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Even as a kid too young to rationalize that this Christianity thing didn't make any sense, I never considered the hell threat to be real. Further, I never accepted that the Jesus man was anything more than a man and no ways to be 'worshipped' whatever worship might have meant although I did accept that he was a real man and really did say and do the things claimed although I can remember rationalizing the 'miracles'. Like Lazarus was never really dead in the first place.
You're extremely fortunate to have caught on so early. Many of us, myself included, didn't catch on it was all a rigged game until very late in life so we wasted our better years on a fable. I recall questioning discrepancies like "Did the rooster crow once or twice before Peter denied Jesus" and "Did one thief or both thieves mock Jesus" but I never carried it further than that. But nobody in those days without the Internet would have been able to find out that the gospels were written up to a full century after Jesus. That was the first crack in the foundation that eventually brought down the entire temple for me.
And we have the power to do something about it - unlike the heaven and Hell of Myth, which we are powerless to alter.
Which is why 'we are on our own/we are responsible - nobody else' is The Good News of secularism; the best; and letting Jesus take the wheel and, if you crash and lose your bits and pieces or your life..that's God's will and it's all good', is very, very bad news.
Ok...what about other places? I think it extends forever.
We make what we have ourselves... wherever we are, no?
I don't limit it to our earth life.
God is not in charge of 'me'...right? There's no one sending lightning bolts my way..
I make my own happiness or my own pit....right?
Doesn't everyone? You've gotta be pretty dumb not to realize this (not you personally, Terry, lol).
Every single thing that happens to us is generated by our own subconscious mind...which is fed images and beliefs from our conscious mind.
Oh, maybe TRANS said the same thing."Which is why 'we are on our own/we are responsible.."
Last edited by Miss Hepburn; 06-22-2019 at 04:43 PM..
You're extremely fortunate to have caught on so early. Many of us, myself included, didn't catch on it was all a rigged game until very late in life so we wasted our better years on a fable. I recall questioning discrepancies like "Did the rooster crow once or twice before Peter denied Jesus" and "Did one thief or both thieves mock Jesus" but I never carried it further than that. But nobody in those days without the Internet would have been able to find out that the gospels were written up to a full century after Jesus. That was the first crack in the foundation that eventually brought down the entire temple for me.
Hate to get off the topic of Old God vs New but for so long...they simply 'weaved the stories together' (as Eusebius put it) like a couple of witnesses swearing on a Bible that Dude was machine gunned and his innards hit the gutter while the other says guy was hung up from a meathook with piano wire. Smart lawyer argues that he was hung up, and then machine -gunned (the smart dudes will already have put 2 and 2 (Matt. 27.6 and Acts 1.18) together ) so they are still credible witnesses.
And people simply put the magi together with the shepherds and nobody even thought about it. Of course, even in the early days, God's word and inerrancy were shot to pieces by pointing up the discrepancies. And right away God's inerrant word was changed to God Inspiring the Bible so it's contents are still true by divine decree but any errors are man's mistakes and...well, hey, that they disagree a bit must show that they are eyewitness and not just reciting some repeated story.
'God inspired' really meaning nothing other than an assumption that it's true and is evidence for Jesusgod in itself aside, I saw early on that just minor discrepancies like how many times the rooster crowd or that Luke has a bit less of a speech than Matthew does will not impress the believer who will point out that people have imperfect recollection.
No - you really needed Big Ones that could not be explained away so easily. One of the best is John having no transfiguration. It's even better than Mark having no resurrection appearances.
And it's rather like One undeniable transitional form (or sequence) and macro evolution is proven, and the more arguable ones become persuasive evidence, because the precedent confirms the similar cases.
Thus the Biggies confirm Gospel unreliability - in fact -fallacy and (blinkered denialism aside) once the principle is validated, all the lesser contradictions become evidence of unreliability, too.
So what? So the 2nd best biggie - the resurrection - is the rock on which the religion is founded. If that disentigrates into sand, the whole eglise comes crashing down. Except for the dedicated denialists.
Ok...what about other places? I think it extends forever.
We make what we have ourselves... wherever we are, no?
I don't limit it to our earth life.
God is not in charge of 'me'...right? There's no one sending lightning bolts my way..
I make my own happiness or my own pit....right?
Doesn't everyone? You've gotta be pretty dumb not to realize this (not you personally, Terry, lol).
Every single thing that happens to us is generated by our own subconscious mind...which is fed images and beliefs from our conscious mind.
Oh, maybe TRANS said the same thing.
I did ....Miss H...have you just converted me?
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Now you got me laughing, Miss H. That's sacrilege, to laugh at your own jokes.
My old dad used to do it all the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn
C'mon, I can't help myself...
"...I believe it...Whether he actually said it or not, I don't care."
That has got to be the funniest line ever.
It even beats ol' Eusebius..one of the best bad examples of Bible apologetics ever...and 'It's in the Bible, so it must have happened'. But you know...from the Olde days..."If it really isn't true..i don't want to know..."
Millions of Christians refuse to look at the very potent evidence that the gospels were written, not by anyone who actually knew Jesus, but by highly literate Greek writers most likely in Greece 50-100 years after Jesus' death. So if they never heard Jesus speak, had no written sources to refer to, and couldn't interview anybody because everyone were either dead or lost to time--then how would they have been able to write such precise dialogue between Jesus and other parties, not to mention the sermon on the mount and even more astonishing, the 4-chapter long last supper discourse that runs for about 2000 words or better? How would this be possible? Answer: it wouldn't--to any rational mind who thinks this thing through.
But the vast majority of Christians, threatened with the destruction of their faith and belief system, would fall to pieces if they acknowledged what the rational part of their minds is screaming at them. This brings on an extreme case of cognitive dissonance. It's like a person watching their house burn to the ground who keeps saying to themselves, "This is not happening to me! I refuse to accept that this is happening to me!"
And so millions of Christians, in danger of losing their church life, their church friends, their worship habits, and belief in Jesus, shut their minds off completely from reality and seal themselves in their safe bubble where they can protect themselves from the ugly truth.
But then your next question, "What was Jesus' original message?" is something we can only speculate on. It's likely he said generally accepted things like, "Treat you neighbor as you would want yourself to be treated". The Jesus seminar, a group of highly esteemed Bible scholars attribute only about 15% of everything in the gospels to Jesus. The rest, they say, according to the evidence, Jesus never said.
So if it cannot be proved Jesus ever warned people about the consequences of not believing in him--if this teaching--that there would be consequences for not obeying and following Jesus--in fact originated in the minds of the Greek writers, then these warning do NOT carry any authority far as God and Jesus go. Unless one wants to argue the anonymous writers were writing from inspiration from the Holy Spirit. But I don't know of anybody crazy enough to argue that.
This is an interesting thought process.
If I were to assume for the sake of discussion that Jesus DID exit and he had a message from God, to try to find the answer to the question, "what was the original message of Jesus? (that now seem to have been miscegenated by the modern day Christian theology) - THEN - I just cannot ignore the existence of Holy men from God - BEFORE - Jesus.
I must try to find out what was message rendered by God through Moses, Abraham, and many many others who arrived before Jesus?
We wont perhaps be able to find the answer but to play this "game of probabilities" and take an attempt at a logical and scholarly guess then this is how I see it.
Through out the human history, we see a trend that tribes and nations and civilizations were born, risen and vanished when their time was up. This see to have happened all in almost corners of the world through out the history.
So the known (and the many unknown to us) prophets of God were sent to different nations and different tribes and different civilization with a message - and that message most likely was - there is only God, and worship only him (Monotheism) - and here are the boundaries of do's and dont's.
If this assumed to be true then why Jesus would've carried a message any different from the Holy men before him?
When you refer to the consciousness that you encountered, are you saying that you began to get very clear and intelligent insights and truths about things, existence, reality? This was happening during meditation? Did you also simultaneously feel blissful loving energy/sensation pouring into you as well?
States of mind are extremely difficult to explain or articulate verbally. i have tried many times and fail repeatedly. I can confirm the "blissful loving energy/sensation" of complete and unconditional acceptance but it is more than that. There is a state of mind that can sometimes occur when dreaming where you can "know" something that has NO RELATIONSHIP to anything in the content of the dream. That kind of "knowing" (without logical reason or referent) is what I mean when I say I "KNOW" this was NOT MY consciousness but I was ONE with it and with a multitude of consciousnesses. It is the existence of this consciousness that validates for me the concept of inspiration from God and it should be available to us all, NOT just special prophets.
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....Miss H...have you just converted me?
My old dad used to do it all the time. 
