"The problem with being privileged your whole life is that because you have had that privilege for so long, equality starts to look like oppression." - Mark Caddo
Yes.
The claim of resurrection wasn't original. There were quite a few examples already of gods who died for three days and were then resurrected, often in the springtime, often born to a virgin. It's a motif that represents the sun reaching its southernmost excursion, stopping for three days, and then resuming its path northward, as the days begin getting longer and the green earth is born again.
From
Other Gods That Rose From the Dead in Spring Before Jesus Christ :
"Attis, a Phrygian-Greek vegetation god born of the virgin Nana, castrated himself and, depending on the version, either bled to death from this or was hanged on a pine tree. He was reborn after three days, his blood redeeming the earth as it fell from his body. His worshipers celebrated the salvation from death offered to them by Attis by decorating a pine tree each spring."
"In Egypt, Osiris died, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven. Horus came back from the dead. Like many gods related to vegetation, Adonis, worshiped in Babylonia and Syria as early as the 7th century B.C., died annually (in the fall) and was resurrected (in the spring)."
What value do the gospels have if Jesus wasn't a god or the channel of a god? I still don't see why anybody who thought of Jesus was an ordinary man or a legend would study the gospels. How many people do you know personally who have lived lives like that or better, or who can offer better life advice? I know plenty.
Christians probably want to claim that that is because those people read Jesus or were influenced by others who did, but Jesus' message was commonplace. Jesus was a typical preacher saying to obey God and be nice to one another. Buddha and many others said it first in some variation of the Golden Rule:
"Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful."
And he wasn't alone. All of these people antedate Christ:
"Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you." - Ancient Egyptian concept of Maat(c. 2040-1650 BCE)
"Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing." - Thales (c. 624 BC - c. 546 BCE)
"Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss." - Lao Tzu (604-531 BCE)
"Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself." - Confucius (c. 551-479 BCE)
"One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one's own self. This, in brief, is the rule of dharma. Other behavior is due to selfish desires." - The Hindu Mahabharata [book] circa 400 BCE
For me, Buddha's message was better than Jesus'. Buddha wants you to be good because it is a better life for you and others. Jesus says be good so that you can be rewarded later.
This is better than anything I've read in the gospels:
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." - Buddha
Buddha gives practical reasons for curbing anger, not threats of perdition:
"You will not be punished for your anger. You will be punished by your anger." - The Buddha
For me, there was nothing special about the life of Jesus. He was just another religious guy preaching. All the special stuff came after his death at the hands of people such as Paul and Constantine. This was a relatively ordinary life amplified by others with an agenda, one that required deification of their central figure, and the message that somehow those words were not just special, but divine. I don't see it.
My position is to avoid faith-based thinking. I start with "there may or might not be a god." I'm still there.
Secular humanists typically avoid making claims they can't support with compelling evidence.
Furthermore, rational skeptics aren't interested in anything that would be generated from "axioms" or premises based in faith. A conclusion can be no more sound than its premises however flawless the subsequent reasoning that connects those premises to a that conclusion is. If I adopt on faith the axiom that A is not equal to A, whatever I derive from that is useless.
Yes. And third-hand knowledge is even less reliable than second-hand. You're aware of the game called telephone and Chinese whispers, I trust. With each iteration of Xeroxing a Xerox, there is loss of fidelity (information).
Many of us already have for the reasons just given - it presumes the existence of a god. If that isn't true, nothing derived from that belief is sound.
Speaking of third-hand information, hearsay is not allowed in a court of law except in rare circumstances such as dying declarations. There's a reason for that, and we just covered it - loss of fidelity (reliability) in the retellings.
