Jesus, confidence trickster or madman?

[pythagoras]

It's taken me a long time but I think I've finally wrested myself completely free from the stories peddled to me as truths(by mainly well meaning adults) as an impressionable child.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the rest are human generated constructs that have been revealed by science to be patently ludicrous.

Dogma such as that the world was created in 7 days which were once literal beliefs have become metaphors.

As the years have gone by more and more of the bible is 'not to be taken literally'' or was written for a 'different age'.

As someone who was taught to love Jesus this leaves me to wonder, uncomfortably, if he was

a) a con-man
or
b) deluded

Could we have a poll on this, perhaps?
Maybe with the inclusion of a 'divine' option.

BTW (for the benefit of God) I'm not ruling out your existence, K?

[Jackie Brown]

If there is a divine being you can be damn sure there is no chance any of our religions have described him/her/it correctly. Organised religion is nothing more than a money making scam that feeds on people's greatest fears.

Me, I think you get one shot before the worms eat ya, so enjoy it!

[browner]

Well there's a Messiah who is alive and well and playing at Ravenhill...some say he can walk on water...I think they could be right.

[big mervyn]

Not sure if he was delusional or just a spoofer, but he seemed to be a dacent enough spud.

Unfortunately, the same couldn't really be said for many in his fan club.

[bootlaced]

It's taken me a long time but I think I've finally wrested myself completely free from the stories peddled to me as truths(by mainly well meaning adults) as an impressionable child.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the rest are human generated constructs that have been revealed by science to be patently ludicrous.

Dogma such as that the world was created in 7 days which were once literal beliefs have become metaphors.

As the years have gone by more and more of the bible is 'not to be taken literally'' or was written for a 'different age'.

As someone who was taught to love Jesus this leaves me to wonder, uncomfortably, if he was

a) a con-man
or
b) deluded

Could we have a poll on this, perhaps?
Maybe with the inclusion of a 'divine' option.

BTW (for the benefit of God) I'm not ruling out your existence, K?

You are getting there,Human projection,or maybe Universal projection,Humans see thing that fits within there scope,GOD made me in his/her/its own likeness,The Universe angle is to do with oh look there is a human,at the end of the day it is all about your own perception and belief system,this should not be confused with a disbelief system which can really confuse things,but at the end of the day or maybe at the end of the night or maybe somewhere in between or outside of that who really cares,at some stage youor me or something else are going to have to confront the thingy that is Quantum,but when you do you will realise that you don't actually have to even consider anything that I have just written,or maybe in a universe somewhere else I will be writing the complete opposite whereby I will be writing that there is another existence totally opposite or maybe attracted to what I have said or have not said and that there is nothing that exists only in my own mind,and I have actually invented or created you,you do realise of course that it is turtles all the way down.

[Jackie Brown]

It's taken me a long time but I think I've finally wrested myself completely free from the stories peddled to me as truths(by mainly well meaning adults) as an impressionable child.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the rest are human generated constructs that have been revealed by science to be patently ludicrous.

Dogma such as that the world was created in 7 days which were once literal beliefs have become metaphors.

As the years have gone by more and more of the bible is 'not to be taken literally'' or was written for a 'different age'.

As someone who was taught to love Jesus this leaves me to wonder, uncomfortably, if he was

a) a con-man
or
b) deluded

Could we have a poll on this, perhaps?
Maybe with the inclusion of a 'divine' option.

BTW (for the benefit of God) I'm not ruling out your existence, K?

You are getting there,Human projection,or maybe Universal projection,Humans see thing that fits within there scope,GOD made me in his/her/its own likeness,The Universe angle is to do with oh look there is a human,at the end of the day it is all about your own perception and belief system,this should not be confused with a disbelief system which can really confuse things,but at the end of the day or maybe at the end of the night or maybe somewhere in between or outside of that who really cares,at some stage youor me or something else are going to have to confront the thingy that is Quantum,but when you do you will realise that you don't actually have to even consider anything that I have just written,or maybe in a universe somewhere else I will be writing the complete opposite whereby I will be writing that there is another existence totally opposite or maybe attracted to what I have said or have not said and that there is nothing that exists only in my own mind,and I have actually invented or created you,you do realise of course that it is turtles all the way down.

Do these universes have full stops?

[bootlaced]

It's taken me a long time but I think I've finally wrested myself completely free from the stories peddled to me as truths(by mainly well meaning adults) as an impressionable child.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the rest are human generated constructs that have been revealed by science to be patently ludicrous.

Dogma such as that the world was created in 7 days which were once literal beliefs have become metaphors.

As the years have gone by more and more of the bible is 'not to be taken literally'' or was written for a 'different age'.

As someone who was taught to love Jesus this leaves me to wonder, uncomfortably, if he was

a) a con-man
or
b) deluded

Could we have a poll on this, perhaps?
Maybe with the inclusion of a 'divine' option.

BTW (for the benefit of God) I'm not ruling out your existence, K?

You are getting there,Human projection,or maybe Universal projection,Humans see thing that fits within there scope,GOD made me in his/her/its own likeness,The Universe angle is to do with oh look there is a human,at the end of the day it is all about your own perception and belief system,this should not be confused with a disbelief system which can really confuse things,but at the end of the day or maybe at the end of the night or maybe somewhere in between or outside of that who really cares,at some stage youor me or something else are going to have to confront the thingy that is Quantum,but when you do you will realise that you don't actually have to even consider anything that I have just written,or maybe in a universe somewhere else I will be writing the complete opposite whereby I will be writing that there is another existence totally opposite or maybe attracted to what I have said or have not said and that there is nothing that exists only in my own mind,and I have actually invented or created you,you do realise of course that it is turtles all the way down.

Do these universes have full stops?

Only if you want them to have,but then again do you believe in full stops or do full stops believe in you,or is there a world out there where no one even knows what a full stop is,and maybe a world where the full stop is god and the commas believe that it is just a myth,and the myths believe..........................

[tighthead]

Pythagoras, your post reminds of a quote from CS Lewis originally from these shores in his book "Mere Christianity".

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

[big mervyn]

Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

You must be quite the psychiatrist Tighty - being able to so confidently diagnose his state of mental health some 2000 years on.

[tighthead]

mervyn, if you read my post again you will see that I was quoting CS Lewis, not claming to be a psychiatrist myself, I dont think CS was either.

[big mervyn]

Sorry Tighty.

That last line is still ballix though.

Never cared much for CS since we had to do Out of the Silent Planet for O Level English - bloody awful book imho.

[bootlaced]

So is CS Lewis the next Jesus Christ? all we have got is a persons word or opinion.Can anybody point me to an account of what Jesus actually said verbattim, written by somebody who was with him at the time, and was actually written at the time Jesus was alive.What language did he speak and in what language was his words written down,and did he really say thou or thee.

[tighthead]

So is CS Lewis the next Jesus Christ?

Where did you get that from Bootlace?

[BR]

IMHO the guy we know as JC was a wise-man - a bit of a thinker, socialist, and handy with a bit of medical knowledge. A 1st century Joe Hendron, if you like, with the thinking added in.

[Shan]

It's taken me a long time but I think I've finally wrested myself completely free from the stories peddled to me as truths(by mainly well meaning adults) as an impressionable child.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the rest are human generated constructs that have been revealed by science to be patently ludicrous.

Dogma such as that the world was created in 7 days which were once literal beliefs have become metaphors.

As the years have gone by more and more of the bible is 'not to be taken literally'' or was written for a 'different age'.

As someone who was taught to love Jesus this leaves me to wonder, uncomfortably, if he was

a) a con-man
or
b) deluded

Could we have a poll on this, perhaps?
Maybe with the inclusion of a 'divine' option.

BTW (for the benefit of God) I'm not ruling out your existence, K?

This doesn't really make an awful lot of sense. Jesus didn't write the bible,Koran or Talmud or anything else which is presented as religious teaching etc today so it has nothing at all to do with him.

You cannot claim that anything Jesus said makes him a con-man or deluded unless you believe the new testament is an entirely accurate account. If you believe it is then you are discrediting your own argument.

Also science has not revealed that religious belief is ludicrous. It has not yet quite been able to master the spiritual world. Indeed it is still struggling with earthly items and is consistently disproving previous scientific theory.

One can believe anything one wishes vis-a-vis religion and nobody can conclusively prove you wrong. The real beauty is that nobody knows anything about God etc with absolute certainty. The grey areas of our being can sometimes be the most interesting. If we knew every damned thing it would make life just a tad too regimental and staid.