Was Jesus really God?

Post Reply New Topic

But when you think about it, despite how short and brutal life could be in ancient times we humans were living in better harmony with nature itself. We didnt overpopulate the earth and fill it with so many humans consuming everything in sight like we are doing now. Plus not as much mass pollution like today and we did not have to worry about that opened pandora's box known as the atom bomb that can and probably will destroy us all and take the entire planet with us (and no there will be no 'messiah' to save anyone).

The gods being real or not real is irrelevant to me. I feel like they all served a real purpose to keep our species in check.

Yes, But, so are you..
God made man in his image. . and man is made of the Universe - literal stardust - fused with a temporarily separated slice of the universal consciousness having an in body human experience for ~80 years before rejoining God in the stream of collective consciousness where we were before we were born and will be again after we die until we embody someone or something else.
We're all God.

I think that's very likely correct, though I would add that it wasn't necessarily religion that made it so. We have evidence from the Piraha tribe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people

They're hunter-gatherers, and as such haven't yet evolved to do farming. They have no religion and their lives are shortish relative to ours, but not brutal but remarkably loving and happy. They're a tad superstitious but with no deity-worshipping or spiritual authority - in fact no authority at all.


Indeed, technology is a double-edged sword, as evidenced by farming, industrialisation, weapons of mass destruction, and hierarchy which I think was an invention that led to great efficiencies but at a terrible cost.


I tend to think the "moral" gods such as the Abrahamic one kept the masses in check for the convenience of their leaders rather than keeping the whole group in check for the benefit of the whole group, though I suppose both effects probably ran in parallel. I don't say religion is entirely harmful, I say that it did as much harm as good. I agree that believing something false isn't always bad. When I compare myself to a religionist who wrongly thinks they're going to the Good Place when they die, I wonder who is the fool, them or me?

I definetly agree with that because a lot of people need to believe in a "better place" after death otherwise life because even more depressing and unbearable. Nobody should have the right to take that away from them.

And I also see your point about how at times religion (any religion) was a double edged sword just like science and technology.

Religion has brought both terrible and not-so-terrible things to the world no doubt. I think a lot of it must depend on how benovolent the ruling priests and leaders of society were because they were the ones deciding how people would worship in their communities.

---

Jesus Was Really And Still Is A Story
With Many Revisions; So Are the Rest

of the Abstract Constructs Humans Create;

Including Both Ideologies And Symbols of Course They Co-Create

And Naturally Bond And Bind Over in Group Think to Better Cooperate;

Is It Really Surprising That A God Birthed With Words Suggests That

God is

'The Word'

Not Really;

Words, Yes And Other
Arts We Create Now Allow

Us in Some Ways to Extend
Our Mortal Lives After Death;

In This Feel and Sense of Reality,

It's No Wonder Through the Ages of
Illiteracy; Words, Stories, And Eventually

Books Were Held High
to the Sky and Literally

Worshipped, Particularly by
the Breath of All the Innumerable
Ghost Authors and Scribes ACross
the Centuries Contributing to that Old

Bible That Tells the Tales of How Humans
Do Create Both Heaven and HeLL ON Earth;
All the Grand Between And The Beyond of What

We Humans
Will Co-Create
Next With What iMaGiNaTiONS
Beyond Limits Will Surely Bring

to
Fruition Next;

Yep, For Folks Who Believe
Stories Are Real; Jesus Can Be
God Or the Devil Or Whoever the

Story Writers

Wanted Him to Be...

(Bugs Bunny; Yep One
of my All Days Favorites)

Obviously, the Old Bible
is an Anthology of Many

Opinions, By Innumerable
Ghost Authors and Scribes

Across the Centuries; Mixed (Edited)
And Matched As Scripts; Not Numbered

Until the 1300's; With Rudimentary Printing Press
in the 1400's to Escape Some of the Scribe Mistakes

And Intentional Changes ACRoss The Centuries too;

Yet let's Use Common Sense; What So-Called

God Would Clearly State That You, Just Another

Slob With God's Face Will Do Greater Works Than the J Man too

Per John 14:12,

IF, You Just
Believe in Him
Who Said You Can
And Will, And Just Do It Again;

Nope, Not Even Requiring Any Shoe Sales For Real...

And Honestly Per Luke 17:21 That Says You Only Find
The Kingdom of God Within; True, Not Necessary to Even

Read about the J
Man or God or Go

To Church Either;

So Obviously Yes,
Folks Around the
World Find Similar
Essences of Real

(WiTHiN)

Human SPiRiTuaLLY
to Give, Share, Care,
Heal with Most
Respect and

Least Harm
In Whatever Language
or Other Arts They Co-Create

to Mutually and Consensually
Relate Deeper Human Potentials For all to Partake;

Jesus Presents Himself in the Good Cop Version at Least
As Someone Who Puts His Self Last in Servant Leadership;

Someone Who Loves The Enemy And Even Turns the Other Cheek...

Someone Who
Loves All

Human
Beings
As Closest
Neighbors
And FRiEnDS as Well True

And For Whatever He Felt God is
As Entity, He Didn't Feel Equal With;

And Even A Force He Doubted on
A Cross that Left Him Behind Yet

of Course

That Force
Was Within
For Him to
Find IT Again

As Like Most All Other
Human Archetypal Hero
Stories, The Hero Defeats the

Demons of 'The Father' in this Case of the

One with So Many Personality Disorders;

Cruel and Psychopathic Too; RiSinG Up Out

of The DarK And BRinGS LiGHT of Newer Wisdom

of What 'They'

Learn Out

in the Deserts;
Under Trees Of Life;

And Even On Pristine Beaches

Escaping From CuLTuRE's oF iGNoRaNCE;

Finding a Better Way Of LoVE iN Peace That Might Even Last

At Least
in 'A Day in the Life' Now;

i'm Not That Much Into Other Stories;

i Rather Write And Play my Own Reality;

It Would Surely Be Uncomfortable if Someone

Else Believed
in my Story
More Than Theirs;

Surely They Would Personally
Be Able to Do Greater Works of Play too..



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbesfXXw

---

Indeed. I'd have no problem in telling a dying human that they weren't going to hell, and I'm sure they aren't, but once somebody has become dependent on a belief in a good afterlife, I think it would be cruel to interfere. I've sometimes wished I could believe in such an afterlife myself, but I could no more do that than believe that this computer I'm typing on is a box of tea bags.

[Belief according to Lewis Carroll]

And knowing me, if I did believe in traditional Christianity, I'd be scared that I was going to hell, at the side of which going out like a candle flame isn't really so bad. I disapprove so strongly of some aspects of what they say God expects of me that I'd break the rules and not be remorseful at all.

Incidentally, I suspect that people didn't really need to believe in an afterlife, but encouraged by believers around them, they tried it, and became so addicted that they'll never learn to do without it. But it's not as bad as a real addiction because it's harmless as long as the supply never runs out, and as long as the pushers give it them for free and don't prescribe impossible or harmful moral codes on them.

A fascinating talk, the main idea being that we are all sons of God, that Jesus was just more powerful than most of us in some respects. I'd love to know what nonpartisan scholars of scripture make of the passages he quotes in support of his idea. Meanwhile, it seems plausible to me, and as usual with Alan Watts, a refreshing and encouraging change from traditional interpretations of scripture.

For anybody who prefers the written word to a YT video, or finds the background music distracting, here's a transcript:

https://www.organism.earth/library/docu ... s-religion

The part corresponding to the video is labelled 34:10 to 43:08 inclusive.
Scriptural references:
John 10:30-38
Psalm 82
John 5:39

I haven't been able to find anything scholarly that corroborates or refutes Alan Watts' assertion that "if you read the King James Bible that descended with the angel, you will see in italics in front of these words, “Son of God,” “the Son of God.” ............. And most people think the italics are for emphasis. They’re not. The italics indicate words interpolated by the translators. You will not find that in the Greek. In the Greek [it] says “a son of God.” So it seems to me here perfectly plain that Jesus has got it in the back of his mind and that this isn’t something peculiar to himself."

This argues differently:

http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/pr ... n10_34.htm

But it's a partisan source, and if their argument were correct, it would follow that Jesus was interpreting the Psalm wrongly when he said in John 10:
34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?"

^^^
Thanks For Providing the Alan Watts Transcript..

---

SMiLes, One of my Favorites From the
Oldest of English Interpretations
Of the 'Gospel of Thomas' Where
i Personally Relate it to With One Phrase

myself

"Naked
Enough
Whole
Complete"

A Golden
Age At
Any Age

i For One
May Come to Do;

Of course, not even
Requiring a Single
Word A Dance
With Sand
And
Sun
And Nothing
More As Another Verse
From the Gospel of Thomas

Suggests the Essence of

'The One' is 'Move and Repose'..

37) His disciples said, "When will You become revealed to us and
when shall we see You?"
Jesus said, "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take
up your garments and place them under your feet like little
children and tread on them, then [will you see] the Son of the
Living One, and you will not be afraid"

And Indeed The Gospel of Thomas is Stripped of All the Myths

Sounding More Like Something one Might Hear the Old Shaolin

Temple Monk off the Old
TV Series "Kung Fu" Relate;

Oh Dear, So Relieved When So Much
of That Was Reborn in Yoda in Early Stars Wars Movies...

Parts of the New Testament Resonated With me; Yet Only

A few
Stripped
From All the Myths;

Yet On the Other Hand,

If Not For The Myths, The Little
Gems Housed Among 'The Garbage'

Might Have Never Continued to Breathe in Modernity...

Like for Instance, if You Only Thrive in the Present You
Never Really Die...

For The Dead
Do Not See or Hear

That Version of Jesus
Was Very Much a Realist

Yet Very Much in Touch

With the More Ascendent
Transcendent Aspects of Life

That Famous Atheist Sam Harris
Relates Not Much Different at all...

i Intuit Who Ever Wrote Those Verses

Would Not Have Any Place to Rest Their
Heads Among Organized Abrahamic Religions

As the Story Book
J Dude in The Gospel
of Thomas Focused
on This Life Now and That's All...

So Much More Reflecting Essence of Eastern Philosophies

That Don't Materially Reduce the World Now to Ironically The 'After Life'...

Of Course Whatever Hope a Story Will Bring to the Down and Out Will Be Worth it too...

There is So Much
Scarcity in the

World Where

A Hope for Anything
Better After Life is all
That Some Have in Their Life Now...

And of Course That is Where Abrahamic
Religions Are Both From And Thrive Wherever

There is

'Desert
Scarcity'
With or Without
A Desert Most...

Moving to More Green
Abundance of India, There

Religions/Philosophies Become
More Naturally focused indeed;

And of Course Among the
American Indians Before

'The Clothed Ones Arrived,'

Not So Materially Reduced Yet
That is changing Fast as The World
Becomes one of 'Mammon' even more..

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxuqSg4 ... yIFoundOut

^
Yes it looks fairly clear that he existed. I would think that also the Gospels had at least some veracity when it comes to the details of the ideology he expounded and various tales of his life - it seems unlikely that they invented the whole shebang - the miracles are much harder to sell to the rational mind, being so extraordinary and counter to most people's experience of things, but even some of those could well have been conjuring tricks that he did actually perform. There were plenty of people faking supernatural powers in those days, as there are now, and I once heard that every one of Jesus' miracles was a well-known conjuring trick at the time, though I can't recall the source. There's usually at least a relic of something that really happened in even the most absurd legends.

A movie that you might enjoy: Il Ladrone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXXrBMm ... oMontesano



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXXrBMm7h2A

A trickster/thief from Galilee takes Jesus to be a competing trickster, and tries to learn his tricks.

Thanks Downloading the full version now, from here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XulxFoXnxV0

My skill in comprehending Italian is woefully limited, but I've found an English subtitle file and I think I know how to use it.

Hmm.....the subtitles were badly out of synch. On perusal, it seems somebody had added a spurious introduction to the film, and removed a small chunk about halfway through, which the subtitles didn't account for. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong and how to correct it, but I got there and have watched and understood about 2/3 of it so far. The implication seems to be that Jesus was either a genuine miracle-worker or a more talented illusionist than the main character. It's like a cross between The Life Of Brian and Monkey.

Was there support for Jesus being God before Paul of Tarsus started changing everything.