40 awkward Questions To Ask A Christian

You insist.

 

I think a decent god would do a good job of creating things rather than leaving all the sick shit?

 

What sick shit?

 

That's a great list. Thanks for the post. I am now heading of to my local church with these questions

 

Remove the rose colored glasses.

 

Nothing real can be harmed. Our illusions about life can surely be threatened. My point is the sick shit exists because you insist it exists. You could just as easily view all phenomena simply as luminosity and vibration. To any members of the humane society looking in on the production of these statements no animals were harmed and no facts were altered.

 

Weren't those kids in Syria who were gassed real? Would it make it okay if we viewed them as luminosity and vibration? Maybe we could do the same with the holocaust? Not that God is necessarily to blame for this for giving us free will, but the people who did it seem like pretty sick shits to me.

 

Again a leveling statistic, yes kids everywhere are real. Some kids everywhere die and mortality is 100 percent regardless. What do you or the world gain through your vision? Certainly it wouldn't occur to you to fill the need of those you think are sick shits instead of reacting convulsively with disgust, not to reward any type of behavior but to let the behavior die out by starving it of energy. What seems sick shit is the only moral motive that exists arising from magnanimous intent, and that is the instinct for self preservation/extension. From that essential motive comes all behavior and the impulse is there is good in the for us and we must have it.

Now our instinct for self extension gives us native protections in that we have fight or flight instincts which we can bring to bare in essentially dire situations and they extend to those and to those things which we call our own. We naturally are protective of our children. The thing that allows mans inhumanity to man to continue is he tells himself that other is not his or his own. In protection of his or his own anyone can be quite vicious in meeting a perceived threat.

I ask the question would you rather be right or have god's kingdom come?

The truth sets us free. The world god created cannot be harmed being the only real thing that exists. We can afford then to suspend our gut wrenching call to arms and allow peace to settle over us. From a state of peace we can then teach peace. The only moment of power is now and to have a future different from the past we make a different choice in the present yet in regard to our reaction to what we deem horrible, we insist that we have barabbas instead of innocence. What we resist persists, because it is made of like energy, so we meet with tragedy perpetually. If you knew that your forgiveness of what you see in the world had the power to redeem the world at large, you would know why I say what I say. Do not judge by appearances but rather use right judgment. Perception is not knowledge but can lead to it if you allow the holy spirit to teach you of god's light in all brothers no matter how dimly perceived by most.

No one knows the hour of his coming because love does not wait on time but on invitation.

 

Who needs these questions when there's nothing to ask?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIOJ4LZwQ8c

And there's a lot more out there to complete the picture!

 

And this is a lot more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvga-98x6Nk

 

Yeah, there are lots and lots of crackpots on the internet. Before swallowing what they say, you might just consider how plausible it is. What we know about Julius Caesar is that he was a ruthless general and politician from a prominent, wealthy family, who had more in common with Tony Soprano and the Godfather than the wandering Galilean preacher your internet source is comparing him to. Your source says virtually every detail of Jesus's life was based on Julius Caesar. Was Caesar crucified like a common criminal? No, he was assassinated. Executed, assassinated, same difference? Caesar also used sex to advance his interests, and was said to be "a man for every woman, and a woman for every man." So far, nothing we know about Jesus includes that detail. With most historical figures of antiquity, there were accounts of miraculous signs and wonders from self-interested followers. Caesar became a God by proclamation of the Roman Senate, at the instigation of his heir, Octavian, who then of course became Son of God--divinity on the cheap! Actually, if we're looking for superficial parallels, Octavian (Caesar Augustus) might be a better bet. He was said to be born of a virgin (impregnated by Appollo in the form of a snake), although that doesn't quite count because there was physical penetration leading to pregnancy. And the notion that Atia of the Juilii was a virgin is laughable. But there were no claims that either Caesar of died for our sins. There were no claims of resurrection--for either Caesar. The biggest problem with your post is that it ignores all the other crackpots who claim that Jesus was a myth based on Horus, Mithras, Heracles, Dionnysis, Serapis, Atis, etc. For those of us Christians who think the important thing about Jesus was His message of universal, non-judgmental love , especially for the poor and society's rejects, none of these supposed rivals quite cut it.

 

Hey man, they also wrote a book about it so it must be true after all :biggrin:

 

I would not regard this detailed well-researched book as the outpourings of a crackpot. I think you are assuming that Julius Caesar WAS Jesus. No, I think it's more the following which gives the real Jesus more validity. Those who assassinated Julius Caesar are similar to the psychopaths running our world today, same mentality, control the lives of the majority. So, the below has the ring of truth...

All roads lead to Rome.
The historical Jesus turns up many times in ancient literature. He travelled widely in the East and absorbed the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism for example and adopted gnosticism (knowing). His teachings were corrupted by the Church of Rome which formed a faith-based salvationist religion i.e. an agnostic religion in which adherents were taught to believe anything the priests of the powers that be told them - and not to think. The Church of Rome and all churches descended from it are therefore anti-Christian, a psychopathic power play.

 

There are many detailed books that might appear to be well-researched but are obviously nutzo. Carotta has no scholarly credentials as an historian, has not passed the test of peer review, and is generally dismissed by reputable scholars as a crackpot. According to Wiki, :
Dominican priest Fr. O'Connor criticized Carotta for avoiding explanations on why the "figure called Jesus Christ" would have been "invented" and given a "life modeled on that of Julius Caesar", and "why there should be four versions of the career of Jesus". Maria Wyke called Carotta's views "eccentric" and described the connections between Caesar and Jesus listed by him as "sweeping and often superficial parallels, however detailed at book length". Spanish philologist Antonio Piñero called Carotta's reading of the Gospel as an "ingenious exercise" but also noted several methodological shortcomings which made the theory "completely implausible".

The excerpt that you quoted would be enough for me to reach that conclusion, because it talks about the travels of Jesus in the Orient--an event that most scholars also relegate to the X-files of quackery. That urban legend was invented to fill the gap in the biblical record of Jesus between his infancy and the beginning of his ministry in Galilee. Actually, he was abducted by a UFO, and spent those years on the planet Nibaru learning nifty stuff like raising the dead and walking on water. But thanks for bringing the book to our attention. I can add it to my collection of weird Jesus theories, along with Allegro's theory that Jesus was a mushroom and the theory that he was a woman named Mariam.

 

Pity you mentioned your sources, namely the bible. I prefer the Gnostic gospels discovered in 1944, stuff that concentrates on what Jesus said, not the fairy tales in the Gospels - you know, bio stuff invented to grab reader interest, plus the prophet crap to give drama, and the crucifixion - real fiction - providing the essential element of violence. I'd go further and say the NT en masse is beyond crackpot, just a contrived bunch of lies.

 

You prefer the gnostic gospels for what reason?

 

as a non-christian, who believes what we see may not be all we get, and one who loves to answer all kinds of questions that interest me:



If a hundred different religions have to be wrong for yours to be right, does this show that people from all over the world like to invent gods that don’t exist? that's a might big if. and its not correct. all are equally 'right' when they encourage people to be considerate and not mess things up, and equally ignorant when they attempt to specify the unknown.

If your parents had belonged to a different religion, do you think you would belong to that religion too? no. my parents had differing religious beliefs from each other, and i consider myself fortunate that they did. they taught me to investigate beliefs on my own, and to formulate my own, on the bases of how things worked and what made sense, to me.

If people from the five major religions are each told conflicting information by their respective gods, should any of them be believed? obviously only partially. but this assumptions is not inwardly valid. these supposedly conflicting beliefs, are all merely different iterations, or revelations, of what is essentially the same belief. merely different updates. from different times and places.


What is the relationship between religion and morality? i believe the desire for people to not screw everything up for each other may have been the motivating force behind the formalization of organized beliefs

How can you tell the voice of God from a voice in your head? if you are hearing a voice in your head, it is in all likelihood, your own.

How can you tell the voice of God from the voice of the Devil? there is no devil. but god doesn't speak either. not in the sense of words. it only hugs, encourages and discourages, in empathic, non-verbal ways. as do the species spirits of all things.

Would you find it easier to kill someone if you believed God supported you in the act? in the first place i would never believe in a god that wanted me to do anything of the sort.

If God told you to kill an atheist, would you? if anything told me to kill anything for any reason other then lunch, the last thing in hell i would believe, is that it was any kind of a god.



When an atheist is kind and charitable out of the kindness of his heart, is his behavior more or less commendable than a religious man who does it because God instructed him to? they are exactly the same. and god only instructs, if it does so at all, though living persons it chooses to be channeled by. the only thing it does directly is give great hugs.

If you are against the Crusades and the Inquisition, would you have been burned alive as a heretic during those events? i might very well have, simply for refusing to lie to myself.

If your interpretation of a holy book causes you to condemn your ancestors for having a different interpretation, will your descendants condemn you in the same way? if so, most probably yes. but as for books, they are written by humans.

Rape wasn't always a crime in the Middle East two thousand years ago. Is that why `do not rape’ is not part of the Ten Commandments? quite possibly. though it may have been the intent, in combination, of some of the others.

Do lions need `god-given' morality to understand how to care for their young, co-operate within a pack, or feel anguish at the loss of a companion? Why do we? obviously we do not. any more then they do. it is very possible we learned to live in villages not limited to our own kin, from the example provided by wolves and other wild creatures.

If organized religion requires a civilization in which to spread, how could this civilization exist without first having a moral code to make us civil? in reality, such a civilization, while well within human capacity, has yet to do so.

An all-knowing God can read your mind, so why does he require you to demonstrate your faith by worshiping him? so far, it is humans who have made the claim that he/it does anything of the sort.

If God is all-knowing, why do holy books describe him as surprised or angered by the actions of humans? He should have known what was going to happen. "holy books", to put it kindly, are filled with speculation. attempting to describe their speculations in terms humans might be familiar with.

An all-knowing God knows who will ultimately reject him. Why does God create people who he knows will end up in hell? he/it doesn't. souls emerge from the sea of consciousness of their own accord, and occupy/bond with, physical life forms capable of sustaining their interaction with material existence.

If God is all knowing, then why did he make humans in the knowledge that he’d eventually have to send Jesus to his death? nothing human knows what god or a god is. the man called jesus he/it chose that time to be channeled by, was put to death for other reasons. his closest friends and followers made his death a symbol to remind us to be considerate, so that his life and efforts would not have been in vein. but that is all.

Why did a supposedly omnipotent god take six days to create the universe, and why did he require rest on the seventh day? this is a conceptual fairy tail to illustrate the concept of sequence. the term "day" in its context, is meaningless.

Is omnipotence necessary to create our universe when a larger, denser universe would have required more power? it is unclear, but unlikely, that omnipotence had anything to do with it.


Why are Churches filled with riches when Jesus asked his followers to give their wealth away?
not all churches are. within reason, it is to make religious meeting places attractive to potential followers.

While in the desert, Jesus rejected the temptations of the Devil. He didn't censor or kill the Devil, so why are Christians so in favor of censoring many Earthly temptations?
christians are not my problem. they are their's. what jesus argued with was his own subconscious. what he rejected was thoughtlessness.

Given that the story of Noah’s Ark was copied almost word for word from the much older Sumerian Epic of Atrahasis, does this mean that our true ruler is the supreme sky god, Anu?
all of the names we have invented for what we don't know, are names we have invented. if there is only one god, then it is the same god, no matter what who may have called it when.

If your desire is to convert atheists so that they become more like you; do you think that you’re currently better than them? my desire is not to convert anyone to anything. but rather to be mutually, universally, and non-hierarchically, considerate of each other, and of the everything our own and each other's existence depends upon.

If religious people don’t respect their children’s right to pick their own religion at a time when they're able to make that decision, how can society expect religious people to respect anyone’s right to freedom of religion? obviously this is one of the reasons we seem to be slipping into another dark ages.

If missionaries from your religion should be sent to convert people in other countries, should missionaries from other religions be sent to your country? certainly. but again, conversion should not be the goal, but rather broadening perspectives, that other perspectives do exist, and are neither more nor less valid then familiar ones.

If children are likely to believe in Santa Claus and fairies, does this explain why religion has been taught in schools for thousands of years? only partially in both senses

When preachers and prophets claim to be special messengers of God, they often receive special benefits from their followers. Does this ever cause you to doubt their intentions? actually the real ones, usually end up getting the shaft, one way or another. because they are trying to tell people how to avoid screwing everything up for each other, to which many prefer to remain indifferent. those who just try to tell people what they think people want to hear, especially fanatics within their already narrow minded beliefs, those are the con artists.

When you declare a miracle, does this mean you understand everything that is possible in nature? no. it simply means you've observed something that doesn't happen often, to have occurred at just exactly the most fortuitous time.

If a woman was cured of cancer by means unknown to us, and everyone declared it a miracle, would the chance of scientifically replicating this cure be more or less likely? exactly the same.

If humans declared fire to be a miracle thousands of years ago, would we still be huddling together in caves while we wait for God to fire another lightning bolt into the forest? no. they did. and we don't.

If God gave a man cancer, and the Devil cured him to subvert God’s plan, how would you know it wasn't a divine miracle? What if he was an unkind, atheist, homosexual? how and why could multiple unseen forces not have worked together? and all the other well meaning invisible things too?

Why Do People Convert to Religion? for their own reasons, hopefully, though more often, because they see their friends doing it. or to avoid being socially and or economically ostracized, which to put it more simply, means to get paid and get laid.

Should an instruction to convert to your religion upon the threat of eternal torture in hell be met with anything other than hostility? any instruction to convert to any religion is nonsense. what we believe in our own hearts comes from the feelings and other influences we personally experience. anything else, is lying to ourselves.

Can a mass murderer go to heaven for accepting your religion, while a kind doctor goes to hell for not? no. it doesn't work that way at all. but then again, MY "religion" isn't christianity.

Did the mass murdering Crusaders and Inquisitors make it into the Christian heaven?
yes and no. evil in the name of good is evil twice. but heaven and hell are not places, but ways of perceiving a state of being, based upon those priorities we each develop in our physical lives.

How can we know what is right when we don’t know for sure who makes it into heaven and hell?
right is not about heaven and hell, it is about not screwing everything up for each other.

If aliens exist on several worlds that have never heard of your god, will they all be going to hell when they die? no. because if there is a god, they will most likely have had their own revealers of its will, that it chose from among them, to reveal it to them.

If someone promised you eternal life, the protection of a loving super being, a feeling of moral righteousness, a purpose for living, answers to all the big questions, and a rule book for achieving the pinnacle of human potential… and all in exchange for having faith in something that wasn't proven, would you be suspicious?
pretending that pretending isn't pretending, is still pretending. of course. there are natural 'rules' for not screwing everything up for everyone including one self. in this life. they don't exist because they are what someone thinks everyone ought to do, but because of how things work, not in some magical sky kingdom, but on this physical material earth.

If someone promised to give you a billion dollars after ten years, but only if you worshiped them until that time, would you believe them? If someone promised to give you eternal life upon death, but only if you spent your life worshiping a god, would you believe them?
i would be and am, skeptical of the idea of worship being anything other then a human invention. however i do not see this as ruling out or even being related to, the existence of things we don't know.

Why does religion appeal more to poor, weak, vulnerable, young, ill, depressed, and ostracized people? Could religious promises be more of a temptation to these people?
does it matter? also, fanatacims, and especially christian fanaticism, are being confused here with the totality of religious belief, to which, i'm not entirely convinced this assumption applies.

 

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My sources? My recollection is that I mentioned the Bible mainly with reference to the lack of evidence in that or any other book of the period about Jesus going to the Orient. Do those Gnostic sources you mention say otherwise? Also, if the Bible is inaccurate about Jesus, how could anyone make sense of Carotta's comparisons of Caesar and Jesus? The Gnostic sources would be of no help to Carotta. So I guess we're stuck with the Bible for purposes of discussing Carotta's book.

By the way, I happen to take some of the Gnostics seriously, although I treat the details with a grain of salt--e.g., the 30 aeons and 365 archons. I treat the Gospels similarly. For example, the two accounts of Jesus' infancy (Matthew and Luke) are obviously inconsistent and were likely added to buttress claims of prophecy fulfillment. As for the crucifixion, I find that event entirely plausible, albeit there are differences in detail in the Gospel accounts. I find it unlikely that Jews claiming Jesus to be the Messiah would make up the His humiliating execution as a common criminal, thereby giving them lots of "'splainig" to do in convincing others that He wasn't a failure. It's hard for me to understand how anyone who is skeptical of the New Testament could consider the more mystical Gnostic sources to be more credible.

If you're into conspiracy theories involving Jesus and Roman Emperors, as you seem to be, you might check out Atwill's Caesar's Messiah, which is as farfetched and sloppily researched as Jesus Was Caesar. I bring it up because it argues that the emperor Titus, not Julius Caesar, was the model for an invented Jesus. If that's right, Carotta is wrong. They can't both be true. But I think they're both wrong. Atwill, a successful businessman (not a scholar) will probably become even more successful from sale of this book, which panders to the gullible. His thesis is that Jesus was invented by the Flavian faimily to neutralize opposition from the Jews by convincing them they should be obedient to Rome. Supposedly the Gospels, written by the Flavians, were allegedly satire based on events in the campaign of Titus against the Jewish Sicarii, so that the Romans could enjoy the joke of tricking Jews into worshiping Titus. For example, when Jesus spoke of being "fishers of men", he was allegedly referring to an incident where the Jewish rebels against Titus were driven into the water had to swim for their lives--ha,ha! And when Jesus told his disciples " Follow me", it was allegedly parallel to Titus' calling to his men not to desert him in a military campaign. These are but two of a dozen similar "parallels"--all equally farfetched. And the clincher is the fact that the rebel leader in the anti-Roman revolt that Titus put down was named Jesus. Not mentioned is the fact that the name Jesus was as common among the Jews as Tom, Dick or Harry are today.

Among the problems with the thesis are: (1) the fact that Christianity was well-established long before Titus and the Flavians came to power, as evidenced by the Roman historians Seutonius and Tacitus (the well-known persecutions by Nero came long before the reign of Vespasian and his son Titus; (2) the Synoptic Gospels were written before Titus' campaigns, and many of Paul's letters were written even before Nero; (3) the message of a peacenik Jesus would be unlikely to win over the anti-Roman Zealots, who never took to Christianity in significant numbers; and (4) some Flavians,notably Diocletian, seemed hostile to Christianity. Diocletian's persecutions, rivaled Nero's (no doubt to convince people that he was anti-Christian, when he was "actually" pro-Christian and supposedly trying to promote the religion.) My own conspiracy theory is that books like these were written by Christians in hopes that atheists will believe them and look like fools.

 

In the CHristian essence can choice be a way to avoid the vices we keep to ourselves? Or must they be ameanable to some probability that we deceive ourselves that we are free.

Come on, atheists. This is key to understand that a situation is not an illusion, but a real way to be committed as Christians so often hypocritically are not.