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Jesus of Nazareth
I found this on the Amorality of Atheism Facebook website page. I don’t endorse the idea that all atheists are amoral though.
Read an article in the Belfast Telegraph recently which said that “Today religion remains a popular historical hobby but not, thankfully, something we take seriously any more”. But whilst the narrow circle of people the author knows might not take religion seriously, there is one person they cannot afford not to take seriously.
He lived millennia ago, travelling by foot, with no car or horse, never leaving a rural area only slightly larger than Northern Ireland. He was a tradesman most of his life, and taught for only three years, spending most of his time with small crowds, and dying in his early thirties. He left behind no children, no army, or political lobby group, to trumpet his cause.
Yet today He is the central figure of the world’s best-selling book, and the subject of millions more. His name is known all over the globe, and spoken in hundreds of different languages. His followers are the most persecuted people on Earth, yet increase by 25 million every year, and his message has outlasted kingdoms, empires, dictators, revolutions, ideologies and religions.
He is arguably the most influential, lauded, loathed, misunderstood, controversial and quoted man to ever walk the face of the Earth. You can write him off as a liar, cast him aside as a lunatic, or look on Him as Lord, but one thing you cannot do is ignore Him. — Andrew Kirke
I’d also add that contrary to what some rags or magazines or online sites put out today of all days, or in prior Easters (Raw Story, CNN, Huffington Post) that no serious historian has ever seriously believed that Jesus did not exist. Only historical illiterates do. Christ was mentioned in Jewish, Greek, and Roman writings. For historians of the 1st century that is more than enough to prove he lived. Keep in mind that what we know of Alexander the Great or Aristotle depends on one source or sources written hundreds of years after their life as in the case of the former.
My faith in Jesus often wavers. I have a doubters’ mind. Nevertheless when I see atheists or non believers rubbish the man’s existence it is as if my faith is renewed again. For in doing so I am confronted not with reasoned belief but blind ignorance. An ignorance at its heart rooted in the desire of the accusers a wish for him not to exist. After all if Christ did exist the onus becomes on the modern unbeliever to take more seriously his words. This can be problem for them, indeed for any soul.
But their refusal also forces me to re-look the evidence for Christ. It also causes me to learn more things about the man. In a weird way it strengthens my faith. Christianity is after all a faith which is soaked in contradictions. It’s also one grounded in the search for Truth. Ecce homo — Behold the man. A man whose life changed humanity.
Published in History, Religion & Philosophy
Odd given the way that Christianity co-opted Pagan culture for its own purposes.
MJ, I’m not diving into the mud with you over your theological claims. I hope you and your faith are very happy together.
But your historical claim that Christianity did not grow out of surrounding cultures is bunk. No movement in human history does not build on the cultural stream in which it swims. I assume your claim is “this is different – it was a bolt from the blue sent by god” which you’re entitled to believe. But now we’re back to faith, not history.
No. It is an inference to most rational conclusion that then gives you a transcendent and eternal – more solid than solid, as it were to counter Cato Rand- basis for making all other inferences.
Are you referring here to the well worn and patently false claims that are often peddled to the gullible and ignorant about the origins of Christianity in Mithras cult or the evidence-free claims of the pagan origins of Easter here? Please clarify the point.
But on a different tack, CR has a valid point: Christianity did not appear out of nowhere. Jesus’ birth, life, ministry and resurrection are all fulfilments of promises God made in the Tanakh and were recognised as such by the first Christians who were, with very few exceptions, Jews.
So, where did god come from?
You took some liberties with CRs point. Aside from agreeing that Christianity is largely an offshoot of Judiasm, CR never said all that.
I don’t understand this comment at all.
@mjbubba believes one thing deeply. Other people believe something else. That’s the basis for a good debate, which everyone has been having. But I don’t *get* the undercurrent of animosity that seems to run under the exchange in some weird way. I mean… am I missing something? Or am I over-reading?
He has said–essentially–that anyone who ignores God does so at his peril, but so what? How is that mud? It would be like Paul Ryan saying that anyone who ignores the deficit does so at his peril. That’s not mud. That’s part of his belief set.
“God as peril” might not be persuasive, but why is it mud?
Or are you saying the ideas aren’t well formed? In this way the thoughts are “muddy”?
Regardless, as God exists outside of His creation, God in effect always was.
I’ve been thinking about that turtle thing, and I wonder what the bottom turtle is for people who don’t believe in a higher power. Isn’t there a leap of faith that must be done for anyone to find the foundation?
Doesn’t science have its own “god for the gaps” when we “reason” we just haven’t figured out how something came from nothing yet?
Maybe I’m not smart enough for this thread.
Christianity did not grow out of surrounding cultures.
This is an historically valid claim with plenty of evidence. Christian teachings are solidly rooted in traditionalist Judaism of the first century. Christian teachings and practices amount to a rejection of all other surrounding cultures, except to the extent that they agree with Old Testament morality.
There is a popular fiction that is less than 200 years old (and commonly found on the internet) that says Christianity is derivative of Pagan thought. Every bit of evidence that I have seen for this amounts either to pure speculation or is easily attributed to coincidence. The New Testament books themselves contain condemnations of Pagan and Gnostic ideas, and there is plenty of similar and more specific rejection of surrounding culture from the writings of the early Christian Fathers.
Lois:
1) You may or may not be aware, but MJ and I have a long history of testy exchanges. MJ frequently says things I find deeply offensive and insulting (and vice versa).
2) His incessant and condescending warnings that my eternal soul is in peril fall into that category, though they are by no means the worst example.
So 3) My “in the mud” reference was just my way of saying “I’m not going there again.” I tried to limit my response to his historical claim, not his theological ones.
And 4) To your “god in the gaps” claim, it might surprise you to know we probably agree. I consider myself a humble agnostic who simply accepts the limits of my own, and human, knowledge. I claim to know nothing about any god or gods. I’m a skeptic, it’s true, but not dogmatic about it. Maybe there is a god (or gods). Maybe it’s even MJs. I doubt the first, and very much doubt the second, but I don’t really know. What I do know is that MJ is human, just as I am, and subject to the same limitations to his knowledge that I suffer from.
Finally 5) On the science side, I also recognize that science, while a method that has taught us much, is far from answering the ultimate questions and may well never be able to answer them.
MJBubba (View Comment):
Cato Rand (View Comment):
MJ, I’m not diving into the mud with you over your theological claims. I hope you and your faith are very happy together.
But your historical claim that Christianity did not grow out of surrounding cultures is bunk. No movement in human history does not build on the cultural stream in which it swims. I assume your claim is “this is different – it was a bolt from the blue sent by god” which you’re entitled to believe. But now we’re back to faith, not history.
It’s amazing that you can make such an emphatically certain claim and then add two caveats before you even finish the thought.
Wherever the early Christian Fathers praised Roman culture, it was to praise the elements of that culture that were in agreement with Old Testament morality. In a couple of famous passages, early Christians made a claim to be good citizens of Rome. They justified this claim by pointing out that their moral code and their personal practices were good. They were good to both Romans and Jews. The fact that they were considered good by Romans was not why they were practiced by the Christians; it is just that Romans, Jews and Christians happened to agree on most moral issues.
Whereever the Christians had a moral issue with Roman morals, they were in agreement with Jewish morals, or else specifically following the teachings of Jesus. They categorically denied the use of Pagan thought as a source of moral teaching.
They did, however, prize the teachings of the Classical Greeks (Plato, et al), because they were probing the nature of good and evil, and developing a philosophy of goodness. They said that the classical writers were making moral progress, and that Romans could complete the struggle begun by the classical writers by embracing Christianity.
I do not think Judaism is properly thought of as a “surrounding culture” of first century Roman society in the Greek and Latin speaking parts of Rome. This is not a caveat.
Saying that Roman morality agreed in some cases with Jewish and Christian thinking is not a caveat. Roman morality and philosophy were not used by Christians, but Christians took pains to point out that, to a large extent regarding morals, they were in agreement.
Christianity is an odd bird of a Faith. Very few faiths posit the personal relationship with God, and almost no faiths fail to treat God as a vending machine. Christianity does both. Further, its founder only had a following for a few years and was killed for it. Even if you do not believe he rose from the grave, you had to agree that the faith has changed the world. I would say the change is like no other faith in history.
I fear we are now just quibbling over semantics, but what I hear when you say that is that Christianity was not affected by surrounding cultures except when it was. In my mind, by the way, the conscious rejection of an attribute of a surrounding culture is being affected by it too. So maybe we’re just making different assumptions about what the terms of the question mean. Bottom line, I think the early Christians grew up in a time and place and culture and were affected by it, and I think that culture itself had not evolved in isolation — it had itself drawn on cultures then extant around it and cultures that pre-dated it but from which it was in various ways derived. I think that with very few exceptions, that’s just how culture works, and I don’t find anything in Christianity that exempts it from that general rule.
I think this depends on what one means by grow.
If one means that Christianity was not a natural extension of pre-existing cultures, then you’ll get no objection from me. Christianity absolutely was a departure from previous religions along several key points. In this sense, it was new.
If, however, one means that Christianity emerged independent of — and without significant influence from — pagan cultures in addition to Judaism, then I’ll push back. While I agree with @hartmannvonaue that claims along these lines have been oversold, I really do think it’s impossible to account for Christianity without first accounting for Platonism.
Even if it was a departure from previous religions along several key points there is a reason for that departure that is rooted in the cultural norms of the time and the way they affected the populace.
I’m on Cato’s side with this, but I’d present it differently:
As I see it:
As I said before, I absolutely respect Christians’ argument that faith in God provides a sound basis for reasoning toward objective moral codes. What I disagree with is the notion that their faith is a demonstrably better foundation than the alternatives.
Second.
Perhaps I’m misreading folks, but the argument I’m objecting to is that Christianity was — forgive me — immaculately conceived.
I don’t want to overplay this, but it’s worth noting that Judaism and Hellenism also cross-pollinated. Yes, the Hellenistic influence was largely removed subsequent to that, but you never completely get that sort of thing out.
The argument is that it is the only possible foundation which is just wrong.
This is perfect Tom. Precisely what I was trying to say but said with much greater clarity.
That is the contention I am objecting to too, though I am not entirely sure anybody is actually making it. Most of the assertions of it seem to come with a lot of caveats.
I think it might be worthwhile to take into account the accountability factor. I will agree that atheists and agnostics are perfectly capable of developing and living by a strong and largely admirable moral code. In the end, though, they are accountable only to themselves. As a Christian, I know I will stand in judgment before God one day. That does raise the ante a little.
As for cross-pollination of religion, that is largely an exercise in semantics. Most Christian churches I have been affiliated with offer alternatives to Halloween. This is not because they are trying to incorporate the darker aspects of that day (satanists, for example, tend to make a big deal out of October 31), but are just offering an alternative to kids who look forward to raking in a big sack of candy every year.
I see that this has become an Atheist party, so, go on your way, have your fun.
As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
No. The argument is that it is the only objectively real one and other apparent foundations for ethics owe their existence to God whether they acknowledge God’s existence or not. God is an entity, not and idea. And what derives from that is not the position that men cannot be good without believing in God, but that men cannot be good without God. Whether God’s existence is acknowledge or not, is in this aspect beside the point.
As for the sophomoric “where did God come from?” …. check the definition, again. God is always already eternally existent and without external cause. The question is incoherent.
This is another point that bears clarification. The argument is not that other philosophies and religions do not have wisdom or beauty, but that the wisdom and beauty come from the same source (God) and that some cultures and systems are closer to the source than others.
Yes, Platonism had an influence on Christian thought and the depth of that influence, as well as the nature of the influence, i.e. was it beneficial, detrimental or largely neutral, is subject to debate and not always easy to descry. The question of whether Epictetus was influenced by the New Testament or not was still being debated until the 1940s if memory serves.
It’s entirely possible that this is true; and, if God exists, then it likely is true.
The bolded is where we disagree. As a theist, the question for you is whether or not God’s existence — which is taken as a given — is acknowledged. As an agnostic, I do not share the premise that God exists. To my mind, I’m not refusing to “acknowledge” God because I don’t know He’s real.
Again, I follow your logic and it strikes me as wholly sound presuming God’s existence.
It also strikes me as sound that Christian and pagan authors agree on some values not because Christianity is true, but because it — and other philosophical traditions — got some things true. I think it’s entirely possible, for instance, that Christian moral philosophy is capital-T true (or, at least true in parts) but that Jesus was not the Incarnation.
I don’t think you understand the point though. If morality is really objective and God really exists, the foundation is in place whatever you think about God.
This is a very imperfect analogy, but a person may know nothing about a relative who helped support that person’s family in some way when that person was a child. Maybe the kid was told his dead Nana put a trust fund together for him, but there’s no real understanding of what that means to a child or who Nana is. That kid will never know Nana outside the abstract even if told stories about her, but it’s really irrelevant. Nana set the kid up. The kid has something tangible from Nana that the kid doesn’t actually control. The kid benefits from Nana because Nana was, indeed, real, and the trust fund is the foundation for the kid’s future.
This logic just assumes your conclusion.
Finally, when thinking about the categorical imperative as the source of objective morality, Kant wrote about racial hierarchies in which black people are stupid, lazy and inferior to whites. Native Americans, according to Kant, were the lowest race, incapable of education, which makes me wonder how well he thought they could deploy reason and thus engage in any universal understanding of right and wrong.
Admittedly, I understand Kant moves to a different place on race as the French Revolution killed God and wreaked havoc in Europe, but he never really explains why, right? His cosmopolitanism in relation to race just kinda becomes.
Therefore, I don’t know how his later views on race are more reasonable than his earlier views. They seem a bit schizophrenic to me, though I certainly think per my own understanding of morality that he got it more right the older he became.
Granted, I am not a brilliant student of philosophy, but this seems to me to point to some of the limits of human reason in any moment in time. We live in a vacuum of historicism?
Reason does not lead to a never changing objective morality.
God does God better than Kant?