Demystifying Jesus

[1robin]

I'm not a dualist. I'm a holist. I believe that the soul is simply a function of the body. All spiritual experiences are experiences of the flesh, because we experience them in our body, which is the medium for the experience. What we call a spiritual experience is an experience of the body in response to ideas of meaningful relationship to some larger context.

Before I start banging away on your claims, let me wish you a merry Christmas or whatever meaningless holiday or term you substitute for it.

1. Concepts must be first examined within the context of the revelation they originally came in or within the principle text they were transmitted to us through.
2. The entire bible is the primary text which communicates to us what the soul is, the NT for who Jesus is, and those plus philosophy for what spiritual means.
3. Jesus in the NT is described as one person of the trinity which makes up the being called God, the NT is the ultimate authority as to who he was.
4. The bible also is the primary text concerning the soul and it emphatically that the soul is specifically not the body.
5. Spiritual experience as described in every authoritative field which applies is also specifically an experience that transcends the body and also transcends the universe all together.
6. Pantheism comes along without any explanation for any of those things, it has nothing to examine, and for some bizarre reasons seems to make every term or concept co-equal with others which makes it what I said originally said. It is an irrational idea which has no verification possible, turns terms that have meant one thing for tens of thousands of years into meaning the exact opposite, and by doing so makes at least 50% of very old concepts meaningless and redundant.
7. Pantheism among countless irrational religions is among the very a handful that are the very worst.
8. Christianity on the other hand does not include terms that have overlapping magisterium, but has all the necessary terms and evidence required to rationally explain all of reality in a beautiful and sufficient manner, and is has objective texts, arguments, verification, and mountains of evidence which produce a harmonious whole.
9. Our bible is the most scrutinized text in human history and well established and perfectly functional methods to interpret it. My conclusions are consistent with the conclusions reached by millions over thousands of years. Yours contradict them all.
10. While it is possible for an at best laymen to be wrong about a few issues and everyone else to be wrong. A person who contracts all authoritative sources and scholars, reason, rationality, argument and evidence can not hope to persuade another far more experienced Christian concerning his own documents.

At this point I do not think any argument or any mountain of evidence can persuade a person who simply decides what he prefer the truth to be and then demands reality adjust accordingly. You might as well tell the Royal academy of science your right about everything in the universe and they are all wrong by mangling up the entire vocabulary of science and 4000 years of study by millions. Your doing so tells me evidence, argument, reason, thousands of years of scholarship in all related fields mean nothing to you compared with what you speculate about metaphysical realities you do not have access to and your religion does not even contain. So I can only do one of two things, I can keep wasting time posting evidence, reason, rational arguments, etc...... to a person who does not value them or I can end our discussion. Very soon I will have to make my decision.

I don't accept your interpretation of the trinity. I gave my own non-supernatural interpretation in a previous post.

No, you didn't. You denied the concept of the Trinity as it has been defined for thousands of years in the only text which contains it and simply posted what you prefer it to mean despite your preference strips the terms of all meaning.

I don't accept any of this as being a rational way of interpreting the crucifixion.

It appears you have as little an idea what rationality means as you do about the Trinity.

If we are punished for not accepting a gift, that gift was not given unconditionally. It was given on the condition that we either accept it or face punishment.

All gifts are given regardless of merit, but they require we accept them. You God offers no gift of any kind other than the eventual heat death of the entire universe.

When did I say I was "utterly sinful"? My interpretation of "sin" is selfishness. I admit that I am selfish, but I'm not utterly selfish. I do things for others without expecting anything from them in turn.

You mentioned you had sinned by thinking evil thoughts of others, but you didn't have to admit that you have lied, stolen, coveted, cheated, etc...... because you are merely a human. So your are a thief, a liar, and a cheat....... i.e. your a sinner and that is just the simple stuff that is true of everyone.

I don't accept that Jesus died for my sins. I accept the help that Jesus provides through his words of advice about how to live life. I accept the gift of inspiration that comes from contemplating his life. I do not accept him as my personal saviour in any kind of mystical sense. And I don't believe he would have wanted me to. I have no desire to be a Christian.

Try not accepting that gravity exists and see if you have any luck. Reality does not require your consent or agreement.

The point I'm trying to make is that a person who doesn't believe they will have any life after death, but who never-the-less gives their life to save another, has arguably made a bigger sacrifice than Jesus, if Jesus knew he would be resurrected.

I can not imagine a person walking around with logic this absurd. You cannot possibly save a single person. The best you could do (but I am almost certain you never will) is to help another live a few more years. It is not even physical death that is the issue. Christ bought spiritual redemption to every human who ever lived, if they will but accept it. Good luck with that savior complex.

I believe spiritual death occurs before physical death. It is the state of alienation, of being cut off from the capacity for love and truth, i.e. being cut off from my God. Those who are not in a state of alienation don't worry about the physical death so much, even though there is no personal after-life, because they identify more with process, i.e. God, than they do with their body or ego.

Ok, I see I am going to have to go ahead and become blunt and exacting. I do not care what you believe, I care about what is true. What you believe seems to contradict what is true in almost every instance, so what you believe at this point is inadmissible.

It isn't that I haven't heard most of this stuff before.

If you reject the most important 750,000 words ever written then you had better have great reasons to do so. I do not see any reasons at all from you, all I hear are preferences, beliefs based on nothing, and belief in a faith which even if true is meaningless. If no one had ever heard of Pantheism no one would have ever lost anything they needed for anything.

You misunderstand me. This is my reasoning :

1. You believe in a fictional perfect God.

That is not reasoning, it is preference made without evidence, argument, or cause.

2. Our original animal nature is to be unconditionally loving.

This is an unknowable conclusion made without even a hint as to evidence or argument.

3. Unhelpful thinking alienates us from our unconditionally loving original nature.

We have killed each others on an industrial scale for as long as we have lived together, your given the only the thing that has ever helped, you call it unhelpful and look exclusively to what even if true cannot possibly help.

4. The main kind of unhelpful thinking which sows the seeds of conflict both between ourselves and our loving nature and between ourselves and our fellows, is idealism (for instance the belief that there is a perfect God who judges us).

You mean the God that sent the most benevolent and gentle teacher concerning agape love, hope, and brotherly love between the rest of us which has done more to soften and regenerate human nature than all other sources combined. Is he the big problem? No I think it was those atheistic utopian leaders who drove out that God and killed more people than any other men in human history in the vacuum left by my God. Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Ceausescu, etc.. drove out Jesus and substituted him with the same metaphysical speculation you use and we can easily see the result. Too many millions of Christians had their guts blown out stopping those men to see their sacrifice forgotten so soon.

5. Since belief in a fictional perfect God is a key example of the idealism which is the root cause of all destructive and unloving behavior in humans, it is not unfair to identify such a false belief as one of the manifestation of the mythological figure, Satan, especially as Satan is sometimes referred to as The Accuser, which suggests a judgemental figure.

I think you have posted at least several dozen conclusions without once even suggesting an argument for them even exists, even when they contract the majority of histories scholastic conclusions, and even about things that even if they were true you would have no way what so ever to know it. I CAN know my God exist, you CANNOT know he doesn't even if it was true.

I don't understand your reasoning. Unconditional love is simply love which asks nothing in return.

I see, so only the God who would have left the antediluvians alive to continue murdering each other, making their children walk through fire for false God's, practice human sacrifice, enslave each other, molest each other, and oppress each other for a thousand generations longer than my God did, is unconditionally loving.

Sorry, but I am done. I want actual arguments, actual evidence, something to actually evaluate beyond your irrational preferences and metaphysical speculations.

Have a good Christmas but I can't justify the time it takes to address all the irrational conclusions you somehow can pack into a post or two. You are one for the books.

 

[Aussiescribbler]

I can not imagine a person walking around with logic this absurd. You cannot possibly save a single person. The best you could do (but I am almost certain you never will) is to help another live a few more years. It is not even physical death that is the issue. Christ bought spiritual redemption to every human who ever lived, if they will but accept it. Good luck with that savior complex.

Just a clarification. I was not talking about myself. If an atheist runs into a burning building to save a young child and dies saving him, then the atheist, who does not believe he will have any life after death, has given what he believes to be his only life to save the life of another. This is similar to the argument that a man who only has ten dollars but gives five dollars to buy some food for a hungry child is more generous than a millionaire who gives several million to charity.

Sorry, but I am done. I want actual arguments, actual evidence, something to actually evaluate beyond your irrational preferences and metaphysical speculations.

Have a good Christmas but I can't justify the time it takes to address all the irrational conclusions you somehow can pack into a post or two. You are one for the books.

I'm grateful for the time you have spent discussing these things with me. You have been very generous with your time. I have gained a great deal from the exchange. It has been very stimulating. I fear you may not feel that it has been a good use of your time and I don't want to take you away from more productive discussions.

I think the one area where we can agree is that what matters in the end is not what we believe but what is true. What matters is not whether another person agrees with us, but whether we have accurately assessed our true situation.

I wish you all the best. You deserve something special for Christmas for being so patient with me.

 

[1robin]

Just a clarification. I was not talking about myself. If an atheist runs into a burning building to save a young child and dies saving him, then the atheist, who does not believe he will have any life after death, has given what he believes to be his only life to save the life of another. This is similar to the argument that a man who only has ten dollars but gives five dollars to buy some food for a hungry child is more generous than a millionaire who gives several million to charity.



I'm grateful for the time you have spent discussing these things with me. You have been very generous with your time. I have gained a great deal from the exchange. It has been very stimulating. I fear you may not feel that it has been a good use of your time and I don't want to take you away from more productive discussions.

I think the one area where we can agree is that what matters in the end is not what we believe but what is true. What matters is not whether another person agrees with us, but whether we have accurately assessed our true situation.

I wish you all the best. You deserve something special for Christmas for being so patient with me.

Even when I do not feel challenged by a poster, I feel badly for ending a discussion if they are being civil. You have been more than civil, but I am short on time these days. Maybe we can have another discussion some time. God bless.