From: Shakehip@aol.com
Date: Sun Jun 14 1998 - 13:06:25 MDT
In a message dated 6/14/1998 11:41:19 AM Pacific Daylight Time, harv@gate.net
writes:
<<
I am not one for defending Christianity, but my reading of the New
Testament seems to indicate that Jesus kept denying his divinity and kept
telling his followers to stop treating him any differently than any other
human. I believe that his followers are the ones who diefied him, as with
many great men. The legend took on a life of its own, and has little
relation to the actual history. >>
Actually you're both a bit off... read it and weep (or laugh)... keep in mind
that there are several different versions written from several different
biased perspectives, for example, compare Paul the zealot and woman hater, vs.
the softer Leo Busgalia like St. Matt. If you were to watch Monty Python's
Life of Brian you'd get a clearer idea of what life was like during those
times, some of the mentality, and also social circumstances. Christ no doubt
had rebelled against the tyranny of the temple. As all authority then was
believed to be granted by god, it would have only made sense for him to
present himself as (or believe himself to believe) some sort of prophet. At
that time there was also a trend of faith healers, televangelists and all
sorts of what is sometimes refered to in Yiddish as "chazerai" - - definitely
it would have taken a "charismatic" figure to create a counter movement. For
his times, no doubt, Christ was a leftist and revolutionary. He redeemed the
Jews from a life encompassing legal system of 613 laws guided by a highly
organized theocrascy. He deserves atleast a tidbit of credit for this, even
in retrospect if his method of porpagating those ideas were a bit distasteful
to us enlightened transhumans. Incidently, I believe that Ben Franklin and
Thomas Jefferson were involved in the writing of a softer and more humanistic
version of the Bible in which all references to "the diety" were eliminated.
Carrying the issue back to the present, we might ask, can the masses really be
appealed to with common sense ? If a highly superstitious idiot was
pointing a gun at you, and you could get away saving you life by telling him
that a ghost was about to hit him over the head with a baseball bat to save
your doubt, would you do it ??? Let's take it a step further...No one, for
example, doubts the leadership of Ghandi, but did the fact that his followers
viewed him as a saint have anything to do with his followers ? What type of
modern day Christ or Ghandi would it take to make Cryonics such a well
entrenched social institution as Christianity so we're not in danger of
extinction, or by lowering ourselves to such levels would we be defeating our
purposes ?
Ed,
militant atheist who likes to stick to the facts
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