PaulS

I think you would benefit by asking yourself....why wasn't Jesus required for more than 160,000 years of any God/human relationship?

I don't know where you get your definitions from, but heterosexuality (or homosexuality for that matter) has nothing to do with being committed as a sexual lifestyle but rather gay people are simply attracted to people of the opposite (and heteros to the same) sex. It is who they are, it is not a choice. They can be no more committed to a sexual lifestyle than you are committed to breathing air. It is just part of them living. And if you understood what civil rights were you'd realize the gaps in your argument. Civil rights - guarantees of equal social opportunities and equal protection under the law, regardless of race, religion, or other personal characteristics. So you'll find that most of your heterosexual civil rights came about already, due to heteros being the majority group. Minorities, such as blacks, women and gays are still trying to gain certain civil rights pertaining to them because of bigots who don't think their lives should be treated equal as others. It's not hard really - treat everybody the same whatever their ethnicity, whatever their sex, and whatever their sexuality. Love your neighbor as yourself, as somebody once said. I think you're 'truth' is a little messed up.

Gay people don't 'pursue' being gay, they simply are gay. Do heteros pursue a heterosexual lifestyle, or do they just live, like gay people just live?

Personally, I don't think this was ever Jesus' belief but rather these are words put on his lips by later authors (and we know John was written some 50-70 years after Jesus died). I think Jesus might have been pushing for people to repent because he thought the coming of the Kingdom of God was imminent, perhaps he even thought that he was the Son of Man who God would use to initiate the Kingdom, but I doubt Jesus ever thought he was to be a human sacrifice whose death would heal an imaginary rift between man and God. I like to think that if Jesus had been more educated about evolution he might even consider that there is no such rift between man and God and that as humans, we are born perfectly human. We have been evolving for some millions and millions of years. Humankind (homo sapiens) had walked this earth for more than 160,000 years before Jesus lived. The oldest written word that we apparently have from God came some 157,500 years after our species first appeared. That's a long time for there to be this rift between man and God that only Jesus could fix. And if God did 'create' the earth, he seems to have spent a lot of time waiting for man (some 14 billion years) so that this rift could then exist and he would have to sacrifice his son to himself, to fix it. I don't think Jesus was either a fraud or a liar, I just think he was born into a Jewish religious culture that was being oppressed by a nasty foreign power and these things helped shape his view of the world and his personal understanding of God. He probably had the best of intent - it's just how he came to think of life and God, like so many others have come to their views too.

Definitely. If Christianity is to continue to have any sort of relevance in the world, it has to do so on the basis of truth and facing the facts. That's easier said than done for a religion that has for so long promoted a lot of messages that actually have no substantiation back to either Jesus or the OT. It will be hard for Christianity to face, but if it doesn't, it will wither into oblivion in the future. That could be a good thing when it comes to a Christianity that promotes what I would call poor messages, but I also think Christianity can be a benefit for some as an inspiration for living a fulfilling life, that some might find useful and it would be a shame to lose that as well.

Another excellent video, mate. A lot more of this information from biblical scholarship and history is starting to get out into the public arena these days. Previously much of this was already known in scholarly circles, but not shared with the general public and laity because it's either been held back by religious authorities perhaps out of 'fear' it will rock their religion, or it simply hasn't been presented by such scholars in an easy to digest manner. Your videos go a long way to sharing this with ordinary people. Keep up the good work.

I like what he has to say, Rom. I look forward to reading more from Gus, but these couple of paragraphs really speak to me: This is the wacky thing about free will and how it is preached in Abrahamic churches around the world. This preaching gets in the way of us realizing the kingdom of heaven, which is right here and right now everywhere that we look. It is just that we can’t see it, and the sermons we keep getting keep us in the field of a battle of Good vs Evil, which is the field named sin. The orthodox church is truly the church of the God in the Garden of Eden. That God places guardians at the gates and keeps us out in the world. So, when preaching on free agency and selective salvation, the church we have is really and truly the church of exile and sin. It keeps the law of the God of Eden, but it is not a Christian church! The laws of Christ and the laws of Thermodynamics speak the heresy. They tell us that the will of that God is our will and that those gate guardians are us, it is just that we do not see it. When each of us internalizes that “I and the father are one,” we find ourselves back in the Garden. We see the one divine will all around us and can then truly love our enemies and our neighbors as our self. It turns out that our enemies and our neighbors are our Self.

To the contrary, the point I am trying to make is that people simply can’t take the Gospels as gospel, based on the available evidence, but that rather they do so based on faith. There is a considerable amount of evidence and NT scholarship that demonstrates how NT writings had developed over the decades following Jesus’ death and in fact it is centuries later before we end up with the actual earliest available versions of manuscripts, some hundreds of years after the fact. To state there there is no way they could have been built on, exaggerated, that sources were legitimate witnesses, etc, seems nonsensical. There is every chance of that and even some very strong likelihood based on what scholarship, not faith, has established. There is also a considerable amount of non-canonical writings developed in these communities after Jesus’ death, which if nothing else, simply demonstrates a wide and varied understanding of Jesus’ life developed in the first couple of hundred years following Jesus’ life. We cannot prove which stories are true and correct, nor can we establish the integrity, motive or accuracy of those whose writings did make it to the cannon. In most cases, we don’t even know who the authors actually are or anything else about them and in some cases we even know the author isn’t even who they are pretending to be. That’s all well and good and people of faith are free to believe or otherwise as they feel so compelled. It just doesn’t change history and actual factual evidence that can be presented to support such views. I think your point about John calling Jesus the ‘lamb of God’ as evidence that Jesus was on earth as a human sacrifice, is a classic example of faith leading for you. There is no reference in the earliest NT writings to this occurrence. Paul doesn’t mention it, nor do Mark, Mathew or Luke. Such a significant moment, but one in which Paul and all the other Gospel writers fail to mention. Yet for you, this one individual cited instance of John calling Jesus the lamb of God, seems to nail it for you. That is not to mock your beliefs, but just to point out that they are faith-based, not evidence-based, in my opinion. It is apparent to scholars and historians alike that the Jesus cult ‘developed’ over the decades following Jesus’ death. The writings of the gospels, understood in their proper chronological order of writing, demonstrates this - Mark being written first, followed by Mathew & Luke, and culminating with the most spiritual of all, John, which transforms Jesus into something that the other Gospels never even considered (Jesus as existing before creation, Jesus as the 'lamb of God', etc). Another good example of Jesus cult development is the ‘ending’ of Mark. I presume you understand that the earliest manuscripts actually demonstrate Mark stopping at 16:8, but of course other versions that proliferated in the early centuries actually portrayed a significant difference and in fact added a story about the resurrection that didn’t even exist in Mark’s earliest versions! According to the earliest versions of Mark that we have, there was no resurrection! This is a significant change to the depiction of what Jesus was about, and suspiciously appears in these later versions of Mark that for hundreds of years have been promoted as gospel, but now we know that such a story was not in the earliest copies of Mark we have. Personally, I think that is a significant point that demonstrates how people’s thoughts of Jesus grew and morphed in the decades following his actual life and how it entered 'Christian' thinking.

Of course we are capable, that is self evident, but it is religion that takes more of an interest in thoughts rather than others. Homosexuality being the prime example for the past almost 2000 years of bigotry from Christians. A gay person can't "think" themselves out of being who they are, but that has been precisely Christianity's argument. They have said gays have free will and can choose not to be gay. We know that is a nonsense. So where is free will when it comes to sexual orientation? And if you don't have free will for that, why do you think you have free will for religious choices, etc etc? Again, it seems to me that the 'free will' argument is just religion's way of condemning those who don't exercise what said religion says is the 'right' will. There are no 'thought' police outside of religion, only 'actions' are policed. Of course humans are capable of thoughts or action capable of harm, that is self-evident, but it is religion only that tells us what thoughts are right and what thoughts are wrong. Society outside of religion offers no punishments for thoughts, only actions. Only Christianity (and some other religions) celebrates punishment for thoughts, in fact traditional Christianity says you are born thinking wrong in the first place.

Neither did "God's people" in Judaism. It is a Greek construct that was introduced into Jewish society only 100 or so years before Jesus.

Irrespective of their 'motives', it is inarguable that their 'faith' gave them the strength to see through their convictions. I disagree with how you determine the 'consensus opinion' that motive alone is sufficient motivation. Like some Christians, these bombers were prepared to die for what they believe God is and wants.

I think if you do some research you will ascertain that the surviving copies we have of any possible 'original' document are dated hundreds of years later than the anticipated original. So who knows what has changed - it can't be shown in any way. And we simply cannot say what alterations may have been made to suit the politics (or beliefs) of the era. Hundreds of years later we see disputes about elements but you only know what has been settled on by what survived. We know a little about what didn't survive, but there is know evidence to show what workings on or developments saw certain text chosen over others and what in fact happened to the others. There were certainly different trains of thought in the early hundreds of years after Jesus (e.g. several Gospels of others authors) that we know weren't accepted. That doesn't mean only the right stuff went into the bible, just that there were alternate views and certain views won out at the end of the day. It's Faith that tells you and others that these were the 'right' views.

I don't think Jesus founded a sect, I think Jesus preached a message of an imminent Kingdom of God, where the evil rulers of the world (Rome) would be shortly overthrown, and God would establish his renewed physical kingdom on earth. Jesus was telling people to prepare for this imminent judgement day and start practicing as though they were already living in said Kingdom. This was expected during Jesus' lifetime and it is possible he even saw himself as playing a role as God's "Son Of Man" - the enitity that might lead the charge for this Jusgement Day. Jesus never saw himself as a sacrifice, but may have been prepared to die for his faith (as most strongly religious people are). When the physical Kingdom didn't come to fruition (due to Jesus' sudden execution from poking the bear once too many times), the disciples and others were left scratching their heads about what to make of this tragic turn of events. Enter the storytelling and interpretation that developed thereafter. I don't think Paul 'hijacked' Christianity in any malicious way, I think he was a genuine convert to his understanding of Christianity and was hell bent on sharing such with the gentiles. Paul developed his alternate theology about Jesus being a sacrifice, and as they say, the rest is history. That view of Christianity became the orthodox view. I think you have since withdrawn this line of understanding, if I understand your post elsewhere correctly. Assert all you like - I'm just asking if you can provide evidence. Sure we start seeing persecution hundreds of years later when the church has started to grown and increase in size, but it is generally maintained by scholars and historians that there is nothing to suggest Christianity was anything more than a backwater movement for multiple decades following Jesus. I am sure there were the odd persecution as there were competing religious beliefs in those cultures, but Christianity per se wasn't a major movement that anybody focused on for persecution of otherwise. If it was, there simply isn't any evidence to demonstrate that.

Yes, I think we all act in our own self interest, even if we don't know we are doing so. It might not be 100% self interest, but there is always a component. Clearly there is an advantage to us in some way for every single thing we do, or else we wouldn't do it. That could be as simple as a mental reward that we are 'doing the right thing' in for instance the situation where we are being persecuted. So, yes, everything we do we do for our own reasons, whether we are conscious of that or not. Your self interest in holding your beliefs at present has nothing to do with intellect or whether those beliefs are necessarily grounded or not, but rather it revolves around you being satisfied that they work for you and what satisfaction those beliefs give you. If your beliefs change later, it would be because you are now satisfied with how those new beliefs compute for you. I disagree with your version of insanity. I think Muslim suicide bombers are just as 'sane' as the next person, but their beliefs push them to a limit others may not be prepared to go. Same for Christians that maybe face death of themselves and their loved ones rather than refute their faith for leniency. Faith drives people to do all sorts of things. I certainly think it is insane that some Jehovah Witnesses would rather die than receive a blood transfusion, but hey, that's their faith. They're not in sane per se, they just hold a faith that to others may seem insane. I agree with you that Pauline Christianity drove Christianity and the Roman Empire to where it is today and that by around 300 it had really established in Rome (as opposed to in Israel). But I don't give Jesus credit for that - that is largely a Pauline and subsequent followers-driven belief system that got up and running. Clearly the remaining disciples did not have such success in Jerusalem. Tell me, how many Christians were in the early Church in 50CE, 100CE, or even 200CE? My point being, it was tiny in the early days - 300 years later is not what I was referring to as 'early' church. I don't think your belief is funny - I was once the same. I just see it a lot differently now than I used to. I have no desire to try and convince you otherwise - I have found that is something that can only happen if the person wants to explore those other understandings for themselves.

It is my experience that religion tends to 'judge' what thoughts are considered harmful. For instance, if a person didn't have the 'free will' to refute their homosexuality, they were considered an abomination. We now know that homosexuality has nothing to do with free will. We are what we are. It seems to me that the 'free will' argument is just religion's way of condemning those who don't exercise what said religion says is the 'right' will.

You have more confidence in the early church than I believe you have the right to. You seem sure that for the most part they were all in their right minds and convinced by apostolic witness. These are people who existed like 2000 years ago, who you know next to nothing about, but seem to have every confidence in. That seems illogical to me and I would say is a matter of faith, not fact. As for the Islamic suicide bomber, my point remains - people who 'believe' in something will do all manner of things. It is not a stretch to imagine that well-intentioned people who heard about Jesus decades after the fact, indeed came to believe certain things about Jesus and were even prepared to die for their beliefs (just like the suicide bomber). Again, faith, not necessarily fact. Does it matter? Not particularly to me, unless such people are causing harm to others (physical, mental or emotional)..

Actually, that is but one theory postulated for the big bang precursor. Others included the possibility that the universe continually expands and contracts and was in one uch contraction phase immediately before the BB. Another is that universes are somewhat like a radioactive nucleus decaying. When a nucleus decays, it spits out an alpha or beta particle. In this theory the parent universe could do the same thing, except instead of particles, it spits out baby universes, perhaps infinitely. It's specualted that these universes could be "parallel universes". Again, my point is simply that we don't kno wenough about it yet to determine causes. I agree with you that theoretical physicists will tell you we cannot postulate anything prior to it because nothing that we can observe through any instrumentation, current or proposed, has any property that it acquired prior to it. Yet as is evident - religion 'knows' it is God. On the face of it, many Christians I know too embrace knowledge. But there often is a limit - that is when new knowledge tends to threaten faith, often I have seen Christians back away from it or refuse to seriously consider the new knowledge and allow it to actually challenge their faith. That often seems a step too far. I know in the days when I was leaving the faith, it was scary.

Like I said in another thread, there are Islamic suicide bombers who are prepared to blow themselves to bits (and others) because they fervently believe in their understanding of God. I don't see that sas much different to early Christians that believed what they believed and were prepared to be persecuted for it. Do you believe Islamic suicide bombers are right in their beliefs? If not, how do you differ their motives from early Christians who were prepared to be persecuted for their beliefs?

I'll let you two discuss this issue in more depth, but for me our lack of free will is easily demonstrated. Example: Try not to think about a pink elephant and tell me what appears in your mind. Did you genuinely exercise free will and ensure you did not think of a pink elephant? I doubt it. Something beyond your control ensured a pink elephant popped into your head. Perhaps a juvenile example but for me it just demonstrates that even when we think we have control of our minds, we don't necessarily. If we can't 100% control our own thoughts at all times, we don't have 100% free will (if any).

Motive was that they believed things, but belief and fact are two different things altogether. It seems you believe in a creator God for which I say you cannot prove exists. That doesn't stop you believing and telling others that what you believe is fact. Do I think you are being selfish - no. Like gospel writers, your 'belief' is a motive for saying unprovable things. I have no doubt that stories of Jesus, and possibly even things Jesus may have actually said or did when he was alive, had an impact on people. The Gospels are a product of that, but that is different from them being verifiable fact. We know that certain books of the New Testament are pseudonymous - that is they were written by people 'pretending' to be somebody they weren't. Wheras today we might call that fraud, it was considered a relatively acceptable practice in the early first centuries CE. Can you imagine a motive for a NT writer lying about who the actual author was for that NT document? Do Islamic suicide bombers have anything to gain by blowing themselves up? Yet they remain CONVINCED they are doing God's work. Many different faiths have been prepared to be perscuted by authorities - they can't all be right about their different religious beliefs, so clearly 'faith' is an over-riding factor, even when they are 'wrong' according to a different faith. Mass delusion? The early Church was tiny for hundreds of years. It wasn't until the Roman Empire got on board that it took off. There was a small band of people who never met Jesus who grew the religion somewhat (e.g. Paul - conspicuously, to me, why many of the closest to Jesus seem fairly silent in the after years of Jesus' death). Belief is a funny thing and people will do all sorts of things for a belief. We see this all around us - not just for Christians.

What are you defining as they created order? Just what you can see now in planets and stars, or are you referring to the gases and substances that initiated the big bang, or does order extend beyond whatever may have caused gases etc to formulate preceding the big bang? My point being, we don't have evidence that the 'created order' has a beginning because our knowledge only extends (at this moment) to the point of the big bang, and that is always scientifically being built on and better understood. Unfortunately, like many times in history, believers tend to attribute the unexplained to 'God', and satisfying themselves that no further knowledge is required. That's where it seems Christianity is largely at today with understanding the universe. It used to be that the earth was only 7000 years young and that God physically popped two single complete humans on the earth from which we are all derived. With science we have obviously moved past that limited understanding. I expect we will too one day concerning the big bang, when we further understand how it initiated the present universe as we know it. But to say it was created by some being that itself doesn't need a creator (so we can draw a fullstop there), seems lacking to me.

It always amazes me that some Christians find it impossible to accept that this amazing universe can somehow have come about by itself in some yet to be better understood way, and that subsequently a master creator must be behind it all, yet they don't flinch at the question about how any such master creator could have come about! If one can accept that 'God' can just 'be' without a creator, why is it so hard to accept that maybe the universe has come about without a 'creator', we just don't understand it fully yet? In short, if a universe cannot be without a creator, why can a God be without a creator? I fail to see how anybody with integrity can accept these as different propositions.

You are of course entitled to your 'belief', but that is different to what can be established by evidence. Which authors - who actually wrote each of the Gospels and how can you demonstrate that? Which witnesses did they speak to? Were they reliable and accurate? How can they be tested? Has everything that was written back then survived intact without change or editing? Has everything in fact survived? What manuscripts were tossed because peopel at the time didn't think they fit? Maybe they were the more accurate Gospels! Do you realise that any 'originals' we have of these writings are hundreds and hundreds of years older than the dates they were alleged to have been written? Are they still orginal? Paul never met Jesus when he was alive. Never heard him preach. Wasn't moving in Jesus' circles. Afterwards, he met Peter and others, but clearly Paul was off on a tangent. The gospels were written much later than just 40 years within Jesus' ministry. Mark maybe was within 30-40years after Jesus, Matthew and Luke more than 40-60years later, and John at least 60-80 years later. There is a lot of scholarship and study that satisfies me that what I was told growing up as a Christian and believing the bible, is actually fit to be questioned and indeed, better understood than as fact about who Jesus was and what he did

Which Pharisees? I accept that somebody wrote that there were Pharisees that said this, but how do you know it is true? What evidence can you provide to substantiate the claims? My point is, authors in the late first century were free to write whatever they wanted about Jesus, as so they did. Much of what was written is likely to be unsupported faith and belief as opposed to factual statements and they certainly cannot be verified. Certainly we see the chronological development from Mark through to John of just how the 'Christ' myth grew over time. To me, to think that Jesus disciples just didn't understand what Jesus was all about is an excuse for the later writings, not a true representation of the relationship Jesus had with his trusted 12. No, Jesus didn't predict his own death, people made these stories up about him after he died to explain his death and justify their belief. And for me, your logic that a God loves us so much that he needs his own son to be a sacrifice to himself so that he in turn can love those people that believe this story, some thousands of years later, is ludicrous. But each to their own I guess.

Welcome to the Forum Dan. Please be encouraged to introduce yourself as per the Introduction section. I hope you enjoy participating here. I think biblical scholarship and a modern understanding of the history of Christianity now establishes that Jesus did not in fact ever claim to be God incarnate. At best it seems Jesus may have thought he had a part to play in the judgement of the earth (as God's representative - the Son of Man) and the imminent introduction of God's new Kingdom on earth where maybe Jesus thought he would oversee on God's behalf. Of course when that all fell apart with Jesus' unexpected execution so early on in the piece, Jesus' followers were left to try and make sense of what had happened and how Jesus could have been so wrong - hence we have the rationale of Jesus being a sacrifice beginning development (primarily by Paul who only knew Jesus through hearsay). Unfortunately, since Jesus' crucifixion, followers of Jesus have been putting words in Jesus' mouth ever since and making claims about Jesus which Jesus clearly didn't adhere to himself. I imagine that Jesus being 'perfect' is one of those things that Jesus might have been left scratching his head over if he heard others saying that about him. Personally, I work for betterment of the community and myself because I love others and have empathy. That's enough of a reason for me to try to ensure we live in the best world we can. But if believing this about Jesus is what makes you a better person, I'm all for it, just as long as you cause no harm to others in the process. Peace and goodwill Paul