough is a group called the Ebionites. Their writings were suppressed by the Church, but some of their views and traditions were preserved in the writings of their opponents, particularly in the huge treatise on Heresies by Epiphanius. From this it appears that the Ebionites had a very different account to give of Paul's background and early life from that found in the New Testament and fostered by Paul himself. The Ebionites testified that Paul had no Pharisaic background or training; he was the son of Gentiles, converted to Judaism in Tarsus, came to Jerusalem when an adult, and attached himself to the High Priest as a henchman. Disappointed in his hopes of advancement, he broke with the High Priest and sought fame by founding a new religion. This account, while not reliable in all its details, is substantially correct. It makes far more sense of all the puzzling and contradictory features of the story of Paul than the account of the official documents of the Church.

6 The Ebionites were stigmatized by the Church as heretics who failed to understand that Jesus was a divine person and asserted instead that he was a human being who came to inaugurate a new earthly age, as prophesied by the Jewish prophets of the Bible. Moreover, the Ebionites refused to accept the Church doctrine, derived from Paul, that Jesus abolished or abrogated the Torah, the Jewish law. Instead, the Ebionites observed the Jewish law and regarded themselves as Jews. The Ebionites were not heretics, as the Church asserted, nor 're-Judaizers', as modern scholars call them, but the authentic successors of the immediate disciples and followers of Jesus, whose views and doctrines they faithfully transmitted, believing correctly that they were derived from Jesus himself. They were the same group that had earlier been called the Nazarenes, who were led by James and Peter, who had known Jesus during his lifetime, and were in a far better position to know his aims than Paul, who met Jesus only in dreams and visions. Thus the opinion held by the Ebionites about Paul is of extraordinary interest and deserves respectful consideration, instead of dismissal as 'scurrilous' propaganda -- the reaction of Christian scholars from ancient to modern times.

i believe that there was a man named Yeshua Ben Yusef who lived around 5 BC to 30 AD. I also can swallow that he was a prophet in his native Galilee, and had a small band of devoted followers, and basically his message was that it would be really great if we were all nice to each other. Anything other that is speculation, I think.
To address claims that he never existed, I think it's worth considering that Paul was doing his thing just 20-30 years after Jesus was supposedly executed, and since he was preaching about Jesus, it seems to me that someone would have said: "Well, I was in Jerusalem/Galilee then, and it never happened". Of course, I'm open to the possibility that he was fictional, as some claim.
As to Adam and Eve, the ancient Hebrews stole that particular myth from the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh", which was in existence about two thousand years before the Bible. That part is just a myth.

"...And party on, dudes!"



Hmm....maybe Jesus was actually a time traveler...

(Reading this threads title got me humming a tune, which brewed some fake lyrics.)

NeoCon Rhapsody
- a satirical re-write by Ready4Change

Was there Jesus?
Is he just fantasy?
Or just a Dogmatic
Escape from reality?

Obey your boss,
Nail Christ to a cross,
And pray!

He's just the Lords Son,
With advice and empathy,

He humbled rich,
Healed a few,
Turned his cheek,
Love that Jew!

Any bad that you do,
He absolves all your sin!

Your sin.

(piano)

Mama, just wrote a song.
With blasphemous lyrics,
Just to piss off a few hicks.
Mama, it was just a post!
But pickups are picketing my house.

Mama! Heeelllllpp!
Please call up the cops!
These guys are now getting out their guns.

Too late,
They've kidnapped me.
Took me to "Camp Love Thy God"
Instructing me with cattle prods.
But it's not torture,
It's called "find the truth,"
Just wish they'd tell me what they want to hear.

Mama! Ooooooooow!
They're forcing me to pray.
They've proven who gave Christ all of those thorns.

(guitar riff)
(piano)

I see a tiny little shadow of a man,
Mr. Bush! Mr. Bush! We call you Presidento'
Shock and Awe the fighting, based on very frightening THINGS!
Mr. Cheney! (Mr. Rumsfeld)
Mr. Cheney! (Mr. Rumsfeld)
Mr. Cheney where'd you go? Undisclosed!

Bush is an average guy, we love him don't you know.
(Born of privilege, with a spoon up his nose.)
(Spoiled every day of his rich, wasted life!)
With or against us, To Iraq we go!
Pre-Emptive! (No! Don't think we should go) Here we go!
Pre-Emptive! (Don't think we should go) Here we go!
Pre-Emptive! (Don't think we should go) Here we go!
(Don't think we should go) Here we go!
(Don't think we should go) Here we go!
No. No. No! NO! No! OH! NO!
Mother dear?
Mother Dear?
Mother why'd I have to die?

The NeoCons have devils set aside for them.
For Them. For THEEEEEEEMMMMM!

(head banging guitars)

So you think you can smear me, and spit in my eye?
So you think you can screw me and spew all these lies?
Not this time! Can't escape from it this time!
Gonna get you out - Impeach your ass right out of here.

This has always mattered,
Hindsight settles it.
Jesus was only human,
And Evangelicals. Are. Shiiiiiiiiit.

Understand what they've done?

So we can vote it up!

Don't wanna be an egoist here. :)

Really flattered by your comment, now. Thanks.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5593208

Tidied it up a bit, too. Enjoy.

The series is made up of 4 half hour parts in RealAudio.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/jesus/footsteps/

there are a great number of things noted in the bible that have been found to be true by archaeologists, why not the central theme.

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that...What I really want to do with my life - what I want to do for a living - is I want to be with your daughter. I'm good at it.

"Say Anything"

Me...not Christian, but feel a bit like a spiritual mutt. I try to be a good person, and I am never happier than when sitting by a river edge in the woods, watching the water flow by. I feel home.

Olafr

The God Who Wasn't There
http://www.thegodmovie.com

I am a divinity school graduate who understands the biblical scriptures to be metaphors for a way of understanding God's interaction in the world. I think that Jesus "dying for our sins" has become a sort of clichéd understanding of a great story, and a great event in history, that tells us a lot about God, a lot about Jesus of Nazareth, and a lot about the whole of humanity. I hate to see Christianity condensed into such a limited (and narcissistic, I think) worldview as the one purported by many fundamentalist Christians, of whom it seems you've had at least some contact. I really like Hegel's view of scripture (and the world), which is one (in my interpretation) where the life of Jesus is an instance of astutely evident Geist (Spirit) interacting with the world (and itself--if you've read H.; if not, never mind). He would say the same of the lives of Buddha, Socrates, and ourselves, in varying ways.