On Fri, 12 Jun 1998 Jeff Fabijanic <jeff@primordialsoft.com> Wrote:
>>Me;
>>If Jesus or Mohammed subscribed I'd put them in my kill file
>How disturbingly knee-jerk of you. Do you think that after almost
>2000 years, we can make any judgements about what these guys were
>*really* like?
They're no different from any other ancient character, they can be judged by
the historical record and by nothing else, the real person could have been
better or worse, and I don't claim to know what anything is *really* like,
not even a brick.
>If nothing else, you know these guys must have been capable of
>holding their own in serious debate
That doesn't follow. Yes, they must have had charisma and been good at public
speaking, but a talent for serious rational debate is not the ticket to fame
fortune or power.
>And man, that Jesus could throw some *serious* parties - wine
>flowing from the taps, spreads of food that keep getting bigger as
>the night goes on, and everyone washing each others feet. Sounds
>like a time and a half
Christ was a jerk. I refer to the character portrayed in the bible, whether
there really was a historic figure who impressed the rubes with card tricks
and other stunts I don't know. Personally I'd be a lot more impressed if he
had taught us about the second law of thermodynamics rather than hear a
report of questionable accuracy about some water into wine trick. It took the
human race another 1800 years to learn about entropy and although it teaches
us nothing about morality neither do Christ's stunts, and unlike the
fermented grape juice bit you can't fake thermodynamics.
Christ was a nut, nutty as a fruit cake, or to put it in more politically
correct language, he had a mental illness that produced delusions of granger.
I don't think it was an act, I think he really thought he was God.
Christ was a martinet. His words "You serpents, you generation of vipers, how
can you escape the damnation of hell" sounds more like a typical flame you
can find anywhere on the net then it does the wisdom of a great sage. Buddha,
Lao-tse, and Socrates all had a much more enlightened attitude toward those
who disagreed with them, and they had it 500 years before Jesus.
Christ was a creep. He believed in hell, he talked with glee about "wailing
and gnashing of teeth" and "these shall go away into everlasting fire".
He thought that torturing somebody, not for a billion years, but for an
INFINITE number of years would be an amusing thing to do to somebody he
didn't like. I think cruelty on this monstrous scale proves that Christ of
the bible is morally indistinguishable from Satin of the bible.
Strong words but I don't believe I'm engaging in hyperbole, imagine for a
moment what it would be like if a Christian God did exist. Here we have an
all powerful demon addicted to flattery who can read your every thought and
will torture you, not for a long time, but for ETERNITY if you take one step
out of line or break just one of his many, many, rules and they includes
thought crimes. To make maters worse you're not even sure exactly what all
his rules are, the "experts" violently disagree, so you never know if you're
going to be tortured or how to avoid it. This seems pretty depressing to me
and not at all moral, I'll take an indifferent universe over a sadistic one
any day.
I'll close with a quotation from Charles Darwin, a better man than the son of
God even if you ignore his enormous scientific ability. I would certainly much
rather have Darwin as my next door neighbor than a vindictive pompous ass
like Jesus Christ.
In spite of the objections of his very religious, but loving wife, he wrote
in his 1876 autobiography :
"Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate but at last was
complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have
never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion
was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish
Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text
seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would
include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be
everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."
John K Clark johnkc@well.com
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