“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Doesn't determinist theory suggest that we live in the best of all possible worlds?

Everything came from that which went before it so although we seem to be trapped by background or history and we're all just playing out individual parts in a never ending story we can still make the right choices in the end?

We cut out lead in petrol and that made a big difference to air quality so we can do it if we agree to try, we can make a difference.

That of course is the rub. Agreement amongst differing tribes or groups all with competing or rival claims usually proves impossible so we're stuck where we are with little change.

Nature still triumphs in the end as the poor people of both Haiti and Japan have discovered but I still say we can do better. Success is 10% talent 90% effort.

It's the 90% effort alas, I'm always having trouble with.

[House of Usher]

I do hope most of the conspiracy theories I read about are true as it turns the world into a wonderful poorly-written spy novel with badly thought through sci-fi overtones.

I also hope that the Jesus from the Bible is completely true, and thererfore the rest of the OT, as that makes the world a silly place.

But I fear I'll just have to continue working 9-5 for many more years, pay my taxes, avoid crime and die at the end of it all.

Reveal yourselves soon alien overlords/secret cabal/second coming of Jesus.

Make the world "special"

You sound like Max Weber's cynical twin from a parallel universe!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber#Rationalisation

(N.B. - Jesus is NT, not OT)

[House of Usher]

Doesn't determinist theory suggest that we live in the best of all possible worlds?

What is determinist theory? I'm familiar with 'the best of all possible worlds' as a belief extolled by Leibniz and ridiculed by Voltaire in his picaresque comic travelogue, Candide.

Determinism is a Christian belief peculiar to certain branches of Protestantism (e.g. Calvinism), is it not? Therefore it's something of a 'subscribers only' offer/your mileage may vary.

[Dunk!]

Yeah, I should have said "And therefore make the Old Tasty Mint true as well".

Knew my view would be covered somewhere.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

http://www.determinism.com/

Science seems to point in the right direction if you can get over the free will bit. Not very comforting perhaps but there are lots of people who believe in the counter argument that free will does exist and we're not Genetic robots with delusions of grandeur.  

[Eric Plumrose]

He was real.

Good grud, what despicable cabal of fucking lunatics and premeditated shite-mongers are Wikipedia allowing to write stuff under their name these days?

He wasn't real.

SBT

Given that 'Jesus' (or rather 'Yeshua') was a common name centuries before and several decades after His supposed birth, I don't see why it's so hard to believe someone claiming to be the Jewish Messiah could have existed. I should think it likely there was a tabernacle-load of would-be Messiahs who happened to have the same name.

It's the claims made during the PR assault of a certain young Turk that are impossible to prove.

[The Legendary Shark]

The problem with personages such as Jesus seems to be that so much time has passed and so many things have been written since his lifetime that it's virtually impossible to be sure of anything. The core message of "be good to one another" seems just about the only useful thing to be gleaned from the whole bloody mess, imho.

[locustsofdeath!]

The problem with personages such as Jesus seems to be that so much time has passed and so many things have been written since his lifetime that it's virtually impossible to be sure of anything.

Sounds like 9/11 conspiracy theories to me.

[SmallBlueThing]

Given that 'Jesus' (or rather 'Yeshua') was a common name centuries before and several decades after His supposed birth, I don't see why it's so hard to believe someone claiming to be the Jewish Messiah could have existed. I should think it likely there was a tabernacle-load of would-be Messiahs who happened to have the same name.

It's the claims made during the PR assault of a certain young Turk that are impossible to prove.

It doesn't matter whether a random person called 'Jesus' was living at the time in Bethlehem (but show me evidence one was!)- it's whether he did the magic tricks. If there is no proof he did the magic, then I'd say that the evidence is very strongly stacked that the magic never happened, and the stuff we KNOW about how the world and universe was created is correct. Ie) that's there's no magic, just as there's been no similar magic in the intervening 2000 years, and just as there was no magic in the 2000 years before that. Or before that. The entire point of Wiki pages like that is to fool the gullible into questioning the rational, and to sew the seeds of doubt. A doubt that inevitably leads to schools not being able to teach evolution, being forced to give "creationism" the time of day (instead of being closed down for even considering it) and fundies some puerile "evidence" with which to argue.

The Jesus myth is a story, designed to keep a small group of people in line thousands of years ago. Just like the Robin Hood myth is a story, designed to give another small group of people (the English) hope, several hundred years ago. Of the two, I'd rather follow the example of Robin!

SBT

[House of Usher]

It doesn't matter whether a random person called 'Jesus' was living at the time in Bethlehem (but show me evidence one was!)- it's whether he did the magic tricks.

I disagree. You can separate agnosticism about the existence or non-existence of Jesus from belief or disbelief in his divinity, and from atheism.

Whether or not 'he did the magic tricks' is a separate issue from the other questions about whether or not he was the son of a carpenter, he created a scene in the temple, he told parables, he hung out with fishermen, prostitutes and louche types, he delivered the sermon on the mount, or was crucified. There is nothing among that lot I find implausible, which is not to say that any or all of it must be true.

I'm sufficiently secure in my atheism that I don't feel the need to deny all the bits of the Old and New testaments that aren't supernatural as well as the bits that are. I don't feel the need to deny that the Romans ever occupied Judaea, for example, or that crufixion was one of their favoured methods of execution.

[The Legendary Shark]

I once saw a BBC documentary called, if  remember correctly, "Did Jesus Die?" which suggested that Jesus was actually a Buddhist and is buried in India (I think, or Kashmir or somewhere like that).

[SmallBlueThing]

But Ush, the entire fictional life of Jesus is entirely based around the fact he was "the Son of God", born of a supernaturally-impregnated human woman in a stable, to which were guided wizards by a magic star, then grew up to do supernatural tricks including raising the dead, walking on water and pulling magic food out of nowhere. Eventually he was murdered and raised himself from the dead before flying up to space on a magic cloud. Take that away, and it's not Jesus. To use a literary term, you've lost the dramatic center of the story.

Since all of that is patently untrue, whether anyone was holding sermons on mounts or not is irrelevent.

Considering so much of the Bible is provably bollocks, I see no reason to give anything other than the bits we can prove (the scene setting, if you like, including Roman occupations and murder-methods) the benefit of the doubt. Like I say- where is the evidence that there was a man called Jesus sermonising anything?

I know what you're arguing, but I don't agree.

SBT

[The Legendary Shark]

In Islam, Jesus (Arabic: عيسى; `Īsā) (pbuh) is considered to be a Messenger of God and the Messiah who was sent to guide the Children of Israel (banī isrā'īl) with a new scripture, the Injīl or Gospel.

Like all prophets in Islam, Jesus is considered to have been a Muslim (i.e., one who submits to the will of God), as he preached that his followers should adopt the "straight path" as commanded by God. Islam rejects the Christian view that Jesus was God incarnate or the son of God, that he was ever crucified or resurrected, or that he ever atoned for the sins of mankind. The Qur'an says that Jesus himself never claimed any of these things, and it furthermore indicates that Jesus will deny having ever claimed divinity at the Last Judgment, and God will vindicate him.[5] The Qur'an emphasizes that Jesus was a mortal human being who, like all other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God's message. Islamic texts forbid the association of partners with God (shirk), emphasizing a strict notion of monotheism; i.e., God's divine oneness (tawhīd).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_Islam

[M.I.K.]

On the east coast of China there's a city called Peng Lai. The area has legends of a magical mountain, on top of which lived some immortals. Story's probably rubbish. No such mountain.

However, this doesn't stop a non-existent mountain appearing out of nowhere off the coast of Peng Lai on rare occasions. It's even been captured on video a number of times. It may just be a mirage, but it's still kind of there and is the most likely candidate for the basis of the myth.

Even the most fanciful stories can have a basis in fact.

[GordonR]

101 ways to know when a discussion is dead.

#87:  When anyone starts regurgitating chunks of stuff from Wikipedia, as if any of it actually means anything.