NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!
We have to be mindful of the context. In times of Jesus the Jewish were taught to fear the wrath of Yahweh, a vengeful and blood-thirsty god who punished wrong-doings up to the third generation of the 'sinner'. The written and the oral law was a jig-saw puzzle full of overwhelming commands you needed to obey in order to avoid 'impurity'. Example: if a woman was menstruating, she became impure; if a man touched anything that the woman had been in contact with, he became impure, too! How did you became pure again? why with ritual ablutions at the temple... followed by the payment of a few shekels that ended in the pockets of the priests.
The boiled down message of Jesus was to forget about all this. The only commandments he gave were: Love God and love your brothers. That's. It.
Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.
The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.
A fine patriarchal theistic message, corrupted for 20 centuries by man and his follies. (Woman relagated to subserviant roles )
But that's the church, which IMO has nothing to do with Jesus' message. The wrongdoings of the Vatican is the perfect example that anything can be corrupted and misinterpreted.
Begs the question: Why the need for such a message and why would a 'son of God' not be able to foresee the corruption and its very long term damaging effects on our small planet... Made even smaller by modern communications and transport technologies.
Back in those days even the more enlightened of civilizations --the Greeks-- thought slavery was natural and acceptable. So, No.Having to say 'Love your brothers' implies that societies preceding this visionary did not operate under that commandment ?
and 'Love your god' that humanity cannot exist without a conscious creator ?
Its a simple message but highly critical and with huge implications. It condemns atheists, is in contradiction with the idea of 'free will' and forces you into a judgemental christian god framework.
Anything outside of the framework is disposable material. Creationism at its best... Darwin beware.
Having to say 'Love your brothers' implies that societies preceding this visionary did not operate under that commandment ?Back in those days even the more enlightened of civilizations --the Greeks-- thought slavery was natural and acceptable. So, No.
That's a very localized perspective... I guess the entire planet needed a good kick in the butt then (which it got )
What religion is good at doing is removing responsability from the individual and sending it to another dimension. Thus the notion of heaven and hell. Paying to have your soul saved etc...
'Love your brothers' implies you are too retarded to appreciate your brother. Jesus is now telling you to appreciate him and that civilization starts now. This is year zero of the christian sect... dark ages will begin in a few centuries. Too bad for Giordano Bruno lol
Giordano Bruno - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But I do think we're too retarded to see the reflection of ourselves in the people around us. If we did, then there would be no need for laws of any kind
Civil laws should have been enough.... and existed way before any Jesus came around.
Democracy in ancient Greece
A linear advancement of science and technologies from 1000 BC through today would have eradicated slavery way before Lincoln showed up.
Instead we ended up with the repression of new ideas in favor of the implementation of divine law, inquisition and cruisades. The appearance of monotheism is in fact the creation of a destructive singularity whose appropriation by diverse cultures is at the core of all disputes on this planet.
Destructive singularity. Are you talking about Monotheism or the Borg?
If you accuse Monotheism of all the problems and disputes in the planet, then I humbly beg to differ. Maybe religion didn't help Man to control its violent nature, but it certainly wasn't the origin of it.
Now that you mention it, the Borg is a good analogy lol. A restrictive view of life for the good of the collective that inhibits the embedded creativity of all humans. Thou shall not explore new venues, should they contradict sacred scripture thou shall be banished to the depths of hell for eternity.
I could argue that religion added an unnecessary extra dimension to human violence. Another reason to be intolerant of your brother... My god is better than your god...
There is no material evidence for the existence of Jesus and what anecdotal evidence there is was constructed well after the period he supposedly lived. But in my view it is this fact that makes the Jesus myth more interesting than had there been an actual person. For example, the circumstantial evidence suggests that Jesus is a composite character composed of facets of religious doctrine that survived the Roman conquest of the Essenes. These bits of doctrine were preserved in the form of stories that anthropomorphized their theological beliefs giving rise to a personification of their religion in Jesus, who as a consequence took on the the essential traits of the religion itself and in doing so became immortal and omnipresent.
Understand, no parent gives a bicycle as a present expecting his child to fall and break a leg! But should that happen, it's understood as part of the learning experience of life.
It would be far more harmful to forbid the child to experience all those things and learn from its mistakes, don't you think?
But there's something more to it: Narratives have power --at least the ones that survive the test of time. And as Jeffrey Kripal explains in his book Mutants & Mystics, we write the stories... and the stories write us
Now who's speculating here?
Besides, who says slavery is a thing of the past?
In 'The Key', the mysterious man who Strieber later called the master of the Key, told him that each person in the west had 5 slaves. But now it was much easier to own slaves because you don't even have to care for their well-being --you don't even have to know where they live.
The Foxconn chairman, Terry Gou, head of China's largest private-sector employer – with 1.2 million workers – promised on Sunday to reduce hours and improve pay after an independent audit found multiple labour law violations at his factories.
Anyway, the Greeks' decline had nothing to do with the emergence of Christianity.