iskander wrote:

proudfootz wrote:

iskander wrote:

Stein wrote:
-- Not sure what game you've been playing here. But if you are trying to creep some people out, then congratulations.

Stein

Ok.

You see, for Stein, everything is partisan. If you were on his team you could say any outrageous thing and get applauded for it.

But Heaven help you if you're not on the 'right team'.

That's ok.


I am trying to understand what could Jesus mean to an atheist, as in "all HJ-ers here who are mostly atheists".

For a believer in God ,the human existence of Jesus would mean the existence of the Trinity , His Church, Redemption and so forth.
For an atheist , the human existence of Jesus would mean nothing at all. Even if one accepts that Jesus suffered a cruel death that he did not merit, even that death means nothing, while the horrible death of people burned at the stake by those defending the dogma of the Triune God should be remembered.

Why would an atheist remember Jesus? It is a genuine question.

iskander wrote:

proudfootz wrote:

iskander wrote:

Stein wrote:
-- Not sure what game you've been playing here. But if you are trying to creep some people out, then congratulations.

Stein

Ok.

You see, for Stein, everything is partisan. If you were on his team you could say any outrageous thing and get applauded for it.

But Heaven help you if you're not on the 'right team'.

That's ok.


I am trying to understand what could Jesus mean to an atheist, as in "all HJ-ers here who are mostly atheists".

For a believer in God ,the human existence of Jesus would mean the existence of the Trinity , His Church, Redemption and so forth.
For an atheist , the human existence of Jesus would mean nothing at all. Even if one accepts that Jesus suffered a cruel death that he did not merit, even that death means nothing , while the horrible death of people burned at the stake by those defending the dogma of the Triune God should be remembered.

Why would an atheist remember Jesus? It is a genuine question.

iskander wrote:I am trying to understand what could Jesus mean to an atheist, as in "all HJ-ers here who are mostly atheists".

For a believer in God ,the human existence of Jesus would mean the existence of the Trinity , His Church, Redemption and so forth.

For an atheist , the human existence of Jesus would mean nothing at all. Even if one accepts that Jesus suffered a cruel death that he did not merit, even that death means nothing , while the horrible death of people burned at the stake by those defending the dogma of the Triune God should be remembered.

Why would an atheist remember Jesus? It is a genuine question.

So let's see - either (a) I'm a "far-Right Nationalist" who has left a trail of left-leaning opinions on the net a mile wide and has consistently posted as someone with zero patience for fringe pseudo historical theories as a 20+ year cunning ruse to hide my true "far-Right Nationalist" views OR (b) someone with zero patience for fringe pseudo historical theories, thus the 20+ year posting history. And my lack of patience with Jesus Myther nonsense.

Posted by TimONeill, Friday, 2 January 2015 7:58:59 PM

Even if the evidence for an historical Jesus was overwhelming, your tone, emotiveness [ie. Tim O'Neill's tone & emotiveness], and concern for christian history only (specifically that which makes christianity look bad, judging by what I saw on the other forum you linked to) still wouldn’t make sense.

As for the two possibilities you list, (b) doesn’t explain your emotional investment in this topic (which is apparent in your emotive language and overlooking of certain details in your rush to respond), and it doesn’t explain why you only focus on history that makes religion look bad; whereas (a) does. But it doesn’t have to stop at those two possibilities. Perhaps everyone dear to you is a Christian and the thought of them losing a belief that seems to provide them with so much fulfillment breaks your heart? Unlike (b), that explanation wouldn’t leave so many question marks hanging.

Ultimately, all I’m saying that I think there is more to what drives you than you’re letting on and I’m fascinated by what it could be. There’s a reason why so many mistake you for a Christian, and it’s not because the rest of the world is stupid.

Presenting yourself as an atheist gives you an air of impartiality (thus faking it online for 20+ years may not be such an absurd notion if you’re passionate enough about defending Christianity and its woeful history), and enables you make make more claims, without immediately backing them up, than you otherwise could.

Continued…
Posted by AJ Philips, Saturday, 3 January 2015 11:23:02 AM

...Continued

Innocent or sinister, something more than a distaste for pseudohistory drives you and it could bear relevance to the discussion if there are some assertions that we’re just going to have to take your word for.

Posted by AJ Philips, Saturday, 3 January 2015 11:23:08 AM

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/threa ... 974&page=0

* "The Mad Rabbi".

TimONeill,

If you really are an atheist with no emotional investment, then why can't we just discuss this civilly? You have been on the offensive with a very snarky and sarcastic tone from the word go. Why do you have to be so unpleasant? Just chill. I have no definitive position on this topic and I'm happy for you to be right. That should have been clear from my first post. The fact that you have become so emotional about all this that you missed that suggests, to me, that there is something more to your position than a mere concern for historical accuracy and what you perceive to be nonsense arguments. Your blog's strong focus on this particular topic, too, only further arouses my curiosity.

Perhaps you're a far-Right Nationalist who wants to ensure the survival of Christianity for cultural purposes? Who knows?

All I know - from my years of experience with atheist-theist debates - is that something's off here and it has me intrigued.

<<Write to your nearest university and explain this to the historians there. I'm sure they'll be devastated.>>

Not necessary. I sure they're already aware of the problem. I will grant, however, that this point of mine is probably more relevant to Christians who believe in a divine Jesus with an important message for everyone.

<<Carrier simply makes the assertion that other scholars "assume" Jesus existed.>>

Not quite. In the link I provided (at least), Carrier makes the point that scholars often assume that certain *evidence* for Jesus exists.

<<Congratulations, you've set a new world speed record for resorting to that weak slur.>>

As I explained to your sock puppet, that wasn't just some ad hominem (or slur). The fact that you interpreted it as such just goes to show how defensive you're getting. But, again, why?

<<Seriously, get a grip.>>

Nothing I have said, nor the tone I have said it in, suggests that I lost my grip. This is just more emotive language from you. I would suggest that it is you who needs to get a grip. Your behavior is manic.

Posted by AJ Philips, Thursday, 1 January 2015 9:49:48 PM

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/threa ... 974&page=0

Stein wrote:

What Antiquities 20 and Annals 15 show is of central importance, since they are two independent non-apologetic sources, the first of which is a contemporary witness to a blood relative with nothing magic or supernatural about him at all. Duh.

iskander wrote:Mark 1 end
45But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus* could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

It was the miracle that made him popular, not the quality of his teaching.
Saints, and relics also perform miracles on his name and huge crowds come to religious leaders like the rats followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin

Stein wrote:

iskander wrote:Mark 1 end
45But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus* could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

It was the miracle that made him popular, not the quality of his teaching.
Saints, and relics also perform miracles on his name and huge crowds come to religious leaders like the rats followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin

You're not paying any attention to any of the modern scholarship, something which we already went over in this thread dozens of times before. Many here who are conversant with the most recent scholarship and reject all the magic woo entirely, just like many a modern scholar today does, have already addressed who and what this mundane human rabbi most likely was and did right here in this years'-long discussion countless times. The most recent analysis of what Jesus the mundane rabbi said and did is not based on idle preferences for what professionals "wish" he said and did. It's based, among other things, on textual, philological and bibliographical analysis of the different idioms of Koine Greek found in the different textual strata of the Synoptics and the parallel pericopes in Matt./Luke.

Just this past May, I already explained what the current state of play in the field is -- and the frequency with which HJ-ers have had to repeat all this stuff again and again and again in this thread is eloquent testimony to the laziness of myther newbies here who with every new wave of newcomers never bother to use the Search function in this humongous thread at all.

I know that even though I am now referring you to the latest posting where I spelled all this out --

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/post2 ... n#p2224439

-- there will still be at least one or two in this very exchange who will pretend, not long from now, that no such stuff was spelled out here at all. For tricksters and bots like them, this stuff is a perennial exercise in futility. But for lurkers, it may occasionally discourage them from the inevitable trolling typical of far too many mythers.

Stein

Owdhat wrote:He is one of those important turning points in history, whether he intended it or not.

....And [we believe] in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us, humans, and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and became fully human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried.

He rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

Stein wrote:

You're not paying any attention to any of the modern scholarship, something which we already went over in this thread dozens of times before.

Stein wrote:

iskander wrote:Mark 1 end
45But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus* could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

It was the miracle that made him popular, not the quality of his teaching.
Saints, and relics also perform miracles on his name and huge crowds come to religious leaders like the rats followed the Pied Piper of Hamelin

You're not paying any attention to any of the modern scholarship, something which we already went over in this thread dozens of times before. Many here who are conversant with the most recent scholarship and reject all the magic woo entirely, just like many a modern scholar today does, have already addressed who and what this mundane human rabbi most likely was and did right here in this years'-long discussion countless times. The most recent analysis of what Jesus the mundane rabbi said and did is not based on idle preferences for what professionals "wish" he said and did. It's based, among other things, on textual, philological and bibliographical analysis of the different idioms of Koine Greek found in the different textual strata of the Synoptics and the parallel pericopes in Matt./Luke.

Just this past May, I already explained what the current state of play in the field is -- and the frequency with which HJ-ers have had to repeat all this stuff again and again and again in this thread is eloquent testimony to the laziness of myther newbies here who with every new wave of newcomers never bother to use the Search function in this humongous thread at all.

I know that even though I am now referring you to the latest posting where I spelled all this out --

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/post2 ... n#p2224439

-- there will still be at least one or two in this very exchange who will pretend, not long from now, that no such stuff was spelled out here at all. For tricksters and bots like them, this stuff is a perennial exercise in futility. But for lurkers, it may occasionally discourage them from the inevitable trolling typical of far too many mythers.

Stein

Stein wrote: .... this thread is eloquent testimony to the laziness of myther newbies here who with every new wave of newcomers never bother to use the Search function in this humongous thread at all.

I know that even though I am now referring you to the latest posting where I spelled all this out --

< link to nonsense by Stein >

-- there will still be at least one or two in this very exchange who will pretend, not long from now, that no such stuff was spelled out here at all. For tricksters and bots like them, this stuff is a perennial exercise in futility. But for lurkers, it may occasionally discourage them from the inevitable trolling typical of far too many mythers.

Stein

Owdhat wrote:He is one of those important turning points in history, whether he intended it or not.

Tyndale was burned alive in a small town in Belgium in 1536. His crime was to have translated the Bible into English. . He was effectively martyred after fighting against cruel and eventually overwhelming forces, which tried for more than a dozen years to prevent him from putting the Word of God into his native language. He succeeded but he was murdered before he could complete his self-set task of translating the whole of the Old Testament as he had translated the whole of the New Testament.


More than any other man he laid the foundation of our modern language which became by degrees a world language. “He was very frugal and spare of body”, according to a messenger of Thomas Cromwell, but with an unbreakable will. Tyndale, one of the greatest scholars of his age, had a gift for mastering languages, ancient and modern, and a genius for translation. His legacy matches that other pillar of our language – Shakespeare, whose genius was in imagination.


For considerable stretches of his short life, Tyndale was hounded across Western Europe by spies and agents from the hypocritical king of England, Henry VIII, the Pope and by the Holy Roman Emperor. It was the Emperor’s net which closed in on him in the end. By then, even to have known Tyndale let alone to have read his New Testament back in England was to make you liable to torture and often death by fire.


His story embraces an alliance with Anne Boleyn, an argument covering three quarters of a million words with Thomas More, who was so vile and excrementally vivid that it is difficult to read him even today. Tyndale was widely regarded as a man of great piety and equal courage and above all dedicated to, even obsessed with, the idea that the Bible, which for more than 1,000 years had reigned in Latin, should be accessible to the eyes and ears of his fellow countrymen in their own tongue. English was his holy grail.

iskander wrote:Thank you.
I see that the name of Jesus is mentioned with other names , such as Socrates, Confucius and so on.


But what did Jesus teach?

Mark 1
12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news* of God,* 15and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near;* repent, and believe in the good news.’*


Jesus was baptised by a mysterious weirdo. Lived in the wilderness with Satan , Angels, and wild beasts,
Later he proclaimed the need to repent because the kingdom of god is near. Repent and believe.
He is teaching nothing so far.