Jesus Christ

yeah thats cool, i have a fascination with ancient religions, and how when north and south america were conquered and colonized all that culture was destroyed and largely forgotten, and i think just being able to learn about it would be interesting, but most of it is burried in the annals of time. I will say this for christians, they seem to have a knack for feeling they are right, everyone else is wrong, and should be destroyed if they don't worship their way.

 

don't remember the title of the book I was reading some years ago, I think the autor was elaine pagels, an american soziologist. she wrote something like this:
there was a living person named jesus he was a descendant of the jewish line of kings, so david from the old testament was one of his ancestors. maybe this went to his head a bit too much, or he used drugs - and he started preaching a different story than his fellow rabbis did.
"Israel" at his time was occupied by the roman "pagans" and they maintained a puppet king in Jerusalem, this guy was a hellenistic orientated boymolesting descendant of one of the generals of alexander the great.
the jewish religion and its professionals in the temples at this time preached war against the roman and hellenistic pagans that exploited the land, so there were groups like the zealots, professional killers and guerillas because of their believes, and the land suffered under constant petty uprisings, guerilla warfare outside the cities, murderous infights against dissidents and the roman economic exploitation.
The fight against the romans lastet until 72 a.c., when the romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem after killing most of the jewish armed resistance and they deported most of the population to other areas of their empire to prevent any future trouble in the area.
30/40 years before these events madhead jesus preached differnt because of the consequences of this civil/anticolonial war for his people - so give the imperator what is his, offer the other... love your enemies...
suffer on earth for the reward in heaven... in other words, stop the useless fighting and start living in peace.
i don't remember what Mrs. Paigels wrote about his death - but the fact that he was executed is mentioned in the report of the roman governor of the province - cucification was a roman punishment for rebellious slaves - remember SPARTACUS?

maybe hierarchy started with religion - I don't have to work because of my divine knowledge - so pass me the soup and then go back working on my fields...

The old testament is full of stories about the punishment of kings that refused to accept the priority of the jewish belief and the hegemony of it's professionals - in these parts it's just propaganda against everything endangering their leading position.

Mrs. Pagels also wrote about the intolerant tendency of monotheistic religion - no ancient polytheistic society except the romans started/declared a religious war against another polytheistic society.
And even the romans tolerated every religion that wasn't preaching war against themselves.
(some claim that the Druid were the backbone of the celtic resistance against rome, and I already wrote about the jewish troublemakers in zion)
The new testament was rewritten more than 5 times to match the actual situation of the growing christianity, at first it was a deadly sin to serve in the roman army, because they tried to repress the christians, but after the christian belief became the belief of the late roman empire - it was a deadly sin not to serve in the roman army to defend the belief...
Somewhere about 630 a.d. the bible was compiled to represent the tool of propaganda that it is today... full with contradiction, so you'll find an answer to every problem in your shitty capitalistic slavedom - believe me...

 

dont forget bout the christians trying to purge the entire jewish population of the face of earth by being a bunch of old school nazi's i.e. the crusades

 

I won't forget the german nazis and the shoa - but the nazis were no christians - that criminal asshole himmler was even trying to substitue the catholic/christian belief in the third reich with what he took for "germanic religion" - which is pretty funny 'cause the last remains of the believes of the old germanic tribes (the edda for example) were also written down by early christian monks trying to discriminate the believes of the ancestors of people that were christianisized only briefly.

But himmler fought the church/christian believe just like any other competitor to the minds of people - especially after some catholic in priests in germoney started to blamed the nazis for killing mentally/bodily disabled people (the euthanasie program).
Some of these good christians even mentioned the "vanished" jews, while the catholic church in general kept silent about the mass murder/mass robbing.

In the jewish matter, himmler was "only" a racist, claiming that jews, slavic, oriental and black people were just subhumans occupying the space claimed by the masterrace, he don't gave a shit about religion.

And he also ordered the "killing by slaving" of prisoners in the german war industry and the utilisation of the tooth gold and the hair taken from the dead in the concentration camps - smells like capitalism, isn't it?
And the jews were only the first in his plans... slavic, oriental, the blacks, the asian... and then the aliens I guess...

I think religion is always used as a tool to unite people in a common believe/superstition, pass down certain points of general importance/indoctrination for the community and to justify the ruling hierarchy - in other words: it's repressive tradition and propaganda, nothing more.

Jesus was just a reformist at his time and he payed for that or the bad comapany he kept - poor sod, used by the system...

 

I have no trouble believing there was a dude named Jesus, but being an atheist obviously i think he was just that- a dude named Jesus, and no different from any other religious "prophet"/founder. Most of his original, actual ideas (besides the "worship your god" crap) were pretty good-equality, helping the less fortunate, etc. Seems like, if not for the religious bullshit, he would have been a super awesome guy, and basically somewhere between a communist/socialist (makes it pretty ironic that the conservative fuckheads worship him haha).

 

Don't lie. The "H" stands for "Hardcore".

 

Regarding the first page with th arguement between Ungovernable and ghoul, ungovernable PLLLEASSSEEEE listen to what other people are saying, its very frustrating when you make assumptions about what people think, for example

, or that if someone believes in a creator automatically you assume they believe them to be authority. Also i am happy that the arguement descended into squabbling, that is how we will learrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrn

 

Guess I have to search again for a small book written by an american autor who made some comparison between the early christians and modern sects like scientology, showing some weird common tendencies in their own important elements of their faiths and the resulting propaganda to the outside.
Both groups used sophisticated means to rise to power, first concentrating on the poor and repressed to build up a mass basis of footsoldiers, then turning to the upper classes to gain influence via high society contacts to achieve the status of an ally to the ruling class. The similarities were frightening, even if it took hundreds of years for the christians to reach the same degree of influence scientology achived in less than 50 years, and most of the single steps to power are shrouded in legends and long lost in history.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... anity.html

If there was/was not a historical person named jesses is a mere academic question, because it doesn't make much difference in dealing with the authoritarian belief of the church today.
I tend to believe that there was a certain person with a more or less local importance - without some kind of real nucleus there would be no group of apostles and followers keeping the memory alive and spreading/ developing the myhts, constantly incorporating foreign legends and miracle-tales of other believes of the same period.
(like the "virgin" birth of jesses - taken over from the egypt belief in the "virgin" conception of the deities horus and ra born by isis/neith of sais:
"Many of the attributes of Isis, the God-mother, the mother of Horus; and of Neith, the goddess of Sais are identical with those of Mary the Mother of Christ." Early Christian stories in the Apocryphal Gospels, which record the wanderings of the Virgin and Child in Egypt are similar to stories found on the Metternich Stela texts about the life of Isis. Also, the pictures and sculptures of Isis suckling her child Horus are the foundation for Christian figurines and paintings of the Madonna and Child. Of course, the legend of the birth of Horus has many elements not found even in the Apocryphal Gospels. Egyptian texts mention numerous forms of Horus. In one he is "Heru-sa Ast, sa-Asar, or Horus, son of Isis, son of Osiris." Isis is described in the Hymn to Osiris, as finding and restoring the body of her dead husband, and using magical words given her by Thoth to restore him to life. Then, by uniting with Osiris she conceives Horus. Horus represented the rising sun and in this respect was comparable to the Greek Apollo.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculous_births

Some historians claim that there was a multitude of sects evolving out of the crisis in roman occupied palestine, so the early christian sect was only one of many others, actively fighting its way to the top against competeting sects up to the development of the "catholic" (unified) church in the early middle ages around 650 a.d., and the consequent use of inquisition and crusades against dissidents and heretic groups.

 

jesus was absolutely not a myth. There are articles written by roman contemporaries addressing him by name and describing him from the perspective of a roman historian, being that he is a cult leader and a threat to the roman empire. The Romans have no reason to make up someone like Jesus, and they're portrayal of him is accurate enough. You can just as easily "debunk" anything that no one was around for. These are called "conspiracy theories" invented by people not who are unconvinced of it's existence, but truly do not want it to exist.

How can a new religion all of a sudden take hold and become the #1 faith of the world without it's creator even existing? Do you really believe a bunch of guys sat around and said "you know, if we make up this whole story about a guy who does magic shit and told as many people about it as possible, then thousands of years from now people will be able to get rich and powerful from it!" You really think someone invented a scam that convoluted? How could it have even taken ground without at least SOME grain of truth to it? If you think people are brainwashed religious fanatics NOW, do you have any idea the pressure of conformity there was two fucking thousand years ago? Obviously it got popular because someone was doing SOMETHING right. No one is going to change their ancestral ways without a lil give and take. To top it all off, the roman fucking empire was trying to wipe them out like vermin, and it STILL thrived.

I'm not saying anything that happened in the good book of bullshit was real, but Jesus was a real guy. And absolute atheism and the argument that "if God exists why doesn't he help us" are completely retarded

 

like gobbledigooks i tend to think there was a "real" jesus, born 2003 years ago (the star of bethlehem appeared in the year 7) and most likely he was one of many wandering preachers struggling with the established official religion, maybe not far from the kind of protestant tv-preachers today, claiming to be able to heal by prayer ect. and supported by a fellowship of people who were looking for something to believe in. but noone knows about a believable historic roman report of jesus and his doings - so please post a source if you have found it, unless then i think that the fact of development of the early christian sect is the only and still not proved reason to believe he ever existed.
i don't understand your theory about "debunking" and "conspiracy theory", because we can be sure the historical person did not managed to do any miracles, didn't raise the dead or went to heaven after coming back from the grave - so his true or invented existence isn't that important, he's just the object of make-up legends and stories which had some meaning and importance at the time, but lost it completely today.

just look at the "new religions" like scientology, neo-hinduistic yogi-fellowships like sanyassins and their lot - repressive systems create a need for community and salvation from the pressure of the here and now, again gobbledigooks scientology-example shows the perfect how-to-manual.
you only need a handful of people ambitious and eager enough to gain power (and maybe wealth) by working the masses of needful and poor people, seeding out promises, harvesting belief and acts of faith...
except for the jewish religion there was not much pressure of conformity - the known world was dominated by polytheistic religions with well populized pantheons of gods and goddesses - and except for the roman wars against the celts (because of the stiff resistance instigated by the druids) and the hebrew jews (because of the similar stiff resistance of the rabbinat against the roman occupation of judäa) religious wars between polytheistic religions were completely unknown, everybody was free to believe whatever he/she wanted, the romans tolerated every kind of weird cult as long as the political/military authority of the empire wasn't questioned.
religious intolerance is resulting from the claim of "the only truth" of organized monotheistic religion - maybe thats why jewish/christian belief and islam became world religions - because they expanded by any means necessary, religious wars and extermination of non-believers and heretics inclusive.
if absolute(?) atheism and the statement that god doesn't exist, because there is no true proof of his existence are retarded - what about a belief in something that isn't proved, and with the words of it's promoters "a question of faith and believe" - i'll try to be more friendly than you: a superstition?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ

wiki wasn't the first place I read that information either. If I'm not mistaken I think there was one other who wrote about jesus.

"i don't understand your theory about "debunking" and "conspiracy theory", because we can be sure the historical person did not managed to do any miracles, didn't raise the dead or went to heaven after coming back from the grave"

What I mean is you can come up with a conspiracy of alternate history for just about anything. There's all sorts of things being said (actually considered sound by academia) about important historical figures ranging from sexuality, relevance, etc. The belief that jesus did not exist comes from the sweeping generalization that all religion is entirely false.

"just look at the "new religions" like scientology, neo-hinduistic yogi-fellowships like sanyassins and their lot -"
Times have changed. We live in a society that allows you to openly contradict everything that it stands for. Scientology was able to take hold because we live in a world that allows it to. Scientology is not a religion, it's a cult. You could say the same thing about every organized group, but it is blatantly obvious that scientology's originated (and still is) a for profit scheme. That's the difference. Believe it or not religion was a bit more sincere back in the day. Through our modern perspective we look at history the same way we look at our own world. Not everything was profitable back then. You couldn't really make money off the poor. Just because there was no fucking WAR doesn't mean they were skipping into a fucking sunset together. DID YOU FORGET ABOUT THE CHRISTIANS TO THE LIONS THING??? The Roman's idea of "toleration" was "we're not going to wipe you all out in one fell swoop like we can". Religion was a total different thing back then. It wasn't your "personal belief" it's was more like a FACT you were born into. The Roman's would've basically had to wipe everyone out if they did not follow their faith.

If you think christians invented religious intolerance...........oh god

And I say absolute atheism is stupid because you're assuming that you KNOW about something that is completely incomprehensible to the human brain. Claiming you understand a being as complex as "god" is absurd.

 

sorry, but tacitus is no eye-witness - he was born around the year 56 and i think we can agree that he spend some time growing and become educated enough to be able to write his works.
so some historians claim that he got his information concerning the historical jesus well after the year 70, when the roman empire deported large parts of the jewish population from judäa, after extinguishing the last sparks of the final uprising against the roman army and destroying the temple in jerusalem to end all further jewish resistance against the occupation.
the jewish diaspora began with contingents of jewish people dispersed all over the empire, so it's highly possible that tacitus learned of jesus from christian/jewish deportees, but this is unlikely to be a "historic" source, because the lifetime of an ordinary human at the time 2000 years ago hardly exceeded 45 years. given the estimated time of the execution of jesus around the year 35 an adult eye witness of the lifetime of jesus would be most likely dead - so tacitus only learned a second-hand story.
another argument against his authenticity is given in the wikipedia article:

concerning the tradition of celtic and germanic religious believes by christian monks (the edda for example, or the famous "book of Kells" ect. in Ireland) the tendency of christian writers to "edit" their works for their own good is already proved - they just tried to control the memory of their predecessors to raise christian belief above the pagan past.
don't forget that most of the early medieval writing - especially the copying of ancient history was completely in the hands of the catholic church who became notorious for their ambition to control the view of the world.
and tacitus hadn't the best reputation as a historian:

why would they ignore him if the stories of martyrdom would have happened like he wrote them down?
karl heinz deschner, a german historian, wrote nine books about "the criminal history of christianity" and claimed that the legends of mass martyrdom were nothing more than legends used for pro-christian propaganda - and to indoctrinate the believers that it's better to suffer like the later saints, murdered by the pagan romans, than to resist and fight back - and provoke real persecution like the jews had to suffer.

another argument is the way jesus was executed - crucification was a roman punishment for fleeing or revolting slaves and less often for military enemy leaders.
6000 of spartacus followers in the great slave uprising were crucified at the via appia for example, this method of execution was very dishonourable - a slaves death, slow and agonizing. the jewish regard the christian cross as a symbol of torture, orthodox jews can't pray in the presence of a cross.
so what has jesus done to deserve such a death?
the jewish punishment for blasphemy would have been stoning - but he wasn't found guilty of blasphemy, so herodes agrippa send jesus to the roman prefect for a judgement. pilatus interrogated jesus and found him innocent (according to the bible) but sentenced him to a dishonourable death? just on the day before a high jewish holyday - pessach - risking scenes like this:
Varus, governor of Syria, crucified 2000 Jews involved in the rebellion of 4 BC (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 17.295). In the late 40s AD the sons of Judas the Galilean, named James and Simon, were crucified by order of Tiberius Alexander (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.102). In the final weeks of the siege of Jerusalem, according to Josephus, the Romans were crucifying 500 Jews a day, stationing the crosses in full view of the city walls: "The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures; and so great was their number, that space could not be found for the crosses nor crosses for the bodies" (Josephus, The Jewish War 5.451)...

i don't think the story works... because there was a fucking constant war since the romans occupied judäa,
the jewish rabbinat resisted the pagan romans by instigating regular uprisings, guerilla warfare and street murders in public - ending up in the final uprising around the year 69/70 and the complete destruction of the jewish state and the start of the jewish diaspora.

just look at the catholic churches in south america or africa - glittering with gold and silver... pre-taste of heaven for the poor i guess...

no, the romans idea of tolerance was: "as long as you pay the taxes and send your sons for the army to fight and die for rome far away from your home, you can believe whatever you want" according to the bible, jesus told "give the caesar what belongs to him..." a perfect match i would say.
give me one example of religious persecution in the roman empire except for the jewish war and the constant warfare against the druidic celts in britain - i never heard of any other religious motivated roman war.
and before the christian belief became the belief of the roman empire around 450 after constantins babtism on his death bed, rome had countless temples and holy shrines used by the official religion, soldier cults like the one of mithras, eastern fertility cults - the bible refers to rome as "the whore of babylon" because of the multitude of pagan believes.

i didn't say christian invented religous intolerance - i said organized monotheistic religion brought religious intolerance into being - so if you look for a culprit it would be the jewish belief that evolved before christian religion - and you only have to read the old testament to find endless stories about the fate of heretic kings resisting the lords will, breaking the rules of the faith - and the christians soon inherited this tendency - give me one religion that killed that many non-believers, pagans and heretics...

my stupidity as a proof for god's existence? a bit too cheap i would say, true because to complex to be prooved wrong? reminds me of the middle ages - the earth is too big to be seen as a globe - so it must be flat?
i'm not claiming to understand god, but i think i understand the idea of god - and there is nothing more than that.

 

it's 2 AM, so I'll respond to your points in the morn but you made a lot of good points.

Look dude, I don't believe in religion at all. I do believe in a deity but nothing beyond "something floating somewhere that knows the answer to WHY". I'm not defending the magical powers of Jesus. All I'm saying is that more likely than not, he existed. The point is history for the most part is semantics. No one was around for it. It could all be bullshit (if you look at the way history is written now, how is it not?). How does anyone know? You could, and people do, argue about any historical figure, place, or event.

You know a fuckton about history dude, more than I probably

 

born by a jewish mother and becoming an anarchist while living with lots of former christians i had to learn my share of history, just to find a way out of the whole confusion about "truths" and faiths - or:

as you mentioned earlier, sometimes it's still that way: you are born into it, so it's your duty to...

but it isn't that way and for whatever reason i think we have to overcome it - and thats why we discuss it here, sharing knowledge and sources, exchanging points of view - so everyone can take his share.
so we can agree: it's most likely that jesus existed, and became the object of legends and miracle stories to promote the ministry of his followers and except for some basic principles of humanity the whole story is a make-up that went horribly wrong.
yes, history is still a too vague science and we don't really know what exactly happened 2000 years ago, but we can use the proved big events - like the jewish war between the start of the calendar and the year 74 when the last jewish bastion masada fell to the romans) - and find some similiarities to the here and now:
a world of constant conflict and aggression where mostly helpless individuals are forced to find some way out of the madness - and the modern cults, sects and religions are a good example how religion works in such a situation - and where/how it ends.
thats why i became an atheist: no gods, no masters - and the question "why" is already answered, the big question left is "how"...
and your personal belief is your personal thing and i have to respect it, so i won't fight you for this - but i'll give you my point of view. somehow each of us should find his own position or point of view, so again: thats why we discuss it.

 

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFD96ZBaQOM[/video]

Only 70 kms from Germ-money border!!!

 

The great lords of oblivion may forgive me - but they will never pardon the poles for forgetting the propeller, this thing with a wingspan of 24 meters should be able to fly!
Next buisness idea: A catholic disneyland, martyrs in authentic gear do little dances, saints and heavenly host give sweeties to the children (half entry fee if catholic, full fee for pagans) and sing little songs...

I know the area, part of my family was living there before WWII when the village was germun and called schwiebus, it's the birthplace of the german communist alfred kattner, who was killed 1934 by his comrades after he revealed the whereabouts of ernst thälman, leader of the communist party, hermann dünow and rudolf schwarz to the nazis.
as retaliation for his death John Schehr, Rudolf Schwarz, Erich Steinfurth und Eugen Schönhaar were "shot on the run" by the gestapo.

so the next giant statue is dedicated to judas iscariot?

 

I dont beleive in god because Science Is Info Not a religion im an atheist because theres no proof god exists the church was created by Capitalists to convert and brainwash the people in the country and kill off other races 2 examples The Native Americans being converted and killed by facist capitalist christian explorers and soldiers and government and monarchs and settlers in the so called "New World" and The Jews being purged in the Holocaust By Adolph Hitler and The Nazis "aka" The Catholics in WW2. If Jesus was Alive he would kick the Christian ass for not making any sense and being so hateful and turn to science and become an Atheist. Religion is just a way to make money. The Christians are a cult just like The New Davadians, and Jim Jones. They all have so much hatred 2 examples of ignorant hatred of Christianity. The Westboro Church and The Klu Klux Klan.
Organized religion is A Brainwashing, Enslaving Cult, so that is why I am an Atheist.