Dear iidb: Guy babbling about Christ, evolution, and the big bang.

[steve_bank]

When people say god bless you I usually take it in the spirit given.

There is a guy in my building who says it like hitting with a club. Passing in the hall, in the elevator, when lengthen a common area hits everybody with it.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Jesus turned water to wine at a party and said eat and drink to remember me. Must have been a party animal.

No kidding. Could have just disinfected the water source so all the people could drink of it free of parasites and be healthy...

...but the writers didn't know about such things, so couldn't make it up... and had to stick with Party Animal Jesus.

 

[Bronzeage]

This reminds me of a story a minister told me many years ago. He was the pastor of a small church and one Sunday a woman attended services dressed in clothes that everyone recognized as what a prostitute on the street corner would wear. I'll call her Lynn. She was quiet and polite and sat in the back. The pastor made a point to speak to her after the service. She was a prostitute and a drug addict and asked for help. He referred her to people who dealt with her kind of problems. She got into a rehab program and attended regularly. As with most people in this situation, there were good spells and relapse. After a relapse she would come back to church, still dressed as a prostitute, which were the only clothes she owned. Finally, one of the parishioners confronted the pastor and asked him what he was going to do about Lynn. He responded, "Lynn is not my project. She is a work of her Holy Father and he's not moving fast enough to suit you, take it up with him."

The point is, your friend is not your project and as they say in my neighborhood, "His mama already raised him. No reason to do it again."

 

[Learner]

.

He did say something good about guys who cut their balls off for god.

He says good things about anyone who is willing to put God first.

Jesus is the ultimate Rorschach Test. People see hm as themselves or whatever they need the idea to be,

Indeed. that would be what we would call... being self-delusional. People for example thinking they're spiderman and falling off buildings.

A good example is Pete Buttigieg. By all accounts a generally conserve valued Christian in all but being gay and married. Believes in monogamy and marriage.

I suppose... if we were to add every single person who identifies themselves to be Christian, right across the full wide spectrum..
...that's pretty much the Human race...each individual with various view points.

People identifying themselves to be part of the human race...right across the spectrum...
...have different opinions, and disagreements!

It's a good example alright: demonstrating, nothings out of the ordinary when we identify ourselves with particular groups of people, unless you define some distinguishing contexts.
Putting it simple, cos I'm a simple fellow.
What is a Christian to you? The one that does "opposite" to what the bible, or Jesus demands them to do, or not to do?!

Our VP Vance a converted Christian believes in the YAHWEH who supports righteous war.

Just another one identifying as Christian, amongst the wide spectrum of multitudes of Christians who would no doubt disagree with his particular version of beliefs.

The gospel Jesus was apparently a wandering itinerant preacher with no job. A vagrant with no visible means of support.

Jesus was an ancient Jewish beatnik.

He certainly would be the richest person collecting loads of money like those big megachurches for profit, if only he was greedily obsessed by wealth...

..but mind you. He did get the biggest following and enormous fame without collecting, or spending a single dime.

 

[steve_bank]

Learner

My short answer has become no one today has any idea who The gospel Jesus nay have been.

My view has become the gospel Jesus is a conflation of multiple personas and events in a turbulent
time.

You say Vane is just another identifying as Cristian, well that is my view of you. 'I am a real Christian, he is not' ... herd it before as a response to all the abuse by Christianity from the beginning.

The narcissistic Jesus. The 'real' Christens do not seem to actually read rte bible.

The story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume is a beautiful biblical account of profound devotion and sacrifice. When questioned about the cost, Jesus declared she was preparing Him for burial, stating, "You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me".

Jesus is the ultimate imaginary friend. Accept Jesus as your personal savior and he speaks to you and guides you.

 

[Elixir]

The point is, your friend is not your project and as they say in my neighborhood, "His mama already raised him. No reason to do it again."

We are all each others’ projects.
That should be obvious now.

 

[Bronzeage]

The point is, your friend is not your project and as they say in my neighborhood, "His mama already raised him. No reason to do it again."

We are all each others’ projects.
That should be obvious now.

Who put that contract out for bids?

 

[ideologyhunter]

Jesus is the ultimate imaginary friend.

Being born white-skinned with reddish-blond hair in first century Judea -- now that was a miracle.

 

[Learner]

Learner

My short answer has become no one today has any idea who The gospel Jesus nay have been.

There's a wealth of descriptions in the Gospels to get a good character profile of what Jesus would have been.

You say Vane is just another identifying as Cristian, well that is my view of you. 'I am a real Christian, he is not' ... herd it before as a response to all the abuse by Christianity from the beginning.

As irony would have it. Atheists often (used to) debate with Christians, arguing as a convention that 'Christians don't do anything close to what Jesus asks them to do' etc & etc., which indicates atheists seem to understand the narrative and what Jesus is about here.

Atheist: "Didn't Jesus say not to judge, and you're judging me..?"

I'm sure even you yourself have done the old conventional 'litmus test', measuring how self claimed Christians like Vance who promotes a war, scales with narratives such as: Blessed are the peacemakers, or love your enemies and so on.

The narcissistic Jesus. The 'real' Christens do not seem to actually read rte bible.

The biblical perspective idea, according to the Gospels...
... is to simply have everyone believe in Christ as their saviour.. EVEN if they don't understand much of the bible - for them they are capture by the heart, it's the love and compassion language that they DO understand!

So, it is NOT at all necessary for the everyday Sunday church-goer to know everything. Unless he wants to be a preacher (or debater).

The phrase:
Blessed are those who believe without seeing, ain't going to be a good argument in the realms of scientific enquiry or debate using science or history. If the phrase is true it couldn't be measured anyway... and a true saying would not care or get conflicted by futile non-belief arguments against it.

The story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume is a beautiful biblical account of profound devotion and sacrifice. When questioned about the cost, Jesus declared she was preparing Him for burial, stating, "You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me".

Jesus is the ultimate imaginary friend. Accept Jesus as your personal savior and he speaks to you and guides you.

'The truth will set you free' was on several levels. The Romans knew this well.

Once Jesus was believed to be the saviour...no authority on earth could control them with fear, since death would be a welcomed. Hence forth Totalitarian Dictatorships would have big issues with Christians who believe in Jesus like the early Christians... .Unless, you persecute them or intentionally corrupt and confuse the biblical narratives i.e. sabotage the credibility of the authors.

 

[steve_bank]

Learner

I have said my views and why many times.

To e me you are just another routine ordinary self declared Christian who claims to know the 'truth'. Endless biblical quotes and interpretaions.

You are welcome to it. Realize all your hand waving and rationalizing means absolutely nothing to me. I believe it is more you are preaching to t\yourself to reinforce your belief.

From the scant gospels and NT texts it is impossible to know who an HJ may have been and what he actually said or did. here was no journalistic reporting and recording, confrontation spread by word of mouth.

 

[Elixir]

it is more you are preaching to t\yourself

It is always thus. Proselytizing is just an excuse to keep trying to convince themselves.

 

[Learner]

Learner

I have said my views and why many times.

To e me you are just another routine ordinary self declared Christian who claims to know the 'truth'. Endless biblical quotes and interpretaions.

All believers regardless of denomination, have to declare themselves Christian. I am quite happy to accept and declare that other denominations are also Christian as me. If the core of each of their faith statements (Christ is saviour, etc..) are the same.yes of course.
The majority if not all have this as there faith statement!

If one is claiming Christ demands them to be warmongers then I will compare with the Blessed are the Peace makers' litmus test. I use the simplest of basic logic to make the analysis. Saboteurs and corrupters will tell us Jesus makes no sense or the bible is hard to understand. Jesus has always had his enemies from the beginning...I think you get the story.

You are welcome to it. Realize all your hand waving and rationalizing means absolutely nothing to me. I believe it is more you are preaching to t\yourself to reinforce your belief.

I merely quote and highlight what seems obvious descriptions to me and where I think you may be wrong. This method of "preaching to yourself to reinforce your belief" can be done by both parties in discussion, to which I would say would include yourself as well:

"I have said my views and why many times."

From the scant gospels and NT texts it is impossible to know who an HJ may have been and what he actually said or did. here was no journalistic reporting and recording, confrontation spread by word of mouth.

Written texts ARE reportings. It's just that it's not acceptable to atheists that people wrote what they saw. willingly to be killed for it.

I think you have fallen into that secular trap described by the line: " if you say it enough times people would eventually believe it to be true".

 

[steve_bank]

Okey dokey Learner.

What ever you say.

I don't read these kinds of responses in detail much any more. My general response is it is all based on a Christian a-priori assumption hat god exists and the NT is factual.

I reject the idea that the NT is a factual record to begin withe, so all debate and interpretation based on the NT is meaningless to begin with.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I reject the idea that the NT is a factual record to begin with

Besides the internal contradictions, James 5 says that church elders will be healing all manner of sickness; in MT 21 JC says Christian faith will cause mountains to jump into the sea; JN 14 has Jesus saying that his followers will perform even greater miracles than he has (a tall order, since he raised Lazarus from death 3 chapters earlier.) I'm not seeing all these promised miracles. OK, classify the mountain quote as metaphorical, like the parables. But after he says it, he adds, "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith." (Wait 'til you see all the riders the believers have attached to that promise. You'll find out that the policy is worthless.)
So...doesn't work for me; never did. I'm here kibitzing mainly because it's so entertaining to get the believers to deny that the mass death and the fiendish infliction of suffering on humanity handed out by the Bible god (no list required, right???) in no way contradict his embodiment of perfect morals, goodness, love, justice and mercy. Goddamn, that Koolaid is full strength.

 

[steve_bank]

I remember Oral Roberts. Alleged faith healer. He used to claim natural disasters were god'swrath for homosexuals.

Roberts denied delay in trial - UPI Archives

In spite of ill health, faith healer Oral Roberts has failed to win postponement of his $11.5 million federal civil fraud trial in which he is accused of...

www.upi.com

Accused of a number of things including using fake sick people for faith healing, but never convicted.

Given us humans have not changed much in 2000 years, we are still highly superstitious and susceptible to to influence.

My guess in a general way Christianity today is not much different than 2000 years ago,.

 

[bilby]

I remember Oral Roberts. Alleged faith healer. He used to claim natural disasters were god's wrath for homosexuals.

His brother and arch-rival, Anal Roberts, was far less popular, with his claim that natural disasters were god's wrath for blowjobs.

 

[WAB]

I remember Oral Roberts. Alleged faith healer. He used to claim natural disasters were god's wrath for homosexuals.

His brother and arch-rival, Anal Roberts, was far less popular, with his claim that natural disasters were god's wrath for blowjobs.

 

[thebeave]

Oral Roberts was such a clown. He once said if his flock didn't donate a certain amount of money (many millions, IIRC), God was going to "call him home". Nice God, ya got there. How was God going to do it? Send an out of control school bus his way while he's waiting at the crosswalk? The usual, tired trope of a random lightning bolt to the head? Or maybe God would have mercy on him and only partially take home at the deadline. Like sever his arm in a freak chainsaw accident?

My dad used to like to watch OR (and others, like Rex Humbard) on Sunday morning while my mom went to church. My brother and I would tease and mock my dad for this, and he would scold us and say its good stuff and we need to pay attention. It was really odd. He was not at all outwardly religious the rest of the time. I still don't know what was going on in his head.

 

[Learner]

I remember Oral Roberts. Alleged faith healer. He used to claim natural disasters were god'swrath for homosexuals.

Roberts denied delay in trial - UPI Archives

In spite of ill health, faith healer Oral Roberts has failed to win postponement of his $11.5 million federal civil fraud trial in which he is accused of...

www.upi.com

Accused of a number of things including using fake sick people for faith healing, but never convicted.
Given us humans have not changed much in 2000 years, we are still highly superstitious and susceptible to to influence.
My guess in a general way Christianity today is not much different than 2000 years ago,.

Did you guess that all of the above is the same Christianity portrayed in the Gospels?

If you mean to portray Christianity the same way that Oral Roberts demonstrates his take of the faith...
.. then I can well agree with you.

Of course in terms of certain believers who were going through the 'Wide Gate' that Jesus talked about.

Your post serving as an argument, and Roberts style of preaching is a harmless false depiction of the Gospels and the common core doctrines of Christianity.

 

[steve_bank]

Am I nit being clear Learner?

I speculate based on what I know of mythology, communications. religion, people. and the geopolitics of the day in Israel.

What you have as Christianity today traces back to a political compromise at the Council Of Nivea between different versions and power factions within Christianity. The RCC still claims after over a 1000 yars to be the one true Christian church.

A major issue was whether Jesus was divine or not. After the new synthesis that defined what it meant to be Christian competing versions were harshly suppressed, writings were destroyed.

A question us what was the intention of the gospel writers. With the obvious Greek influence to me it was targeting non Jewish gentiles/pagans in the Roman empire.

Jesus as a demigod would appeal to Greeks and Romans. It fits their historical mythology.

So as I said I do not take the gospels and NT in general as factual. Illiteracy dominated and communication was by word of mouth subject to errors and intentional additions and fabrication and embellishments.

The common core of Christianity as it became is the Nicene Creed. Look it up.

Outside of the RCC which defines its theology, Christians freely interpret OT and NT as it suits them. Courtesy of The Reformation. Have you heard of that?

To me you are a run of the mill Christian.

There are non western Christian traditions today that trace back to the ancient times.