Steve Weiss

Far from doing any good, religion has given the West repression and mass murder. Ever hear of the Dark (religious) Ages? Civilization has had to overcome religion to make any progress at all.

mountainman

Hi Chili.

You probably already understand that the term "monstrous tale"
and the direct application of the term "fiction" to the NT is not
new but is sourced from the emperor Julian.

We know that the Roman thugs crucified hundreds of thousands
of people during the period 55 BCE through to Trajan, and later.
The truth of the history of the Roman Empire is closer to a heritage
of death and destruction. In the words of Terry Jones:

The thesis is that
we've all been told
a false history of Rome that has twisted
our entire understanding
of our own history -
glorifying (and glossing over)
a long era of ruthless imperial power ..."

We need to understand our history if we are not to repeat it.

I certainly do not view the fabrication of the Galilaeans as history.
It is possible that Julian's conviction is historically factual.
That the NT - "is a fiction of men composed by wickedness".
And in the fourth century.

You need to read "The Life of Apollonius of Tyana" by Philostratus.
Then the Eusebian treatise AGAINST Apollonius of Tyana
IMO these and other neopythagorean writings, are those that the fiction
successfully attempted to calumniate under the regime of Constantine.

Chili

Yes I have heard about the Dark Ages but have you ever heared about the Renaissance, the Reformation and the decline of our civilization to the point that Loyds of Londen feels inadequate to insure Michelangelo's "David."?

Steve Weiss

The rebirth of civilization and the Industrial Revolution was marked by a decline in the influence of religion. True men of science like Galileo and Da Vinci came up against Church repression and tried to avoid it with mixed success. Whatever they, and others like them, accomplished was despite the opposition of the Church. Even today anti-science Christian fundamentalists as well as Muslims oppose stem-cell research and the teaching of evolution.

Have you heard of the Counter-Reformation, the Thirty Years War, the Crusades, The Inquisition, The Index of Banned Books, pogroms, the lack of opposition to Hitler by the Roman Church (Hitler was a Catholic, by the way), sectarian murders in Northern Ireland, massacres of the French Protestants when the Edict of Nante was repealed, etc. etc. That there may be contemporary vandals who threaten art objects pales into insignificance as a civilization indicator compared to the rivers of blood that have flowed due to religious irrationality.

Chili

Hello Mountainman,

I would argue that we are repeating it now right here in America which is a Galilean front all of its own. Galilee is where the Messianinc movement takes place which only means that "born agian" people are allowed to set the whole nation and even the entire world on fire for the Lord (as they call it) because they have been fornicated spiritually and now think that we all should have that because it felt so good and still feels good to do your neighbor.

This is why I hold that the best thing that ever could happen in America is to
gather all the bibles into a windrow from North to South and burn them from East to West and start all over agian.And now again in the 20th century, wile in braod daylight after what you guys call the age of Enlightenement. It is sick man, sick, sick, sick and they'll bomb the hell out of anybody who doesn't agree with them and have been doing this for 100 years already and nobody has the insight to call them on it.I know nothing about that but I do know that America is the greatest nation on earth if they could only change their own mindset instead of trying to change the world around them.

Chili

Oops, Catholics are not Christian fundamentalists but they are enemies of progress for which we fought the Reformation that caused the decline of our civilization. Muslims are their equals from a Jewish perspective and without a testament of their own. I heard of it all but did you know that Hitler would have been hauled before the Inquisitor if that would have been allowed but now is excommunicated under the Syllabus of Errors and therein is handed over to the selfrighteous protestants to claim as one of their own? Surely you know about his jail-house conversion that led to his reform movement similar to that of Luther, Billy Graham and the whole American lot that is responsible for the continuation of war around the world because there is no peace in their mind?

Steve Weiss

Finding an intelligible point in your ranting is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

mountainman

Galilee, according to Josephus, from whom the historical context
of the 1st century Roman imperial military rule of "their empire"
is often obtained by historians, has nothing to do with any
Messanaic movement. Rather, the Galilaeans are characterised
as a "lawless bunch of brigands" who have fled both the Jewish
and Roman "law and order". Any resemblance to "a spiritual
movement" is conspicuously absent (from Josephus, AFAIK).

Although I agree that the description "lawless bunch of brigands"
may be an appropriate description for certain American involvement
over the last 100 years on Earth. But see below.


This applies to everyone. America is just the biggest school-kid
in the planetary school-yard of juvenile nations. Education is
lacking all around the paddock. The change must first occur at
the level of the individual, in order to be reflected in a nation.
This highlights the sage advice to get one's own (individual) house
in order before trying to order any other house. To be independent.

Chili

Exactly, they were a bunch of born agains also known as wolves in sheeps clothing that nursed Jesus to life . . . who was on his way to Isreal as a state of mind but needed someone to help him 'fill the divide' that existed in his own mind. So here he received the spiritual nourishment that made him clomplete the race, as Paul would have it.Yes, they are all born again and have their eyes half opened but they all want to die before something good will happen to them (typically lost as the children of Israel were lost while always peddling their point of view by day and singing 'patient endurance' songs by night) . They are typically the second beast of revelation and are even proud to worship Jesus as an end in itself instead of just being the way to follow and drink of the cup he drank . . . which is not that difficult according to William Golding and so many others just like him. I mean our heaven is crammed with artistic giants to the utmost chargin of the have-nots. They are running out of entropy (wisdom retained) that was generated prior to the Reformation. If you apply Plato's "theory of recollection" here you cannot blame stupid people for being stupid and that is why I hold that the mythology is in charge of our destiny and we are just its pawns. This would be how and why civilizations rise and fall which has nothing to do with the size of our guns or our pistols. I can add here that intuition is the mother of wisdom but that won't help if you didn't get that by now. I can also lead you to the last paragraph of Aristiotle's Posterior Analytics where he tell us just that but that won't do any good either because we are the victim here and that is just how it is.

Chili

. . . so here we have it folks: the wolf nursing the lamb as if one of their own -- and they will never know the difference because their faculty of reason is not raised into their "upper room" to serve intuition so that reason can prevail. This would be where ousia's come to rest in parousia or the forms in the ultimate form or the daily masses arrive to illuminate Easter and give substance to our pie in the sky which there is called the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

@%$# man, if nothing else give the ancients credit for the imagery here that 6000 years later all our PhD's combined still cannot figure out.

Cheers.