AW! Epistles
From JJ
Abstract
Sunday, 05 May 2002
No doubt the Christian Church has failed time & time again. The Christian Church is sorely divided and often severely misguided on many issues. It would seem that most Christians often have their heads hidden in the sand or are in denial. I think all would concede that Christianity as a religion has been both very constructive for mankind/civilization on one hand, while on the other, at times extremely destructive. The Christian Church is laced with hyprocrisy, manipulation & control and co-dependency problems and more often than not, just downright offensive and stupid—Gee—sounds like most of humanity to me.
Me too, but Christians are supposed to be better than most of humanity, otherwise what is the point of being Christian?
The focal point of true Christianity is not about the institutionalized church. True Christianity is about Jesus Christ. True Christianity is not about religion. Religion is about man seeking God. True Christianity is about God seeking man and therein lies the fundamental difference of the essence between what Jesus proclaimed and all other religions past and present.
Why should I believe what you say true Christianity is when 30,000 Christian sects will tell me something different, each one? I have no compulsion to find God, so I am not religious, but if God is somehow working through me, it is to tell the world that Christianity is Satanic.
I would be the first one to agree with Mr Buckner about the way the legitimate questions he raises are addressed. It is truly aggravating for me to watch so called knowledgeable Christians just blow him off. However, Mr Buckner does show a lack of historical biblical knowledge on one issue when he states that Christ was crucified on a friday and raised on Sunday. That statement alone raises a lot red flags as to the basis of his scholarly credibility. It is a church tradition not based on historical fact. Believe me when I say that Jesus’s statement of three days & three nights in the grave can be easily proven to the satisfaction of the most skeptical scholar simply by having a knowledge of the Passover celebration and the Jewish calendar that existed at that time.
You should be careful talking about scholarship, Jere. No one knows when Passover was in those days. It all depended on observation, and there are simple reasons why the observations might have been different from what the astronomers think they ought to have been. I have a page mentioning this: Year of the Crucifixion
Ever watched a diehard conservative and liberal debate each other? Each side in the end earnestly believes they’ve won the debate except that no one has changed their mind about their inherent belief system. However, you would hope during the discourse they would at least be totally honest with each other and themselves, and at the very least respect the sincerity of each others point of view—in a sense they’re both evangelists for their causes. The real question is what is their true motivation—is it from an honest & open caring heart that is concerned for the welfare of people and the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or is it vanity, pride, power and/or the fear of change.
From my own experience, Conservatives are concerned for themselves. If Christ were the criterion, none of them could enter the kingdom of God. The gospel Jesus is quite explicit about this.
When you look at the essence of the life of Jesus, you find a man that vehemently opposed religious hyprocrisy, a man who genuinely loved people, a man who had genuine compassion for the sick, outcasts, etc. who wasn’t afraid to wholly associate and give of himself to them. He was a man who could cut through all the religious crap & and people’s excuses. He so offended the religious leaders of the day, they couldn’t nail him to a cross fast enough.
This is, of course, the impression the gospels want to give, but is utterly different from the Christianity of history. Your man, Jesus also said, so clearly that it cannot be mistaken, that you know a tree by its fruit.
It is an indisputable fact of history that Jesus (Joshua/Yeshua) was crucified by the Romans.
Large numbers of people were. Which one was Jesus? Are you sure you have the right one?
Whether or not you believe Jesus was the Son of God and was raised from the dead, almost any scholar will acknowledge something happened in the lives of those few followers that led them to change the known world of their time.
I have a lot of pages that explain this in detail with no supernatural intervention.
Per 2 Peter 1:16, Peter is clearly stating that his message was based on his own eyewitness accounts of the supernatural events that marked the life of Jesus during the ministry years that Peter was with him. “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Do you really believe this man was lying?
Frankly, yes! There are no reputable scholars who will not admit that 2 Peter is a pseudepigraph written about 100 years after the events to which he refers. The author himself cannot therefore have been an eyewitness.
Do you really believe that Paul was lying? Paul was the creme de le creme for an educated man of his time. A star Pharisee as well as an educated Roman citizen. Why would he lie about his supernatural encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and give up in an instant all that he had attained in his life? The prestige, the power, the wealth? All for a lie? Paul himself states (also as quoted by Mr Buckner) that essentially the Christian faith is in vain if Jesus was not raised from the dead.
I have a detailed commentary on Paul/Saul. Why not read it? Saul Paul He admitted he was a liar for the cause he was propagating. His astonishing good luck and amazing friendships with the Roman officials suggest that he was something not apparent. He was a Roman official—an agent provocateur infiltrating the ranks of the Jewish dissenters.
For the life of me, regardless of how much contradiction one may feel our current day biblical translations contain and notwithstanding the claims of historical inconsistancies, I have to ask myself at the very least, were all these people psychotic liars risking life & limb for a lie?
Look, Jere, there is no need to suppose that the immediate followers of Jesus were psychotic liars. They believed Jesus had risen, but there is no reason for us to think he really had. Paul seemed to start the tradition of pious lying, and every Christian since has joined in. As you will know, lies can be by omission or by commission. Even good Christians, as you will no doubt count yourself, like to omit what they do not like. Christian apologists, do that and also lie! Few Christians risked their lives and their limbs, certainly by comparision to the myriads of non-Christians who ran such risks at the hands of the Christians a few centuries later and then for a thousand years or more.
I think not and in addition to that I have my own born-again experience—the day that Jesus presented himself personally to me (oh there’s that p-word) and that encounter changed my life forever. When you have a true encounter with Jesus—you’ll know it.
There is an interesting psychological study yet to be done on people like you. How do you differ, for example, from the millions of Americans convinced that they are being abducted nightly by aliens? I have just entered up a piece on the social psychology of Christianity: Psychology
Mr Buckner is absolutely right when he states the church should address these issues head on with a true sensitivity & intellectual understanding of where the other side (Mr Buckner) is coming from instead just dimissing it out right as having no credibility. I agree with Mr Buckner that the Church can only benefit from the truth by acknowledging the legitimacy of his questions by answering not with emotional outpourings and the same old party line cliche’s, but with respect & honesty.
Which of the 30,000, though, is the church? As I asked above, who is to be believed? The simple answer has to be, none! If God has no better method of getting his salvation message across, I would say that everyone is better assuming that it is not God’s message. It is a way of keeping a class of confidence tricksters in a comfortable, and, today, even a luxurious existence.
My faith is based upon what I have heard—the testimonies & eyewitness accounts of the Apostles & others of this time period—the testimonies of others who have come to Christ past and present and finally my own personal conversion experience coupled with the personally proven & tested reliability of God’s word as it has pertained to my life over the years.
Can I sell you a used car? Only $500! A snip! Certified by Paul the apostle himself, and I have a testimony to prove it!
Outside of that, I don’t have any other answers to prove what I know to be true. Other than that, if you would like to know the reality that I know, all I can say is in the privacy of your own thoughts, be brave, be humble and most of all be excruciatingly honest and ask God if He is real, if Jesus is real and if it is true, would He reveal it to you personally.
Now then, if I were to do any of that, I would already be confessing my insanity. If you have had this personal experience of God, why did he want to recommend Christianity at all, when it has a murderous and wicked history? Imagine yourself being tortured by the Inquisition or the witch-finders and then burnt from the feet up, tied to a stake, standing on tar barrels. Have you the imagination to do this? No one who can imagine it could possibly be a Christian. That is why Christianity is Satanic. Any good God could never have allowed such cruelty at all, and especially in his own name.
In conclusion, based upon my own church experience over the past twenty some odd years, it’s not hard to imagine what the final straw must have been for Mr Buckner, but I suspect God is not done with him just yet because I’ve been there.
I do not know the answer to this, but Buckner’s list of contradictions is logic and few Christians are logical. Christianity appeals to emotional people. Read my piece on social psychology. Christianity is a man-made fraud perpetuated on humanity for 2000 years. It would be the conspiracy to end them all if it were not already in the line of the conspiracy foisted on the world as Judaism.
Christians have predictable “answers” to logical questions, but they are fake answers because convinced Christians like yourself do not believe through logic. If, though, Christianity had not been the accepted religious form we have, it is reasonable to think that you would never have been a Christian. If you had been born in India you would have been a born again Hindu, in Pakistan, a born again Moslem, in Japan, a born again Buddhist, or whatever. Your believe, in other words, might come to you as a revelation of some sort but it required your own social conditioning first. Christianity as a church, which you reject as merely religion, was therefore necessary for your own conversion.
You sound an intelligent man or woman, as many Christians who care to speak to me through this medium are, which makes it all the more surprising to me that they are so gullible. I suppose gullibility is independent of intelligence, though I think the two should be inversely related. The point is that socially adjusted people often chose a religious lifestyle because they are good. It is not that religions make people good. Religions offer themselves as the place for good people and not surprisingly, good people join up. Good people are honest and trusting. Unfortunately, the confidence tricksters and shysters see them as easy meat, the reason why religions began in the first place, and they are in there with them, and so it goes on.
True Christianity is defined by the basic Gospel message of Jesus—in a nutshell, anything other than the blood of Jesus as a means of salvation is a false religion. You will find that even with all the division most Christians agree on this.
How do you and other religions know this, and why would an almighty person chose such a barbaric way of establishing a true religion? If an almighty person thought it was necessary for everyone to think the same thing, he could make us do it without a bead of metaphorical sweat on his metaphorical brow. He could burn it into each one of our hearts, as, presumably, you think he has done to you, but why should he pick an institution with such an evil history to save his sheep? They are not his sheep but the sheep of the evil men who profess to know what God thinks. Every Christian seems to think they know what God thinks even if other Christians are wrong. I say again—the only safe thing to believe is that you are all wrong.
The point of being a Christian is not about being better than the rest of humanity (we all know where that leads and has often led in the past)—it’s about having a personal relationship with God the Father through faith in Jesus Christ. It’s about the renewing of one’s mind with the character of God/Christ and allowing God to work in your life.
If it is not about being better than average human beings but simply about having a personal delusion, what purpose does Christianity serve in practice in society?
As far as the question of scholarship on the crucifixation—I will take more care and investigate further. What I accepted as correct teaching was that Jesus was crucified on a Wednesday (daytime—Passover eve if you will) and resurrected on Saturday morning (Sabbath). The Jewish day is from sunset to sunset and Christ was taken down from the cross before the evening of the Passover day began. Wednesday the first day—Wednesday eve the first night. Thursday—the second day—thursday night the second night. Friday the third day—Friday eve the third night. Saturday morning—still the third day and when the tomb was discovered to be empty. Thus three days & three nights. Of couse if you bring the calendar into question—it’s all up for grabs.
I obviously do not know what peculiar sect you belong to, but my understanding of Christianity is that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, whence we celebrate Good Frday. He arose before the women got to the tomb on Sunday, whence we celebrate Easter Sunday. Christians realize that this is not three days and nights but claim it is three days counting inclusively—Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
I have a special request. I sincerely would like to know what you believe in—what is your perception of existance, purpose (if any)? I would like to know your story—do you have something posted on the web that I can access?
Take a look at adelphiasophism.com
I introduce the Christianity pages with a personal introduction. It is often helpful to read a book from the beginning.
You are factual about the issues you bring up and I don’t know if I have a logical answer for all these questions. However, the thing that I would be careful of, is trying to view the existance of God through a finite mind. God will never be logical according to our human carnal intellect & reasoning(even though we are his creation). However, there is another element or dimension of true Christianity that you have not addressed—which I would like to present to you the next time.
Why have only Christians been blessed with an infinite mind? The truth is that Christians reject their brains as the work of Satan because it makes them think that the lies they are fed by supposed ministers, priests and prophets of God might be just that—lies. Frankly, if I were to accept that God created me, then I should have to accept that he did so with a brain, and the brain must have had a purpose. To turn round when your brain cries out, FOOL! FOOL! and accuse it of being Satanic is an insult to God, but Christians like to believe the commandments of men, not God.
I want to understand what it is you think you know that discredits the Gospel and whether or not the faith that I have upheld for so many years can withstand the acid test of the truest & sincerest secular intellect.
Faith is for fools, as I said in my previous reply. God gave you a brain, in your own belief, so he must have expected you to do something with it, but instead you believe crooks and tricksters who say to you that you must not use it because it creates doubt. Perhaps the doubt is God trying to tell you something important, but you are not allowed to listen!
Upon reading your crucifixion date material which I admit is hard for me to wade into and completely understand—I’m not sure if your are agreeing or disagreeing with the Gospel accounts of Jesus eating the Passover meal with his disciples Wednesday evening—crucifed Thursday morning—interred just before sundown Thursday evening (Sabbath preparation day)—untouched in the tomb Thursday evening through the Sabbath—resurrected on Sunday morning the first day of the Jewish week. Are the three days & three nights and the rising from the dead on the third day reconciled here or conflicted—is this the issue that you believe discredits the biblical account—based also on what Mr Buckner refers to as the 2 1/2 day question?
I state clearly that Jesus was crucified on 15 Nisan, Tuesday 18 March, 21 AD. Jesus hung on the cross three days as was normal and was interred on Friday so as not to pollute the sabbath. On Sunday morning the tomb was found empty and the credulous disciples thought he had risen as the first fruit of the dead.
1. Per your response about the book of 2 Peter, who do you consider to be reputable biblical scholars that they all would admit 2 Peter is pseudepigraph & written 100 years after the fact? My initial research into the matter shows that biblical scholars place 2 Peter sometime between 65 & 68 AD. They admit in recent centuries that it’s genuineness has been challenged by many scholars. However, as biased as you think Christian biblical scholars may be, none of the detractors of the books of Peter have been able to definitively discredit the authenticity of either book. Are you claiming that only non-christian biblical scholars are reputable?
Correct. Christian scholars have a Christian agenda. They seek to prove Christianity. Some are worse than others in their determination to lie, but they all are liable to, so none can be trusted when they come up with conclusions favourable to Christian interpretation. When they come up with contrary conclusions they can be believed because it is perverse to deliberately come to conclusions opposite to your beliefs unless the evidence is unchallengeable.
What sources you use to defend 2 Peter as early, you do not say, but the work was not mentioned until the middle of the third century, and fathers of the church like Eusebius did not trust it as original. Even M R James did not think it could be earlier than 100 and 125 was more likely, but most scholars put it at 140 and even that is probably pushing it as early as they dare. See Peake’s Commentary or any good biblical commentary. Evangelical ones are the most phony.
2. You state that Christians always have predictable answers to logical questions—could you please give some specific examples.
How many examples do you want? Among the best examples is the Christian response to the absence of any reliable evidence for Christian beliefs. “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is their mantra. It shows that Christians are gullible, uncritical and frankly stupid. Absence of evidence obviously is evidence of absence. What they perhaps mean is absence of evidence is not proof of absence, but Christian apologists are keen to confuse in the minds of their credulous converts the distinction between proof and evidence. Sadly most simple believers think that the mantra “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” means absence of evidence is evidence of presence.
3. Am I to understand that human intelligence/logic/science is your sole basis for determing truth?
What basis for truth do you have? Can I verify it? If I cannot, then how is it true?
