From: S
To: Rebelprofiler
Posted: Tue May 01, 2012 8:05 pm
Subject: Re: religion and stuff
Ah, ok then on the miracles. But what then, going off of Catholicism, separates Jesus from any other saint other than the fact that he himself claimed he was different? Just takin' his word for it? I mean, I know faith is important and all, but is there any clear reasoning as to Jesus's divinity?
I'm still having trouble with the whole Jesus not being another god thing. You've explained it sufficiently enough, but I think it's that damn Trinity idea tripping me up. Jesus is different from the 'regular' Christian god, yet because he is divine and because it's a monotheistic religion, it seems like fudging the definitions a bit to consolidate the two ideas. There's a father and son, but the same person. I just can't... two clearly different Biblical characters but the same deity.
Catholicism has so much roundaboutness to it. Not only is there a strict hierarchy of religious authorities within the Church (Pope, Bishops, Priests, etc.), the layman is even farther separated from his god by talking through saints as well. Seriously, it seems like Catholics way over-complicate. Why do you need all that separation? I much prefer the Quaker approach of just pray.
With the Islam thing--I thought that, perhaps, images of prophets were also not allowed. Regardless, you do make a fair point that what does it even matter if a Christian/Jew/atheist/Scientologist draws their prophet? I really don't know as much about Islam as I probably should, though.
No, no, no, you're in no way getting me to reject the faith. Trust me, if any religious discussion I've had has done me in, it's been with Christians. I've only fairly recently began really thinking about Christianity. Prior, I was somewhere between Christianity and agnosticism and didn't bother to move forward from there. I've been merely Christian-ish for years. Now I'm actually reflecting and trying to figure stuff out.
That interpretation of the story of Job makes more sense. I'll definitely still need to look into it, as it is still such a weird sort of story. Job still seems to have gotten the shitty end of things. But at least the way you explains it beats the previous reasoning I've gotten with is pretty much--things suck, but still worship this jerk of a higher power because faith.
So if Jesus was quoting Jewish texts, though admittedly some more obscure ones, it still goes back to the question of his divinity. Why go through the trouble of an extension of god that uses with such quotation and repetition? Yeah, there were some new ideas too, but why the old ones? And why the continued misinterpretations, thousands of years on, claiming he spoke in tongues or whatever?
That book definitely seems interesting. I'll have to read it after I finish the Bible proper. I knew that there were lost books, but again, I'm only fairly recently looking into all this stuff, so there's a decent amount for me to cover.
From: Rebelprofiler
To: S
Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 6:31 pm
Subject: Re: religion and stuff
I actually did some homework for you to find out why Christians claim Jesus to be of Divine origin. My head hit the table a couple of times with their circular reasoning but basically their ideas can be surmised in 3 arguments: #1 - He was the Messiah (which he wasn't but I'll get into that), #2 - He was resurrected from the dead (we've beaten up this horse - was he REALLY dead? Or do you just THINK he was dead? And it should be noted here that it's common Anthropological knowledge that all of the 12 disciples spent MOST of their time with Jesus totally stoned on Cannabis Oil, which frequently causes hallucinations and is how we have the walking on water trick. Fun Fact: Joan of arc had her visions discredited when she was de-throned as a saint because she was high on mushrooms the whole time. Christians should be bigger on hallucinogens than they are, given their history of drug use.), and #3 - The council of Nicene merged Jesus with a popular Greco-Roman legend (Hercules) in order to make it more palatable to the masses. Now I want to point out that all three of these arguments are made and debated by Christians who seem to think he satisfies the first two but they scoff at the third one, even though it's probably got more truth to it than they know. (*cough* Horus *coughcough*) MAINLY they claim that because Paul said he was divine (in the rest of the NT), that means it's truth. Because Paul wasn't a liar. (insert circular reasoning here)
Now why is he not the Messiah. Let's first start here. According to Jewish scriptures, the Moshiach, will be a number of things - divine is not one of them.
#1 - He must be a Jew born of the line of David (Also, Jeremiah says Moshiach is male - though that is up for debate among the Jewish sects). This means he needs male seed to be considered Moshiach. well if we refer back to Vatican II, we assert that Jesus was probably born of either Mary's Uncle or Joseph's seed. If we're assuming Joseph to be the father, we run into a hang up here. MAINLY that the gospels can never seem to agree on where Joseph came from. Two of the three that mention his lineage trace it back to David's BROTHER who was told by Gd that he would never have an heir to the throne of Gd. But fine. I will give Jesus a free pass on the lineage argument.
Here's more free points for Jesus. He's a charismatic leader, who inspires others to follow him (#2). He's also scholarly in Torah and observant in it's laws(#3). This is where all that knowledge of the apocrypha came in handy for him. It allowed Jesus to reach out to the Gnostics on their playing field and convert them into his fold.
Here's where Jesus fails. Moshiach is a great military leader who leads Israel on to win many war battles (#4), and a fair and righteous judge (#5). He returns worship to the Temple in Jerusalem (#6), he returns all Jews to Israel (#7), he mints his own money and establishes Israel as the center for all world commerce (#8), and he establishes a reign of world peace (#9) before dying a normal human death (#10). No resurrection, no free pass into heaven after collecting the keys of hell. He simply lives and dies as a normal Jewish leader.
But because Jesus SAID he is the Moshiach and because Peter and Paul agreed, it's so.
As to the Trinity, all I can say is that they believe Jesus to be Gd's leg or something. If Gd was a corporeal being, Gd would have an arm (The holy spirit) and a leg (Jesus). So worshiping Jesus is worshiping Gd since they're the same thing. And all the saints are Gd's secretaries, who all sit outside Her office, type memos, and take messages. But Jesus is in the office. Because Gd is a CEO and Jesus is Gd's leg.
Christianity on the whole largely states that, while technically their Gd is the same as that of Abraham and Moses, it's not REALLY the same Gd because their's is all about the loving and peace and the OT Gd was all about war and destruction. And to that I really can't argue. My Gd is real. Yours is a zombie created in large part to a bunch of stoned disciples. Or rather a Lich (Quote from Reddit: which is created when a powerful magician or king, striving for eternal life, uses spells or rituals to bind his soul to his animated corpse and thereby achieving immortality. Litches are depicted as being clearly cadaverous, their bodies still bearing the wounds they received before their death. Litches often have the power of necromancy, which allows them to bring the dead back to life.). But zombie is easier to explain to naive Christians.
I honestly don't know a whole lot about Islam either, my dear. You want to ask me about Mormonism, I'm right there (as I have done *extensive* research on the LDS church and the FLDS sects). You want to know about the Amish, I'm game for that too. Scientology, 7th day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses... all religions I know inside and out. Many I joined for a brief period - however superficial - to get the story for my Anthro of Religion degree (I specialized in fringe religious sects). Judaism? Well yeah I can talk all day about Judaism. I can even give you a total family tree of all of the Jewish sects and why they hate each other. Christianity? Well if you're asking Evangelical, Mainstream, and Catholicism, I know quite a bit. But as to the family tree of all denominations and why they hate each other? Not a clue. Best to ask senoy. But Islam? The extent of my knowledge on Islam is that there are two main sects: Sunni and Shi'ite. But I can't tell you why they hate each other or why they do anything other than why they wear a Hijab, pray to Mecca and how they determine if something is halaal (as I accept halaal food as being kosher given the extensive knowledge I have on the customs, though this is apparently a bit of a stray from the normative in Jewish thought). I literally know DICK about Islam other than I know my local Halaal butcher is named Ali and he likes to give me free pitas with my falafel.
Random story about Job. So according to Torah we have an instance of Jacob and his MASSIVE brood being somewhere in the land of the canninites and his daughter, Dinah, goes off into town and lays with the crown prince, who then decides he will marry her. Now in the three lines we're given in Torah is that she was raped. But Talmud says she willingly laid with the prince because she was in love with him and wanted to marry him and sleeping with him was the only way she'd ever get Jacob to agree to it. So Jacob's sons go to the prince and tell him that he has to be circumcised in order to join the people and marry Dinah. Three day into healing, the brothers storm the city and kill everyone. When Jacob hears about this, he's floored and a might bit pissed because this is very obviously an act of war on the Cannanites. The boys say simply "Should he treat our sister as a harlot?" Apparently Jacob (as is said in Talmud) was so upset about this that he cried. But Dinah was still lingering about. She would no longer bring in the virgin price and had nobody willing to pay it, especially since the prince knocked her up with Saul. So he married her off to Job. Dinah was Job's first wife. She and Job had Asenath, who would go on to become Joseph's wife. They buried her in Caanan.
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