What I find interesting is that Jesus was Ain't even close to being established - BARRIE SUGGESTS ! running for office according to the findings of Barrie Wilson’s interruption of the lost gospel. I don’t know if Jesus hated the Jews but he want to lead the Jews and he had very good connections in Rome, all the way to the top. Jesus’s bad luck was a change in power in Rome. If that hadn’t happened Jesus would have been governing the area.It didn't take too much googling to find that Wilson's book hasn't convinced too many (any?) in the know. A shrewd politician heading to the top. :bug: Do any other scholars entertain such a notion?
PS: What happened to the brain of Citizen's Challenge above where Jesus is advocated as, well, just about worshiped? The evidence of some type of true conversion is there too. That evidence is the deprecating phrase: "Shattering our egos. Dying on the cross of our own making" (failings) Ego is our identity as self aware and the hallmark of humanity. Ego can be overdone as self awareness becomes "only aware of self". to shatter the ego? Don't shatter it at all. Harness it. His phase is analogous to: "Smashing our guitars. Dying on the stage of our own melody" If done to express our passion, that is good for everyone and children. In the way CC uses it, it seems hateful to humanity in a way only Jesus and god can be.Hateful ??? Where do you come up with that? Yes the “ego" is the aware self. Human awareness is on a continuum. Way too many can’t see past their own immediate self interest, or even feel hostility and commit violence towards others. We behave in self-destructive ways. If those so afflicted work on themselves, they will reach the point where truly recognizing themselves as others have experienced them is emotional shattering - crisis of ego - dying on the metaphorical cross of our own failings. This is where I’m suggesting the metaphorical example of Jesus comes into its own - no god, no hateful, simply a spiritual support. For those who choose, if you don't choose him, there are other metaphors and spiritual aids. Back in the 70s I had a friend who seriously studied philosophy, degree level stuff. He told me about their best professor a man who so thoroughly dismantled all perceptions of his students that it lead to emotional crisis in some. But, once the shock passed the “emptied out" students were ready to genuinely tackle philosophy as opposed to just smelling the flowers. This is close to what I’m talking about. I'm very curious where you find this "hatred" in my words.
Jesus’ Passion is a guide and support for us as we individually traverse our own lives. Jesus is there in spirit to help each who reaches for him to help guide in times of trials and tribulations. He’s about helping those who’ve reached their reckoning, when sins and failings have done their damage and there’s no place left to go. He offers strength to stand trial, to be justly convicted, … to face it, own it, to absorb our own sins. To finally understand it from the outside looking in. Shattering our egos. Dying on the cross of our own making. The Glorious News is that once you’ve done it, the promised rebirth happens, and you awaken a new person. Your history is still yours, but your direction, attitude and understanding is deeper. You find yourself with tools to handle the day to day you never imagined were in you. You finally appreciate your’s is a universal struggle, just as with your parents and their parents and all others. Jesus is, not about brainwashing or absolutism, or self-delusion, not about driving an agenda and gaining power, not a bludgeon of judgement, no end of the world, no heaven or hell. Just a guiding support for those who choose to believe. Jesus certainly isn’t ruler of our eternal physical universe, nor our mother planet, Earth. Jesus is a divine being of our own global societal mind, it’s a beautiful thing, but that’s as far as his reach goes. Not a Universal Truth, Jesus and the Abrahamic Faiths are Personal Truths, nothing more. What about Science? That’s a human tool for understanding the physical world we were born out of and will die back into. It’s a tool for keeping humans honest* in a way religions are incapable of. PS. We need each other to keep ourselves honest.
We've been through this a couple times Yohe. Pretty outrageous of you to ask for references given your past. More outrageous to say you have more data when last I checked, all that data is in some disorganized boxes in your garage. The only source I really need is the Bible itself. Anything extant just confirms the history that can be pieced together from there.I want to understand what you are saying. That in over 40,000 thousand years of religion. A religion that has a history with many branches throughout it’s evolving. You are saying that there is enough history in the bible alone to piece it all back together? I not going to challenge you on the bible, because I know you’re understanding of the bible in immense. But I find that when I read some items in the bible it is my understanding of earlier history that gives me a complete different picture than if I had to just rely on the bible itself. And I am not just talking about the small items here. Oh right, I forgot that you see everything in light of a few bones or beads found 40,000 years ago. Of course religion has evolved, and Jesus can be seen as one in a line of similar incarnations of religion. That doesn't tell us much about how we came to have belief in the 20th century of a particular man with a particular name. To find that, your best source is the Bible, Isaiah 52, 53, Daniel, Corinthians are good starts. Obviously some background data is helpful, and without it you couldn't assign probabilities to facts. I was not suggesting anything so ridiculous as having someone from a lost South America tribe simply read the Bible and figure it all out.
You guys should really watch Zeitgeist, The Movie. The first part documents just how UN-unique the Christian religion is. Just about everything it considers sacred occurs in numerous other religions and belief systems. Virgin birth, 3 days in a cave, ressurection, and on and on. And mind you ZG is not anti-christianity. It’s just saying that humans, faced with similar circumstances, especially when on the whole civilizations were ignorant, humans will come to very similar creation myths.
What I find interesting is that Jesus was Ain't even close to being established - BARRIE SUGGESTS ! running for office according to the findings of Barrie Wilson’s interruption of the lost gospel. I don’t know if Jesus hated the Jews but he want to lead the Jews and he had very good connections in Rome, all the way to the top. Jesus’s bad luck was a change in power in Rome. If that hadn’t happened Jesus would have been governing the area.It didn't take too much googling to find that Wilson's book hasn't convinced too many (any?) in the know. A shrewd politician heading to the top. :bug: Do any other scholars entertain such a notion? What you found fits a common pattern. I would be shock if the experts acted differently. Take the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library, the finding of the Ark, the graves of Jesus’s family, the virginity of Mother Mary, just to name a few. Then look at what history shows us and it has been this way for some time. Take the horns of Moses for example. I wouldn’t be jumping to conclusions to fast when it comes to religion. This is a subject that you really need to look at all the angles that you can. Call it the human factor. Acceptance of changes of religious ideas can easily take decades. The Gospel of Thomas was found in 1898 (Oxyrhynchus) and it is just now starting to be accepted. One of the problems was most the scholars worked at religious institutions and most still do. It is hard to build good scenarios and even harder to build theories. What I find interesting is that the lost gospel does fit very well with a lot of the other existing scenarios, kind of like the key or the missing piece of the puzzle.
Jesus, he is one of my heroes. But of course you are talking about the Jesus of Paul and John. I am talking about the real Jesus. And Jesus did have a driving agenda and it was about gaining power. And it was his way of going after that power that showed his genius.You know this how? Because it's "real". You know, real, as in really. You find the real one by picking out some evidence that agrees with things you've learned in modern schools, based on modern philosophy, then ignoring the other 99% of the evidence of what Jesus was and how the legends and myths developed. Please provide us with some of this evidence that Jesus was real. I have not seen any of it. But since you are so sure of yourself, please tell us about it. PS. Please don't use the bible in an attempt to prove the bible. List of burial places of biblical figures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burial_places_of_biblical_figures Is it logical to think that so many graves of bible figures are still known today if they were not real? Where is the grave of Santa or the tooth fairy? Lois, did Jesus exist has never been as issue in my research. The problem really has been that there were claims that to many people may have gotten labeled as “Jesus". The possible specifics of that what Jesus attempted to do was astounding. But what grew out of his legacy end up being world changing.
Mike you take the horns of Moses, I’d rather look at animal tracks.
Oh and none of the blah blah up there has a thing to do with Jesus’s Passion, though I imagine many don’t even grasp what that is.
Science is unlimited in scope. God and his unhuman son Jesus are tools of manipulation to social science. Jesus is to life as blood letting is to medicine.But religion has no limirs. We know!
Jesus, he is one of my heroes. But of course you are talking about the Jesus of Paul and John. I am talking about the real Jesus. And Jesus did have a driving agenda and it was about gaining power. And it was his way of going after that power that showed his genius.You know this how? Because it's "real". You know, real, as in really. You find the real one by picking out some evidence that agrees with things you've learned in modern schools, based on modern philosophy, then ignoring the other 99% of the evidence of what Jesus was and how the legends and myths developed. Please provide us with some of this evidence that Jesus was real. I have not seen any of it. But since you are so sure of yourself, please tell us about it. PS. Please don't use the bible in an attempt to prove the bible. List of burial places of biblical figures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burial_places_of_biblical_figures Is it logical to think that so many graves of bible figures are still known today if they were not real? Where is the grave of Santa or the tooth fairy? Lois, did Jesus exist has never been as issue in my research. The problem really has been that there were claims that to many people may have gotten labeled as “Jesus". The possible specifics of that what Jesus attempted to do was astounding. But what grew out of his legacy end up being world changing. What was world changing was the exaggerations and rewriting of Jesus" story by people who never saw him, most of whom were born after he died.
Please provide us with some of this evidence that Jesus was real. I have not seen any of it. But since you are so sure of yourself, please tell us about it. PS. Please don't use the bible in an attempt to prove the bible.Lois, I did not give you any proof for your question about Jesus. I will try and explain my thoughts on that. You would not ask the same question about, let’s say Greek philosophers for example. You don’t question if Zeno, Pythagoras, Socrates or Plato existed do you. What is their proof of existence? I would have to say their work. The same with the great Buddha’s of the past. Several of the great teachers of the past have continue to exist in history. The same can be said of Jesus. I can find no proof of Jesus the deity really living outside of the bible. But there are the teachings of Jesus the Gnostic (teacher) outside of the bible. The Gnostic gospels for example have a lot of Jesus’s teachings. Your question is a highly contested question from both sides of the issue and has been for some time. http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/did-jesus-really-exist-2/
What was world changing was the exaggerations and rewriting of Jesus" story by people who never saw him, most of whom were born after he died.Answer - the creation of Christianity. I agree with you totally. I think the stories about Jesus were verbally told and when written down, they had a different resolve and fore filled entirely different objectives. Remember after Jesus the Antonine plague hit. Rodney Stark's book, the Rise of Christianity, argues that one of the main reasons for the success of Early Christianity was the Christian emphasis on caring for the sick. The plague is said to have taken up to 5M lives. That was at least half of the population.
Mike you take the horns of Moses, I'd rather look at animal tracks. Oh and none of the blah blah up there has a thing to do with Jesus's Passion, though I imagine many don't even grasp what that is.CC, I don’t see any difference on what you are calling Jesus’s Passion than what you would see in the Buddha religions. I know you are using it as an arguing point against Senator Jeff Sessions and the Republicans. But I warned you that if you guys kept on pushing and using the tactics you embraced that you could set a lot of the projects back by years and it may take decades to get back to where we were with the Christian movement. So, looking at animal tracks is what you are going to be doing for the next few years. Have fun. I would rather talk about history.
You guys should really watch Zeitgeist, The Movie. The first part documents just how UN-unique the Christian religion is. Just about everything it considers sacred occurs in numerous other religions and belief systems. Virgin birth, 3 days in a cave, ressurection, and on and on. And mind you ZG is not anti-christianity. It's just saying that humans, faced with similar circumstances, especially when on the whole civilizations were ignorant, humans will come to very similar creation myths.Zeitgeist is very dated. It has a lot of errors. Richard Carrier has put out the first peer reviewed scholarly work on the historicity of Jesus. He addresses the exact same issues, but in much more depth. It will take a couple years for the work to be absorbed and responded to, but I'm hopeful it will clear up a lot the questions. Hopefully it will leave Mike choking on its dust too.
Lois, I did not give you any proof for your question about Jesus. I will try and explain my thoughts on that. You would not ask the same question about, let’s say Greek philosophers for example. You don’t question if Zeno, Pythagoras, Socrates or Plato existed do you.I won't speak for Lois, but I do question those people's existence. A lot of people do. There are entire departments in universities dedicated to asking questions like that. You could find the arguments online I'm sure. And for the millionth time, there aren't billions of people worshiping Socrates. There aren't end of the world theories coming out every few years that people believe and kill their children as a response to them. Congress doesn't invoke the name of Socrates when suggesting we ban Muslims from coming to America.
You guys should really watch Zeitgeist, The Movie. The first part documents just how UN-unique the Christian religion is. Just about everything it considers sacred occurs in numerous other religions and belief systems. Virgin birth, 3 days in a cave, ressurection, and on and on. And mind you ZG is not anti-christianity. It's just saying that humans, faced with similar circumstances, especially when on the whole civilizations were ignorant, humans will come to very similar creation myths.Zeitgeist is very dated. It has a lot of errors. Richard Carrier has put out the first peer reviewed scholarly work on the historicity of Jesus. He addresses the exact same issues, but in much more depth. It will take a couple years for the work to be absorbed and responded to, but I'm hopeful it will clear up a lot the questions. Hopefully it will leave Mike choking on its dust too.Dated? It points out how various religions have so many similarities. How is that dated? And it doesn't really address (as far as I can remember) the historicity of Jesus. Most scholars believe he was a real person, but as to the mythology that has grown up around him, for example his birthday being 25th of Dec, ZG addresses that well.
Lois, I did not give you any proof for your question about Jesus. I will try and explain my thoughts on that. You would not ask the same question about, let’s say Greek philosophers for example. You don’t question if Zeno, Pythagoras, Socrates or Plato existed do you.I won't speak for Lois, but I do question those people's existence. A lot of people do. There are entire departments in universities dedicated to asking questions like that. You could find the arguments online I'm sure. And for the millionth time, there aren't billions of people worshiping Socrates. There aren't end of the world theories coming out every few years that people believe and kill their children as a response to them. Congress doesn't invoke the name of Socrates when suggesting we ban Muslims from coming to America. And for the millionth time you have stated the obvious and left out the timeline information. Did all what you are talking about basically happen from the day Jesus was born? Or did it start a hundred years after Jesus died? Where were the protest at the crucifixion? Where were the people? When did it start getting written about? This is the point we are talking about right now. Was Jesus as popular as a politician in his time or as popular as a GOD? And the end of the world theories are OT, but I got to agree that they are using Jesus to drive them. Most likely just like they used Jesus in the past to write their ideas into the gospels.
You guys should really watch Zeitgeist, The Movie. The first part documents just how UN-unique the Christian religion is. Just about everything it considers sacred occurs in numerous other religions and belief systems. Virgin birth, 3 days in a cave, ressurection, and on and on. And mind you ZG is not anti-christianity. It's just saying that humans, faced with similar circumstances, especially when on the whole civilizations were ignorant, humans will come to very similar creation myths.Zeitgeist is very dated. It has a lot of errors. Richard Carrier has put out the first peer reviewed scholarly work on the historicity of Jesus. He addresses the exact same issues, but in much more depth. It will take a couple years for the work to be absorbed and responded to, but I'm hopeful it will clear up a lot the questions. Hopefully it will leave Mike choking on its dust too.Dated? It points out how various religions have so many similarities. How is that dated? And it doesn't really address (as far as I can remember) the historicity of Jesus. Most scholars believe he was a real person, but as to the mythology that has grown up around him, for example his birthday being 25th of Dec, ZG addresses that well. That’s true, books have been written about Jesus’s sayings and matching them up with older religious saying. On the religious side, I don’t think Jesus was creating a new religion, he was just teaching what he most likely learned in Alexandria, some 30 miles and boat ride away.
You guys should really watch Zeitgeist, The Movie. The first part documents just how UN-unique the Christian religion is. Just about everything it considers sacred occurs in numerous other religions and belief systems. Virgin birth, 3 days in a cave, ressurection, and on and on. And mind you ZG is not anti-christianity. It's just saying that humans, faced with similar circumstances, especially when on the whole civilizations were ignorant, humans will come to very similar creation myths.Zeitgeist is very dated. It has a lot of errors. Richard Carrier has put out the first peer reviewed scholarly work on the historicity of Jesus. He addresses the exact same issues, but in much more depth. It will take a couple years for the work to be absorbed and responded to, but I'm hopeful it will clear up a lot the questions. Hopefully it will leave Mike choking on its dust too.Dated? It points out how various religions have so many similarities. How is that dated? And it doesn't really address (as far as I can remember) the historicity of Jesus. Most scholars believe he was a real person, but as to the mythology that has grown up around him, for example his birthday being 25th of Dec, ZG addresses that well. Yeah, dated. Here's the Bibliography from OHTJ]. I'll be commenting on this more, and highlighting which of these books are the ones Carrier endorses. Dougherty is at the top of the list. He has beefs with Ehrmann, but that's a good recent too.
What was world changing was the exaggerations and rewriting of Jesus" story by people who never saw him, most of whom were born after he died.Okay Lois, that is a given Oh, but look at what people have done with it! Ridicule it, ignore it.; Still doesn't take away its power. The comments in this thread are an exact example of why we (the enlightened ones ) lost the election - too much circling the wagons. I've been to hell and back and I don't want to circle the wagons and hide from their dependence on religion any more damnit all - lets confront their crap head on - acknowledging what is real so far as the human spirit and experience is concerned, When will we focus on the fundamental reality of Earth as a real living entity in its own right and Evolution as how we got here, and how we fit into eternity. Of course, can't confront Christianity do that unless you've been on the inside and are willing to talk some of the lingo and appreciate some of the concepts. It ain't that hard, after all it's only human nature. Rationalism and self-skepticism makes us stronger and smarter. Just gotta learn how to use our smarts again our adversaries. I'm quite fortunate in that my inside Christianity experience was intense but started at about seven years of age and it went through its entire cycle in a decade's worth of growing up and paying attention to the world around me. ... oh and Lois, lordie, lordie, if you don't think the human spirit is a force to be reckoned with - well it's no wonder we've done nothing but lose ground against Jesus Freaks for the past four decades. The reality of Mother Earth and evolution and our own singular unique moments along the flow of Earth's Evolution is a story a billion times more magnificent and passionate and important than the completely egotistical Abrahamic Religions We The Enlightened People have allowed the ReactionaryMilitaryInductrialComplex and it's masters-of-the-world oligarch to commandeer then world with.
One question based upon hundreds of thousands of years of religion.
A part of the human makeup that has managed to evolve even when the humans were totally isolated on remote islands.
What if mankind has a religious gene? Point being, if you are going to war, at least know who and what your enemy is.