>>34535662
Christianity is derivative and descendant of Second Temple Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Greco-Roman & Hellenistic Philosophy and Cults of Mithras, Isis, and Dionysus. Your "holy book" is changed in whatever way the ruling class of the day sees fit and is a tool to control the masses into behaving favourably for the rich to stay rich.

>>34535695
well if God really created the universe, he would set precursors in the world so that the Theology and conditions for Christ would be there

>>34535662
I mean, Jesus wasn't even white, and that's only the first of many lies about him.

>>34535704
>he would set precursors in the world so that the Theology and conditions for Christ would be there
Why would he condemn the masses before christ to sin then? Why would he allow the primordial sin of eve and the apple?

If God wants to stop suffering but can't, he is not all-powerful.
If God can stop suffering and wants to, but doesn't know it's happening, He is not all-knowing.
If God knows about the suffering and can stop it, but chooses not to, He is not all-loving.

>>34535662
>Was Jesus really the Son of God?
No.
>And did he conquer death,
No.
>cleanse all our sins?
No.

>wat u think anons?
I think you should realise that God is just Santa Claus for grown-ups and move on.

>>34535740
>If God wants to stop suffering but can't, he is not all-powerful.
this has already been deboonked. Free Will can not exist if he is all controlling.
Can you stop giving Dawkings Reddit Atheist posts
>>34535739
it was pre-Arab invasions Levant which was White. Just look up Hittites

>>34535662
>Was Jesus really the Son of God?
Yes, but it's important to keep in mind that the goal of Christianity is to become a Son of God as Christ was. Sonship is something you aspire towards. Christ perfected it, which means he lost his identity in it and became it. Sonship through perfect participation is indistinguishable from Sonship by birth, because at the highest level it must be said that Logos himself set the causes and conditions necessary for that Sonship to take place, thereby incarnating himself in the form of Jesus.

>And did he conquer death
Everyone who ceases to fear death and lives in God conquers death.

>cleanse all our sins
He showed you how not to sin, but you still have to obey the commandments and live by Christ's precepts. No genuine Christian has ever said that Christ died for you in a transactional sense, thereby freeing you from the responsibility of continual self-abnegation.

It helps a lot to read the works of the desert saints. They were very rigorous, had level heads and never believed in anything blindly. Understanding them transforms faith from something performative and uncertain into something true, genuine and foundational.

>>34535695
>Your "holy book" is changed in whatever way the ruling class of the day sees fit
Moron, it was exclusively written and copied by monks, who lived in fear of the commandment that they will be banished to hell if "one jot or tittle [tiny punctuation mark]" is omitted or added. Even the jewish scribes lived by the same principle, which is why ancient texts from the old testament from thousands of years ago are the exact same as what's in the Bible today.

>>34535739
>Jesus wasn't even white
He was. The original inhabitants of the Levant had fairer skin than the arabs of today. They were closer to Greeks and Iranians in complexion. Arabs only came centuries after Jesus with Mohammed's conquests.

>>34535773
The "changed in whatever way the ruling class of the day sees fit and is a tool to control the masses" is especially ridiculous considering the ruling class has always had a deep hatred for religion since it has the tendency to make people uncontrollable through physical force or greed. Christianity was illegal in its earliest days specifically because its followers weren't afraid of becoming martyrs if it meant following their principles. The leviathan of government has always hated religion and sought to undermine it at every turn, because they know full well that a man can't serve two masters and they want to be the master that people choose to follow.

>>34535662
>Was Jesus really the Son of God?
Yes, and so are you.
>And did he conquer death
Yes, physical reality is an illusion. Once one fully understands this fact then they realize death is also an illusion.
>cleanse all our sins?
A sin isn't something you do. Evil deeds and evil rewards are merely the symptom of the disease. Sin is a state of ignorance. You'll only really be free of ignorance when you achieve the above mentioned state. The only way to achieve this state is complete unity with the will of God.

>"but St. Paul said Christians are free of sin!" I hear someone shouting
To paraphrase Confucius: "I have many men tell me that they are wise and virtuous, but I have not met one who could go a whole year without sinning. Even a single month would be quite impressive."

>>34535753
>>34535778
Well, I stand corrected. The more you know.

>>34535753
>Hurr durr, muh free will
And why does God think that the free will of evil people is more important than the free will of good people?

If an innocent person is murdered, that person does not *want* to be murdered. So the free will of the *victim* is being violated. God has a simple, binary choice: if He intervenes, he preserves the free will of the innocent victim at the cost of violating the free will of the murderer; if He doesn't intervene, he preserves the free will of the murderer at the cost of violating the free will of the innocent victim. In both cases, one person's free will is preserved and one person's violated; so God's choice comes down to which of the two people's free wills is the more important and valuable. And God ALWAYS decides that the murderer's free will is more important than the innocent victim's.

So, this can't be about valuing free will. It can only be about God valuing murderers more than victims. What does that tell you about Him?

>>34535740
The answer to this is that you're causing your own suffering. God can't create suffering, but you can with your own beliefs and behavior. This should be obvious to anyone who has ever gotten over anything in their lives by a change of attitude. The same scenario can completely devastate one person, while leaving another unphased. If suffering came from outside of the self, this wouldn't be possible. So, in reality, suffering is a mechanism that exists to help you avoid foolishness so that you may become wise. Suffering can only exist where there's a deficiency of wisdom, meaning your own foolishness is the only thing that makes suffering possible. It has to be this way, and it's good that it's this way.

>>34535773
So the version of the bible that includes unicorns is correct? Or the one that says there is "treacle in Gilead"? Or the version where the seventh commandment reads "Thou shalt commit adultery"? They're all infallible?

>>34535755
This guy gets it. Not sure about the Logos stuff, but his message is correct.

Jesus is the son of God as proclaimed by the bible. It may help to not stress so much about the literal interpretation of this statement (although it is important) but instead to consider the teachings of Jesus, who is the embodiment of God on earth.

John 14:6 - "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

A wise man once told me the Holy Spirit (Jesus) exsists in all of us. The son of God lives with you Anon, and through his teaching you can become close to God.

>>34535823
having agency is the prerequisite of being a person. also you are confused about the difference between negative and positive freedom/will. Read your own argument slowly it is incoherent, maybe ask chat to help you
>>34535755
i dont fear death. It would be a release. Right now I have no desire even for striving after any laws. The world is dead to me and I have a destructive urge towards it
>>34535796
but i am ignorant about everything really. What do I know? just a walking sin....

>>34535662
He was a son of god, just as all of us are. We are not born with or in "sin."

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>>34535778
Oh, bullshit. Pic related was a typical face at the time. And Jesus looked typical, otherwise it wouldn't have been necessary for Judas to point him out.

>>34535823
>So the free will of the *victim* is being violated
No, it's not. That isn't what free will means. Free will means simply that, the freedom to will. The victim has the freedom to desire not to be murdered, but the victim does not have the freedom to actually not be murdered, for the same reason the victim does not have the freedom to magically make himself a millionaire or a dinosaur. Having a free will doesn't mean having the freedom to change reality as you please. It simply means being in control of your will, your loves, your desires. The victim in this case is primarily a victim of his own misuse of his will, because he wills not to die in a situation where he must die. If the victim were a good and wise man, he would align his will with reality so that they're concurrent. Which is to say, he would cease to fear death and accept his fate as a necessity.

That isn't just a Christian sentiment, either. Everyone agrees on it, from Stoics to Buddhists. The whole of life can be summed up as "learning how to draw the line between what you can control and what you can't control, and making peace with what can't be controlled". That's the one and only way for a man to become happy. Anyone who refuses to learn this lesson will be miserable, and he will have no one to blame for his misery other than himself and his refusal to change his attitude so that it aligns with reality.

>>34535843
>having agency is the prerequisite of being a person
Yes, and God takes away the agency of victims to preserve the agency of murderers.

>maybe ask chat to help you
That's an interesting way to admit that you aren't capable of arguing against what I said yourself, but thank you for conceding, however grudgingly.

>>34535854
You can define free will in that way if you wish, but then it doesn't help you with the Problem of Evil.

>>34535839
Logos is just the Greek word for "Word", but it also meant logic, or cause and effect. It's Christ in his most primal form as the begotten Son, even before becoming Jesus the Christ.

>>34535868
Yes, it does. For the very reasons I explained. The victim in your murder example is pained by his own beliefs about death being a fearful event. He isn't pained by the death itself, because death is not a fearful event. Therefore, he is the cause of his own suffering. Therefore, God is not the cause of his suffering.

It may also help to understand that evil is a privation, not an essence. Saying that God is responsible for evil is like saying that the sun is responsible for shadows. Shadows are just the absence of light, and evil is just the absence of good. Evil can only exist in the mind of someone who has turned away from God. Meaning God isn't the source at all, on the contrary he's the source of all Good exclusively.

>>34535843
>The world is dead to me
That's a good first step, even if it feels bad right now. Christianity is about dying to the world so that you can become reborn in God. What this looks like in practice is withdrawing your care and concern for worldly things, and dedicating yourself to spiritual things instead. When your focus becomes your own moral improvement, everything else falls into place, because there's no situation that doesn't provide you the opportunity to exercise the virtues. If you're surrounded by unpleasant people, that's your cue to exercise patience. If you lose all your belongings, that's your cue to exercise detachment. If you meet somebody who demands much of your help, that's your cue to exercise compassion. When you truly care about becoming better for God's sake, every new trial becomes something to be thankful for, especially with the knowledge that these trials are sent by God.

>and I have a destructive urge towards it
This part isn't as good. Your only impulse should be to see things get better, never for them to get worse. It can be hard, but it's possible to purify those feelings with the understanding that the best way to attack sin itself is to help sinners stop sinning.

>>34535828
>God can't create suffering
Then he isn't all powerful.

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i like Jesus

sometimes people give me little crosses as a present, i've seen him a lot at raves, he talks to me when i make pleas

i don't think he's cleansed my sins because i've convinced myself i can endure my karma in this lifetime, but he says it's cool if i just want to lay them on to him

i'd rather not, wouldn't it be cool to be saved by good works? or maybe not saved but maybe just keep my soul above the discard line, i think i would like to be an able-bodied human again, at least one more time--i don't know if i'm totally done with samsara

i will let Jesus know tho!!!

>>34536045
Yes, he is, because creating suffering would be evil and evil is the lack of potency or power. Being unable to do something evil or incoherent is evidence of omnipotence, not evidence against it. God would have to step down from being all good in order to do evil, just as he would have to step down from rationality to do something irrational, and he would have to step down from truth in order to do something false. Goodness, truthfulness and rationality are all the same principle, and that principle is the only potency. Evil is the lack of that principle, which is impotence.

So basically, your objection simplified is "God can't be God unless he can stop being God", which is a nonsense statement. God is God because he cannot stop being God, and if he could stop being God he would not be God in the first place.

>>34536045
i don't know what God he could possibly be talking about he cursed women to suffer in childbirth

i think he was just masturbating

>>34535740
i'm not on your side either btw define love

>>34536114
hakadosh baruch hu can stop suffering at any time by pulling the plug btw, that is trivial

he is all loving because he does not

>>34535662
Jesus was real, oh yes. I watched as Pontius sentenced him. I was the bird in the rose garden, and I saw the whole argument between him and Kaiyapha of the sandhedrin.
The crowds were deafening. They threw dates and gold coins.

>>34535695
>Christianity is derivative and descendant of Second Temple Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Greco-Roman & Hellenistic Philosophy and Cults of Mithras, Isis, and Dionysus.
These are all derivative of the Proto Indo European mythos anon.

>>34535740
These are all misunderstandings and mistranslations.

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>>34535879
> "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God."
This has to be one of the most profound statements ever made. Especially when you read Genesis 1.

>>34535773
>it was exclusively written and copied by monks, who lived in fear of the commandment that they will be banished to hell if "one jot or tittle [tiny punctuation mark]" is omitted or added.
>>34536177
>These are all misunderstandings and mistranslations.

Pick one, both can't be true.

>>34536195
Yeah, understanding that God is Truth and that Christ is Reason really puts a lot of important theological points into perspective and causes things to start clicking. Another equally valid way of looking at it that helps, since Truth is synonymous with Love, is that God is Love and Christ is the love of Love. Because what is reason other than the love of truth, and what is truth other than unadulterated goodness?

>>34536210
>Yeah, understanding that God is Truth and that Christ is Reason
This is the reverse of what it says.
Christ claims to be literal Truth in John 14:6
> “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Which would make perfect sense. You can't come to Reason except through Truth.
This is important because Reason and Truth are not synonymous. Lies are entirely rational.

>>34536234
They're not synonyms, but they are distinctly one. Which is to say, that Truth's existence necessarily begets Reason's existence. Truth can't exist without Reason because Truth's existence inherently begets Reason, and Reason can't exist without Truth. That's what's meant by that passage, and that's why Christ is God's begotten Son and not his created Son. The Church fathers are very strict and distinct on all of this, because this is the same rationale that establishes the Trinity.

>Lies are entirely rational
Only from a materialistic perspective, but materialism itself is never rational, because the material world isn't good in itself. Or another way of putting it is that Christ, which is reason, is in all of us, and we abuse Christ any time we use our rationality to pursue love of the self rather than love of the Father.

>>34535662
Haysoos is the Puerto Rican delivery boy for the market down the street.