No Robots

Neither shall they say: Behold here, or behold there. For lo, the kingdom of God is within you.

AdamWho

Yep, imaginary.

No Robots

Well, he wasn't necessarily talking to guys like you there. Here’s something that is perhaps more up your alley:

Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all filthiness.

AdamWho

All the quotes in the world are not going to create evidence for your death cult. Sorry

Jane H

Having just finished this book, (or via: amazon.co.uk) I think your comments misrepresent his position. As Dawkins theological gopher and ex-Christian he's not going to be found declaring the inerrancy of the NT, but he does use the usual Third Quest tools (multiple attestation, dissimilarity etc.) to talk about the parts of the gospels that, in his opinion, are probably accurate.

And as I said, I found myself nodding in agreement with a lot of his apocalyptic reading. It's the next part that we would disagree on.

Talking of which....

Jane H

Thanks for putting it gently, but there really was no need. I'm quite thick-skinned.

And of course you have more than a point. Here was this self-styled prophet banging on about how he was the best thing since unleavened bread. He was reinventing in a new and silly way what the Kingdom of God was understood to be. He claimed to be the Messiah, and the King of the Jews, and...wait, did he just hint that he was...

So, yes, completely bonkers. Even worse, he then went and got himself killed. So obviously you would also have to be completely mad to think he was the Messiah, because a dead Messiah is a contradiction. He was obviously just talking stupid- pack up and go back to the day jobs, disciples.

So why the **** would they want to tell the world that these obviously crazy bunch of ideas were true?

They seem pretty sure something utterly convincing happened.

mountainman

Hi Philosopher Jay and Jane,

The attendees at the Councils of Antioch and Nicaea appeared to have been utterly convinced by Constantine's declarations concerning the authenticity of the Christian religion. Within a year brand new laws were declared to the entire Roman Empire ..... "Religious privileges are reserved for Christians".

And so, it was all over red rover for all "religious" opposition. Have a look through the Codex Theodosianus for the details. The new corporate MacDonalds of state religion had arrived, had been established in all major cities, and all the local grass-root religious operators simply went out of business overnight, with a little help from the army.

Best wishes,


Pete

Zenaphobe

I thought of this thread when I saw this

Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-z..._b_830237.html

Zuckerman seems to sum it up quite nicely.

spin

(If you'd noticed what you were responding to

the character of Jesus would have ... and therefore we can say that the Jesus character was...

There was no assumption regarding the existence of this prophet. You're talking about a character found in a book collection. The reality of the figure needs to be demonstrated based on a critical examination of the source materials--source materials that were reproduced under the control of the purveyors of the religion centered on the character for a millennium or more.)

(reputedly)
(portrayed to be)
(At least the texts did.)
(Well, cardboard cut-out disciples.)

It was an era when the craziest ideas were served up and thought to be true by people without the facilities to know better. People believed that a certain Mithras did a cosmic act in a cave by slaughtering a bull. The ever sharp-eyed Lucian of Samosata told us of a certain Alexander of Aboneuticus who was the prophet of a snake god. Some people were induced to drug themselves into a mad state because of Dionysus. Crazy ideas were popular. And you can forgive the people who believed them because they didn't have the thinking tools to help them.

But then we have been through modern crazy as well. Some wacky bunch thinks bread can really become flesh. Another believes people can be mystically branded on their hands and feet. Yet another can believe that there was a cataclysmic event which left evil souls floating around the earth clinging to human beings. All signs of socio-cultural failure of educational responsibility.

Just as people were utterly convincing about WMDs and the need of an invasion of Iraq. Wait, there were no WMDs, but al-Qaeda were in Iraq, so we had to invade Iraq. Hang on, al-Qaeda was in conflict with Saddam Hussein, but SH was such an a-hole we had to invade Iraq.

Conviction doesn't reify (otherwise all those virgins of the suicide bombers have to exist).

aa5874

Wouldn't that be the FUTURE? Jesus in the NT would be describing things that did NOT happen in REALITY.

Jesus would be known to be AN IDIOT or mad, or a liar or a combination of any when he DIED not when alive.

Jesus claimed in the NT that he would rise the third day after he was killed and that people would see him coming in the clouds.

The absurdity of those claims are REALIZED after DEATH.