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You may be missing the (or just my) point. It does not matter if the story is true, and it doesn't even matter if the mind behind the story was divine or human. What matters is that much of humanity was laboring under a belief that God or gods were angry with them - they were prisoners of fear and superstition. The story, when believed, began to free humanity (or a portion of it) from that prison. Its an ongoing process. I'm not saying the story was even necessarily the only thing that played a role in that, but I do think it was pretty key.
Just my thoughts, and perhaps they are half-baked.
No. It's an idea I hadn't considered before. I shall bear it in mind.
P.s I have a theory .... ...that the story passed through a number of revisions.
(a) Jesus was executed to Rid Rome of a potential nuisance.
(b) The disciples convinced themselves that the Messianic spirit had gone back to heaven and would return soon.
(c) Paul made faith in this risen messianic spirit the ticket for Gentiles to be on the Right Side when the return occurred.
(d) Later Christians changed Paul's curing of sin-death by Jesus' obedience, to a washing away by a sacrifice. That was what was in the gospels.
(e) this was later refined into God sacrificing himself in human form, rather than the Messiah. So we get this message read into the story rather late. It is a new and unusual idea, as you say, but I don't think this idea was there either as it really happened or as it was written.
No. It's an idea I hadn't considered before. I shall bear it in mind.
P.s I have a theory .... ...that the story passed through a number of revisions.
(a) Jesus was executed to Rid Rome of a potential nuisance.
(b) The disciples convinced themselves that the Messianic spirit had gone back to heaven and would return soon.
(c) Paul made faith in this risen messianic spirit the ticket for Gentiles to be on the Right Side when the return occurred.
(d) Later Christians changed Paul's curing of sin-death by Jesus' obedience, to a washing away by a sacrifice. That was what was in the gospels.
(e) this was later refined into God sacrificing himself in human form, rather than the Messiah. So we get this message read into the story rather late. It is a new and unusual idea, as you say, but I don't think this idea was there either as it really happened or as it was written.
I don't even think the key point of the story was God sacrificing himself. Like you said, I think it morphed into that and the idea that God needed a sacrifice to be appeased was actually a set-back. I'm thinking more of the simple sayings attributed to Jesus. The idea that God was a loving father, and didn't need to be feared; the ideas encapsulated in the parable of the prodigal son (and his big brother) ... those ideas I think were pretty foreign. But these ideas were introduced into the collective human psyche through the Jesus narrative.
I don't even think the key point of the story was God sacrificing himself. Like you said, I think it morphed into that and the idea that God needed a sacrifice to be appeased was actually a set-back. I'm thinking more of the simple sayings attributed to Jesus. The idea that God was a loving father, and didn't need to be feared; the ideas encapsulated in the parable of the prodigal son (and his big brother) ... those ideas I think were pretty foreign. But these ideas were introduced into the collective human psyche through the Jesus narrative.
By God, I think she gets it!!!Now if only more people would make the connection between spiritual and cognitive (human psyche) as the entire focus of God's concern, NOT the carnal nonsense that everyone focuses one.
No. It's an idea I hadn't considered before. I shall bear it in mind.
P.s I have a theory .... ...that the story passed through a number of revisions.
(a) Jesus was executed to Rid Rome of a potential nuisance.
(b) The disciples convinced themselves that the Messianic spirit had gone back to heaven and would return soon.
(c) Paul made faith in this risen messianic spirit the ticket for Gentiles to be on the Right Side when the return occurred.
(d) Later Christians changed Paul's curing of sin-death by Jesus' obedience, to a washing away by a sacrifice. That was what was in the gospels.
(e) this was later refined into God sacrificing himself in human form, rather than the Messiah. So we get this message read into the story rather late. It is a new and unusual idea, as you say, but I don't think this idea was there either as it really happened or as it was written.
You got at least one thing right: the idea of Jesus dying for our sins was a relatively late development in the growth of Christian dogma. Had it been legitimate it would have emerged right from the time of Jesus' crucifixion, not a hundred years later.
Ah! The theist mind. It regards evidence as nonsense.
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Show us how many humans get to the truth that black holes exist with evidence.
The evidence is there. I gave you the link. We accept the existence of black holes because we have verifiable evidence for them. Why are you having such a problem with this?
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Humans in majority rely almost exclusively on putting faith to a small group of humans they believe to be in direct contact with the truth itself to get to truth.
That isn't faith. People believe those small group of people because those small group of humans produce evidence and ironically YOU believe them too! You believe them when you drive your car. You believe them when you fly on aeroplanes. You believe them in matters of electromagnetism, gravity, thermodynamics, photosynthesis,relativity and acoustics....and a thousand other things. In fact there are very few things in which you don't trust this small group of humans. In hundreds if not thousands of aspects in your every-day life, you trust these small group of humans implicitly...until they contradict your belief in ancient mythology...and then suddenly, you claim that they don't know what they are talking about, that they are idiots and that we are idiots for believing what they say. What a hypocrite you are!!
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You can't even provide the evidence of your own existence on the 365 days in 2015.
The fact that I am here is evidence of that.
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Or show us the evidence about what you did and said on, arbitrarily, Feb 24, 2015.
No, you're right. I can't do that...and that's why I don't believe your Bible, where that a group of anonymous people can write about what other people they never met, did, where they went, when they went there and what they said VERBATIM, 50 - 100 years after the alleged events.
You see, this is a brilliant example of the skewed thinking of theists. You demand that I tell you what I did, minute by minute of each of the days of 2015; and you ask it because you know that it's something that can't be done. Yet when it comes to your beliefs you throw that out of the window and you accept that a group of anonymous authors wrote down verbatim what was said by whom and to whom, when and where 50-100 years after the alleged events! Don't you see how dumb that is.
...and if you asked me what I did, where I went and with whom I spoke on each day of 2015...and I gave you a stack of old papers detailing each day...you would say to me...Pffft! How do it know this is true? You could have just made it up! Show me verifiable evidence that what is written here is true.
You know you would and thus you expose your hypocrisy! But hey! Look, I'll give you a chance to prove me wrong.
Apart from the Theory of Evolution and the 'Big Bang' Theory. Please tell us what other scientific Theories you feel are fundamentally flawed and untrustworthy and then explain why you think it.
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Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
Someone explain to this poster the established validity of scientific data, upon which we all rely every day, including himself.
Do you really think it would do any good old fruit?
I don't even think the key point of the story was God sacrificing himself. Like you said, I think it morphed into that and the idea that God needed a sacrifice to be appeased was actually a set-back. I'm thinking more of the simple sayings attributed to Jesus. The idea that God was a loving father, and didn't need to be feared; the ideas encapsulated in the parable of the prodigal son (and his big brother) ... those ideas I think were pretty foreign. But these ideas were introduced into the collective human psyche through the Jesus narrative.
Well, that is also part of My Theory (read: "hypothesis") that the words of Jesus are the invented words of the writers. Sure there is an original text (1) but that it quite hard towards the jewish Law (Paul's making the Law obsolete became in the Greek Christians a detestation of the Jews and the law they observed) and the promised handouts f you have faith enough are no more than what the OT god did when he was in a good mood and was more about proving one's Faith than demonstrating God's loving nature.
The future of the faithful wasn't going to be an easy ride and even the second coming wasn't going to be much fun for anyone.
Even Jesus begging to be let off (no chance) isn't a loving father. It is about Obedience by the way, and reads very oddly today when Jesus God is supposed to be asking favours from himself. It all makes sense when you dab off the later Jesus as god overpainting and see the 'Jesus as human Messiah' gospel -original portrait.
Other lessons are not so much about a loving father but the need for repentance and taking Jesus as Lord and savior - just as is the case now.
So the lovey stuff is somewhat selective and read into it.
(1) to find it, take Mark, shed the Decapolis material (the 'Great omission) in Luke, and that is how the original looked, give or take a few additions like the assistants in the boat or Pilate's surprise. Because even Mark is a revision.
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Originally Posted by thrillobyte
You got at least one thing right: the idea of Jesus dying for our sins was a relatively late development in the growth of Christian dogma. Had it been legitimate it would have emerged right from the time of Jesus' crucifixion, not a hundred years later.
Only one thing? Well, better than u a complete car -crash I suppose. In fact, Jesus dying for our sins in the sense of Messianic obedience wiping out the sin of Adam's disobedience, is Paul's pre - Gospel idea (it's set out in Romans) and the later Christians turned it into a Paschal sacrifice washing out the sin with blood, not obedience, That is why Passover became so important and John has every damn' thing happening at a Passover.
Any relationship is a 50-50 proposition, even a relationship with God. You reach out, He responds. But if you think carefully about how often you've reached out you'll likely find it was you reaching 100% of the distance and not finding any hand at the other end to grasp hold of.
Indeed, I knew one Christian who lost faith while listening to Garth Brooks unanswered prayers song. Somewhere towards the end of the song the person in question realized that the activities and actions of this "god" were in every single way entirely indistinguishable from no god existing at all.
And deep realization that every attribute of your god appears to match every attribute of "no god" is likely to, at the very least, provide some internal challenge to faith in many people. And for this person at least it was totally destructive of it.
Clearly it was different for you as I personally see no more substantiation for the deist position than the theist position. The former for me is simply a nonsense. The latter for me is just the house that people have built on that foundation of nonsense.
That is why I rarely attack "theism" but with my personally constructed phrase (which is "I have never seen any argument, evidence, data or reasoning to suggest that this universe was created and/or is being maintained by a non-human intentional intelligent agent) I think I encompass mostly deism, and much of the world's theism that has led from it.
Well, that is also part of My Theory (read: "hypothesis") that the words of Jesus are the invented words of the writers. Sure there is an original text (1) but that it quite hard towards the jewish Law (Paul's making the Law obsolete became in the Greek Christians a detestation of the Jews and the law they observed) and the promised handouts f you have faith enough are no more than what the OT god did when he was in a good mood and was more about proving one's Faith than demonstrating God's loving nature.
The future of the faithful wasn't going to be an easy ride and even the second coming wasn't going to be much fun for anyone.
Even Jesus begging to be let off (no chance) isn't a loving father. It is about Obedience by the way, and reads very oddly today when Jesus God is supposed to be asking favours from himself. It all makes sense when you dab off the later Jesus as god overpainting and see the 'Jesus as human Messiah' gospel -original portrait.
Other lessons are not so much about a loving father but the need for repentance and taking Jesus as Lord and savior - just as is the case now.
So the lovey stuff is somewhat selective and read into it.
(1) to find it, take Mark, shed the Decapolis material (the 'Great omission) in Luke, and that is how the original looked, give or take a few additions like the assistants in the boat or Pilate's surprise. Because even Mark is a revision.
Like I said, the words attributed to Jesus. I'm going with the "it doesn't matter" theme again on that point. Who spoke the words matters far less to me than the words themselves.
I understand your sticking points about the content of the words. Not all of it supports the message of God as a father or being forgiving (though perhaps more than you give credit for?). But some of it does: the kernel of it is there. And that kernel found it's way into our consciousness, collectively. As a whole, humanity had been firmly embedded in fear of angry God/s for millennia. Change does not happen overnight.
Hell, my family for as many generations back as I know about was still immersed in the belief in a wrathful, angry god, but it was tempered by the belief that that God was also a loving father. While those beliefs are obviously in opposition to each other, at least my family wasn't taking part in animal or human sacrifices because the edge had been taken off of the Angry God belief.
And, in my generation and the next, some of us are escaping that Angry God belief altogether. You see my point?
If one doesn't give the god claims any credit, you escape it totally and immediately.
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...that the story passed through a number of revisions.
Someone explain to this poster the established validity of scientific data, upon which we all rely every day, including himself.
