Jesus and the Witch Hunters

[Unknown Soldier]

So take your pick: Jesus the sinner, or Jesus the murder advocate and founder of the witch hunters.

That one is easy: the sinner. If "sin" causes you to love your fellow human being and eschew violence, it is no sin to me. The rest, is going to take some unpacking.

You'll need to tell Jesus that he should love his fellow human beings and eschew violence. He didn't seem to see it that way.

 

[Politesse]

That one is easy: the sinner. If "sin" causes you to love your fellow human being and eschew violence, it is no sin to me. The rest, is going to take some unpacking.

You'll need to tell Jesus that he should love his fellow human beings and eschew violence. He didn't seem to see it that way.

He's dead, Jim.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

He's dead, Jim.

For once we agree.

And by the way, if Jesus was a sinner, then his preaching against sin made him a liar and a hypocrite. I don't need a liar and a hypocrite to tell me to love others and eschew violence. I don't need anybody to tell me to love others and eschew violence. I must winder about anybody who can't figure out on their own that it's best to love others and eschew violence.

 

[Politesse]

He's dead, Jim.

For once we agree.

And by the way, if Jesus was a sinner, then his preaching against sin made him a liar and a hypocrite. I don't need a liar and a hypocrite to tell me to love others and eschew violence. I don't need anybody to tell me to love others and eschew violence. I must winder about anybody who can't figure out on their own that it's best to love others and eschew violence.

Then everyone, regardless of their religious sympathies, is a liar and a hypocrite. I know of no one without faults. You yourself have just blindly stated that it is good to love others, even though it is quite obvious that you don't love everyone; you started a thread on an internet forum just to donk on a dead guy. To me, that does not make your statement false. Everyone holds values and beliefs that they struggle to put into practice, but we are made better by the attempt.

 

[Politesse]

You're making this whole issue out to be much more complicated than it is. The law to murder witches is very clear and simple: "You will not allow a witch to live." I interpret this law as a command to kill supposed witches. There's very little leeway here regarding the meaning of this injunction. How else would Jesus interpret it? If Jesus believed that this law should be disobeyed, then he upheld sin, something he always preached against. If he upheld it, then he condoned the murder of witches.

I don't think he did, unless the story of the adulteress' trial in gJohn is a complete fabrication (John 7:53–8:11). It may have been, but then the verse we're discussing is also suspect. Ultimately, we can only really discuss Jesus as a literary figure. And that literary figure said, in short, that no human being was qualified to judge another's life, because we are ourselves sinful. At the conclusion thereof, Jesus himself refuses to condemn the woman, even though he clearly states that what she has done is a sin, and the case for it being a capital crime under Mosaic law is much more clear than what you are citing concerning witchcraft. There is no ambiguity whatseover in Deuteronomy 22:22–25; adulturers are to be stoned to death immediately. Yet, he dismisses this legal argument out of hand. God alone, in Jesus' teachings, had any right to judge us all. In fact, at no point in his recorded teachings does he advocate for people to judge anyone else in this way; there is much talk of God's judgement, certainly, but he never adovcates for our habit of playing judge and jury for each other's sins, and in fact, the perils of doing so are a major theme in both of his most well-preserved sermons. (Matthew 7:1-5) (Luke 6:31-42) And though Jesus believed himself to be an apocalyptic figure, come to redeem humanity at the very end of this Earth, he did not allow even see his own fundamental purpose as judging the sins of others (John 3:17)(Thomas 72).

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Then everyone, regardless of their religious sympathies, is a liar and a hypocrite. I know of no one without faults.

We're all killers too, but for those of us who only swat flies it would be ridiculous to say we are no better than Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor who was inspired by the Gospel to torture and murder people. The acts of Torquemada demonstrate that the evident lies and hypocrisy of Christ are more harmful than the lies and hypocrisy of almost any of us and by a very wide margin. To excuse Christ's lies and hypocrisy by comparing them to ours is absurd.

You yourself have just blindly stated that it is good to love others even though it is quite obvious that you don't love everyone...

I suppose I don't love everybody. If a person is unlovable, then I'm unlikely to love her. If any person thinks I don't love him, then he should take an honest look at himself to see why. If I'm aware that that person has knowingly done needless harm to others, then I might not love that person because he doesn't deserve it.

...you started a thread on an internet forum just to donk on a dead guy.

You're not telling the whole truth. I have detailed in my posts that I "donked on that dead guy" because I believe that his dogmas have led to untold harm and misery for millions of people for almost twenty centuries. You left out that information and deliberately misrepresented what I've been arguing. Doing so is known as a "lie of omission." I see that the ill effects of Christ's message are not far away, now are they?

By the way, your lie of omission appears to be common among Christ advocates. It's not the first time that my speaking out against Christ's dogmas has led to his followers crying that I'm being hateful while they dance around the fact that I'm speaking out against people being hurt. If I was hateful toward people, then I wouldn't say anything about the atrocities inspired by Jesus.

To me, that does not make your statement false. Everyone holds values and beliefs that they struggle to put into practice, but we are made better by the attempt.

If you want to attempt to be made better, then a good place to start is to stop misrepresenting what I say to defend your precious Jesus. His victims will appreciate it knowing that other people are then less likely to be hurt like they have been.

 

[Politesse]

Then everyone, regardless of their religious sympathies, is a liar and a hypocrite. I know of no one without faults.

We're all killers too, but for those of us who only swat flies it would be ridiculous to say we are no better than Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor who was inspired by the Gospel to torture and murder people. The acts of Torquemada demonstrate that the evident lies and hypocrisy of Christ are more harmful than the lies and hypocrisy of almost any of us and by a very wide margin. To excuse Christ's lies and hypocrisy by comparing them to ours is absurd.

You yourself have just blindly stated that it is good to love others even though it is quite obvious that you don't love everyone...

I suppose I don't love everybody. If a person is unlovable, then I'm unlikely to love her. If any person thinks I don't love him, then he should take an honest look at himself to see why. If I'm aware that that person has knowingly done needless harm to others, then I might not love that person because he doesn't deserve it.

...you started a thread on an internet forum just to donk on a dead guy.

You're not telling the whole truth. I have detailed in my posts that I "donked on that dead guy" because I believe that his dogmas have led to untold harm and misery for millions of people for almost twenty centuries. You left out that information and deliberately misrepresented what I've been arguing. Doing so is known as a "lie of omission." I see that the ill effects of Christ's message are not far away, now are they?

By the way, your lie of omission appears to be common among Christ advocates. It's not the first time that my speaking out against Christ's dogmas has led to his followers crying that I'm being hateful while they dance around the fact that I'm speaking out against people being hurt. If I was hateful toward people, then I wouldn't say anything about the atrocities inspired by Jesus.

To me, that does not make your statement false. Everyone holds values and beliefs that they struggle to put into practice, but we are made better by the attempt.

If you want to attempt to be made better, then a good place to start is to stop misrepresenting what I say to defend your precious Jesus. His victims will appreciate it knowing that other people are then less likely to be hurt like they have been.

It seems like you are more or less admitting here that modern political concerns are your primary motive here, which you are blindly reading into an ancient text that does not say what you say it does. You also seem very upset that I am a "Christian apologist", an accusation that seems quite strange to me given that I am not, and haven't. It should be obvious from our coversation above that I am no doctrinaire for that faith tradition. Is it that you think anyone who dares disagree with your wild theories must be a secret evangelist, even if they make no argument for converting to Christianity?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

It seems like you are more or less admitting here that modern political concerns are your primary motive here, which you are blindly reading into an ancient text that does not say what you say it does. You also seem very upset that I am a "Christian apologist", an accusation that seems quite strange to me given that I am not, and haven't. It should be obvious from our coversation above that I am no doctrinaire for that faith tradition. Is it that you think anyone who dares disagree with your wild theories must be a secret evangelist, even if they make no argument for converting to Christianity?

Again, you are dancing around the issues I raised and posted more red herrings to do so. Either sensibly address those issues or I will move on. You can start by explaining your misrepresenting what I've been arguing. It appears you did so to cover up the culpability of the Gospel story and its Christ figure (if he really existed) for persecutions like the witch hunts and the inquisition. Is that correct?

 

[Politesse]

It seems like you are more or less admitting here that modern political concerns are your primary motive here, which you are blindly reading into an ancient text that does not say what you say it does. You also seem very upset that I am a "Christian apologist", an accusation that seems quite strange to me given that I am not, and haven't. It should be obvious from our coversation above that I am no doctrinaire for that faith tradition. Is it that you think anyone who dares disagree with your wild theories must be a secret evangelist, even if they make no argument for converting to Christianity?

Again, you are dancing around the issues I raised and posted more red herrings to do so. Either sensibly address those issues or I will move on. You can start by explaining your misrepresenting what I've been arguing. It appears you did so to cover up the culpability of the Gospel story and its Christ figure (if he really existed) for persecutions like the witch hunts and the inquisition. Is that correct?

You accuse me of "dancing around" while you make personal attacks instead of presenting evidence of your views? It is very telling, to me, which of my posts you are responding to and which you are ignoring. It doesn't "appear" like that at all, and indeed I don't see the relevance of those historical events to discussing what was or wasn't true of Jesus in his lifetime. No, I don't think those people you mention were justified in doing what they did, but they aren't relevant to the discussion you were supposedly putting forward in this thread. No one can control what other people do after we are dead.

 

[lostone]

All religions and ideologies have done lots of harm. It is the nature of life that most of us do some harm to to others passing through. OTOH, the most harm is usually done by those who become fanatical about their beliefs, no matter what those beliefs may be. The most common fanatical belief system in the US, at the present moment, is the Dominionism version of Christianity. The sort that Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, and so forth adhere to. Perhaps we should also admit that harmless, and even beneficial, versions of those ideologies also exist.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

All religions and ideologies have done lots of harm. It is the nature of life that most of us do some harm to to others passing through. OTOH, the most harm is usually done by those who become fanatical about their beliefs, no matter what those beliefs may be.

By "fanatical," I assume you mean not able to listen to reason even if harm results or if there is an obvious potential for harm. Many people tend to come along preaching what many people want very much to believe because if what is preached is true, then others think they will greatly benefit. As a result, those believers make the promises they hear their top priority seeking fulfillment of those promises no matter who gets trampled in the process. The "preachers" knowingly add fuel to this fire often avowing the dangers of believing them making out the risks of belief and obedience to be virtues. The obvious result is that believers often do take risks and end up trampling other people because to them the utopia they seek is worth anything to them. Jesus fits this mold of a fanatical and dangerous religious leader in the same league as Jim Jones and David Koresh.

The most common fanatical belief system in the US, at the present moment, is the Dominionism version of Christianity. The sort that Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, and so forth adhere to. Perhaps we should also admit that harmless, and even beneficial, versions of those ideologies also exist.

Fanatical religions can be harmless and even beneficial if its followers don't take it too seriously or change it to avoid harm and help people. Christians have done so all along. Almost all Christians, for example, ignore Christ's command to be "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven" or even prohibit the practice of self-castration which they ended up needing to do.

 

[steve_bank]

From a moral perspective yiu may say we all 'murder' but conveintent ignorance.

Your cheap computer mouse made by near slave labor in China and other places.


Thomas Moore wrote in his times that society allows conditions that compel people born into poverty to commit crime to survive, then punishes them for it. Twain in an essay aclled out selective morality.


The majority looks the other way on social and economic conditions that lead to crime and murder. Conservatves hang onto an econmic idelgy that creates conditions for crime.

The grand inquisitor is an extreme example.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

From a moral perspective yiu may say we all 'murder' but conveintent ignorance.

Your cheap computer mouse made by near slave labor in China and other places.

I look at it this way: If some thug decides to murder a person without my putting him up to it or even knowing he did it, loots the body, and then gives me the money so I can buy food and rent shelter that I otherwise could not obtain, then I don't see how I did anything wrong. I'm not a murderer if I incidentally benefit from murder that I never approved of.

Besides, Chinese workers may be exploited, but they're normally not murdered. Yes, we Americans may benefit from harsh labor practices overseas, but what can we do about it? Are you going to return your sneakers to Walmart feeling guilty for wearing them?

Thomas Moore wrote in his times that society allows conditions that compel people born into poverty to commit crime to survive, then punishes them for it. Twain in an essay aclled out selective morality.

Moore was right. Poverty does breed crime, most of us know it, and we generally turn a blind eye to it. Considering that the poor people prosecuted for crimes are not liked or wanted anyway, we can dispose of them that way and look good doing it.

The majority looks the other way on social and economic conditions that lead to crime and murder. Conservatves hang onto an econmic idelgy that creates conditions for crime.

Again, I don't disagree with you. What you say is obvious, and the lies people tell to deny it are obvious too.

The grand inquisitor is an extreme example.

I'm not sure what you're referring to or saying.

Anyway, what does any of this have to do with the topic?