Christians are Revolting - Sean Lauren

[otseng]

This thread will debate the book Christians are Revolting: An Infidel's Progress, by Sean Lauren.

We will go through the book one chapter at a time and discuss the contents of each chapter. I anticipate we'll spend several days on each chapter and then move on to the next one. Please avoid jumping ahead, but you're free to discuss previous chapters (for those that join late). We'll end the debate with each person giving a general overview of the book. The thread will then be closed.

If you'd like to participate, sign up here.

[Divine Insight]

The reason people WANT to take all or nothing is because they're stuck in a religious mindset. You have to believe all the right things and do all the right sacrements and know all the right stuff.

I disagree with you on this Sean. This isn't what people WANT. This is what the religion has been telling them they must do in order to avoid damnation.

This is a religion that has a God who will curse you, damn you, drown you, turn you into a pillar of salt, or cast you into an eternal hell fire if you don't get things RIGHT.

So this has nothing at all to do with what people WANT. It's entirely about a religious paradigm that demands what people must do if they want to be accepted by the God of this religion.

Keep in mind also, that it used to be that if the Church excommunicated you, then you were also being excommunicated from God. It wasn't just that the Church disapprove of you, but God wouldn't be happy with you either.

Make no mistake about it, Christianity and Islam are "Fear-based" religions. If you screw up or show disrespect to AUTHORITY, then not only will you suffer social chastisement, but you will also suffer damnation from God.

It is true that modern day Christianity is basically just "coasting" along from previous historical momentum. It's no longer being used for political power like it was back in the days of Kings and Monarchical dictators. A lot of the world has move forward to embracing Democracy from the Greeks.

Democracy is the anti-thesis of Christianity. Christianity is absolute dictatorship where God is the Dictator. This is why you better get it right in Christianity and "Do as you are told". Not what you think might feel right for you. That's heresy!

Christianity is all about Monarchical Authority. That's what it's about.

Perhaps Jesus wasn't. Although face it, even the Gospels have Jesus telling people to hate their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters and follow HIM. That's absolute monarchical dictatorship.

After all, if you reject Jesus and go off to take care of your own desires, supposedly that will lead to death. Only following Jesus and doing precisely as he says can you obtain eternal life.

But you're an atheist right? So you don't even buy into Jesus' claim of eternal life.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 53 by Elijah John]

Yep, I absolutely agree. The political post seems like it'd be better on our Head to Head though . You mentioned not seeing how the trinitarian God perspective harms people so long as it's not being forced on others. It's not the trinitarian view that does it, it's the dogmatic worship of a book that does it and indoctrinating children into believing it's the very infallible word of God. It leads people like me to believe it and read it and attempt to fulfill every contradictory verse. It definitely leads to trouble as my story expounds. That's where the harm comes in. If Christianity "knew what spirit they were of" and "listened for God's voice" rather than thinking the Bible said it all and represented God, then the pain would not be present and the religion itself would be beautiful even if still wrong about a God.

Sean, I deleted that political post, what used to be post 51 here. Cut and pasted much of the content for our H2H.

[ElCodeMonkey]

I disagree with you on this Sean. This isn't what people WANT. This is what the religion has been telling them they must do in order to avoid damnation.

That's a very astute clarification. Fear is a huge tool to prevent proper questioning. It worried me for quite some time that I would reject God by questioning what I was reading and especially to question the veracity of the Bible. That's the real reason it is all or nothing: fear. They believe they must have everything accurate or risk damnation as you said. Oddly enough, it's still not helping them. And despite this, it's not necessary because that fear was introduced, not by God himself, but by man. Man threatens with fire and excommunication and the lot to control the people. And like I said, the "all or nothing" approach isn't helping people determine what is correct anyway hence the multitude of different denominations. From my perspective, however, this all or nothing is not only impossible and harmful, but also pointless. The God Jesus preached (from my perspective and understanding prior to being corrupted) is simply "follow love." This is not mixed with "or suffer endlessly." Do your best. In the end, God will judge and separate sheep from goats, wheat from weeds. It's worth, then, keeping this in mind that we do not feel a need to know with 100% certainty which verses are "of God" and which ones are not. We simply do our best to do what is good and right.

[ElCodeMonkey]

Like most people, I prayed to become rich, but only so that I could feed all the starving kids in third-world countries. After considering a while, I then prayed that God would simply feed all the starving children directly while I wondered incredulously why nobody had thought of such an easy solution before.
...
I could not help but draw the connection at that time that God thus prayed to himself and utterly failed to be successful in obtaining that for which he himself was praying and to himself for that matter who then denied his own request. It is a lot like asking myself with deep sincerity for a sandwich of which I am clearly capable of making and yet telling myself no and going away hungry.

I think the author makes a great point here about prayer and its lack of efficacy. The only kinds of prayers that ever seem to be answered are the ones that very well could have occurred without any intervention at all. Even God's own prayers to himself seem to go ignored.

[Divine Insight]

The God Jesus preached (from my perspective and understanding prior to being corrupted) is simply "follow love."

But according to the Gospels (and thus Christianity) that's simply not true.

There are many places in the gospels where Jesus tells people to "Keep the commandments". So he's referring back to the God of the Old Testament. There's also the very troublesome claim by Matthew that Jesus did not come to change the law and that every jot and tittle shall not pass from law.

These are extremely problematic, IMHO.

I would be the first to agree with you about Jesus, if and only if, we could separate Jesus from the God of the OT.

If I thought that "Christianity" could be made into a religion where we would just toss out the OT entirely and view Jesus as a stand-alone God, then we'd have an entirely different situation. But that's not what we have here at all.

It would also seem to me that you and Elijah John are taking extremely different positions. You seem to be viewing Jesus as a potentially stand-alone "philosopher", who basically has no connection or dependency on the God of the OT at all.

On the other hand Elijah John's focus is on the God of the OT where Jesus is nothing more than just another prophet of that original God. I personally see this as being extremely problematic. But Elijah John sees no problem apparently because he has no problem simply ignoring anything in the OT that he doesn't like. He just chucks those parts out as being "not form God".

The problem with doing this is that then we definitely end up with a God that is created in our image. We are then deciding what we would like for God to be like based one what we personally pick and choose from Hebrew mythology. About the only thing our God(s) would have in common at that point is that we are all using Hebrew mythology as our source to cherry-pick from.

So for me, the problems don't even have much to do with Jesus at all. The problems are almost entirely associated with the God described in the OT.

And of course, Christianity holds Jesus up as the "Sacrificial Lamb" of the God of the OT who offers Jesus up to us as a "last chance" to avoid otherwise certain damnation.

What I have always found to be truly strange about Christianity is that Christians would basically reject the God of the OT, and have no desire to worship him, but for some weird reason they have no problem accepting Jesus.

If Jesus and Yahweh are one in the same, then why didn't Yahweh behave like Jesus from the get go?

Christianity is almost like saying, "Hey Yahweh, we don't care much for you, but we like your son". Christians are in love with Jesus, not Yahweh. But they seem to forgot that it's Yahweh they are supposed to be loving with all their heart, mind, and soul. Not Jesus.

[ElCodeMonkey]

The God Jesus preached (from my perspective and understanding prior to being corrupted) is simply "follow love."

But according to the Gospels (and thus Christianity) that's simply not true.

And according to many other people that's not true. Just because one person's accord is not the same doesn't make mine wrong. Whatever truly happened will be true whether we or others recognize it, can recognize it, will recognize it, or fight it. I have no problem with some verses of the Bible (or many, for that matter) contradicting me because it is the fact that those contradictions exist that proves my point. Part of the story is that the story will be corrupt. So I still attest that the "God of the OT" was just as benign and whose depiction was corrupted as the God Jesus taught. Sacrifice was a human (or demonic) construct, not a benevolent loving God construct. Contradictions prove my point, not destroy it. I don't really care what other people "think" or what Christianity is "today" because those things don't change what really happened whether they're interested in them or not.

[Divine Insight]

I don't really care what other people "think" or what Christianity is "today" because those things don't change what really happened whether they're interested in them or not.

But that's your major problem right there. By what authority do you claim to know what "really happened"?

I mean, as far as I'm concerned you seem to be suggesting a similar scenario to what I have suggested, save for not making the connection to Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. But other than that, you and I seem to be in agreement. Jesus was just a human "theist" (i.e. a believer in God) offering up his opinions on theology in an apparently extremely "arrogant" way. And by "arrogant" I simply mean that he was speaking as though his idea of what God should be like should trump everyone else's idea.

And let's suppose that this is what "really happened". Then I ask, 'So what?"

Christians place their faith in the idea that Jesus knew what he was talking about and not just offering up mortal human opinions about what he thinks a God should stand for.

I mean, if you are trying to sell me on the basic philosophy taught by Jesus, I'd say the bulk of it sounds pretty good just from a pure rational logical perspective. I mean the Golden Rule is certainly a logical and reasonable philosophy that many secular philosophers have suggested long before Jesus.

But other than this why refer to Jesus' opinions as being the "True Christianity" when Christianity isn't about Jesus' opinions at all. Christianity is a religion that is based on the idea that Jesus was the Son of God, purposefully sent on a mission which included being crucified by humans, being resurrected from the dead, and floating off to heaven to sit at the right hand of God.

It's not a religion that merely follows the opinions of Jesus as a secular mortal man who had opinions on what he thought a God should stand for.

That's not "Chrsitianity", and never was.

[ElCodeMonkey]

[Replying to post 66 by Divine Insight]

My authority is logic. My story makes far more logical sense than the Christian story. Since it makes more sense, we can ditch what makes less sense and cling to what makes more sense. And whatever makes more sense later than what I've presented we can jump to that instead. By doing so, we can forever climb the ladder of sense-making rationality and progress.

So about that prayer comment... I think ElCodeMonkey was right on the money!

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 66 by Divine Insight]

My authority is logic. My story makes far more logical sense than the Christian story. Since it makes more sense, we can ditch what makes less sense and cling to what makes more sense. And whatever makes more sense later than what I've presented we can jump to that instead. By doing so, we can forever climb the ladder of sense-making rationality and progress.

So about that prayer comment... I think ElCodeMonkey was right on the money!

That's fine. I even agree with your logical analysis concerning the Gospel Rumors about who Jesus supposedly was.

But you still seem to be totally oblivious to the problem here.

What you would actually be doing is destroying Christianity and showing that Jesus was never anything more than a mortal man voicing his personal opinions, in an either an extremely arrogant, or overly-confident way.

Christianity holds that Jesus was "The Christ", that's why it's called "Christianity".

You claim that you want to "restore" Christianity to what it was originally about. But Christianity was never about worshiping (or following) a mere mortal man who was simply voicing strong religious opinions.

Christianity is about Jesus being "The Christ" (i.e. the Son of God), ...

"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

This is what Christianity is about. It's not about following a secular religious hippy.

What you are proposing is not a restoration of Christianity, but instead you are proposing an entirely new "thing" (not even sure what to call it since it couldn't be called a theology) that you would need to relabel as something like Jesusianity

You'd need to drop the "Christ" factor.

You are no longer talking about a "religion", but now you're just talking about a philosophy that is based upon following the philosophy of Jesus as a mere mortal man who was mistakenly rumored to have been "The Son of God".

In your philosophy Jesus' crucifixion was just a sad end to some hippy's religious rants.

In Christianity Jesus' crucifixion is a major part of the whole "Sacrificial Lamb" thingy.

I just don't understand how you can suggest that your views on who you think Jesus might have actually been would represent a "Restoration of Christianity" to what it originally was.

That's just utter nonsense.

You talk about logic. Well, there's nothing logical about rejecting the major tenants of Christianity only to claim that your new view of Jesus represents a restoration of Christianity.

There is nothing logical about that claim at all. Logic dictates that if your suspicions about Jesus are true (and they may very well be true), then the logical conclusion is that Christianity was never true, ever. Period. End of story as far as Christianity goes.

If you wanted to make a new secular philosophy out of Jesus at that point you'd need to give it a new name. Perhaps Jesusianity? I don't know. But it certainly wouldn't be Christianity .

[ElCodeMonkey]

[Replying to post 68 by Divine Insight]

You're confusing what I believe myself with what I believe Christianity is. I may believe that Jesus is a man, but Christians can go on believing he is God incarnate with all his miracles and everything if they so desire. So he still could have had the authority of God himself as witnessable by his miracles and everything to restore God's original command back to love. And if they follow this Jesus properly, maybe they'll even get the power of prayer to heal again, who knows. And if they follow him properly, maybe they'll have eternal life. I don't believe all that myself as an atheist, but I do believe in the moral teachings of Jesus if not the miracles part. So Jesus can still be the Christ, the son of God, or God himself, part of a Triune if you really want, but the faith needs to revert back to his teachings and ditch the Pharisaical teachings that infiltrated. Meanwhile, I'll believe the miracles never happened and that Jesus taught all this as a man.

The "big problem" you're referring to seems to be coming from this idea that I must force my belief upon everyone and fix it all. I'm not that silly. I don't think I'm going to fix anything myself. I'm sharing the story so that others who are seeking, like I was, can find some better answers. Perhaps they or others can find better ways to fix the world through the message Jesus actually taught. Who knows. I'm doing a small part, and I hope others might do their small part. I'm no Christ myself, after all.