The Christ Myth Theory

[No Robots]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

 

[steve_bank]

Think about it, a small group of people determine 'what Christian means'.

Christianity has always been about power of the few over the many in the Earthly human domain.

A good example is Hnery 8th. The RCC did not meet his needs so he created his own version to serve his personal and political needs.

And now we have the mythicists telling us what science reveals and how anyone who disagrees is an ignorant nut job.

It is about group power like the RCC and the SBC, and it is abut a feeling of personal power. Just watch Christian TV. Indivduals on a misson from an all powerful god. A sense of superiority abd righteousness.

 

[No Robots]

Think about it, a small group of people determine 'what Christian means'.

Christianity has always been about power of the few over the many in the Earthly human domain.

A good example is Hnery 8th. The RCC did not meet his needs so he created his own version to serve his personal and political needs.

And now we have the mythicists telling us what science reveals and how anyone who disagrees is an ignorant nut job.

It is about group power like the RCC and the SBC, and it is abut a feeling of personal power. Just watch Christian TV. Indivduals on a misson from an all powerful god. A sense of superiority abd righteousness.

No disagreement from me on that. I just don't know why you would want, with your mythicism, to take their place.

 

[steve_bank]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

Are you a believer of some kind?

If you go by one inerretaion of the hospels suffer the world as it is, believe in Jesus-god, and get an etrnal reward in heaven.

 

[No Robots]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

Are you a believer of some kind?

If you go by one inerretaion of the hospels suffer the world as it is, believe in Jesus-god, and get an etrnal reward in heaven.

Yeah, well, that is a heathen distortion. Judaism is all about making a heaven here in this world.

 

[Jarhyn]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

I'll offer that maybe the resistance you are seeing is in fact over the absence of shown work in the text. Western thought is as much founded on platonic philosophy as much as any kind of "Jewish" philosophy, and while I feel there is an identification of co-homology that these two are moving towards, it's equally dismissive of the vast mountain of work that's being spent not just to believe it but to prove it out, to say "oh, to that's just Jewish thought".

I get where you're going with singularity of thought on the matter of  social rather than  genetic operation, but it's not anti-jewish to want to do that work to take an idea and to put it on a solid foundation rather than a foundation of just-so stories.

It's rather anti-platonic to suggest this is anti-jewish. It's jewish-agnostic. And being anti -platonic in a meeting place founded on platonic thought is kinda nutty

I think it's important to be realistic about how time has hopelessly corrupted any access we might have to any truth of any of the lives of the early Baptismal cults, and that's all there is to it, really.

Rather than trying to get people to believe your book which we can well agree has seen too much corruption to recover any degree of basis perhaps you might try the harder, narrower road, of painstaking certainty on the construction rather than accepting any "rote".

Then, you can find gratification later as much as you please knowing you, too, have now done the work and not just heard "the name" but learned it entire, how it is spelled and spoken.

I appreciate what you are saying, Jarhyn. Perhaps if all mythicists were as spiritually generous as you, I wouldn't hold such a dim view of them.

Platonism and Judaism do have similar ends. However, there is a deep problem with Greek thought: it is dualist. Judaism is monist, and therefore is able to work directly on operationalizing its meaning and goals.

Platonic thought is not necessarily "dualist", though claims of "dualism" lacking context of what the duality being proposed is, are kind annoying and unanswerable (even within a singular system, which rather implies that the perception of dualism is itself a little presumptuous). This is a misconception in many ways of platonic thought.

I am a materialist, through and through. I do not believe in a spirit absent some real and well established observable material to meditate claimed effects. You'll in fact have, in any claim, a burden to show what dualism you claim to think it is that I believe, as a platonic thinker.

If you pay attention to my contributions as to the discussion of "god" you may even come to notice that to me "god" is more a philosophical and metaphysical lever, a tool for working around various ideas and concepts than an active entity, even when it is in fact describing an active entity and that entity happens to be me (please do not construe this as a claim I am God, Creator of our mathematical system in isolation; I'm A God creator of A instance of A mathematical system someone else designed, in isolation).

I think you and I can both agree that there is a conflict between the selfish gene and the social idea, but it's not one I personally wish to ignore or pretend does not exist. There were and are selfish genes and their selfishness created us, until it lost ahold of it's creation to the hands of a better model of survival and existence.

What, exactly, that model is and how it functions is rather out of the scope of this thread, however. I do enjoy discussing it though, so if you'd like, start a thread and ping me.

 

[No Robots]

Platonic thought is not necessarily "dualist", though claims of "dualism" lacking context of what the duality being proposed is, are kind annoying and unanswerable (even within a singular system, which rather implies that the perception of dualism is itself a little presumptuous). This is a misconception in many ways of platonic thought.

My charge of dualism against Greek thought comes from a book that I mentioned a long while back, The Clue to history, by John MacMurray.

My own way of understanding this is that Greek thought is essentially philosophic. Philosophy relies on careful distinctions between the subject and object, hence it is dualist. According to Macmurray, philosophy is a consequent of the underlying dualism of Greek culture. And this cultural dualism is the result of slavery and the concomitant distinction between the leisured and the working. This contrasts with Jewish culture in which all are workers, including God, and in fact all real work is done as a co-working with God. This monism produces mysticism rather than philosophy. Mysticism is more powerful than philosophy in that it proceeds from insight to action without intervening ratiocination.

 

[Jarhyn]

Platonic thought is not necessarily "dualist", though claims of "dualism" lacking context of what the duality being proposed is, are kind annoying and unanswerable (even within a singular system, which rather implies that the perception of dualism is itself a little presumptuous). This is a misconception in many ways of platonic thought.

My charge of dualism against Greek thought comes from a book that I mentioned a long while back, The Clue to history, by John MacMurray.

My own way of understanding this is that Greek thought is essentially philosophic. Philosophy relies on careful distinctions between the subject and object, hence it is dualist. According to Macmurray, philosophy is a consequent of the underlying dualism of Greek culture. And this cultural dualism is the result of slavery and the concomitant distinction between the leisured and the working. This contrasts with Jewish culture in which all are workers, including God, and in fact all real work is done as a co-working with God. This monism produces mysticism rather than philosophy. Mysticism is more powerful than philosophy in that it proceeds from insight to action without intervening ratiocination.

Not exactly. Rather, it relies on identification of what you could call "boundaries of correlation". This doesn't wage a discontinuity on the universe so much as a recognition that SOME parts of it fail to be meaningfully related to other parts of it along certain dimensions of relatability.

Again, we could discuss this, but it's not really the thread for it.

There's a merry argument going on in Other PD in the threads on free will and determinism where I explore concept of deconstructing and eliminating subjectivity in platonic thought, but those explorations are perhaps tangential to the discussion you may wish to have.

 

[No Robots]

Not exactly. Rather, it relies on identification of what you could call "boundaries of correlation". This doesn't wage a discontinuity on the universe so much as a recognition that SOME parts of it fail to be meaningfully related to other parts of it along certain dimensions of relatability.

Philosophy does arrive at the point of unity, the One, the same end point as Judaism. However, there is a persistent shadow of cultural dualism in Greek thought that prevents it from operationalizing. This can be overcome only by self-conscious monism. Omnia animata, as Spinoza puts it. Everything is alive. And as Hegel puts it, there is understanding in Nature.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

Always good to have a goal but I'd certainly leave the mysticism out of it. Making the world peaceful is a wonderful aim but using mysticism is going down the wrong path, it's just another word for woo and brings nothing but conflict.

So your plan is to have a totally jewish world and then everyone will live happily ever after, a regular heaven. Well, heaven failed, you know, it's in your bible, the perfection must have been somehow imperfect. Interesting, don't you think? Yet that's what you want to do again? You don't see a problem?

 

[No Robots]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

Always good to have a goal but I'd certainly leave the mysticism out of it. Making the world peaceful is a wonderful aim but using mysticism is going down the wrong path, it's just another word for woo and brings nothing but conflict.

So your plan is to have a totally jewish world and then everyone will live happily ever after, a regular heaven. Well, heaven failed, you know, it's in your bible, the perfection must have been somehow imperfect. Interesting, don't you think? Yet that's what you want to do again? You don't see a problem?

I feel pretty good about joining with Moses, Jesus, Spinoza and Marx and all other mystics in pursuing the goal of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

 

[Jarhyn]

Not exactly. Rather, it relies on identification of what you could call "boundaries of correlation". This doesn't wage a discontinuity on the universe so much as a recognition that SOME parts of it fail to be meaningfully related to other parts of it along certain dimensions of relatability.

Philosophy does arrive at the point of unity, the One, the same end point as Judaism. However, there is a persistent shadow of cultural dualism in Greek thought that prevents it from operationalizing. This can be overcome only by self-conscious monism. Omnia animata, as Spinoza puts it. Everything is alive. And as Hegel puts it, there is understanding in Nature.

Prevents some from operationalizing perhaps, but so too does the monism of Judaism when it fails to recognize the reality of such disjuncts between phenomena.

I argue that everything is not "alive", and when you singularize to a whole mathematical system in isolation, that concept loses meaning.

As it is, "alive" is an arbitrarily contextualized subset of "cyclic process continuity and termination thresholds", and "mind" describes a tiny subset of "alive things" which has correlate switching behaviors, and so such statements as "the universe is alive or "the universe has a mind" are in fact not just nonsensical, but are false. The universe, the object of "this mathematical system in isolation" has many disjuncted minds, many alive parts, many minds, but on the whole, it has is not even a cycle, unless you believe in conformal Cyclic cosmology, and even then, it does not have correlated switching on that scale.

But what can certainly be said of it is that objects like us, subsets of this whole grand thing that DO correlate in their motion unto continued interrelationships of more "strong", "weak" and "magnetic" and "electric" kinds than merely the gravitational-chaotic kind, is that we do in fact have the structure that allows correlated switching and thus "minds".

There are larger objects of correlated switching too, larger selves and larger minds, but to believe the whole of it is this is unsubstantiated folly.

What is certain is that no matter what it originates of as a function, it benefits those in it most to dance the Neo-Lamarckian "socialist" paradigm, and to diversify and reorganize is a part of existing as a wise cellular automata of any stripe.

 

[No Robots]

I have made a post about life as a general property of the whole of reality.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

Always good to have a goal but I'd certainly leave the mysticism out of it. Making the world peaceful is a wonderful aim but using mysticism is going down the wrong path, it's just another word for woo and brings nothing but conflict.

So your plan is to have a totally jewish world and then everyone will live happily ever after, a regular heaven. Well, heaven failed, you know, it's in your bible, the perfection must have been somehow imperfect. Interesting, don't you think? Yet that's what you want to do again? You don't see a problem?

I feel pretty good about joining with Moses, Jesus, Spinoza and Marx and all other mystics in pursuing the goal of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

I'm sure you do. That's the problem, being run by your feelings and not rational thought. Maybe you should educate yourself about how your brain works. Do that first.

 

[No Robots]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

Always good to have a goal but I'd certainly leave the mysticism out of it. Making the world peaceful is a wonderful aim but using mysticism is going down the wrong path, it's just another word for woo and brings nothing but conflict.

So your plan is to have a totally jewish world and then everyone will live happily ever after, a regular heaven. Well, heaven failed, you know, it's in your bible, the perfection must have been somehow imperfect. Interesting, don't you think? Yet that's what you want to do again? You don't see a problem?

I feel pretty good about joining with Moses, Jesus, Spinoza and Marx and all other mystics in pursuing the goal of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

I'm sure you do. That's the problem, being run by your feelings and not rational thought. Maybe you should educate yourself about how your brain works. Do that first.

All mystics affirm that reason is the essence of reality.

 

[steve_bank]

Philosophy is a theology without ta god. It serves the same purpose.

Organized atheism has its own scriptures, bishops, and self styled popes. Followers of different atheist sects quote their scripture as do Christians.

Atheists and Christians can both exhibit the same psychology, or perhaps pathology is a btetter term.

 

[steve_bank]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

Are you a believer of some kind?

If you go by one inerretaion of the hospels suffer the world as it is, believe in Jesus-god, and get an etrnal reward in heaven.

Yeah, well, that is a heathen distortion. Judaism is all about making a heaven here in this world.

So, you decline to state if you have any form of Christian belief?

 

[No Robots]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

Are you a believer of some kind?

If you go by one inerretaion of the hospels suffer the world as it is, believe in Jesus-god, and get an etrnal reward in heaven.

Yeah, well, that is a heathen distortion. Judaism is all about making a heaven here in this world.

So, you decline to state if you have any form of Christian belief?

It's right in my sig, bro. Christian.atheist. You can read about my journey in this post.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

It's right in my sig, bro. Christian.atheist. You can read about my journey in this post.

Thank-you for the link. Your previous life has more to do with your brain anatomy than reading a book. Many people turn to mysticism and religion when having experienced what you went through. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to start a movement based on the biology of the brain than on woo? That seems to me how one would go about helping more people, with knowledge and science and not thoughts of utopia. Advances in knowledge are the best hope of helping persons with such conditions. It may be as routine to repair and reconstruct brains one day as it is to replace a hip or set a bone that it is today.

But having said that maybe that's all some of us have to give us hope. I can see natural selection operating there and it explains the popularity of mysticism and religion, which in itself is explained by brain anatomy. That's why I ask the question of whether more mysticism is an answer or whether more knowledge is the answer. And of course this gets us back to the op and all the mysticism surrounding first century Palestine and the evolution of another jewish sect.

I can see now how you have a chip on your shoulder and why you are basically a jewish supremacist. I don't think, however, that that accomplishes anything other than creating more conflict. It lets you survive but is unfortunate that you cannot comprehend a more peaceful and rational path to world peace. You are certainly not alone and I am not at all unfamiliar with what you have gone through.

The other aspect of the human condition that comes to mind is our ability to pretend. I really don't know how the brain does this and wish I did as it would give a lot of us a bit of x-ray vision and help us do exactly what you are aiming for. I personally have a tremendous ability to pretend. That ability to pretend translates into being able to see myself in other people, even those long gone. It's very monistic when you can put yourself into a prehistoric situation based on evidence, bones, tools, etc. And not just people, but even other organisms with which we all share a common ancestry. That's my vision, to pretend that we can all one day see each other as ourselves and act accordingly. And we might get there if we continue to advance scientifically.

 

[steve_bank]

I aint your bro, dude.

I'd ask ou to elaborate on Christian atheist, but I expect it would be be pointless.

Stumps me hw anyone secular or theist can derive a coherent morality from words attributed to Jesus. As I always say whtever floats your boat.
There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

The objective is to attain to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, yes.

Are you a believer of some kind?

If you go by one inerretaion of the hospels suffer the world as it is, believe in Jesus-god, and get an etrnal reward in heaven.

Yeah, well, that is a heathen distortion. Judaism is all about making a heaven here in this world.

So, you decline to state if you have any form of Christian belief?

It's right in my sig, bro. Christian.atheist. You can read about my journey in this post.

I aint your bro, dude.

Your post says nothing except you read a book that influenced you. I'd ask you to elaborate on Christian atheist, but I expect it would be be pointless.

It is beyond me how anyone secular or theist can derive a coherent morality or philosophy from words attributed to Jesus. As I always say whatever floats your boat.

For me it does not matter what you believe and follow. What matters is how you actually relate to the world and people around you.