Conclusive proof that Jesus was NOT divine

[Randy Carson]

I have. It's sitting right here on my desk, I just dug it out. And now what? Hijiri is right.

Great!

What is your opinion of the conversion of Peter and his assessment of Christopher's atheism?

[reasonist]

Interesting question. Peter is in my opinion an agnostic or a deist at most. He believes in evolution. They grew up separately for most of their youth and didn't like each other that much. Peter was an atheist and probably just switched to piss off Christopher. Peter was quite a drunk and womanizer in his earlier years until he found god. Just replaced one drug with another.
Christopher always won the debate on it's merits, Peter disliked debating him because of that; as far as I know they had only 3 or 4 debates. But they always respected each other despite their differences. I read his " The Abolition of Britain", a pessimistic rant of an isolationist.
If you follow both brother's career, you will find that their path was very similar in their younger years. It seems to me that Peter always felt like being in the shadow of his older brother. That's why he changed his outlook in life. From ultra left wing to social conservative, from atheism to faith. I hope that explains.

Now you have to tell us why you reject many monotheistic gods but belief in a particular one. We established that you are an atheist like us, we belief in one god less than you.
Was it indoctrination from someone or you were in need of an emotional crutch? And surely if you were born in say Riyadh you still would be a Jesus believer, right? You would be executed but you would insist...

[hrdlr110]

I caught that too! lol!

[marom1963]

All the fairy tales aside, the problem is not even the questions of 'Was Jesus Divine' or even 'Has Jesus really existed as a person?' There is no need for one man for any of this to occur. Having said that probably there have been a  few dozen real life men that have tried to lead revolutions of some sort in the environment of those days in Ancient Rome. The 'nobles' controlling all the land, slaves doing all the work and citizens never getting paid enough to survive. Constant immigrations to the cities...etc. And there are soldiers of course. Soldiers are crucial.

Highly likely there were other rumoured stories that grew up to a point but never manage to become myths in the end and faded away in course of hundreds of years. And when one stuck around -the tipping point- and spread enough to become dangerous enough to threaten the Empire they have felt the need to make it official and standardise it for control. Now, when you are 'making' an epic story for people you take motifs and characters people already are familiar with in collective memory.

The options in myth making is pretty few anyway. Of course there will be a man with super powers. What else was there going to be? A squirrel? An ordinary man? What good is that? You need a super hero. And you need to make that man perform extraordinary deeds, make him say things that contrast the system they live in, so people would follow him. None of it has to be original, infact it must not be original, it must be very simple so people would follow it. What is that? 'This man was killed and he came back.' A hero that defied the very fear why humans invented religions and god in the first place. Fear of Death.

How did Christianity spread, what Constantine did, what what was done in Nicea councils and others with creeds is politics catching up. They are not a different political decision than what Ramses II has done to keep the order and the balance of the masses, more than thousand years before Jesus. In a different way, but for the same goals.

But in real life practice, it comes down to the soldiers. If a threatening amount of soldiers didn't convert to Christianity -remember that the only biggest power is trained, armed men that day- Christian myth could have died out easily. Because it wouldn't have even become the official religion of the Roman Empire. And even that took a very long time.

You know what, looking from the point of view of domestic politics of the Empire, the whole thing is actually brilliant.

The Christian myth bore a great similarity to the Mithra myth. Mithra had been the god of choice of the legions for quite some time. The problem w/Mithra was that his cult did not admit women. Enter Jesus. A similar god, allowing easy conversion of the troops - and allowing their extended families to join, as well. Now the whole family could worship Mithra/Jesus. Everybody was happy.

[marom1963]

FACT: Thomas Jefferson is not recognized as a NT scholar or an authority on the material he commented upon in this passage. He is offering his personal opinion, and the only reason this is even noted is because of his celebrity status. This is the equivalent of someone like Beyonce testifying before congress on climate change without having any genuine scientific credentials whatsoever.

How dare you compare a noted scholar, fluent in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French to Beyonce! How dare you! Jefferson had a fine education and was widely read. He had the largest private library in North America. How dare you!

[marom1963]

7 minutes of enlightenment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMo5R5pLPBE

I love Christopher Hitchens!

[Randy Carson]

Interesting question. Peter is in my opinion an agnostic or a deist at most. He believes in evolution. They grew up separately for most of their youth and didn't like each other that much. Peter was an atheist and probably just switched to piss off Christopher. Peter was quite a drunk and womanizer in his earlier years until he found god. Just replaced one drug with another.
Christopher always won the debate on it's merits, Peter disliked debating him because of that; as far as I know they had only 3 or 4 debates. But they always respected each other despite their differences. I read his " The Abolition of Britain", a pessimistic rant of an isolationist.
If you follow both brother's career, you will find that their path was very similar in their younger years. It seems to me that Peter always felt like being in the shadow of his older brother. That's why he changed his outlook in life. From ultra left wing to social conservative, from atheism to faith. I hope that explains.

I don't think Peter views himself as "an agnostic or a deist at most". And you propose that Peter became a believer just to get our from under Christopher's shadow? Interesting take.

Now you have to tell us why you reject many monotheistic gods but belief in a particular one. We established that you are an atheist like us, we belief in one god less than you.

Nope. Apparently, you missed this thread:

Do Atheists Just Believe in One Less God Than Christians?
http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=10068.0

Oh...wait...you have several posts in that thread.

Was it indoctrination from someone or you were in need of an emotional crutch?

The grace of God and my own reasoning. Mostly grace. I was raised in a Christian home, but I hadn't been to church in years when God reached out to me.

And surely if you were born in say Riyadh you still would be a Jesus believer, right? You would be executed but you would insist...

Probably not. But I would still have the obligation to follow God as best I could with the information available to me.

Same as you.

[reasonist]

Probably not. But I would still have the obligation to follow God as best I could with the information available to me.

Same as you.

Unfortunately you did not answer the question on the other thread either. But at least you gave a partial answer here. So I will try this one more time, let's see if you have the honesty to answer the question objectively.

You would NOT follow Jesus as a christian if you would have been born and raised in Riyadh. There would be no bible available, it's possession is equivalent to a death sentence. The only book available would be the Koran, your parents would have sent you to a madrassa where you would recite the book of Mohammad all day long.
If you would have been born in New Delhi you would be a follower of the Sikh religion, in Peking it would be Shangdi etc etc.It's called social conditioning and is a proven fact and a logical conclusion.
All the current monotheisms claim exclusive truth at the exclusion of other faiths. Milliions have been slaughtered because of "minor differences" over the last 2 millennia.
But here is the crux. The truth is not a local phenomena. The truth is universal. It doesn't change with geographic location. The truth is the truth in Siberia or Saigon, Singapore or Switzerland. Truth proven by facts, verifiable, testable and disprovable facts. Of course the guy in Baghdad defends his truth as fervently as you do, many times with brute force. Depending where you Randy Carson were born, you might be a suicide bomber, an aspiring martyr or a monk in Tibet for all you know.
A peer reviewed, proven fact on the other hand is the same anywhere in the world. There aren't many different truths. There can only be one. And as long as you don't admit that, we cannot have a honest dialogue. So try to think as a human primate, which means objectively, and a whole new, wonderful world will open up for you. Where you are now, most of us have been many years ago, so we know where you come from. It's tough to let go but it's the only way if you want to be honest with yourself and others.

[Baruch]

And that is why Constantine must conquer the world, posthumously.  To prevent kids in Riyadh from not becoming good 4th century Romans ... who probably ended up in hellfire anyway.  "hellfire and brimstone" were real places ... mines on Sicily and Sardinia ... where some people were transported to work out their punishment.  "lake of fire" of course refers to Mt Etna also in Sicily.  The method of eruption of Mt Vesuvius, was unlike Mt Etna, and that is why the Romans didn't get away quicker.  The Sicilian Greek philosopher, Empedocles, became a god by throwing himself into the molten crater of Mt Etna.

[reasonist]

And that is why Constantine must conquer the world, posthumously.  To prevent kids in Riyadh from not becoming good 4th century Romans ... who probably ended up in hellfire anyway.  "hellfire and brimstone" were real places ... mines on Sicily and Sardinia ... where some people were transported to work out their punishment.  "lake of fire" of course refers to Mt Etna also in Sicily.  The method of eruption of Mt Vesuvius, was unlike Mt Etna, and that is why the Romans didn't get away quicker.  The Sicilian Greek philosopher, Empedocles, became a god by throwing himself into the molten crater of Mt Etna.

Pompeii revisited. From death trap to tourist trap.

[Baruch]

Pompeii revisited. From death trap to tourist trap.

We all become archeology eventually ;-)

[PickelledEggs]

Of course Jesus wasn't divine. Same thing with every other person that never existed in the first place.

-Sent from your mom

[widdershins]

Probably not. But I would still have the obligation to follow God as best I could with the information available to me.

Same as you.

Well, then, we're all good.  The information available to me is "there are no gods".  That being the information I have, I AM following God as best I can with the information available to me.  Since there are no gods, there is nothing to follow but my own sense of morality, which I do follow.

[Randy Carson]

Well, then, we're all good.  The information available to me is "there are no gods".  That being the information I have, I AM following God as best I can with the information available to me.  Since there are no gods, there is nothing to follow but my own sense of morality, which I do follow.

Is that actually the information you have available to you? That there is no God?

Weird. More than two thirds of the population of earth disagrees with that.

That doesn't make them right, of course, but it ought to make you wonder if you've missed something that others are seeing...

But you don't care, so all is well. Stay Calm and Carry On.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Is that actually the information you have available to you? That there is no God?

Weird. More than two thirds of the population of earth disagrees with that.

That doesn't make them right, of course, but it ought to make you wonder if you've missed something that others are seeing...

But you don't care, so all is well. Stay Calm and Carry On.

Wow, found two of them this time.




Arguments like this make me want to convert to Buddhism. I could use some meditation about now!