(October 29, 2014 at 9:57 pm)Minimalist Wrote: So, you're saying that jesus was full of shit?
That's actually a stance gaining popularity with liberal Christians. I don't know if you've seen those Love Wins bumper stickers on cars, or not, but that's the name of a book written by a pastor who makes that exact claim.
He deals with the whole cognitive dissonance issues of hell and an all-loving god by simply removing hell. Obviously, the son of this god said the exact opposite, so he has to use some rather creative interpretation combined with the (uncorroborated) writings of a twelfth century rabbi to assert that Hell was a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem, Jesus meant it as a metaphor, and people back then would have gotten that.
Of course, his assertion is as nonfalsifiable and unsupported as his religion is*, so, there's that. Still, it makes a lot of the liberal Christians feel better, so they go along with it.
* I loled very hard when I read a Christan's review of Love Wins complaining that the author didn't have any evidence supporting his point. Pot, meet kettle.