Nums,
I notice the quality of your posts is sagging down badly, you're reduced to one sentence or even one word responses--and many of them are simply attacks on me and have no discussion value at all. Maybe this would be a good time for you to become on of those Christians quietly practicing their religion in the privacy of their own lives.
You are running and hiding, there is nothing in Jesus' LOVE GOD and LOVE OTHERS AS YOURSELF that requires goatherder context or the windbaggery of philosphers or the Church. That was the real beauty of Jesus' message, it was simple, to the point, and it didn't require all the nonsense that goes along with churches and organized religions. Of course the churche's aim was to make it esoteric because that's how they control the people and bend the laws to suit their own ends. Jesus' message is so simple and direct that anyone can see the sin in the Pope living like a king when millions of God's children are living in dire poverty. Anyone can see that sheltering pedophiles and allowing them to continue preying on children is wrong.
Yeah, right, you have nothing to say so you claim I said something somewhere else (but you don't quote it) and then you make a self-evident statement as if it was a diamond from the lips of the Pope. You see what I mean about the quality of your posts?
NO, people often help each other even without sermons, where do you live that people don't help each other?
People met and shared with strangers just like at the Mount of Olives, no sermon, just good people sharing what they had with others. And it went on for 3 days. No sermon, no religious twaddle, just good people sharing with each other and enjoying the music.
Your answer implies that I am less than you because I don't know (and I admit it) but that you DO know (which you don't). At least I am honest. As far as Buddha was concerned, he wasn't crucified for people's sins either, so your comment about him is outside the context of our discussion.
Boy, I'm glad you told me that, what a revelation! This is going to make all the religious newspapers, I bet the Pope will make you a Saint for this. See what I mean about your post quality?
We are all immortal beings and thus death is but a transition in our existence. We come here to learn and we need to deal with the cards we are dealt. It was far better for me to transition from male to female in my presentation and continue my life despite the difficulty and the pain because of the learning experiences I've had. You would write better posts if you weren't so angry.
We would need to qualify the "afraid to die" phrase in order to make a meaningful exchange of this. They were not afraid of an afterlife of punishment for eternity, they didn't fear the JUDGMENT of some monstrously cruel deity who would torture them for all of eternity for the sins they made in an eyeblink of time.
I think the fault can be laid at the door of the liars who blaspheme by telling people about the horrors that your monstrous deity will visit upon them if they don't do what the CHURCH tells them to do. Can you see the hypocrisy in this, taking the simple and easily understood words of Jesus LOVE GOD, LOVE OTHERS AS YOURSELF, TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, RETURN GOOD FOR EVIL... and twisting that into an insanely violent religion that tells people to fear their Creator because He will punish them for all of eternity. Total crap, Nums, and I'm sorry you bought into it.
Hellfire and brimstone and eternal punishment aren't frightening?
Oh yeah, just read the Old Testament and you can see how He is portrayed. And that's exactly why I don't buy the blaspemy in the Bible or from the Pope or Fred Phelps, God is better than we CAN imagine, and I can imagine a God who doesn't murder His own children.
One does not "heap blashemy at..." something, blasphemy is heaped upon. The information was here and readily available long before the Christian religion came upon the scene. My guess is that some research on the history of religion before Christianity might be very enlightening for you.
The "condoms cause AIDS" comment and the pedophile philosophers to the contrary.
Which proves my point exactly. Jesus' message didn't need to be filtered through Kantian ethics any more than it needed to be filtered through Daniel Boone's underwear. All the fancy philosphizing and Popery windbagging only serve to cloud the truth and muddy the waters and obscure the message.
Hobbes, Kant, the Popes, James Cargill, and Moshe Dyan cannot make Jesus' message any more plain, succinct, to the point, terse, or clear. Why you have to make it so complex seems to be a symptom of you having a lot of learned lumber in your head that you wish to use even when it's not necessary.
Is there anyone who needs LOVE GOD, LOVE OTHERS AS YOURSELF, TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, RETURN GOOD FOR EVIL, and FORGIVE OTHERS AS YOU WISH TO BE FORGIVEN to be explained? You seem to know a bit about math, Nums, so you know that mathematical theorems tend to have a beautiful simplicity when they represent a universal truth. Jesus' message is beautiful in its simplicity, a simplicity that makes it available to anyone without any context whatever. No threats, no punishments, just a simple prescription for how to live one's life.
