What's not to love?

[Killman]

He is still alive.

Did you or radorth even read aleialoura's post AT ALL????

Also, correct me if I am wrong on this but wasn't the modern concept of hell basically non-existent until Jesus came along? That is a bit strange.

"I have come to heal, forgive, and, oh yeah, here is a nice little eternal torture chamber that you can fry in if you don't follow me."
Ooo, we don't want that to happen do we? I better believe in this crap.......

[DeistPaladin]

"False in one part, so false in all" is a logical fallacy.

Not necessarily. There are two situations I can think of where a falsehood is a good justification for skepticism:

1. Where the falsehood is a deliberate lie. It doesn't necessarily mean that everything the liar says is false but it does discredit the testimony sufficiently to consider the rest suspect and certainly not to be accepted purely on the author's say-so.
2. Where the testimony is said to be divine revelation, from a perfect and all-knowing source. Such a source should not make mistakes and therefore the exposure of a mistake, deliberate or accidental, precludes the testimony being of divine origin.

---

Greater men than you disagree no doubt.

Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Authority

Our society views Jesus through rose-colored glasses. I know because I used to have a positive view of Jesus though I was never a Christian. Take it from someone who knows, it takes a conscious effort to rip off the rose-colored glasses and read the Gospel accounts with a critical eye.

Which shows you haven't got a clue what he is talking about. How ironic that you are more legalistic, and think more in black or white than the Christians do! I love it. Really.

I read what's there. Not what I want to read.

[The Grand Nudger]

Love the OP's concession right at the beginning btw

"What's not to love (except the obvious shit)?"

-Me: The obvious shit. Whether you like to think about it or not matters very little to me.

[Kayenneh]

What's not to love?

Oh, I don't know. I actually do like the golden rule, it's good to keep in mind to be kind to those around you. But when Christians, who swear that they believe in all he said, do this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4UnkyNJGmw

it's truly scary. Where's the empathy? That's something I do not love.
For that matter, any fanatic of any fictional character creeps me out. I mean, just look at Twihards or Harmony-shippers. One shouldn't be too obsessed about any book..

So yeah, there might be a few pearls here and there (albeit, all of them can be found in better written literature). It's the fan club I can't stand.

[Disciple]

Hey guys, look I know that some of you get pretty wound up whenever even just the name of Jesus is mentioned. You should not let it control you to the point where you go into a blind rage and forget that radorth simply asked a question. Its almost like you are afraid to answer it really. He said "assuming hypotheticlly that it was real" right? So nobody has to pretend that he said Jesus is real so why dont you like him. He states at the very beginning that its ASSUMING that the NT and jesus is real. I dont have a problem at all or get bent out of shape if sombody were to ask me why i dont like batman or superman (i prefer batman). I could still just answer the question quite easily knowing they arent real.

In the bible, Jesus did indeed talk about hell more than anybody else. It was what he talked about more than anything as a matter of fact. He was hardly swooning at the Idea of people going there. He wanted people to know about it so they wouldnt have to go there.
He said "I have not come to condemn the world, but to save it."

Hmm? "thought crimes" not so much. What he said was "if you look at a woman to lust after her, you have commited adultery with her already in your heart" He didnt say you cant admire the beauty of a woman. What he meant by that was, we shoulnt look at a woman and think... "man, id like to fuck that, and i think im gonna try" He knew that thoughts lead to actions. Im not a woman but im pretty sure they dont want to be objectified as sex objects anyway. I dont see where there should be a problem with this.

Many people make the mistake of thinking christians follow jesus out of fear. We do not. Speaking for myself here, I choose to follow him out of love and gratitude. Im the type of person if you tell me I must do something or else i will do it anyway JUST because you said that.
peace.

[Paul the Human]

Jesus is most likely fictional, but the character is no different than the thousands of other charismatic, dilusional (or lying), cult leading conmen the world still sees to this day. So he spoke of nice things... And people followed him. What's to love?

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

....
Hmm? "thought crimes" not so much. What he said was "if you look at a woman to lust after her, you have commited adultery with her already in your heart" He didnt say you cant admire the beauty of a woman. What he meant by that was, we shoulnt look at a woman and think... "man, id like to fuck that, and i think im gonna try" He knew that thoughts lead to actions. Im not a woman but im pretty sure they dont want to be objectified as sex objects anyway. I dont see where there should be a problem with this.

...

This isn't directly related to the conversation at hand but anyways...

The verse you're referencing, Matt 5:28, probably wasn't originally meant to be taken as being against "lusting." The word translated "lust" really means "desire" or "covet" and it's used in a positive light in the NT several times. The word translated "woman" in Greek I'm told can mean either woman or wife. If it's used in the context of marriage, it means wife, not woman. Well guess what. Adultery in the biblical sense always means specifically sex with another man's wife, not simply fornication. The verse probably should be read something like "But I tell you that anyone who looks at another man's wife with desire has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Otherwise, if it meant "any woman" that would include your own wife, and the entire book of Songs would be sin. There's even an early church father who interpreted this verse as being against coveting a man's wife (not "lusting" at women in general).

The More You Know!

[The Grand Nudger]

Coveting as sin is thought crime. Objectifying a woman as sin is thought crime. Lust as sin is thought crime.

There is no way other way to cut it, no translation escapes it. This isn't exactly a surprising proclamation considering the character who is said to be making the proclamation. I think about things all day, they rarely lead to actions. Get a fucking grip, and guess what, still thought crimes. You don't see any problem with this? Well, let me introduce you to to a little book called Nineteen Eighty-Four. This work of sci fi is apparently more competent at conveying a useful message than your christ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

[Minimalist]

I actually do like the golden rule,

Greeks came up with it first.

[radorth]

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.
The atheists here sound in so many ways like the Phariees. It ain't true. He fools the simple-minded. He's a fake. He's crazy. He's not for real. You have to wonder how many atheists really know the difference between honest skepticism and the same kind of cynicism the Pharisees demonstrated.

To each his own I guess