Yes! Also, Jesus was not a carpenter, he was actually a bricklayer. And non-union at that! Bloody scab.

And he got killed by despite his father being almighty. Beware. Easter is coming. News at 11pm

And he got killed by despite his father being almighty.

Man that was all part of the plan! If the Jews didn't kill Jesus, do you think there would be any Christians?

(On a serious note: just as I have never been able to understand the feelings of some Christians towards Jews for "killing the messiah", I can't understand the harshing on Judas. If it wasn't for Judas, Jesus would not have been crucified, your sins would not have been forgiven, Christianity would not exist. Of course Jesus and Judas were mates. It only makes sense. As for taking the biblical literally...well..according to the bible armadeggon should have occured close to 2,000 years ago. Rant out.)

Very little about Christianity makes sense, other than "love one another", which seems to be the only message the majority of Christianity utterly fails to get.

"It can't be that simple. Can it?"

Actually, I reckon most of what Jesus said made sense. If you remove the entire Old Testament (except maybe keep Proverbs. And hell, Song of Songs as well), as well as Acts, Paul's epistles, and Revelations, it's not that bad, really.

is Jesus so scheming and crafty anywhere else in the New Testament?

It seems out of character for him to set up the whole Judas thing--and why would he want Judas to do that--it detracts from the message he was trying to send, no?

"Love one another" and many other Christian values are actually just part of being a good human and a positive part of community. And those values were pretty entrenched in society before the Christians set up shop. Granted, a lot of people need to be reminded of what constitutes good behavior and many even need to be scared into doing the right thing.

Hmmm...

Unlike the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible, all written in the first century, the Gnostic documents were written in the second century and afterward.

I'm an atheist myself but even I can't see why this would prove or disprove anything.

Just to derail slightly, I was watching an episode of Jonathan Miller's Short History of Disbelief this morning and there was great quote from Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

And that just goes to show you: arguments about god's existence have been going on since 300 years before Christ's crucifixtion up to the present day, all clearly without much effect on how the majority feel.

I guess us humans are just predisposed to be religious.

/slight derail

Is there any reason we avoid political discussions on Metachat, but not religious ones?

Is there any reason we avoid political discussions on Metachat, but not religious ones?

I don't know why we avoid political discussions, as long as they're good natured.

Dodgygeezer - I've never seen that Epicurus quote before, but I've considered exactly the same thing. In fact, I tried to post a big rant to Metachat many months ago, but it was too long and dissapeared into the ether. Basically, I don't see the justification for believing God is omnipotent / omniscent. Not from the angle of preventing evil, but simply from the angle of excercising power and being changable. If God were truly omnipotent - capable of anything - then He could snap his fingers and, say, make Muslims, or Buddhists, or Scientologists "correct". He could just do this, instantly, make the necessary changes to the cosmos, and which religion was "correct" would suddenly change. So how can we possibly know what to believe in? And God has changed His mind in the past. Garden of Eden. Casting Satan into hell. Tower of Babel. Jesus. You name it. What's to say He won't do it again, or hasn't done it already? And if you limit his ability to change, to make up His own mind, then He is no longer all powerful, is He?

Questions about the nature of God fascinate me. But has anyone noticed that God doesn't seem to be a part of the major religions these days? I know, from when I was a Christian, God was a fairly wishy-washy, untouchable concept. Everything was really all about Jesus. I get the same impression of Islam - it's all about Mohammed (and rules), and God is, again, distant and impersonal. I get the impression Judaism has more interesting things to say on the nature of God, probably because they have no middle-man.

is Jesus so scheming and crafty anywhere else in the New Testament?

I don't think it's a case of Jesus being scheming and crafty. It's just a matter of fulfiling the scriptures. It's all predetermined, and Judas was just playing his role.

I don't know if if we avoid any discussions here. Neither political or religious. It's just that many of them tend to get messy like in MeFi. Here they don't. I don't know.

jesus walked on ice but peter fell through because he was a big, fat smelly poopypants

We've had political discussions here before. I don't know where the idea that we don't came from.

And I think we do a good job of keeping them civil.

But yeah, I do think it's in the nature of humans to believe in a higher power (my boss and I used to talk about a "belief gene" all the time, and suggest that ours was mutated). What I think is interesting at this time is that the belief systems that seem to be based around unquestioning faith (eg islam, fundamentalist christianity) seem to be the most vocal and have increasing influence. Compare with others that have a tradition of questioning and examining their beliefs (judaism, the jesuits etc).

Don't know what it really means, but it kind of freaks me out. (yay! not thinking!)

I only know one thing for sure, and that's this: In heaven, there is no beer. That's why we drink it here. And when we're all gone from here? Our friends will be drinking all the beer.

And on the topic of political/religious discussions here, I think that yes, for the most part, the tone remains civil here. Yay civility.

But the tone of this thread may also sound a bit condescending, if I may say so, to a person with Christian beliefs. Like, say, TPS.

We're all entitled to our own beliefs, and we should try to explicitly respect others', no?

Civil is good, but "civil" isn't always enough to keep from stepping on other people's toes.

lolz @ wedge.

Jimbob, i think us Jews are even less about God than other religions (and we have no surrogates, like Jesus or Mohammed)

The Bible: Thus, Peter fell through because he was a big, fat smelly poopypants

But the tone of this thread may also sound a bit condescending, if I may say so, to a person with Christian beliefs. Like, say, TPS.

We're all entitled to our own beliefs, and we should try to explicitly respect others', no?

Civil is good, but "civil" isn't always enough to keep from stepping on other people's toes.

Thank you, mudpuppie, that was the point of my asking. I considered saying it myself but couldn't figure out a way of writing it that truly expressed what I meant to say. I guess what I mean to say is this: Threads like this assume we're all not Christians, and I don't think that's true. I'm a Christian, and I doubt I'm the only one. But if I were to post an answer in this thread where I disagree with something someone says, I feel like everyone would jump in and be like, "Let's remain civil, not talk about it ::plug ears and LALALA::" But that robs me of my chance to talk about what I believe. I'm not sure that there's some broad, rule-based answer, I just think members should be aware that we are a diverse community. IMO, we should leave the "OMG Stupid Christians!!11" threads to Metafilter, because they always cover them anyway, but maybe I'm the only one.

I'm very aware that christians exist here. I hope I appear sensitive and not exclusionary.

As it happens I'm not much of an advocate for the atheist life. My nightmares are the sort of hell that only come from disbelief and I don't wish them on anyone.

Be religious - you'll probably be happier than me.

I dunno, TPS, I jump stink on folks for all sorts of reasons, and they still seem to tolerate me. I think you'd be surprised; as long as you avoid telling people they're hellbound for their disbelief, persecution here is unlikely.

See, if you never speak up in the face of someone's (almost certainly ignorant or accidental) condescension towards your belief, you skip your chance to correct the error. And most of your interlocutors here are more interested in being correct than being right, I'd wager.

It's actually not fair to others to clam up; if you just say, "You're not necessarily correct, but experience has told me people like you will hurt my feelings if I try to explain," you reverse the condescension without affecting its cause, which is usually ignorance or indifference.

Demagogues worldwide are hurting a lot of people in the name of religion. If you keep in mind that most "enemies of religion" are fighting against those demagogues, against how faith is wielded and not against faith itself, then you can better take part in the remarkable and remarkably civil discussions that go on here.

But has anyone noticed that God doesn't seem to be a part of the major religions these days? I know, from when I was a Christian, God was a fairly wishy-washy, untouchable concept. Everything was really all about Jesus. I get the same impression of Islam - it's all about Mohammed (and rules), and God is, again, distant and impersonal. I get the impression Judaism has more interesting things to say on the nature of God, probably because they have no middle-man.
I have noticed this and, to add some icing, notice that the whole concept of Christianity seems to be becoming more and more selfish - it's all about saving yourself, to hell with everyone else (literally). This could be more a symptom of the marketing savvy that most church groups have discovered in the past few years than anything, but most Christianity these days seems most un-christian to me.

Thanks, Hugh Janus- maybe I just don't have the energy for correcting people on matters such as this. I never have. I'd much rather spend my time thinking about cute boys :-D

But since you insist:

Unlike the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible, all written in the first century, the Gnostic documents were written in the second century and afterward.

I'm an atheist myself but even I can't see why this would prove or disprove anything.

The canonical gospels were written by people who knew Jesus, or people who knew people who knew Jesus, during a time when a lot of people who knew him were still alive. 100 years later, a lot of those people would be dead.