Jesus

[Geminize]

Originally Posted by ReasonableJeff

God doesn't want stubborn, coerced submission.

It's a red flag for me when I hear someone claim to know what their god wants or thinks. If the Bible is truly history, then we have no way of knowing what the god of the Bible wants. For that is one fickle, unpredictable, and inconsistent god. We are free to cherry pick bible verses to support the sort of god we prefer.

[ReasonableJeff]

I believe what I believe not because it's logical, makes sense, or sounds sane. I believe what I believe because it is what I feel works forme. I follow my religion based on what I well, personally think is true based upon faith and it's what allows me to be a happier, healthy, kinder, and more productive member to society.

I think that's most of us…I wrote an article about it. Type into google "morethanmorality." It'll be the first hit.

So I guess my answer is, if I'm enjoying what he's saying, if it's feeling right to me, if it's making sense even in a nonsensical way, if I'm just clicking with it.

I get what you're saying, but there's one problem with that. If you get to pick and choose what you like and don't like as truth, then you don't have a relationship.

To have a relationship with someone means that the other person has the ability to contradict you. Boyfriends/girlfriends can tell you when you're wrong about something….so to have a relationship with God there has to be some way for Him to contradict what you want or what you're doing.

If you just pick and choose what's real or true, then you can never have a relationship with God.

When it comes to religion it's a matter of faith and I think people forget what faith means. If they knew they wouldn't be bothering with thinking about real or not.

I agree with you almost 100%, the exception is Christianity. Here's what I mean, if it turns out that Buddha never existed, it doesn't really change the teachings of Buddism. However Christianity teaches that Jesus was real and the entire Christian teaching of salvation by grace is absolutely dependent on that claim being true. If Jesus wasn't real, grace can't exist.

Christianity teaches that because God really did enter into human history and bear the sins of those that would come to believe in Him, we can get a "get out of jail free card." If Jesus wasn't real, or if He wasn't God, or if He didn't die on the cross….then the penalty for sin hasn't been paid, you have to earn your salvation just like the other world religions and the Christian teaching of grace would be nonsensical.

[ReasonableJeff]

CLEARLY (to me at least) what was taught was not meant to be taken literally. But the zealots can't stand to hear that. Christ may have been an actual historical figure who walked the face of the Earth. But did he really heal the sick, walk on water, rise from the dead? Was he really the Son of God?

Hello LateBloomer,

I liked what you said when you contrasted an imbalance of emotion and logic…I think you're right.

Regarding the above quote, if Jesus didn't really rise from the dead the Christian faith is pointless.

1 Corinthians 15:13, 17-19 (ESV) — 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

[LateBloomer]

Who is talking about a physical resurrection here? The zealots again?

Can I not be resurrected in a spiritual sense (born again)?
Perhaps a metaphysical sense (as a memory or dream)?

The problem with modern men (Jung might suggest) is our FAITH in the material world. That perhaps we value ONLY what we can see, measure, quantify (blood pressure, brain waves, heart beat).

Yes, science can keep the blood pumping, but is that a resurrection? Maybe in the most strict literal sense, yes.

But I don't think that's the SPIRIT of the passage you quoted.

[Undreamt]

Considering religion is mearly an embodiment of faith and a belief of powers outside ourselves that encourage morality and give believers a sense of purpose.

I don't see why you need proof for religion.

If you are looking for proof so that you can convince others to join your religions then you are not using religion properly.

[Nick9]

What do I think? As an atheist, I am fascinated by how the Jesus story evolved to become what it is today. The "leader of the free world" (as we Yanks like to refer to the US president) cannot be elected without a passably convincing belief in the Jesus story (thankfully not the Mormon story). In a society as varied as ours, I find that disturbing.

That and swearing on the Bible during a lawsuit at court is something I will probably never understand :confused:

[Kiid]

The bible doesn't fell like it loves me. due to people telling me I'm going to hell cos I'm gay and I wouldn't change that even if I could and I won't be sorry for it either. To be honest there are times that I'v been close to believing in god and then BAM some cunt says god hate fags and I become an unbeliever again.

I'm glad that you may have found Jesus but I don't think I will or want to. And if Jesus was such a good teacher then why are there people homeless on the streets? Did they just chose to be homeless?

[Pix]

^^

Put another way, why are our Christians so determined to stomp out beautiful LOVE in the world while ignoring actual suffering? Even if they decide gay sex is a sin (only because the Bible said so, and technically so is eating shrimp but you don't see amendments being added to state constitutions against Red Lobster), which is worse, consensual gay sex or rape culture? I knew a Catholic church that included vile members that menaced me more than once as if to rape me (I think they would've if I hadn't run away with a head start one time), and one also killed a neighbor's cat. And of course it's Catholics who have a lot of sex abuse covered up to yet they protect pedophiles while bearing false witness against gays and trying to to keep condoms out of Africa (thus adding to poverty & AIDS) and will sometimes excommunicate a little girl for having an abortion but not her rapist. So if Jesus is so good and Christianity inspires people to be good, then why are so many so despicable like this?

Btw, I don't mean to just include Catholics, they were just a convenient example. If you want I bet I can find a clip again where a mainstream news show helped bust would be child molesters and the most disturbing sexual predator of kids (and also practiced given that he alone looked and found the cameras within seconds of coming into the house and took off running showing he had experience or talked with others who did) and it turned out he'd been a preacher of a Baptist church and the comment was "this no longer surprised us." And I could go on.

There are evil teen gulags and boot camps run by Christians as well. Why aren't these evil Christians volunteering with Doctors Without Borders instead? Why instead of trying to prevent gays from being protected by hate crimes they don't instead try helping runaways (many of the boys themselves abused by men, just like the girls, and many kids are themselves fleeing horrible abuse, including sexual)?

And American Christians, including big names (one gave the prayer at Obama's inauguration) who work tirelessly not only to make sure gays remain 2nd class citizens but show their true goals as they get "kill the gays" bills passed in Africa...never mind the AIDS, poverty, disease, and even baby raping, they'd rather kill the gays than actually help make the world a better place.

And plenty of times when Christians DO manage to pull together and help (as opposed to a small minority of them) then it's usually something stupid like providing Bibles to people without food, electricity, and sometimes even the ability to read. (At least in these cases Bibles get put to good use as fire starter or toilet paper. Nevertheless they must think our Christians who send them Bibles are crazy.)

WWJD? Would Jesus REALLY focus on spreading hate, stamping out love if they're of the same gender, abusing children into conformity and telling people how to vote, or would Jesus say it's more important to stop the sexual abuse in the church, fight rape culture first and condemn rapists more than little girls who abort a rape baby, and help runaways and people who are dying of poverty and disease than being so concerned with people in love who happen to share the same gender? And if the latter, then why do so many of them fail to get it?

Just imagine how much better the world could be if all the Christians out there hurting and oppressing and abusing right now were to HELP the world instead!

[ReasonableJeff]

actuyally we have absolutely no evidence jesus existed, no historical records, no great reocrdings of revelations or his teachings, no physical evidence, nothing but the scrolls in the bible, nothing but the records written many years after his alleged death


and that by no means is any more proof we have of jesus than we do of superman or batman, we have books, that said they exist, and they did great things, but nothing to back them up.

Hello sephirothtx,

I think we have good reason to believe that Jesus did in fact exist.

The empty tomb of Jesus is actually much closer to fact than most people would lead to you believe. There are people whose entire job revolves around studying the New Testament documents that we have. Not all of these people are believers. Some are Jews, some are agnostics, some are atheists, some are Christians but all are very well educated.

Just because NT scholars believe something to be true, doesn't mean that it is. However, if scholars from both ends of the spectrum (believers and unbelievers in Jesus) agree on something, that usually means that there is compelling evidence for such an agreement.

Recently a scholar by the name of Gary Habermas did a survey of over 2,200 publications on the resurrection in English, French, and German since 1975. He found that approximately 75% of scholars accepted the historicity of the discovery of Jesus' empty tomb.

Also, according to Jacob Kremer, another NT scholar who has specialized in the study of the resurrection, "By far most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb."

The evidence is so compelling that even a number of Jewish scholars, such as Pinchas Lapide and Geza Vermes, have declared themselves convinced on the basis of the evidence that Jesus' tomb was found empty.

[frvrdnld]

I'm not religious at all. There are too many questions I have that no one seems to answer. Everyone I have ever asked has always quoted some scripture as a response, however, still never answered one of my questions.

To be honest, my main question doesn't fall with Jesus, however mine lies with the bible itself. There is this book titled the Bible. It is full of stories and lessons. Who is to say that any of that is real. It very well could be a story book, and just that. There wasn't necessarily paper back then, stories got passed from person to person making it vulnerable to change (like the game telephone). How did all of these stories and lessons, etc come about? How were they all compiled into one book? Except for in this book no one else has seen or heard from God. How could this higher power whom no one sees speak these words within the book and tell each and every different person how to live?

DISCLAIMER: Not trying to pick a fight and start trouble. These are just my own frustrations that I feel fit the topic at hand.