Even the Bible warned us, Proverb 31

[exhausted]

Jesus was a very wise man and there is wisdom in spades in the bible.....I wonder what Jesus, a man who advocated giving up possessions, helping the weak and living a spiritual life thinks of where Christianity is today, with all those fabulous, wealthy churches? I'm sure that the ability to recite scripture and personal belief in God is far more important than actually following his example....I've never met a Christian who lives this life. I know a lot who go to church and think that's the eternal life bit sorted.....

Evil infiltrates EVERYTHING. That doesn't mean there isn't good out there.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Jesus was allegedly crucified in AD 0.

There was no year zero. It went straight from 1BC to AD1. Jesus was born about 5 or 6 BC and the crucifixion occurred at about AD 25.

 

[Bible_Belt]

So, a good Christian should follow the book,give up the love of money and possesions and forget going to organised church? I doubt that's going to happen as it seems going there is to prevent social shame as much as anything, and those churches need you turning up. Keeps them in business.

Jesus never went to church. The church people (pharisees) were his enemies, and they eventually got him killed for rebelling against their authority. If you are alleging that the church is corrupt and hypocritical, Jesus said the exact same thing.

 

[exhausted]

So, a good Christian should follow the book,give up the love of money and possesions and forget going to organised church? I doubt that's going to happen as it seems going there is to prevent social shame as much as anything, and those churches need you turning up. Keeps them in business.

Didn't say any of that and not here for an argument or debate. Im good on my faith and dont care to try to persuade or to argue anyone the other way.
One thing ill say is nonbelievers or uneducated put religion and faith into the same category. It isnt. Believing in God and believing in man made religions are not exactly the same.
Sure i go to church but i stopped critiquing every single thing like a damaged woman and just go for myself and my soul. Thats it. No arguing. No worrying about the intricacies. Just for myself to the creator and his son.
Maybe im wrong. Who knows but my soul is pure with honesty and honor to why I go.

 

[taiyuu_otoko]

There was no year zero. It went straight from 1BC to AD1. Jesus was born about 5 or 6 BC and the crucifixion occurred at about AD 25.

Whatever. The point is the same. There was a LONG TIME before the "event" of the virgin birth and the writing down of that event. In the meantime, it was telling and retelling, which almost certainly included a LOT of embellishment.

And if you REALLY want to get technical, it didn't "go" from 1BC to AD1, those labels were created long after the fact. Dudes weren't walking around in 1BC thinking, "Wow, there's whole new millinium just around the corner!"

Those "labels" AD and BC weren't used until hundreds years after the fact, and AD was used BEFORE BC was used.

 

[Atom Smasher]

Indeed. I don't believe he was the son of God but I do believe Jesus was fundamentally, if accounts are correct, one of the greatest if not the greatest man to have lived.

Either he was who he said he was (the son of God and the ONLY means by which men can approach God), or he was a liar or out of his mind. He was crucified specifically for claiming he was equal with God. No mere man can make that claim and be considered "great". Either he was of divine origin or a lying deceiver. There's no middle ground.

 

[exhausted]

This has been my experience mywhole life

M too.
I have 3 sisters and a controlling mother but i still wont give in to that shiit

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

Yes, there is knowledge that there is no heaven or hell because neither of which are empirically proven or observable. Heaven and hell are positive concepts, arguing that these do not exist because neither are observable or proven is not based on belief. Logical fallacy.
.

The empirical scientific method proves nothing. That's how it works, it's just works with appearances. And so, there is no Knowledge of reality. As soon as we start talking about reality, we are in the realm of belief. I believe I exist, and think it very sensible to do so, even though I can not 'prove' it.... just as I believe in God. I think it's the manliest belief to have... that there is an intelligent and powerful cause to this cosmos.... that it is a cosmos and not a chaos.

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

The Zen understanding of reality is broadly "nothing exists beyond the present moment. Everything else is based on conceptual thought which only exists in our minds, and our attachment to ourselves and our desires is what creates the illusion of a soul and a fixed self". I wouldn't call that belief, I would call that an unremitting and factual assessment of reality through observation.....but, hey, God made the world in seven days around 4000 years ago....almost the same I suppose!

I am not a Buddhist but this way of thought is concerned with what "is" as opposed to "what should be, or what the book says it is". There really is a difference.

However, I do not believe this to be infallable. We could live in a simulation, or it could indeed be a Christian God.....if any Christians are willing to attest to the fact Jesus may not be the saviour, God may not be just and it's just a good guess...

East is East, and West is West. The Buddhist way is not the Western way. We follow the Greek and Roman philosophical tradition that took our intelligence seriously. Even though it could not storm the heights, those heights were definitely posited. These first heroic stirrings of the human spirit culminated in the Christian tradition. History is Providence. It's the difference between a fatalism and real concrete freedom.

Though Buddhism has one thing right, that we should not take earthly desire too seriously. But this desire is not abolished in Christianity, as it is in Buddhism, but redirected upward to a whole superstructure of reality that Buddhism remains ignorant of.

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

Just on another note, do you think on the women's version of these sites they are discussing this? LOL!

Exactly. There is a Great Chain of Being. And man's leadership and intelligence is a significant link in that chain.

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

Sorry dude, but some of it is a direct quote from Christ.. esp. books of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Find a Bible in which the words Jesus Christ spoke are printed in Red.
If the apostle Paul can be saved after the damaging words he gave during his life, anyone can. He became one of the Disciples.

Well if you want to be fully consistent with your beliefs, you'll have to do better than 'sola scriptura'. This may sound shocking to Protestant and secularized ears alike, but it is a heresy [heresy meaning to think for yourself as opposed to orthodoxy]. What is required, if the Church is not to endlessly fracture, to the point where every man becomes his own Pope, is a thousand year old tradition which can provide some authority and unity. This is religion [religio... to bind] and is exactly the opposite to the kind of anarchic freedom [free from] we enjoy today.

The irony is, that given a few orthodox beliefs, one is wonderfully freed up in a positive sense [free to] to develop all manner of thoughts, unrestricted by the prevailing paradigms, which always have the ideological ego at the center. In other words, you're enabled to discover poetic and aesthetic consciousness, which is in reality the bridge to the divine. You become more like a planet revolving around a greater reality, as opposed to imagining your ultimately insignificant self as the sole reality.

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

Jesus was allegedly crucified in AD 0. The first gospel or the epistles weren't written for 30 years after that. That's sixty years of "word of mouth" between the Virgin Mary story and when pen was put to paper.

I see as more metaphorical, archetype than anything else.

Plus, the idea of a virgin birth isn't original to Christianity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_births

Yes, Christianity can not be separated from the Church. There is a pragmatism about this that does not care too much for ideological purity. The Church is a funny old thing, warts and all. But I still love it... The biggest loss in the Reformation was our understanding of language. Where before you had various interpretations - literal, allegorical, metaphorical etc, suddenly you were just left with the literal... thanks largely to a dogmatic theological monk. Art was stripped from churches in Switzerland, monasteries were destroyed in England, Christendom became Europe.... and I know what side I would have fought on.

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

I used to say stuff like that before I just grabbed my balls and accepted I am going to die and rot one day. Face that and you will laugh your head off at all the cowards running around with illogical beliefs to protect that ego.

There is as much proof in heaven or hell as there is that we are actually part of an enormous game of scrabble played by pigs who are having a threesome with a goat......oh, oh, can't be disproven.....

All of this belief is based on humans early experiences....theres a big powerfull being who decides everything.....it's so obvious how this was thought up. However, once people are set in their ways, it becomes "us" v "them" and religious people are supporting a sports team, not any notions of rational thought or knowledge. Finding that in an ancient book, interpreted by paid professionals, or even just a book......man, you think if a being of this sort existed he would wrap it in such a crude set of self contradictory texts.....the scientific method proves everything. It doesn't prove no God, but it does prove that we have no evidence of it, and the only evidence of a soul is a rotting corpse. People need to grow up and DEAL WITH IT.

Well, I think both of us like to think we are being rational, but our sense of rationality will depend no doubt on the 'paradigm' we are operating with.

Yours seems hyper-modern, where you've accepting a naturalistic view of the world. All super-nature, beliefs, philosophy, and egad... perhaps eventually scientific rationality and language itself, becomes swallowed up in contingency.

Personally, I think this view is not only impoverishing of our lives, but also lacks a certain self-criticism where the limits of so-called knowledge lie.

It is not really reason that is central, but the will. For it is out of our own will that we create all these systems of knowledge. Where criticism and philosophy come into play, is they enable us to hold all these, what are essentially constructions, at arm's length. This is the important function that skepticism has always had in philosophy. Having achieved this liberation of sorts from the 'determinations' of knowledge, we are then free to believe what we like... or should I say what is most coherent. All the best of western civilization and art starts here.

Life is not so much a box of chocolates as bunch of balls to be juggled. The trick is to find a world view big enough to fit all the aspects of our existence... whether science, philosophy, art, morality... women, and not to just become obsessed with one single ball and reduce the world to that.

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

Because it doesn't exist. It's a fairy tale.

No end of wordery will cover up the giant holes in Christianity and the other Abrahamic desert cults. Christianity has an excellent moral value system which is very conducive to a well-fucntioning, productive society, able of winning wars and material possessions. That is no evidence of any level of real understanding, and the theorising of Christian philosphers like Berkeley only became anywhere near wisdom when he MOVED AWAY from theological dogma and started twisting the book towards a metaphorical interpretation. The mental gymnastics used by Christian Bishops to take into account actual knowledge and run to say "see! See! There's an obscure verse that I can make this fit with!" is fairly amusing from an agnostic atheist perspective.

People will hang the fvck on to their cultural beliefs because of early brainwashing but mainly the social shame of being considered "bad" for not following a bunch of make believe BS. They will fight for their ignorance. Social shame is powerful.

The book of Genisis is completely contradicted by evidence. We have dinosaurs. How much evidence do people need for Christ's sake? It's been made up. It doesn't even make sense. A world made in six days despite the concept of "day" being reliant on the revolution of the earth, which was only made later in the week.

Once you start saying "metaphor" then I will argue that "Spot the dog goes to the country" is actually a holy book, you just don't get the metaphor. Anyone can do that.

Once again this shows a rationalist paradigm. I agree with you that modern Christian apologetics appear ridiculous [because premised first on a faith in ideological reason/ rationalism]. I tend to think the further you go back with the 'theologians' the better they are. I have nothing but contempt for Luther who was said at the time to be a pestilent fart of the devil.

As for the relation between faith and reason, Anselm stated well back in the high Middle Ages his maxim of 'faith seeking understanding'. I prefer to go even further back to Augustine's 'believe in order to know'. Here we have no ideologue, but an urbane cultured man of the Greco-Roman tradition bringing that culture to the service of Christianity and the Church. Coherency, culture and continuity.

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

The conceptual paradigm I operate in is a skeptical philosophy, a philosophy/ criticism of science, an aesthetics, and a cultural tradition of faith... which has an element of providential history to it.

Your paradigm seems to be science and progress. But don't you think the notion of progress is problematic..... in this day and age?

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

You are a very well educated and articulate poster and I am in awe somewhat, as I agree with much of what you say, but I would argue that the brilliance of these thinkers was borne in the human mind and religion was purely a conduit to express the brilliance of the thought of mankind.

Well, I think there is definitely a development and progress of thought involved over the centuries. I view that as a kind of Providence. I mean, the pagan world would never have recognized the need for some Christ figure without a certain development of thought and culture outside the Jewish tradition. The Greeks provided the intellectual pathways whilst the practical Romans provided the institutions and roads.

For me, the real revolutionary break came with the Reformation [what a misnomer that is]. For here the ego [the heretic... to think for yourself] comes into prominence - Luther's 'Here I stand, I can do no other'. I wonder if this new found centrality of the ego was somehow a compensation for the shattering event of Copernicus' displacing of God's green earth from the center.

 

[Bible_Belt]

The book of Genisis is completely contradicted by evidence. We have dinosaurs. How much evidence do people need for Christ's sake? It's been made up. It doesn't even make sense. A world made in six days despite the concept of "day" being reliant on the revolution of the earth, which was only made later in the week.

Once you start saying "metaphor" then I will argue that "Spot the dog goes to the country" is actually a holy book, you just don't get the metaphor. Anyone can do that.

Time can't be relative? That's your best argument? Einstein would disagree.

 

[Bible_Belt]

I'm just laughing at the idea of thinking time is static. The rate that time passes can change like the wind. That's a basic premise of the theory of relativity. If you're going to act like Mr Science, you could at least understand it at a minimal level. I'm sure there are much better scientific arguments against the Bible than arguing in favor of a Newtonian universe.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Jesus said, thou shalt turn the other cheek to homophobic micro-agressions....

I like particle physics, string theory, at least until the point I have to do math. Then it stops being fun. I'm a fan of Einstein's writings about relativity. The farther you go in that study, the wackier the theories get. I've seen fairly recent papers theorizing the Universe is a hologram, and also one that the Universe itself has a consciousness. That's pretty far out there. I don't see it as any less believable than the Bible, which by the way, even if you discard everything supernatural in it, is still the best history book in existence for much of ancient humanity. Maybe that's because it has hardly any competition, but it still has value as a historical record.

 

[ChristopherColumbus]

Please substitute "faith" with "irrational belief in the supernatural"

Faith is a human concept from a human mind and has no basis in reality.

No, scientific theory is a human concept from a human mind. Faith transcends concepts.

You might like to read a bit of Kant, and Thomas Kuhn's 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.'