Pagan Origins

Yes, I did get the message. You can interpret the bible anyway you want as long as it fits your rhetoric or it doesn't really matter if it doesn't makes sense.

 

Figure out the application for yourself. In your own context. In the context that arises. I'm not interested in religion and lording words over you to tell you how to act in every situation. ARe you generally a person who promotes peace? Do you seek peace? Do you seek the peace, ultimately, even for people who might wish you harm? Then you're a peacemaker. Awesome. I'd say that's pretty much in line with what Jesus is asking of people...or better said, what Jesus is saying is a better way to live.

But I'm not going to tell you to take every single situation in your life and map out how you're going to respond. If you're working on your inside enough to be someone of peace, love, etc....then the stuff that you do will come from that. Except when it doesn't, because we all screw up.

This in incorrect...the earliest Christians were not called gnostic. Gnosticism existed in certain fringes of the movement. There are all sorts of debates about the level of its influence. We do have writings where early Roman leaders and others referred to Christians as Nazarenes (reflecting the area from where Jesus grew up)...they were called disciples amongst themselves..different sources I've read suggest they weren't called Christians until about the 2nd centruy or last 1st century at the earliest. Acts suggests they were first called Christians at Antioch.

If you read Acts too, you see them referring to the faith as "The Way." That gets repeated quite a bit in Acts.

 

Well said. I agree entirely.

 

That's probably true. I think our goals in this conversation are different. I'm not interested in human progress; I'm more interested in the epistemology. If 100 years from now, everyone agrees that Christianity was a Stone Age meme, it may be important but I don't find it interesting and I'm not trying to speak to it. Everyone agreeing and humanity progressing doesn't make it true.

What I'm hearing is that there is no logical construct on which a fundamentalist doctrine can be built. I don't believe that. I don't see fundamentalists as recalcitrants who won't acknowledge the obvious; they start from different axioms and a much different intepretation results. I don't believe they're right, but I also can't disprove them. I don't think that's a middle way at all. I think it's just a reminder to people to not oversimplify or stereotype.

As for the atheists, I wasn't even thinking of you. I don't even remember who they are by name, but I've been in enough religion threads here to know they always come out in threads where someone wants to educate on the real roots of Christianity.

 

This discussion (other cheek) was started because it is implied that Jesus' teaching is different than the Hindus version of non-violence. Non violence and peace is always preferable. Our disagreement is the practicality of this methodology and that in no way it is any different than non violence message that the Hindus started which predated Christianity.

I think you are referring to post Constantine Christians. The one's I was talking about were the Jewish Christians that basically started following the teachings of Jesus. These were the same people persecuted by the Romans. They all had different belief systems.

 

Honestly, I don't care. I believe in God and I understand God through the person of Jesus. Awesome if that revelation is similar in Hinduism...and in many ways I believe it is.

I'm not referring to post-Constantine Christians at all. Acts covers events before Constantine...and the letters and communications from Roman leaders referencing followers of Jesus as a gigantic pain in the ass were definitely pre-Constantine.

There were differences among them for sure...there are still differences today...there was and is a common core among most, though.

 

You can interpret the bible anyway you want to. There is nothing at all stopping you from doing that. I'm sorry if what's being said here doesn't make sense. To some people it does make sense. If it doesn't for you, I don't hold that against you at all.

 

I've mentioned this before...I know a guy who is a freaking genius in the field of nanotechnology. Seriously..the kind of guy you talk with and realize you have very little to add to any conversation with him. He's bright beyond my understanding.

He grew up Jewish and became convinced that Jesus was who he claimed to be.

He believes in a Creator.

That's not the point of me telling you that...not to suggest he's smarter than you and me so we should defer to him because he must have all the answers. I'm not saying that, I promise.

He has colleagues who are NOT believers who I'm sure are equally if not smarter than he is.

I asked him once how they treat him regarding his beliefs....he told me that the soft science guys...the sociologists and psychologists tell him vehemently he's wrong. He says, with his own commentary, that those guys already have their own Bible in the works of Skinner and Freud.

But he says his colleagues in the hard sciences say that his "best guess" (which derives from his faith) is every bit as legitimate as theirs. That the "why" question that isn't answered by hard science is up for grabs....and that it's not a competition between science and faith to get there. He finds his faith confirmed in theories like the Big Bang...nothing into something. Ex nihilio.

That's just his experience that he shared with me. Of course that's not exhaustive of human experience or the embodiment of truth. Antecdotal to be sure. Just interesting to me.

Fascinating guy.

 

I really like this story, even the 2nd time. It squares with my experience working in the hard sciences. It squares with how I view the universe as a physicist.

I truly believe that if someone feels confident as an atheist and/or feels that faith of any kind is ridiculous, then they simply don't know enough about what we have learned so far about the universe.

The "why" question, as Max says, has only become more profound. I would even say it becomes more scary decade to decade.

I just read the wonderful biography of Einstein by Walter Isaacson (cannot recommend it enough.) Einstein drifted into and out of faith, and he joked a lot about God throughout his life (always hard to tell what the guy was taking seriously), but he had a faith in a sort of order in the universe. When that faith was challenged (e.g. by the evolving reality of quantum mechanics), he became incredibly frustrated, and he went to his grave saying that such theories and systems may work but would always be "incomplete" until there was some beauty or deep order restored to them.

 

You have to find your own "evidence." No way I can convince you though in the rational sense of an argument. Not even remotely interested in trying to.

#BeWell ha!!!!

 

You realize I'm not an athiest either, right? I get frustrated because people act like they only have two choices, not just with this but everything (Democrats-Rupublicans, black-white, etc...)

Just eliminate the middle man (i.e. how EXACTLY should I think religious book and religious leader?), still pray even if you don't like a religion and it's deity and live by pure love and see what happens. And by pray, I don't mean pray for selfish things but for things and people that will advance your spiritual progress.

 

I think there must be some kind of anamnesis going on with religion. Not the literal remembering but some kind of cultural/humanistic memory that steers belief and thought in a certain direction. Especially in the ancient world when so much knowledge was being posited and so much was based on a feeling of the world.

Physically the human body has always been a ruler for the surrounding world. Exact sizes differ but general proportions have an average and an ultimately determined "ideal" the became common across continents. So too was the human mind an epistemological ruler for the world. Again, differences exist but ultimately it is all the same electricity and wiring. How much of that is only internal and how much is also external? Does that have any play on the anamnesis?

And, again, the ancient (and well beyond understanding) of history often had very little to do with "fact". Accuracy didn't matter at all. In that kind of environment and with stories getting passed around the abstract nature of history speaks to the concrete nature of present. History as accurate telling of past events is ore of an 18th century movement.

I think the "why" question is tied to our human DNA. Why (or how) the why is there is way beyond my understanding. But it is interesting.

 

Pagan origins; capitalist, democratic, egalitarian and rationalist outcomes.

 

heaven & hell, prophecy, demon possession, sacrifice, initiation by baptism, communion with god through a holy meal, the holy spirit, monotheism, immortality of the soul, and many other "christian" ideals belonged to earlier, older pagan faiths. they were simply part of ancient mediterranean culture.

if they were all myths... mithras, dionysus, attis, osiris, and orpheus to name a few... why was jesus all of the sudden not a myth?

i am not convinced jesus ever really existed - at least not in the way the bible says. he may have been a dude who was crucified or was a preacher of some kind, but considering the timeline of events and when the actual writings of the new testament are dated, i can't understand why people view the bible as infallible.

brainwash is powerful.

 

Since we are in the topic of origins, what do you guys think about the story of Gilgamesh and it's comparison to Noah's Flood? Is it conceivable that the story of Gilgamesh was passed down through generations, recycled by the Jews and just gave it a little makeover?

 

Yes entirely possible. I know there are several different religions that have big flood stories.

 

I believe Yashua (Jesus) existed but many of the elements of the Bible from his story were exaggerated and interpolated (i.e. forged and added in) and like I said earlier in the thread, I think his mission was to show how one could rise up to god-like status and live out of pure love. Celebrating him in a cult of personalty is not getting people anywhere, otherwise we wouldn't have wars between the Catholics and Protestants or look at Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses funny because their interpretation is different.


Speaking of the Bible, especially the beginning of the Old Testament, many of those stories were passed down orally for centuries before finally being recorded. Remember, it wasn't like today where something is written and record via the 'Net at least every split second, as people didn't keep as many records (let alone weren't literate). And just like a game of Telephone and Rumors, many of the real facts were lost and/or changed as time went on before reaching the final draft.


Additionally, travel was obviously much harder, which only compounded the above. That's why the stories of the Bible took on added importance because not only was it a written record of Hebrew genealogy but people (even the priest class in some cases) didn't have access to the mass produced religious teachings until the printing press was invented 500 or so years ago. And like I said, travel was tough and there was zero electronic communication before the last century and a half, so the teachings of the Bible were all people had.


Today, the Bible lives on by tradition as it has been so highly regarded for the last two millenniums thanks in large part to the factors I named above. But now people have access to spiritual teachings from across the globe and can help uplift each other's minds thanks to the internet (both on it and talking to people in person).