I would like your answers to this if you are so inclined....

jmharris23

Moderator
For those of you who do not believe in the God of the bible......would you share with me your thoughts on Jesus Christ?

For example....do you believe he was a misguided man with good intentions, a good moral teacher, a lunatic, or didn't exist at all. These are just a few examples.

I am working on something for a project and would just like to hear what you think about Jesus.
 

dawg2

AWOL ADMINISTRATOR
This should be interesting...
 

centerpin fan

Senior Member
He was a killer -- a child-slaughtering monster who left a trail of blood and gore over 6,000 years of history.

:rolleyes:
 

jmharris23

Moderator
Just FYI, I will "abuse" my mod powers in this thread in order to keep it on topic. Thanks for understanding :D
 

TheBishop

Senior Member
A philosopher that was killed for his teaching perhaps.
 

jmharris23

Moderator
Thanks....let me also say, I would rather this not turn in to a debate, but just that people would like, TheBishop, give their answers. Thanks again
 

Four

Senior Member
I really never think about it to be honest, if i hear someone referring to Jesus Christ, I immediate think "not real" or so, i generally don't consider the historical figure.

Without researching the historical evidence, i think its a good possibility that it wasn't even one person. Jesus is basically a common first name, similar to Josh, and christ isn't a real last name, its a title.

So with something so ambiguous it could easily be a "john doe" type name given to a collection of people that caused some philosophical trouble for the Jews.
 

jmharris23

Moderator
Is this it? I thought more might answer this :confused:
 

Asath

Senior Member
“......would you share with me your thoughts on Jesus Christ?”

Whew. Not so easy a topic, as intended, so I suppose the paucity of responses at this point is understandable.

Central to the idea of ‘sharing thoughts’ on the subject is the reality that the idea of the Jesus figure holds a place of more than passionate reverence for both Christians and Muslims, both of whom are totally committed to the physical existence of such a figure. Speaking against this thought has, until very recently, been a capital offense within Christianity, and still is a capital offense in certain Muslim societies. Causing a large portion of the world to call for your immediate extermination as a ‘heretic’ might give any intelligent person pause.

That said, there is a large body of thought that doubts the historicity of Jesus, and unfortunately these are not the usual ‘fringe’ thinkers or garden-variety nutballs, but rather serious scholars who have delved deeply into the ‘evidence,’ or lack of same, and have all come away with largely the same thought.

Most scholarly opinion on the matter holds that that there WAS such a person, but that his actual life story was quickly displaced by the myth-making necessary to the formation of any cult. Others, perhaps better versed in ALL of the religious myths that have taken hold over the ages, hold that an actual historical figure isn’t necessary to explain the very few apparently ‘biographical’ details in the Gospels. In other words, there MAY have been such a person behind all of the legends, but the mechanisms of all known Belief systems are so easily seen in the formulation of this particular example that there didn’t really NEED to be such a person.

And this is hardly a matter to be considered lightly. The history of Christianity, in the early, formative stages, is murky at best, but remains one of the most important developments in human history. For Muslims, Jesus was one of the most important of God’s prophets, who would come again on the last day and kill the Antichrist. If it came to light that Jesus did not exist, or was at best a wandering Rabbi around whose short ministry an enduring mythology had been built, it would have obvious consequences – essentially tossing all of the New Testament as well as the Koran into question, and alienating hundreds of millions of ‘Believers’ of several stripes whose lives had been built around such belief.

However, we are no longer in the age of the flat-earth adherents, who similarly numbered nearly everyone, and summarily executed anyone who doubted their assertions. Hundreds of millions of people CAN be wrong, and a reading of history reveals that the vast majority has ALWAYS been wrong. And there is no mystery in this either – humans are herd animals, depending on each other for their mutual survival, and anyone who breaks ranks with the leadership of the moment threatens the rest of the herd, and must be culled.

The problem of Jesus, aside the societal fear and intimidation surrounding the question, is that it is impossible for any serious historian to employ either the Bible or the Koran as an historical documentation of anything at all. If either one was infallibly, historically accurate, and did, indeed, contain all of the Truth that needed to be known, then all of progress would have been arrested over a thousand years ago. Bringing either Christian or Muslim FAITH into what should be a disinterested historical inquiry undermines any search for the real truth, and the fact of progress in the face of those Faiths, and the steady retreat of the dogmas of Belief in the face of new discoveries should also be enough to give even the most stubborn and vehement of believers pause.

To my mind, since I’m getting long-winded here, it is a certainty, in any historical context, that the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were never spoken by any such person, since the Gospels were written by unknown authors some forty to eighty years after the crucifixion that is therein described. We can use all manner of evidence here, but to use only one – the Gospel of Mark is considered by most scholars to have been the earliest of them, but the Epistles of Paul reliably predate this writing, and make no mention whosoever of many of the details of the life of Jesus that we find in Mark. There is no mention of Jesus’ parents, or the Virgin Birth, or of a place of birth, or of John the Baptist, or of Judas, or of Peter’s denial, among many other rather crucial details that have entered firmly into the mythology, such as the miracles, the trial before a Roman official, the place of execution, nor even to Jerusalem.

There is also very little in the Non-Christian evidence, since of about sixty actively writing historians who were known to exist during the first century Roman world, there is amazingly little corroboration, and what little there is (from Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius) is vague, inconclusive, and unhelpful.

A charitable conclusion, built on the evidence, and lack of same, is that there may well have been a man, named Jesus, who hated the historical circumstances of dictatorship and oppression into which he was born, and who preached rebellion against this nonsense, and who was executed, along with hundreds of rebels like him, for that ‘rabble-rousing’ agitation.

Who knows why, when thousands are protesting, that one man is singled out and becomes the ‘Martin Luther King’ of his generation? A symbolic figurehead for everything that is wrong? Things needed to change, and whether history reveals that change to have been for the better is up to others to decide. But for my own part I view the Jesus figure, whether real or invented, to have been the lightning rod for a grass-roots rebellion, and one of the most successful ones in all of history.

I do not, however, subscribe to the thought that anyone or anything can be elevated to the status of deity.
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
For those of you who do not believe in the God of the bible......would you share with me your thoughts on Jesus Christ?

For example....do you believe he was a misguided man with good intentions, a good moral teacher, a lunatic, or didn't exist at all. These are just a few examples.

I am working on something for a project and would just like to hear what you think about Jesus.

Not that I am either but how would Jews & Muslims figure into your research. I've read some old post where a Jewish guy posted on here alot, but he doesn't respond any more. Either we don't have a lot of Jews & Muslims in Georgia or they don't hunt for wild hogs or cast for shrimps.

It would be nice to have some other religious people on here to debate with other than the Atheists.
 

ambush80

Senior Member
I used to think he had long blonde hair, blue eyes and carried a lamb around with him wherever he went. I prayed to him when I was afraid of the dark. Then I thought he was dark complected and had black hair and brown eyes and that he was a philosopher that people greatly admired. I stopped being afraid of the dark and didn't pray to him anymore. Now I don't think about him much except when I see what belief in him does to people.
 
A philosopher that was killed for his teaching perhaps.

Not a bad answer.

What I would piggyback onto TB's answer is that if he existed (note - I'm open to the idea that he existed) there was nothing divine about him. No miracles, no flying, no resurrection.
 

TheBishop

Senior Member
Not a bad answer.

What I would piggyback onto TB's answer is that if he existed (note - I'm open to the idea that he existed) there was nothing divine about him. No miracles, no flying, no resurrection.

Its exactly how one of my heros saw him. Thomas Jefferson, he even wrote his own bible void of all the miracles and the resurrection.
 

ted_BSR

Senior Member
“......would you share with me your thoughts on Jesus Christ?”

Whew. Not so easy a topic, as intended, so I suppose the paucity of responses at this point is understandable.

Central to the idea of ‘sharing thoughts’ on the subject is the reality that the idea of the Jesus figure holds a place of more than passionate reverence for both Christians and Muslims, both of whom are totally committed to the physical existence of such a figure. Speaking against this thought has, until very recently, been a capital offense within Christianity, and still is a capital offense in certain Muslim societies. Causing a large portion of the world to call for your immediate extermination as a ‘heretic’ might give any intelligent person pause.

That said, there is a large body of thought that doubts the historicity of Jesus, and unfortunately these are not the usual ‘fringe’ thinkers or garden-variety nutballs, but rather serious scholars who have delved deeply into the ‘evidence,’ or lack of same, and have all come away with largely the same thought.

Most scholarly opinion on the matter holds that that there WAS such a person, but that his actual life story was quickly displaced by the myth-making necessary to the formation of any cult. Others, perhaps better versed in ALL of the religious myths that have taken hold over the ages, hold that an actual historical figure isn’t necessary to explain the very few apparently ‘biographical’ details in the Gospels. In other words, there MAY have been such a person behind all of the legends, but the mechanisms of all known Belief systems are so easily seen in the formulation of this particular example that there didn’t really NEED to be such a person.

And this is hardly a matter to be considered lightly. The history of Christianity, in the early, formative stages, is murky at best, but remains one of the most important developments in human history. For Muslims, Jesus was one of the most important of God’s prophets, who would come again on the last day and kill the Antichrist. If it came to light that Jesus did not exist, or was at best a wandering Rabbi around whose short ministry an enduring mythology had been built, it would have obvious consequences – essentially tossing all of the New Testament as well as the Koran into question, and alienating hundreds of millions of ‘Believers’ of several stripes whose lives had been built around such belief.

However, we are no longer in the age of the flat-earth adherents, who similarly numbered nearly everyone, and summarily executed anyone who doubted their assertions. Hundreds of millions of people CAN be wrong, and a reading of history reveals that the vast majority has ALWAYS been wrong. And there is no mystery in this either – humans are herd animals, depending on each other for their mutual survival, and anyone who breaks ranks with the leadership of the moment threatens the rest of the herd, and must be culled.

The problem of Jesus, aside the societal fear and intimidation surrounding the question, is that it is impossible for any serious historian to employ either the Bible or the Koran as an historical documentation of anything at all. If either one was infallibly, historically accurate, and did, indeed, contain all of the Truth that needed to be known, then all of progress would have been arrested over a thousand years ago. Bringing either Christian or Muslim FAITH into what should be a disinterested historical inquiry undermines any search for the real truth, and the fact of progress in the face of those Faiths, and the steady retreat of the dogmas of Belief in the face of new discoveries should also be enough to give even the most stubborn and vehement of believers pause.

To my mind, since I’m getting long-winded here, it is a certainty, in any historical context, that the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were never spoken by any such person, since the Gospels were written by unknown authors some forty to eighty years after the crucifixion that is therein described. We can use all manner of evidence here, but to use only one – the Gospel of Mark is considered by most scholars to have been the earliest of them, but the Epistles of Paul reliably predate this writing, and make no mention whosoever of many of the details of the life of Jesus that we find in Mark. There is no mention of Jesus’ parents, or the Virgin Birth, or of a place of birth, or of John the Baptist, or of Judas, or of Peter’s denial, among many other rather crucial details that have entered firmly into the mythology, such as the miracles, the trial before a Roman official, the place of execution, nor even to Jerusalem.

There is also very little in the Non-Christian evidence, since of about sixty actively writing historians who were known to exist during the first century Roman world, there is amazingly little corroboration, and what little there is (from Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius) is vague, inconclusive, and unhelpful.

A charitable conclusion, built on the evidence, and lack of same, is that there may well have been a man, named Jesus, who hated the historical circumstances of dictatorship and oppression into which he was born, and who preached rebellion against this nonsense, and who was executed, along with hundreds of rebels like him, for that ‘rabble-rousing’ agitation.

Who knows why, when thousands are protesting, that one man is singled out and becomes the ‘Martin Luther King’ of his generation? A symbolic figurehead for everything that is wrong? Things needed to change, and whether history reveals that change to have been for the better is up to others to decide. But for my own part I view the Jesus figure, whether real or invented, to have been the lightning rod for a grass-roots rebellion, and one of the most successful ones in all of history.

I do not, however, subscribe to the thought that anyone or anything can be elevated to the status of deity.

The importance of a particular original post can be determined by the number of lines it takes Asath to give his opinion. Excellent OP.
 

ambush80

Senior Member
The importance of a particular original post can be determined by the number of lines it takes Asath to give his opinion. Excellent OP.

Your jabs are becoming tiresome and trite. Why not try to add to the discussion?
 

Asath

Senior Member
“Jesus existed but was completely human”

One needs to be very careful here – an assertion like this one leaves one open to the same standards that attend ALL assertions of fact.

One’s ‘belief’ is not a factor.

CAN it be demonstrated that the Jesus figure existed as a real person?

This question is the predicate upon which all else is founded.

By any standard one wishes to apply, aside the ‘belief-based,’ the genuine historical evidence is pretty thin, and given what IS known about the historical period, where the gruesome execution of ‘rabble-rousers’ and ‘dissenters’ was routine as an example to the masses, it seems as likely that such an individual man existed as it is likely that the idealized figurehead is an amalgam of ALL of those who resisted and perished for their rebellion. Remember here that the stories did not become written lore and legend for many, many years after the supposed fact.

Similar to the Civil Rights movement, but multiplied by about a thousand, nearly everyone was under the whip-hand of a central dictatorship that they found intolerable. In such a tinderbox, ANY spark that took hold was certain to create a wildfire. Fires of rebellion may take hold, and even today we witness riots that appear to be unreasonable and ‘spontaneous,’ but it is only well after the initial reactions that thoughtful folks look back and see the reasons. A long and thoughtful view suggests that this is quite likely the case with the Jesus figure.

One man probably did not create the overall movement, but in order to have a center to rally around, the movement may well have taken one man as their center.

And again, in an era where little was known, scientifically, and the rising Sun was still God-driven, nearly everything that was different or successful was attributed to the spirit world. Little wonder, then, that a grass-roots rebellion against the most powerful government on Earth would give ‘Divine’ attribution to their odd, and wholly unexpected, success.
 

stringmusic

To Be Determined
“Jesus existed but was completely human”

One needs to be very careful here – an assertion like this one leaves one open to the same standards that attend ALL assertions of fact.

One’s ‘belief’ is not a factor.

CAN it be demonstrated that the Jesus figure existed as a real person?

This question is the predicate upon which all else is founded.

By any standard one wishes to apply, aside the ‘belief-based,’ the genuine historical evidence is pretty thin, and given what IS known about the historical period, where the gruesome execution of ‘rabble-rousers’ and ‘dissenters’ was routine as an example to the masses, it seems as likely that such an individual man existed as it is likely that the idealized figurehead is an amalgam of ALL of those who resisted and perished for their rebellion. Remember here that the stories did not become written lore and legend for many, many years after the supposed fact.

Similar to the Civil Rights movement, but multiplied by about a thousand, nearly everyone was under the whip-hand of a central dictatorship that they found intolerable. In such a tinderbox, ANY spark that took hold was certain to create a wildfire. Fires of rebellion may take hold, and even today we witness riots that appear to be unreasonable and ‘spontaneous,’ but it is only well after the initial reactions that thoughtful folks look back and see the reasons. A long and thoughtful view suggests that this is quite likely the case with the Jesus figure.

One man probably did not create the overall movement, but in order to have a center to rally around, the movement may well have taken one man as their center.

And again, in an era where little was known, scientifically, and the rising Sun was still God-driven, nearly everything that was different or successful was attributed to the spirit world. Little wonder, then, that a grass-roots rebellion against the most powerful government on Earth would give ‘Divine’ attribution to their odd, and wholly unexpected, success.

Yes, I'm sure that Jesus, His disciples, and His followers decided to start a rebellion against a government that was sure to murder them over that rebellion, they all had a death wish. Great theory:rolleyes:, although not your own, surely you see the irrationality of it.
 
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