Bigthink - User Ideas Feed

Did Jesus know he was God?

Bigthink — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:38:27 +0100

: Given that his reported sayings are ambiguous to say the least in relation to his claiming divinity, this goes to the heart of how Xtians should perceive this meddlesome Jew. If he knew he was God, then all the suffering and angst ('Father, why have you forsaken me'? et al) is merely 2000 year old melodrama. He obviously knew he had no problems getting past some temporal physical pain, with certain paradise waiting on the other side? Who in history could have claimed such inside knowledge? Given his magical abilities to know the future, what did he sacrifice? Why would he bat an eyelid at a few nails and thorns? Unless of course he was what a non supernatural prism would reveal... a devout reformist human Jew.

Conditional celestial love?

Bigthink — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:29:23 +0100

If 'God is love' as if often posited on this site, then what conditions are attached? The inclusivist monotheists would possibly say there are none? ie. Yahweh, Yahweh V.2 (Jesus), Yahweh V.3 (Allah), loves us no matter what, and even non-believers like me can get a ticket to the post mortal dance. Yet most believers attach conditions to this love, some to do with how we behave in our lifetimes, so that we may be rewarded in the invisible hereafter. Some do so on the basis of supposed holy books, which are seen as instructional and a guide to living. Even the esoteric disciplines have this tradition of ascribing value to behaviour before an etherial reward for a 'soul' is gained.

What purpose does it serve for men to direct their love skyward only to be met with silence? what compells people to carry on, swallowing the lie that the silence is part of the test? why spend the fruits of the better part of our nature, empathy and love, on so indifferent and silent an entity as any to be found in every holy book ever written? The sky is wide and beautiful and outside us, and it is ours for a time to savour, but heartfelt love is from within, with a copyright marked 'human race' and should be valued as the best part of us, earned and returned by humans only.

Theodicy or empty rationalisation?

Bigthink — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:27:14 +0100

Those who profess a belief in an interventionist deity struggle with the 'problem of pain'. Xtians particulary as their holy books implicitly says their God directly acted in ways that could only be seen as evil himself. Theodicy is the ability to rationalise how a good god can do or allow evil in the world.

The Greek philosopher Epicure said it best 300 years before gentle Jesus was mentioned. He wrote.. 'Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? then why call him God?

Theodicy? the ability to not admit the bleeding obvious.

Good information is meaningful, even in Esoterica

Bigthink — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:38:06 +0100

Good information is meaningful... the ability to contextualise it and process it appropriately is priceless. Many people live in Esoterica, an exotic land, benignly ruled over by a benevolent young uber-enlightened King, where any idea you can wrap your brain around is as valid as another. Brilliant minds that have laboured under rigourous regimes of testing and re-testing models, come up with information that is as useful in Esoterica as a Nostradamus quatraine or a John Edwards seance. Observational data, studiously charted over endless hours is equal with the ganga tinged ramblings of second rate sci-fi writers. What hope for critical thinking when the science of Hubble is no better than magic? No prizes for guessing who the king of Esoterica is.

Religion... the illusion of control

Bigthink — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:02:35 +0100

Religion seems to appeal to a very deep human need, to feel to be in control of your own destiny. Even religions that have constructed paradoxical deities.. ones that cannot logically allow humans to have free will, will invoke their traditional 'get out of jail free' card by insisting that they do have free will so as to feel some control in what would otherwise be a dialogue with a celestial fascist. Rats in experiments when placed in cages and given electric shocks were divided into a group that had no control over when the shocks were administered, and one that did... even though the amount of shocks they were given were the same, the ones that had the ability to control the timings exhibited less stress and symptoms such as stomach ulcers. The rats that had the illusion of control enjoyed a health benefit. Maybe religion functions in the same way? The faithful delude themselves they have some control over their destiny, even outside of this mortal coil.... but at what cost?

Jesus Vs Santa ... Is belief in a deity childish?

Bigthink — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:40:28 +0100

An accusation levelled suggests my 'brand' of atheism smears intelligent thinking Xtians with the idea that their belief in God is no more sophisticated than a child's belief in Santa Claus? No matter how you dress it up the similarities are stark... Jesus vs Santa?

Both get great press at Xmas, both are friendly and good with kids, they each have beards, both are surrounded by male helpers, both are constantly badgered with requests, both can be in many places at once, they each use animals as a mode of transport, they both generate enormous profits for business, they are both immortal and most obviously, they are both fictional.

have I missed anything?

Love is Love, No God Required

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:53:51 +0100

Amen.... thanks SS.

Why give credit for our better impulses to some imaginary entity? Love is in us and of us. It may not be enough to best our self-interested and selfish desires, but it puts up a pretty good show. It may be able to be explained as being to our Darwinian advantage, it may be reduced to trite couplets by show tune writers, or doggeral verse on greeting cards.. it may be the repository of all our aspirations and ambitions, unrealistical eulogised by the poets and painters... but it is a real and powerful thing nonetheless. Let's not sell it short by attaching the credit to someone's invisible friend, let's value it and call it ours.

Is America ready for a Falwellocracy?

Bigthink — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:28:33 +0100

: Given the rise of the religious right in the states and the poisonous influence of the dominionists there, is there a chance America will abandon her enlightened constitution and succumb to a Xtian version of Sharia law? While the neo-cons are keen to exploit the external 'terrorist' threat as the greatest peril to democracy, it may pale in the face of the Trojan horse that lies in wait in it's own backyard. Apart from cheerleading the struggle between moderate Islam and the headline grabbing fundamentalists, Americans need to keep an eye on the divide between the moderate Xtians who built their country and the extreme evangelical fascists who would steal it.

Paul's Jesus vs the Gospel Jesus?

Bigthink — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:41:46 +0100

One for my Xtian mates.... I recently re-read Pauls letters, spurred on by an idea I stumbled over... oy vey. Drudgery at best.. but what they contain is intriguing. The version of Jesus he embraces is more myth than man, why is that? He seems unaware of any detail of Christs life as depicted in the gospels? no mention of Immaculate conception, virgin birth, Bethlehem, Wise men, Joseph and Mary, Nazareth carpentry, John the baptist, Herod and the slaughter of the innocents, The wedding at Cana, the miracles! Wow. For someone trying to keep alive a new church, based on belief in a miraculous human/God he did not in some 80,000 words find room to mention any of these things. Maybe they had not been invented yet. And his meeting with JC's home boys which should have been a dream come true for him, is so glossed over as to be perfunctory and an obvious later interpolation. His writings (and those under his name which he did not write) constitute the bridge between the supposed recent events, maybe 10 to 20 years before he wrote, and the gospel accounts which came maybe 50 to 100 years after him. A mythical human who conquers death is the version Paul pushes.... not much else, except a peculiar obsession with circumcision?! The Gospels go to pains to emphasize the humanity of Jesus, filling in lots of detail to hook in the reader. One theory is that Paul was writing in code for protection from what was an heretical belief, and that Jesus Christ was a cipher for their belief, no more real than Osiris or Hercules. Maybe the later writers felt thay had to flesh out the human interest part of the myth and constructed a story that they could almost all agree upon. My question is if Paul's Jesus met the Gospel Jesus would they recognise each other?

Religion as a magic bullet?

Bigthink — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:32:53 +0100

Constant themes in these pages and elsewhere, is that one single thing can fix us... Jesus, Allah, Jehovah, meditation, sunshine, energy, Love (Hi BC)... where is the elusive magic bullet? Everyone has an answer, but is one needed?. I contend that we don't need fixing in the ways suggested.. we are how we are. We can and should aspire to the better angels of our nature, we yearn to feel some broader connection to some form of continuity, and manage to codify these desires under many a multi coloured flag.We are part of a continual tapestry, a thread of life that joins the past humans to the future generations. I say there is no magic fix... we're not that broke. We have survived and prospered against the odds, and while we have pain and problems we also have beauty and trancendence. Let's face up to the reality of life and not overlay some expectation of winning the celestial lottery after we're dead.... we've already won it by being here. Atheists can participate in the search for meaning... we love, laugh, bleed, cry and make great art with the best of them.... and, in a majestic indifferent universe, that's enough. As I said to a pantheist friend.. we're alive now, no death required. We'll be dead sometime, no life required.

God is unknowable

Bigthink — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 03:20:00 +0100

: My friend Tiak states that while he can't know all of God, he can know part. He favours the Jesus key to unlock the mysterious deistic Pandora's Box. A strong mystic tradition in the earlier monotheistic faiths survives and it speaks of a god who is unknowable, ineffable, unattainable.. so much so that it is folly to even attempt. This of course is another 'out' clause the believers have in order to put god beyond reason and logic. Tiak is seemingly coming from a place where logic is valued and therefore has to struggle with a paradoxical god. Why bother? How can the texts that illuminate JC's life be trusted one whit? they are so contradictory as to be next to useless on specifics. If he just wants to hold on to the idea that "Jesus is love' as many modern Xtians do, embarrassed by the old dogmas (and rightly so).. then why not embrace a version of Jesus that resides beyond reason and logic?

Politics and Jesus

Bigthink — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:12:04 +0100

: The political struggle over what Jesus represented was a key to how he is perceived today. The swill of Nicea threw up a few possibilities and the numbers went for the god version. Would Jesus have become Yahweh v.2 if the Arians had held sway? No, he would have been viewed as a troublesome priest, a thorn in the side of the collaborationist Jews who prospered under the Romans instead of a lightning rod of discontent for the Zealots who wanted the Romans out of Judea. He would have been seen as a pious Jew interested in focusing his countrymen on their own traditions of 'do unto others' et al.. an idea that pre-dates JC by over 800 years. Instead, like some uber-scapegoat, he is loaded up with all the troubles of the tribe and cast out into the desert to 'atone' for all our sins.. something he never alluded to himself. What would we make of Jesus the freedom fighter? In politics, like mathematics, it pays to have the numbers.

How useful is the assumption of 'God does not exist'?

Bigthink — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:07:14 +0100

Rooters News Agency reported anthropologists recently discovered a little known sect of coffee cup worshippers in the Ukraine. They claim their patron is Saint Denys the Logical and base their beliefs on his texts. Worshippers pour hot coffee into a cup and then pick up the handle, pause and chant 'the handle is only an assumption, but it's the best one we have', they then genuflect 5 times, hop on one leg and drink the beverage. When asked why they revere the coffee cup, one UK devotee HP said, 'you try drinking coffee without it'!! They are mostly a peaceful group, but do have issues of conflict with the next village, who drink tea, and then have a nice lie down.

S44... again it's got your fingerprints all over this one my friend. With all the quality of information at our disposal as RO points out, is it not a useful assumption to say 'god does not exist' at least in any form that would make one iota of difference to us (hi Herbie).. therefore the freeing up of time and resources by putting humanities energies into useful pursuits would be of huge benefit to everyone?! therefore atheism is useful, agnosticism just leaves the door slightly open for a pantheist toehold.

Jesus and the Mystics?

Bigthink — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:50:28 +0100

No it's not a new Xtian band... given the amount of esoteric and mystical baggage JC is loaded down with these days, I wonder what is the gap now between literal Xtians and the mystical variety that are happy to post in these pages? Are they just pantheists in Xtian clothing? All 3 monotheisms have these strands of thought, not dissimilar from eastern disciplines and were often contemporaneuos, not post eastern philosophy as sometimes believed. If the Jesus of the Bible is pushed further to the 'east', what is left for the literalists to cling to? a lot of Xtians don't believe in the virgin birth, the miracles, the healings, even the resurrection doesn't seem to be a necessity for some?! Where does this leave a post modern Xtian, where every angle on Jesus is equal to all the others?

and if they were a band, I think they'd rock like nancy boys!

Does God have free will?

Bigthink — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:34:31 +0100

: Can an omniscient/omnipotent god have free will? Has that model, in trying to create the most powerful thing imaginable, created a paradox? Would a Kronos like creator be more acceptable, creating the world out of chaos? ironic that the aesthetics and mystical holy men at one end had god defined as void or silence, while at the cruder end the version to be sold on the street ends up being the equivalent of a Marvel super hero writ large? and of course that begs an even more important question... what kind of outfit does he wear, and is the underwear on the outside?

God, The elephant in the room.

Bigthink — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:02:25 +0100

As interesting as all the pure reason and logic that my learned friends leave me for dead with is... the one thing that should inform these arguments seems to have been sidelined a little... can I ask the Big Jumbo Sky God to step back on stage? Roll up, roll up!! Marvel at the nasty Old T Yahweh v.1, gasp at the loving New T Yahweh v.2 (nothing up his sleeves).. Don't even mention Yahweh v.3!! The circus is back in town.

Our Xtian friends get twisted in non-logic, insisting all the while they can have their cake and eat it too regarding their imaginary friend. I ask them to explain how a god they say is unknowable in terms that we'd understand, can be known to them? They say he has a nature, that is infinitely good? why? based on human experience in this world you could argue he was infinitely evil by the same measure? They say he can't be unjust, and then wish away the implications that would condemn innocent babies to the same eternal damnation as mass murderers. When reason and logic fail, let's engage them on their own terms... what their own divinely guided holy books say. It's only fair. So bring on Jumbo please.. I have a shovel at the ready.

Is there God on Mars?

Bigthink — Tue, 27 May 2008 01:52:38 +0100

Mr D Bowie only went some of the way asking 'Is there life on Mars'? What about the old sky god? Is Yahweh V.2 on Mars? and if he is, how does he pass the time, given his little objects of love, the creatures he created Mars for (us) are a few million miles away? If he created the universe for us, then what was his point in making it so unattainable? At this rate come Armageddon, we'll barely be landing people on there! Does he visit Alpha Centauri just to check the real estate prices? Does he miss his little pets when he does? What was the point in creating such an unimaginably vast universe, the majority of which, to an embarassing degree will remain unknown to us? I mean it makes a lovely backdrop and all... but did he really have to go that far, or was he just showing off?!

How much free will do we need?

Bigthink — Sat, 24 May 2008 05:06:55 +0100

: The scientists reduce our 'free' will to sub-atomic particles and firing neurons, so that if we drill down deep enough, we don't have any. At that level we don't. The theists say we do, but profess a model which makes it logically impossible. When this is pointed out in relation to an omniscient/omnipotent deity, they deny they are excluding logic, and argue in ever decreasing circles. My point is, within the human experience, where we (westerners) have choice between 100 breakfast cereals, 50 types of toilet paper, 7 types of milk, 10 types of sugar, 18 types of jam, 55 varieties of fruit, 220 types of coffee... and that's before we walk out the door in the morning.. How much free will do we need? I can choose to treat people well/badly, to contribute to my environment or not, to move or atrophy, to think or fart... the choices are endless, so even if I'm not free to choose, it barely registers on a scale that is recognisable.... but that's us westerners for you, we most of us live like medieval kings now, and still too much is never enough.

Aliens without original sin?

Bigthink — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:05:01 +0100

A Catholic scientist, Father Funes, Director of the Vatican Observatory (I didn't know they had one!) came out last week with a statement reported by the BBC, that said alien life could exist in the cosmos. He went further and said some aliens might even be free of original sin!! How can I write funny stuff when these guys beat me to it? You can't satirize that? Father Funes, please stay out of comedy and leave it to the professionals! Unbelievable, in SO many ways....

Did Yahweh meet Moses and give him instructions and laws?

Bigthink — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:18:07 +0100

: On teasing out a line of thought regarding how a loving Jesus can be part of the genocidal Old T god, it seems this may be a sticking point for revisionist inclusivist Xtians? So a simple question should suffice, either this is history or metaphor, which is it to be? Can the bible be trusted on this central point?