What do you think about Jesus?

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Morality is very relative. I'm guessing that survey was before the alter-boy sexual abuse became very common public knowledge. It's hard for morality to sink lower than that The leadership does not reflect the average Christian. The leadership portrays the stereotype that Christians are strongly pro-life & against birth-control but I've been reading stuff from Catholics For Choice that says 9 out of 10 are actually pro-choice & support birth control availability. If that's true the leadership is extremely out of touch with their members.

I think Jesus was probably a real historical figure but he was not god, because there is no god. I am completely baffled by people's belief in any supernatural deity or phenomenon. It's no different, to me, than believing in Santa Claus.

I grew up Catholic so I have some knowledge of Jesus's teachings but not very in depth. Some of the things he preached, like goodness and humility are clearly good, but he also demanded that people worship him and his father (who is also him), which is very disturbing.

We can slip into ideological or religious bigotry like people often do, in regard to politics, religion, and a lot of other choices that people make in life. Even, whether to get tattoos. I am actually against tattoos, ha ha.

I recently read an autobiography of Emmanuel Swedenburg, who discovered how to calculate longitude among other things. He lived in the 1600s, a time of religious wars and controversies. It is hard to imagine now, but Catholic and Protestant used to be at war. Swedenburg has a lot to say about Christianity and specifically Lutheranism. He was pretty interesting fellow, but the controversies he instigated would still be controversies today, in 2024, and people would still call him crazy.

I don't really evaluate atheist vs. theist as a moral issue. I think God offers help. You can take it, you can also deny it. That doesn't mean you are better or worse. It does not mean you are better or inferior. You can still fall into error and folly, as Swedenburg points out, despite belief. I fall into error and folly sometimes. So, I feel this is so.

However, I think it is like whether you want to have regular checkups with the dentist or doctor. You can be fine without them. But they can also help. So, God can help too, especially in the rough patches.

I don't think God is diminished by people not believing or that he gets his feelings hurt, ha ha. That would be our projecting human traits upon the Supreme Being. I conceive of same as remote, alien, yet willing to help. We are very primitive life forms compared to the Supreme Being. Yet it is Mercy that he will help us. I need help sometimes.

He doesn't need us, that much is clear by ancient history, when we did not exist on the planet at all. It is a question of whether we want to avail ourselves of him. So, you can maybe get by without, like a lot of ancient people did, and modern people do. You can also take advantage. It is like a power outlet. You can plug in, or just go without. Maybe you are so powerful and strong, you never need the help.

Perhaps someone can explain to me how... Or why... God would have a gender?

Because he is the artificial creation of a patriarchal society?

Satan isn't real (which I'm sure you know). Even if Jesus was real the fact is that his followers did more harm to the world than good. The only good Christians ever gave to the world was false hope.

The survey(s) I saw were pretty recent. As you say, the sexual abuse was by the leadership not the followers, and the survey(s) were about the rank-and-file. I wasn't impressed with the quality of one survey, which cited voting and abstinence from recreational drugs as two of the markers of morality (and mental health if I remember right). Not exactly Public Enemy Number One or a raving maniac. Best guess, it was a propaganda exercise disguised as an impartial bona fide study, designed to make church attendance seem attractive. Excuse my off-topic rant, couldn't resist.

Utter load of BS.

Pretty much, I think. Many theologians see God as without form and therefore genderless, but in a patriarchal society, assigning maleness to God would have made him more relatable as an entity worthy of deference. Nobody would have listened to a female Jesus. So, in a nutshell, it was a marketing strategy aimed at a bunch of sexists.

Truth be told he doesn't really cross my mind

It's inventors weren't thinking outside of the basically, like a person but with special powers box. Seems like a lack of creativity.

There was more creativity on the original Star Trek series. A few of the god like beings were kinda genderless or were female

Can Hugger Orange be a god?

I think I include Hugger Orange and Bob Probert as gods within my pantheon.

Maybe Dale Earnhardt too.

In the Bible Jesus was always miraculously healing people of their disabilities. This gives the impression that being disabled is wrong or a punishment for sin.

Yep. In those dark times it doesn't seem to have occurred to them that sickness might be a case of bad luck. And their sin theory wasn't confined to your own sins, they thought you could be sick because of the sins of your parents. Punished for circumstances beyond your control - doesn't seem quite fair, does it? And what did they make of doctors, who interfered with God's plan by curing people? Unless they were all Jewish shamans or something. Come to think of it, they knew nothing of bacteria, viruses etc., so maybe nobody had ever tried material reasoning.

Actually there's at least one exception in scripture:


Of course Jesus then healed the man. So maybe that's it. I've got ASD because God has selected me as a guinea pig for a Pentecostal preacher to demo his healing skills and the glory of THE LORD. Two problems though - I don't go to church (therefore sinning and deserving to have ASD all my life), and even if I did, I don't believe in miracles (the magic doesn't work on skeptics).

Don't get me wrong. I'm convinced that the placebo effect (which is based on some kind of faith) can be remarkably effective on some ailments. But it won't fix a missing limb. And certain atheists who understand a thing or two about placebos have worked wonders. No doubt that's the Holy Spirit working through them, which is the only reason atheists ever manage to do anything decent. The apologists have an answer for everything.

I'm not a complete chronological snob though. It wasn't the fault of the ancients that they hadn't twigged science yet, and (for example) if they'd noticed that people who practised good hygiene didn't catch diseases so much, the notion of washing away the sins to avoid divine retribution would have been the best explanation they had.