Body of Christ; blood of Christ

Debate Room
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I’d like to outline some remarks to motivate an argument of sorts.

It seems we cannot agree on the existence of the historical Jesus. However, Christians rely on his literal existence as a testimony of their faith.

What the Gospels tell us is that this supposed man came into the world and when he was baptized by John, he understood in that moment that he was the son of God come to save mankind from sin and death.

Now, the life he is supposed to have lived after that reckoning was filled with acts of compassion and acts of righteousness. Jesus was the first documented man to have claimed to come to the world in the name of compassion and righteousness (if we can assume for the moment that he indeed lived).

Jesus calls himself the son of man and the son of God interchangeably. It appears that this man recognized a certain divinity within him, but also identified as a human being.

Assuming he lived, he is the first of our kind to have made a claim to divinity on the basis of pure godly righteousness. His short ministry embodied the principle of compassion. Indeed, the story of his life seems to personify Jesus as the embodiment of compassion in human flesh.

None of this matters if we cannot have personal access to the divinity of Jesus in this very life time. To “believe” in Jesus is to recognize that out there in the universe the principles of compassion and righteousness have always been embodied by this “Christ”.

What interests me is that the embodiment of compassion which we are supposed to have access to in this life is depicted in the gospels exactly as we might expect. All of his words and actions point to his inherent divinity. And if he didn’t live, it doesn’t really matter, because the divinity of Christ is still accessible to any living being.

In the sense that the divinity of Christ has always been around (ready made to be understood and accepted by anyone living) it strikes me as odd that in this one episode of history a man comes along who is recorded as having emulated that pre-existing divinity.

It would be less surprising if the story of Christ had been told many times before in many other places. It does not seem logical to me that the story could have been kept a secret for so many years. And that is why I am personally persuaded by the historical accuracy of the life of Jesus.

The myth of Jesus was only told once. But his divinity seems to have existed since the dawn of man.

It is simply too unrealistic for me to assume that the personage of the historical Jesus would have lived and died breathing compassion and righteousness in the way that he did and not be the first to claim full rights to the very divinity of the Christ we have access to in this life.

My question for atheists is: why do you reject the divinity of Christ? Why have you not seen the compassion and righteousness of the man Jesus for your selves? What stops you from being a witness to his grace and mercy?

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The complete nonsense of such a being existing, for one.

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You think it’s nonsense that a man might embody the principles of compassion and righteousness?

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Not what I said, don’t try disingenuousness as a debate tool. You’ll get called on it.

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Fair enough. Why is it complete nonsense that such a being might exist (a being who I’ve described as fully compassionate and fully righteous - not sure exactly who you’re referring to?)?

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I don’t have to disprove any suggest critter, you make the claim, you provide the proof. And quoted works of very dubious authenticity will be ignored.

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The book isn’t necessary. All that is necessary is to acknowledge the principle of righteousness. My claim is that the existence of righteousness implies a being like Jesus. The Bible just happens to be an accurate depiction of such a being. Accurate enough and singular enough to be oddly coincidental given the nature of the Christ.

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I’ve got to duck out to get some sleep. :wink:

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There have been many enlightened people in many different cultures over the centuries.

One of my favorite examples is a guy named Nunuku Whenua.

The Maori of New Zealand were cannibals and very warlike. Some of them left around 1500 CE to Chatham Island and Pitt Island, which is about 500 miles from New Zealand.

It was during a war between these former Maori when Nunuku Whenua (a boat captain, bas-relief artist, and high-ranking chief of the Hamata tribe) stood between these two warring factions, raised his hands, and said: “Enough! From this moment forward, there will be no murder, no war, and no cannibalism. Anyone who violates this law will have their bowels rot in their belly.”

And he worked to change his culture almost overnight into a society of pacifists with a philosophy predicated on the value of all human life. These people were called the Moriori.

And Captain Whenua did this without religion, although we can debate this because his curse to anyone who disobeyed this law certainly has a supernatural element to it.

Also, it should be noted that the Moriori were almost exterminated (in the 1800’s) by their warlike Maori cousins when the Maori found out about their existence from European sailors.

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As is shown so often by believers.

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I disagree, Christ was just one among the other radical preachers of the time, and his teaching especially on the moral side look like a syncretism of confucius, buddha, india philosophies etc.
There are some scholars that tell us that since basically from the gospel we do not know what happend to Christ from boy age to roughly 30 years old, he could have traveled east to the partian empire where he was exposed to Zoroastrian religion, confucius and buddha teachings etc and he came back to palestine to preach a kind of wild mix of things bound together by some judaism. Anyway, what we take for granted is that Jesus founded the christian religion that is not true at all, St. Paulus highjacked his teachings and founded Christianity, otherwise today Christians would have less skin on their penises and would not eat pork or shrimps

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Well the existence of someone with a fairly common enough name, being executed in not uncommon fashion for political prisoners of that period, doesn’t objectively evidence they would have been anything but human of course, whereas him not existing at all kills christianity stone dead.

This is not even the “first hurdle” of their religion’s claims, and there is only scant evidence to for this.

Is anonymous unevidenced hearsay, so the lowest possible bar set, for the largest of all possible claims. How would one justify disbelieving all other religions if one set this low a bar for credulity, the bias is too manifest to ignore?

Documented? Not one word was documented about him, all we have is secondhand (at best) hearsay, from anonymous sources.

Why would we do this, if our goal is the truth?

No one knows what Jesus said or did not say, if indeed he existed at all. Even were anyone able to establish this much, why would any objective reader lend credence to a bare claim? Let alone for anything supernatural, when no one can objectively demonstrate it is even possible?

No it doesn’t, and even if we knew for a certainty he thought this about himself, or others thought it, from an epoch of extreme ignorance, superstition and credulity, it gets a resounding “so what?”

Again I’d have to disagree, whilst it is on display, the character depicted also claimed to want to fulfill all of old testament law, the contradiction is palpable.

I don’t agree, since a) there are plenty of similar myths and legends, but even were it the first one, it would not in any way lend any objective weight to the claim, why would it?

Why are you assuming anything was kept secret, and for how long, and what principle of logic do you imagine would be violated by this happening?

Hmm, there are similar myths of course. Myths involving deities fathering children with humans is not unique, nor was this one the first.

No it isn’t, the question is what is your criteria for belief, and paradoxically for disbelief. Someone would need to objectively demonstrate that a deity is possible, and then that it exists, until they can do this, I need ask myself nothing, beyond that question above.

Those are human traits of course, so even were I to accept someone existed, and they satisfied my own notion of those adjectives, this does not remotely suggest they were anything but human. Why would it?

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What a load of bull. So you’re going off of the word of anonymous authors who wrote a fan fiction?

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So rat_spit is in favor of self-righteousness. Very Christian.

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Just shaking the lemon tree guys.

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Why do you say that? The believers I’ve encounter take the Bible to be the living word of Gid. ie. indispensable

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I clearly said the book isn’t necessary. So, no. I’m not going off the work of mark Matthew luke or John. I’m going off the self evident truth that if righteousness can be established and acknowledged for what it is, it implies the existence of a being who most ideally embodies that principle.

Like all people, I am connected to a sense of righteousness. However, like all people also, I am not the person who necessarily embodies it perfectly. I make all kinds of moral mistakes.

But having accessed righteousness in and of itself, we can envisage a being who most perfectly embodies that principle. That being, coincidentally, resembles in act and word, the being depicted in the Bible.

That doesn’t mean that the Bible is true (the New Testament I mean). What it does mean is that the principles of righteousness is so compelling that a myth so powerful was created around the being who exemplified it.

Since at least the Bible is either true or the myth is either divinely inspired by that righteous being, it follows that a belief in Jesus is quite natural for any one with any sense of compassion.

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Again, morality is subjective, unless proven otherwise.

So he can only be fully rightous in his own mind and not to everyone else.

And i don’t think dying on a cross for everyones sins and thus everyone else from the on, be born in a debt to some cosmic mage is very compassionate.

Personally i’d say thats a dick move.

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Thats your opinion. Couldn’t I just as easily say “morality is objective unless proven otherwise.”

We’re all more or less the same. We all have five senses. We all require the same things to survive. Our desires are different. Our paths in life are different.

But, this term “morality” has to be defined. Some of us have a conscience and some of us don’t. The very meaning of having a conscience is that when we hurt people in one way or another we’re filled with shame or anxiety.

And those of us with a conscience obtain a clean conscience by trusting in ourselves and acting out of righteousness. We all obtain a clean conscience in the same way. So the variables which condition the weight on our conscience are the same. We’re all weighed down by grief for the same reasons.

There is only a finite number of human behaviours. And all of them have consequences. Those of us with a conscience either suffer or benefit from these behaviours (depending on which are right and which are wicked).

The people without “morals” - without a conscience aren’t affectted by the consequences of their actiojs.

So when someone says “morality is subjective” and points to the morality of the Nazis as a clear example of how our survival in society depends on a fluctuating scale of what is right and wrong, they are failing to keep in mind that some people don’t have morals and don’t have a conscience.

No. The perfection of righteousness is intuitive to everyone. We all know what a perfect person is. We just fail to meet that standard because we’re imperfect. And it’s exactly because we fail to live up to the standard of full righteousness that we are capable of evil.

I don’t think he needed to die on a cross at all. It wasn’t necessary nor does it preclude him from being the embodiment of compassion. Plus, you say that as if he chose to get crucified.

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No, because everything is subjective until proven.

Disagree, we all have a conscience, though each persons is different, as is there ability or inabilty to ‘listen’ to it.

Again, you’re implying some people have no morals, yet they would argue differently.
They would argue that they have a set of korals, they just happen to be different to yours.

Hence, subjective.

Ok, well then was it morally right of Britain to blanket bomb Dresden? Or for the US to drop two nukes?

Thats incorrect, because i sure as heck don’t have any idea of what is perfect.

That implies that something is without fault, i personally don’t believe anything is.

My two year old son is absolutely wonderful and makes my world as happy as it can be.

Give him a marker and he’ll still draw on the walls, or both.

If you spoke as he did in those times, you know the consequences.

Unless he was a total fucking idiot.

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