Following up: I am obliged for the civil exchange about an interesting and scholarly topic. I am always surprised at how message board banter drifts towards malicious gossip, petty grudges, character defamation, obsession, and trivial mediocrity
Jesus and Siddhartha Gautama
- Thread starter Dutch Uncle
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Following up: I am obliged for the civil exchange about an interesting and scholarly topic. I am always surprised at how message board banter drifts towards malicious gossip, petty grudges, character defamation, obsession, and trivial mediocrity
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
I've been studying the same thing for several years on political forums. IMHO, it's because they come with both preset agendas and are overly-emotional, all to often, emotionally unstable.
In this particular case, he came here to hate religion and he won't stop hating religion. No one here can make him stop hating religion. He cannot be reasoned with because he is emotionally set to hate religion and emotion never listens to reason.
That said, why bother with these poor souls who hate so much? I use them as a springboard to discuss the issue in general, mostly, discuss the issues with others who are cooler, saner and better educated. Obviously that's not him. LOL
To some extent, I understand the sentiment. An atheist who thinks of themselves as the prodigy of Voltaire, Jefferson, and Adam Smith will find it difficult to acknowledge how much of our legacy is associated with the convergence of western civilization and Christianity.
My own opinion has evolved over the years. At this time, I cannot imagine what western civilization, and my own consciousness and ethical maxims would look like without the fusion and legacy of Plato, Pericles, Jesus, Augustine, the Gospels, Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Newton, Lincoln, Einstein, et al.
All of it, collectively, fused, and co-mingled, is our legacy and influences us in ways we generally do not think about.n
You're the one who brought up irrelevant issues. Here is where I started:
Jesus clearly had the intent of expanding the religion that His Father started with the Jews.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Yes, it's all connected like a stew.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Awesome. Thanks for participating.
TexanManWithPlans
Verified User
Well, you're somewhat correct in that the the book doesn't explicitly claim that Jesus never existed. The book examines the literary origins of the Jesus myth. But it's pretty evident that there was no magical zombie who floated into the sky 2,000 years ago.
Thanks for admitting how easily I destroyed your position.
In my own words:
Jesus came to benedict fools and doofuses and arrogant despots and the meek that...
They each and all had individual souls and exist beyond the body.
--Fin--
The sin of being ignorant of this basic knowledge "was relieved" by a public display of an
Avatara that became famous and the talk of the centuries [into kali yuga's annals].
In Buddhism there is soul that each indivisible persona possesses as their own address [X-Y-Z coordinates]
A soul is its own vector point. No two vector points can exist in the same place at the same time
---and a soul never can be dissolved.
A soul is active (& conscious) by nature [aka a soul is a nucleus of "sat, cit & ananda"].
SOoooo,
A nirvana state [thou I know it to be temporary] cannot be achieved until re-birth [aka samsara] stops.
Buddhism reformation was to apply brahminical know-how of Yoga moksha for common folks too.
Hence Buddhas principle of "ahimsa" [non-violence] was an auxiliary yoga principle to shed
ugra-karma [ugly bad karmic reactions] with the ridding of karmic connections the concept
of stopping samsara was the goal...nirvana [lit., without-qualities] can be the refuge from samasara.
SO,
Jesus's [famed as a political radical protesting against tyrannical rule] STARTED DEMOCRACY by
injecting the principle that each person mattered; that each person had their own individual indivisible soul.
If each person has a soul [where previously, only Caesar or the Pharaoh etal had a soul],
then they were represented in the book of life of human society etc etc
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StoneByStone
It's OK to Be White
On this forum, it's really just the Trumpcucks who do that, and like a handful of SJW cucks.
I disagree with the use of the term "conceived by"
Democracy is self-evident.
But FYI,
"Sudras" must be corralled by rules and thus enforcers exist.
Stone layers apply mortar, but a supervisor oversees, and the bankers counts receipts.
There is always a hierarchy chain of command in operating a production.
It's labor representation that kicks in later.
Whilst nature takes it's course a group/clique/landlord/headmaster/country must divvy-up chores.
--Fin--
Even the stupid kid in class prefer the smart kids do all the thinking.
StoneByStone
It's OK to Be White
So there's something that I might not have been clear with in this thread.
Religious people can do things despite their own religions. When Christians fought to end slavery, that was them having Enlightenment ideas despite what their own texts and traditions say. Basically, Christians went against Christianity to end slavery.
And that's why this happened AFTER the Enlightenment. The Reformation was a move away from the stronghold of the Catholic Church. That made the Enlightenment possible, which was a move away from religion as a whole, it's when we stopped making laws based on tradition and religion, and started making laws based on logic and Greek ideas.
So yeah, there were plenty of great Christians who helped to build Western Civilization, but their ideas were not Christian. I'd compare them to most Christians today who don't live by Christianity, even if they are influenced by their religion here and there.
That's why I said these ideas come from the Enlightenment with roots in Ancient Athens. Democracy was a Greek idea, but it was greatly expanded upon by European Enlightenment-thinkers. And even today, we're still working on it. For a long time, women weren't allowed to vote in America. However, it was at the Enlightenment that we accepted Democracy and started working on it. As opposed to the Middle Ages, where Democracy was completely off the table because it went against Christianity.
Yeah, the soul of a woman was equal to that of a man, but on Earth, women were supposed to be subservient to men. Same goes with emperors and the poor. The poor were told in the Bible and by the Church to be subservient to the leaders, even though in Heaven, they would be equal. This is not a good philosophy, it's a philosophy that lends itself to tyranny.
That's one theory, but science also shows that we evolved altruism. And people who lack altruism usually have a level of mental illness.
And no, the "Might Makes Right" that Neo-Nazi Darwinist Pagans talk about is wrong. Pagan societies did have mercy and charity. Every society had laws to protect the weak, which may have just been pragmatism, but either way, it existed before Christianity.
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12453
Post 133 flings the term SOUL all over the place.
Do you not recognise that your official sources of the definition of Soul do not exist?
I am vegetarian.
I will ask a blunt question: You eat animals? Is it BECAUSE animals don't have a soul?
So would a tyrant kill someone that he supposed that had a soul?
Aren't tyrants soul-less?
The ageless knowledge begins with Self-realisation.
We are each an individual soul self.
We are spirit soul, we are not the material body.
Where is record of the recognition and codification of Soul.
DYK: anima = soul in latin.
hence, animated, animation.
Alma in Spanish
Atma is Sanskrit
So, animals are animated by the presence of a conscious soul animating the material body.
DYK: Spirit-soul is composed of anti-matter.
Do you not recognise that your official sources of the definition of Soul do not exist?
I am vegetarian.
I will ask a blunt question: You eat animals? Is it BECAUSE animals don't have a soul?
So would a tyrant kill someone that he supposed that had a soul?
Aren't tyrants soul-less?
The ageless knowledge begins with Self-realisation.
We are each an individual soul self.
We are spirit soul, we are not the material body.
Where is record of the recognition and codification of Soul.
DYK: anima = soul in latin.
hence, animated, animation.
Alma in Spanish
Atma is Sanskrit
So, animals are animated by the presence of a conscious soul animating the material body.
DYK: Spirit-soul is composed of anti-matter.
StoneByStone
It's OK to Be White
I never said there was nothing good about the Middle Ages. I said that Western Civilization is not based on Christianity, but rather based on the Enlightenment which came after the Middle Ages.
And really, the Magna Carta was about as effective as muh constitution. It didn't actually stop kings from doing what they wanted.
I see what the problem is. You define Western civilization whatever happened after the French Enlightenment. You consider Western civilization to be the last 250 years.
That's fine.
I consider that to be the late Modern era.
The legacy of western civilization to me includes late antiquity, early, high, and late Middle Ages, Renaissance, early Modern era, and late Modern era.
And historical scholars would generally agree with me.
All those periods of Western history fit together like a jig saw puzzle and build on each other. The Enlightenment did not just appear in a vaccum.
You have to also realize that history and human thought are always influx. The Enlightenment of the 18th century was not the final word on trajectory of the west. The west had a powerful reaction against the Enlightenment in the 19th century during the Romantic era, when people began to resent the implication that all there was to human existence were scientific observations, industrialization, and logic. People of the Romantic era wanted some spirituality, individualism, and respect for emotion to be part of human existence.
We are products of all the traditions - spritual, intellectual, artistic, ethical, literary, philosophical, and scientific - resulting from the trajectory from late Antiquity to the late Modern era
The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families
with the divinely sanctioned authority (auctoritas) of the Roman State.
Its framework was based on Roman and Greek precedents, and was formulated during
the early Principate of Augustus. It was rapidly established throughout the Empire
and its provinces, with marked local variations in its reception and expression. ...
The cult of the Emperor as a particularly offensive instrument of pagan impiety and persecution.[1]
It therefore became a focus of theological and political debate during the ascendancy of
Christianity under Constantine I. The emperor Julian failed to reverse the declining support
for Rome's official religious practices: Theodosius I adopted Christianity as Rome's state religion.
Rome's traditional gods and Imperial cult were officially abandoned. However, many of the rites,
practices and status distinctions that characterized the cult to emperors were perpetuated in
the theology and politics of the Christianized Empire.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_of_ancient_Rome
with the divinely sanctioned authority (auctoritas) of the Roman State.
Its framework was based on Roman and Greek precedents, and was formulated during
the early Principate of Augustus. It was rapidly established throughout the Empire
and its provinces, with marked local variations in its reception and expression. ...
The cult of the Emperor as a particularly offensive instrument of pagan impiety and persecution.[1]
It therefore became a focus of theological and political debate during the ascendancy of
Christianity under Constantine I. The emperor Julian failed to reverse the declining support
for Rome's official religious practices: Theodosius I adopted Christianity as Rome's state religion.
Rome's traditional gods and Imperial cult were officially abandoned. However, many of the rites,
practices and status distinctions that characterized the cult to emperors were perpetuated in
the theology and politics of the Christianized Empire.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_of_ancient_Rome
StoneByStone
It's OK to Be White
I know some people do consider Western Civilization to be whatever happened in Europe and America since the Indo-European migration or Classical Greece. That doesn't really make much sense to me, because then we're counting radically different cultures as being part of the same civilization. We're saying a Catholic Theocracy is the same civilization as a Democratic Republic. And yeah, I know that cultures evolve. The Democracy of Weimar Germany is not exactly the same as the Democracy of the Federal Republic of Germany. And the culture of Ireland is not the same as the culture of Finland, despite them both being Democracies. But all of these cultures, regardless of period or region, have the same Western cornerstones that were established during the Enlightenment. Sure, there was a backlash against secularism and science during the Romantic period, but we didn't abandon those Western cornerstones. We were still expanding upon things like Democracy and free speech.
If "Western Civilization" is anything that happened in Europe since Classical Greece, then there really are no Western values. Anything from Democracy and Secularism to Dictatorship and Theocracy can be considered Western values, which makes the term meaningless.
I understood your claim denied Jesus ever historically existed, not that you only denied his divinity.
Lots of people think Jesus was only human, a great prophet of God, but not a divine being who was resurrected.
One billion Muslims believe that.