Who Made Religion Up?

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In the English language, the phrase “Jesus died for our sins.” implies an exchange.

In my world that implies more than one party being involved.

If someone were to exchange something with themselves they still possess both items. It is therefore not an exchange but a reallocation.

Considering Jesus is not dead, nothing was given on that account.

I imagine in an imaginary exchange the counter party can remain nameless because why name something imaginary. Unnamed is better in such an instance.

I don’t see how this is dismissed as facetious.

Also, does not the word died note permanence?

I wouldn't think that it's the job of the rational mind to believe anything, only to test. Surely belief is irrational by its very nature, being essentially the taking of a mere guess as the absolute, unrefutable truth? The only "rational" arguments in support of religious belief I've seen are inconclusive at best, such as the watchmaker analogy.

Yes I think there are problems with that "He did this for you" thing. It's loaded with presumptions, and the whole sacrifice-crucifixion thing is abhorrent to me. A really kind man gets killed in an extremely painful and nasty way, and somehow it's supposed to be a good thing. I can't imagine that before the event anybody had said "What a shame, I'm such an evil varmint. If only a deity's son would be tortured to death on my behalf, all this could be put right. I do hope that happens soon."

People are born enslaved to sin.  Jesus' death 'bought' our freedom from sin.  The fact that saved people still sin is due to the choices they make -- theft gets them what they want, adultery feels good while doing it, and lying keeps them out of trouble with the law and their spouses.The blood-cost was exchanged with the devil -- the fallen angel known as Lucifer.Jesus died.  He was dead.  His death atoned from our sins.  He rose again from death, and is now seated at the right-hand of God the Father.For you, imagination may be more comforting.  For believers, it is far more comforting to know the truth.Your questions do not seem raised for your learning, but for an opportunity to challenge believers (no matter how much you may deny it).Nope.  People have 'flat-lined' -- no brain activity or heartbeat -- only to be revived through medical intervention.  Some have even revived spontaneously.

There is some conflict concerning the fate of unrepentant souls after physical death.  Are they cast into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels?  Are they obliviated -- given the "Second Death"?  Are they recycled, to endure another life in the physical body of an animal, insect, or plant?  Is there even an Afterlife -- do we still exist as conscious entities after our physical deaths -- and should it even matter to physical people not yet dead?

We can go back-and-forth on this topic and never reach an agreement.

A recent pope said "Pffft" to that notion.
He suggested it was simply someone's creative imagination.
So much for the church's infallibility.

The Bibble is full of contradiction.

Reason suggests it is all a figment of humanity's imagination inspired by a desire for intrinsic meaning in life.
Simples...

And because I am half German, I am half guilty of the Holocaust.
I'm sorry, I don't buy that nonsense.

My "belief system" is based on REASON.
I will take that any day of the week over a belief system built on "faith".

Excerpt from "A critical review of "The Jesus Mysteries" by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy".

In their 1999 book "The Jesus Mysteries", Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy claimed that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. He is supposed to have been the creation of Jewish Gnostics who copied the details of his life from other dying and rising gods in the pagan mystery religions of the ancient world. However, their arguments are not supported by the historical evidence.

Freke and Gandy give the impression that Judaism at that time was heavily influenced by pagan beliefs, so it sounds like a fertile place for a Jewish/pagan mystery religion to arise. They write,

• "A Jewish scripture called 2 Maccabees records that the temple of Jerusalem itself was transformed into a Greek temple to Zeus and festivals of Dionysus were celebrated." (Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries, Thorsons, London, 1999, p217)

2 Maccabees actually says that in 167 BC the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the Temple by setting up a statue of Zeus, tried to suppress Judaism by forcing them to participate in the festival of Dionysus and convert to paganism (2 Maccabees 6:1-11).  This provoked the Maccabean Revolt in which the Jews won their independence and there was a conservative Jewish backlash against paganism.  Judaism at the time of Jesus was anti-pagan, rather than open to pagan influences.

Freke and Gandy suggest that the idea of a Jewish dying and rising godman may have come from the Therapeutae, a Jewish mystery religion sect in Alexandria.  They are supposed to have merged the pagan dying and rising god motif with the Jewish expectations of the Messiah (The Jesus Mysteries, p232-233).  Our only knowledge for the Therapeutae comes from On the Contemplative Life by the Alexandrian Jew Philo (circa 20 BC to 50 AD).  He did not say anything about them believing in a dying and rising god.

•
•
•

The claims of The Jesus Mysteries are not supported by the original primary evidence. There is no evidence the ancient pagans believed in a godman who was born of a virgin, was crucified, and rose physically from the dead. The historical Jesus of Nazareth was unique.

 Link to Article 

I too much prefer to keep my critical faculty awake, generally speaking. So much so that I don't really have a belief system at all. I suppose I see no difference between belief and faith - both seem to be to do with assigning certainty to things that aren't certain, without the believer seeing or admitting what they've done.

If I was taught correctly, one or two of the Gospels contain passages written to counter the popular Gnosticism of the time. I can't recall the details of how that was pitched in the NT, and they might never even have explained it to me that deeply, but if it's correct - and it looks testable, it would be hard to fit that in with the notion that the Jesus story was created by Gnostics.

Clearly an inconvenient truth. The Bible says none of your commentary. It clearly says there is burning for Hell for eternity.

You basically confirmed half of what I proposed in your replies. First, you said there was no deal “full stop”, then you say the exchange was with Lucifer which I am certain is not in the Bible.

You seem to want to place attributes to me that don’t exist. I have only stated things that seem ridiculous to me.

Your statement about people flatlining on an operating table being considered dead is really grasping at straws. They survived. They did not die.

---

Oh Dear Lord The So-Called
Inerrant Holy Spirit Inspired Word of God;

From Numbers 31, Old King James Version
With The Verses As Numbered Below, Somewhere
In the 1300's As the Scripts All Mix and Matched By Church Officials;
Innumerable Ghost Authors, Including Scribes and Their Accompanying
Mistakes; And Intentional Changes too Across the Centuries; Yes And Even

More Revisions And Continuing New Interpretations, Depending Now on

Which of the 45,000 Plus Christian Denominations You Ask; And Yes Each

And Every Member in Every Pew of Every Church, With A Different View of Even

Who Story
Book Jesus
Is; and What 'He' Did; And What He 'Must Still Do'...

Oh By 'the Way,' i DO GREATER WORKS THAN JESUS; IF 'YOU'

DON'T BELIEVE i HAVE THE AUTHORITY, RE-READ JOHN 14:12 iNDEED, if Need be, HEHE...

AND ADDITIONALLY, i ONLY FIND THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN; NEVER 'OVER THERE'

OR 'THE OTHER PLACE' EITHER AS IF i LOOK TO THE SKY THE BIRDS WILL PRECEDE ME,

IF i LOOK BELOW, THE FISH WILL PRECEDE ME; Yet of Course This Basic Direction Still

Exists in Luke 17:21; See How Easy it is To Cherry Pick This or That Verse to Justify

Whatever i Wanna Do; Just Like Women Still Taken Up in Wars and Raped and

Only Seen As OBJECTS to use for Sexual Gratification of Course As Folks Have

Been Using Old Text By Faceless Authors/Scribes to Justify The Most Horrible

Of Offenses to Other Humans; Including Slavery, Stoning, And Extensions

Now of What is Copied of The Terrors, Still Used in Other Religions too;

Now Don't Get me Wrong, 'The Beatitudes' More Closely Relate to the

Compassionate Teachings Attributed to Story Book Buddha That in Some
Stories Was Born of Virgin And Seeded By The Divine; or Other Gods Like Hercules too;

It's True, Parts of the Bible i Can And Will Sweetly Stomach; Others are only Worth Spitting

On As Dangerous And Potentially Still Harmful to Other Human Beings;

For Those Who Do Believe They Are Holy Spirit Inspired By A God Who Could

Only Be Even More Psychopathic Then Than 'Hannibal the Cannibal' FOR REAL

And His 'Silence of the Lambs' as Somehow Whatever Ghost Authors/Scribes in
Parts, Who Wrote Matthew and the Beatitudes Transforms Jesus into 'Mr Hyde'

As He Prepares A Place of Burning Forever, Changing Once Loyal Sheep Who

Other Wise Might Feed and Clothe the Mexican Carpenter (Roofer) Crossing

The Southern Border; 'DEviL' Yes, Changing Them into Goats; And Yes Burning them

Forever Alive to Torture Them; Not Unlike the Quran Version That Oh God of YucK,

Provides Ever More Skins to Boil Away Even More; Yet This is What You Do When You

Are Building Monarchial Empires, You Bond And Bind Folks Over Carrots and Sticks

of Religion And Use Folks as OBJECTS And Rape Their Freedoms Away to Empower What Power

Corrupts

As the

Living Dead;

With Promises in
Dirt Naps of Course...

No Thank You, i'll Take the LoVE iN Peace FOR ALL; NO EXCEPTIONS

From That Beatitudes Part; And the FLoWinG Meditation in Effortless 'Wu

Wei' Ease In All that i Do in The Kingdom of Heaven Within 'The Tao' Brings Still in Essence

Newly Now Beyond All Names; True 'the Force' Within That Never Ends Now For Real; God Yes, Real

Balancing, Friends With Gravity, Weight of Finger Tips; LoVE iN Peace For All; Just Real TOTAL Bliss

Now; Getting 'Backwards' to What the Other Books Says; And There Are So Many More

Examples i Can And Will and Do Provide That You'll Never Hear Repeated

in Any Church; Pretending Like They Don't Exist, Until Days To Go to War

And
Rape
And

Pillage Again...

Just Really Reflective

of What DarK Humanity
Brings; What Nightmares

Humans Bring to Fruition;

And Dreams of LoVE iN Peace

Humans Bring in Best of All Their Compassionate Potentials;

True, i Will Not Assert The Old Bible is All A Lie; It's Mostly A Reflection

of the Human Condition (DUH, Obviously as Innumerable Humans Wrote It)

DarK Thru LiGHT; iNDeeD, i Will Do Greater Works Than That;

It's Not That Hard; Be Kind to All;

iNDeeD, Truly Be HumanKind;

"Truth oF NoW And Then"...

From Numbers 31, Old King James Version:

"1 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

2 Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites:

afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people."


"15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel
of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor,
and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.

17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and
kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

18 But all the women children, that have not known a
man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

"31 And Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the Lord commanded Moses.

32 And the booty, being the rest of the prey which the men of war had caught,
was six hundred thousand and seventy thousand and five thousand sheep,

33 And threescore and twelve thousand beeves,

34 And threescore and one thousand asses,

35 And thirty and two thousand persons in all,
of women that had not known man by lying with him."

How This is Still Justified in 'School BookS in Florida' is Indeed

Below my Reading Comprehension at Least; True, There Are
Other Parts That Talk About Donkey Size Parts of the Human

Anatomy And Volumes

of Emissions of Horses,

SL8T Shaming Women in Tow of Course...

i Will Guarantee You This Much, When i Ever

Write A 'Bible' Even More; It Will Have THE
PURE SPiRiT Of A

Woman's Touch...

"Truth oF

NoW And Then..."

It's Always Amusing When So Called
Self Professed Rational Folks Literally

Assess the Bible As Truth...

Truth of
Lies, Yes;

Some Truth, Yes,

Truth of Truths, Hell F iN No...

It's Easy to Hide Lies in An 800,000 or
So Word Book, Until You May Encounter
A Person on the Autism Spectrum Who

in Focus Reads 20 Times Faster Than the
Average Human Being; 'Splinter Skills' Do Abide, Some Days hehe...

And as Far as Writing Speeds and Metaphors, Some Autistic And
Other Folks Accomplish

More too...

It's All One

Big Soup

Of Humanity Indeed...

HumanKind At Best As
far as i feel and sense for real...

Have a Nice Day; Yet i am not One
to Tell Anyone Else What They Will or Will Not Do...

SMiLes For All
And No Thing too

Truth oF NoW And Then..

---

I remember seeing the film "Flatliners" and laughing at the naive idea of those experiments they were doing- supposedly killing each other temporarily so they could experience what happened after death and then come back and report their findings. I guess the outmoded definitions of death are still accepted by many. A stopped heartbeat was once the best indicator of death they had, but muddled thinking somehow led many to view it as the definition of death rather than just an indicator. In the days before defibrillators, taking that view would have nearly always worked. It's interesting how even these days there's no perfect definition either of life or death.

Talking of living and non-living entities, does anybody know why many languages assign gender to nouns that refer to things generally accepted to be inanimate? Is that a linguistic relic of an ancient mindset that presumed everything to be alive?

Interesting . . . tell me more . . .