Demystifying Jesus

[Aussiescribbler]

I don't think the Gospels are a fully authentic account of Jesus's teachings, but I think they get the gist (with some extras added). But for sins, I don't think he really cared all that much. He had a message for Jews, and he does talk about Jewish laws and the like. But that was addressed to the Jews, and really didn't have an impact on Gentiles. As in, I don't have to follow the Jewish laws as I'm not a practicing Jew. And historically, I don't think that Jews were as worried about sin as we are.

I think he was much more focused on the new kingdom, and that we should live as if it was here. So yes, things like love over material possessions, forgiveness, loving of one's enemies, etc. And that is a great message we call can find some worth in. So we do agree there. I see it largely as tolerance. A message similar to Martin Luther Kings Jr. A message one is willing to die for.

As for the Pharisees. Their philosophy really doesn't come into the OT. E.P. Sanders has a great book called Paul and Palestinian Judaism, as well as some other works on Judaism in the time of Jesus, that help to understand Pharisaic thought. Regretfully, we only have to Pharisees from the first century that wrote; Josephus and Paul, and both have problems when looking at Judaism.

Thanks. It does seem there is a good deal of agreement between your sense of Jesus' message and my own. Letting go of selfishness and opening up to love is what I see as the essence. It may be that I've over-emphasised the idea of "sin" because it fits so well with my own belief that a sense of guilt often lies at the heart of selfishness. Having the guilt lifted - i.e. having one's sins forgiven - may be a more specifically Christian emphasis on something which was less important in Jesus' actual message to his fellow Jews.

I've also been very heavily influenced by William Blake. Of course he was someone doing what I'm doing - looking for personal meaning in the gospel writings - rather than a scholar studying them as a historical artefact to be understood within the context of the times.

For Blake forgiveness of sins is the crux of the matter, as he says in the unedited version of The Everlasting Gospel :

What can this Gospel of Jesus be
What Life Immortality
What was it that he brought to Light
That Plato & Cicero did not write

The Heathen Deities wrote them all
These Moral Virtues great & small
What is the Accusation of Sin
But Moral Virtue's deadly Gin
The Moral Virtues in their Pride
Did o'er the World triumphant ride
In Wars & Sacrifice for Sin
And Souls to Hell ran trooping in
The Accuser Holy God of All
This Pharisaic Worldly Ball
Amidst them in his Glory Beams
Upon the Rivers & the Streams
Then Jesus rose & said to Me
Thy Sins are all forgiven thee
Loud Pilate Howl'd loud Caiphas Yell'd
When they the Gospel Light beheld
It was when Jesus said to Me
They Sins are all forgiven thee
The Christian trumpets loud proclaim
Thro all the World in Jesus name
Mutual forgiveness of each Vice
And oped the Gates of Paradise
The Moral Virtues in Great fear
Formed the Cross & Nails & Spear
And the Accuser standing by
Cried out Crucify Crucify
Our Moral Virtues neer can be
Nor Warlike pomp & Majesty
For Moral Virtues all begin
In the Accusations of Sin
And Moral Virtues End
In destroying the Sinner's Friend

This makes sense to me though, that the Jewish spiritual authorities, like the moral philosophers of Rome and Greece, where concerned with the issue of moral virtue which causes division by encouraging us to judge people as either righteous or wicked. If Jesus delivered a message that encouraged people to love everyone regardless of their behaviour - just as God "...causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." [Matthew 5:45] then this would have been quite revolutionary and forgiveness of sins would have been central to that message. Or forgiveness of immoral behaviour if sin as Christians tend to conceive of it was not a major concern for Jews.

 

[RedDragon94]

Yeshua doesn't save us from sin; that is all the made up stuff that came after from the Pharisees John, Paul and Simon the stone (petros).

Then why would Jesus say that whoever does not believe in him is condemned already? (John 3:36)

 

[Aussiescribbler]

So I don't get how pulling him out in this thread as if he were different or that there is anymore proof for Jesus then anyone else.

If you are asking why I started this thread about Jesus rather than any other historic religious figure it is because the words attributed to him have proven inspirational to me in my quest to better understand myself and human behaviour generally. I think it very likely that Buddha or Lao-Tse might provide me with similar inspiration if and when I get around to reading them. I don't consider myself to be a Christian for a number of reasons. I don't believe in the supernatural. I don't believe in any form of worship. I don't want to tie myself down to necessarily agreeing with Jesus on all issues. If I were a Christian it would be of the gnostic variety.

 

[Aussiescribbler]

Hello scribbler, what is behind your forum name?

Aussiescribbler is a user name I have used for many years at various different forums. If you do a Google search you will probably find me popping up in lots of places. I also have published erotica ebooks under that pseudonym. The meaning is that I live in Australia and am an amateur writer with a sense of self-deprecation. I later came up with another pseudonym - Joe Blow - for my writings on psychology, as I wanted to distinguish that writing from the smut.

One of the most beloved and brilliant journalists to have ever lived stated what must be and what can't be true concerning the historical claims from or about Christ. He stated:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
A quote from Mere Christianity

So Jesus was either a madman or he was God incarnate. Since his claim to coming on the clouds of heaven to rule the earth as occupant of the throne of God is recorded in the same place as your issue about his coming to a wedding, you must either accept all the biblical claims about Christ or none of them. There is no hero in neutrality, and if you choose not to decide you still have made your choice.

I'm actually very familiar with that quote from C.S. Lewis. I haven't read the book itself, but the quote is hard to avoid.

First let me say that my view of lunatics is not quite as dismissive as Lewis's. I've experienced psychotic episodes a number of times in my life as part of more generalised nervous breakdowns. Given that the normal state which we classify as sanity is actually a state of alienation, as the psychiatrist R. D. Laing pointed out, there can be a kind of truthfulness in the psychotic state. Of course it can't be trusted. Where there is insight it comes in symbolic form, but we tend to take it literally. And since the psychotic state is generally precipitated by a profound emotional crisis and can be a very frightening experience, the psychotic is not in any position to benefit from that insight at the time. Later when things calm down and the capacity for reason reasserts itself it may be possible to recognise that one was lost in both states and that the psychotic state brought visions which, if properly understood, can help to lead the way to being less lost, less alienated. To give an example of symbolic insight, my psychotic mind told me to be naked. I took my clothes off and got into trouble. Later I realised that I was being told to be honest - to remove the clothing of a false persona.

I'll include a quote from R. D. Laing regarding God which I think may amplify the relevance of what I'm saying here :

There is no doubt, it seems to me, that there have been profound changes in the experience of man in the last thousand years, In some ways this is more evident than changes in the patterns of his behavior. There is everything to suggest that man experienced God. Faith was never a matter of believing He existed, but of trusting in the Presence that was experienced and known to exist as a self-validating datum. It seems likely that far more people in our time neither experience the Presence of God, nor the Presence of His absence, but the absence of His Presence.

We require a history of phenomena – not simply more phenomena of history.

As it is, the secular psychotherapist is often in the role of the blind leading the half-blind.

The fountain has not played itself out, the Flame still shines, the River still flows, the Spring still bubbles forth, the Light has not faded. But between us and It, there is a veil which is more like fifty feet of solid concrete. Deus absconditus. Or we have absconded.

SLS · Bibliography · Transcendental Experience in Relation to Religion and Psychosis

This fits in with my pantheism, which I will discuss further below. Laing is talking about people in the past having a direct experience of God rather than a belief in something they can't see. To me this suggests the pantheist who sees God directly in the orderliness of nature. When my alienated - i.e. dishonest - frame of thinking broke down in psychosis my encounter with the truths which lay buried beneath was frightening and characterised by supernatural "magical thinking". So it seems to me that the distance between an individual and his God and the degree to which that God is viewed as a magical supernatural being is a measure of how alienated they are. To give an example, someone who is practicing a great deal of sexual repression will be alienated emotionally and intellectually because of the need to exercise restraint on free emotion and free thought lest either reconnect them with the disturbing force of their bottled up libido. Such an individual is unlikely to see divinity in nature, because when they look at nature they see animals copulating just like they want to do. Their concept of the divine has to be something otherworldly enough to have no hint of the sexual about it.

Was Jesus a lunatic? At the time he was preaching clearly not. We see a person with clarity, insight and self-possession. What is an interesting possibility is whether his encounter with the devil in the desert was actually a period of psychosis which helped to give him his deep understanding of the human psyche.

Was Jesus "the Devil of Hell"? If one looks at much of what has been done in his name one could be forgiven for thinking so, but it is not as if any of that behaviour was uncharacteristic for humans.

But this isn't really an issue for me because I do accept his claim to be God (if he made such a claim). I'm a pantheist. For me everything is God. I'm God. You're God. The Eiffel Tower is God. Of course applying the term that broadly makes it meaningless, as you point out below. So let's be more specific. For me "God" is a mythological personification of the creative principle of the universe - that general principle which allows complexity and order to come into being. Everything which exists in the universe is an expression of that principle, but it can be seen in a more concentrated form where the most creation is taking place. If we call the presence of this principle "divinity" - then a human being is more divine than a rock. Since we are all products of this process we are all "sons (and daughters) of God". And love is the force by which this creative process brings meaningful organisation to human society. So "God is love". What is a prophet? A prophet is someone who gives voice to the principle. Truth is the framework which makes love on the larger social scale possible (lies separate us, but truth is the place were we can agree and come together). So anyone who tells the truth is a prophet. The deeper the truths they tell cut through the social fabric of lies the more important they are among prophets. While any of us, as active agents of the creative principle, would be qualified to refer to ourselves as "God" (as long as we mean this in the same way we would mean it if we said "I am life"), Jesus, as a very powerful truth teller, could really speak for the creative principle (i.e. "God").

Regarding this passage : "I am," said Jesus. "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." Matthew 14:62 - this is a bit different from the account of the marriage at Cana in that it is a prediction. I did say that I view Jesus as someone who spoke poetically. A poet may talk about "Spring tiptoeing across the flowers with her gauzy raiment blowing around her". We know that there is no such entity. It's just a way of conjuring up a stronger emotional response to a nature phenomena. Jesus referred to himself as "the Son of Man". This has a similar connotation to me as Nietzsche talking about the "Übermensch". If the social evolution of the human race has been retarded by some kind of psychological flaw which has kept us from becoming a specie individual - a state I identify with Jesus prediction of a time when the "Kingdom of Heaven" would be realised - the will of God, i.e. the loving instinct toward creative cooperation, being done on Earth as it is in Heaven (i.e. the world of the idealising imagination) - then Jesus is the prototype new human - the non-retarded son of the retarded human race - and so the arrival he prophesies is not literally his own, but that of the new humanity of which he was the prototype. "sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One" means working side by side with the creative principle and benefiting by its powerful allegiance. So it means we will be working with nature instead of against it. "...coming on the clouds of heaven..." means the arrival of this new state of consciousness will be so dramatic and spread so quickly that it will be as if it fell upon us from the sky.

 

[Aussiescribbler]

Christ's primary mission had to do with spiritual matters not earthly matters. So if you gut his supernatural claims you have denied Christ's primary claims and roll. Now we must decide to believe or not believe Christ about supernatural claims but to believe in things contrary to the evidence then we are acting in the most foolish way possible. So the issue is not so much what we believe but what the evidence suggests we should believe. It comes down to what it always does, the evidence for a claim. Do you want to shift gears to the evidence and argumentation concerning specific claims to the supernatural?

This raises an interesting question. What do we mean by "spiritual" and what do we mean by "earthly"?

To me spirituality is about the realm of emotional relationships. If I read a beautiful poem, it may move me to tears. For me, that is a spiritual experience, which doesn't require belief in the supernatural. Love is something physical - it is a sensation of the body which accompanies the release of the chemical oxytocin into the blood stream. But we experience love because of our relationship with others. Spirituality has meaning for me in the same way that music has meaning. Music is more than the physicality of sounds made by instruments. It is a pattern which shapes one part of physical reality in such a way that it can cause another part of physical reality to have an emotional reaction. So I am concerned with spiritual matters - with the world of immaterial relationships which effect the way we feel and act as humans.

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place." John 18:36

What does Jesus mean by "not of this world"? Some would interpret this as meaning not of this physical world, i.e. the Earth itself. I don't see it that way. I think he means that his "kingdom" is not part of the world of social relations as it has historically existed. We talk about a person not having "worldly concerns" in the sense of having no interest in wealth or honours.

Of course, not believing in the supernatural, I have to have a non-supernatural interpretation of "heaven". For me, heaven is an idealised potential world of loving social relations which can be apprehended by the imagination. The aim is to bring this vision to fruition. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:19-21. For me this has a direct non-supernatural applicability. Love is more important than material wealth and the more we cultivate it the more we can be blessed by feeling the warmth of that heavenly potential world burning in our veins. We may not be able to live there, but we can participate in it.

That is not quite accurate, countless claims (maybe even the majority) were recorded by eyewitnesses. It depends on which specific claims your examining as to whether they were recorded by eyewitnesses.

But do we have those eye witness accounts? If an eye-witness account is being reported by someone else, there are already two levels on which it can be inaccurate or even fabricated. I haven't read a lot about how the New Testament came to be written. I've read Bart D. Ehrmann's Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible, which was fascinating, but I haven't read much more. I haven't even got around to reading more of the New Testament than the four gospels and Revelations. Religion is a bit of a side-interest for me.

No offense intended but I have often remarked that I consider Pantheism to be one of the stranger types of religions. Pantheism's central tenant is that nature and God are equivalent but that makes one of those two terms redundant, and if God is equivalent to nature then since nature is not divine then in what way is it God? If God equals nature why not call everything either God or everything nature. Also all the evidence we have points to the universe coming into being out of nothing a finite time ago. So how in the world is nature the cause of nature's beginning to exist? Perhaps you can harmonize Pantheism's self contradictions.

I've come to call myself a pantheist because I asked someone what I was and they suggested I might be a pantheist. When I read the definition it seemed closer than anything else. Here is the definition I get from Google : "a doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God."

I'm not a religious person. I don't, personally, consider pantheism to be a religion. When I look up definitions of the term "religion", worship always seems to be involved. Worship makes no sense to me in the framework of pantheism. Worship requires separation. You worship something which is other than yourself. (I suppose an extreme egotist might worship himself, but even then he would be worshipping himself as something distinct from everything else which he does not feel worthy of worship.) To view the universe itself as in indivisible divinity, means to view oneself as God as much as anything else is God, and why would one worship something which includes oneself as well as everything else?

Which leaves the question as to why bring the term "God" into it if all one means is the universe. For me, the reason is to attempt to achieve some kind of reconciliation between religious dogma and mythology and the kind of reality which science can explore. Why did Albert Einstein say "God doesn't play dice" rather than "The universe doesn't play dice"? Metaphysical concepts run deep in our psychology. We apprehend ourselves to be a part of something full of grand and profound meaning. For those who believe in the supernatural, religion can cater to those feelings. For those of us who don't believe in the supernatural, the grand and profound meaning has to be found in the universe, as apprehended by science, and our place in it, particularly as it bears upon the way we organise ourselves as intelligent social organisms.

 

[wizanda]

Then why would Jesus say that whoever does not believe in him is condemned already? (John 3:36)

Maybe you missed the bit you quoted saying, John, Paul, and Simon are false....

Therefore the gospel of John can not be trusted, as it doesn't match the words or teachings of Yeshua in the synoptic gospels.

You're not condemned for believing in Yeshua; you're condemned for not listening to his words, and as John contradicts him entirely, it shows people aren't listening to him.

 

[psychoslice]

In my way of thinking its easy to demystify Jesus, he simply didn't exist .

 

[Aussiescribbler]

Yes, I too agree that for the most part the religion people grew up around Jesus misrepresents Jesus.
That should Not surprise us because Jesus' recorded words forewarn us that MANY would come ' in his name ' and prove false according to Matthew 7:21-23

Gospel writer Luke also lets us know that after the death of the apostles that an apostasy would set in according to Acts of the Apostles 20:29-30. Fake ' weed/tares ' Christians would grow up together with the genuine ' wheat ' Christians until the ' harvest time ' or the soon coming ' time of separation ' on Earth - Matthew 25:31-33,37.

We can see, for example, that there have been those who have used Jesus' name to preach hate rather than love. There have also been those who have used Jesus' name to fill their own pockets.

To me, if we could stop sinning we would Not die, but because we can't stop sinning we die.

So you are saying that you have some kind of habit of behaviour which you cannot break, but if you could break it you would physically live forever? I can understand that some kinds of behaviour undermine our physical health and thus shorten our life, but eternal physical life for an individual has no precedent that we can see in nature. Even those who believe that Jesus rose from the dead in physical form don't seem to believe that he has been wandering around in a physical body ever since. Most seem to believe he has some form of etherial existence.

Since we can Not resurrect oneself or another we need someone who can resurrect us.
Jesus was un-effected by adamic sin ( sinful leanings we inherited from father Adam )
Because sinless Jesus died a faithful death, then Jesus was given keys to unlock death for us - Revelation 1-18

None of this makes much sense to me on a supernatural level. Why would a loving God require the death of an innocent man to pay for the sins of others?

On the other hand I can see meaning in these quotes if we interpret them in the light of non-supernatural spirituality.

Each of us consists of a body. That body has an ego - a conscious thinking mind which gives us our self-awareness. We are not just our body, but also the things our body does, the things we think and the words that come out of our mouth. There is nothing that we are which didn't come from outside of us. Our genes come to us from our parents. Matter comes into our body from the food we eat. Information and ideas come into our mind from other minds, but may combine in ways which produce something original to us. Our output - our behaviour, including the words which come out of our mouths - is determined by the input. We experience ourselves as having free will, but we are an expression of a wider system which continually makes us what we are. There are paths of thought and action which lead to greater creation, that open us up in such a way that love and life and generosity flow through us like the blood of life itself. We can't find such a path. We have to be lucky enough for it to come to us from someone else, but if it comes to us then we have found eternal life, because we are the life that flows through our thoughts and actions. Every body dies and rots. Every ego ends. If we see ourselves as the body then we see ourselves as what dies and rots. If we see ourselves as the ego then we see ourselves as what ends when the body dies. If we identify with the love that flows through our thoughts and our actions then we are life itself and life itself does not die. If what matters to us is the love that we have shown to others - a love that changes their lives and perhaps brings them to the path of life they cannot find for themselves - then the death of our body need not trouble us, because that body was never anything but a tool given us to serve our true self - love. I think this is the resurrection. This is the life after death. For me, the only way in which Jesus was resurrected, and the only way in which he lives, is in the love that existed in him and exists in us because it has been communicated to us by his words.

Some people resurrected to heaven like the ones of Luke 22:28-30; Revelation 20:6, but the majority of mankind will be awakened from ' death's sleep ' during Jesus' millennium-long day of governing over Earth for a thousand years, and will have a happy-and-healthy physical resurrection as Daniel will - Daniel 12:2; Daniel 12:13

We don't have to judge others because God's judgement is already recorded down for us in Scripture.
Unlike Jesus, we can Not read hearts so we should Not just impute wrong or bad motives to others.
We can leave the judging and ' time of separation ' in Jesus hands - Isaiah 11:3-4; Revelation 19:14-16

I think Revelation 19:14-16 describes the apocalypse, which, for me, is a time when all the lies and false thinking of the world is revealed as such. The symbol of someone with a sword for a tongue is a great way of illustrating the concept of intellectual battle - the use of reason and insight to cut through falsehood. The idea of judgement in this context is largely a judgement on the basis of truthfulness. Those exposed as having been deceived or as liars will of course experience great tribulation at this exposure. But the death of the world of lies means that the bodies of all humans who live from that time forward will be vessels for the life eternal, experienced in full measure, because their identification will be with the process more than with their own physical existence.

 

[Aussiescribbler]

In my way of thinking its easy to demystify Jesus, he simply didn't exist .

If he didn't exist then he is a delusion shared by at least 2.4 billion people. That may be true. I'm not the one to argue against that. I leave arguments for the historical existence of Jesus to others. But even if we could prove he didn't exist we would not have demystified him, because we would be left with the mystery of why those people believe in him and what purpose that belief has. Even if a delusional belief is counter-productive it still has a purpose in the sense that it fills a niche that the individual has not yet been able to find something else to fill as well.

Even if Jesus were nothing but myth, we could seek to pierce the mystery of why that myth resonates with us so. This is true of the Greek myths which nobody today believes to be anything but myths.

 

[fallingblood]

Is this better?


I have had very good advice given to me on making my posts readable. Beliefnet folks told me to make it short.

All this fuss you believers are making over the proof of existence over Jesus, is a front. Your doing this to get attention to get converts IMO.

Its worthless. The bible, the New Testament, its not written right, half of it isn't readable. It doesn't apply to our culture.

Jesus life in the Bible and weather he existed or not, doesn't matter. Belief on Jesus is not doing any good for our culture, and can not be applied to my life. Its not understandable, the bible is NOT! That's all that counts. The

Atheist scholars also accept that Jesus existed, thus your argument doesn't make sense. Some of my favorite scholars on Jesus are Jewish, and the definitely aren't trying to convert anyone to Christianity. So that point makes no sense.

Your argument that the NT isn't written right also makes no sense. I have read it over and over again, so yes, its readable. And it may not directly apply to our culture, but at the same time, much of it can.

The belief in Jesus can apply to other people's lives though, and it can make them want to be better people. Why is that a bad thing? Just because it doesn't apply to you doesn't mean it is bad. And the Bible is understandable. Because you don't understand it doesn't mean others don't. At this point, I don't think you have any real arguments, as you never respond to my rebuttals. Instead, you just repeat the same things.

Truthfully there is a person here who is responding and expressing exactly what I want to say, and he's doing a good job of arguing. I'm enjoying reading the thread. Especially sense I know I'm not the only one who feels like me.

So I don't give a sh*t who responds to me. My opinion is being argued well.

It isn't being well argued though. You, and the other person who you state is expressing what you want to say, aren't making a good argument. His argument largely relies on a misunderstanding of what history is and how we study it, which is followed by special pleading, and your argument is basically just repeating what you've already said, without addressing new points.

Part of an argument is addressing the rebuttals. That really isn't happening.

The idea that the person of Jesus and the myths and what he did can be proven beyond doubt and Christianity is bull sh&t and I know it will be argued by those who represent my side better then I do.

Therefore I will just sit back and read.

You can't prove beyond a doubt that Christianity is false. You can give evidence that certain points are wrong. That they may be false. But much of it is subjective. That's why there is so much disagreement even within Christianity. Philosophy and theology is largely subjective, and often, many of the ideas within Christianity are also the same ideas that people outside of Christianity have as well. They just found the information in a different manner. So no, no one is going to prove that Christianity is bull.

And we can be certain that Jesus existed. That is a historical certainty.

 

[Riders]

Your argument that the NT isn't written right also makes no sense. I have read it over and over again, so yes, its readable. And it may not directly apply to our culture, but at the same time, much of it can.

Its not readable because much of it is a contradiction to each other. Many people think Jesus was talking to Jews not us.. It wasn't meant for us but for those people.

According to WIki it wasn't written till a few hundred years after the events and so the written part, written by man could not be true. Its mythical. The WIki also says this.

Wiki says the only thing historians agree on and can be said as real, is that Jesus was born baptized and crucified. There no proof for anything else that took place in the bible. Wiki regards it as myths.

There are plenty of people who don't believe Jesus existed. So you can say you've go proof from here to eternity, but there are tons of people who don't believe.

According to Wiki, other religions and Atheism is getting more wide spread and attendance in the Christian church has gone down. So no matter what you say, it doesn't mean anyone heres going to believe.

 

[psychoslice]

If he didn't exist then he is a delusion shared by at least 2.4 billion people. That may be true. I'm not the one to argue against that. I leave arguments for the historical existence of Jesus to others. But even if we could prove he didn't exist we would not have demystified him, because we would be left with the mystery of why those people believe in him and what purpose that belief has. Even if a delusional belief is counter-productive it still has a purpose in the sense that it fills a niche that the individual has not yet been able to find something else to fill as well.

Even if Jesus were nothing but myth, we could seek to pierce the mystery of why that myth resonates with us so. This is true of the Greek myths which nobody today believes to be anything but myths.

If he didn't exist then he is a delusion shared by at least 2.4 billion people. That may be true. I'm not the one to argue against that. I leave arguments for the historical existence of Jesus to others. But even if we could prove he didn't exist we would not have demystified him, because we would be left with the mystery of why those people believe in him and what purpose that belief has. Even if a delusional belief is counter-productive it still has a purpose in the sense that it fills a niche that the individual has not yet been able to find something else to fill as well.

Even if Jesus were nothing but myth, we could seek to pierce the mystery of why that myth resonates with us so. This is true of the Greek myths which nobody today believes to be anything but myths.

Yes I see him as a myth, and there is nothing wrong in that, its the message woven in they story that is important, not if he was real or not, which is a wast of time.

 

[1robin]

Aussiescribbler is a user name I have used for many years at various different forums. If you do a Google search you will probably find me popping up in lots of places. I also have published erotica ebooks under that pseudonym. The meaning is that I live in Australia and am an amateur writer with a sense of self-deprecation. I later came up with another pseudonym - Joe Blow - for my writings on psychology, as I wanted to distinguish that writing from the smut.

Wow, I must really watch what question I ask. Just kidding.

I'm actually very familiar with that quote from C.S. Lewis. I haven't read the book itself, but the quote is hard to avoid.

First let me say that my view of lunatics is not quite as dismissive as Lewis's. I've experienced psychotic episodes a number of times in my life as part of more generalised nervous breakdowns.

You a real gold mine. An author of erotica as well as psychotic breaks with reality. If nothing you are at least candid and honest. Most of us are half nuts, but most of us try to deny that we are.

Ok, let me gives some more context just in case you may find it interesting. The book Mere Christianity before becoming perhaps the 3rd or 4th most important and cherished extra canonical Christian text did not start off as a book at all. When Churchill needed someone to lift Britain up during the worst period of the battle of Britain he could have found an atheist, a humanist, an agnostic, etc......He instead found the Christian journalist C.S. Lewis. His speeches were only later recorded in print and later still into the hearts of countless people of all walks. However my opinion is that compared to the scholars I personally use most often Lewis couldn't hold a candle to them.

Anyway, back to business. I do not think Lewis was attempting to provide a rigorous medical term to point out that either Christ was (given his claims) extremely untrustworthy, was often extremely irrational, and would probably be a candidate for being committed to a psychiatric institution if he lived in out time or he was honest, lucid, and divine. Basically you could say he should be either ignored or worshipped.

Perhaps the greatest word smith who ever lived, G.K. Chesterton said the most self confidant people in the world are in insane asylums. They do not believe they are God's, they are more certain they are God's than the rest of us are sure we are humans. Absolute certainty in that case is either justifiable or psychotic.

I'll include a quote from R. D. Laing regarding God which I think may amplify the relevance of what I'm saying here :

There is no doubt, it seems to me, that there have been profound changes in the experience of man in the last thousand years, In some ways this is more evident than changes in the patterns of his behavior. There is everything to suggest that man experienced God. Faith was never a matter of believing He existed, but of trusting in the Presence that was experienced and known to exist as a self-validating datum. It seems likely that far more people in our time neither experience the Presence of God, nor the Presence of His absence, but the absence of His Presence.

We require a history of phenomena – not simply more phenomena of history.

As it is, the secular psychotherapist is often in the role of the blind leading the half-blind.

The fountain has not played itself out, the Flame still shines, the River still flows, the Spring still bubbles forth, the Light has not faded. But between us and It, there is a veil which is more like fifty feet of solid concrete. Deus absconditus. Or we have absconded.

SLS · Bibliography · Transcendental Experience in Relation to Religion and Psychosis

The guy sounds like a competent writer but not necessarily a competent historian, philosopher, or theologian. With a few exceptions I could follow what he said and know for a fact that it does not line up with my own experiences nor those of other Christians which I have counseled. However my biggest problem with what you posted from Mr. Laing is that his evidence and argumentation do not seem to exist. He seems to merely make flowery declaration void of that which justifies them. He probably writes better than me, and I probably better argue than he, but perhaps it is too early to tell.

To give an example, someone who is practicing a great deal of sexual repression will be alienated emotionally and intellectually because of the need to exercise restraint on free emotion and free thought lest either reconnect them with the disturbing force of their bottled up libido. Such an individual is unlikely to see divinity in nature, because when they look at nature they see animals copulating just like they want to do. Their concept of the divine has to be something otherworldly enough to have no hint of the sexual about it.

I will come back to your Pantheistic faith at the end of this post. But here I want to point out that what those who do not at least at times repress their sexuality should have because they will wish to have been alienated from the STDs, families many broke apart through their lack of discipline, and the unwanted pregnancies that have led to the industrialized slaughter of our most innocent fellow humans for the sake of the convenience for the guilty parties.

You are going to have to do a lot of work to qualify your generalization above. The way to avoid the most dreadful outcomes most humans will ever face to restrain their passions, not to let them run wild. You must qualify your examples above until they no longer violate this simple truth.

Was Jesus a lunatic? At the time he was preaching clearly not. We see a person with clarity, insight and self-possession. What is an interesting possibility is whether his encounter with the devil in the desert was actually a period of psychosis which helped to give him his deep understanding of the human psyche.

A mere mortal human being claiming he had always existed, could forgive the sin of others, could take away the keys to Hell from Satan, and would rise from his own death is either crazy in whatever year he happened to claim it, or was divine no matter what year he claimed it.

Was Jesus "the Devil of Hell"? If one looks at much of what has been done in his name one could be forgiven for thinking so, but it is not as if any of that behaviour was uncharacteristic for humans.

That is a false deduction, what Christ was and did is causally unrelated to what those followers who disobeyed him have done.

But this isn't really an issue for me because I do accept his claim to be God (if he made such a claim). I'm a pantheist. For me everything is God. I'm God. You're God. The Eiffel Tower is God. Of course applying the term that broadly makes it meaningless, as you point out below. So let's be more specific. For me "God" is a mythological personification of the creative principle of the universe - that general principle which allows complexity and order to come into being. Everything which exists in the universe is an expression of that principle, but it can be seen in a more concentrated form where the most creation is taking place. If we call the presence of this principle "divinity" - then a human being is more divine than a rock. Since we are all products of this process we are all "sons (and daughters) of God". And love is the force by which this creative process brings meaningful organisation to human society. So "God is love". What is a prophet? A prophet is someone who gives voice to the principle. Truth is the framework which makes love on the larger social scale possible (lies separate us, but truth is the place were we can agree and come together). So anyone who tells the truth is a prophet. The deeper the truths they tell cut through the social fabric of lies the more important they are among prophets. While any of us, as active agents of the creative principle, would be qualified to refer to ourselves as "God" (as long as we mean this in the same way we would mean it if we said "I am life"), Jesus, as a very powerful truth teller, could really speak for the creative principle (i.e. "God").

Ok, this gets back to the heart of my problems with Pantheism.

Take the two most accepted cosmological models, the BBT and the BGVT. You account for both within the bounds of Pantheism, and I will within Christianity and we can see how each stacks up. Deal?

Actually let's start further back with one additional question. Since your God is the universe, and since the universe does not communicate anything about it's will, what Pantheism is, or whether Pantheism is true or not then how do you know any of those things.

Regarding this passage : "I am," said Jesus. "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." Matthew 14:62 - this is a bit different from the account of the marriage at Cana in that it is a prediction. I did say that I view Jesus as someone who spoke poetically. A poet may talk about "Spring tiptoeing across the flowers with her gauzy raiment blowing around her". We know that there is no such entity. It's just a way of conjuring up a stronger emotional response to a nature phenomena. Jesus referred to himself as "the Son of Man". This has a similar connotation to me as Nietzsche talking about the "Übermensch". If the social evolution of the human race has been retarded by some kind of psychological flaw which has kept us from becoming a specie individual - a state I identify with Jesus prediction of a time when the "Kingdom of Heaven" would be realised - the will of God, i.e. the loving instinct toward creative cooperation, being done on Earth as it is in Heaven (i.e. the world of the idealising imagination) - then Jesus is the prototype new human - the non-retarded son of the retarded human race - and so the arrival he prophesies is not literally his own, but that of the new humanity of which he was the prototype. "sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One" means working side by side with the creative principle and benefiting by its powerful allegiance. So it means we will be working with nature instead of against it. "...coming on the clouds of heaven..." means the arrival of this new state of consciousness will be so dramatic and spread so quickly that it will be as if it fell upon us from the sky.

That is the first time I have ever seen anyone but me mention Christ and Nietzsche in the same paragraph. It is definitely different than a wedding in Cana. It is a prophecy about his second coming, the intent being to show that Christ is occupant of the throne of God and to reassure that even though he would die in filth and misery he would return in power and glory.

Now if you want to try and claim Christ spoke in analogies, parables, symbolism, apocalyptic imagery, poetry, by inference, code, prophecy, etc.... That is fine but debates take place on common ground. You must point out which scriptures you want to investigate, which one of those categories applies to those scriptures, as well as apply the same accepted hermeneutics, etymology, and exegesis as has been perfected by 2000 years of the greatest expert's in the related fields developed concerning the most scrutinized book in human history. Once you do so then we can resolve whether you are right or wrong.

 

[fallingblood]

Its not readable because much of it is a contradiction to each other. Many people think Jesus was talking to Jews not us.. It wasn't meant for us but for those people.

The Buddha was talking to his followers, not us. Doesn't mean I can't get something from it. Same way with Jesus. It doesn't matter who is audience was. People still can get something out of it.

And yes, the Bible does contain contradictions. But that's because the Bible is composed of many different books. It is literally a collection of books. Each book can stand on its own. Thus, I can read Matthew for what Matthew said, and get something out of that. The book of Matthew is readable. I can then go to Luke, and read Luke for what he said, and get something out of that, even though there is disagreement. I can do that for every book, and as a whole, the Bible is readable because of that point.

It is the same concept as a collection of scholarly writings. I have a collection of essays on Jesus and Archaeology which are combined into one book, and while there are disagreements, the book as a whole is still readable. Contradictions don't make a book unreadable.

According to WIki it wasn't written till a few hundred years after the events and so the written part, written by man could not be true. Its mythical. The WIki also says this.

Screw Wiki. Wiki isn't the end all source. And if Wiki states what you're saying, then it is wrong. It, the Bible, wasn't compiled until hundreds of years until after the books were written, but a number of the books were written at the same time in which they are talking about. Paul didn't write his letters a few hundred years afterwards.

Even the Gospels weren't written a few hundred years later. It is accepted that they were written a few decades after, something around 40 years for Mark, but that's still within the same century. The premise of your argument is false, and the conclusion is false as it starts from a faulty premise.

Wiki says the only thing historians agree on and can be said as real, is that Jesus was born baptized and crucified. There no proof for anything else that took place in the bible. Wiki regards it as myths.

No. The wiki article you linked to (and Wiki is not the end all) stated that historians agree nearly universally on a few things. That Jesus was real, he was baptized, and was crucified. Now, I've actually read what historians and scholars have to say about Jesus, and there are many things that they also agree on; however, not universally. As in any topic, there is some disagreement. And I've already covered this, yet you refuse to actually respond.

Wiki doesn't regard the Bible as a myth. So there you're flat out lying. Yes, there is myth in the Bible, but that doesn't mean the whole Bible is myth. The letters of Paul, as in actual letters he wrote, are not myth. They are letters. Wisdom literature in the OT isn't myth. It falls under wisdom literature. Poetry in the Bible doesn't suddenly become myth because its in the Bible. Its still poetry.

There are plenty of people who don't believe Jesus existed. So you can say you've go proof from here to eternity, but there are tons of people who don't believe.

You're using a logical fallacy. Plenty of people think the sun revolves around the world. Plenty of people believe in creationism. Plenty of people believe that hell is at the center of the world. That means absolutely nothing besides that people believe it.

Now, I've laid out evidence that Jesus existed. Your argument here is basically that you're going to close your eyes and not accept anything because you don't believe Jesus existed. If that's your attitude, fine. That's your choice to have faith in such an idea. But don't argue that Jesus didn't exist if you refuse to actually deal with the issue.

According to Wiki, other religions and Atheism is getting more wide spread and attendance in the Christian church has gone down. So no matter what you say, it doesn't mean anyone heres going to believe.

That is just nonsense. The two sentences don't even go together. Many atheists also accept that Jesus existed. It isn't either or. I'm not arguing for a Christian understanding of Jesus.

Also, Christianity is growing. According to your beloved Wikipedia, "According to 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there are 2.18 billion Christians around the world in 2010, more than three times as much from the 600 million recorded in 1910.[1] According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, by 2050, the Christian population is expected to be 2.9 billion.[2]:7" So it is growing, and is expected to continue to grow.

If you can't actually make a reasonable rebuttal, this is my last response to you. So far, you're cited Wikipedia as if it were gospel, and have done so incorrectly multiple time, in essence, you're making things up. You haven't dealt with any of my arguments, but instead have stated that you will have blind faith that Jesus didn't exist because he must not exist. Those aren't arguments, and really no longer worth my time.

Yes I see him as a myth, and there is nothing wrong in that, it the message woven in they story that is important, not if he was real or not, which is a east of time.

While we disagree on the existence of Jesus, I truly loved your comment.

 

[1robin]

This raises an interesting question. What do we mean by "spiritual" and what do we mean by "earthly"?

In this context I would say non-spiritual issues are about material things. Food, clothing, health, etc..... By spiritual things I mean things beyond or which transcend the material. Salvation, God, resurrection, etc......

To me spirituality is about the realm of emotional relationships. If I read a beautiful poem, it may move me to tears. For me, that is a spiritual experience, which doesn't require belief in the supernatural. Love is something physical - it is a sensation of the body which accompanies the release of the chemical oxytocin into the blood stream. But we experience love because of our relationship with others. Spirituality has meaning for me in the same way that music has meaning. Music is more than the physicality of sounds made by instruments. It is a pattern which shapes one part of physical reality in such a way that it can cause another part of physical reality to have an emotional reaction. So I am concerned with spiritual matters - with the world of immaterial relationships which effect the way we feel and act as humans.

That is tricky, while love may be somewhat spiritual, most emotions are the result of chemical interactions.

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place."

John 18:36

What does Jesus mean by "not of this world"? Some would interpret this as meaning not of this physical world, i.e. the Earth itself. I don't see it that way. I think he means that his "kingdom" is not part of the world of social relations as it has historically existed. We talk about a person not having "worldly concerns" in the sense of having no interest in wealth or honours.

Again let me remind you that I said that Christ's primary mission was spiritual, I did not say that that was his only mission. This is easy to see the way I described it. His primary mission was not to save us from dying in the material of fleshly sense, it was to united us with the father who is 100% spiritual (a disembodied mind). He performed that roll by being spiritually resurrected from death which came from a source which is 100% spiritual and which transcend the physical world.

Maybe this will make it clearer. Of this world applies to things that are governed by natural law. Not of this world are things which are not governed by natural law, which in fact supersede natural laws (i.e. the supernatural or spiritual)

Of course, not believing in the supernatural, I have to have a non-supernatural interpretation of "heaven". For me, heaven is an idealised potential world of loving social relations which can be apprehended by the imagination. The aim is to bring this vision to fruition. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:19-21. For me this has a direct non-supernatural applicability. Love is more important than material wealth and the more we cultivate it the more we can be blessed by feeling the warmth of that heavenly potential world burning in our veins. We may not be able to live there, but we can participate in it.

Did Christ feed 5000 people with a fish and a few loaves of bread by any natural law you can name, or by some force that transcends every natural law we know of.

This another example of what is so weird about Pantheism. Compared to the Heaven I believe in your description of heaven strips the word of everything that makes it meaningful or profound.

But do we have those eye witness accounts? If an eye-witness account is being reported by someone else, there are already two levels on which it can be inaccurate or even fabricated. I haven't read a lot about how the New Testament came to be written. I've read Bart D. Ehrmann's Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible, which was fascinating, but I haven't read much more. I haven't even got around to reading more of the New Testament than the four gospels and Revelations. Religion is a bit of a side-interest for me.

That is not relevant to my claim. I said the original biblical documents were written by eye witnesses to most of the events they contained. However there is an even more absolute way to show this. The gospel writers stated that the Holy Spirit came to them to remind them of all the events they were to record. Since the Holy Spirit observed every event that has ever occurred then that means that all the Gospels were ultimately written by an eyewitness to their events.

I've come to call myself a pantheist because I asked someone what I was and they suggested I might be a pantheist. When I read the definition it seemed closer than anything else. Here is the definition I get from Google : "a doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God."

No offense intended but you realize that you are wagering your immortal soul on a proposition you chose based on the proximity of a term relative to your speculation concerning metaphysics? Christianity offer something that no other mainstream religion ever has, the bible promises every believer a spiritual experience which validates and confirms out intellectual consent. It will be too late for you to change your mind if you find your self in Yahweh's presence after death. I concentrate on the less important aspects of debate instead of keeping what the stakes are too often. There are 3 categories of religions concerning confirmation.

1. There is only one faith (Christianity) that I have researched which both offers and demands that everyone who comes to believe has a spiritual experience with the risen Christ which validates our faith. For this category you can know your right before it is too late.
2. The second category are faiths that claim that some usually small subgroup may at some point have a validating experience. Hinduism enlightenment would be an example. For this group only a tiny fraction can know they are right before it is too late.
3. The third group include faith's like Pantheism are more philosophy's that religions but regardless they do not offer anyone spiritual confirmation of their faith. So for 90% of those in category 2 and for 100% of those in category 3 it will be too late to change when and if you realize you were wrong.

I'm not a religious person. I don't, personally, consider pantheism to be a religion. When I look up definitions of the term "religion", worship always seems to be involved. Worship makes no sense to me in the framework of pantheism. Worship requires separation. You worship something which is other than yourself. (I suppose an extreme egotist might worship himself, but even then he would be worshipping himself as something distinct from everything else which he does not feel worthy of worship.) To view the universe itself as in indivisible divinity, means to view oneself as God as much as anything else is God, and why would one worship something which includes oneself as well as everything else?

Which leaves the question as to why bring the term "God" into it if all one means is the universe. For me, the reason is to attempt to achieve some kind of reconciliation between religious dogma and mythology and the kind of reality which science can explore. Why did Albert Einstein say "God doesn't play dice" rather than "The universe doesn't play dice"? Metaphysical concepts run deep in our psychology. We apprehend ourselves to be a part of something full of grand and profound meaning. For those who believe in the supernatural, religion can cater to those feelings. For those of us who don't believe in the supernatural, the grand and profound meaning has to be found in the universe, as apprehended by science, and our place in it, particularly as it bears upon the way we organise ourselves as intelligent social organisms.

That is correct you do not really have religion or faith. You have instead consented to accept a intellectual or metaphysical proposition. Since beliefs like that are inconsistent between people and since they have no concrete doctrines or revelations then your beliefs are as pliable as your preferences, which makes it very hard to think of anyway to resolve who faith is true.

Maybe we should instead stick to examining which one of us understands various bible scriptures correctly.

I felt like I cheated you so I went back and added the following.

I can defend my faith through thousands of philosophic arguments, in a dozen academic fields, and by a mountain of evidence because my religion acts as a fixed point which is easy to evaluate. However, Pantheism seems to be malleable, vague, and has no fixed point to make it readily evaluated. I do not think Pantheism is true because I know my religion is true and my religion is exclusive. My faith being true means all competing faiths must be false, but until Pantheism can make claims that can be evaluated it would be a hard idea to falsify.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

We can see, for example, that there have been those who have used Jesus' name to preach hate rather than love. There have also been those who have used Jesus' name to fill their own pockets.
So you are saying that you have some kind of habit of behaviour which you cannot break, but if you could break it you would physically live forever? I can understand that some kinds of behaviour undermine our physical health and thus shorten our life, but eternal physical life for an individual has no precedent that we can see in nature. Even those who believe that Jesus rose from the dead in physical form don't seem to believe that he has been wandering around in a physical body ever since. Most seem to believe he has some form of etherial existence.
None of this makes much sense to me on a supernatural level. Why would a loving God require the death of an innocent man to pay for the sins of others?
On the other hand I can see meaning in these quotes if we interpret them in the light of non-supernatural spirituality.
Each of us consists of a body. That body has an ego - a conscious thinking mind which gives us our self-awareness. We are not just our body, but also the things our body does, the things we think and the words that come out of our mouth. There is nothing that we are which didn't come from outside of us. Our genes come to us from our parents. Matter comes into our body from the food we eat. Information and ideas come into our mind from other minds, but may combine in ways which produce something original to us. Our output - our behaviour, including the words which come out of our mouths - is determined by the input. We experience ourselves as having free will, but we are an expression of a wider system which continually makes us what we are. There are paths of thought and action which lead to greater creation, that open us up in such a way that love and life and generosity flow through us like the blood of life itself. We can't find such a path. We have to be lucky enough for it to come to us from someone else, but if it comes to us then we have found eternal life, because we are the life that flows through our thoughts and actions. Every body dies and rots. Every ego ends. If we see ourselves as the body then we see ourselves as what dies and rots. If we see ourselves as the ego then we see ourselves as what ends when the body dies. If we identify with the love that flows through our thoughts and our actions then we are life itself and life itself does not die. If what matters to us is the love that we have shown to others - a love that changes their lives and perhaps brings them to the path of life they cannot find for themselves - then the death of our body need not trouble us, because that body was never anything but a tool given us to serve our true self - love. I think this is the resurrection. This is the life after death. For me, the only way in which Jesus was resurrected, and the only way in which he lives, is in the love that existed in him and exists in us because it has been communicated to us by his words.
I think Revelation 19:14-16 describes the apocalypse, which, for me, is a time when all the lies and false thinking of the world is revealed as such. The symbol of someone with a sword for a tongue is a great way of illustrating the concept of intellectual battle - the use of reason and insight to cut through falsehood. The idea of judgement in this context is largely a judgement on the basis of truthfulness. Those exposed as having been deceived or as liars will of course experience great tribulation at this exposure. But the death of the world of lies means that the bodies of all humans who live from that time forward will be vessels for the life eternal, experienced in full measure, because their identification will be with the process more than with their own physical existence.

Right, to me also, there is No precedent in nature of living forever on Earth.
That ' everlasting life ' on Earth was only offered to Adam and his descendants. - Genesis 2:17
The purposeful breaking of God's law damaged Adam, thus damaged Adam could only pass on to us his damaged physical state. Since we are innocent of what Adam did, but can't undo the physical, emotional, spiritual damage inherited from father Adam we fall short through No fault of our own. So, we need someone who can help us.
God 'right away' at Genesis 3:15 promised an offspring (seed) who would come to our rescue/salvation/deliverance
and because Jesus was Not damaged from adamic shortcomings, thus Jesus then could even out and balance the scales of justice for us for what Adam did wrong. Before Jesus' ransom could be fully applied to us 'we' ( the human family ) we would first have to be born and fill ( populate ) the Earth as that is God's will ( purpose ) for Earth - Genesis 1:28 . This means that Jesus' coming 1,000-year governmental rulership over Earth will undo all the damage Satan and Adam brought upon us humans. Then means enemy death will be No more as mentioned at Isaiah 25:8 and 1 Corinthians 15:26. That opens up the way for us to gain 'everlasting life on Earth' as originally offered to Adam before his downfall.

ALL of the resurrections that Jesus performed were only physical resurrections.
ALL the old testament Hebrew Scripture resurrections were also physical resurrections.
Through father Abraham, God promised that ALL families of Earth will be blessed.
All nations of Earth will be blessed. Blessed with the benefits of healing for earth's nations - Revelation 22:2
- Genesis 12:3; Genesis 22:18

Yes, our genes come from out parents. 50% from one parent and 50% from the other parent, so that means each of us is unique and never lived before. Since both parents can't stop sinning ( leaning/ toward wrongdoing ) we inherit 100% of their imperfections, and thus pass on our inherited imperfection to our offspring.
If it were Not for Jesus' coming millennium-long day of governing over Earth that process would never end.
Now, through Jesus we can look forward to a permanent bright and happy-and-healthy future - Jeremiah 29:11

 

[Riders]

Wiki doesn't regard the Bible as a myth. So there you're flat out lying. Yes, there is myth in the Bible, but that doesn't mean the whole Bible is myth. The letters of Paul, as in actual letters he wrote, are not myth. They are letters. Wisdom literature in the OT isn't myth. It falls under wisdom literature. Poetry in the Bible doesn't suddenly become myth because its in the Bible. Its still poetry. I have passages from Wiki I will paste here.


You have not proven to me Jesus existed. There is no proof here and I'm not interested in Jesus. There's plenty of proof that the Mormons leaders lived too.

All other religions as Wiki said have proof as well, just Christianity. So what's the point? WHy should you care if I believe he existed?

The truth is you lie about pushing the Christian religion here. If you were not you wouldn't care if I believe he existed or not. If your not pushing Christianity you should not give an iota about weather I believe Jesus existed.

The Christian churches have been losing attendance and memberships for a few years. Wiki doesn't say most historians say Jesus existed, it says
they cant say he didn't exist anymore then any other leader of religion. Jesus isn't any different then Buddha or any other messiah from the past.

Other religions have grown from4 percent of American religions to 7 percent in the past 65 years. Muslim religion has the biggest amount of growth.

 

[Riders]

Here is proof of my point from WIki.

There is no physical or archaeological evidence for Jesus. All sources are documentary, mainly Christian writings, such as the gospels and the purported letters of the apostles. The authenticity and reliability of these sources has been questioned by many scholars, and few events mentioned in the gospels are universally accepted.[39]

In conjunction with biblical sources, three mentions of Jesus in non-Christian sources have been used in the historical analyses of the existence of Jesus.[40] These are two passages in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, and one from the Roman historian Tacitus.[40][41]

Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus Christ in Books 18 and 20.


That all I have to say.The only proof you've given is that historians agree with his existence which means nothing and Josephus writing. Theres no actual physical proof.

So you've proved nothing.

BTW on the bible, its not acceptable to say its ok that the bible contradicts itself. If it were meant to be read as an individual book all of the books wouldn't have been canonized to make one book.

The fact that those were the books that were canonized means who ever did it was completely confused, and the bible is confusing.

 

[Riders]

Heres the link to a web page that describes church attendance decline.

7 Startling Facts: An Up Close Look at Church Attendance in America

 

[Aussiescribbler]

Anyway, back to business. I do not think Lewis was attempting to provide a rigorous medical term to point out that either Christ was (given his claims) extremely untrustworthy, was often extremely irrational, and would probably be a candidate for being committed to a psychiatric institution if he lived in out time or he was honest, lucid, and divine. Basically you could say he should be either ignored or worshipped.

Perhaps the greatest word smith who ever lived, G.K. Chesterton said the most self confidant people in the world are in insane asylums. They do not believe they are God's, they are more certain they are God's than the rest of us are sure we are humans. Absolute certainty in that case is either justifiable or psychotic.

I love G.K. Chesterton, and he does have a point here. But it isn't an "either/or" situation. I never met anyone in the mental hospital who thought they were a God. I met someone who thought he was Jesus. He collected Christmas cards claiming they were birthday cards for himself. And I thought at times that I was Jesus. I smiled at the appropriateness of being given sandals to wear from the used clothing supply when my sneakers were thrown under the shower by other patients. I saw a special significance in the fact that I had attended a retirement party for a workmate just before going crazy and being locked up at which we were supposed to be all dressed in black, but I forgot and was dressed in blue. There were thirteen of us and someone jokingly called it "the Last Supper". And then, after being given the sandals to wear, I went home and tried to kill myself with an overdose of paracetamol. Realising it wasn't going to give me a painless death, I rang the hospital and they came and got me in an ambulance. When I fought with nurses in an attempt to find something to slit my wrists I was drugged and woke the next morning strapped to a hospital bed in a position characteristic of the crucifixion. I felt that the whole of human history was going to end in failure because of me, that all the suffering of every human would have been for nothing because of my own personal failure. I begged the doctors and nurses to kill me. The next day the paracetamol detox was finished and the police came to take me to the mental hospital. My way of explaining the experience of myself and others is that we all have a "Christ-nature" - that our original instinctive orientation is toward unconditional love and that the neurotic ego which forms over that can break down and bring us in contact with that original nature. The problem is that, being neurotic, we don't have the integrity necessary to live that nature, hence the fact that I was totally crushed by the idea that I might be the one on whom the whole salvation of the human race depended.

The reason people end up in mental hospitals has little, necessarily, to do with what they believe about themselves. It has to do with whether they can function socially. I could believe I was a God from the planet Zod, but as long as I go to work and do my job adequately and don't yell and scream at people on public transport or take my clothes off in public, I won't end up in a mental hospital. I understand, however, that G.K. Chesterton is talking about verbally expressed absolute certainty. We can't know of certainty that nobody tells us about.

The guy sounds like a competent writer but not necessarily a competent historian, philosopher, or theologian. With a few exceptions I could follow what he said and know for a fact that it does not line up with my own experiences nor those of other Christians which I have counseled. However my biggest problem with what you posted from Mr. Laing is that his evidence and argumentation do not seem to exist. He seems to merely make flowery declaration void of that which justifies them. He probably writes better than me, and I probably better argue than he, but perhaps it is too early to tell.

I recognise that Laing's comments, powerful as I may find them, do not carry much weight in a rational argument. As you say he doesn't, at least within that quote, provide any evidence. Laing was a divisive figure. Many of his fellow psychiatrists considered him a lunatic and felt that his ideas were too dangerous for students to be exposed to. He was a popular figure amongst the counter-culture, but is perhaps most appreciated by people, like myself, who have experienced psychosis. We may read his writings with a deep sense of relief that someone at least "gets us". And, apparently, he had a unique ability to bring people out of a catatonic state simply by sitting with them in an attitude of empathy and acceptance. Not all of his writing is in the same style. He did write books in which he used case-studies to back up his conclusions. He wasn't all LSD-inspired stream-of-consciousness, but that was part of what he did.

I will come back to your Pantheistic faith at the end of this post. But here I want to point out that what those who do not at least at times repress their sexuality should have because they will wish to have been alienated from the STDs, families many broke apart through their lack of discipline, and the unwanted pregnancies that have led to the industrialized slaughter of our most innocent fellow humans for the sake of the convenience for the guilty parties.

You are going to have to do a lot of work to qualify your generalization above. The way to avoid the most dreadful outcomes most humans will ever face to restrain their passions, not to let them run wild. You must qualify your examples above until they no longer violate this simple truth.

I'm glad you bring this up because it is an issue which goes to the heart of the philosophy I express in my book How to Be Free by Joe Blow and other writing. Freedoms falls into two categories. There are freedoms from something and freedoms to do something. As long as we want to do anything which is against our own best interest or against the best interest of others, then we can't have the freedom to do anything we want. On the other hand, if we don't want to do anything which is against our best interest or against the best interest of others, then we can be free to do anything we want. How do we get to that state? We have thoughts about doing destructive things and we have emotions, which may include the desire to do destructive things. These thoughts and emotions are not actions. It is the actions which would be a problem. As long as we don't act on our desires to do destructive things, we can have full freedom to think and feel what we like. We have no control over the initial thought or feeling. Our choice is whether we will respond to it by trying to repress its free play in our mind or whether we will allow it freedom there and exercise control simply by not acting on it. My contention is that those of us who accept our thoughts and feelings unconditionally as artefacts, not necessarily as something to be trusted, are in a better position to understand ourselves, because more of our thinking takes place on the conscious level rather than being repressed into the subconscious. And, I believe, we are better able to restrain ourselves from destructive behaviour because our attitude of self-acceptance has a pacifying effect. A lot of people are driven to destructive behaviour by inner turmoil.

So I don't see sexual licence as the only alternative to sexual repression. I don't consider myself to be a particularly sexually repressed individual, but I've only had sexual intercourse about three times in my life. I masturbate. I fantasise, even writing and publishing my fantasies. I watch porn. Now I'm not advocating my exact approach here. I'm single. I have no children. What I would say is that all that is required to not be sexually repressed is to unconditionally accept and enjoy all of the erotic sensations which come to one without acting upon them in any way which would cause problems for oneself or others. Repression occurs when we fight against some thought or feeling. Acting upon it is not necessary to avoid repression.