No kidding! Dark matter, dark energy, gravitational lensing, the cosmic microwave background radiation, and those are a couple things out of who knows how many. The bible can't hold a candle to that.
That is because, in 1777 a young Maggie Smithe showed her ankles to one Jonathan Bjornson, and as a punishment for such wanton harlotry America can't have nice things for seven generations.
And it wouldn't surprise me at all if, given an accepting environment, any one or more of them would come out as atheist. Ben Franklin would be a VERY likely candidate, as would Thomas Paine, I suspect.
I thought Age of Reason was generally atheist. Although it has been a long time since I read it.
ETA: I wuz wrong.
AI Overview
Thomas Paine Quotes Reveal His Thoughts on Religion
No, Thomas Paine was not an atheist; he was a deist, a believer in one God but a rejection of organized religion, particularly Christian doctrine. His influential book, The Age of Reason, attacked organized religion and the Bible's inconsistencies, leading to him being falsely branded an atheist and damaging his reputation. Paine advocated for reason and freethought, arguing that true religion was derived from natural reason and not divine revelation or miracle stories.
But xtianity is the religion of love, who wouldn't want to believe in peace on earth as "jesus" preached.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” – Matthew 10:34
“But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.” – Luke 19:27
“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” – Luke 12:49
“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” – Luke 12:51
“And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.” – Mark 9:43
You are right that Christians refer to Jesus in terms which give the wrong impression. Jesus will give his peace to those who are his followers but judgment for those who reject him.
If they were killing each other then they were disobeying Jesus and so it's no surprise that things went off the rails. Paul said that we are not to use the "weapons of this world" in regards to spiritual matters but he's often ignored.
Then Peter disobeyed Jesus several times by doubting him and denying he knew him. As all christians who marry, have children and doesn't cut ties with their families. Try again. Without quoting Paul, who was not an apostle.
Rascal’s Wager. Rascal is a very, very powerful god. Rascal could not care less if humans believe in him or not. Rascal has no rules for how people treat each other. Rascal has one and only rule: Put no other gods before me. Anyone who puts any other god before Rascal gets hell. Everyone else gets heaven.
To get heaven, you could be atheist, agnostic, Rascalite, or polytheist so long as Rascal is at least tied for number one.
Now then, do you really want to take the chance of putting some other god before Rascal?
I’ve not read any form of the Bible, only what is shared in this forum. One thing seems assured - these bibles have shit-tons of different authors. Their message is confusing, contradictory and illogical, leading to piecemeal applications of its’ content. Kind of like the Democratic Party.
How did that piece of bad fiction ever become the “book of all books?”
Maybe 15-20 years ago some publisher issued a new release of the bible (why was never explained). Some anonymous reviewer on Amazon wrote a lengthy review as if it were a novel. (About 2/3 of the way thru the author had 4 chapters that seemed cover the same ground about a new major character but the chapters were all somewhat different. Poor editing.). The review went viral. Christians wrote stuff like “This isn’t a novel. It’s the word of God!” And other people expanded on the original review. Last time I saw it, there were THOUSANDS. It was fucking hilarious. I’ve tried to find that again from time to time but never have.
In real life (not myth or fable) how many people were the models for the Biblical character of Jesus? In the absence of any real evidence, we’re stuck with probabilities:
0 — 15%
1 — 35%
2 or more — 50%
Supporting the 3rd hypothesis are anomalies such as “the Nazarene” being born in Bethlehem (a conflation of the divine-savior and political-savior traditions); dueling genealogies in Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38; the “Prince of Peace” stating “I come to bring not peace but a sword” and trashing the money-changer tables in the temple; the friend of the common people also recommending that “these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them — bring them here and slaughter them in my presence”; the same guy who said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” supposedly also saying “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”, thus creating the ongoing controversy over whether man is saved by works or grace; and the bringer of a new covenant claiming to uphold “every jot and tittle” of the old one.
These differences are what we’d expect if two or more itinerant preachers — probably illiterate themselves and certainly working in an illiterate society — were each delivering somewhat different messages, and word-of-mouth transmission confused who said what, much the same way as modern people will attribute quotations of unknown origin to William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, or George Carlin.
Another consideration is how common the name Yeshua was in that era: applied to about 4% of men. (For comparison, 3% of American men are named John.) And, since the various Yeshuas weren’t distinguished by surnames, it’s easy to understand how “Yeshua said ...” was just taken by most hearers to mean the one they were most familiar with.
In his book 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝐷𝑦𝑛𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑦: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑛 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠, 𝐻𝑖𝑠 𝑅𝑜𝑦𝑎𝑙 𝐹𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑖𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 James Tabor said that their were four other guys running around the mideast claiming to be the messiah.
Yeah, see, the few times I have tried to read that book I've been horrified. Particularly once I became a parent and saw other parents exposing their kids to shit in the Bible. Like, wtf? And how can anyone create a religion of it, much less think, if it truly is the word of a god, that that god is worthy of their worship?
Sounds like the Nones are hedging their bets. Were Jesus real, that would not go well for them. Something about being neither hot nor cold. Those folks would wind up being spewed out of Jesus' mouth.
My Jewish grandma started lighting sabbath candles in her very old age (never religious, did not bar mitzvah her sons). I asked my dad about it. He said hedging her bets. :D
I don't think the nones are hedging their bets so much as they may have lost interest in something that didn't serve them. As I said elsewhere, they haven't LOOKED at religion the way we have, they're not inquisitive or skeptical.
Which is why I invented (probably not the first person) a different Wager. This one is called Rascal’s Wager. Rascal is a very, very powerful god. Rascal could not care less if humans believe in him or not. Rascal has no rules for how people treat each other. Rascal has one and only rule: Put no other gods before me. Anyone who puts any other god before Rascal gets hell. Everyone else gets heaven.
To get heaven, you could be atheist, agnostic, Rascalite, or polytheist so long as Rascal is at least tied for number one.
Now then, do you really want to take the chance of putting some other god before Rascal?
I've always thought of it more as "Pascal's Roulette Wheel," because that's a better framing of the thought experiment since it's not just a binary choice between one denomination of Christianity and nothing at all.
Except the wheel is a couple hundred meters across, it has tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of positions- exactly 𝘰𝘯𝘦 of which could possibly be the correct one- and there are no clever bets on odds or evens or red or black. You pick one place, and only one; it's either right or it's not, and the only way you'll find out for sure is to snuff it.
It all makes Pascal look like rather more of a risky gambler than he wanted to appear.
One of many problems with Pascal’s Wager is that he simply ASSUMES there’s no downside to believing in God. Had he never heard of tithing or sleeping in on Sunday mornings?
Seriously, has there 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 been a prosecutor so bad at their job that they got shot down by a grand jury 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 in the space of a month? What's she doing, handing down indictments scribbled on wine-stained cocktail napkins with the sharpie she's huffing as a chaser?
This is something that is fairly obvious with how the category is described. Nones = no religious affiliation. One can still have supernatural beliefs, even belief in a god of some sort, while eschewing religion altogether.
That being said, there are still far more non-believers than a few decades ago. This is a good thing. Even if people are reluctant to give up belief, they are still leaving behind the authoritarian tendencies of organized religion.
Although I'm a truly devout atheist, I do feel the teachings of a compassionate Christ are pretty good at setting examples for how to treat one's fellow humans, other living beings, and planet earth. If only the CINOs in Wash. DC would heed these teachings, our country wouldn't be in such peril.
This from Jesus? I haven't even mentioned: "I come not to bring peace but a sword," which doesn't improve matters. Jesus gets NO rhythm with me, full stop.
Both of those are not literal calls for violence or evil. You're cherry picking.
Matthew 10 is a bit of a mishmash (because amongst all the 'don't value other people, value me' he throws in the classic 'when you value them/strangers, you value me'.) But the general gist is that people need to put God first on their priority list if they expect salvation.
Your Luke quote is part of a parable. The meaning is not 'go murder nonbelievers', it is 'people who don't follow God will go to hell'. Does that make God out to be benevolent? Absolutely not. Does that make Jesus out to be advocating violence? Also - and here's where your cherry picking goes wrong - absolutely not.
For me, the first is Jesus' ego talking, and sorry-not-sorry, but I don't care for it. He expects his followers to value him above all things and people? Don't think so. As for the parable, yeah, I knew it was, but it's still bad form for someone who is supposed to be the Prince of Peace™ talking about killing ANYONE doesn't work with me.
That is MY take on it. Whether it agrees with anyone else or not, I honestly DO NOT CARE.
Eeeeehh... I'll admit that a couple of the gospel writers put some pretty words in his mouth, but you still have to do an uncomfortable lot of cherry-picking to separate 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 stuff out from all the doomsday cult shit. See also: Troublesh00ter's post.
At the end of the day, belief isn't knowledge. If the belief was provable it would be a fact, and facts do not require belief. The range of things it's possible to believe is impossibly large to calculate. When those beliefs are weighed against testable evidence what one believes is almost certainly wrong as a matter of probability. And around and around we go.
I pray, though I recognize the overwhelming likely futility because I find talking out my anxiety and emotions to be comforting.
I hope for an afterlife, though it seems very unlikely.
Hell, I hope for some sort of good God or gods that can explain all of my doubts and questions.
Do I still admire the parts of the Bible that prea h social justice and kindness to immigrants? Yes. Even as I acknowledge and reject the barbarous parts about women and LGBTQ and other groups.
Is it logical? No.
Would I agree with you about 99% of political issues? Yeah. Do I agree that religion has no place in government? Yep.
Is my hope likely just a shred of a security blanket I was indoctrinated with as a child? Yes.
Some of us aren't there yet. Some of us might not get there. Sorry.
Maybe, indepently of the way someone grew up, not everyone is wired to be an Atheist. I was raised secular, NOGODZ religious and yet both of us found something was missing in our lives. NOGODZ became Atheist at 8, even if he probably didn't know the word yet, and I found my Goddess when I was 25.
If “gods” existed, they could prove their existence easily. They wouldn’t need carnival barkers and shamans to tell you “god’s message” or reach into your wallet so that you could attain “salvation.”
This is so interesting and also not surprising. The Americas are particularly plagued with these ridiculous superstitions. Sometimes I almost feel like Mexico and South American Catholics are far worse, but really it’s just a different sort than our Puritan BS over here. We are in this together. I also think many people need something and aren’t open or creative enough to find their own path. It’s disturbing to see this wellness-guru trend takeover to fill the void. I went to the Natural History Museum a few weeks ago and watched a fantastic film on the universe and came out weeping at the beauty of it all. How can that not be enough? Just let it be.
These folks are incurious, they expect to be fed the answers and the best place for that is the church. Museums and schools expect too much effort from the faithful. Churches also groom their congregations to be incurious, can’t have them asking uncomfortable questions.
Liberation Theology was pretty cool. Unfortunately, American New Apostolic Reformation missionaries and prosperity gospel pastors have taken over Latin America. Who wants to work for equality when you can be get instant gratification by sending seed money to the rich pastor? These people are also the ones working under the table with coyotes, driving immigration northward, and the ones who told Latinos for Trump that their vote, like the seed money to the pastor, would guarantee Trump would protect them. Now they've become the stuff of FAFO videos.
All these shootings with white male Christians and they do nothing. This is just an excuse to work towards taking the rights of minority groups away. Combined with Trumps comments on bringing back insane asylums this is not good.
Instead of this crap, ban individual ownership of assault rifles and overpowered handguns FOR EVERYONE.
It's always thus. Look at the Black Panthers in the '70s. The NRA is bonkers about gun rights for white men, but silent when it comes to just about anyone else.
B-b-b-but the number of trans people who've Done a Bad(tm) went from 𝘰𝘯𝘦 to 𝘵𝘸𝘰! That means the crime rate 𝘥𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘥! The horror! Something must be done, I say! Something! 𝘈𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨!
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It is worth noting that the 𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 Nazis 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 practiced selective disarmament against those groups of people they intended to murder- and the pretexts they used to justify it were equally flimsy. If this goes through, the 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 fugly evil shit is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 far behind.
It is hard to shake the indoctrination of youth. A trained pup takes time to learn a new trick as a grown dog. Mommy and Daddy set the table...err altar and kiddy does his act in front of the congregation as the Christmas Star. That's effective.
I still like Christmas Time. Why? Because of the good memories. The smells, the food, even some of the music and rushing about. That's effective.
I’m only on my 2nd cup of coffee, so why don’t I muddy the waters even a little bit further?
“mud, mud, glorious mud. Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. So follow me, follow, down to the Hollow, and there let us wallow In glorious glorious glorious mud.”
Hemant wrote: ”In the U.S., even though 29% of people have no religious affiliation, only 8% of us are truly secular. That is, only 8% of Americans don’t believe in God, don’t believe in an afterlife, and say the natural world is all there is. To put it another way, only 8% of us in the U.S. are right on those questions.“
Probably my favorite all-time quotation, from John Gardner’s “the wreckage of Agathon.”
“ WHAT MATTERS IS NOT SO MUCH THAT WHICH IS TRUE, BUT THAT WHICH IS ENTERTAINING.”
And my second favorite quote, from James Branch Cabell’s character, Koschei the Deathless, Who Made Things As They Are:
“What are your beliefs about Me to Me, Who Made Things As They Are?”
And my third favorite quote is from Alice, where the white queen says: ‘I can believe six impossible things before breakfast.”* I’m still drinking my coffee, and haven’t had breakfast yet, so this is entirely relevant.
I’m just a mass of contradictions, I am. I have no religious affiliation, and I am truly secular. I don’t believe in any God in particular, because I’m not sure what one is. The character Q in Star Trek is a perfect example. What is the difference between a god and a being of immense power they can do pretty much what he wants to, but has the maturity of a 12-year-old, which most gods seem to have? “I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.” And 12 year-old Frumpy Gertrude is jealous of 12 year-old blonde Heather, the popular girl. What’s the difference?
I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I’ve had a few experiences with my late partner, as did other people, that were very difficult to explain. So I don’t. The natural world, whatever that is, doesn’t matter, and seems to be all there is, unless it isn’t.
It doesn’t really matter what I believe, and so Koschei the Deathless is correct about that. All that matters is the reality, which may or may not be knowable. Or it may not be knowable in the way we think it’s knowable. Who knows?**
My point is that I am a human being, and generally speaking, a mass of contradictions. But I don’t let what I might believe interfere with reality. There might be a God or gods, but frankly, I don’t care because they don’t seem to be all that important. Especially if this God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. If that were the case, there would be absolutely no difference between the world with that God and the world without that God. Everything would be exactly the same as it is
There might be an afterlife— my late partner is a good argument for that— but whether I believe in it or not doesn’t really affect anything in my life now. I’ll either see him after I die, or I saw him after he died, or none of it is true. It doesn’t matter what I believe, because what Matters in this case is what is entertaining. And it entertains me to believe that if anyone was going to show up after he died, it would have been Larry. Far more likely Larry than Jesus.
My point here – and I do have one— is that what people say they believe may not have a great deal to do with what they actually believe. What matters is what they do. A child molesting protestant youth pastor can tell me that he believes in his God, truly and absolutely, but his child molesting activities tell me he doesn’t really believe it. He’s saying that for popular consumption, or to convince himself of something or other. As that other great philosopher, Yoda said, “there is no try. There is only DO.”
It also doesn’t matter what I believe about those things, because my belief has nothing to do with their reality. But then, neither do I.
I am a secular atheist with some decidedly non-secular non-atheist things floating inside my head. I don’t act as if these things were real. It takes a true believer to do that. And even then, we have the example of the child molesting youth pastor. I just put all of those things into the category of not true, but entertaining.
Everything is much calmer that way. Let us wallow in glorious mud!
* my second favorite quote from Alice, which may or may not be relevant here: “ I’ve seen a cat without a grin, but never, oh never!, A grin without a cat.”
*I couldn’t resist. Sorry. I’m a bad philosopher. Bad!
"WHAT MATTERS IS NOT SO MUCH THAT WHICH IS TRUE, BUT THAT WHICH IS ENTERTAINING.”"
In other words, style instead of substance. Ronald Reagan got us started down that road, but Trump makes Ronnie look like an amateur ... which is why I am sometimes scared out of my wits for my country.
I don’t think I agree with style over substance. For me, it’s simply describing the reality that I believe I exist in. It’s a great deal of gray in a world that insists on being black and white, even when it knows it isn’t. I don’t let the contradictions trouble me.
I agree though about being scared for my country. I’m a little bit more international, because I’m scared for the world. My favorite grad school teacher. C. West Churchman, talked about what he called the Sytems approach. He said officially that as the world gets more and more complicated, we must learn to manage the systems that we create, rather than trying to manage simply the world. But he also admitted that he thought the systems would be far beyond our ability to manage them, and that chaos would ensue eventually. This is a bit simplified from what he actually said, but basically it all boils down to that
Zero argument about being scared for the world with Donnie at the controls. He's screwing with everything that the US has been, up to his arrival on the political scene, and he's doing his best / worst to redefine this country in his image, mostly so that he gets his way 100% of the time. The consequences of this actions are hardly limited to the borders of the US, and the international reactions to his programs are on the evening news damned near every night.
8%er here. Supernatural nonsense is why we can't have nice things.
Yup. The universe as it really is is far more wondrous than any woo-woo could ever hope to be.
No kidding! Dark matter, dark energy, gravitational lensing, the cosmic microwave background radiation, and those are a couple things out of who knows how many. The bible can't hold a candle to that.
https://ibb.co/yn6bWtd4
Christian kryptonite.
Chucky laid it all out and was proven right with the discovery of DNA a century after his passing.
Hell, he was proven right shortly after the first edition of 𝘖𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯 when fossils he predicted were found.
He was proven right when he studied Galapagos islands fauna in 1835, 2 decades before The origin of species was published.
Indeed he was. DNA simply made any futher doubt of his findings to be impossible.
Impossible, perhaps, for the rational mind. Not only perfectly possible but highly likely for the religious fundies.
💯
Likewise. I'm a strong believer in the cathartic value of fiction, but it makes a dreadfully poor foundation for a worldview.
Ayn Rand.
𝘌𝘶𝘨𝘩... not even worthy to be used as toilet paper, let alone as the basis for a philosophy.
That is because, in 1777 a young Maggie Smithe showed her ankles to one Jonathan Bjornson, and as a punishment for such wanton harlotry America can't have nice things for seven generations.
(Counting generations on my fingers). We should be okay by now. Who else fucked up later?
But...but...the hymns and choir are so lovely. And so is the stained glass. What's wrong with that?
Stained glass: from stained thinking.
Clear glass: from clear thinking.
Woo-pie.
Madison, Jefferson, and all of the other Deist founding fathers would be part of the Nones today.
And it wouldn't surprise me at all if, given an accepting environment, any one or more of them would come out as atheist. Ben Franklin would be a VERY likely candidate, as would Thomas Paine, I suspect.
I thought Age of Reason was generally atheist. Although it has been a long time since I read it.
ETA: I wuz wrong.
AI Overview
Thomas Paine Quotes Reveal His Thoughts on Religion
No, Thomas Paine was not an atheist; he was a deist, a believer in one God but a rejection of organized religion, particularly Christian doctrine. His influential book, The Age of Reason, attacked organized religion and the Bible's inconsistencies, leading to him being falsely branded an atheist and damaging his reputation. Paine advocated for reason and freethought, arguing that true religion was derived from natural reason and not divine revelation or miracle stories.
But xtianity is the religion of love, who wouldn't want to believe in peace on earth as "jesus" preached.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” – Matthew 10:34
“But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.” – Luke 19:27
“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” – Luke 12:49
“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” – Luke 12:51
“And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.” – Mark 9:43
Christians call their savior The Prince of Peace. Proof positive they don't read the bible. Or even just the gospels.
https://ibb.co/Dfmzqpjz
You are right that Christians refer to Jesus in terms which give the wrong impression. Jesus will give his peace to those who are his followers but judgment for those who reject him.
What absolute bullshit. Jesus never existed and if he did, only an idiot would worship such a vengeful asswipe.
Conditional hatred. Nice.
Try again. Followers of Jesus killed each other since at least the 4th century and it lasted well into the 20th century in Europe (Ireland).
If they were killing each other then they were disobeying Jesus and so it's no surprise that things went off the rails. Paul said that we are not to use the "weapons of this world" in regards to spiritual matters but he's often ignored.
Then Peter disobeyed Jesus several times by doubting him and denying he knew him. As all christians who marry, have children and doesn't cut ties with their families. Try again. Without quoting Paul, who was not an apostle.
Why would you say that Paul was not an Apostle? Yes, Peter did disobey Jesus on several occasions.
Paul or Saul never existed.
Definition of a bully. Ignore the toadies, harass the rest.
Do you really want to take the chance of putting Jesus before Rascal?!?!
Jesus belong to the demi gods category. How does that work ? Not asking for a friend.
Rascal doesn’t pick nits.
I don't understand your comment.
Rascal’s Wager. Rascal is a very, very powerful god. Rascal could not care less if humans believe in him or not. Rascal has no rules for how people treat each other. Rascal has one and only rule: Put no other gods before me. Anyone who puts any other god before Rascal gets hell. Everyone else gets heaven.
To get heaven, you could be atheist, agnostic, Rascalite, or polytheist so long as Rascal is at least tied for number one.
Now then, do you really want to take the chance of putting some other god before Rascal?
Thank you for your explanation.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/02/world/video/children-families-flee-as-israeli-attacks-gaza-city-digvid
I’ve not read any form of the Bible, only what is shared in this forum. One thing seems assured - these bibles have shit-tons of different authors. Their message is confusing, contradictory and illogical, leading to piecemeal applications of its’ content. Kind of like the Democratic Party.
How did that piece of bad fiction ever become the “book of all books?”
Worst fan fiction ever.
Maybe 15-20 years ago some publisher issued a new release of the bible (why was never explained). Some anonymous reviewer on Amazon wrote a lengthy review as if it were a novel. (About 2/3 of the way thru the author had 4 chapters that seemed cover the same ground about a new major character but the chapters were all somewhat different. Poor editing.). The review went viral. Christians wrote stuff like “This isn’t a novel. It’s the word of God!” And other people expanded on the original review. Last time I saw it, there were THOUSANDS. It was fucking hilarious. I’ve tried to find that again from time to time but never have.
I like the bit with taking out your eyes and hand if they cause you to sin. Places the responsibility firmly on the man whining about what women wear.
There'd hardly be a priest left on Earth with eyesight or opposable thumbs if they followed 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 advice.
"Grab em by the pussy. They let you do that when you're famous." -
Donald 1:1
In real life (not myth or fable) how many people were the models for the Biblical character of Jesus? In the absence of any real evidence, we’re stuck with probabilities:
0 — 15%
1 — 35%
2 or more — 50%
Supporting the 3rd hypothesis are anomalies such as “the Nazarene” being born in Bethlehem (a conflation of the divine-savior and political-savior traditions); dueling genealogies in Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38; the “Prince of Peace” stating “I come to bring not peace but a sword” and trashing the money-changer tables in the temple; the friend of the common people also recommending that “these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them — bring them here and slaughter them in my presence”; the same guy who said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” supposedly also saying “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”, thus creating the ongoing controversy over whether man is saved by works or grace; and the bringer of a new covenant claiming to uphold “every jot and tittle” of the old one.
These differences are what we’d expect if two or more itinerant preachers — probably illiterate themselves and certainly working in an illiterate society — were each delivering somewhat different messages, and word-of-mouth transmission confused who said what, much the same way as modern people will attribute quotations of unknown origin to William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, or George Carlin.
Another consideration is how common the name Yeshua was in that era: applied to about 4% of men. (For comparison, 3% of American men are named John.) And, since the various Yeshuas weren’t distinguished by surnames, it’s easy to understand how “Yeshua said ...” was just taken by most hearers to mean the one they were most familiar with.
In his book 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝐷𝑦𝑛𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑦: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑛 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠, 𝐻𝑖𝑠 𝑅𝑜𝑦𝑎𝑙 𝐹𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑖𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 James Tabor said that their were four other guys running around the mideast claiming to be the messiah.
https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Dynasty-Hidden-History-Christianity/dp/074328724X/ref=sr_1_1?mfadid=adm
It was a thing people did then. A legit way to beg for food. Along with performing magic tricks.
Yeah, see, the few times I have tried to read that book I've been horrified. Particularly once I became a parent and saw other parents exposing their kids to shit in the Bible. Like, wtf? And how can anyone create a religion of it, much less think, if it truly is the word of a god, that that god is worthy of their worship?
Sounds like the Nones are hedging their bets. Were Jesus real, that would not go well for them. Something about being neither hot nor cold. Those folks would wind up being spewed out of Jesus' mouth.
My Jewish grandma started lighting sabbath candles in her very old age (never religious, did not bar mitzvah her sons). I asked my dad about it. He said hedging her bets. :D
Cracks me up - like they think they’re fooling god.
W. C. Fields, a lifetime agnostic, was discovered reading a Bible on his deathbed. “I’m looking for a loophole,” he explained.
A-HA! :)
I don't think the nones are hedging their bets so much as they may have lost interest in something that didn't serve them. As I said elsewhere, they haven't LOOKED at religion the way we have, they're not inquisitive or skeptical.
And it's their loss.
Pascal's Wager may be the default position of the many nones.
Which is why I invented (probably not the first person) a different Wager. This one is called Rascal’s Wager. Rascal is a very, very powerful god. Rascal could not care less if humans believe in him or not. Rascal has no rules for how people treat each other. Rascal has one and only rule: Put no other gods before me. Anyone who puts any other god before Rascal gets hell. Everyone else gets heaven.
To get heaven, you could be atheist, agnostic, Rascalite, or polytheist so long as Rascal is at least tied for number one.
Now then, do you really want to take the chance of putting some other god before Rascal?
Yes, I worship a Goddess, not a God so I can have Seshat first and Rascal second and still end in this alleged Heaven 😋
Beware of loopholes.
Wait. Rascal isn't real? Whaddya mean you made "him" up.
I've been burning shit in his honor.
Maybe I was inspired to make him up!
Rascal works in mysterious ways.
And Pascal was talking about his Catholic version of his god. No other.
I've always thought of it more as "Pascal's Roulette Wheel," because that's a better framing of the thought experiment since it's not just a binary choice between one denomination of Christianity and nothing at all.
Except the wheel is a couple hundred meters across, it has tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of positions- exactly 𝘰𝘯𝘦 of which could possibly be the correct one- and there are no clever bets on odds or evens or red or black. You pick one place, and only one; it's either right or it's not, and the only way you'll find out for sure is to snuff it.
It all makes Pascal look like rather more of a risky gambler than he wanted to appear.
One of many problems with Pascal’s Wager is that he simply ASSUMES there’s no downside to believing in God. Had he never heard of tithing or sleeping in on Sunday mornings?
OT- In addition to being so incompetent she couldn't indict (a man for throwing) a sandwich, Jeanine Pirro (should that be Jeanine 𝘗𝘪𝘯𝘰𝘵?) is irritating federal judges with her perpetually-tipsy authoritarian antics: https://apnews.com/article/jeanine-pirro-trump-judge-faruqui-ca18c324dbf904d929a7377576b3ba8f
Seriously, has there 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 been a prosecutor so bad at their job that they got shot down by a grand jury 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 in the space of a month? What's she doing, handing down indictments scribbled on wine-stained cocktail napkins with the sharpie she's huffing as a chaser?
The judge said “no credibility left?”
But, but, but …. Pirro was on Fox!!! I don’t understand!?!?
from what I can gather, it's pretty rare to get shot down by a grand jury even once.
Figures that the only thing this regime can manage to win at is losing.
Trump has a history of only hiring the "best" people....
For certain idiosyncratic values of “best”.
This is something that is fairly obvious with how the category is described. Nones = no religious affiliation. One can still have supernatural beliefs, even belief in a god of some sort, while eschewing religion altogether.
That being said, there are still far more non-believers than a few decades ago. This is a good thing. Even if people are reluctant to give up belief, they are still leaving behind the authoritarian tendencies of organized religion.
Although I'm a truly devout atheist, I do feel the teachings of a compassionate Christ are pretty good at setting examples for how to treat one's fellow humans, other living beings, and planet earth. If only the CINOs in Wash. DC would heed these teachings, our country wouldn't be in such peril.
Frankly, Jesus lost me when he comes on with:
𝐴𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑒; 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑟 𝑑𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑚𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑒.
-- Matthew 10:37-38
And then there is THIS little gem:
𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑒𝑠, 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑛𝑜𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑒 𝑟𝑢𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚, 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 ℎ𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑚𝑒.
-- Luke 19:27
This from Jesus? I haven't even mentioned: "I come not to bring peace but a sword," which doesn't improve matters. Jesus gets NO rhythm with me, full stop.
Don't let a few pesky details ruin the narrative.
Both of those are not literal calls for violence or evil. You're cherry picking.
Matthew 10 is a bit of a mishmash (because amongst all the 'don't value other people, value me' he throws in the classic 'when you value them/strangers, you value me'.) But the general gist is that people need to put God first on their priority list if they expect salvation.
Your Luke quote is part of a parable. The meaning is not 'go murder nonbelievers', it is 'people who don't follow God will go to hell'. Does that make God out to be benevolent? Absolutely not. Does that make Jesus out to be advocating violence? Also - and here's where your cherry picking goes wrong - absolutely not.
For me, the first is Jesus' ego talking, and sorry-not-sorry, but I don't care for it. He expects his followers to value him above all things and people? Don't think so. As for the parable, yeah, I knew it was, but it's still bad form for someone who is supposed to be the Prince of Peace™ talking about killing ANYONE doesn't work with me.
That is MY take on it. Whether it agrees with anyone else or not, I honestly DO NOT CARE.
It's almost like maybe more than one person was submitting quotes on JFC's behalf.
We need more Fred Rogers and a lot less Fred Phelps in the world.
And alot less Fred Trumps.
But that involves turning the other cheek and not being utterly xenophobic. You don't get power and money like that.
The examples are set, so the MAGATY Xtians know how to diametrically oppose them.
Eeeeehh... I'll admit that a couple of the gospel writers put some pretty words in his mouth, but you still have to do an uncomfortable lot of cherry-picking to separate 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 stuff out from all the doomsday cult shit. See also: Troublesh00ter's post.
Lots of other real humans did the same thing and more. Yet they weren't magically transformed into am omniscient, omnipotent deity.
https://ibb.co/GXLJRK3
"If you can't SHOW it, you don't KNOW it."
-- Aron Ra
"If you've got the truth, you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it. Show people."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
"I don't want to believe; I want to KNOW."
-- Carl Sagan
If belief doesn't align with reality, WHAT GOOD IS IT???
If belief doesn't align with reality, you must reject reality.
-- Any religious leader
I can't see the image. Tried twice. Just says Faith2.
https://freeimghost.net/i/Faith2.AUYHRC
Sounds a bit like Sagan. He didn’t want to believe, he wanted to know.
At the end of the day, belief isn't knowledge. If the belief was provable it would be a fact, and facts do not require belief. The range of things it's possible to believe is impossibly large to calculate. When those beliefs are weighed against testable evidence what one believes is almost certainly wrong as a matter of probability. And around and around we go.
Hence why the United States feels compelled to print "In God We Trust" on all its currency.
Belief-based reality: Delusion with a caveat.
Well, I am one.
I pray, though I recognize the overwhelming likely futility because I find talking out my anxiety and emotions to be comforting.
I hope for an afterlife, though it seems very unlikely.
Hell, I hope for some sort of good God or gods that can explain all of my doubts and questions.
Do I still admire the parts of the Bible that prea h social justice and kindness to immigrants? Yes. Even as I acknowledge and reject the barbarous parts about women and LGBTQ and other groups.
Is it logical? No.
Would I agree with you about 99% of political issues? Yeah. Do I agree that religion has no place in government? Yep.
Is my hope likely just a shred of a security blanket I was indoctrinated with as a child? Yes.
Some of us aren't there yet. Some of us might not get there. Sorry.
Nothing to be sorry for. The more important part is acknowledging the humanity and dignity of others, no matter who they are.
Maybe, indepently of the way someone grew up, not everyone is wired to be an Atheist. I was raised secular, NOGODZ religious and yet both of us found something was missing in our lives. NOGODZ became Atheist at 8, even if he probably didn't know the word yet, and I found my Goddess when I was 25.
If “gods” existed, they could prove their existence easily. They wouldn’t need carnival barkers and shamans to tell you “god’s message” or reach into your wallet so that you could attain “salvation.”
But with proof then the whole faith thing is out the window.
and with it the pocket picking and grifting.
A man without god is still a man.
A god without man is nothing.
Yep.
Good read on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Gods
This is so interesting and also not surprising. The Americas are particularly plagued with these ridiculous superstitions. Sometimes I almost feel like Mexico and South American Catholics are far worse, but really it’s just a different sort than our Puritan BS over here. We are in this together. I also think many people need something and aren’t open or creative enough to find their own path. It’s disturbing to see this wellness-guru trend takeover to fill the void. I went to the Natural History Museum a few weeks ago and watched a fantastic film on the universe and came out weeping at the beauty of it all. How can that not be enough? Just let it be.
These folks are incurious, they expect to be fed the answers and the best place for that is the church. Museums and schools expect too much effort from the faithful. Churches also groom their congregations to be incurious, can’t have them asking uncomfortable questions.
Incurious, and they also like things in black and white. Which I suspect is the reason they very selectively read the Bible.
Indeed. Good vs evil type black and white and nothing beyond. What an oversimplified waste of life and experiences never to be had.
One of the neurological defects of the conservative brain.
💯 slave morality
Liberation Theology was pretty cool. Unfortunately, American New Apostolic Reformation missionaries and prosperity gospel pastors have taken over Latin America. Who wants to work for equality when you can be get instant gratification by sending seed money to the rich pastor? These people are also the ones working under the table with coyotes, driving immigration northward, and the ones who told Latinos for Trump that their vote, like the seed money to the pastor, would guarantee Trump would protect them. Now they've become the stuff of FAFO videos.
Anyone who trusted Trump, needs a psychological evaluation!
OT The DOJ considering firearms ban for trans.
All these shootings with white male Christians and they do nothing. This is just an excuse to work towards taking the rights of minority groups away. Combined with Trumps comments on bringing back insane asylums this is not good.
Instead of this crap, ban individual ownership of assault rifles and overpowered handguns FOR EVERYONE.
It's always thus. Look at the Black Panthers in the '70s. The NRA is bonkers about gun rights for white men, but silent when it comes to just about anyone else.
B-b-b-but the number of trans people who've Done a Bad(tm) went from 𝘰𝘯𝘦 to 𝘵𝘸𝘰! That means the crime rate 𝘥𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘥! The horror! Something must be done, I say! Something! 𝘈𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨!
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It is worth noting that the 𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 Nazis 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 practiced selective disarmament against those groups of people they intended to murder- and the pretexts they used to justify it were equally flimsy. If this goes through, the 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 fugly evil shit is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 far behind.
Let's see how the 2nd Amendment absolutists react to this.
They're 𝘢𝘣𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 sure they only want the Second Amendment to apply to the very demographic that commits the most mass shootings.
Well, the NRA does believe the blind have a right to own firearms.
It is hard to shake the indoctrination of youth. A trained pup takes time to learn a new trick as a grown dog. Mommy and Daddy set the table...err altar and kiddy does his act in front of the congregation as the Christmas Star. That's effective.
I still like Christmas Time. Why? Because of the good memories. The smells, the food, even some of the music and rushing about. That's effective.
That's how to win. Make good memories. As adults.
I still love Christmas lights. I would string them all over my living room ceiling all year long if my wife would let me.
Christmas lights....aaah...(dippy smile). I adore them!
I’m only on my 2nd cup of coffee, so why don’t I muddy the waters even a little bit further?
“mud, mud, glorious mud. Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. So follow me, follow, down to the Hollow, and there let us wallow In glorious glorious glorious mud.”
Hemant wrote: ”In the U.S., even though 29% of people have no religious affiliation, only 8% of us are truly secular. That is, only 8% of Americans don’t believe in God, don’t believe in an afterlife, and say the natural world is all there is. To put it another way, only 8% of us in the U.S. are right on those questions.“
Probably my favorite all-time quotation, from John Gardner’s “the wreckage of Agathon.”
“ WHAT MATTERS IS NOT SO MUCH THAT WHICH IS TRUE, BUT THAT WHICH IS ENTERTAINING.”
And my second favorite quote, from James Branch Cabell’s character, Koschei the Deathless, Who Made Things As They Are:
“What are your beliefs about Me to Me, Who Made Things As They Are?”
And my third favorite quote is from Alice, where the white queen says: ‘I can believe six impossible things before breakfast.”* I’m still drinking my coffee, and haven’t had breakfast yet, so this is entirely relevant.
I’m just a mass of contradictions, I am. I have no religious affiliation, and I am truly secular. I don’t believe in any God in particular, because I’m not sure what one is. The character Q in Star Trek is a perfect example. What is the difference between a god and a being of immense power they can do pretty much what he wants to, but has the maturity of a 12-year-old, which most gods seem to have? “I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.” And 12 year-old Frumpy Gertrude is jealous of 12 year-old blonde Heather, the popular girl. What’s the difference?
I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I’ve had a few experiences with my late partner, as did other people, that were very difficult to explain. So I don’t. The natural world, whatever that is, doesn’t matter, and seems to be all there is, unless it isn’t.
It doesn’t really matter what I believe, and so Koschei the Deathless is correct about that. All that matters is the reality, which may or may not be knowable. Or it may not be knowable in the way we think it’s knowable. Who knows?**
My point is that I am a human being, and generally speaking, a mass of contradictions. But I don’t let what I might believe interfere with reality. There might be a God or gods, but frankly, I don’t care because they don’t seem to be all that important. Especially if this God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. If that were the case, there would be absolutely no difference between the world with that God and the world without that God. Everything would be exactly the same as it is
There might be an afterlife— my late partner is a good argument for that— but whether I believe in it or not doesn’t really affect anything in my life now. I’ll either see him after I die, or I saw him after he died, or none of it is true. It doesn’t matter what I believe, because what Matters in this case is what is entertaining. And it entertains me to believe that if anyone was going to show up after he died, it would have been Larry. Far more likely Larry than Jesus.
My point here – and I do have one— is that what people say they believe may not have a great deal to do with what they actually believe. What matters is what they do. A child molesting protestant youth pastor can tell me that he believes in his God, truly and absolutely, but his child molesting activities tell me he doesn’t really believe it. He’s saying that for popular consumption, or to convince himself of something or other. As that other great philosopher, Yoda said, “there is no try. There is only DO.”
It also doesn’t matter what I believe about those things, because my belief has nothing to do with their reality. But then, neither do I.
I am a secular atheist with some decidedly non-secular non-atheist things floating inside my head. I don’t act as if these things were real. It takes a true believer to do that. And even then, we have the example of the child molesting youth pastor. I just put all of those things into the category of not true, but entertaining.
Everything is much calmer that way. Let us wallow in glorious mud!
* my second favorite quote from Alice, which may or may not be relevant here: “ I’ve seen a cat without a grin, but never, oh never!, A grin without a cat.”
*I couldn’t resist. Sorry. I’m a bad philosopher. Bad!
"WHAT MATTERS IS NOT SO MUCH THAT WHICH IS TRUE, BUT THAT WHICH IS ENTERTAINING.”"
In other words, style instead of substance. Ronald Reagan got us started down that road, but Trump makes Ronnie look like an amateur ... which is why I am sometimes scared out of my wits for my country.
I don’t think I agree with style over substance. For me, it’s simply describing the reality that I believe I exist in. It’s a great deal of gray in a world that insists on being black and white, even when it knows it isn’t. I don’t let the contradictions trouble me.
I agree though about being scared for my country. I’m a little bit more international, because I’m scared for the world. My favorite grad school teacher. C. West Churchman, talked about what he called the Sytems approach. He said officially that as the world gets more and more complicated, we must learn to manage the systems that we create, rather than trying to manage simply the world. But he also admitted that he thought the systems would be far beyond our ability to manage them, and that chaos would ensue eventually. This is a bit simplified from what he actually said, but basically it all boils down to that
Zero argument about being scared for the world with Donnie at the controls. He's screwing with everything that the US has been, up to his arrival on the political scene, and he's doing his best / worst to redefine this country in his image, mostly so that he gets his way 100% of the time. The consequences of this actions are hardly limited to the borders of the US, and the international reactions to his programs are on the evening news damned near every night.
More reasons to be scared shitless.
Dictator for a Day
Why can't it be this way?
I'll make my enemies pay
Eliminate the DOJ.
Dictatorforadayshow.com. Available now to rent. Coming soon to streaming.
https://youtube.com/shorts/wYajj434RPg?si=gA4d-4XNsy85bHZ2
https://www.gocomics.com/speedbump/2025/08/26
I would buy one of those!
Me too.