What are all the reasons you don’t believe in Jesus?

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

If God was real, it would make sense that He would want to send a person down to Earth to teach us His ways.

When I hear or see the first two words of the above sentence together then I know I am usually dealing with an unbeliever but sometimes to an apologist who does not realize that they don’t believe it themselves.

But why would it make sense for an omnipotent God to send a messenger down to planet Earth? Would it not make more sense to communicate directly? I mean why not? It is like asking the babysitter to tell the children that their father loves them when he is sitting idly by on a sofa in the adjacent room with the door locked from the inside.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Same as why one would not believe in Mohammed, or the Allah he claims to know about. Evidence for the existence and reports of Jesus don’t even come close to what’s known about Mohammed, yet the range of beliefs around Jesus is truly baffling, and deep. In fact faith of many kinds is even revered by believers in spite of the lack of evidence. Faith serves as a proof of belonging to a group, and it serves as an excuse to do really, really bad things.

Every god and religion are mere inventions of man, and almost always in the image of man. Don’t forget the hundreds or thousands of years these myths have not only been expanded and glorified for their own sake, but forced onto entire populations and civilizations, at the pleasure of rulers and patriarchs saying “it’s for your own good”.

Finally, look at how incredibly gullible human beings are by nature, and ask yourself why they believe in such things as Scientology, even when it’s well know the religion was completely invented by only one, or a few human beings.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

But why would it make sense for an omnipotent God to send a messenger down to planet Earth? Would it not make more sense to communicate directly?

Presumably, a teacher like Jesus is for teaching, and a direct communication would be for the purpose of proving God exists, which is probably unnecessary, since people either believe or they don’t, and if they don’t, either it doesn’t matter, or they know they will go “straight to hell”.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Where did Jesus get his teacher training from?

[StregaModerator]

@simonpaynton There wasn’t any hell until Jesus turned up.

[DavisParticipant]

Simon … I don’t know anymore I you’re paraphrasing appologits or defending their arguments.</p>

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

I’m just putting the other point of view.

There wasn’t any hell until Jesus turned up.

If that’s true, then it accords with the lack of “partner control” in his moral philosophy: Christians were encouraged to be toothless, and to let God take care of any offenses.

Where did Jesus get his teacher training from?

Wouldn’t it be obvious?  From his daddy.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Where did Jesus get his teacher training from?
Wouldn’t it be obvious?  From his daddy.

You mean from the god you do not believe exists?  I thought you said you are an atheist?

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

I’m just trying to get inside the other person’s point of view.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

After all the years of trying do you think it is still a worthwhile endeavor? I am reading about the life of Diderot at the moment. I am sure his insights are of more value to me because I get to learn something new or appreciate a concept from a different perspective.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

I’m just trying to get inside the other person’s point of view.

All gods and religion are much easier to fathom when one knows that all gods and religion were invented by human beings. All human good and bad is right there, written by human beings into scriptures, like any other fiction or screenplay ever written.

So I’m with you on trying to understand the other person’s point of view. While at the same time realizing how persons create lasting fiction from it, for better and for worse. It becomes “myth” when it lasts and is embellished over generations.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

I want to avoid straw man arguments, and also, Jesus’ philosophy overlaps with the one I have come up with.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

According to Diderot, the theory of natural morality put forward by the English philosopher Shaftesbury not only “broke the Church’s monopoly on ethics” but also “rehabilitated human pleasure”. He considered natural morality to be derived from humans alone and that no scriptural relationship was needed (even if God existed). It also did away the threats of hell and eternal suffering.

Diderot embraced this philosophical system that (circa the 1740) allowed a skeptic like himself to feel virtuous no matter how annoyed the Christian moralists became because it allowed him to enjoy the pleasure seeking physical body that God gave him.

I agree with Diderot and I can critique his ideas as I read them because he wrote several works. But I can’t do that with Jesus because he wrote nothing down, except I think in the sand (verse not recalled by me). All we have is hearsay and versions of translations of his supposed sermons.

In light of this and given that we are atheists, does anyone think that there is anything we can learn from Christian ideas about morality that could be of use to us? Has it anything that is better than secular derived morality?

[_Robert_Participant]

The main focus of Christian morality is self sacrifice and worship of the supernatural to receive some sort of benefit in an afterlife. This promise is somehow enabled by a scapegoat murder as written decades after the event. Essentially as long as you pray for forgiveness for raping someone and have faith; you and your victim will both be together again in heaven. It’s the worse system of morality ever devised.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

It’s good to break the Church’s monopoly on ethics and to rehabilitate human pleasure.  I agree with natural morality, or moral sense theory, in the form of ethical intuitism or “moral foundations theory” which states that there are six innate moral foundations that determine our sense of right and wrong.  In other words, right and wrong (in Romans 2:15)

show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them

In Matthew 15:11, Jesus is reported to have said:

What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.

So, Jesus agreed with Shaftesbury and Diderot.  But the Church decided to put its “twisting garden of rules” in place and keep people tied up in knots.

is anything we can learn from Christian ideas about morality that could be of use to us? Has it anything that is better than secular derived morality?

Jesus’ teaching, or commandment, “love God, and love your neighbour as yourself” is better than anything the Western moral philosophers have yet come up with, because it is immediately useful in people’s everyday lives.  The formula I came up with was not a copy of that or based on it, yet it coincides with it, from a different starting point.

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