RE: What's not to love?
April 26, 2012 at 12:46 pm
(This post was last modified: April 26, 2012 at 12:55 pm by DeistPaladin.)
Bold emphasis mine:
Amen. What the hell do people even mean by "historical Jesus". It's like saying "historical Superman." The superpowers are so interwoven into the character that a telling of the real story of a purely mortal Jesus would bear no resemblance to the Gospel version.
Nearly every episode in the Gospels of the supposed life of Jesus either involves a miracle or is centered around one. Take away the supernatural and you've gutted the entire story.
Enough with the damn appeals to authority already. It's a logical fallacy! The reasoning is especially fallacious when you consider that many of these characters lived in a more primitive time when religion was more prevalent and so little was known about our universe.
I could argue with you about many founders being deists, Newton was a heretical Christian who rejected the Trinity, and Gandhi was a Hindu but this would all be beside the point. The main point of the OP was to ask us what we thought of the teachings of Jesus. We have answered it. Can you defend his teachings?
For Reason's sake, read the Gospels cover-to-cover. Do it with a critical eye. Rip off those rose-colored glasses. Replace the word "Jesus" with "Hercules" or "Gilgamesh" if that helps.
(April 26, 2012 at 12:42 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I, for one, do not accept the historical jesus concept since it is essentially meaningless. Was there someone named Yeshua bar-Yosef in first century Palestine? Sure. They were such common names that there had to be a hundred of them.
Amen. What the hell do people even mean by "historical Jesus". It's like saying "historical Superman." The superpowers are so interwoven into the character that a telling of the real story of a purely mortal Jesus would bear no resemblance to the Gospel version.
Nearly every episode in the Gospels of the supposed life of Jesus either involves a miracle or is centered around one. Take away the supernatural and you've gutted the entire story.
(April 26, 2012 at 12:45 am)radorth Wrote: So it seems fair to say that if there is an afterlife, I will end up in the company of at least 50 American Founders, Newton, Bacon, Locke, the abolitionists who were virtually all "fundy" Christians, most if not all leaders of the Enlightenment and revivals which changed the world, Solenzenitzen and probably Mahatma Gandhi.
And the more cynical unbelievers here will end up in the company of ...er...Minimalist, Deist Paladin, Dawkins, Tom Paine perhaps, and I'm afraid, the Pharisees.
Enough with the damn appeals to authority already. It's a logical fallacy! The reasoning is especially fallacious when you consider that many of these characters lived in a more primitive time when religion was more prevalent and so little was known about our universe.
I could argue with you about many founders being deists, Newton was a heretical Christian who rejected the Trinity, and Gandhi was a Hindu but this would all be beside the point. The main point of the OP was to ask us what we thought of the teachings of Jesus. We have answered it. Can you defend his teachings?
For Reason's sake, read the Gospels cover-to-cover. Do it with a critical eye. Rip off those rose-colored glasses. Replace the word "Jesus" with "Hercules" or "Gilgamesh" if that helps.
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
