Seriously, you have serious mental problems. You are a stalker.
The biggest problem facing monotheism.
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Daylight63
Verified User
How am I a stalker?
you are that jerkoff who posts pictures
Daylight63
Verified User
Only to those who themselves either post pictures or post shit that is unworthy of considered intellectual response.
You literally wrote that the New Testament stories about Jesus are not true. Doesn't that mean either Jesus or the disciples lied? Why go to the effort to sugar coat it?
saying that God is equivalent to invisible pink elephants or children's fairytales is equivalent to saying those people with Christian belief are idiots or fools. Why sugar coat it?
I've gone to the trouble to read Nietzsche, and study Sartre, Camus.
Because I don't find their arguments particularly convincing, that doesn't mean I despise them. I am allowed to feel their arguments don't convince me
I think it's possible Jesus was a charismatic rabbi who preached a radical message of social justice and salvation, who was perceived by the disciples, and may have felt himself, that he was a son of God - which in the Jewish tradition is a person vested with divine agency
Daylight63
Verified User
It is usually best to discuss fraught topics with people who are able to differentiate between "disagreement" and "insult".
I just don't find Jesus interesting. Notice, I said nothing about his being influential.
Daylight63
Verified User
As you have told LITERALLY everyone, even when we didn't ask.
I've never disparaged the important atheist thinkers as fools or idiots, and never demeaned their beliefs as being so laughable as to be equivalent to believing in invisible leprechauns.
^^STALKER
Sure, a lot of people think the New Testament canon is boring. A lot of it is kind of a snoozer.
Daylight63
Verified User
You do use emotionally pejorative language for atheist positions all the time. I'm sorry to point it out to you but you do.
"liar", "conspiracy", "fairy tale". Those are the words you attribute to atheists all the time yet none on here have said anything like that.
When you say the New Testament authors don't tell the truth, the stories are fabricated, that's lying by any other name. Why sugar coat it?
If you genuinely believe the New Testament authors fabricated the stories about Jesus, what's wrong with calling them liars?
IBDaMann
Well-known member
That's not really a problem on his part; he is proselytizing his personal faith. You are looking at his sermon as being intended as some sort of rational analysis, but he is actually selling his religion, and unfortunately he mischaracterizes atheism in the process (as you noticed).
One example, gfm7175 is a Christian, and he is so because he sees daunting problems/evil in the world, and the message of Christianity resonates with him as the answer, i.e. it brings him purpose and comfort (as the first speaker alludes), and with it, gfm7175 acquires a different view of the universe than, say, I have. I am an atheist, and I could tell gfm7175 flat out "Hey, the universe is a random dust ball and I don't see your deity in there anywhere" and it won't change anything with him because atheism doesn't resonate with anyone looking for specific theological answers, and atheism doesn't refute any theological answers that anyone has.
Of course, if it turns out that his religion is true, I'll look for him at heaven's Will Call and explain to him how I was just kidding about the whole random dustball thing while I ask him to put in a good word for me with the Big Guy.
Daylight63
Verified User
Because there's a real possibility the folks who actually put the story down to paper were NOT lying but mistaken. Taking oral stories from years earlier and forcing them into a prophetic/religious framework. I mean it's pretty obvious when you read the Gospels that each differs according to the focus of the intended audience.
Look at this forum as an example. We have posters saying completely batshit wrong things all the time. And many of them actually believe it. There are people on here who believe things that are COUNTER TO REALITY. And they are honest about their belief.
Need I remind you that people are mistaken in their beliefs literally all the time. This is not unheard of. 900+ people killed themselves because they truly believed that Jim Jones was telling them the truth. Many people perished with David Koresh because they honestly believed in him.
It is possible to make DECLARATIONS and be MISTAKEN.
At the risk of writing too much (given your distaste for reading too much) I will make a brief comparison to a couple other religions: Scientology and Mormonism.
We know with 100% knowledge that Scientology is 100% made up. We know who made it up and we know the time and place. We know there is nothing to it but the imagination of L. Ron.
Mormonism we have a pretty good idea that it was 100% made up as well. One dude with a record of fraud and religious dabblings made up a story and gilded the lily repeatedly (like his "translation" of the Papyrus) so we know it's made up. But millions of people believe it is true. Even though we know kind of a lot about the origins.
Then let's talk about Islam: older, again, one dude in a cave says he saw an angel and the story begins. Billions believe in this guy. It is buried in the distant past so things are a bit more difficult. We don't really know as much but we can ASSUME Mohammed did what others later did. But the feeling is less "sure".
Go back even further to Christianity. This one arose at a time when few would have been writing anything about any of these characters. We don't even really have DIRECT evidence of the existence of many if any of the characters. Maybe some inferences like the Ossuary of James. But the rest of it rose up out of a desert full of illiterate farmers and fishermen desperate for some relief from Roman occupation. And the place was CRAWLING with itinerant apocalyptic preachers like Jesus.
I mean ancients believed and wrote things we KNOW are not true. Presumably Herodotus BELIEVED that there were flying snakes in the world. Other authors BELIEVED there were people with their faces in their chests in parts of the world. People can be MISTAKEN AS WELL.
I think it's possible to INFER that the stories about Jesus were largely made up. He may very well have been a real person but he wasn't God and he wasn't even magical or miraculous. People made up the stories of miracles or thought they saw something they didn't see (honestly believed the miracle....like some of the folks at Fatima).
I know you don't like to read so you probably stopped several paragraphs ago, but basically the point is that:
When we know the details about the origins of any given religion they are always made up by humans. In cases where we DON'T know for certain all the details we can INFER that they likely are made up.
But in the ancient world it would be NO BIG THING for people to HONESTLY BELIEVE in a man walking on water and raising the dead and flying up into heaven. And they would not be LYING if they wrote about it as if it were real.
You're looking in the rear view mirror two thousand years later and expecting to see 21st century standards of biographical and historical writing.
I'm not talking about the theology and hyperbole woven into the books of the New Testament.
I'm talking about the basic facts the disciples believed that Jesus was divine and that they saw him after the crucifixion. The divinity and resurrection of Jesus is the core essence of Christianity, and the most important events described in the NT canon.
These events are not necessarily based on ancient oral traditions that made their way into writing many decades later. There are creeds, hymns, and epistles in the NT that can be dated to the 30s, 40s, and early 50s shortly after the crucifixion and when the eyewitnesses were still alive. All of them attest to the divinity of Christ and to his death and resurrection. No matter how far back you push the earliest Christian writing (they go back to the 30s and 40s), the story remains consistent. The eyewitness believed Jesus was divine and they believed they saw him after the crucifixion.
Daylight63
Verified User
And I simply don't believe people ACTUALLY saw a dead man rise from the grave and then ascend up into heaven. I am uncertain why this is confusing to you. And I'm willing to say the people who WROTE the account were NOT the people who experienced it. The authors may have never even spoken to a person who witnessed it.
But the writer could VERY MUCH HAVE BELIEVED IT.
Question: do you think there actually WERE flying snakes or do you think Herodotus was mistaken?
I've already provided my hypotheses on why the disciples believed they saw Jesus after the crucifixion.
All Christian canonical writing going back to the earliest days of the Church and the generation of the eyewitnesses in the 30s and 40s attest to the disciples belief that Jesus was somehow divine and they saw him after the crucifixion.
There is no Christian writing anywhere in the first century that contradicts this. The basic consistency among all sources is striking.
There's no point pussy footing around this. The genuine and bold skeptic or atheist is not going to sugar coat this by calling it a mistake. Either the disciples were mass hallucinating, or they were all mentally ill, or they conspired to lie.
I personally have my own rational explanation.
Herodotus based his claims on ancient fossils found in Egypt; certain marine fossils resembled flying snakes. Makhtesh Ramon is cited by some as a source for his belief. Marine fossils are found on the upper slopes of Mt. Ararat and the Himalayas, and in the Americas as well, which is why Great Flood stories are all over the planet, and nobody had to steal other peoples' stories to develop their own.
en.wikipedia.org