Was Jesus really God?

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The trinity exists being that reality has three dimensions on this octave of existence involving height, width and depth.

I’d rather worship Jesus than YHWH. Jesus seems like less of an as*hole overall. Of course, I’m not keen on worshipping any god.

Comic Lewis Black observed that unlike the God of the Old Testament "the God of the New Testament is a pretty nice guy. I dunno what happened. Maybe he took anger management classes, or maybe the birth of his son calmed him down.".

I’d be an upgrade to Jesus. People should be worshipping me.

Your explanation is probably better than my guess, and may have gone down well with the gentiles they were looking for, but it wouldn't have worked on me. I much prefer the legend about St. Patrick with his shamrock / 3-leaf clover analogy. Maybe that's because I often prefer a vernacular explanation to a "sophisticated" one - vernacular thought can be refreshingly direct and easy, while often being capable of great intelligence. I presume those gentiles were quite heavily educated?

Incidentally, one of the very few "supernatural" phenomena I've seen but haven't yet been able to explain away scientifically was a friend who could find bucketfuls of 4-leaf clovers with remarkable speed. She didn't even have good eyesight.

I've often noticed that there are people around today with more compassion than the god(s) of the Old or New Testaments had, though the New is certainly a step up from the Old. But I don't do worship. I'm too proud to grovel and I think worshipping risks offending the worshipped or making them narcissistic. I suppose that makes me a bit of a Lucifer, though I'd probably turn down the job of running hell.

Is it possible that he was based on other ancient deities in the far east that we simply have not found the link to?

I mean for example scholars who don't allow religious bias to cloud their judgements already figured out that the "God" of Judeo-Christianity was actually a combination of both a war deity and a storm deity found in the Canaanite pantheon that the Israelites just kind of adopted as their one and only deity.


This is a really interesting video by a Jewish scholar I found on youtube who explains the true origins of this one God born out of violence and war who managed to somehow conquer much of the world as we know it today.

I don't expect people would be given my 'sophisticated' explanation, if they were Roman pagans they'd already be familiar with the concept of threefold gods, so the trinity is aligned with the idea of preaching to them in their vernacular.

We only need the sophisticated explanation because we're not steeped in that era's vernacular.

El and YHWH merged into the YHWH we know today. In some ways current YHWH seems more like El than like early YHWH.

That's a good video, btw. I watched it a few months ago.

Yes. The "Arian Heresy" was suppressed in the 4th century AD by the emperor Constantine who held a conclave of bishops from far and wide in what is now the rural village of Isnik, Turkey. Arias was a religious scholar and teacher in Egypt. It's a very interesting part of Christian history though little known. In the 20th century priests were still being thrown out of the Catholic church for questionning this "heresy". I don't know if this still happens.

Arias was the Bishop of Alexandria. Yes. They held the council at Nicea to...get Christianty's act together...about a lot of issues. Including that one. Constantine was neutral and even kinda leaned toward Arianism, but obeyed the decision of the council, and proceeded to stamp out Arianism.

But Arianism was already catching on with the Barbarians beyond the borders of the Roman Empire both north and south. The Barbarians of Europe often converted from Paganism to Arianism, and later converted from that to orthodox Christianity. But in the deserts of Arabia it seems to have left a legacy. The coins from the Mecca area from the time of Mohammed have no pictures on them, and make no mention of Mohammed, but have simple texts reading "God does not beget, nor he is ever begotten" (ie "in this town we are monotheists, but we dont go for this virgin birth/trinity jive"). So a branch of Arian Christianity seems to be what evolved into modern Islam.

Yes that makes sense to me and explains the matter

Ooh, they shouldn't do that:
Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

Yet in the NT we have this:
2 Timothy 2:7
Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

OTOH, it seems to me that black can be "proved" to be white (which of course it isn't) with scripture, so I'm not saying you're wrong.

Yes, and apparently a lot of it is devoted to technically remaining kosher, but not actually having to put up with the inconveniences. It's not my religion, so I can't say that I care, but if turning off a switch is work and work isn't to be done on Saturday, it seems odd that it's permissible to achieve a similar effect by using a shade to block the light. Personally, I wouldn't care to follow a God that was so easily fooled. But, that's just me.

I think the main problem with every god including the God of Judeo-Christianity is that people today are judging these ancient deities and the people who worship them with a modern bias.

The Gods were never meant to be "perfect" or "all-good". But ancient humans understood that they were powerful and dangerous and that it was best to try and stay on their good sides. If you worked hard to appease the gods they might show you favor, but if you offend them for whatever reason that might damn you forever.

People in the old days did not see the world in total absolutes like they do today. People today are so uptight about what they consider "moral". And it's not even just the Christians who view the world as black and white, there are so many atheists and New Agers who are the exact same way

It's also strange to me. Christians, Jews, and Muslims tend to think anyone worshipping a different god than they do is pure evil. And they have slaughtered each other for centuries.

New Agers (especially the 'Wiccans' aka fake witches who have overshadowed real witchcraft) think they're more enlightened by rejecting Christiainity but they view the world through that exact same lense. Also the toxic positivity and that whitewashing of all those Gods and Goddesses they steal from other cultures to worship...

And Atheists... oh boy. Don't even get me started the way that they constantly complain about how quick religious people are to judge them when they themselves are quick to judge religious folks. How many atheists claim all religious people are stupid, evil, and would be better off in a world where religion was outlawed? Ironically these same atheists who make these arguments probably never researched the history of the Soviet Union to know that enforced atheism sucks just as much as enforced religion under a theocratic regime.

I think the problem with people today isnt mainstream religion, new age movements, or atheism. It's the fact that society is too modern in its thinking when it comes to why religion was necessary to begin with. It's that thinking in absolutes by today's morals.

Well yes, but the ancients were wrong in thinking that their problems were caused by and could be fixed by deities if the mortals sacrificed all kinds of good things to them - animals, people, food, time, work, even their pride and autonomy. Not that they were stupid, even if they seem stupid to many modern people. Just wrong in their explanations of how the universe ticks.