[quote=keepitlow;18215]Here is the thing about Jesus.
Throughout history NO ONE that ever wrote about Jesus ever met Jesus. Jesus started with Paul’s visualization or dream of Jesus decades after Jesus’ suppose life and death and it all mushroomed from there.
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That noone has written about does not actually mean that he did not exist, does it ? Things are being discussed, and written for keeping them alive, when they are not there anymore. When one falls in love, one does not start to write it down, one lives the experience. Only later, when love has ended, faded, passed, only than people start to think of it, analyze it, and perhaps write down the expereince. Thus, the six decades until the Gospels we know were written (perhaps there were earlier ones what have been destroyed in the time of Irenaeus 180 AD, when the four canonical gospels were selected among many existing) might be just the natural cooldown, the time until, all people who actually knew Jesus, died. For those who met him, probably there was no need to write about him. Also, Jesus lived and taught among simple people. Few people could actually write in that time, things were transmitted orally. Those who could write were those who belonged to the authorities and they might have been a bit biased towards him. 
The story of Jesus is all based on one mans dream of Jesus. So let me repeat, NO ONE that ever wrote about Jesus ever met Jesus…it is all just hearsay and wishful thinking.
You rightly asess that christianity would not be what it is today without Paul’s activity. You also cling too strongly of the idea that someone could exist only if there is written evidence about him. This can be percieved as wishful thinking, too… where the wish is Jesus’ inexistence as a person.
But let us keep our heads cool, that’s the idea, isn’t it ? I think I have shown above that there might be plenty of reasons why there are no writings about a person the Gospels describe, or if there were, they might have been destroyed.
The argument about Paul’s dream is not free from a distortion … I think vision would have been a better term, as it happened during the daytime, on Pauls’ trip to Damascus. By using the term dream, you want to lessen the significance of that event, probably because yoy see dreams as meaningless brain activity what take place during sleeping.
I think, that what you say does not prove Jesus’ inexistence. There is much room for reasonable doubt here. Neither it proves his existence, but that is not the point, the point is that what you present as “evidence” is lacking.
I have to wonder if the Christians realized that Jesus was not born on Dec 25 and his birthday was just ‘created out of thin air’ by the church to replace the pagans solstice holiday - doesn’t that start to make you wonder about the rest of the lies we have been told?
Obviously, christianity as a religion, or religious authority today, developed through two thousands of years, became first a state religion of the roman empire in the fourth century, than it developed through the centuries and arived to what it is today. The fact that they adapted to traditional pagan festivals shows what every outer, exoteric religion does … takes over. But to say, that they were so evil, and so manipulating that they made up a Jesus, is not likely, and does not count as proof for Jesus’ inexistence, for the same reasons I stated above. Religions are as organizations, creation of men.
Now I’m not against Christian worship. Although I am an agnostic freethinker, I was a Christian for 50 years myself and subscribe to freedom of worship.
You don’t have anything against it ? If it is a lie, than aren’t you bothered by the fact that so many poor souls beleive it and build their lives on it ? Or do you mean, regardless that it is all a lie, you can accept that it might work somehow, for some people ?
Being an agnostic freethinker is good. It means one honestly admits that one cannot accept anything what is not available to the senses, and means that one wants to be a free judge of what is true, and what is not.
About the 50 years, I think you never were a christian, you just thought you were. To accept that for so many years you were mislead, is a brave thing and I salute you for it. I wish more people who call themselves christians would do that.
But I believe the Christians motto should change to we worship along the lines of the myth of Jesus and not confuse faith with fact. I look to Jesus as the Taoist scholars look to Lao Tzu…a myth…but a myth containing much wisdom.
… compared to the Jesus myth what is nonsense, is that what you say ?
Now Buddhism and yoga are full of the same myths and overblown hype as the rest of the religions it is our job through sift through the mess of lies and see by testing what works and what does not work in our quest for spiritual growth.
Bold accusations, fortunately they do not hold. Why … it would trake us too long. With every aspect of reality one rejects, one take a step back from understanding the whole.
Religions are surely one important aspect of reality. Why there are the way they are, and what do they mean to people … these are good questions.
“When the sun rises I go to work,
When the sun goes down, I take my rest,
I dig the well from which I drink,
I farm the soil that yields my food,
I share creation, Kings can do no more.”
Ancient Chinese, 2500 BC
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Respectable lines, what are probably used to represent your approach to life. And that is fine.
As I see this, christianity, what I consider a religion what watches over a tradition even himself does not comprehend, in spite of two thousnads of years of existence, became so exoteric, so materialist in it’s ways that it is actually the forerunner of what we call materialist science today.
There is no missing link, keepitlow provides the perfect example for this. Only that for most people who are like him, this change did not happen during their lives, but during the time between death, and rebirth.
They rightly oppose something what became menaningless. That does not mean, that what it guards and perpetuates, is not true, only that it is no longer comprehnsible, it only means that the time of religions based on authority has passed.
PS. Do not think I want to fight you. I respect your anger. If I would have been lied for 50 years, I’d be pissed too. (I am sure they don’t realize what they do, at least not all of them) But anger makes one blind. Only you know what happened to you, and what makes you to have this personal vendetta against christianity and religion in general, and I even admit that you could be entitled. But this is not freedom. The thought that one believes what one wants, is an illusion. In reality, one beleives what one is able to believe, no exceptions.
