Jesus - the madman?

Originally posted by sonship
Watch [C. Hess] tell me about the superiority of atheism to theism for answering life's deepest questions.

When have you ever answered any of "life's deepest questions" on this forum? All I can recall you doing is making conjectures, assertions and claims.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I don't recall Jesus or his disciples doing 4. or 5. so maybe they weren't to be taken literally.

Those two are not to be taken literally because Jesus' disciples didn't have to do it? I seem to recall the disciples walking around healing people and stuff, after Jesus was gone - as in they had been given his magic powers - so I take it they could drink poison. In fact, if I had such powers, the first thing I'd do is drink some poison to impress people. Then I would pretend-choke just for laughs. As for the cutting off hands, maybe they never had a sinful thought enter their mind?

Or! Or, they healed themselves! 😲

And the reason we don't read about that in the bible is that the people who put it together realised the problems that would arise if they included those parts.

Originally posted by sonship

You clearly have no interest in the truth and only care about what is in it for you, or what will keep you happy in your delusions.

Well, I'll tell you what. This Forum is called [b]Spirituality. You seem to be here over the years as a Spirituality Exterminator, a watchdog of some type assuring that Spirituality is shown to no ...[text shortened]... criticism of my alledged disingenuous questions - at best - "It takes one to know one."[/b]

Not 'spiritual exterminator' so much as 'bible god exterminator'. I am not even atheist but I consider the bible god and all three Abrahamic religions 100% man made. Men can and do come up with wise sayings on a daily basis and have for the past 10,000 years or more and they did that with the bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Vedas, all of them written totally by men.

Humans are plenty smart enough to come up with literally millions of pithy sayings, no need for intervention from a deity.

These fast food religions do a dis-service to mankind, just like the idiots who say the pyramids could not have possibly been built by men since they were too dumb to have ever come up with the engineering talent to have done it on their own, THEREFORE aliens exist and THEY came down to Earth to help the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids, not even taking into account the idea why some alien civilization would WANT to help build such monuments which are for the aggrandizement of a single person.

The same goes for ALL of the burger king religions. (Prepackaged set of hierarchical rules where one person is at the top and everyone else cow tows to that one person) Like a real god would NEED to set up a system like that. A real god can speak to every person on Earth in his or her own language all at once, no intermediaries needed. That is the big failure of these Taco Bell religions.

Originally posted by sonhouse

Not 'spiritual exterminator' so much as 'bible god exterminator'. I am not even atheist but I consider the bible god and all three Abrahamic religions 100% man made. Men can and do come up with wise sayings on a daily basis and have for the past 10,000 years or more and they did that with the bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Vedas, all of them written totally by men.

Humans are plenty smart enough to come up with literally millions of pithy sayings, no need for intervention from a deity.

The book of Proverbs contains wise sayings. The whole Bible is not just the book of the sayings of the wise in Proverbs.

You have much history there. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob speaks of a God in the flow of history. It is naive to pretent all we have in the Bible is a collection of wise sayings.

We have a record of this God's interaction with generations and generations of people. In fact 1600 years of time are covered not including time in prophecies yet to be fulfilled.

You artificially characterize the Bible as merely "wise sayings."

I'll ignore the red herring stuff about pyramids and ancient knowledge.
Its not terribly relevant here.

A real god can speak to every person on Earth in his or her own language all at once, no intermediaries needed. That is the big failure of these Taco Bell religions.

It is Islam that usually insists that Arabic is the ONLY language in which Allah wants to speak to men.

The Bible is in three languages - Hebrew, Chaldean, Greek.
It has been translated into thousands of languages.

You say you're not an atheist. From where do you get your concept of Theos ?

Seems you Burger King - Tacos Bell religions apply more to your fly-by-night concept of Theos devoid of any biblical influence than the thousands of years the Bible has impacted the beliefs of people.

Educate yourself just a little bit. The Quran was written by one man over the course of about 30 years. By the way Muhammed himself doubted at first that the messages he was getting were really from God and not from evil spirits. His wife and another relative had to encourage him to keep taking down the messages as from Allah.

The Bible has 40 different authors over a vaster period of centuries.
Rather than one occupation they represented many.
Moses - a political leader trained in Egypt
Joshua - a military general
The Samuels - a priest
Psalms - largly a shepherd boy become a king
Proverbs - largly a wise king and other intellectuals
Daniel - a Hebrew statesman trained to serve Babylon
Nehemiah - a governor
Ezra - another priest
Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah - prophets of God
Amos - a tree farmer called to be a prophet.
Matthew - a tax collector
Mark - an assistant to a preacher
Luke, Acts - a physician with a penchant for journalism and history
John - a fishermen

Diversity suggests God's concern for universality.
Duration of time suggests God testifying to His faithfulness and eternality.
Longevity of time testifying to His word enduring the test of time an ever changing surrounding world.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Not 'spiritual exterminator' so much as 'bible god exterminator'. I am not even atheist but I consider the bible god and all three Abrahamic religions 100% man made. Men can and do come up with wise sayings on a daily basis and have for the past 10,000 years or more and they did that with the bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Vedas, all of them written total ...[text shortened]... age all at once, no intermediaries needed. That is the big failure of these Taco Bell religions.

So you say you are not atheist, but your religion is not a 'fast food' religion.

Okay, so it's not McD's, Burger King or Taco Bell. Is it Chipotle? Does their God speak to you personally?

I've heard of arrogance before, but this takes the cake. You actually expect that if God were real, He would speak to you.

One can ONLY extract from this that if you are NOT atheist, then your God MUST speak to you. What's he been saying lately? Hmmmm?

Originally posted by Suzianne
So you say you are not atheist, but your religion is not a 'fast food' religion.

Okay, so it's not McD's, Burger King or Taco Bell. Is it Chipotle? Does their God speak to you personally?

I've heard of arrogance before, but this takes the cake. You actually expect that if God were real, He would speak to you.

One can ONLY extract from this that if you are NOT atheist, then your God MUST speak to you. What's he been saying lately? Hmmmm?

No, I said a real god COULD talk to everyone in the world in his or her own languages, that is not arrogance, just simple surety. I don't 'believe' in ANY god.

I have said before I want freedom FROM religion, ESPECIALLY these pre-packaged Taco bell Arbies roast beef religions. I include the Bahavagid Gita in that as well. The first words in that book goes, you have to accept Krshna as THE lord. Sound familiar? I was trying to understand a bit of the Dasa thing. When I read that, I realized Krshna was just another burger king religion like yours and the Torah and Islam.

I have said it before and will again, a real god, IF it wanted to establish a true world wide religion, could just go, OK everyone on this pitiful planet, here is how it is.... in their own language.

All I see here is humans telling me how great this bible god is when THEY have NEVER seen hide nor hair of this beast and never will.
Because it is all made up by men to control other men AND with the side goal of putting down women. That is how it has been for the last few thousand years, like in Judaism or Islam, and early christianity, look at how they treated women, look how women are treated today.

That was not always the case.

Look at the earlier religions where women were much higher on the totem pole till they got knocked down by the masculine religions that came about a few thousand years ago.

You really think a god would allow women to be second class citizens? I don't think so. It tells me this hierarchy is all made by men, for men to control men and put women down. That is the way of it for thousands of years. You can't tell me that the fact that women have made some gains in western society in the last 100 years or so has anything to do with religion now, can you?

Originally posted by sonhouse
No, I said a real god COULD talk to everyone in the world in his or her own languages, that is not arrogance, just simple surety. I don't 'believe' in ANY god.

I have said before I want freedom FROM religion, ESPECIALLY these pre-packaged Taco bell Arbies roast beef religions. I include the Bahavagid Gita in that as well. The first words in that book goe ...[text shortened]... ns in western society in the last 100 years or so has anything to do with religion now, can you?

Clearly, you don't 'grok' the whole concept of faith.

Anyways, so which is it, are you an atheist or not? You say you're not, and yet you then say that you don't believe in any god. That's atheism, man.

Originally posted by C Hess
So, the point made in the video is that Jesus demand insane things of his followers. Things that no sane person today would obey. The list he presents is this:

1) you should love your enemy (while turning away from your family)
2) you must sell everything
3) you should abandon your family
4) you should cut off your hand
5) you should drink poison

If ...[text shortened]... ou reply with challenging my "philosophy" in life? I guess you can't rebut these statements, uh?

There was always an "if" involved in those things.

Originally posted by sonship
The Quran was written by one man over the course of about 30 years. By the way Muhammed himself doubted at first that the messages he was getting were really from God and not from evil spirits. His wife and another relative had to encourage him to keep taking down the messages as from Allah.

Maybe this is how God decided to reveal Himself. Personally I don't think the Quran is any more or less plausible or convincing than the Christian Bible. Your personal preference for the latter is not evidence when it comes to the credibility/lack of credibility of the former.

Originally posted by sonship

The book of Proverbs contains wise sayings. The whole Bible is not just the book of the sayings of the wise in Proverbs.

You have much history there. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob .....

How many gods you got going there?
Not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?
Why not?

Originally posted by RJHinds
There was always an [b]"if" involved in those things.[/b]

Please, enlighten me as to what those ifs were.

Originally posted by FMF
Maybe this is how God decided to reveal Himself. Personally I don't think the Quran is any more or less plausible or convincing than the Christian Bible. Your personal preference for the latter is not evidence when it comes to the credibility/lack of credibility of the former.

Muhammed ?

Maybe.
Maybe not.

Originally posted by Suzianne

You actually expect that if God were real, He would speak to you.

An omniscient, omnipresent god would. Why not?
He cares about us all right?
Time is of no consequence to him.

There is no reason why god would not speak privately to everyone

Originally posted by wolfgang59
There is no reason why god would not speak privately to everyone

If I have understood Suzianne correctly then her reasoning is as follows:
1. Free will is good and desirable, and God gives us free will.
2. Free will consists of making decisions whilst in a state of ignorance.
3. Therefore God must keep us ignorant so that we have the free will to decide whether or not to have believe in him (faith).

Originally posted by Suzianne
So you say you are not atheist, but your religion is not a 'fast food' religion.

Okay, so it's not McD's, Burger King or Taco Bell. Is it Chipotle? Does their God speak to you personally?

I've heard of arrogance before, but this takes the cake. You actually expect that if God were real, He would speak to you.

One can ONLY extract from this that if you are NOT atheist, then your God MUST speak to you. What's he been saying lately? Hmmmm?.

isnt it more arrogant to believe that god IS speaking to you?