Jesus Myth & Why It Endures

[Pah]

These people can't even figure out whether there is a god or not, so them trying to understanding spiritual things like principalities and powers is like a baby trying to understand basic algebra. Instead of trying to find out what the word of god is all about for themselves, they use poorly researched websites and everything other than the bible to try to understand it.

Think about it. The pharisees and sadducees were very in tune to the scriptures, but they couldn't even figure out what god was trying to tell them through jesus (should i enter into my mother's womb and be born again when i am so old? - nicodemus the leader of the pharisees). And remember, Jesus said he was only speaking of earthly things there and they couldn't handle if he spoke of spiritual things. Remember when Jesus said he was coming back, would he find faith? that means faith is going to be dead by time he gets back; i'm sure you can see the hopelessness of this world.

It seems most studies end up leading us to the part where it says that god's true children will only be a small flock during this age. Narrow is the path we walk, but when Jesus returns to whole world is going to mourn. Thank god we only have to face death once, and will be resurrected into our spiritual bodies for the 1,000 year reign while satan is locked up. That is if we hold strong until the end.

Is it that the Sadducees and Pharisees didn't understand their own writings or were they prevented from understanding by the same God that promised everlasting fealty to them and their seed forever?

 

[schnooby]

So,the devil? Did Satan surprise god? Can god be surprised? Then,whence evil?

your question, dripping with contempt and sarcasm poisons the well of discussion, or can you not see that?

i feel like im talking to rebellious teenagers who are locked in the throes of raging hormones and imbalanced neurochemistry.

Argumentation 101: in order to have a legitimate argument you must concede the possibility you are wrong. You must also stipulate to the premises which support the thesis At least these two things even just to get started.

And that ladies and gentlemen is why you cannot have satisfactory answers, because you start with warped, incorrect, outlandish, ignorant and naive premises. If you begin a thesis for the sake of argument, it cannot BE a real argument if your premise is missing half the information to make it a well crafted, legitimate premise. Your conclusions will always be wrong because you start with incorrect premises, distortions of the subject or related attributes etc.....or because you start with the conclusion and reason backwards finding reasons to support your premature conclusion ( god must be evil because he lets people suffer when he could intervene etc...)

For these reasons and more i find arguments put forward by people like you guys to be wanting because one way or the other you always seem to start out with some assumptions which destroy any chance you could find fhe truth.

For example.....the problem of evil.

The answer to this "problem" is remarkably easy to arrive at if and only if you start with some basic assumptions the bible provides with little effort to the researcher.

In Revelation 12:7 It says there was war in heaven and that lucifer and a third of the angels who were loyal to him were cast out.

No question pertaining to the problem of evil is properly answered without including this information. The bible clearly describes the problems of lucifer before his eventual banishment from Gods presence. Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 both talk about this development of rebellion.

Now, many ask, if god is all this or that why did he allow lucifer to rebel, why not just wipe him out of existence immediately, etc......

The answer again is simple, though perhaps hard to accept. The creator is a being unlike anything we know and often does things we cannot understand or seem unreasonable or cruel to us. if god knew sin or rebellion was growing in the heart and mind of the most powerful being next to himself, why risk the untold sorrow that would follow? why not quench it immediately and spare billions upon billions of people from the darkest sorrow and misery we could imagine?

its a good question, a reasonable question.

What if the answer to that question hinges entirely upon a weird quality that exists only in the most advanced beings, the ability to choose, to exercise will, autonomy, and self determination? What if in order for love, friendship, genuine spontaneity, surprise, creativity, imagination and similarly serendipitous qualities to exist you HAD to allow for the possibility that the x factor, the dark flipside of free will would or could find fascination with chaos, with a path not in accordance with the design or exiistence of cosmic law?

essentially what sin is, is a departure from the built in operating system of all matter which prescribes certain conditions in order for life and existence to be maintained. With the unique power of free will, which matter does not have, which only advanced beings have, we have the ability to "turn aside" from the prescribed behavior that serves existence. Its drinking gasoline instead of water, its breathing smoke instead of air, its jumping off a building when you cannot fly, its the madness of the self directed mind which chooses a path other than the one nature, physics prescribes for the perpetuation of life.

The creator is the source of life just as food is. We will die without food....we spiritually die without the creator. Satan chose to turn away from the creator.......the source of all......the fount of eternal life and existence.....and he became absorbed with self. Even modern psychologists will tell you that being self absorbed is a spiral downward to self destruction. Even athiests recognize the value of selfless giving and service to others. All of nature exists not unto itself, but that it may minister to some other form of life. Humans have defied nature and natures god.....by persistently growing inward towards self, to the detriment not only of self but all those which could have been ministered to.

Those skeptics of you need to really ask yourselves if its really the truth you want or a truth which is more palatable and doesnt require anything of you. I believe many people turn away from even seeking the truth because they intuit that it will require a conscientious change in their lives........a commitment to a moral standard. Its not lost on many of us believers that there is a very strong attraction to world views which are basically ala carte believe whatever you want, you are god, your truth is the only truth, etc........moral relativism. As for me i have often wished the norse legends were real and that i could die in battle and go to the happy hunting grounds afterwards


theres a quote from fight club that i really like because it deals directly with the bitternesss of truth and challenges people to accept it even if they dont like it.

• You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you, never wanted you, in all probability he hates you. It's not the worst thing that could happen.

What IF the answer you claim you want just really sucks? What if it doesnt scratch where it itches? What if you were able to cross the threshhold of belief and once youre there you find theres a thousand more questions after than before? what if believing only makes your existential pain and suffering worse?

Believing is no great thing, gents, its practically crawling before walking and its really no big deal as the bible says


You believe that there is one God. That's fine! Even the demons believe that and tremble with fear.
James 2:19


So hey guys, its been great but until i see the remotest evidence of a genuine question that doesnt reek of contempt and sarcasm its simply not worth my time.

 

[JCS57]

Like the tooth fairy, or Santa?
Wait, wasn't St. Nick real???

And don't forget according Megyn Kelly of Fox Noise Santa is white guy.

 

[JCS57]

Ok all kidding aside honest question here for jc and gg etc....


what is the reason why you are here.......is it to merely engage in argument for sport.....or because you are genuinely interested in information that could change your minds?


ill tell you what i THINK as a mere mortal.
i think you are both fairly entrenched unbelievers who enjoy stirring shit up. And guess what, thats totally okay with because i enjoy it too.

however, lets not conflate honest truth seeking with playful or even mean spirited debate for its own sake. What the two of you are doing, the way you portray yourselves, and indeed, even by your own admission you were (in jcs case) a former xian and appear to have really already made up your own mind(s) about this stuff. If thats true then all conversation here is really no more than intellectual masturbation and some verbal jousting.

I need to ask how you can honestly expect anyone to take you seriously when you make it obvious youre not interested in believing. Youre very approach dooms anything other than wholehearted commitment to failure. You are looking for reasons to doubt, not reasons to believe. I dare say if you subjected many of lifes experiences to the same nihilistic attitude you would never have any meaningful relationships or experiences, constantly searching for every crumb or hint of incongruity. Almost no situation in life can bear such artificially exacting scrutiny.

Be that as it may, if you find yourself unable to come correct with what really drives you and brings you here, i am more than willing to joust with you and in time show what nonsense most if not all of your contradictions are.

And that leads me to another thing.....dont be such a lazy oaf merely copying and pasting other peoples works expecting me to address each one of the misapprehensions of scripture. Half the time those who hqve assembled those lists havent done any real scholarly research, instead picking verses about troops counts in one book that dont match those in another and so on......been there done that.

If you have any REAL questions lets have them, but my time is too valuable to go debunking websites you scattershot out your driveby window.

One at a time. First off where are you referring to when you say here? If you mean rollitup because it's filled with great info from really good growers. If you mean this thread, because it deals with questioning a mythology I at one time embraced completely without question. As to changing my mind in what way? I've already explained that I've changed my mind and why I changed my mind. Are you really sitting there thinking you have some new information that could profoundly alter my position that I haven't all ready considered? If so let's see it, I'm always ready for possibility that my mind could change once again if the evidence is sound and not some rehash of the nonsense that has come before. Your second paragraph is just more posturing nothing to comment on.

Third paragraph just substitute your initials and direct your response at yourself in other words look in the mirror. I keep waiting to some sort of answer on what I've asked how many times and all you keep doing is attacking the messenger while completely ignoring the question. But I digress its me that's closed off the mind and have cemented my position.

Your fourth paragraph is a hoot. Since this thread wasn't about joining up again I ask what are you doing here? The rest of the paragraph is just more ad hominem ignor the questions attack the questioner.

The fifth is just more evasive posturing. If you can't explain it just pretend it wasn't brought up or it wasn't worth answering because you believe the question wasn't an honest question. Hey it was honest enough for me I CHANGED my mind due to that question.

The rest isn't worth responding to since at this juncture it's pretty obvious who has closed off their mind. The last sentence is exactly what I've been bringing up over and over your the arbiter of truth and the arbiter of what is a real question. Sorry but I won't bite anymore you're a pretentious phony.

 

[Hazy_Nights.DC]

..that's why you always see me chilling with Moses.

 

[Rrog]

I'm sure Christians are right and the rest of the planet is wrong. The rest of them go straight to hell.

And we're talking the chosen Jews, too.

Seems very kind and loving to me.

Oh and I'm always affected when people post in completely bold or CAPITALIZED fonts. I figure it means the author is really really sure of his facts when he does this.

 

[Hazy_Nights.DC]

World End...not even a million saved..

 

[Rrog]

Does not seem efficient for a god, so... maybe that's not really how the universe works.

 

[JCS57]

I'm sure Christians are right and the rest of the planet is wrong. The rest of them go straight to hell.

And we're talking the chosen Jews, too.

Seems very kind and loving to me.

Oh and I'm always affected when people post in completely bold or CAPITALIZED fonts. I figure it means the author is really really sure of his facts when he does this.

I started using the bold feature because my eyesight sucks it allows me to proofread far faster than otherwise would be possible

 

[Rrog]

You're likely going blind whacking off on your plants as shown in your avatar.

Sorry, had to go for the joke. Sorry to hear about your eyesight, for sure. That would be more than a drag after a while. By all means, bold that shit.

 

[R1b3n4]

 

[greasemonkeymann]

I'm just baffled that people think they can convince others, anything.
that's why I stopped poking fun at y'all.
I mean it's not like there is going to be a moment of clarity and someone is gonna say "eureka! I GET IT"
so anyways..
I just started dating this chick, and got a picture for you guys..
tell me what you think..
something about her face is just not right...
She makes up for it by the best blowjobs though.

whaddayathink fellas??
she's hot eh?
I sorta think that's a good argument against god right there... I mean if I were omnipotent I surely wouldn't create THAT.

 

[JCS57]

I'm just baffled that people think they can convince others, anything.
that's why I stopped poking fun at y'all.
I mean it's not like there is going to be a moment of clarity and someone is gonna say "eureka! I GET IT"
so anyways..
I just started dating this chick, and got a picture for you guys..
tell me what you think..
something about her face is just not right...
She makes up for it by the best blowjobs though.
View attachment 3714562
whaddayathink fellas??
she's hot eh?
I sorta think that's a good argument against god right there... I mean if I were omnipotent I surely wouldn't create THAT.

Isn't that the Virgin Mary? Would certainly explain a few things. A face only a god could fuck.

 

[bgmike8]

View attachment 3714540

Lmao. Pic stolen


What do you guys think about zeitgeist?

 

[Dalek Supreme]

What do you guys think about zeitgeist?

The religion segment of Zeitgeist?

If so? It's mainly bad scholarship from the 18th century that was rehashed without checking the facts.

The main culprit was Acharya S aka DM Murdoch.

The silly part is all these deities claimed to be born on December 25. It's not true besides the date was a much later church tradition. Acharya would receive a lot of flack for that. Ironically she died December 25 from brain cancer.

 

[Tektek]

your question, dripping with contempt and sarcasm poisons the well of discussion, or can you not see that?

i feel like im talking to rebellious teenagers who are locked in the throes of raging hormones and imbalanced neurochemistry.

Argumentation 101: in order to have a legitimate argument you must concede the possibility you are wrong. You must also stipulate to the premises which support the thesis At least these two things even just to get started.

And that ladies and gentlemen is why you cannot have satisfactory answers, because you start with warped, incorrect, outlandish, ignorant and naive premises. If you begin a thesis for the sake of argument, it cannot BE a real argument if your premise is missing half the information to make it a well crafted, legitimate premise. Your conclusions will always be wrong because you start with incorrect premises, distortions of the subject or related attributes etc.....or because you start with the conclusion and reason backwards finding reasons to support your premature conclusion ( god must be evil because he lets people suffer when he could intervene etc...)

For these reasons and more i find arguments put forward by people like you guys to be wanting because one way or the other you always seem to start out with some assumptions which destroy any chance you could find fhe truth.

For example.....the problem of evil.

The answer to this "problem" is remarkably easy to arrive at if and only if you start with some basic assumptions the bible provides with little effort to the researcher.

In Revelation 12:7 It says there was war in heaven and that lucifer and a third of the angels who were loyal to him were cast out.

No question pertaining to the problem of evil is properly answered without including this information. The bible clearly describes the problems of lucifer before his eventual banishment from Gods presence. Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 both talk about this development of rebellion.

Now, many ask, if god is all this or that why did he allow lucifer to rebel, why not just wipe him out of existence immediately, etc......

The answer again is simple, though perhaps hard to accept. The creator is a being unlike anything we know and often does things we cannot understand or seem unreasonable or cruel to us. if god knew sin or rebellion was growing in the heart and mind of the most powerful being next to himself, why risk the untold sorrow that would follow? why not quench it immediately and spare billions upon billions of people from the darkest sorrow and misery we could imagine?

its a good question, a reasonable question.

What if the answer to that question hinges entirely upon a weird quality that exists only in the most advanced beings, the ability to choose, to exercise will, autonomy, and self determination? What if in order for love, friendship, genuine spontaneity, surprise, creativity, imagination and similarly serendipitous qualities to exist you HAD to allow for the possibility that the x factor, the dark flipside of free will would or could find fascination with chaos, with a path not in accordance with the design or exiistence of cosmic law?

essentially what sin is, is a departure from the built in operating system of all matter which prescribes certain conditions in order for life and existence to be maintained. With the unique power of free will, which matter does not have, which only advanced beings have, we have the ability to "turn aside" from the prescribed behavior that serves existence. Its drinking gasoline instead of water, its breathing smoke instead of air, its jumping off a building when you cannot fly, its the madness of the self directed mind which chooses a path other than the one nature, physics prescribes for the perpetuation of life.

The creator is the source of life just as food is. We will die without food....we spiritually die without the creator. Satan chose to turn away from the creator.......the source of all......the fount of eternal life and existence.....and he became absorbed with self. Even modern psychologists will tell you that being self absorbed is a spiral downward to self destruction. Even athiests recognize the value of selfless giving and service to others. All of nature exists not unto itself, but that it may minister to some other form of life. Humans have defied nature and natures god.....by persistently growing inward towards self, to the detriment not only of self but all those which could have been ministered to.

Those skeptics of you need to really ask yourselves if its really the truth you want or a truth which is more palatable and doesnt require anything of you. I believe many people turn away from even seeking the truth because they intuit that it will require a conscientious change in their lives........a commitment to a moral standard. Its not lost on many of us believers that there is a very strong attraction to world views which are basically ala carte believe whatever you want, you are god, your truth is the only truth, etc........moral relativism. As for me i have often wished the norse legends were real and that i could die in battle and go to the happy hunting grounds afterwards


theres a quote from fight club that i really like because it deals directly with the bitternesss of truth and challenges people to accept it even if they dont like it.

• You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you, never wanted you, in all probability he hates you. It's not the worst thing that could happen.

What IF the answer you claim you want just really sucks? What if it doesnt scratch where it itches? What if you were able to cross the threshhold of belief and once youre there you find theres a thousand more questions after than before? what if believing only makes your existential pain and suffering worse?

Believing is no great thing, gents, its practically crawling before walking and its really no big deal as the bible says


You believe that there is one God. That's fine! Even the demons believe that and tremble with fear.
James 2:19


So hey guys, its been great but until i see the remotest evidence of a genuine question that doesnt reek of contempt and sarcasm its simply not worth my time.

What??
It's 2016, you need deprogramming.
Evil is not a real thing, just pretend to scare the ignorant masses.
People do things we can describe as evil or bad or whatever.

 

[GardenGnome83]

your question, dripping with contempt and sarcasm poisons the well of discussion, or can you not see that?

i feel like im talking to rebellious teenagers who are locked in the throes of raging hormones and imbalanced neurochemistry.

Argumentation 101: in order to have a legitimate argument you must concede the possibility you are wrong. You must also stipulate to the premises which support the thesis At least these two things even just to get started.

And that ladies and gentlemen is why you cannot have satisfactory answers, because you start with warped, incorrect, outlandish, ignorant and naive premises. If you begin a thesis for the sake of argument, it cannot BE a real argument if your premise is missing half the information to make it a well crafted, legitimate premise. Your conclusions will always be wrong because you start with incorrect premises, distortions of the subject or related attributes etc.....or because you start with the conclusion and reason backwards finding reasons to support your premature conclusion ( god must be evil because he lets people suffer when he could intervene etc...)

For these reasons and more i find arguments put forward by people like you guys to be wanting because one way or the other you always seem to start out with some assumptions which destroy any chance you could find fhe truth.

For example.....the problem of evil.

The answer to this "problem" is remarkably easy to arrive at if and only if you start with some basic assumptions the bible provides with little effort to the researcher.

In Revelation 12:7 It says there was war in heaven and that lucifer and a third of the angels who were loyal to him were cast out.

No question pertaining to the problem of evil is properly answered without including this information. The bible clearly describes the problems of lucifer before his eventual banishment from Gods presence. Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 both talk about this development of rebellion.

Now, many ask, if god is all this or that why did he allow lucifer to rebel, why not just wipe him out of existence immediately, etc......

The answer again is simple, though perhaps hard to accept. The creator is a being unlike anything we know and often does things we cannot understand or seem unreasonable or cruel to us. if god knew sin or rebellion was growing in the heart and mind of the most powerful being next to himself, why risk the untold sorrow that would follow? why not quench it immediately and spare billions upon billions of people from the darkest sorrow and misery we could imagine?

its a good question, a reasonable question.

What if the answer to that question hinges entirely upon a weird quality that exists only in the most advanced beings, the ability to choose, to exercise will, autonomy, and self determination? What if in order for love, friendship, genuine spontaneity, surprise, creativity, imagination and similarly serendipitous qualities to exist you HAD to allow for the possibility that the x factor, the dark flipside of free will would or could find fascination with chaos, with a path not in accordance with the design or exiistence of cosmic law?

essentially what sin is, is a departure from the built in operating system of all matter which prescribes certain conditions in order for life and existence to be maintained. With the unique power of free will, which matter does not have, which only advanced beings have, we have the ability to "turn aside" from the prescribed behavior that serves existence. Its drinking gasoline instead of water, its breathing smoke instead of air, its jumping off a building when you cannot fly, its the madness of the self directed mind which chooses a path other than the one nature, physics prescribes for the perpetuation of life.

The creator is the source of life just as food is. We will die without food....we spiritually die without the creator. Satan chose to turn away from the creator.......the source of all......the fount of eternal life and existence.....and he became absorbed with self. Even modern psychologists will tell you that being self absorbed is a spiral downward to self destruction. Even athiests recognize the value of selfless giving and service to others. All of nature exists not unto itself, but that it may minister to some other form of life. Humans have defied nature and natures god.....by persistently growing inward towards self, to the detriment not only of self but all those which could have been ministered to.

Those skeptics of you need to really ask yourselves if its really the truth you want or a truth which is more palatable and doesnt require anything of you. I believe many people turn away from even seeking the truth because they intuit that it will require a conscientious change in their lives........a commitment to a moral standard. Its not lost on many of us believers that there is a very strong attraction to world views which are basically ala carte believe whatever you want, you are god, your truth is the only truth, etc........moral relativism. As for me i have often wished the norse legends were real and that i could die in battle and go to the happy hunting grounds afterwards


theres a quote from fight club that i really like because it deals directly with the bitternesss of truth and challenges people to accept it even if they dont like it.

• You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you, never wanted you, in all probability he hates you. It's not the worst thing that could happen.

What IF the answer you claim you want just really sucks? What if it doesnt scratch where it itches? What if you were able to cross the threshhold of belief and once youre there you find theres a thousand more questions after than before? what if believing only makes your existential pain and suffering worse?

Believing is no great thing, gents, its practically crawling before walking and its really no big deal as the bible says


You believe that there is one God. That's fine! Even the demons believe that and tremble with fear.
James 2:19


So hey guys, its been great but until i see the remotest evidence of a genuine question that doesnt reek of contempt and sarcasm its simply not worth my time.

Lol, you are a joke! Don't have time? You wrote a book!
And you can't use ancient books as evidence. Especially when you can't prove they are from god!
You have failed to convince anyone. You need a little depth in your mind...

 

[Az-uar Iam]

Cool, and awesome question.

When I was a kid I believed in Lake Monsters. Then over time I saw not only the evidence did not fit, but most importantly "I wanted to believe" which was holding me back from seeing truth.

The Universe is mysterious as it is without things that are untrue. I rather know than believe.

Keep in mind that one can be too skeptical, but do not open your mind so much that it thinks like it fell out.

That's our problem. We think knowing is enough, but what do we understand?

 

[primabudda]

all bullshit, the dude who wrote genesis didn't even know where the sun went at night, case closed !!!!!!





But seriously idk, maybe jesus was one of those crazy guys everyone knows.


and his powers was just early religious blindness from his followers on twitter, yea i seen him on twitter !! there's tons of them, maybe he was one these kind of people.


Maybe we are all alone !! but with with weed ha ha !!

 

[R1b3n4]