You don't need Jesus

[_Jersey Girl]

the very existence of Jesus

You are a Christian liar. There is no real Jesus. Nothing is proven to make Jesus real. He is in your imagination. He is your imaginary friend. The prophecies and promises of the Christian Bible are garbage.

Take your apologist blinders off and learn to read. You aren't talking to an LDS believer here. You're talking to a Christian believer.

I made no assertion about the existence of Jesus that requires proof. Read my sentences again. All of them, not the one line that you yanked out of context to continue your intellectually dishonest spout fest.

Words. They matter.

[_Jersey Girl]

I have asked you repeatedly

I have asked several direct questions in this thread which you have not answered. In fact, you've ignored the whole point of this thread. You, Jersey Girl, are a hypocrite and are deceptive in your debate practices -- you are a Christian militant -- peddling your disgusting Christian religion. You love to quickly accuse your opponent of not answering your questions almost seconds after posing them. You love to attack the person and find any fault in the person while all along ignoring the message. You have not answered my questions -- but you deflect and assault. You've ignored the points I've made in this thread and have derailed it. I see how you manipulate and use deception in defending your side of an argument. You have derailed my thread and I would appreciate it if you would get the hell out of my thread, right now, thank you. You are not an honest person. As I say, you are a Christian militant for in behalf of your imaginary friend.

Jehovah God is a monster. He is pure evil. The Christian religion is an evil cult.

Cursed be Jehovah and the Israelite cult.

Let me give you the clue that you lack. Anyone with a third or fourth grade education can actually read and comprehend the words you've vomited on this thread. Most folks don't care to be accused of having homicidal tendencies or referred to as murderers.

You'll have to just take my word for that.

Or read the thread, Mr." All you need is love".

[_Shulem]

You can have love in your heart for yourself and others without the belief in an imaginary Jesus. You don't need to believe in a dead Jew to experience love and live a blessed life.

Do not join the Christian cult. Do not pretend to drink the blood and eat the body of a dead Jew. The Christian religion is a brainwashing cult founded entirely on the faith of imaginary beings.

The Christian religion and Mormonism is a lie. They are peas in a pod.

Christ is not coming back, ever.

[_Dantana]

You can have love in your heart for yourself and others without the belief in an imaginary Jesus. You don't need to believe in a dead Jew to experience love and live a blessed life.

Do not join the Christian cult. Do not pretend to drink the blood and eat the body of a dead Jew. The Christian religion is a brainwashing cult founded entirely on the faith of imaginary beings.

The Christian religion and Mormonism is a lie. They are peas in a pod.

Christ is not coming back, ever.

Brother Shu, your position is certainly understandable, but I think maybe a little aggressive. The radical-ness of the Abrahamic religions is over amplified by the radicals. I think clearly the majority of believers are 'cafeteria' and 'chapel'. Therefore their seeming inadequacy in understanding the horrors that come with their passed down beliefs should be given some leeway.

[_Jersey Girl]

You can have love in your heart for yourself and others without the belief in an imaginary Jesus. You don't need to believe in a dead Jew to experience love and live a blessed life.

Do not join the Christian cult. Do not pretend to drink the blood and eat the body of a dead Jew. The Christian religion is a brainwashing cult founded entirely on the faith of imaginary beings.

The Christian religion and Mormonism is a lie. They are peas in a pod.

Christ is not coming back, ever.

Of course you can have love in your heart for yourself and others without a belief in Jesus. I never once suggested otherwise. Were I to assert such a thing, it would fly in the face of everything I know about my atheist friends.

I haven't "joined" anything and I don't pretend to drink the blood and eat the body of a dead Jew. You really need to stop generalizing like that.

When you generalize and describe Christians as "all" anything, you're no different than the bigots who make the same sweeping generalizations about gays. For example, you called two posters on this thread "murderers". How many times have you seen bigots say that gays are all responsible for AIDS?

It's all the same thing. Bigotry and hate never win the day. Particularly when someone forwards their hate speech using "love" as the vehicle.

Don't believe me? Ask the vast majority of fundamentalist Christians.

You're exactly like them.

[_Physics Guy]

I just mean that a highly structured religion (or organization) like Mormonism will have fewer positions available than an array of one-off Christian churches that aren't bound to any kind of standard except the cultural and somewhat fictitious standard (in my opinion) of biblical authority.

I'm just saying that the same structural openness, the minimal buy-in of the Bible as final word along with some minimal theology like the trinity and salvation by grace, paves the way for progressive beliefs, but it does the same for regressive beliefs, which a more rigid organization has some protections against.

I think of this issue as "bundling", the way Microsoft used to try to get everyone to use Internet Explorer by wiring it into Windows. These days Apple's "walled garden" approach to its products might be a more potent analogy. If you want feature A you've got to buy into the whole ecosystem. The contrast is Linux where you can have anything you want if you can debug the driver.

Religious bundling can be a good tool for social engineering. A lot of us probably owe our civilization to our ancestors' reluctant acceptance of the unpopular practice of not murdering strangers because it was bundled with the Easter feast. Bundling isn't 100% effective, though. If I think of sede-vacantist Catholics, who literally think they are more Catholic than the Pope, it seems that even the most fanatical institutional ideologues can find a way to regress as far as they like by doing it in the name of the church they profess to obey. And on the other hand bundling isn't always necessary either. Plenty of congregationalist Protestants who explicitly recognize no authority but their own reading of Scripture are in practice loyal disciples of a guru preacher and will accept every word from his mouth.

There probably does exist a significant population of swing voters who will go along with progressive policies when they otherwise wouldn't just because they've been made part of the bundle. These are also people that go along with oppressive beliefs and practices just because their church teaches them. So there are both costs and benefits in bundling. At least in the First World, my feeling is that society is probably at a stage where less bundling is better. We've got enough of a base that we should free up the markets. A group like the Westboro Baptists causes a lot of pain to the few people they directly target but they probably do more good than harm on the whole, by showing a lot of people that beliefs which may seem reasonable when not closely examined are pretty horrible when you face them square-on.

I'm not dogmatically un-dogmatic. I think that sometimes you do have to draw lines and oppose people who cross them. To me a certain minimal level of tolerance should be such a dogma. A view that you should kill somebody if you feel God commands it is not an acceptable view.

[_Shulem]

Of course you can have love in your heart for yourself and others without a belief in Jesus. I never once suggested otherwise. Were I to assert such a thing, it would fly in the face of everything I know about my atheist friends.

And I never suggested you said otherwise but was asking for an admission on your part that nonbelievers (not just atheists) can have love in their hearts for themselves and others. My point was that you don' t need a belief in an imaginary Jesus to experience true love. You did not admit that point in this thread until just now. Congratulations on that.

I haven't "joined" anything and I don't pretend to drink the blood and eat the body of a dead Jew. You really need to stop generalizing like that.

Well, the pope and a great many people from other Christian sects (billions) would disagree with you. But of course, you are of your own Christian stripe which I may add is a most divided religion when it comes to beliefs and practices. Christians even have a history of warring with themselves.

You say you haven't JOINED anything and that you don't drink blood and eat Christ yet your own St. Paul said, "For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones". Have you not joined the Christian cult, Jersey Girl? Are you not supposed to be "perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment -- From whom the whole body fitly joined together -- joined unto the Lord is one spirit?" It was Christ who instituted the sacrament of drinking blood and eating flesh -- a main biblical staple.

I'd say you must certainly have joined something. You've joined up with the body of Christ and cult members who are devoted to his sacrament of symbolically drinking a Jew's blood and eating his flesh as practiced anciently and today in the various Christian religions.

When you generalize and describe Christians as "all"

That's right. I'm doing the same thing St. Paul did. He generalized Christians in terms of ALL countless times in his epistles. He taught they were to be of one mind and one body. Let their be no divisions.

Don't believe me? Ask the vast majority of fundamentalist Christians.

And here we have prophet Jersey Girl teaching the world true Christianity and setting the Christian world straight. Tell it to the pope.

Riiiiiiight.

[_Shulem]

Brother Shu, your position is certainly understandable, but I think maybe a little aggressive. The radical-ness of the Abrahamic religions is over amplified by the radicals. I think clearly the majority of believers are 'cafeteria' and 'chapel'. Therefore their seeming inadequacy in understanding the horrors that come with their passed down beliefs should be given some leeway.

Yes, I am being aggressive, quite so. I find certain death penalties against innocents as outlined in the Old Testament law of Moses to be some of the most offensive and evil things I've ever come across. I'm shouting on the housetop and proclaiming, "This stuff is evil and Moses was a murderer!" He needs to be condemned -- this stuff is nothing but hate.

Yes, I'm being aggressive. I offer zero tolerance or leeway for anyone who defends Moses as a righteous man and call out the hypocrisy of those who refuse to condemn him. He was a despot and the leader of an abominable cult. Without an admission of guilt it's easy to imagine today's believers following in the footsteps of Moses had they lived in his day and picking up stones to do his bidding. I can imagine that! That's why I can imagine posters on this thread committing murder. They honor Moses and refuse to convict him. They have joined with him in his murders.

Murder is is murder. Case closed.

[_moksha]

As Karl Marx said, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people".

Jesus giving refuge from the harshness of the world is something wonderful. That is why it is important to define Jesus not by religious atrocities, but rather by the dynamic potential to alleviate our sorrows. Pass the poppies for that which will lend a heart in a heartless world.

[_Shulem]

As Karl Marx said, "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people".

Jesus giving refuge from the harshness of the world is something wonderful. That is why it is important to define Jesus not by religious atrocities, but rather by the dynamic potential to alleviate our sorrows. Pass the poppies for that which will lend a heart in a heartless world.

I'll agree with Karl Marx on his overall assessment of religion on a whole. One doesn't need religion to lead a happy and fulfilling life filled with love and good deeds.

Jesus? I strongly disagree with his teachings he offered at the last supper -- his cult ritual of drinking his blood and eating his flesh. I find his sayings on that regard to be repugnant and utterly disgusting.