sotto voce

It's a problem. Jesus took people quite by surprise. He said that his crucifixion would convict the world of its own sin, of his perfection, and of his consequent future judgment of the world. And the subsequent history of the world seems to show that he was right in every respect.

It took three hundred long years before it finally sank in that Jesus' following was not going to wither away— despite secret infiltration, despite open opposition. So there had to be got up a fake version of his following; one that was in harmony with the prevailing political reality, but also with the superstitious mindset of the age, complete with temples, sacrifices and even virgin cult. Today, when totalitarian instincts have certainly not withered away, and remain lurking in the shadows, the superstitions have become an open embarrassment. The inheritors of imperial 'Christianity' are now in a fix, because people simply do not believe that a man, even a gloriously attired man in a temple, can change bread into God; let alone offer God to God as a sacrifice! Such things were sufficient in an age of brute force ensuring amazing irrationality and ignorance, but they do not wash today.

Because there was another shock on the way. Mediaevals simply did not believe that the world was even capable of changing. They never envisaged that people would not forever mostly toil on the land, living in villages, isolated, ignorant and believing anything they were told. The rich lived with impunity, their only threat being themselves.

The problem was, and remains, that men like Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, whose work did so much to destroy superstition and create enormous wealth, did not reject the Jesus of the Bible, whose miraculous resurrection, they thought, made his claims relevant in their private lives. Scientists today find such relevance, and a curiously large percentage of them are biologists who accept evolution, a fact to which allusion is never made in the media. This is of course only to be expected, because, while the Reformers rejected the irrational beliefs of mediaevalism, they accepted miraculous events as rational, expected evidence of divine presence. While they condemned the imperial fake church as 'antichrist', teaching as dogma that which was 'repugnant to the plain words of Scripture', they did not reject the biblical record in any respect. So 'Catholicism' is a busted flush.

People are left with two options when dealing with Jesus— though many end up hedging their bets, because neither option is convincing. One option is to simply say that the miraculous is made 'impossible' by science. This is demagogic irrationality, and merely makes people feel good for a moment, if that long. The other answer is that Jesus just did not exist. The miraculous is possible, yes, but Jesus did not perform any miracles, because he did not exist. Which is fair enough. Though it's a puzzle how all the king's horses and all the king's men, Jews with their Scriptures, Greeks with their wisdom, could not overcome the view that he had lived on earth.

Fair enough, except when a man arrives who says this, and yet still calls himself "Father" because he thinks that Jesus existed! So it would seem that the message is, "Jesus did not exist, but if you don't believe that, you had better jolly well accept papacy, or else." Something like that.

This message is not new. For years now, internet posters who, with successive posts have displayed apparent atheistic belief, then attempted to desperately, subtly, pass on Catholic distortion, have given away their actual belief in Jesus, the historic, Protestant, biblical Jesus. That happens every day. But when there is a headline like this one, we know that the ultimate in cognitive dissonance has been reached. We realise that the confounded Galilean has truly conquered, and convicted!

tanya

Umm. Nope. Sorry, I disagree with this hypothesis.

James CLERK Maxwell, one of the most famous physicists, the world has ever known (who accurately predicted that the rings of Saturn were made up of tiny particles, using mathematics to justify his concept), would be today unknown, if he had focused attention on Jesus, instead of Poetry, English, and Art, as he did while a middle school student. He won the mathematics prize at his school, at age 13, and presented a work to the Royal Academy before age 16, when he entered the university.....

Einstein considered Maxwell one of the most important and influential thinkers of the 19th century, and retained, if memory serves, a photograph of Maxwell, on his desk. Einstein, by the way REJECTED the bible, in toto, not just the Christian nonsense.

In history, of course, a guy like Thomas Brodie would have been castrated, tied to a pole, and burned, slowly, using green sticks, to ensure a slow burn. This is the way that the famous Spanish physician and scientist, Michael Servetus, was executed in Geneva, on orders of Calvin and Luther. Aren't those your homies, sotto voce? Yeah, Servetus is a very interesting guy, in my opinion.

Like several members of this forum, Servetus was brilliant, fluent in Hebrew and Greek, and had read the Bible in the original languages.

Unlike most of the other members of the forum, however, he studied medicine, after obtaining his doctorate in physiology. He published the first paper (in the western world--> I claim, without evidence, that Servetus studied in Spain, with Jewish translators of the famous Arabic physicians, who had made the same discovery three hundred years earlier,) describing the pulmonary circulation, responsible for taking deoxygenated blood from the right ventricle, and distributing it to the lungs for reoxygenation, followed by return to the left atrium, thence out to the general circulation via the aorta from the left ventricle.

He got into trouble because the Catholics prohibited him from publishing, together with his pulmonary circulation discoveries, chapters arguing against the trinity, and against infant baptism.

He was viewed, (correctly, in my opinion), as an heretic, and condemned to death, when he ignored the Catholic demand to cease publication of arguments from the Hebrew text and Septuagint (a tad like poor Brodie) in support of his position.

He fled to Austria to escape death at the hands of the Catholics, and then, since the Inquisition was closing in on him, fled again, to Geneva, where he foolishly attended mass in Calvin's church.

Calvin recognized him, because of his facebook photographs, alerted the thought police, who arrested him, and then sought Luther's approval to finish the job, which the Catholics had botched.

Luther and the whole Geneva urban crowd, anxious for some entertainment, what with the disruption of the internet, thought it a jolly good idea to burn him alive, thereby demonstrating to one and all, that the Protestants and the Catholics were indeed able, sotto voce, to get along in harmony. May as well toss in a few Muslims, too, while we are at it, though, I am not sure about their position on trinitarianism or infant baptism, but, I am sure they would have been there selling popcorn at the burning. Good riddance of another heretic, eh sotto voce?.....

sotto voce

Don't misquote, poster.

Chili

So then that was the first time they bombed the wrong country already then, and the Catholics approved with their silence. And was Hitler next, did you say?

Iskander

Christians have fabricated a new religion from bits in the Hebrew bible as Muslims have also done.

Amazing book the Hebrew Bible!

sotto voce

Stimulates one helluva lot of half-truths, anyway.

Sheshbazzar

sotto have you noticed that most people on FRDB don't buy into the Christian peddled everyone is sinful line?

If everyone in the world believed that zombie Jeezus was 'perfect' this Internet site and this Forum would not be here.
And there wouldn't be any Islam or Hindus or Buddhism or any of the worlds many other religions.

Yeah, I'm sure you are going to protest that zombie Jeezus Gawd, -or rather his murdering minions- working in his name, just haven't yet got around to the evangelization of scaring and terrorizing everyone on earth into a proper conformity with zombie Jeezus Gawd insanity.

Most people here do not at all believe that any zombie Jeezus Gawd is ever going to fly down out of the clouds of heaven with ten thousands of zombie Jeezus saints, to execute judgment upon all, swinging a bloody sword and rolling the heads of billions of non-believers right and left.

Its an old boogyman story used to terrorize children and the ignorant into mindless conformity to the manipulations of a pocket stuffing and power hungry clergy.

Boo! ' Jeezus Gawd is pissed and he's gonna get you! ....less you bow down to us right now and beg for forgiveness,
....and fork over your dough so that we's can use it to do more of our zombie Jeezus Gawds brainwashing work for him.'

Zombie Jeezus the scary old nightmare gawd has held a lot of names.
Might as well update him again and call 'im Freddy Jeezus Kruger. The kids of the future will be able to better relate.

Toto

Subsequent history shows that Jesus made no impression on the society of his time. Later generations could only fight to the death over what his message was. :huh:

You can't point to a single historical fact that can only be explained by a historical Jesus.

Chili

In his "Consolation of Philosophy" Boethuis has a beautiful line on this, already on the second page of Book I:

"Her dress had been torn by the hands of marauders who had each carried off such pieces as he could get." . . . and scatter they went now as sower themselves.

Iskander

Beautiful! Splendid! I have enjoyed reading it.