Re: making fun of atheists

boots goes:

Alan Hope <usenet.identity@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

boots goes:

Alan Hope <usenet.identity@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

boots goes:

Sorry to interrupt this vitally important train of thought, but when
you say "belief in Jesus" precisely what do you mean? Do you mean
belief that someone actually lived as the prototype for the stories
about Jesus? Do you mean belief that Jesus is man's "saviour" and
only middleman to God? Do you mean belief that Jesus is the messianic
"Christ"? All of these? None of these? What?

I've only ever been talking about belief in the historical Jesus.

That's wonderful Mr All About Alan, and it does serve to confirm the
obvious, but the question was asked in a response to Jackson, not Your
Selfcentricness.

Then send it by email, cunt.

In any case, you have your answer, which is as I say.

All the rest follows from that.

All the rest may or may not follow from that. I have no qualms about
accepting the idea that there was someone behind the legends, but when
people start making that fellow the one and only middleman with access
to God, I start looking to find out where the hat is and who gets the
money (which by the way I'm not putting in).

Once you realise that there's no historical basis for thinking the man
Jesus even existed, the rest falls away.

Of course, even if you think Jesus left his prints in the dust of
Palestine, you may still have problems with the rest of it.

Have you considered the differences in implications for the cases
where (a) Jesus existed as described

His followers would still have to prove he rose from the dead to sit
on the right hand of the father.

and (b) Jesus was an entirely
fictional character?

Then it would be like most other religions. Thor and Odin never
existed either, nor Jupiter nor Hermes.

Granted I encountered the material at a time
when my views were largely unformed,

Oh? When was that, this morning?

but it contained concepts that
were for me at that time new concepts.

I don't understand your use of the word "but".

Some of those concepts I
immediately rejected even at that young age, others pointed to very
interesting possibilities. Without devoting decades to studying the
subject I can't guess whether if fictional it was an amalgam of
earlier parts or an entirely new work. If fictional I'd say it was
the product of either a very skilled technical writer, or if original
some kind of literary genius.

You must be joking. Every single aspect of the Jesus myth has its
counterpart in earlier myths. There's not a single bit of it is in any
way original.

The ideas presented have grasped
generations by the throat and shaken them. It's something to ponder
regardless of its literal veracity.

They did that because they're pretty unexceptional, and have been
around forever. They'd already formed the basis of several religions
before St Paul ever came along, so it's not surprising he decided to
go with a winning formula. If he'd been living today, he'd have cast
Vince Vaughan and Luke Wilson.


--
AH
http://grapes2dot0.blogspot.com
.

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