No Bertie. He did not leave that option open to us and never meant to. To call him a great moral teacher is to entirely miss the point. He was either insane or lying or telling the truth.
Why would such a citation even exist? While Jesus was still alive he was a nobody: just another itinerant teacher in some backwater Roman province. It was only after he was executed (and supposedly resurrected) that that he perhaps became more noteworthy. And the 'cult' around him that grew only later was when people started to notice.
We only care about [Hh]im now because of what that 'personality cult' became, but then (between 1AD and 32AD) why would anyone care to write things down about him?
You are arguing there is silence when there should not be. Can you explain why you expect there to be citations?
His divinity is a matter of opinion and nothing more.
PSA:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
With regards to the idea of "no contemporary sources":
* https://historyforatheists.com/2018/05/jesus-mythicism-3-no-...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_silence
It should be noted that while Jesus was still alive he was a nobody: just another itinerant teacher in some backwater Roman province. It was only after he was executed (and supposedly resurrected) that that he perhaps became more noteworthy. And the 'cult' around that grew only later was when people started to notice.
We only care about [Hh]im now because of what that 'personality cult' became, but then (between 1AD and 32AD) why would anyone care to write things down about him?
Current consensus is that such an individual did exist:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
The belief that Jesus was a myth is the fringe theory. Tim O'Neill has a series posts breaking down how most of the points that 'Mythicists' are wrong:
* https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/
(Tim O'Neill is himself an atheist.)
> People say "what about Tacitus? Or Joseph Flavius?" but like the Gospels, these people weren't writing at the time but decades later.
So argument from silence:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_silence
O'Neill goes over this:
> What is essential to all historiographical formulations of an argument from silence, however, is that it is not the silence that is key, it is the argument that there should not be silence. The strength of this kind of argument lies in showing that there is silence in the sources where silence should not exist. Any attempted argument that does not do this or does not do it competently will immediately fail. And here is where the naïve Mythicist argument always collapses.
[…]
> Another illustrative example can be found in our earliest references to the Carthaginian general Hannibal. As one of the greatest military commanders in the ancient world and the general who came close to defeating the Roman Republic in the Second Punic War, Hannibal (247- c. 182 BC) was justly famous in his own time and has remained so ever since. His career was also fairly long, beginning at around the age of 18 in 229 BC and spanning about 40 years until at least 190 BC. Yet, despite all this, we have precisely zero references to him in any literary source dating to his lifetime.
* https://historyforatheists.com/2018/05/jesus-mythicism-3-no-...
In the case of Jesus, he told his followers to eat him (John 6). Potentially normal lunatic stuff...when they were like "whoa wtf bro" he doubled down and kept using a word which describes teeth tearing and chewing. I don't find cannibalism to be highly moral (since it usually involves murder) so shouldn't that disqualify Jesus from being a lunatic but also a good moral teacher?
If someone needed to be entirely good to be a good moral teacher then almost nobody (if anybody) would qualify.
Moral authority is only as powerful as the believers not finding out you don't ACTUALLY believe what you are telling them to. People easily write off the Catholic Church because of the disgusting abuses Catholic authority figures have perpetrated throughout the ages. Pick and choose works with bare philosophies but Jesus isn't asking us to believe right, he's asking us to live right. You can't pick and choose living right, either you are or you aren't. If you only sometimes rob the bus station you aren't living right.
I don't really believe that. I think it's more of a continuum. And that everybody does both good and evil deeds.
Living right is acknowledging the mistakes and trying to never do that same thing again. Repeatedly robbing a bus station is quite a far cry from trying not to do evil on purpose.
To follow this lunatic you have to eat his flesh. From John 6:
> 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
> 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
> 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206&versio...
Similarly at the Last Supper, where he also instructs his followers to drink his blood:
> 27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the[b] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026&ve...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper#Institution_of_the...
Some folks (even Christians, like some Protestant denominations) believe it is meant to be symbolic, but the earliest Christians did not take it symbolically:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the...
> 37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&ve...
> 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014&versi...
It also follows that if God made the universe, and the universe has goodness in it, then God either created goodness too or he IS goodness. Darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God. Therefore, God is good.
Too bad we believers have done such a terrible and easy to criticize job of being Christlike. I can't blame anyone for saying Christianity has too much baggage for them to even want to believe.
It's clear that people are wired for worship (for those of no faith, we have celebrities). I liken it to atomic power, potentially beneficial when properly harnessed, or horribly destructive when weaponized.
No, we don't. I know this is commonly bandied about as a truism but no one actually worships celebrities in the same way, or for the same purpose, as the religious worshiping deity, except maybe serial killers.
And of course celebrities don't threaten you with eternal torture if you don't love them and do what they say, so it's definitely a bit more lighthearted engagement.
In theological terms we have an infinite capacity for desire, designed that way by God because we were created to be in communion with him, an infinite being. If you are not "filling the gap" with faith, you'll fill it with something else. If you were created to loudly proclaim the gospel, but lose faith, maybe you loudly proclaim whatever you think the world needs to know about your favorite celebrity.
Nevertheless, many irreligious people are nonetheless perfectly happy, self-actualized and fulfilled without any religion whatsoever.
As you said, many Christians struggle with depression (waves I'm on Zoloft lol) and their hearts are "filled" so what's the deal? Well, our hearts are only as full as we want them to be. Many Christians are more attached to the world than God. They'll stay up late for a football game, but ask them to stay up late praying and most of them will laugh. Also, as we believe we are body/soul composites there can be various modes depending on our Christian journey.
Our soul can be full while we are suffering martyrdom. Our soul can be barren (usually called dryness) while our body has never felt better. Life is a journey home to be with God, and sometimes we need to practice things like patience when we are tired or grumpy.
From Gods perspective, if a soul is incapable of receiving the gospel and they die without being baptized, he still wants to save that soul. Would a viable strategy be to give them a good life in spite of their ignorance, which they will see the full picture of after death, and they accept God? They won't feel the lack of God because it wouldn't help bring them closer to God.
Perhaps that's true. But for many people that's their friends, family and community rather than some kind of idol. And it's certainly not true that everyone feels the need to proclaim loudly about something (I do, but that's another matter!)
Plus, it's not like the Reformation happened out of nowhere. The Catholic Church made lots of mistakes and awful decisions for a long time before people had enough.
I'm Catholic, and my favorite devotion is Divine Mercy. One of the teachings of the devotion (direct from Jesus, according to Sister Faustina) is that what hurts him the most is when people can't accept his mercy after death. They believe their sins are greater than his mercy (which is infinite) and they send themselves to hell as a result.
Jesus wants to be merciful to all, but he also said (Matthew 5:6, Matthew 18:21-35) that those who are merciful are the ones who receive mercy.
So if everyone walked around being merciful and forgiving one another, we'd certainly be a lot better off!
I'm glad that you find solace and meaning in your faith, but you may be too close to it to realize that the Church exists to control you, not to bring you salvation.
It's a personal choice, and I respect that, but my original point is that there's an undercurrent of war to remove this choice and that gets ignored by people such as yourself because you already live in such a world and you like it.
The analogy I like to use is this: imagine if there was a revolution and somehow muslim evangelicals took charge of the government and put the state under Sharia Law. This has happened in other countries, it's not pure fantasy.
Now think about if you'd like to live in that society. I can guess what the answer might be.
Doesn't that argument apply equally to "badness" (I guess "evil" might be the more idiomatic term): if God made the universe, and the universe has badness in it, then God either created badness too or he IS badness. Therefore, God is bad.
> In Christianity, this is theologically explained as "God is good and the source of all good, his will is good and to go against his will is therefore bad"
Of course the question is why we ought to believe this as opposed to following our own moral convictions. And from my perhaps cynical perspective, this seems to be what Christians do anyway (moral views vary dramatically within Christianity): they just ascribe their own moral views to God.
Aquinas covered this in the 1200s, "Whether the supreme good, God, is the cause of evil?":
* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1049.htm#article2
> Of course the question is why we ought to believe this as opposed to following our own moral convictions.
You say slavery is bad. I say slavery is fine. You can follow your mortal convictions (and not have slaves), and I'll follow mine (and run a cotton plantation). But the two statements are contradictory, so which of us is following the "correct" one?
Of course this assumes that there is an objective moral code—which begs the question on where it would come from.
Regarding moral convictions, that one's obviously true. Everyone from Luther to Wesley were interpreting the Bible in new ways after the reformation, so it's no surprise "interpret it yourself" became people's primary strategy.
That said, for a baptized Christian, we receive the Holy Spirit (aka the Paraclete, or counselor). Christians are encouraged to read the Bible so the Holy Spirit can call those verses to mind when they are relevant to something, such as seeing a hungry person and hearing "Feed my lambs" in your heart.
So while having an authority structure is good for some, others don't need it. I described the Bible to my father in law as "the rules of the beach - follow them or you'll get kicked out of the beach. That's enough for some people to never commit grave sin, just knowing the rules. Sometimes it's more complicated than that." The Holy Spirit fills in that gap and helps guide us even when the Bible didn't explicitly say something it couldn't have known like "don't cyberbully people because it's a sin."
Of course from the outside looking in, that just sounds like "your conscience" in some respects, but your conscience affects you after an act, not before it. The Holy Spirit is our guide in this world and is the one who speaks what needs to be said as Jesus told his disciples not to worry about what they are to say to authorities when brought to court, as the Holy Spirit will give them what they should say when they get there.
Obviously people can and do ignore the Holy Spirit, but that doesn't mean he isn't still helping them.
But monotheistic religion is so bothered with God being an ultimate moral authority (beyond just being omnipotent) that it must perform some scary mental gymnastics to reconcile this, which usually goes thusly: evil and suffering are part of God's Plan. Evil serves some purpose that will be revealed in heaven or whatever, so its existence can be tolerated (when it would be inconvenient not to).
That's a dangerous place to be. Children slowly dying of cancer, or being murdered in war, for example, can't matter on some ultimate moral level because God allowed it to happen, and anyways they're all happy in heaven now. Any horrifying thing can be handwaved away by religion as not mattering, because otherwise that would mean God messed up.
Religion doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of thinking, either. Political ideology or secular morality can also condone unspeakable things "for the greater good" or because "that's just the way it is". I really think it shouldn't be some bizarre stance that all uncommon suffering is unequivocally bad, but here we are.
Aquinas gave a summary in the 1200s: Article 1. Whether God is good?; Article 2. Whether God is the supreme good?; Article 3. Whether to be essentially good belongs to God alone?
* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1006.htm
The late Michael F. Flynn wrote a decent summary of the argument in his five-part series laying out Aristotle's first way argument about the Unmoved Mover:
* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-way-some-backgrou...
* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-way-moving-tale.h...
* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-l...
* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/10/first-way-part-iii-big-...
* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/11/first-way-part-iv-casca...
The Creator also being All-good is in Part IV (Theorem 9).
The inadequacy and even brokenness of man is what necessitates a Messiah in the first place.
Or wrong. People can say untrue things without being insane or lying. Sometimes, we're just mistaken.
> Or wrong.
Buddy was literally crucified for claiming to be God:
> 61 Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”
> 62 “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
> 63 The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. 64 “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?”
* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2014&versi...
> 6 But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”
> 7 The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
* https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2019&versi...
* https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/61174/why-w...
Heck of "LOL! Just kidding guys! It was just a prank!" :)