Who Was Jesus? He Definitely Is Not God

yes there is, there are extra-biblical sources that make mention of him.
beyond that there is a plethora of extra-biblical sources confirming the existence of numerous people mentioned in the Bible, so it is irrational for you to assert that the accounts relating to Jesus are all fictitious.

 

Having disciples or being the Son of God is beside the point, as are whether or not Jesus or the Buddha existed. The package of teachings I'd consider to be the essence of Christian morality include the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the idea that God is love, that the two most important commandments are love of god and love of neighbor, the golden rule, forgiveness, universal love, turning the other cheek, and non-judgmental concern for everyone, including society's rejects. I'm not saying He invented the components. Rabbi Hillel made his contributions, and the golden rule is multi-cultural. Yet not everyone, and not even all Christians accept these as norms for human behavior. A video earlier in this thread challenges them, and the dominant force of Christendom throughout history has made a mockery of them. But I believe that they offer for those who would accept them a way of peace, and if everyone would accept them world peace. As Jesus said: "The Kingdom of the Father is spread out everywhere upon the earth and people do not see it." (Thomas 113)

I think your treatment of Gandhi and Mother Teresa are symptomatic of our era's attitude to heroes. Go for the flaw. If they're flawed, they're discredited. Gandhi put his life on the line modeling non-violent civil disobedience. But yes, he beat his wife. Mother Teresa (not on my list of favorites) dedicated her life to serving the poor, but she didn't like abortion and may have valued poverty too much. ( BTW, your description of Christopher Hitchens as "a journalist for whom the word 'excellent' falls short" is a bit much. He was a militant atheist, as biased as yourself, who fell short of professional journalism's standards of objective reporting.) We could add to the list Thomas Jefferson (inspiring thinker about liberties and equality, but he owned slaves and had sex with one of them), Martin Luther King (champion of non-violent civil disobedience and Civil Rights, but an adulterer), and of course JFK (inspirational to a generation of young idealists, but a womanizer). Yet while recognizing the flaws, I continue to be inspired by the virtues, since heroes are so hard to find these days.

As for your heroes, I'll concede you Socrates, whether or not he existed--and putting aside the rather negative view of him presented by his contemporary Aristophanes in "Clouds", which presents him as a charlatan on a swing. He's one of my heroes, nonetheless, because of his championing of critical thought. Sam Harris is another story. Sam seems to be--well-- rather like you, which may be why you admire him so much:tunnel visioned, anti-religious, Islamophobic, fanatical, and very impressed with himself. In my opinion his defense of torture as a legitimate tool against our war against terrorism pretty much eliminates him as a viable contender with Jesus for moral leadership. I consider him to be a hate monger and that puts him low on my totem pole of moral exemplars, even below Mother Teresa.He is a neuroscientist but so far his claim to fame hasn't been in that field but rather as a professional atheist on the talk circuit and blogosphere. In all his debates I've seen, he comes off second best because he doesn't listen to his opponents and repeats the same old talking points, which are your same old talking points. He has a good mind, though often uninformed and given to over-generalization, but I don't know enough about his personal morality to comment. The Moral Landscape is, in my opinion, his weakest book to date, and is not taken seriously by ethicists. It is warmed-over utilitarianism--Bentham's felicific calculus with a whiff of neuroscience to make it seem modern. I admire his effort to defend moral absolutes, which is an uphill battle these days, and he is courageous in exploring Buddhist meditation and conceding that consciousness might exist independently of the material brain. But he is unable to reconcile his moralistic conclusions with his psychological determinism. Sam is a determinist who believes we are essentially automatons. As such, talk about morality seems meaningless. This being the case, I find it hard to think of him as being a moral exemplar. To say he's achieved "Christ consciousness" would be ludicrous and would only insult him.

For further criticism of Harris, see http://www.thenation.com/article/160236/same-old-new-atheism-sam-harris?page=0,1 (Sam as shil for the military-industrial complex) Since we're into skewering heroes, I can't resist including the machete job done on Sam by an anti-gun advocate that would rival the criticisms of Jesus, Mother Teresa and Gandhi.(Sam as shil for the NRA) . http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/sam-harris-worlds-dumbest-atheist-his-latest-rant-guns-points-yes Finally, here's an article on Harris' rabid Islamophobia that made me more aware of why you might consider him to be a moral paragon. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-harris-muslim-animus . And you admire this guy? And think he ranks ahead of Jesus?

 

Then I hope you don't base your life around what I may or may not have said, if I exist or not. Certainly it should raise eyebrows if you begin to call yourself a "writerian" because of the amazing posts I have made, eyebrows should be raised even further if "writerianism" is a powerful theocratic lobby which has given the world immeasurable amounts of agony, bloodshed, and darkness, and you manage to somehow convince yourself and others that although you claim full membership into the priviledged group of "writerians", you are certainly not so foolish as to accept all their beliefs at face value (as if this added sophistication to your position, other than the sophistication of calculated group membership).

Facts about their lives are well recorded in many sources, you can try google if you wish to learn more, i'm sure there's a great write up on wikipedia. For a good book on why theresa in particular was actually something of a depraved, backwards thinking political engine, check out:



It's short, and right to the point. First hand accounts of her as a person and the work she did, by a journalist for whom the word "excellent" falls short.

I do not think you have exhausted all possible other explanations, even banal ones such as "noxious mind was filled with christian theology, noxious trips on acid, noxious sees things that are in christian theology, noxious concludes therefore its all true".

Without getting into the actual experiences, I will just say that there is no way that you have tried every explanation, for a bigger reason than you might think. There may be certain facts about the world, reality, human cognition, which allow for extraordinary states of consciousness, including but not limited to the perception of tangible and concrete "things". These states or events might occur without us having any kind of science or even description of them; we could be like those trying to understand germ theory without a microscope.

This still does not mean that the bible is true, just because you cannot explain some things you've experienced.

This is a decision you have made, to cease the inquiry and to embrace the warm glow of christianity. A decision. It does not follow logically, and in fact there could be an infinite number of explanations if you want to get really Alice down the rabbit hole . . . for example, how do you know that all your experiences which confirm the new testament were not given to you by a Djinn, in order to deceive you away from the true lord and creator, Allah? Your forsake his prophet mohammed, you do not get into paradise. Score one for the forces of Satan.

It's always interesting to see how unlikely it is painted that jesus was a nutbag. I can hop on a bus for 45 minutes and get to downtown Toronto, and meet a dozen different young men who will explain to me quite earnestly that they are in fact Jesus Christ, and can attest to me, and provide me with eyewitnesses as to their having performed miracles.

I agree with you that christianity stands or falls on the veracity of its claims, and I think any honest perusing of these claims and the associated, I hate to even call it "evidence", should lead one to conclude it falls quite soundly and firmly flat on its face without so much as a whimper or a note of protestation from the creator of the universe, with all his infinite love.

Why on earth not? If you think that 2,000 years ago the son of god came to earth to die for our sins, and that unless we open our hearts to him we are doomed to an eternity of hellfire, is this not news worth spreading? Is this not only good news, but actually the biggest news ever? The only news worth sharing? Shouldn't we be closing down governments, burning down strip clubs, all in the name of saving souls and raising awareness for the awesome reality of YWHW and his sacrifice for our eternal wellbeing?

There is an inequality between the claims you claim to believe and the actions you perform, and this is par for the course for most believers.

My trip on 15 hits did not result in me claiming that an ancient book of religion is in fact true, and that some extraordinary breaks of the laws of nature occured in a small tribal area in the desert 2,000 years ago which ultimately mean the end of philosophy, ethics, and ontology as we know them.

What would you discard of my account of 15 hits of lsd? That there was nausea? That I experienced profound states of bliss? That music was phenomenal? The statements I made were, outside the unusual context, fairly bland, and 100% reproducible.

You can, tomorrow, take 15 hits, and experience exactly what I said I did. I made no claims of reality that weren't poetic, I made no statements of fact which could be right or wrong. I described a subjective experience, and that experience has absolutely zero effect on the state of reality for you.

Your experiences however, have attached to them a claim that is profoundly relevant to me, and in fact to all humanity. You are saying that the 1.5 billion muslims are wrong, the billion hindus are wrong, the animists and shintoists and buddhists are wrong. You are making claims about reality which are empirical claims, and for the evidence of those claims, you are pleading the fifth, or saying "well its true for ME and you can't prove it otherwise".

Well then respectfully those claims should not be made and the voice should not be heard. If you cannot show me the money, then I'm not interested in the waking dreams you had.

You may think you are very skeptical and inquiring, but the truth is that even men like Isaac Newton were seduced by the silliest of things such as alchemy, and phrenology, and talmudic cryptography.

Part of being human is making mistakes and believing things that aren't true, and that goes for me, and that goes for you.

The difference is I use this as my guide, while you have picked a different guide, one who pushes this inconvenient fact away from you, and label it "bad".

Even if we know for sure that he existed (we don't), that does not in any way shape or form add to the credibility of the stories around him. We know that Genghis Khan existed, that doesn't mean that folklore surrounding him by primitive ancient peoples is in any way to be taken seriously.

 

you know Mr. Writer, without wanting be bothered with quoting and parsing your response, would you please go back, re-read what I have posted and then please explain to me where or how you came to ascribe all these ideas and beliefs to me based on what I have said?
seems to me that you rather than I are the one making ludicrous assumptions about things based on very little evidence.

all I said was I have had experiences that lead me to accept that some of what is recorded is true.
I never specifically stated what I feel is true, nor have i stated any affiliation with any religion at all.

It ALWAYS amazes me how little it appears folks actually read and comprehend shit, it just utterly baffles me.

so Greg, please quote the statements I made that gave you any footing to proclaim what I do or do not believe.
why do you assume that I have ceased inquiry?
why do you assume that I do not consider my experiences or whatever to simply be things that science has not defined as of yet?
actually I have made that exact statement here numerous times, I don't believe in the supernatural, but I do believe there is a lot of shit we know very little of that with today's understanding would fall into the category of "supernatural".
etc.
etc.
etc.

I know you are a much more critical thinker/reader than your responses regarding this topic suggest.
what is it about this subject matter that causes you to basically devolve intellectually?

my reference to your LSD experience is because one important factor that very often gets missed or dismissed is the fact that Christianity is an experience based religion regardless of what the mainstream contemporary thought is. Christianity was and is about personal experience and revelation.

why MUST there be some other explanation for my experiences whenever the explanation given in the Bible completely and fully explains the phenomena?
because it doesn't jive with YOUR assumptions concerning it?.... Please, you are much smarter than that.

again, go back and read what I posted and then try to figure out why/how in the hell you came up with all the gobbledygook you ascribed to me in response.
might be good lesson in self knowledge for ya if you tune into your own bias and the source of it rather than thinking of clever quips that you think bolster your argument.
seriously, ask yourself "why do I respond so vehemently and make such huge assumptions whenever it comes to this topic?"

count how many times you said "you believe" when I gave no indication of what my core beliefs are.

I know I constantly question my motives, intentions and reactions, others would do well to follow suit.

 

If my post is inapplicable to you then disregard it. Perhaps I conflated some things you said with certain beliefs, or remembered certain things wrong. I seem to do that a lot in these threads, with you, Asmo, and Okiefreak.

I find the issue is that you rarely actually state a belief, you mostly just slide in between dialogue to raise attention to the dogma of christianity or faith. Perhaps I am over reading this to suggest that you, as a christian, believe the beliefs that most christians do. I am aware that there is a bewildering variety of beliefs, but in my mind I try and synthesize what yours are based on discussion in other topics.

If you would like you can post what your explicit beliefs are, and we can work with them more concretely.

It seems that all I know for certain about your beliefs is that you've had some "experiences" which "suggest" that "some" of the writings of the bible are true. All words in quotation marks would benefit from further elaboration on your part.

I can only work with what I've got.

Alternatively I can just drop this whole thread because its beginning to make my head hurt.

The reason I seem to get more emotionally involved in these discussions is because I am particularly vexed by improper application of reasoning and logic to fields which demand the strictest and best application of all. I value these human faculties too much perhaps.

 

as do I

and true, I have not ever stated any concrete beliefs, but have many, many times stated that my conception of God and all that jazz is an ongoing process and is contained within the Bible, but not constrained by it.
Let that sink in a bit.

my experiences specifically are the "baptism of the holy spirit" to use christian vernacular, evidenced by speaking in tongues and other stuff all pretty text book 2nd chapter of Acts kinda stuff, EVEN THOUGH I WAS RELATIVELY UNAWARE OF A MAJORITY OF WHAT I EXPERIENCED PRIOR TO THE ACTUAL EXPERIENCE.

ever since I have puzzled over it and have considered many more ideas and explanations than you could imagine, but honestly why should it be other than what is stated in the Bible? what is wrong with accepting something at face value when all other viable possibilities have been exhausted?

on a side note to appeal to you as a scientist, there has been some research into speaking in tongues and it was found to be rather unique experience and completely opposite meditation, chanting or repetitive prayer, ruling out that it is simply another form of focused concentration.
No conclusion concerning a divine origin, but certainly confirmed that it is a real, scientifically measurable phenomena and it is wholly unique from all other types of meditation oR mental practices known and tested thus far.

do you not at least as a scientist find that compelling and intriguing?

 

No thanks....wasn't my point to learn more. My point is....why is this book any less fiction than the bible? Why is Wikipedia more believable than the Bible? It is still an interpretation by a human being.

I hear loads of people say the Bible is fiction but they believe any other book that is written...shit off the internet...crap our Gov spews. ppfftt

 

Compelling and interesting as a curious human behavior, sure. "Why should it be other than what is stated in the bible?" because the bible states uncountable number of ridiculous things and has no basis in science or reality. It was not written by an ancient scientist studying glossolalia . . . do not even try to kid yourself that you have exhausted all other possibilities. you aren't even close. the best neuroscientists in the world have not even begun to scratch the surface of a phenomenon like glossolalia, so you are not even 1% near exhausting all possibility.


I don't know man, but even from a cursory examination of this, it seems that "speaking in tongues" is merely a kind of verbal seizure, perhaps an exercise in an ancient part of the brain for vocalizing prior to formation of language (grunts, growls etc) which incorporates basic elements of one's mother tongue as leeched from the brocas area. Just a working hypothesis based on 5 minutes of research.

If Glossolalia has the promise to prove the existence of the divine and to corroborate the new testament to reality, don't you think there'd be a bit more of a "gold rush" to study it? As such it seems limited to even the fringe of the credulous . . .

From Wikipedia

"In 1972, William J. Samarin, a linguist from the University of Toronto, published a thorough assessment of Pentecostal glossolalia that became a classic work on its linguistic characteristics.[6] His assessment was based on a large sample of glossolalia recorded in public and private Christian meetings in Italy, The Netherlands, Jamaica, Canada and the USA over the course of five years; his wide range included the Puerto Ricans of the Bronx, the Snake Handlers of the Appalachians and the Russian Molokan in Los Angeles.

Samarin found that glossolalic speech does resemble human language in some respects. The speaker uses accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses to break up the speech into distinct units. Each unit is itself made up of syllables, the syllables being formed from consonants and vowels taken from a language known to the speaker:


It is verbal behaviour that consists of using a certain number of consonants and vowels[...]in a limited number of syllables that in turn are organized into larger units that are taken apart and rearranged pseudogrammatically[...]with variations in pitch, volume, speed and intensity.[7]


[Glossolalia] consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.[8]

That the sounds are taken from the set of sounds already known to the speaker is confirmed by others. Felicitas Goodman, a psychological anthropologist and linguist, also found that the speech of glossolalists reflected the patterns of speech of the speaker's native language.[9]

Samarin found that the resemblance to human language was merely on the surface and so concluded that glossolalia is "only a facade of language".[10] He reached this conclusion because the syllable string did not form words, the stream of speech was not internally organized, and – most importantly of all – there was no systematic relationship between units of speech and concepts. Humans use language to communicate but glossolalia does not. Therefore he concluded that glossolalia is not "a specimen of human language because it is neither internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives".[10]
On the basis of his linguistic analysis, Samarin defined Pentecostal glossolalia as "meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance, believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead".[11]

Practitioners of glossolalia may disagree with linguistic researchers and claim that they are speaking human languages (xenoglossia). Felicitas Goodman studied a number of Pentecostal communities in the United States, the Caribbean and Mexico; these included English, Spanish and Mayan speaking groups. She compared what she found with recordings of non-Christian rituals from Africa, Borneo, Indonesia and Japan. She took into account both the segmental structure (such as sounds, syllables, phrases) and the supra-segmental elements (rhythm, accent, intonation) and concluded that there was no distinction between what was practised by the Pentecostal Protestants and the followers of other religions.[12]"

 

Knowledge is power

Well it depends on what you mean by "fiction" vs "non-fiction". For example, in any library, The Missionary Position is filed under non-fiction. That's telling. Perhaps we can look to the meaning of the words.

Fiction: the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration, especially in prose form. works of this class, as novels or short stories: detective fiction. something feigned, invented, or imagined; a made-up story

Non-Fiction: Nonfiction or non-fiction is the classification for any informative work (often, a story) whose creator, in good faith, assumes responsibility for the truth or accuracy of the events, people, and/or information presented.[1] A work whose creator dishonestly claims this same responsibility is a fraud; a story whose creator claims no such responsibility to the truth is classified as fiction.[1]

This means that when Christopher Hitchens did a lot of personal, in person research, about a real person in real life, and then presented those findings, he was describing reality, and until recently we could ask him for his rough draft, his interview notes, even his airplane tickets to prove he really did the things he said he did. By all accounts this work of his meets every criteria imaginable for the label of "non fiction".

Now let's turn to the Bible. One simple question for you: who is the author of the bible?

Although it is not perfect, and prone to promiscuous editing, that same freedom ensures a state of informal Peer Review, whereby any unscrupulous editing will be witnessed by many more individuals whose goals with wikipedia are the preservation of correct knowledge; in other words, it has within it a built in self-correction mechanism. You should look into the team of people who work around the clock to ensure wikipedia is up to date and factual, they are performing a noble duty for mankind.

The bible has none of this. It has no footnotes, no list of contributors, no mention of the process of editorialship which went into its creation (and which we know from ancillary accounts to have been frought with political intrigue and the most devious of schemes by secret powerful men in secret powerful places).

Yes, but you grant that there is a spectrum of quality when it comes to human interpretations, yes?

For example, imagine you are planning a road trip across the USA. I give you two options to help plan your routes:

1) Get a map from www.mapsoftheworld.com and use this to plan your trip

2) Use a 17th century map of the northern hemisphere

Do you seriously propose that using 2 will be as useful as using 1? Of course not. I can give you an infinite number of examples in this vein . . . diagnose your depression with the DSM-V, or with Lord Chetwick's Phrenology Manual? Not all human beings are equal, not all minds are equal, and not all writings are equal, especially to the tasks they propose to go through. Please rid yourself of this foolish thought; all ideas on the intellectual marketplace deserve the same, and the highest level of scrutiny and suspicion.

Rationality, intellect, and incredulity are not always equally and sensibly applied. Isaac Newton, who single handedly gave us the field of Optics, and Calculus, also believed fervently in the transmutation of base metals into gold.

To your example of people believing what they read on the internet and what they hear from the government, but not the bible, perhaps the more intelligent course then is to add the internet and the government to things that deserve more scrutiny and facts-checking. More credulity is never, ever the answer.

 

seriously Greg, that is your reply?
I have seen that report and many others like it, still does nothing to diminish the phenomena.
this is the research I was referring;
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/brain-religion1.htm

it is the brain function that I find compelling, as I think you may as well if for no other reason that it being completely different than other states of awareness, according to the the physiological activity in the brain.

and stop referring to the Bible as "fiction". It has conclusively been proven numerous times that the Bible is as reliable historical record as any other document of the same time period.
you may not agree with or believe all it claims, but to mindlessly proclaim it all fiction is sooooooooo many IQ points below you

Begin to practice a little discernment when considering the topic as your bias is precluding you from actually giving an honest appraisal.

as far as my exhausting different possible explanations, I thought I made it clear "at our present level of knowledge" I have considered as many as I could come across.

 

All the archeological finds must be fiction also, also the men and women whos names are in the bible must be fiction and the archaeologists are liars. The bible is just a plain ole conspiracy that has fooled millions. Sigh

Our father in the heavens has hidden the truths in the bible from the wise and intellectual ones.

 

I'll just let those three replies above this post stand on their own and I will take my leave from this thread. As Hitchens once said, when you encounter a statement of profound error, all you can do is underline it.

 

whew , that's a relief , psy-unbound from mr.writerism I can write in tongues :

sook jahm wee flow'rr bo!

Jesus loves all the little children of the world , all are precious in his sight . oolihm

 

Those parting lines underline the smug arrogance that was so typical of Hitchens--narcissistic poser to the very end.

 

Greg, please do expound upon anything in my most recent response that is a "statement of profound error" ?

 

i think Greg has left the building.

 

the Gregorian chant reZounds , anciently , unconditionally , beyond curmugeonly .

 

There was no jesus, there were figures like him who he is probably a conglomerate of, but he was not a historical figure, he never existed.

There is no god, so even if jesus was a historical figure, his status as son of a silly legend is a moot point.

 

was one is , is no was