Chaucer

No. But can you prove they would have?

Chaucer

Chaucer

I fail to see how Roman religion of that time is any less fanatical than any other fanatical religion. You're just blinded by Jew hatred, or maybe hatred of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition in general. You really think that the pagan religions of the ancient world were any less susceptible to fanaticism than any other -- not to mention ancient Rome's political fanaticism, whenever it conquered new territory. Not to mention the examples of Hindu fanaticism in India today. You really think that the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition has a monopoly on fanaticism. Which rock have you been living under?

Chaucer

storytime

Rome can be seen as less fanatical due to its many gods of choice for people to worship. Jupiter and Mars is mentioned in Pauls gospel. Why was Paul opposed to these other than his Jewish tradition of one Hebrew god?

You seem to think that "hate" is a dirty word when it actually provides the reasoning by which the Jewish tradition kept to its singular purpose in independence from other religions. As Alan Derkowitch(mispelled), once said: "Hate is a good thing if applied properly". I like to think that I apply it properly in reasoning why both Judaism and Christianity should be disgarded as the biggest hoax ever perpetrated onto mankind. Just look at what a pitiful hateful mess it has turned you into. You've set the Jews up as idols to be worshiped, tried to put fear into anyone who opposes "the bible" by accusing them of being anti-semitic. Thinking to silence them into submission of your ridiculous gMark/gJohn, or whatever hell the else you attempt to do in your anti-Christ hate of Christians when you should be declaring the whole damn thing a myth, a biased account from a bunch of pious frauds in their priestly attire and circumcised dicks. So why don't you try and convince me why I should not hate this death cult as it gave birth to another bastardized religion? And why don't you tell me just why you love it so?

Chaucer

I don't "love it so". Instead, I may be one of a kind: a theist who does not believe in anything supernatural, and whose guess that there may be a deity extends to the supposition that that deity, if it exists, is not supernatural at all. Most religions, including both Judaism and Christianity, are dubious flights of fancy that are sometimes deeply harmful, sometimes just idiotic. Religions tend to have precious little to do with reality, because they are often power-hungry ad hoc ripoffs -- grossly distorted -- of the occasional humanitarian or altruist who has tried -- sometimes successfully, sometimes not -- to sensitize humanity to the needs of its more vulnerable neighbors. Once a religion is institutionalized, both vulnerable neighbors and any altruistic pioneer's insights in their favor are often the last thing on an institutionalized religion's mind, with fanciful mumbo-jumbo swiftly taking the place of any neighborly concerns, because mumbo-jumbo is a more effective -- and a more cynical -- way to keep people in awe.

Any deity that may exist would undoubtedly be an entity that would partake of properties that will one day be scientifically verifiable, rather than one with eternally inscrutable properties. It's absurd to suppose that any entities are ultimately inscrutable. Eventually, science will certainly be able to explain everything. Whatever deity may be out there cannot possibly be outside the cosmos, the only possibility being that it formed along with the cosmos and is a part of or a reflection of it. Hence, it is not supernatural. (In a few ways, this is not too different from Buddhism, which does not view deity as a Creator of anything, but an entity within the cosmos, though of another dimension.)

Quantum physics now posits a dimension in which all time is simultaneous, rather than linear, plus a cosmos with maybe as many as eleven dimensions instead of three. The notion that the very few documented instances of special spiritual sight from a few adepts through the eons is attributable to these dimensions somehow "bleeding" into isolated persons' consciousnesses makes better physical scientific sense than the mumbo-jumbo offered by religions. If there is a deity, it could be responsible in some way for the isolated expansion of altruistic consciousness within certain once-in-a-millennium adepts "hearing its message". But that message cannot come from "heaven" or "hell". If it comes from anywhere outside one's own head, it may come from one of the extra dimensions that quantum physics has deduced but that we can not yet directly experience.

Since I view Jesus's personal experiences as most likely a badly misunderstood amalgam of these sorts of extra-dimensional experiences-insights, guided by a sensibility reflecting some of the most exemplary altruism that the species has yet seen, that means that any dependent texts narrating Jesus's odyssey are bound to have profoundly destructive and eventually institutional distortions in them. Even the closest we have to primary texts will still have plenty of absurdities, because a Stephen Hawking was simply not around to explicate them. When you compound those few absurdities in the primary texts with the ravages -- often self-serving -- of virtually playing telephone as reflected in subsequent dependent texts, you then have hideously distorted monstrosities like the blatantly anti-Semitic Gospel of John, the latest and most derivative and most dangerous and most dishonest of the Gospels.

The difference between you and me is that I see and abhor the doctrine that I see in a noxious text, GJohn. You, on the other hand, come off (whether intentionally or not) as having dedicated yourself in hate against actual people instead, in this case the Jews -- and also some others. Yours is a hatred that can more easily spawn pogroms, if taken to its logical extremes. My detestation of derivative and noxious texts like John and much of Paul, etc., can also metasticise into something hurtful to some people, true, and I should guard against that. But my disgust is directed at texts, yours at people. That's the difference.

I must also say that I find it rather revolting that you're willing to come off as left-handedly sympathetic with the combined anti-Semitic plus mumbo-jumbo outlook of a GJohn through your taking rhutchins' part in this. GJohn has been used as the excuse for some of the most atrocious instances of man's inhumanity to man ever. And rhutchins' posts reflect yet another dreary gravestone in the cemetery of death that the GJohn outlook has ploughed. Rhutchins has much company through the ages, all of it either profoundly superstitious, or profoundly bigoted, or profoundly racist, or all three. I can't imagine you really get your jollies out of being in such company! If I seem a pitiful hateful mess to you, then you and especially rhutchins seem ten times more of that to me.

Now, I have not set any peoples up as idols to me. I've just read enough to know a GJohn acolyte when I see one. Rhutchins is plainly a GJohn acolyte, and GJohn acolytes turn my stomach because the chief thing that guides them is hatred of a specific people above all else.

I can be just as disgusted with a racist creed from the ante-bellum South, or an anti-Muslim one from the more disreputable corners of Hindu India today. But in this particular exchange, rhutchins just happens to have hitched his wagon to a deadly parade of hate against all Jews in the form of an ancient and perverted text, and so that is what I am calling him on -- and you -- in this thread.

Chaucer

storytime

Well, let me first say that I think you're speaking out of both sides of your mouth. You're giving excuse and space for an entity to exist although not a supernatural god as portrayed in the bible. You are aware that both Judaism and Christianity demand Yaweh be recognized as THE god, THE supernatural entity. So yes, you are a most unusual theist in denying what is believed by both Jews and Christians.

As to your anti-semitic remarks, you fail to observe who is talking to who in the bible. Jews are infighting with one another. Thus the story in John is anti-semitic and because a new belief has been displayed as "new wine". The "old wineskins" [Pharisees,Sadducees, the elders in holding power] could not accept the new portrait of God, Jesus by name. These were the body of men called "anti-Christ" that Paul said were already in the world. The resurrection of the dead as presented by Paul of Jesus went against the old understanding. Jesus, the guilty Jew could not be allowed to rise and have name in the books of judgment as innocent, because, he was guilty of blasphemy, and by Jewish Law he should die. To have Jesus as "god in the flesh" would have destroyed Judaism, as it would have gone against the commandment of "thou shalt have no other gods before me", no mediators, no saviours, no man. "What, is god a man" that he should judge what I have already judged for my people Israel? Anti-semitism arose between these Jews of old and the Jews of new testament, as would be expected. The two could not occupy the same house name "Israel". So off went the Jews for Jesus and created a new religion and it came to be known as Christianity. A new House name. Now, why would you think that Jews for Jesus in their anti-semitism for the old traditional Jews not be equal in their hate and accusations against one anothers group. Both thought and think they are right in their precepts. You side with the anti-Christ Jews in your inept observance of the situations and circumstances. Your disgust is directed at the people who accused the old Jews of killing their Christ and Lord. That's the difference in your hatred and why you should examine more closely the story in its freedom from one sect of Jews into another, from the old Judaism. I see nothing wrong with hating the old and embrasing the new in those times that were a changing. Neither do I see nothing wrong in todays atheist trying to bring out of this 2000 year old NT story into a new enlightenment that denies both religions in their hate filled agenda's of death cult mentality, not to mention getting rid of their monstrosity of a god that makes any sane person want to puke.

bacht

This is true in the Old Testament but not necessarily the New. The gospels as we have them are no earlier than the mid-2nd C, by which time it's more likely that gentiles dominated Christian ecclesia. It's possible that by the time gJohn was written there were no Jews left in most Christian communities (maybe some Ebionites and Mandeans in fringe groups).

Condemning the Jews for rejecting Christ is an old tactic but still silly. Why should they have listened to Hellenistic interpretations of THEIR religion? That's like neo-pagans asking modern Christians to accept Mary as the true goddess.

storytime

You're not getting the point. It was the old Jews in the standard relgion of Judaism(the old wineskins) in Pharisees, Sadducees, elders, who rejected Jesus. What choice did they have? because, if they accepted that Jesus was God in the flesh, then they would have destroyed their own religion. So then, in order that they not all die, "it was expedient that one man die" in order that the whole body called Israel might live. These traditionalists were the body[of men] Paul recognized as THE anti-Christ[Judah], because, they rejected Jesus as God in the flesh. The New Wine(Pauls gospel) was attempting to put itself into the old wineskins that could not hold it because it would burst and both elements would be lost. Destroyed. There had to be a division of Jews due to the old beliefs and the new beliefs, thus an anti-semitism element from the Jews for Jesus and an anti-Christ element from the old traditional Jews is seen.

So, condemning the old traditional Jews for rejecting Jesus the god-man is not silly, its just a division of beliefs among the Jews.

bacht

Your argument is based on faith, that the new revelation of Christianity was superior to the old revelation of Mosaic Judaism. Maybe so, maybe not, but it's kind of apples vs oranges: Judaism was as much about ethnic and territorial connections as it was about beliefs and rituals. Christianity sold itself as a universal multinational community of unrelated believers. Ironically it was the Jews who were forced to become "citizens of the world" while Christianity became part of the Roman government.

You're telling us what the ancient Jews should or should not have accepted as their fundamental view of life. I don't see what gives you that authority.

Chaucer

My disgust is directed at those people who continue to do that today to the exclusion of the Romans. Jesus was executed by the Romans. And the fact that each sequent Gospel veers less and less against the Romans and more and more against the "old Jews" than the one before it makes the whole game of only blaming the "old Jews" highly suspect.

Yeah, there was in-fighting. Yeah, old Jews and new Jews resented each other. Yeah, some Jews acted as Quislings in Jesus's capture.

But I note you still don't address a fundie like Rhutchins' ridiculous remarks about the Romans, who are obviously just as guilty. I wonder why you don't. You know and I know and our readership know that Rhutchins' ludicrous remarks idolizing the Romans are what really set me off. The elephant in the living room here is that here we have a fundie like Rhutchins not only jumping on the derivative GJohn bandwagon but setting up the _Romans_ as idols in addition! While the Romans were just as guilty! You say you don't like posters here who set up certain peoples as idols, and yet you don't blink once when a fundie like Rhutchins -- a fundie! -- sets up the Romans as idols?! Why?! I wonder why.

Now that kind of ludicrous exculpation of the Romans is a blatant dog-whistle for would-be Nazis, a sly wink to would-be Nazis, and plenty know that, pal. Golly, Gosh, Gee, You're so upset in your exaggerated claim that anyone here might be setting up the Jews as idols, and yet you don't challenge a far more blatant case of that kind of idolizing for the Romans?! Even when it comes from a fundie?! How naive are you? Are you really that naive? Or are you also in the business of providing these anti-Semitic dog-whistles yourself in any way you can?

What. Is. Your. Game?

Chaucer

storytime

I see you as having a serious problem concerning different readings of the NT story. For example, your insistance that the Romans crucified Jesus, which is your assumption because I can't find that conclusion in the KJV. As Pilate is reportedly turning Jesus over to Herod, washes his hands of the matter, this somehow releases Pilate of killing a man who has done nothing to threaten the Roman Empire or Caesar. But the Jews want Jesus dead, and they have a law which says that Jesus must die for his blasphemy. But they claim they're not permitted to kill any man. Does this make sense that those Jews would insist on Rome doing their bidding? Anyway, so off goes Jesus with Herod for execution. I will think between the lines and conclude that Herod given in his role as tetriarch of Judea or whatever, was also given his own army of soldiers per Caesar's instruction long before Jesus came on the scene. How else could Herod control the Jews without an army of his own? And as the JEWISH High Priest said "away with him" where do you get the idea that Rome was responsible for killing Jesus the Jew? And why do you insist on brow beating rhutchin or me for that matter about this 2000 year old piece of crap story? Rhutchin, imo, has a right to read the Jesus story any damn way he wants. I don't give a shit that he may read it as Jews being the bad guys or Rome as the evildoers. But for you to practically imply that either of us is somehow committing a crime against "the Jews" is ridiculous to say the least. And, if he wants to be against Judaism because he's a Christian, then that's his right of way, imo. Although I'd prefer he leave it behind for sanity's sake.

You on the other hand I see absolutely no hope for in your "Nazi" accusations, your "anti-semitic dog-whistles" and your purposeful hatefulness to cause undue harm. If you want to know what I'm up to or what my game is, then read my posts. You'll quickly see my atheism is stronger than any love for "the Jews" or "the Christians", and right at the moment I don't have any luv or respect for either. And if you don't like it, I really don't give a fucking gawd damn. Understand?