No Robots

Yeah, sorta like Michael Servetus, whom Calvin had the good sense to burn at the stake.

post tenebras lux

Unfortunately the wiki gets several things wrong about him. Like it was Farell's church he attended, not Calvin's.

Why is committing murder and showing yourself up to be a hypocrite 'good sense'?

No Robots

I'm saying that you and your famous countryman apparently share a willingness to summarily condemn others for their beliefs.

post tenebras lux

Sorry, but I'm not french, dude.

But thanks for confirming that it was meant as an insult.

By the way, what's your view on the fact that Christians (well, theists generally) seem to like using blindness as an insult? Which I find insulting and very cowardly. Never mind that they like picking on the vulnerable, but why don't they pick on someone who can at least see who is attacking them? Any ideas?

That's why I called Brunner a nutjob, cos of his (to paraphrase): yer all fookin' blind yer wankers!

Any ideas why Brunner used that metaphor of blindness?

Julian

What? You think I was just making that up? I have actually read some of his stuff, not too much since that would be damaging to your brain, and...well, you read it.

Julian

Toto

Luxie - No Robots forgot the [sarcasm] tag.

I do not think that the OP actually has much in common with Brunner. I think the OP does have a lot in common with a group known as Atheists for Jesus (there may be a schism here: http://atheistsforjesus.tribe.net/ ).

My only question is where Jesus said "we were all equal, that everyone had a right to life."

No Robots

Good one.

It's a common enough idiom in spiritual writing. In Eastern terms, it is about seeing through Maya with one's inner eye to the Absolute.

No Robots

Thanks for the link, Toto.:thumbs: I'll check it out. Maybe I do have a home on the web (a little tear runs down my cheek).

Lógos Sokratikós

He was, in all probablility, meaning "debunker". In other words, the philosophical position that in absence of evidence, the tree in the forest made no sound.

"The story of Christ looks pretty much adorned, therefore there was no Christ", is pretty much the tune.

On one extreme we have the believer ("If the story says the cow jumped over the moon, the cow actually jumped over the moon"), on the other the debunker ("Because your story has this unbelieveable notion, nothing really happened and actually, if you ask me, there was no cow!"). The skeptics are in between. If the skeptic isn't skeptical of either of the two extremes, well... Let's say I'd be skeptical of her/his skepticism!

Koyaanisqatsi

Welcome.

Setting aside the valid point that we'd have no way of truly assessing that, IF Jesus was a real person, he most definitely was misunderstood judging from what has been attributed to him, since it is all contradictory. At one point he's teaching love and forgiveness and peace and then at another point he's saying he didn't come to bring peace, but a sword and that you have to hate everybody you know and love (and your own life) to be his disciple around the time that he breaks the fifth commandment.

In short, nothing from what is called "scripture" by cult members is of any use to us.

I know without a doubt that there were many men during that time named Jesus, any one of which could have been a Rabbi executed by the Romans for sedition against Rome.

I'm not quite sure what that means, but if you mean history is written by the victors, I agree. That doesn't get us very far, of course. And I would also have to ask for the evidence you're referring to. We don't have any evidence of Jesus of Nazareth as a real human being; we only have the mythology of cult writers about their cult leader/icon written after their leader/icon's supposed death.

It is entirely irrelevant as history, unfortunately, demonstrates.

Yes, indeed. Cult indoctrination is a dangerous and horrific tool and human ignorance, gullibility and fear are all too easily manipulated.

Somehow I doubt that .

Well, if he existed, he was under Roman occupation along with pretty much the entire known world at that time. The categorizations you've chosen seem fairly loaded, but what the hey? When in Rome...

Yes, well, again, this is smelling more and more like the victor's propaganda than anything realistic. Were Jews being persecuted by the Romans? Sure. Just about everyone was being persecuted if they wouldn't assimilate. Were the Romans executing people just for their beliefs? I doubt that, but no Roman historian me. That, too, sounds like the victor's propaganda. Indeed, if Pilate's fate is any indication (he was relieved of his command and recalled to Rome, I believe, due to his brutal slaughter of the Sammaritans and subsequently committed suicide as a result of the humiliation) I would bet that any executions were for crimes far more serious than spiritual beliefs, but I could be wrong.

I think it's safe to say that any occupying force would have expected the people they had conquered to assimilate into the fold, so to speak, and I'm sure those conquered would fight this, but I'm not sure one can separate out spiritual belief as the single motivating crime on either side. Remember, there was no separation of Church and State back then, so one's beliefs weren't a separate isse from one's governance. IOW, power and the removal of power is what motivated leaders; spiritual beliefs were probably taken for granted the same way anyone born into a Muslim/Christian/Jewish family takes their beliefs for granted; like background white noise in their lives.

There's a Hollywood mythology about any "ancient" time that depicts everyone to be equally fanatical in the most important sense all the time about such incredibly dire things and blah, blah, blah. The reality would have been closer to what we see in Iraq today, I would imagine; an occupying force (us) clashing primarily over power struggles. The local leaders in turn use whatever tool they can to motivate their troops into action; if one of those tools is cult dogma, well. That's what it's for.

I seriously doubt that. If, indeed, he were a man, then he would have stumbled through life making the same stupid mistakes we all make and, at best, he would have arrived at his philosophy or moral teaching or whatever you want to call it only after having fucked up so many times that the philosophy presented itself through his mistakes.

That's reality. What you're positing is little more than mythology.

Again, you're mythologizing. Real human beings aren't like that. Not Gandhi; not Martin Luther King, Jr; not Jesus of Nazareth. They may be more steadfast in certain areas than others might be and willing to withstand more blows than another for what they believe in, but you see my point.

Nor, by the way, does that necessarily mean that their "cause" (their beliefs) are "true" or "just" or anything, for that matter. It simply means they are more stubborn than others might be in the same situation.

That's actually the only thing that does seem to ring true with reality. If Jesus did exist and he was crucified by the Romans, it would have most likely been because of sedition against Rome (that or murder). The more likely scenario is that Jesus was the leader of an insurrectionist movement (what we would call a "terrorist" and/or a "freedom fighter" depending on where we sat that week ). He was either caught or betrayed and sentenced to death by the Romans and was burried after rotting on the cross with the other insurrectionists caught with him, thus turning him into a martyr.

The freedom fighter movement grew and the "followers of Jesus" who killed "in Jesus name" were becoming so real a threat and converting so many freedom fighters/terrorists to the cause, that Rome finally had to come down in 70 A.D. with the iron fist you spoke of earlier, just like we did (or tried to do) in Fallujah.

I won't start on my own theory of how the Jesus mythology got perverted by the Romans during and after 70 A.D., but suffice it to say, knowing the region as we do now and the fact that the people there haven't really changed in any fundamental way for the past 5,000 years, I'd say the above is more likely true than any other explanation, with the possible exception that Jesus appeared to be dead after days of being crucified and guards were bribed to let his followers take his body to be entombed and then one of two things may have happened; (1) he was sealed in the tomb and that was that, or (2) he was sealed in the tomb, but awakened from his coma (and consequently never actually died) and spirited away to safety somewhere.

I believe there are several books on the 2 scenario.

What did not happen, of course, is that a dead man resurrected in order to prove he was divine, or a god, or some other such nonsense.

Doubtful, but possible, particularly if you take the controversy over whether Jesus was hanged or crucified. As I understand it, hanging someone on a tree was the final step after stoning to death for blasphemy.

More likely, however, is my version of the story; that he was a popular, fanatical leader of an insurrectionist group that was either caught or betrayed by his own people (hence the Judah "B" story) and summarily executed. This would explain the inclusion of the trial sequence; particularly in light of the supposed fact that the Sanhedrin tried twice to stone Jesus to death before, but failed.

And before you get ahead of yourself, I believe the trial sequence as read was written by a Roman (aka, "Mark") and that GMark is Roman propaganda.

IOW, outright ommitting the trial would have been too easily contradicted by anyone who was still alive and remembered the public showing of convicting Jesus and executing him, but rewriting the narrative slightly to incrementally (as the story progesses) shift the blame onto the Sanhedrin and away from the Romans by the end of the story makes sense as the Roman's enemy in the region were the Jewish insurrectionists.

Indeed, Paul and the synoptics are replete with anti-Judaic (as opposed to anti-Simitic) sections; quite transparently demonizing (if you will) all Jews in general, which is extremely suspicious, IMO, considering there was no such thing as a "Christian" back then and they would have all been Jewish.

Well, only in the Western world. And has been for at seventeen hundred years, or roughly the time that the Roman Empire transformed itself into a borderless empire by becoming the Holy Roman Empire, aka Catholics, which still command hundreds of millions today.

Indeed, some would argue the Roman Empire never fell. Guess who one of those would be

If he were an Iraqi fighting against the American occupation and oppression? Probably, but it wouldn't be public; he'd just be on a playing card and then one day shot in his hiding place and then we'd see a picture on the nightly news with the slug, "Popular Leader of Iraqi Insurrectionists Finally Killed" or the like.

Why? I'm curious as to your perception on this. I'm imagining you think that Jesus would be killed because of the things you mentioned previously; that his peaceful "steadfastness" to his ideals is what would get him executed, instead of what was more likely the cause.

Oh, yeah, absolutely agree. Anyone claiming to be Jesus to fundamentalist Christians would at the very least immediately be dismissed as a lunatic until, ironically, he showed them the proof they claim he said they would never get and should never seek.

Ah, irony.

Yep. Which naturally just proves that they are nothing more than indoctrinated cult members. But then again, there's the paradox of a dead guy actually coming back to life (particularly thousands of years later), so....you know.

Go figure.

Yes, well, of course no such thing could ever happen, since the man supposedly died over two thousand years ago, so there will never be a time when that man "comes back," so, again ironically, they'd be right to kill him (or rather, not believe him).

Have you ever heard the Buddhist saying, "If you see the Buddha, kill him?" The reason being, of course, that there is no one Buddha; that we are all Buddha, so any one person claiming to be the Buddha has not achieved enlightenment and is only out to cheat you.

Well, his martyrdom, certainly; all the other bullshit was just heaped onto him by his cult followers centuries later and that primarily just to increase their own power.

You mean, when he was executed, it wasn't by his own followers. Martyrdom is only applied by one's followers.

No offense, but I don't see necessarily where what you said necessarily means he was "misunderstood" so much as it means his cult followers, throughout the centuries, built up the mythology so much as to remove any semblance of humanity from the poor bastard.

Indeed, one might think that; the problem being that we have no clue what his "message" actually was or if there even was one beyond, "Death to the Romans" that then later got rewritten by the victors (the Romans) to "Death to the Jews!"

:huh:

A better question is, when was it right?

Well, again, without a reliable referrent point, how could we possibly establish that?

Not until much later and only then as nonsensical apologetic. The cult leaders at the time had to explain how a supposed Jewish Messiah ("the" messiah, no less, which actually doesn't exist in Jewish mythology) died instead of doing what he was supposed to do, which, according to one Jewish author, was to signal a time when all humanity (aka, the Jews) were to annoint their holy ones and make their final blood and grain sacrifices, before he shut that conduit to god off as a prelude to him killing every non-annointed human on the planet with fire and flood.

It's certainly one of them, yes.

For the sin of Adam and Eve eating the apple from the tree of understanding of good and evil (aka, the "original sin"). This, of course, raised many other holes in the mythology that apologists had to strugle with, but that was supposed the reason why Jesus had to die. Why we weren't all thereafter born into the Garden of Eden was never quite explained, but hey. It was a young cult intent on power and manipulation; not any kind of spiritual honesty That much is abundantly clear from how wrong GMark is regarding Jewish traditions and prophecy.

He did? How do you know?

No? What makes you think that?

Except for slaves. And whoever he came to bring a sword and not peace against.

No, his crucifixion would have been the ultimate example of the unwavering strength of the Roman military.

Remember, even in the mythology, Jesus doesn't die for his beliefs; in fact in two situations he supposedly begs his god to spare him. Regardless, Pilate has him killed because he (inexplicably and incongruously) wished to please a crowd of conquered Jewish slaves. It has nothing to do with Jesus' beliefs.

What madness? Again, even if you buy GMark as read, there is no discussion of beliefs at all; he is crucified because Pilate is apparently afraid of the very crowd he's there to brutally oppress, remember?

From what? That he is god? That, again, is the supposed reason why the Sanhedrin wanted to kill him (which, again, they could have done any time and supposedly tried twice).

Only if Jesus were (as I believe) the leader of a growing insurrectionist movement who the Romans killed for sedition thinking it would stop the insurrection, but instead only fanned its flames (resulting eventually in the need to destroy the place in 70 A.D.).

If you're thinking that he sacrificed his body for the sake of peace or something, then you're way off base (both in a speculative historical context and in a spiritual mythology context).

True, but, again, that could only be the result of some other factor than him being a god or son of a god and, again, the only logical conlusion is that he was the leader of an insurrectionist movement and in death became a martyr for the cause against Rome (which in turn was later rewritten to be an anti-Judaic propaganda attempt).