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Originally Posted by Matej
In my opinion Jesus was either:
A. A crazy guy.
Just like there are crazy people in mental institutions today. People who believe their own thought-up stories and tell you about how they met with aliens or how the government is spying on them in such detail and so convincingly that if you did not know it was not true, you would be ready to believe them. He just happened to live in a time when people did not know better. I mean, if someone came up to you and told you a story like that today, you would laugh at them, or give them some change to leave you alone.
B. A really clever guy.
In every time period there are always individuals who think more openly than the general masses, and are able to use it to their advantage. Perhaps Jesus, seeing how gullible people are, made it all up. Maybe for personal gain (does not have to be monetary), just like a lot of the new religions, such as Scientology, or Joseph Smith and the Mormons (if you are a follower of either of those, I am sorry for offending you). Or perhaps he truly was a good person, and even though he knew he was telling made up stories, he knew it was a great way to reach the people and maybe help them be a better person as well. Perhaps he never even claimed his stories to be fact, perhaps he was just a great and loved storyteller, and history just ended up making him into some Godlike being. Either way, he definitely achieved fame, since we are talking about him today.
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Personal Gain? wow, you really didn't read the bible did you. lol.
You are right about Scientology probably following the same path though. Hubbards war buddies remember him saying he'd get rich starting a religion. But history is going to remember Tom Cruise over some random war vets. Sad. Very sad.
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I sincerely believe that this is the only life we have and we shouldn’t be satisfied with good enough. People should make the most of life now and not expect to live in an afterlife. Most Atheists capable of thinking for them selves will feel the same, and agree, we should be good to our fellow humans for the sake of being good without any expectation of a reward or some kind of punishment in an eternal afterlife.
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parts in bold are actually very New Testament. If you believe in afterlife or not, wouldn't you agree that there is some baseline needed to motivate the lazy people to make the best of life? Generally mankind is lazy. If someone gave you food every day, you wouldn't want to go work for it. You'd expect it for free.
That's the beauty of religion, it promotes doing something for your community, and it really doesn't say you will go to hell if you don't participate. It is easier to be drawn to bad things when you do not participate in helping the community.
Right now, for example. How many people x how many hours are being wasted on internet discussions that don't lead anywhere, instead of people getting outside and doing something for your neighbor, street, city, town, country?
The power of Community is a beautiful thing. Imagine if for one day, everyone in your city picked up one piece of garbage. Or lets say built a house. The Amish can build a house in a day when they get a small community together.
Not saying we should all go hardcore nutty old-school! I believe that most religion promotes community and helping others, and from the reading of the bible and the history of people, yeah, you can see how good things have happened.
Mankind isn't perfect. We never will be. But to make the most of life, its outlined in the Bible. (in-between a lot of history and jargon)
(actually Buddhism is kinda cool concept for me too, but it goes a little further saying you shouldn't even kill any other living thing. This includes bugs, I f'n hate mosquito's)
note: my background is Christian, however, i've gone through about 3 different stages of it. As a kid, I went to sunday school, and never really liked it after the one youth dude quit, so I stopped going for about 20+ years. I came back to it on my own after sitting in on a few seminars with various types of people from different places. So I went from belief, to kinda ignoring it, to now reading, and coming up with my own relationship with god. Kinda hard to describe, so I'll just say, because of some of my opinions I actually find it hard to get along with bible thumpers. ...I actually can't stand them, and i've smoked weed, I still drink beer often, I work in a job that rapes the land of resources, and I've had plenty of sex before marriage etc. I think most should read the bible but don't approach it like its the word of god. See it from the perspective of people that wrote it
and leave a lot of it open for interpretation!
Sum up where i was going to stay on topic, I agree with the other dude, the Anti-christ, is a way of life, not a person that creates doom! You get enough people that are against or warping the words of god... well, lol, you have the SS. Hitler himself didn't pull off the events of the 30's and 40's. He had many other people with an agenda, that went against pretty much every religion.