The Jesus myther nonsense

[piscator]

...

UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU CUM EVERY TIME YOU SEE A BOOK BURNING.



Stein

"Jism" or "Blow a load" might have been a more lyrical choice in that crash/ride bit at the end. It needs an extra syllable...

[pErvinalia]

I'm saying that there'd be no secularism nor human rights today were it not for Enmetena, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Gotama, Confucius, Socrates, Yeshua, Ulpian, Naylor, Franklin, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King and Mandela and their sort.

We can think for ourselves without knowing anything of these people. The case for human rights or Secularism isn't validated by past thinkers, they are concepts that stand on their own merits.

You're just pulling a variation on the old 'there can be no good without god' shuffle, or 'we need other people to tell us what the right thing to do is' two-step.

If they hadn't existed, someone else would have. Morality is an evolved behavior that enhances species survival.

Absolutely correct. And aren't we lucky that some of the building blocks for that continual evolution can be studied as a social/cultural phenomenon by historians of the 21st century who value the unique history of the human animal for the precious thing it really is.

UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU CUM EVERY TIME YOU SEE A BOOK BURNING.



Stein

You like hyperbole, don't you?

[hackenslash]

Dunno, has she got big boobies?

[Brian Peacock]

I'm saying that there'd be no secularism nor human rights today were it not for Enmetena, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Gotama, Confucius, Socrates, Yeshua, Ulpian, Naylor, Franklin, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King and Mandela and their sort.

We can think for ourselves without knowing anything of these people. The case for human rights or Secularism isn't validated by past thinkers, they are concepts that stand on their own merits.

You're just pulling a variation on the old 'there can be no good without god' shuffle, or 'we need other people to tell us what the right thing to do is' two-step.

If they hadn't existed, someone else would have. Morality is an evolved behavior that enhances species survival.

Absolutely correct. And aren't we lucky that some of the building blocks for that continual evolution can be studied as a social/cultural phenomenon by historians of the 21st century who value the unique history of the human animal for the precious thing it really is.

UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU CUM EVERY TIME YOU SEE A BOOK BURNING.



Stein

Yes, studying social history is interesting and informative, at least to those who are interested in being informed about the history of society. So what's this got to do with whether Jesus lived or not?

[Stein]

I'm saying that there'd be no secularism nor human rights today were it not for Enmetena, Urukagina, Hammurabi, Gotama, Confucius, Socrates, Yeshua, Ulpian, Naylor, Franklin, Tolstoy, Gandhi, King and Mandela and their sort.

We can think for ourselves without knowing anything of these people. The case for human rights or Secularism isn't validated by past thinkers, they are concepts that stand on their own merits.

You're just pulling a variation on the old 'there can be no good without god' shuffle, or 'we need other people to tell us what the right thing to do is' two-step.

If they hadn't existed, someone else would have. Morality is an evolved behavior that enhances species survival.

Absolutely correct. And aren't we lucky that some of the building blocks for that continual evolution can be studied as a social/cultural phenomenon by historians of the 21st century who value the unique history of the human animal for the precious thing it really is.

UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU CUM EVERY TIME YOU SEE A BOOK BURNING.



Stein

Yes, studying social history is interesting and informative, at least to those who are interested in being informed about the history of society. So what's this got to do with whether Jesus lived or not?

1. An ancient Sumer proverb, “A man without a god -- for a strong man no loss”, offsets Lagash's lone Enlil worshiper, King Enmetena, who, invoking Enlil, frees Lagash's weak and downtrodden from debt slavery due to sharp practices in debt manipulation. Enmetena brings “amagi”/liberty ("back to the mother") and institutes the first documented peace treaty after a war with Umma. Lugalanda's abuses destroy Enmetena's dream, but Urukagina/Uru-inimgina ("inim"/word) relieves whole families again enslaved by sharp practices in debt, insisting Lagash's own god Ningirsu hears the weak. Urukagina helps "the widow and orphan", restoring "amagi". Umma's Lugalzagesi massacres Lagash, vanquishing Urukagina, but is then vanquished by his old friend Sargon and crucified at the city gates. Babylon's Hammurrabi echoes Enmetena. Egypt, in "Eloquent Peasant", introduces Golden Rule, "Act for the man who acts, to cause him to act", but enslaves Jews, who, once freed, institute 10 Commandments traditionally ascribed to Moses, claiming they're from his god Yahweh, hearing the afflicted and mandating a sabbath day of rest. Israel enacts protections for aliens, widows and orphans.

2. In Asia, Brahma worship, traditionally ascribed to Krishna, who slays a tyrant, Kamsa, springs up in India alongside an hereditary caste system, even as Indian culture mandates feeding the indigent and sheltering the alien. In "Purusha Sukta", a poem found in a relatively late book of the sacred Rig-Veda, caste system is "affirmed" as coming from Brahma. Brhaspati, from either the political Kshatriya caste or the commercial Vaishya caste, resents the powerful and inactive priestly brahmin caste at the top and introduces "Lokayata" doctrine, which rejects a hereditary caste system, any belief in the divine and any obligation to feed the indigent or shelter the alien, since the active castes are deemed more practical and worthy. Gotama Buddha reverses Brhaspati's cultural impact in India by placing charity foremost, while still rejecting a hereditary caste system. As a "knower" of both "gods and men", Buddha re-acknowledges Brahma and also Brahma as the ultimate ethical standard, though not as a Creator, nor with full omniscience. Buddhism takes root and flourishes under Asoka. Confucius, China's conscience during non-stop feuding, defies danger, claims protection from Tian (= "heaven") and inspires a variant of Golden Rule, "What I don't wish done to me, I won't do to others". Confucianism takes root and flourishes under Gaozu. 3. In Greece, Hesiod presents a "picture" of the early cosmos: The Theogony. His writings inveigh against social injustices also involving debt abuse by a predatory upper class, and, according to one account, he influences the Constitution of Orchomenus, whose designers term him "hearth-founder". He may be the first known designer of a Constitution; but another account places this Constitution as post-Hesiod, "hearth-founder" referencing the place for his ashes instead. Solon, like Enmetena, is again haunted by whole families in debt, compelling him to make reforms in Athens. Although enlightened rule brings new liberties, Pisistratus reverses them. Solon doesn't know his overturned liberties will soon inspire the world's first democracy. Cleisthenes, in Athens, inspired by Solon's example, starts the world's first democracy. Leukippos introduces Atomism, conceiving all of nature as microscopic atoms, the West's first implicitly non-theist construct for the cosmos. When Sparta defeats Athens, Critias overturns Athenian democracy, abrogating all freedoms, effectively recalling Brhaspati's Lokayata: reject the divine, exalt the practical. Critias starts the first known peacetime extermination as part of a systematic doctrine, requiring that all well-to-do political "misfits" be killed and their wealth appropriated by the state. Critias is killed in battle, and a backlash against his associates is fatal to his estranged tutor Socrates, who, unlike Critias, believes in the divine, claiming direct experience of a divine voice from childhood on, and is, ironically, one of the few to defy Critias's state lynchings. That doesn't save him from execution.

4. Rome effectively channels the peremptory mindset of Socrates's judges and has crushed half the known world, when Jesus Christ, in Palestine, calls Yahweh "my Father", restores a Mosaic compact with the afflicted and gives a new take to Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", in a spirit of forgiveness. Urging sacrifice for others, even enemies can be loved. He challenges money lenders, but Tiberius's henchman, Pilate, recalling Sargon's execution of Lugalzagesi, crucifies Jesus at the city gates. Some report Jesus freed from his own tomb. That report, plus the impact of a selfless ethic, helps change the global calendar. During intermittent Roman persecution of Christians by Nero and others, the jurist, Ulpian, tolerant of all creeds, introduces a principle that "all men are equal", denotes social conscience as a call "to harm nobody, to live in honor and to give everybody what is his" and questions torture: "The strong will resist and the weak will say anything to end the pain". Subsequently, Constantine adopts Christianity, but allows all believers "their temples of falsehood" "that this restoration of equal privileges to all will prevail to lead them into the straight path". Theodosius I reverses a hands-off policy, making Christianity a state religion instead, criminalizing other worship and destroying all other temples. He also responds to riots at a Thessalonica garrison, where the Roman commander's killed, with a ruse that entraps and kills 7,000 civilians, including women and children.

5. Mohammed, Islam's founder, introduces Qur'an-ic calls to help the needy, plus the Constitution of Medina: universal religious freedoms, equal cultural and political rights and equal "security of God" for all. But harsh circumstances lead to raids and military clashes with various tribes of various creeds. On one occasion, Mohammed even kills hundreds of captured Jewish prisoners. This all stops in Mohammed's abrupt decision to go through the bristling region unarmed, like Confucius, attempting to establish peace among the tribes. Associates are surprised by a freedom he gives women in disputing public policy, but he does partake in a prevailing tradition of child brides. In his last speech, he says "An Arab has no merit over a non-Arab". In Andalusian Spain's cosmopolitan Caliphate of Cordoba, Abd-ar-Rahman III channels Mohammed the peacemaker, but Egypt's Al-Hakim bi-Amr channels Mohammed the warrior, terrorizing the Middle East, destroying many Christian communities and rousing Western Europe, with Urban II launching the Crusades. Gregory IX launches the Inquisition and also encodes slavery and Jewish inferiority as official church law.

6. Genghis Khan founds the Mongol Empire, killing unprecedented numbers of civilians throughout Eurasia. Religiously tolerant, consulting Buddhist monks, Christian missionaries, Muslim imams, etc., he still lives, like Lugalzagesi, for sadistic thrills: "The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters."

7. Christian hierarchy is alternately favorable and wary at Copernicus's orbiting-Earth model, but the Reformation triggers growing Roman Catholic paranoia, as in Rome's muzzling of Galileo's telescopic cosmic research; further implicit grass-roots rejection of all hierarchy peaks in the non-violent Society of Friends (called Quakers) launched by Fox and Naylor, in Lilburne's Agreement of the People, in Knutzen's pioneering atheism in the heart of Europe, while borrowing Ulpian's call to social conscience, in the Rights Declaration at William III's coronation, and in Locke's dictum of "life, liberty" for all. An embittered cleric, Meslier, rejects the very notion of divinity, advocating collective extermination of all priests and the nobility. Locke's and Meslier's ideas each play out politically. An American Revolution against the British empire of George III and Lord North is partly burdened by a British inheritance of racist slavery for the black man, but still finds Adams and Jefferson partly inspired by ancient Athens, partly by Ulpian's "all men are equal", partly by William III and partly by Locke's "life, liberty" for all, with Jefferson introducing “pursuit of happiness” for the first time, while Madison undertakes a new Constitution, effectively separating church and state, leading to Washington's Presidency. Robespierre adopts Meslier's exterminationist "program" in a French Revolution against Louis XVI, though Robespierre rejects Meslier's atheism, even guillotining some atheists.

8. Monroe is the first American President to free some slaves, helping institute Liberia, and Jackson stands up to the financier class's sharp practices, vetoing the rechartering of a predatory central bank. Jackson also defies Supreme Court Justices in allowing forced removal of many American Indians from their homes, triggering a Trail of Tears for the red man. Bahá’u’lláh founds Bahai and advocates world peace. He conceives the globe as one village long before others take up the same idea politically. Intimate accounts show a stoic with some insight. Global notions of social justice gain more currency through reactions to American and French Revolutions, with Alexander II abolishing Russian serfdom, and with Lincoln abolishing American slavery. Lincoln also suspends habeas corpus during a Civil War, like Jackson defying Supreme Court Justice. Marx calls for emancipating the masses from a capitalist class and adopts Feuerbach's atheism; he also cheers on Alexander II's assassination. Tolstoy channels Fox and Naylor's non-violence. Virtual slavery lives on in Leopold II's Belgian Congo, partly under Christian missionary cover. Half of Congo perishes, through exhaustion, arbitrary executions, and worse, yielding huge dividends from rubber plantations. First modern human rights movement, under Casement and Morel, exposes regime's horrors. Belgian parliament votes to wrest Congo ownership from Leopold to Belgium as a whole. First modern environmental movement, Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal, fuses natural conservation and consumer protection, in a Presidency marked by winning antitrust suit against Morgan's Northern Securities. Morgan then rescues Roosevelt and U.S. in '07 Panic, giving impetus for Federal Reserve.

9. Once Wilhelm II's German forces are routed in World War I, France, Britain and others, goaded by Clemenceau, humiliate a defeated Germany, sewing seeds for Hitler's Nazism. Talaat Pasha goads a fractured Turkey into Armenian genocide. The spirit of Lugalzagesi lives on in Hitler's despoiling Europe in World War II, and of Critias in Hitler's systematically exterminating gypsies, homosexuals and 6 million Jews, although, unlike the atheist Critias, Hitler acts as a believer. Channeling Leukippos's Atomism, Einstein's relativity theory connects space/time and helps prod Hitler into exploring atomic weaponry, triggering Einstein's urgent letter to Franklin Roosevelt leading to the Manhattan Project. Franklin parallels Theodore's Square Deal with his New Deal and his Four Freedoms and parallels Jackson in his reining in sharp banking practices; he also parallels Jackson/Lincoln in attempting to dilute Supreme Court Justices' power. In a struggle against the Axis powers, Roosevelt defeats Nazi Germany and rounds up thousands of Japanese-Americans at home without due process, and Truman trumps the Manhattan Project's first battle-tested atom bomb on the last holdout, the Japan of Hirohito and Tojo, with a second one. Some claim final surrender by Japan already imminent after first bomb, others claim second one was needed. With the Axis surrender, Marshall, wary of repeating Clemenceau's mistake, gets Truman to adopt his renewal plan for vanquished foes.

10. Marx and Tolstoy's philosophies play out with mixed results. The Marx inheritance embraces Russia's tumultuous reform process under Lenin culminating in Stalin, who helps trigger a 50-year "Cold War" and whose Russian gulags channel Meslier, plus Chairman Mao's Chinese dictatorship, versus the more pluralist Scandinavian Socialist tradition of Denmark's Larsen. Tolstoy inspires Gandhi's successful non-violence for Indian independence against the same British empire that Jefferson opposed. Gandhi also supports hereditary caste system, as does Godse, a Hindu nationalist who kills Gandhi.

11. American racism is alive and well after slavery's end, and it takes King's non-violent methods and his "dream" speech, recalling Jesus and Gandhi, to ultimately kill the Jim Crow laws, but not without being killed himself. Mandela, an opponent of Malan's South African apartheid, chooses, while in prison, to turn away from violence, to ignore all feuds, as Confucius did, to ease the afflicted, as Enmetena did, and to forgive, recalling Jesus. Urukagina's nemesis Lugalzagesi lives on in Bin Laden, operating in Afghanistan under Taliban protection, channeling Mohammed as warrior, not as peacemaker. Like Al-Hakim bi-Amr, Bin Laden fosters atrocities, bringing many deaths to Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, Bali, London, Madrid, and elsewhere. Like Sargon vanquishing Lugalzagesi, Bush Jr. frees Afghanistan from the Taliban, but Bin Laden escapes, and some claim Bush's application of torture also compromises efforts at capturing Bin Laden, as well as ignoring Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war. Bin Laden's finally killed by a detachment of Navy seals, dispatched by Obama, who also dispatches an American terrorist to his death without due process, avoiding a trial in absentia. Euphoria at Bin Laden's end is offset by an ongoing recession, partly triggered by sharp banking practices.

Stein

[Svartalf]

tl dr

What'ss the cliff notes version?

[Hermit]

It's an edited version of Stone's list of Top Crimes Against Humanity, which in turn appears to be a shortened list of 40. A connection with his opening post is not apparent, and Stone makes no attempt to explicate by way of a conclusion, nor does he attempt to define "crimes against humanity" to begin with. That makes it easier to cherry pick. 3300 dead due to aeroplanes landing in locations that are not airports makes the grade. The destruction of everyone and everything Carthaginian does not.

Go figure. I can't be bothered.

[Svartalf]

I notice the dog mandated acts of genocide in the babble did not make the list either... is that because their actual occurrence is dubious or because the divine mandate absolves the crime tag?
Roman repression of the Jews did make the list, so I guess it's the second... because the Jews were definitely not exterminated, unlike those victims of Gideon and others...

[Brian Peacock]

I notice two things.

i. Stone's literary style, such that it is, is very similar to Stein's.
ii. Whether Jesus was a historical figure or merely a composite myth token has no relevance to Stein's reply to my question, and no bearing on the issue whatsoever.

I also think that any Christian assertion that the acceptance of Jesus as a de facto historical figure is foundational to all contemporary thinking on human rights is completely undermined by the Christina doctrine of vicarious redemption - in as much as this pernicious doctrine is fundamentally and necessarily antithetical to both the principle and implementation of universal human rights. I'm with Hitchens on that one I think.

[Stein]

I notice two things.

i. Stone's literary style, such that it is, is very similar to Stein's.
ii. Whether Jesus was a historical figure or merely a composite myth token has no relevance to Stein's reply to my question, and no bearing on the issue whatsoever.

I also think that any Christian assertion that the acceptance of Jesus as a de facto historical figure is foundational to all contemporary thinking on human rights is completely undermined by the Christina doctrine of vicarious redemption - in as much as this pernicious doctrine is fundamentally and necessarily antithetical to both the principle and implementation of universal human rights. I'm with Hitchens on that one I think.

As am I. In addition, the Eastern Orthodox tradition apparently does not accept the grisly atonement doctrine either. And that certainly is not in the earliest textual strata (courtesy of modern philological analysis) of both the apologetic and non-apologetic Yeshua data. In both, including Tacitus and Antiquities XX, Yeshua the rabbi is simply a human being who became an agitator for the marginalized and was executed. Period.

The extensive readout which I submitted (in a bit of exasperation, I admit, which I still think was partly warranted) is useful because it shows that, even though nothing happens in a vacuum, it still takes individuals to start ripples going anyway. While general adaptation processes may inevitably render some trends more enduring -- and inevitable -- than others, that inevitability, once any species is going to evolve and survive at all, doesn't subtract from the interest and importance inherent in those individuals who may (however inevitably) arise. Adaptational pressures may create conditions that are generally hospitable for individuals such as a Confucius or a Gotama or a Franklin, etc., who initiate new proposals for society that eventually stick (if not immediately). But that which makes those individuals _choose_ to be that inevitable catalyst in the first place, rather than their neighbor across the street or someone else, is not inevitable. Instead, that is completely individual and of lasting fascination for anyone who is a humanist. How come figure A and not figure B? What goes into the type of human being who "evolves" the social/cultural patterns versus the type of individual who "regresses" it instead (an Al-Baghdadi, say)? That is not an idle question. That question is central to knowing just how fragile and prone to ultimate extinction the human species may or may not be.

Finally, I keep thinking of Margaret Mead's remark: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Cheers,

Stein

[JimC]

Stein. You take this shit far too seriously. I think you need a happy pill. Or twelve.

Vast amounts of neat gin, IMO...

[Brian Peacock]

A five-hour Halo binge!

[Stein]

A five-hour Halo binge!

I attempted to respond as straightforwardly to your previous as seemed possible, to me anyway. --

I notice two things.

i. Stone's literary style, such that it is, is very similar to Stein's.
ii. Whether Jesus was a historical figure or merely a composite myth token has no relevance to Stein's reply to my question, and no bearing on the issue whatsoever.

I also think that any Christian assertion that the acceptance of Jesus as a de facto historical figure is foundational to all contemporary thinking on human rights is completely undermined by the Christina doctrine of vicarious redemption - in as much as this pernicious doctrine is fundamentally and necessarily antithetical to both the principle and implementation of universal human rights. I'm with Hitchens on that one I think.

As am I. In addition, the Eastern Orthodox tradition apparently does not accept the grisly atonement doctrine either. And that certainly is not in the earliest textual strata (courtesy of modern philological analysis) of both the apologetic and non-apologetic Yeshua data. In both, including Tacitus and Antiquities XX, Yeshua the rabbi is simply a human being who became an agitator for the marginalized and was executed. Period.

The extensive readout which I submitted (in a bit of exasperation, I admit, which I still think was partly warranted) is useful because it shows that, even though nothing happens in a vacuum, it still requires individuals to start ripples going anyway. While general adaptation processes may inevitably render some trends more enduring -- and inevitable -- than others, that inevitability, once any species is going to evolve and survive at all, doesn't subtract from the interest and importance inherent in those individuals who may (however inevitably) arise. Adaptational pressures may create conditions that are generally hospitable for individuals such as a Confucius or a Gotama or a Franklin, etc., who initiate new proposals for society that eventually stick (if not immediately). But that which makes those individuals _choose_ to be that inevitable catalyst in the first place, rather than their neighbor across the street or someone else, is not inevitable. Instead, that is completely individual and of lasting fascination for anyone who is a humanist. How come figure A and not figure B? What goes into the type of human being who "evolves" the social/cultural patterns versus the type of individual who "regresses" it instead (an Al-Baghdadi, say)? That is not an idle question. That question is central to knowing just how fragile and prone to ultimate extinction the human species may or may not be.

Finally, I keep thinking of Margaret Mead's remark: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Cheers,

Stein

Is it too much to expect a reasonably succinct response in kind, instead of "A five-hour Halo binge!"?

Stein

[hackenslash]

It doesn't get more succinct than 'a five-hour Halo binge'. It's only five words, after all.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

It doesn't get more succinct than 'a five-hour Halo binge'. It's only five words, after all.

"Have you tried wanking?" would have been even more succinct and just as apposite.