Thanks. Yes, I was recently traveling in Turkey and visited the poet prophet and philosopher tomb we call Rumi who quite clearly is very wise and what I would call enlightened.
Just the same there are many people that have said they are gods or are divine in some way over the millienia. Some today still think that they are divine. So let’s take the God thing out and let’s leave the miracles that Jesus performed at the door for this conversation.
Is there anything that Jesus preached and not that which developed later from the Church that you dispute or think is false, untrue or wrong?
Thanks Laura. Yes let’s just take the God and all the miracles out of the discussion.
I know it’s broad and not all atheist as Christians think alike. I would ask specifically of Jesus teachings not those that developed from the church does an atheist dispute or say is false wrong and if that is the case then what do they claim is the truth.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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I think the parable of the ten minas and the parable of the ungrateful servant, both in Matthew, are appalling.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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They’re meant to be. But yeah, Jesus said some extremely, hyperbolically, hard things. No one reads the unbelievably good stuff. The universalist stuff. And if they do they dismiss it, minimize it, ‘Yeah but…’ it.
For me, “hard” is a euphemism and “hyperbolic” is an excuse. Those passages are appalling to me not because they are “hard” but because they are examples of awful moral reasoning. Be forgiving to avoid being tortured by a powerful master? A powerful master who delights in the murder of those who don’t follow him? These passages are perfect illustrations of why an atheist like me can’t say “I don’t believe in god but Jesus is great.” Jesus is a mixed bag. He said some great things, he said some okay or obvious things, and he said some awful vicious things. (This all assumed that he “said” any of this stuff, or indeed anything at all.)
The conversation, BTW, was about how an atheist thinks of Jesus.
LOL, I am sure that everyone in this conversation has, like me, read the gospels many times.
I might add the parable of the wedding banquet here too (for me). The whole parable seems to be going along fine until one of the less prepared guests suddenly finds himself tossed out of the party. [oh yeah - and then there’s the minor detail in at least one gospel version I think where the master orders the cities burned of the people who were too busy to come - granted, they had mistreated and killed some of the servants … still not a party host that you want to appear to snub in any way or form I guess! A story starting with hospitality intentions and ending up with burned cities!] I do think you have to at least grant that hyperbole must have been a big part of narrative back then. Logs in eyes etc … it isn’t just moderns who are intimately familiar with the literary sledge hammer known as hyperbole
[and then also the ten prepared virgins and the ten unprepared ones … with the latter half just being “outside the realm of grace” as it were in the end. Jesus’ recorded parables seem to be quite the recorded blend of seemingly disparate things like the boy scouts’ “be prepared” motto yet mixed with extravagant grace that we give much more air time on Sunday morning. It would seem that nobody who desires a neatly gift-wrapped systematic theology is ever left comfortable when trying to take all this together.]
[sorry about the ‘spring-like’ growth of my post above. think I’m finally done editing it.]
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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I agree Stephen. I mean completely. I have an atheist friend who is frustrated by my completely agreeing with him too, yet still believing, in my unbelief. Jesus was well ‘ard. Horrifying. Scary. Gave us Hell. But we’re being anachronistic. Projecting way post-Enlightenment liberalism back down the telescope. For the time, for the culture, this was the best moral reasoning by a country mile. He used racism for Heaven’s sake! And I bet you have no idea what I’m on about, even if I proof texted on Jesus’ universalism! I did it elsewhere here and still nobody gets it. You’d give it the time of day, but no one else can.
You aren’t the only one here, Martin, that doesn’t run screaming from the room when the “universalism bogeyman” peeks around the corner. There are some of us here that do deeply consider - even hope on such things, and not without plenty of scriptural warrant.
One of the most common objections from atheists have to with hypocrisy in religion (or of the religious). I can’t recall any instances of an atheist claiming Jesus was a hypocrite.
There might be a few complaints about Christians ignoring the teachings of Jesus, tho I would have a hard time digging up an example.
ETA: I replied to Mervin, but this was intended as a general comment. Sorry Mervin!
Did you mean that as you stated it there? I should think examples of Christians falling short of Jesus teachings really aren’t all that hard to come by … crusades, inquisitions, present day politics, evangelical scandals, personal failures each of us probably have in mind …
Or on second thought, were you referring to a self-identified Christian who does even put up a pretense of wanting to follow Jesus? As in … “yeah, I’m a Christian, but I don’t buy into all this Jesus stuff…” If so, then I guess that might be a strange bird.
I meant the former, but was aiming for more individual failings rather than historical baggage. I have a hard time blaming religion for historical events, because atheists often implicitly assume that history could only have been better in the absence of religion. In fact it could have been worse.
Its a bit like Fine Tuning arguments - if things were different then things would be different. Sure things might have been better, or worse, but we can only speculate about alternate history.
Which is not to say I approve of the crusades, etc., but human failings could be equally responsible.
I have encountered self-identified Christians who don’t act very Christian, IMO. Some people are just iceholes, I don’t need to blame religion for that.
If memory serves correctly; it was Johnny Dangerously (1984) with Michael Keaton and Joe Piscopo.
As for being an Atheist, I have found that Christians, I talk with, believe what they want to believe regardless of what is taught by Jesus. For example; I’m curious how many Christians on this board still believe in an eternal Hell of torture for non-believers. My experience is that the number is dwindling very quickly.
Just Christians? Doesn’t everyone tend to do so? The things that he said were paradigm-shifting and even life-changing. Certainly the most challenging things that a religious figure would ever say. I think that we are all guilty of reinterpreting his words to match what we want them to mean, at times.
