Apparently, your receiver needs some tweaking. We (Poly, Tris, Mange, me, and others) have said many times that we consider an atheist who loves to be our spiritual peer. You say that you give and receive love, yet searching your posts to find it is frustrating.
Leave me alone, you say. (“Consider your oligation fulfilled.”) We are deceived/stupid/incorrigable, you tell us. ("…your god was a vague idea/explanation/excuse in the back of a primitive persons’ mind’). We’re liars, you insist. ("…Christianity tries to claim credit…") And we’re delusional, you point out. ("…imaginary beings.")
If that’s what you consider to be love, then I would ask that you please stop loving me.
The thing is that if you are a atheist but accept there was a real man called Jesus and that he at some stages in his life proclaimed himself to be the son of God / God. Then Jesus was one of two things
a: A charlatan
b: Delusional
It doesn’t really bother me either way.
I think some of the sayings / teaching attributed to Jesus are a good beginning on how to live your life but they were not original or world changing ideas.
What was done on the back of the man did change the world.
A possibility is that, if there was a Jesus, he was a nice guy who tried to tell people to be nice to each other. After he left, his followers got overzealous and switched the message, Instead of promoting the “Be Nice” message, they started promoting the “Jesus says Be Nice” message, while giving examples, made up or otherwise, of why Jesus’ “Be Nice” message is more important than anyone elses’ “Be Nice” message.
Another possibility is that Jesus was nuts.
Another is that he never existed.
First: Sorry, my first post came out sort of weird. It should have read “If you saw a salesman…” Damn last minute revisions.
Second: Hypothetically let’s say a door-to-door salesman came to your house and tried to sell a carpet cleaning product. However he says, “There’s no evidence that this actually works. I have no proof whatsoever that this is an effective carpet cleaner.” would you buy his product? No. But similarly, Christianity provides no proof about its validity, but you will devote your whole life to it?
Third: I would say that it “isn’t legit” based not just on the deeds done in its name (althought they don’t help), but more in the sheer evil built into it. (see this thread for more.)
I understand your point, Qwerty, but I don’t understand what it has to do with the topic at hand. Your salesman would not be saying that there’s “no evidence”. Rather, he would be offering testimonials from some two billion of the world’s people.
Mangetout and Lib, you must remember that our assigned mission is not to defend the teachings of Christianity, but to show Christ to others.
If you take the “love God and show love to all men,” “return good for evil,” “do not judge, as you yourself fear to be judged,” “be perfect as God is perfect,” and similar passages and add to them something that amounts to “You can do it, for you will be strengthened to do it,” you’d have a great deal of what Jesus said in summary.
Now, how do we go about showing that mind which we’re told to have in us to somebody who’s been as burned by zealous legalists calling themselves Christians (with who knows what justification?) as Czarcasm or JayJay (whom I’ve noticed has been intensely quiet in this thread)?
You have failed to even notice my point, Czar. You did not criticize, you ridiculed. Someone started a thread to find out what the “Message of Jesus” is. You cannot really believe that your post expressed a real message from Jesus, or a mythological message from Jesus, or even the delusional beliefs of Christians as to what the message of Jesus is. If your first reply to this post was not a deliberate attack on the intellectual stature of Christians, you have a very poor set of communication skills. A deliberate insult is a deliberate attack. If it was a mistake, it was an extraordinary example of speaking without thinking.
You do denigrate Christians, and you cannot believe that your message on this thread, or any of the many threads on ethics, morals, or religion have expressed universal love for those who believe in any God. Obvious contempt for others who do not share your opinions is there. Saying over and over that it is not is a silly exercise, since if it was not your intent to insult and denigrate others because of their beliefs, you are failing miserably at whatever it was you were trying to do.
Just trying to point out that maybe the message came long before your designated messenger, and that if maybe people spent more time spent more time spreading the mesage and less time promoting their idealized and romanticised version of their designated messenger, the message might be more warmly received.
“People should take care of one another and help each other in their endevours.”
“O.K., sounds like a great idea!”
“Just realize that you have to do through the name of (insert name of favorite savior here), in just this certain way, or awful things will happen to you.”
“Ummm…I’ll get back to you on that, O.K.?”
It is our belief, Czar, that the message cannot have predated Him simply because He Himself is that message. He is the Word. That is not to cast any sort of dispersion on anyone else who might have said to love one another, but merely that Jesus is Himself what they say when they say it.
I don’t mind your holding your own opinions, and I accept your word that you don’t hate Him. But in doing the very thing you complain most about — prosyletizing your views on Him with a nearly violent passion — you aren’t getting across the point that you intend. There is a refreshing difference between your latest tempered post, and posts where you’ve ridiculed Jesus and therefore those who worship Him.
Please, if you love us, know that we love Him. Do you go around talking about your friends’ mothers as though they were worthless whores? Of course not. If we are your friends, please respect our beliefs. Despite what you might suspect, they are based on firm convictions of personal experience and not brainwashings. We haven’t been duped by anyone or anything.
In all honesty, do you not think that either Poly or Tris or Mange or I have demonstrated an ability to think rationally? Do you ever stop to think how you come across when you say that the man we love is a snake-oil salesman at best and a lunatic at worst? What is the difference between your taunting us as delusional and that of a man who taunts homosexuals and calls them perverted?
It is all the more bewildering since we do not recognize His message in anything that you’ve attributed to Him. It is like hearing the weird arguments of a Creationist about the Second Law of Thermodynamics when you know very well that he has misinterpreted its implications. It is like hearing the bully who incessantly mocks Paul McCartney simply because he knows that you’re a fan.
If nothing else, you should at least consider your status as moderator, and treat your board members who are in good standing with the utmost respect at all times. From now on, please say things the way you just did. Say that, in your opinion, the message might have come long before Jesus. But please do not say that Jesus is a fraud, implying that we are therefore gullible dumbasses. Everyone can plainly see that we are not.
THe trouble is that some very religious people, such as yourself, try to bring forth the false argument that:
I am “attacking” your god
And you identify so strongly with your god that you feel as if
I am personally attacking you.
Sorry, but I refuse to go down that road, for it tends to stifle all critical conversation about any religion. If I state my personal opinion that Christianity might not be the be-all and end-all of religions, or even if I bring forth my opinion that Jesus(if he existed) wasn’t the first to bring forth a message of love and forgiveness, it is NOT fair for you to complain that you have been personally attacked.
You are not God.
Criticising him(if he exists) is NOT criticising you.
Perhaps it’s time to jump off this merry-go-round; we seem to be (wrongly or otherwise) interpreting your comments as personally hostile, you seem to be (rightly or otherwise) interpreting our responses as paranoid and overly-defensive. (Not that I want to put words in your mouth).
I suspect if we were able to discuss this face to face over a pint, the conversation might not have spiralled in this particular direction (although we probably still wouldn’t agree); ho hum, live and learn. It’s all too easy to be misunderstood in a plain-text conversation.
Your points are well taken, Czarcasm – you have not attacked us, the posters. But you have indeed attacked a point important to us, which we are doing our best to explain and defend in a rational way. Your allegations are not documented, but suppositions. That they may be your beliefs regarding the question at hand justifies your stating them, but you run the risk of being classed with Lolo as incompetent at debate if you simply repeat your own versions of “I’m not impressed.” I will grant that hard objective evidence that is not slanted towards belief is difficult to come by on this topic, but there are a wide array of scholarly sources out there regarding the basic question at hand, ranging from the dogmatic to the extremely skeptical. Why not use some of them that support your views, or attempt to refute some of them that do not?
Finally, regarding whether Jesus’s ethic was a pastiche of truisms, I trust you’ve heard the story of the man who read Hamlet for the first time, and said he was not impressed with it: “It’s all a bunch of famous quotations; nothing original to it.”?
How can statements like the one above be accepted as logical discourse? The message of “Love one another, treat each other as brothers, and take care of each other” is not exclusive of your religion, and it existed in one form or the other before your religion did. When did Jesus obtain copyright on the above concept? Jesus is the message? At most, I will accept that Jesus taught this and other messages. This wild idea that when people try to pass the message of love, they are actually saying “Jesus” is not the norm throughout the world, believe me.
