Happy Easter, The Death of Jesus!

[Complications]

One Last Ride.

[sMartins]

Fixed for you

[Jalpha]

I think its a mistake to assign human characteristics and personality to what is instead the driving force, or purpose, of all things.

We are merely manifestations of that force, as Jesus was. I believe if he had lived long enough to finish the Bible it would read something a lot like that. Children of God. Whatever. It isn't romantic.

Our arrogance would have us believe we should have entitlements because of this but we do not.

God is not the seat of morality. We are.

Scripture? Matthew 7:15-20.

The churches are rotten and their fruit spreads pestilence, the people eating from them are sickened.

My 2c.

[dageir]

If God is dead, then everything is allowed, there is no ontological distinction to be made between rainbows and corpses, and all is merely flux and ash before the void. As the universe clearly has meaning, telos, will, and conciousness, I find the Christian story infinitely more believable, especially as it harmonizes with the fact that Jesus Christ -- speaking as a matter of historical and objective fact -- is the central icon of human history, as foretold in Jewish prophecy. Christianity has the only pure, wholesome, and integrated ethics, and the only sound anthropology in teaching the fallen state of man, and his salvation through grace, rather than through works.

If Christianity is not true, then I see no meaning in the alternative, but only a nihilistic subjectivism bordering on solipsism. Without Christ the levees break, only a profound existential absurditiy remains, and nothing can be built upon such loose sands (Matthew 7:24-27).

I admit that this is a leap of faith, as is the alternative belief in an infinite chain -- turtles all the way down -- of natural causation.

He is risen!

Assuming God does exist, everything is allowed. According to the scripture we are given free will. When did you see him/her/it intervene the last time? If we rely on observations/experience God seems to be an observing/passive god, not active. (Or maybe each one of us has personal God with different capabilities? ).
You claim the universe clearly has meaning. Do you have any sources on that statement? What do you found this claim on? Where is the evidence of will or conciousness? What is believable of the christian story?
According to the new testament an underaged girl (by current standards) was impregnated by a holy ghost which is part of a trinity of 3 gods that still is only one God. (All this is from memory and some factual errors might occur). At the same time a leader in the area seems to want to kill all first borns for some reason. The girl and the boy(man?) flees to Bethlehem and the girl gives birth to a son. For some reason 3 guys from the east (Persia) show up after being guided by a star. They give some random stuff to the mother and this seems to be used as evidence that the boy is "special". After this there is a lull in the story. A bit more than 30 years later apparently the same guy claims to be the son of God. (At the time there are many prophets having similar claims and there is much ruckus because the locals are angry at the romans for some reason). The romans do not care about this particular guy, but the locals thinks he is challenging the priests (he made a mess in the temple among other things) so the romans nail him up to calm things down. 3-4 centuries later a group of old men meet up in Nicaea to discuss what goes in the bible and what does not. Christ seemed to be quite a capable man. He healed the sick people. He walked on water. He transformed water into wine. Still no contemporary historians tell of these feats. Yes, one jewish (Josefus) historian mentions Jesus in passing, but does not confirm the superhuman capacities.

Solipsisms claims are not verifiable/testable and neither are the claims of christianity. To your credit you aknowledge this. It seems like you just choose to believe what gives most comfort. In my opinion this is like walking backwards into the future. Now mankind has been given the task to define their values for themselves (which they always have been in reality). We can choose freely (within apparent physical bounds) and that is scary.

The christian story is very humanocentric/egocentric as if mankind is the epitome of creation and has a special father/mentor to take care of them.

Nietzsche puts it quite eloquently:

“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of ‘world history’―yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that it floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world.”
― Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense

Our knowledge of the universe is increasing every day. We find new planets on a regular basis and Earth seems less and less special by the day. For mankind the most important thing as a species is in my opinion to spread from this planet as soon as we can. You may ask what the value of this might be considering the above quote. I do not know to be honest, but maybe the true meaning of the human life is to discover and experience the universe. Nothing more, nothing less. We are the universe observing itself. That will be impossible if we are extinct.

[sMartins]

I think its a mistake to assign human characteristics and personality to what is instead the driving force, or purpose, of all things.

Very true ... indeed only Christianity do that pretty much at that level ... though we have to remember that everytime we talk about god/gods we are talking about us in reality. ( Zeus was the power, Mars the war, Venere the love .... and so on ...)

God is not the seat of morality. We are.

Also very true, that's why we always needed and we need some kind of concepts/ideas (like religion or philosophy) to remember us that, you know if the evil doesn't exist then also the good doesn't exist. Before religions, in tribes there were taboo to base the community on.

Churces are just made by men, such as any humans thing, there is someone good and someone less.

Assuming God does exist

God/Gods existed for sure in the past, for example, if you remove the word "God" from middle age you do not understand nothing about that age, same thing with the word "Gods" in Athens in 400 b.c. ... and so on.
But if you remove the word "God" nowdays, do you still understand our age? The answer is yes .... so what are the gods in our age? "Money, tecnique" .... try to remove those words from our age and you cannot explain anymore what's going on nowdays. Try to live a week without spending any money, then tell me if it's possible ... I already know the answer, it's not.
So God is dead ... doesn't matter anymore in our life, but money and tecnique does matter, we can call them the new gods. The main problem is that those new gods doesn't care at all about what is humans .... maybe just a bit the money, that still is a human activity, markets are still driven by humans passions ... but always less, cause nowdays they look at technological resources to invest money on. That's the real danger of our age, Tecnique .... that is totally detached from the human condition.
Tecnique just works, and doesn't care at all about humans and it reproduces on itself .... I mean, for the first time in the history we have far more power to do things than to predict their utilization ... quick simplistic example: if tomorrow someone discover a button with which we can turn off the sun, we are sure that soon or later someone will turn off the sun, is that good, is that bad? who cares, since tomorrow it's possible, and if possible soon or later will happen.
We do not have an apparatus of ideas to support the era we live in.

"That which is truly disconcerting is not that the world transforms itself into a total dominion of technique.
Far more disconcerting is that man is not at all prepared for
this radical alteration of the world.
Far more disconcerting is that we are still not capable of
reaching, by means of a pondered thought, a proper comparison with that which is truly emerging in our era.
M. Heidegger, Gelassenheit(1959), Italian translation
L’abbandono,II Melnagolo, Genoa, 1983, p.36"

P.S. Just saying even you guys and kids, when I talk about customs clients, just in a game ... our way to think, to reason is efficiency ... that's scary, very scary. It's cause our age in nothing more than that, and it's sad also, not just scary.
Try to explain at a kid of just 20-40 years ago that a game is efficiency ... he will laugh so loud, efficiency has nothing to do with a game.
It's a trivial example, but very meaningful in my opinion about how our reasoning is changing.

[Jalpha]

 What is believable of the christian story?

A woman became pregnant out of wedlock and was married to the only man who would have her. She sent the child away as soon as she could. He was a smart cookie and learnt scripture, then began working on something better. Meanwhile the Jews want freedom from "oppressive" Roman occupation. They want a Jewish king. Jesus is a pacifist and this will not do.

Pharisees stand back. Watch Rome take notice. Jesus starts his peace march toward the Romans in Jerusalem, riding a donkey... Pharisees strike, whip up a crowd, Rome kills Jesus and the disciples set the foundation for the collapse of Rome, fuelled by their hurt and rage.

The jews win again.

Read about the Roman campaign against the Jews... They literally dug through the mud walls of their cities.

[Potjeh]

Gilgamesh is still a better story.

[MikeOfDragon]

If God is dead, then everything is allowed, there is no ontological distinction to be made between rainbows and corpses, and all is merely flux and ash before the void. As the universe clearly has meaning, telos, will, and conciousness, I find the Christian story infinitely more believable, especially as it harmonizes with the fact that Jesus Christ -- speaking as a matter of historical and objective fact -- is the central icon of human history, as foretold in Jewish prophecy. Christianity has the only pure, wholesome, and integrated ethics, and the only sound anthropology in teaching the fallen state of man, and his salvation through grace, rather than through works.

If Christianity is not true, then I see no meaning in the alternative, but only a nihilistic subjectivism bordering on solipsism. Without Christ the levees break, only a profound existential absurditiy remains, and nothing can be built upon such loose sands (Matthew 7:24-27).

I admit that this is a leap of faith, as is the alternative belief in an infinite chain -- turtles all the way down -- of natural causation.

He is risen!

I disagree with ya, but I will respect your belief. I believe everyone has to make their own meaning out of what they believe they know about the universe.

[Jalpha]

Gilgamesh is still a better story.

Yea, you poke at an interesting point. Most of the Bible is a total re-hash of what I will call earlier known truths about the origins of our species and culture and our wider purpose within existence. Hand me downs from the Egyptians who took them from the Sumarians who collected this information from prehistory.

There are similarities across most old texts, most of which are religious or historical, often both combined. I find this interesting because there is a set of patterns of events sometimes revolving around a central figure repeating through history not only in religious documents but also in our history. There are similarities in each repeat event but the individual circumstances are obviously much different.

Is there a higher purpose to existence, is life just what we can see and touch? I'd prefer it if people took the approach of someone filtering information when talking about the Bible in particular. Instead of always arguing about the parts which are different, or confusing, or just plain fucking wrong... It might be more constructive to validate what is true and scrap what is obviously not. Most people do this on an individual basis anyway because that book is wrong and it isn't finished. It's so unfinished they included some random letters they found between churches and included them as foundation texts to base the religion off of. Funny. Very obviously unfinished, more obviously manipulated over the last couple of thousands of years to reflect what is in the best interests of the church.

[Sollar]