Who cares what any one person thinks? Lolo, if your “unimpressed”, why should anyone else care? Who needs to justify their personal beliefs to you? Who do you fancy yourself to be?
As if your mind isn’t made up. Please - level with us. Let’s not act as if we’re on the fence here.
Ah, c’mon, Hawth! You don’t like JCS? King Herod’s Song alone makes it great!
Ignore everything you think you know about this real or fictitious person and start over.
Once upon a time there were a people who took the idea of “living right” seriously enough to write down the rules, back when that kind of thing was rare. There was no separation of church and state back then, and certainly not here, where the book of rules was said to be the Law of God. This set of rules, the Law, had everything in it from “thou shalt not kill” to instructions on when and how to wash and what and how to prepare and eat your food. And because they took this all so seriously, you would be esteemed as a person, and respected, if you were viewed as living in accordance with the Law, whereas you would be pretty much cast out and snubbed and left out of things if you were viewed as one who reviled the Law.
Well, this had been going on for quite a long time, and these people had been enslaved or taken over at various points in their history, but had remained intact and kept their Law and survived all that, and now, once again, were conquered people living under the control of the empire of Rome. The Law, in addition to all those rules and directions, was a collection of stories of the people, and it was full of stories of leaders who had once led the people to freedom from those who enslaved them (a guy name Moses, in particular), so despite being conquered by Rome, the people had a certain spirit of “been there, done that, ain’t gonna last” and there was, along with the sense of rebellion-in-waiting, an anticipation of a great new leader who would do the Moses thing again and get Rome off their backs.
Meanwhile, going back to the business of social status and esteem and how people viewed each other as good with God or not so good with God, there was quite a bit of friction between different groups and factions concerning things like the propriety of profiting from the Roman occupation or how much you should give to the poor in order to earn the esteem of others. And, as in our day, there were plenty of your basic rigid fundamentalists doing some finger-pointing and, in the process, holding themselves up as counter-examples who were not doing these unLawful things.
So this Jesus fellow comes along and it turns out that he knows the Law well enough to use it against the fundies of his time, and he says that although the letter of the law is important and must abide, people should mainly concern themselves with the underlying spirit of what the Law actually says, its real message: forgive people if they do you wrong, share what you’ve got, love your neighbor; forgive them and forgive them again, not expecting or demanding compensation of some sort for forgiving; share without keeping track of what you’ve shared and forget about getting any of it back; love not only your loving neighbor, but even your hateful neighbor who isn’t loving you back. And don’t be doing these nice things in front of an audience to impress folks with how Lawful and righteous you are, and don’t go around pointing fingers at people and telling them they are doing it wrong.
So his other main message (the first main one being the bit about love and forgive and share) was therefore that Goodness, although it can be described and codified in a good Law, is always more important than and primary to the Law itself.
And he went around accepting misfits that were normally despised, thus violating the unspoken social codes about how to treat the unLawful who weren’t Doing It Right, and made many of them feel like actual people for the first time in years and years. He also visited sick folks, who were normally shunned (the Law advised quarantine, logically), and tried to help them, and soon all kinds of stories sprung up about how this Jesus guy could change your life.
So this was cool and groovy and attracted lots of flower children who could grok to this pretty good, and even moldy old finger-pointers – not so much the fundies as the ones who tended to point at the whole society and tell everyone how unGodly the whole culture had become – listened and got it and started following him.
But the fundies and the ones who liked to parade their Lawful Goodness ostentatiously as one of the Almight In Crowd, naturally enough, found this appalling and kept challenging him, trying to get him into trouble. He was hassled about visiting sick folks and pariahs on the Sabbath, but he defended himself, quoting the Law back at them; they tried to turn some of his flower-child words back against him–they accused him of committing blasphemy and declaring himself a God–but he cited a passage in the Law that said we are all Sons of the Most High (but don’t live up to it and fall short of our natures).
Meanwhile, the Romans, who had enough awareness of the old stories of Moses and the rebellion-in-waiting spirit of the people to be wary of anyone who attracted a following, didn’t like the way people were clustering around this Jesus guy, and it didn’t help that many of them were saying he was going to lead them out of bondage as they’d been expecting someone would. When Jesus ran some loan sharks out of the temple, it attracted a lot of attention. So when the fundies decided to do something about Jesus, they went with the idea of turning him in to the Romans as an insurrectionist, and the Romans found it convenient to be able to intervene at the request of some officials of these people themselves rather than of their own accord.
So they locked him up, tried him for being a troublemaker, and killed him.
good point.
I suppose if it was true I might be impressed, if not for all that needless killing and sexism strewn throughout…
but oh well.
clearly you care, or you wouldn’t be here. and by your same, and totally ineffectual, logic… (I say with the same perceived whine)"Who care what you think? nanny nanny boo boo, stick you head in doo doo!
Dostoyevsky, Isaac Newton, Kierkegaard, Bach…
Nope. All morons.
AHunter3,
I don’t know of anything I’ve enjoyed reading more than the post you graced us with here. Thank you. I’m going to scroll back up and read it again.
Ahunter3,
decent story. No, I’m still not that impressed. I suppose I’m not impressed b/c Jesus supposedly casted out demons (laughable) and was said to have done all sorts of other shtuff I find equivocable with much other myth.
I suppose I’m also not impressed b/c Jesus and Peter were in and end of the world cult and the world didn’t end.
One man’s rejection of an empire is nothing new, even for jesus. people did it and do it all the time.
To think Jesus, if all the stories are actually attributable to one man, was the only fellow who could see the right from the wrong or even the best, I find misleading.
many egalitarian societies existed before the roman empire. Many egalitarian societies axisted after. Jesus lived in a small part of the world for a brief time.
so, no, I’m not impressed.
I’m not impressed b/c i’m not impressed enough by his story. And really, it’s just a story.
and if we’re going to look at the story I think we should look at the whole story.
Can anyone magically turn water into wine? no.
walk on water?
do the fish and bread trick?
cast out demons?
no, no, no.
But that’s just my opinion. So, if it impresses you, great. it still doesn’t impress me. But, and I think mantegout made a great point, I don’t see it as real. I don’t even see his ideas as necessarily right or even close to correct.
But, and I must stress this, that doesn’t mean I’m right either.
That is indeed a great post Ahunter3, I skipped it at first because of it’s length, but gave it a chance because of Libertarian’s comment.
It shows how even dyed-in-wool atheists like myself can respect at least some of the teachings of Jesus the man, even when we don’t believe in Jesus the Christ.
It seems to me there are two general cases: Jesus wrought miracles, or he did not.
What you seem to be saying, above, is that even if you accept his execution of miracles - supernatural phenomena - you would still be unimpressed, based on the “needless killing and sexism” that occurred around his time. (As you know, Jesus himself is not alleged to have killed anyone).
So the question I asked above is quite relevant, even though my tone in the previous post was clearly tongue-in-cheek: if supernatural events such as described in the Gospels do not impress you, what would? I’d suggest your “impression threshold” is unreasonably high.
If I misunderstood you – if your real message is: “I am not impressed because I don’t believe that Jesus - or any man - could do the feats attributed to him,” then we have a different argument indeed. And it’s an argument you could have made succinctly in the first post, instead of dancing around in the OP with this “impressed” business.
“Jesus: He didn’t do anything supernatural” or “Jesus - Why such a cult following for obvious falsehoods?” These subjects might have better illustrated your message, I suggest.
Erm, in the New Testament? (since we’re talking about Jesus, not Xianity)
Sure, Mange! You know. All those murderous crusades that Jesus led. And how He disrespected that Samaritan woman.
Bricker,
I was talking about the killing by a supposed God in the bible.
same god in both testaments, no?
or are you suggesting the OT is falsely prophecized and or divined?
Ah, we have yet another person railing against God while still unable to take up the premise of God seriously. If you want to complain about God, at least do so in the proper context–that there is an afterlife, with suitable reward for your actions here, and that hence death isn’t the end of everything.
If not, well then, I’m not much impressed either.
and what would be the serious premise of God? would that be your premise and anyone in disagreement is simply unable to take the premise seriously?
I feel the, "You just don’t understand! vibe coming through.
what exactly am I missing?
and by all means, please expound upon a concept necessarily outside of any comprehension. please, I beg you.
OK, so you don’t accept the myths of Jesus. Therefore, you aren’t impressed by the Christ aspect of Jesus.
Fine. Let’s go back to Jesus the man.
He started a frickin’ MAJOR religion? How many people have done that? Not many, since there are only 5 major religions in the world. So he’s one of 5 men in world history to have a major impact on world philosophy, religion, morals that lasted 2,000 years. That doesn’t impress you? Lolo who exactly are you impressed by? Anyone?
Himself likely. He seems to enjoy his trolling.
The Christian view is that it’s the same deity proposed in both Testaments. IIRC, the Judaic view is that the deity proposed in the New Testament can not be the same as the one in the OT.
I am not a believer and I certainly don’t buy into the claims that Jesus was the son of God and that he walked on water, etc. Still I am quite impressed by him.
It’s easy to take his philosophy for granted these days since it has been so ingrained in our culture, but that was not the case when Jesus was alive. Place him in the context of his time and place and you (the generic “you” not “You, Lolo”) can appreciate the huge philosophical leap he made.