I Am Christ

[radorth]

The idea/philosophy is focussed on getting people to shed, destroy, see past, re-assess and grow past their subjective beliefs, as much as possible! It is about increasing the “individual’s” independence of thought as much as possible and exploring the limits of that possibility.

You guys have pretty well done that, no? We have histories of whole countries run by atheists exploring "new" ideas. It did not work out well. Upwards of 60 million innocent people were killed, murdered, starved to death in the last 100 years by atheist leaders-- more people than all the religious wars in all of history combined. God forbid a skeptic would stand up to Stalin or Mao. That is not to say Christians did not do evil, but a rational person would compare their works to the teachings of Jesus.

The ‘I Am Christ’ idea, takes into account that humans are social beings and are therefore naturally dependant on one another to some degree, but the ‘I Am Christ’ idea, asks; to what degree is this dependency healthy for both the individual and the society and do both history and current affairs present us with any evidence to show that such dependency is causing our downfall as a species, who seem to be heading into a new ‘dark age,’ or ‘Idiocracy,’ if we ever in fact emerged from the first one.

Well certainly the Catholic church and state were codependent (I like to say) in the Dark and Medieval ages, and this co-dependency was oppressive and led to the most evil deeds. The real question is, what does that have to do with Jesus, or the possiblity that if we actually did what he said, the world would be entirely peaceful and prosperous? If you are going to claim to think freely, than please do so. I'm reading church history and finding little evidence Christianity as Jesus taught it has ever been tried. Chesterton made the same claim.

It is about fostering both a cognitive and behavioural humility amongst an otherwise egocentric and overconfident species, whose confidence has been predominantly rooted in misguided beliefs and perceptions that have been reinforced by various psychological strategies employed to protect the house in which these beliefs reside, the ego.

I agree. But I find few humble intellectuals, and the ones I do find as easily become Christians as not. Is the agnostic Will Durant egostistical because he read the Gospels and decided you can't make this stuff up. He called the claimed contradictions "minutae." Einstein read the Gospels and decided the same thing, and openly said so, although he later seems to have had his doubts. Of course he did his best thinking as a young man

It is about attempting to address and reconcile the various aspects of our own consciousness (individuation) which have been divided and pitted against one another, causing the proliferation of internal and external conflict and the dominance of the ego-self over the “true-self,” for lack of a better word.

Good stuff. What I am saying is that you can't claim to have thought independently until you have tested and guaranteed your own motives are free of bias. How do I know you have ever tried Christianity yourself? Have you tried everything Jesus and the apostles said would lead to true enlightenment? Have you spoken in tongues and prophesied?

It is about maturing beyond lame and impotent “hero worship,” and becoming the hero, the saviour, the teacher and the student, all at one time and giving up childish things, like religious faith, political ideologies and scientific and academic dogmas.

Well religious belief is not faith, and religious beliefs cannot even co-exist with faith. Jesus told the religious people of his time exactly that, but now they just reincarnate as Christians.

It is about putting an end to the emotional manipulation achieved by the belief, which, in the hands of various belief peddlers, has fostered inequality, poverty, war,

Well John Locke was a Christian's Christian, calls Jesus over and over, "our savior," defends miracles and seems to have gotten what Jesus was talking about in Luke 4, where we find his mission is to free the oppressed and set at liberty the captives. Jesus also says in another place that heretics are to be left alone, by the way. Too bad half the Popes did exactly the opposite. But you see this si simply more evidence that you are are throwing the Baby out with the dirty bathwater, which of course the great thinkers like Jefferson tried to keep people from doing. He said the words of Jesus had been wrapped in the "rags of the clergy." No argument there. But the words themselves he called the "most sublime" and the "greatest system of morals." Also the three men he most admired were Christians. Ido not say he was a Christian. That is not for me to decide. I doubt it. I am just pointing out what he, a genuinely independent and fearless thinker, believed.

Had we actually done what Jesus commanded in the Sermon on the Mount, we could speak with authority, but that only a fraction of the world has ever done so, and so calls for "new independent thinking" don't mean much if no one has even tried the "greatest system of morals."

What is in the least irrational about this argument?