Do you believe Jesus was transhuman?

[saltpoint]

[Syrinx]

1. what's a transhuman?

I would guess no.

[saltpoint]

5. Here, I'm using the word as trans / across / beyond human capacity,

referencing New Testament accounts where he is reported to have performed miracles.

[Syrinx]

18. ok

So, I would say no. I think Jesus was probably a real person. But I doubt he had any special powers. I think he was just a very kind philosopher. But I could be wrong. :)

[saltpoint]

It could be that a lot of self-described agnostics would like to see

more of Jesus as a kind philosopher, to steal your phrase.

Once in a while we also get Jesus the fiery socialist. I like that component also, especially since the local authorities of the Roman Empire were an unpleasant bunch.

I respond more positively to Jesus as a figure correspondent to his being either a kind philosopher or a fiery socialist. The notion of his bringing people back from the dead is much less persuasive.

[MineralMan]

2. No. I think he was bihuman.

[piratefish08]

3. Whatever else he may have been, I am certain he wasn't a blonde haired, blue eyed zombie.

[saltpoint]

6. The fundies want Jesus to be from Omaha. If Jesus did exist my guess is

he was a Jew from the Mediterranean.

[dschis]

53. (smile) That would a good guess

[GMA]

75. Well, there you go.

So I won't waste your time.

[Davis_X_Machina]

4. Heretic! That's Docetism!

Someone summon a Council. What do the Turks call Nicea these days?

[saltpoint]

7. I hope I'm not in any trouble.

I mean, yeeks.

:hi:

[Meshuga]

8. Darth Vader was a transhuman

A fictional one, of course. So was Robocop. Now, Jesus... I don't think any biblical passage suggests he was transhuman.

[saltpoint]

12. The allusions to miracle-working would hint at transhuman capacity, yes?

[Goblinmonger]

9. I voted other because he didn't exist.

There is no proof for a historical Jesus, much less a transhuman one.

[saltpoint]

13. True. We know Lincoln was at Gettysburg because we have the

photographs and a speech in his own hand.

I know of no such reliable reference for a Jesus of Galilee.

In the Jesus of Galilee who appears in the New Testament, there are moments of transhuman activity. Folks are raised from the dead. Certain things are turned into certain other things.

It does appear that belief in the central figure of the gospels would require wrangling over or even acceptance of the notion that the figure described was transhuman.

Which I personally find problematic.

[GliderGuider]

10. If he existed he was human. However

From here he looks an awful lot like a probability envelope.

"His" teachings were fine, though.

[saltpoint]

14. Agree certainly that the tenets of his ministry were admirable and also he

must have had serious balls to run afoul of the authorities, knowing full well the likely consequence.

I'm more inclined to respect the exceptional human than the transhuman Savior.

[stopbush]

20. Couldn't disagree more. His teachings suck.

Read all of it, not the warm and fuzzy parts. The teachings of Jesus are a blight on humanity.

[GliderGuider]

21. I understand your concern.

However, I think humanity has probably been blighted more by his followers than his teachings.

Religion is a Janus-faced beast. The heart of any religion is very different from its outer carapace. The hard outer shell is essentially a social control mechanism that serves the interests of socioeconomic power hierarchies. I think that's where the blight comes from. The core teachings of Christ (whether he actually existed or not) tended to revolve around peace, love, forgiveness, surrender and the idea that we are all god. Not terribly blighting ideas in my opinion.

Can you point to a teaching that you feel was negative? I'm by no means a Christian. I was a hard-nosed atheist for 57 years and even over the last couple of years have only come as far as non-dual awareness, so I have a lot to learn.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[saltpoint]

26. A non-Christian myself, "a blight on humanity" does seem a bit harsh.

Through several layers of scholarship we are given a man who appears to be arguing for the voiceless.

[dschis]

29. Read it again

But drop the attitude and unharden your heart

[stopbush]

32. It's been my experience that "unharden-ing one's (religious) heart" ultimately means

softening one's brain.

Sorry, but taken in it's totality, the message of Jesus is gruesome and loathsome.

As long as you're handing out advice, here's some from me to you: instead of viewing Jesus as the universe's biggest nice guy, view his teachings from the opposite perspective, ie: as a threatening, manipulative, self-centered SOB who no more cares for human beings than then next despot hell bent on making the world worship him. Seen from this perspective, the ugly ideas of Jesus make perfect sense while the "good verses" come off as hollow attempts to suck people into his orbit.

Xianity depends on the "fig" leaf of fear, ignorance and guilt to ensnare it's victims and keep them in line. Fear of eternal death leads to joining the religion. Ignorance keeps one's brain soft and insulated from competing ideas, while the guilt associated with forsaking the religion discourages people from leaving long after they've decided it's a crock of shit.

[dschis]

34. Hmmm

as opposed to the barbarism that it replaced? Yes, it's been mishandled, but the basic tenants in Matthew still hold true. You're right in one way, softening one's heart does entail 'softening your brain'. Man in his natural state is one cruel SOB, maybe not a individual level, but as a group.

Jesus replaced a set of religions that enjoyed either bloody sacrifices (human and animal) or blood sports. Humanity, for all of it's faults has become the better for it. Hell is just a way of getting your attention and getting to you to look at a better way of living and interacting with your fellow man.

Like it or not, though not at first so much, he has effected Western thought and philosophy.

A lot of people that leave are disgusted with 'professed Christians'. I look at those folks as the Pharisee's of our generation.

Others leave because they try to take what's written in the prophecy sections in a human context when the visions imparted to men that didn't quite understand what they were being shown.

I personally look at Christianity as not a religion but as a friendship. There are things I don't understand to be sure. I then look at my friend in the capacity of having to keep the whole cosmos in order and realizing that he must juggling a few more billion things than just my wants. I find though I don't necessarily get taken care right then it eventually comes around often times better.

Man is still pretty barbaric today, but it could be a lot worse. We haven't killed each other off and that's because there are a few still around (not necessarily 'the professed') that are truly humble and willing to live the true path that the Christ taught and still teaches.

[stopbush]

35. I disagree strongly that "man in his natural state is one cruel SOB."

As animals, we are no more barbarous than any other creature on the planet. We look to survive to the best of our ability.

Besides, man is no longer in a natural state. We are in a mentally EVOLVED state, and have been for at least 50,000 years. Last I looked, 95% of human beings were not murderers or thieves. Religion would have us believe that man is still in his animal state, denying our innate ability to reason and to make ourselves better and more compassionate, without - and often, in spite of - religious dogma, lies and fantasy.

As far as barbarism - are you really saying that the great civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome were barbarous compared to, say, the civilizations of the stone and ice ages? More so than the Xian civilizations that followed? I think not.

Please understand me: my problems with Xianity go straight to the "basic tenets" of Xianity, straight to the disgusting tenets Jesus espoused - loving him more than family, believing oneself to be born ill and ordered to make oneself well, aspiring to an eternity of serfdom in some heavenly dictatorship, and on and on it goes.

Christianity - and all other religions - are at war with man's intellect, self esteem and right to self determination. They are incapable of flowing with the tide of man's ongoing evolution. They are stuck in a mindset of childish fear and studied ignorance. And that, to me, is loathsome.

BTW - if anyone needs Jesus or religion to be a good person, that speaks to that person's inability to tap into their own evolved sense of morals and ethics. It also deprives that person of their very birthright as an evolved homo sapiens. It allows religion to usurp the goodness that man has evolved on his own and to claim warrant for its existence. How pathetic is that?

Do you really think the Jews needed the 10 Commandments to know that murder was wrong? Did they go about slaughtering each other and having sex with their livestock as a matter of course until god revealed the "truth" to them centuries after he supposedly created them? Fairy tales, and bad ones at that.

Your world view is a world view that needs and must go the way of all other failed hypothesis. Happily, it is doing so - and rapidly - in the rest of the developed world. The USA is just a bit behind the curve because we are an immature and self-centered nation of fantasy believers, be it the fantasy of religion, of achieving the ill-defined American dream or of winning the lotto.

I give Jesus another 100 years or so before he's gone the way of Anubis.

[dschis]

38. Like Apophis too

Oh wait a minute, he's coming again in in couple of decades.

I obviously don't agree neither did Newton or to lesser degree Einstein.

the Greeks and Romans 'exposed' unwanted infants. You can tell where the Roman brothels are by the infant bones beneath. They were not the only civilization that did or do that I give the example of modern China

Yep, the Jews did need the 10 Commandments. All you have to do is read a bit about the time line beforehand.

As far as 'mature countries' are concerned. Christianity is what civilized them in the first place. Druids weren't nice people (not that they knew it) that had to be turned same with the Wotan/Odin worshipers. Fact is, a whole lot of common law is derived from those simple statements

Christianity has done to change mores than another philosophy around. We as a civilization are sliding into barbarism as we speak and a big chunk of it lies on you and your kinds shoulders. The professed ones are helping things right along. New and false teaching has confused mankind further. Read the headlines.

I personally am not for sure what God has planned in heaven. He might want us to create other worlds for all I know or to contemplate our enlightenment. Somebody has to be in charge and keep a bit of order

I do however agree that you must be completely childlike, but we are also taught to give to "Cesar" what is his and to give to God what is his.

The 2 greatest commandments are: To love God with all of your heart and to love your fellow man as you do yourself.

As far the rest of loving God more than your relatives (especially if they are non believers), yes, that's the way it is.

If you believe that we are just a bunch of chemical reactions well I can't help you. I am of the opinion that information is never lost.

Just curious what's your opinion about ghosts?

BTW, Pride goes before the fall

[stopbush]

39. Ghosts don't exist.

Pride goes before a fall if the pride is based on ignorance.

BTW - why is it that people who like quoting that line to non-believers are the ones who are always shouting that they're "proud to be an American?"

BTW - did Xianity civilize all of the pre-Xian cultures? How about all of the civilizations that never heard of Xianity in the common era but still somehow managed to become civilized?

Civilization is hardly "sliding in barbarism," at least the parts of civilization that have freed themselves from religions shackles.

You seem to treat the Bible as if it is an historic document. it isn't.

[dschis]

42. Parts of it are

Even though I did devote most of life defending your and everyone's rights of belief. Yes I am retired Army I don't especially put America before the rest of humanity. Everyone has pretty good ideas but I personally am not in crowd that you're trying top put me in.

Not all but most and lot of those were influenced by us.

Oh you just read the headlines from Europe sometimes and I repeat My assertion that a LOT of Western philosophy and law is directly derived form those simple statements.

The Eastern civilization got tamed from the most part from Buddha and some (other traditions) say that he was influenced by the teachings of Jesus.

But this isn't about this world, but the next. In your case it's immaterial. You have have already cast your lot and established your own belief system.

[stopbush]

46. Buddha lived some 450 years before Jesus supposedly appeared,

so I don't see how he could have been "influenced by the teachings of Jesus."

Also, I have not "established my own belief system." Non-belief isn't belief. Atheism is to belief the way not collecting stamps is to having a hobby. Why is that so hard for the religionist to understand? Do you have a belief system built upon denying the existence of Anubis, or do you just reject the existence of Anubis out of hand because you think that believing Anubis existed would just be silly? Well, that's how I feel about your god - to believe in Jesus would be silly, just like believing in Anubis is silly.

BTW - I wouldn't put you in the crowd I'm putting you in if you were a little more fact oriented in your posts. Averring that Buddha was "influenced by the teachings of Jesus" is one of those inanities that Xians spew consistently, like averring that there are contemporaneous third-party historical sources who mention Jesus (there aren't) or asking people to prove a negative ("prove god doesn't exist").

As far as we know, there is no next world. It's actual immaterial to both of us. You just choose to spend a lot of time imagining there is an afterlife.

[Name removed]

50. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[saltpoint]

57. Like a ghost from a wishing well, the lyrics from Gordon Lightfoot's

"If You Could Read My Mind."

The ghost's being real or not is far less the point than the mythic construct invoked by the poet / songwriter.

That ghost has to be there.

Did you never read Hardy Boys mysteries? The ghosts have to be there.

How else does Ebeneezer Scrooge buy a turkey for the poor but for the ghosts' visitation?

Ghosts, real or not, intercede in literature and art to make the real world more real.

[stopbush]

60. No, ghosts intercede in literature and art to add a supernatural element

to the proceedings, not to "make the real world more real."

I have no idea who Gordon Lightfoot is.

Never read the Hardy Boys mysteries.

Yes, Dickens goes to great lengths in the opening of A Christmas Carol asking the reader to accept that Marley had been dead for seven years "or nothing wonderful can come of the story." So what? One is asked to believe that people come back from the dead to believe the story of Jesus. That hardly makes resurrection or the Jesus tale any more real. Would Scrooge's tale be any less real if Dickens made it clear at the end of the book that Scrooge had imagined the whole thing (he hints at this, BTW)?

Even Scoobie Doo's ghosts always turned out to be bad guys wearing florescent paint.

Gods also intercede in literature and art, not to make the world more real, but to offer a half-assed supernatural explanation for why things happen in the real world. Strangely, modern-day religionists willing toss aside the intervention of the gods when they are of the old Greek or Roman variety, but they insist on their own religion's gods - and their supposed intervention - being quite real.

[saltpoint]

70. I'm afraid you've lost all credibility when you claim that you don't know

who Gordon Lightfoot is.

May God in His Wisdom Cast you upon the hot blue blazes of hell, forever and ever amen.

Gordon Lightfoot is one of the most talented songwriters who ever picked up a guitar.

Of his friend Lightfoot, Bob Dyland said, "When you hear one of his songs, you want it to last forever."

[stopbush]

72. I'm not a fan of American pop music. Big deal.

I DO know that it's Dylan, not Dyland. And - sorry to say - the bit of music I've heard from Dylan sucks.

There's no god nor hell, so I'll go right on not knowing who Mr Lightfoot is without any fear of consequences.

[saltpoint]

74. : )

[Critters2]

48. I'd suggest you read _Violence and the Sacred_ by Rene Girard. nt

[stopbush]

51. Just what I need, another book in the queue.

I'll think about it.

[54anickel]

77. How about a website and youtube channel as an intro?

http://www.ravenfoundation.org/what-is-raven.aspx

http://ravenfoundation.org/Blog.aspx?cid=2&Page=6

[GMA]

36. Arrogance is unbecoming,

and we humans are so good at it. It's breathtaking, really.

[stopbush]

43. Agreed, and there's nothing more arrogant than religious beliefs.

After all, they are beliefs based on fantasy, not fact. They are appeals to the grossest type of self-centered-ness, ie: the idea that the whole of the cosmos was created so that god would take a personal interest in YOU.

What other human endeavor can you name that marches forth with arrogance as does religion, offering no proof for its claims and wearing "faith" - ie: the cheapest commodity on Earth - as some badge of honor? And religion does this IN SPITE OF all the evidence to prove its wishful thinking is just that - wishful thinking.

Of course, you mean to say that non-believers are arrogant. I'll assume you believe in Jesus to the exclusion of all other gods. That means that you're arrogant about Anubis and Isis and Thor and Zeus and all of the other thousands of gods whom you so breathtakingly dismiss.

Fact is, when it comes to gods, you're an atheist on 99.9999% of them. You and I have a lot in common. The only difference is that I simply go one god further than do you, and that fact gets your panties in a wad.

[GMA]

44. What evidence is there that faith is just wishful thinking?

And I absolutely do believe in a cosmos created so that God could take a personal interest in me. And you. And every other living creature. And the earth herself. And lots and lots of other "earths". I also think it takes arrogance to believe that we are the sole inhabitants of the sole planet created to support human life.

And it's easy to say that faith is a cheap commodity--until one is asked to die for--or sometimes even more difficult, to live for--one's beliefs. I'm just happy as I can be, though, to live in a place where you and I can discuss such things freely.

[stopbush]

45. You do realize, don't you, that the fact that we can discuss these things freely

has nothing at all to do with religion, don't you?

There is no evidence that anything in the Bible is fact based. It's pretty much a historic fiction - a fantasy that references actual historic events and personages to give it a feel of being real. It's like Gone With the Wind.

BTW - did god take a "personal" interest in the homo sapiens who existed 100,000 years ago as they lived out their lives of 20-odd years, most often dying of diseases of the teeth, malnutrition or being killed by predators? Or, did god wait around for 98% of homo sapiens existence until the Bronze Age arose, at which point, god said, "well, that's really about all that I can stand. They've really gone too far now, what with indoor plumbing and the other Roman inventions. I'm going to send them a savior. To make the best impact, I won't send him to China or some highly developed civilization. No, I'll send him to the Palestinian backwater where he'll need to compete with all the other self-proclaimed messiahs. Yeah, that's the ticket."

Seriously - did god have a personal relationship with our ancestors of 100,000 years ago?

[GMA]

58. You go ahead and run with that one,

that religion has nothing to do with free speech. And yes, I do believe that God (with a capital G) did take a personal interest in all forms of life on this planet--and others-- whenever they lived. If we knew all things, where would be the fun in that?

[stopbush]

61. Care to point out where and how religion promotes free speech?

What did Jesus say on the subject?

I'll wait.

[GMA]

69. You're not trying to trick or trap me, are you? lol.

I suspect you have no interest in anything Jesus had to say. Am I wrong?

[stopbush]

73. I'm well aware of every word attributed to Jesus, painfully so.

Which is why I find his words taken in their totality loathsome, as I've gone to great lengths to enumerate in my posts.

If you have something that Jesus supposedly said about free SPEECH (ie: not free will or anything else where the adjective "free" happens to make an appearance), then by all means, let's hear it (that includes "the truth shall set you free," which has nothing to do with free speech).

[rd_kent]

11. Jesus is a mythical creature, like the Loch Ness Monster.

Although there is more proof of the existence of the Loch Ness Monster......

[saltpoint]

15. If those enjoined by the tenets of his ministry believe also that he was

transhuman, that is, capable of doing things other human beings cannot do, it would be interesting to see how crucial their adherence is correspondent to how transhuman they consider him to have been.

[DeSwiss]

16. Yes. Yes he was.

All figments of imagination are transhuman.

- You might even say that they're ephemeral. Even sort of wispy.....


"Jesus Was A Good 'Ol Boy - Friend To Elvis & Robert E."

[saltpoint]

17. A provocative trio there in that image, and hat's off to the gardener.

[stopbush]

19. Other - he didn't exist at all.

[saltpoint]

27. A case can be made to support that claim. It would appear, though, to

be beside the point of some 2000 or so years of scholarship on his life.

As we are given this figure, he remains a legitimate fascination. IMO no spiritual entity can be understood without mythic construct, and in this consideration, Jesus of Galilee is genuinely interesting and vivid.

[stopbush]

33. 2,000 years of "scholarship on his life" is pretty meaningless.

The Egyptian gods date back to before 3100BC, and I'm pretty sure that Egyptian "scholars" did all kinds of "research" on the "lives" of the 700 gods of Egypt.

Jesus is a legitimate fascination the way fairies and vampires are "legitimate" fascinations...which is to say, the legitimacy lasts only as long as people are willing to suspend disbelief and engage in willing ignorance to imagine that their fantasies have a basis in reality.

Religious "scholarship" seeks to prove "why" a religious-historic "fact" is true when it should be asking "whether" it is a fact at all.

[GliderGuider]

37. Does it matter if values are based on facts?

After all, we don't know most of the "facts" behind some modern events that are driving our values today. 9/11 springs to mind, as does the factual basis of various other wars (e.g. the Gulf of Tonkin incident), or even the facts behind the health care, abortion or welfare debates in the USA. Hell, we don't even know the "facts" behind the economic crash we're in the middle of, and that is driving a lot of values today.

The factual nature of Christ's existence has absolutely nothing to do with the values people derive from either the teachings or the churches that grew up around his name. The important issue is how the myth affects peoples' behaviour. It's no different than how the myths we tell ourselves about our modern culture affect our behaviour. A modern belief like, "Growth is essential" is just as mythic as "Love thy neighbour as thyself". And, I would submit, much more damaging to humanity and other life on the planet. It's impossible to escape the effect of myths on our behaviour. To try and deny them and insist that only "facts" are acceptable reveals an incomplete understanding of human nature.

[stopbush]

40. I agree that myth has a great effect on our behavior.

You seem to make the common mistake of believing that Jesus invented the Golden Rule and the few other humanistic tenets that are woven through his particular mythology. The "fact" is that human evolution is responsible for the development of the Golden Rule and variations upon it, and that such tenets existed in societies long before Jesus was a figment in a Bronze Aged writer's imagination.

The Jesus myth is just another pagan god myth of the Bronze Age that owes its very idea of what a god is (omnipotent, omniscient - ie: man on steroids) to age-old ideas that man developed for himself. The thing that has kept Xianity going for 2000 years has a lot more to do with playing on people's fears of eternal damnation than it has to do with the Golden Rule (or its variation, love your neighbor). Take the fear of damnation out of the Xian spiel, and you negate the core political power that Xianity holds over its adherents. Do that, and you'll see people chucking the religion faster than they can say "I'm sleeping in Sunday."

[GliderGuider]

56. Form vs. content

First off,

You seem to make the common mistake of believing that Jesus invented the Golden Rule and the few other humanistic tenets that are woven through his particular mythology.

I do? Where did you read that? Altruism has been around since before we were even homo sapiens. It’s not even humanistic. It’s what balances out our urge to eat our neighbours and makes life possible. You seem to be making the common mistake of assuming that anyone you disagree with shares all the ideas you disagree with.

Now that's out of the way,

It’s interesting that the Jesus story shares so many explicit features with other, older god-man stories (Mithra, Horus, etc). That implies that the story itself was created by writers who wanted to leverage the subconscious impact of existing stories. The teachings of the tradition were also re-written in many cases to support the message implied by the story – the existence of an anthropomorphic, patriarchal, omniscient, judgmental creator-god.

What’s even more interesting to me is that when I looked a bit further afield than just the KJV as interpreted by Jimmy Swaggart, a very different picture emerged of the core teachings. Many of the teachings contained in the Gospel of Thomas, for instance, make Jesus sound like a Zen master or a classical mystic, and contain not a hint of the vengeful, judgmental qualities ascribed to god by mainstream social-control Christianity. In fact, it has a deeply non-dual flavour, which contrasts strongly with the Cartesian dualism of mainstream Christian interpretations.

It’s also interesting that Christianity and its direct descendant Islam are the only mainstream religions that place such emphasis on damnation to an eternal hell. Hinduism doesn’t, Buddhism doesn’t, Judaism doesn’t, nor does Confucianism or any animist or pagan faith. The teachings attributed to Jesus contain no mention of such an idea. What that tells me is that the concept of hell was invented by the power hierarchies of the church to ensure compliance in the flock.

Given the huge gulf between the actual teachings attributed to “Jesus” (whether he existed as a man or not) and what we are taught by religious “authorities”, it’s obvious that a lot of sanding and polishing (not to mention bending and twisting) has been going on since before the Council of Nicaea. It seems entirely legitimate that someone would investigate the original teachings (as far as they can be discerned) alongside those of other religious/philosophical originators – especially if one’s goal is to mine for nuggets of wisdom to facilitate one’s own ethical, philosophical and spiritual growth. Of course, in doing that it's essential to recognize and avoid the overtly man-made aspects of the religious structure overlaid on the spiritual teachings. To twist a biblical saying we need to "attribute to Caesar that which is Caesar's".

BTW, one modern “spiritual” teacher even you might like is A. H. Almaas. He is much more concerned with the psychological aspects of non-dualism, and his teachings are mostly centered on how to come into closer touch with the truth of who you really are as a person. His approach combines humanistic psychology with simple non-dual awareness. There’s not a single mention of an anthropomorphic god in any of his writing.

Best wishes.

[stopbush]

59. You say that the teachings of Jesus "contain no mention of hell."

Actually, you said: "It’s also interesting that Christianity and its direct descendant Islam are the only mainstream religions that place such emphasis on damnation to an eternal hell...The teachings attributed to Jesus contain no mention of such an idea."

How about these:

Matthew 5:22 "whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire."

Mark 9: 43-48 "And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched.
Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:
Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."

John 8:24" I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins."

John 15:6 "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."

Revelation 1:18 "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."

Comments?

[GliderGuider]

62. Comments

Again, I'd remind you that I'm not a Christian, and don't believe the bible is either literal, original or authoritative. With that understanding:

Revelation 1:18 - According to Wikipedia, "There has always been debate about Revelation's composition as well as its trustworthiness. In the Catalog of Eusebius it is placed in the disputed category along with the the Epistle of Jude, the Epistle of James and the Gospel according to the Hebrews. It is also the more conservative view that John wrote the book, the same that wrote the Gospel of John." so, not the teachings of Jesus.

The two quotes from John don't mention hell. Fire can have numerous metaphorical interpretations.

Matthew and Mark: There's apparently an issue with the correctness of the translation of "gehenna". It's entirely possible that later redactions of the Bible overlaid the idea of eternal torment to keep the sheep in line.

Frankly, the minutiae of Christian apologetics are really not very interesting to me. I'm not a Christian, and I really don't care what Christians choose to believe. My position is that "Jesus" didn't talk about infinite punishment for finite sins, as that does not fit with his other teachings, that were about love, compassion and forgiveness ("let he who is without sin, etc.")

It's much more reasonable to assume that many layers of verbiage and motivation accreted on the teachings over the years, to the detriment of humanity. That's why I resonate to the gnostic gospels like Thomas - they feel more original to me.

[stopbush]

64. You may not be a Xian, but you cherry pick with the best of them.

Jesus did talk about infinite punishment for finite sins. Why won't you accept that? it's not like your life or mortal soul are dependent on it.

Going the "but the translation is wrong" route is a two-edged sword and a game that we could play all day. I don't know why you can't just admit that you are quite wrong in your assertion that Jesus didn't teach the concept of hell fire. I don't see why you find it necessary to excuse Jesus for claiming that he not only preaches hell fire, but that he is the entity endowed with the power to decide which human beings end up burning for eternity. You're actually being quite the run-of-the-mill Xian in this regard. Who ya gonna believe? GG, or the verses provided?

And why do you say that, "it's much more reasonable to assume that many layers of verbiage and motivation accreted on the teachings over the years, to the detriment of humanity." I see no reason to hold that as a default position in this matter. My experience with going back to the original Greek on NT matters is that it gets even worse for Jesus the humanitarian as the original language paints an much less nuanced picture of the madman. The latter-age "layers" you speak of more often mitigate Jesus' unsavory teachings, rather than making them worse. Again, you're cherry picking. Stop the cherry picking and view Jesus in the full horror he represents.

Face it, you have a view of Jesus that you've arrived at by ignoring anything that upsets the gentle Jesus, meek and mild apple cart. That's what most Xians do. That's what American society does as it bends backward to allow the most-favorable spin on Xian dogma and doctrine, ignoring the unsavory "truths" that sit side-by-side with the few humanistic truths that the Gospel writers deigned assign to Jesus' lips.

Your earlier posts gave me hope that you had the ability to be objective on this subject. Now, I'm thinking, not so much.

[GliderGuider]

65. Well, I'm under no particular obligation to be consistent.

Feeling one has to swallow the whole thing is only important if one subscribes to a particular ideology. I don't. My beliefs are totally personal, and I build them out of whatever materials are pleasing to my sensibilities. Since I don't expect anyone else to follow them, I have no need to justify them.

I also cherry pick my Buddhism, my Hinduism, my Daoism and my Wicca.

Regarding my objectivity, there is IMO no way whatsoever to be objective about purely subjective things like values and beliefs. Down that rabbit hole lies the madness of cognitive dissonance, so I don't really try. It's my spirit, and I get to decide what I'll feed it, on whatever basis I choose. I'm sorry if that doesn't meet your needs.

[stopbush]

66. Point taken.

[dschis]

52. Pretty good

[saltpoint]

41. Well of course it is not "meaningless." You back-hand some very serious

minds there.

I don't think you would go up to Paul Tillich and tell him his life's work in spiritual scholarship is meaningless. If it really were meaningless, he might deck your ass on the spot. I wouldn't blame him.

Christianity in most of its manifest expressions catches the light given off by redemption. It is clumsily managed by some of its sects, selectively ignored by others, etc., but at its source, the mythic construct is persuasive.

Inspiration matters, whether it's your personal flavor or not.

[stopbush]

47. Does having a "serious mind" make one's thinking correct?

Fred Hoyle was brilliant when it came to stellar nucleosynthesis, but he went to his grave believing that the Big Bang theory (a phrase he coined derisively) was wrong and that his Steady State Theory of the universe was correct, even after all of the scientific predictions made about the Big Bang were proven to be accurate by study of the red light shift. Hoyle had a serious scientific mind that became blinded to the scientific method once he embraced religion in his later years.

Einstein rejected the idea of quantum mechanics...and he was Einstein! Does a mind get more serious than that?

How about the serious apparatchiks who wrote those very intellectual tracts about how great Communism would work?

Serious minds can be seriously wrong, whether the political system is Communism or Christianity.

I have no problem confronting Paul Tillich about his work. At least we'd get to see an actual resurrection if he's to come back from the dead and try to deck me. I'd think my chances were pretty good against that dried up corpse.

Xians often ask me what will I think if I die and find out that there is a heaven as described in the Bible. Won't I feel like I wasted my life? I'd ask each Xian to look at the flip side of that coin - what if there is no heaven or hell and you have wasted a great percentage of your life worrying about such things and promoting a risible myth to everyone you could corner? Guess what? Neither of us will be finding the truth post-mortem because there ain't no afterlife to go to to have that "doh!" moment.

Re: redemption. What, pray tell, are men to be redeemed from? Unless Adam and Eve existed - and we know that they didn't as the Biblical account of creation is a poorly written and laughable myth - then, whither original sin? As man evolved from the same single-celled creatures as did all life on Earth, at what point did man sin to cause himself to be in need of redemption? At the point when mammals first evolved? At the point Neanderthals evolved (are there Neanderthals in heaven?)? Did man first "sin" 250,000- 100,000 years ago when homo sapiens first established himself? Did he first sin around 6,000 BC when the Summarians were inventing beer, or did he first sin 2,000 years later (4,000 BC), ie: the time that the Bible says Adam and Eve were created?

Sorry, but redemption is just another BS conceit of the religionist, childish in its reason-free expression and deadly in its necessity for self-loathing.

[saltpoint]

54. You bring out the heavy-weights, and the best Christian minds are

among them, though by no means exclusively.

"Right" and "Wrong" / "Correct" and "Incorrect" can be useful at times but at the heavy-hitter level of ideas they are almost a useless polarity and should be eyed with suspicion if not rejected outright.

Scientific inquiry asks into the nature of the universe. To argue that scientists so doing are often "wrong" is beside the point of the inquiry itself -- and contraindicates what drives it. Beethoven tore up hundreds of pages of score until he was satisfied that centuries later we would agree in large numbers that his 27th piano Sonata is sublime. On the other hand, Mozart could compose absolutely, that is, with flawless construction, all in his head, not a note scratched out, not one page rumpled and tossed in the waste bin. Two different kinds of minds at work toward a similar goal and outcome.

My original post does not argue for the divinity of Jesus, but rather, asks into its nature. For someone to believe that he was divine begs the question of their belief in say, Athena, or Dhambala, or for that matter, Antinuous. Was Jesus a real person? Scholars of the historical Jesus believe he likely was. I have no idea. More to the point, I would not know how to convince you he was real if I so believed or persuade you that he is a conjured fiction of the later Church fathers. As holy originals go, he is compelling whether I can produce evidence that he was real or not. He is arguable also as a Jungian archetype. The scholarship is extensive and challenging and meets all threshold interest criteria. The dude, real or not, totally rocked.

A. N. Wilson has a good handful of books but his two best, IMO, are of Paul and of Jesus in which he calls for a more imaginative interpretation of their lives as we are given them. If you have not already read these books, they would be perfect for a chilly late November's night. Fundamentalists would be appalled by Wilson's findings but it sounds to me as if you would take some delight in them.

The characters in Larry McMurtry's novels are "fiction" at one level but are sustained in the population of the country's readers because they are so "real." Very likely McMurtry used actual folk for the models for his men and women. The force of the narrative, in and of itself, is compelling. The Jesus we are given in the three synoptic gospels is also compelling, certainly mysterious and unformed in many respects, and unquestionably inspirational to many. I respect the socialist Jesus more than the savior Jesus.

[rug]

22. No, but I am open to the possibility he was polyunsaturated.

[kwassa]

23. Is this a Boojatta question?!?!?

[saltpoint]

28. I like Boojatta's questions on this site a lot and would be the first to

admit that mine are not nearly as good.

[54anickel]

25. No, nor do I "believe" what I "believe" matters. n/t

[DU GrovelBot]

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[saltpoint]

31. Strongly disagree. There is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus played

for the Detroit Tigers.

[dschis]

49. Pretty funny. That got some coffee on the keyboard

[saltpoint]

55. -- -- --

:hi:

[Silent3]

63. I believe the longer this thread sits around...

...the more I detest the word "transhuman".

What's wrong with "superhuman" or "supernatural"? "Transhuman" is an icky, cloying word, a word that for me reeks of a posturing, New-agey "Oh! Look at me! Look at what enlightened spiritual concepts I'm thinking about!" attitude, the kind of word that's meant to be vague, a nearly blank slate onto which you can project whatever meaning is convenient for you to have the word mean.

[laconicsax]

67. You were an indigo child, weren't you.

:hi:

[Silent3]

68. Crystal, damn it, Crystal!

Indigo!? Pffft!

[saltpoint]

71. Try calling Jesus "magical" in certain circles. You'll be set upon by

jackals and wild dogs, the flesh torn from your bones, and left to die like a diseased horse.

[saltpoint]

76. Shaw said:

"Christianity might be a good thing if anybody ever tried it."