Is a good atheist better then a bad christian?
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Anonymous
Agree. There’s good and bad of all kinds. Christianity does have a defined moral code though. There’s no guarantee a Christian will walk and talk it, but it’s there. The seven Christian virtues are from two sets of virtues. The four cardinal virtues are Prudence, Justice, Restraint (or Temperance), and Courage (or Fortitude). The cardinal virtues are so called because they are regarded as the basic virtues required for a virtuous life. The three theological virtues, are Faith, Hope, and Love (or Charity). Prudence: also described as wisdom, the ability to judge between actions with regard to appropriate actions at a given time Justice: also considered as fairness, the most extensive and most important virtue Temperance: also known as restraint, the practice of self-control, abstention, and moderation tempering the appetition Courage: also termed fortitude, forbearance, strength, endurance, and the ability to confront fear, uncertainty, and intimidation Faith: belief in God, and in the truth of His revelation as well as obedience to Him (cf. Rom 1:5:16:26)[21][22] Hope: expectation of and desire of receiving; refraining from despair and capability of not giving up. The belief that God will be eternally present in every human's life and never giving up on His love. Charity: a supernatural virtue that helps us love God and our neighbors, the same way as we love ourselves. Abortion, alcohol, divorce, sexual morality and celibacy, slavery, violence, wealth, and poverty, are all areas Christianity speaks of and applies Christian ethics to. |
Anonymous
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_ethics |
Anonymous
ANd all these "Christian" ethics can apply to any ethical person, with or without religion. Even "Faith" assuming it is not limited to faith in the existence of the Christian God, his son, who died so humans who believed in him could live eternally, and the holy spirit |
Anonymous
Now those ethics can apply to anyone, but when Christ walked the earth they were radical and new ideas he preached and that’s why he was hated by some and loved by his followers. People enslaved one another, had multiple wives, sacrificed children and adults, etc. Yale historian Jeroslav Pelikan wrote, "Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western Culture for almost 20 centuries. Here are some shards of his impact that most often surprise people: Children In the ancient world children were routinely left to die of exposure -- particularly if they were the wrong gender (you can guess which was the wrong one); they were often sold into slavery. Jesus' treatment of and teachings about children led to the forbidding of such practices, as well as orphanages and godparents. A Norwegian scholar named Bakke wrote a study of this impact, simply titled: When Children Became People: the Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity. Education Love of learning led to monasteries, which became the cradle of academic guilds. Universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard all began as Jesus-inspired efforts to love God with all ones' mind. The first legislation to publicly fund education in the colonies was called The Old Deluder Satan Act, under the notion that God does not want any child ignorant. The ancient world loved education but tended to reserve it for the elite; the notion that every child bore God's image helped fuel the move for universal literacy. Compassion Jesus had a universal concern for those who suffered that transcended the rules of the ancient world. His compassion for the poor and the sick led to institutions for lepers, the beginning of modern-day hospitals. The Council of Nyssa decreed that wherever a cathedral existed, there must be a hospice, a place of caring for the sick and poor. That's why even today, hospitals have names like "Good Samaritan," "Good Shepherd," or "Saint Anthony." They were the world's first voluntary, charitable institutions. Humility The ancient world honored many virtues like courage and wisdom, but not humility. People were generally divided into first class and coach. Jesus' life as a foot-washing servant would eventually lead to the adoption of humility as a widely admired virtue. Historian John Dickson writes, "it is unlikely that any of us would aspire to this virtue were it not for the historical impact of his crucifixion...Our culture remains cruciform long after it stopped being Christian." Forgiveness In the ancient world, virtue meant rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies. Conan the Barbarian was actually paraphrasing Ghengis Khan in his famous answer to the question "what is best in life?" -- To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women. An alternative idea came from Galilee: what is best in life is to love your enemies, and see them reconciled to you. Hannah Arendt, the first woman appointed to a full professorship at Princeton, claimed, "the discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth." This may be debatable, but he certainly gave the idea unique publicity. Humanitarian Reform: Jesus had a way of championing the excluded that was often downright irritating to those in power. His inclusion of women led to a community to which women flocked in disproportionate numbers. Slaves--up to a third of ancient populations--might wander into a church fellowship and have a slave-owner wash their feet rather than beat them. One ancient text instructed bishops to not interrupt worship to greet a wealthy attender, but to sit on the floor to welcome the poor. The apostle Paul said: "Now there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave or free, male and female, but all are one in Christ Jesus." Thomas Cahill wrote that this was the first statement of egalitarianism in human literature. https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1773225/amp The Pagan World Before Our Lord Jesus Christ preached the Good News of the Gospel among men, the world was submerged in a prolonged and terrible night, in which moral licentiousness, egoism, cruelty, inhumanity and oppression reigned, as history illustrates. From this picture, it cannot be surmised that all Romans, Greeks, and "barbarians" were profligates. There were minorities at variance with that situation, and they were prepared to receive the evangelical preaching with the eagerness of a castaway who finds a lifeline. Hence the rapid expansion of the Catholic Church through the Roman world, and, finally, the conversion of the Empire in the year 313 of the Christian era. [... The Pagan] gods formed a fearful and violent band of miscreants. They were adulterers, liars, thieves, oppressors and murderers guilty of patricide, matricide and fratricide. They were cruel, selfish, treacherous, slothful, false, shameless and incestuous, and included fornicators, degenerates, and paedophiles. Zeus (the Jupiter of the Romans), the chief deity of this crew, was not only a brute who practised cannibalism, devouring one of his daughters and murdering other close relatives, but he was also an uncontrollable adulterer who victimised many single and married "gods", violated his sisters and daughters-in-law, ravished his own daughter and even his mother, and who, moreover, kept a young boy whom he had abducted as a lover. Cruelty, Immorality, Oppression Slavery was such an accepted institution in the ancient world that slaves commonly made up the majority of the population. ... In Roman law there were clauses concerning slaves that sparked great cruelties. ... In Antiquity, killing was viewed with indifference, as being a natural happening in the life of peoples. The massacre of a population of a city caused neither surprise nor indignation.... In Rome, the spectacle most prized by the people was that of men dying, and the gladiator fights in Rome were occasions of pitiless slaughters. "In the morning, says Seneca, men are thrown to the lions and bears; after mid-day, they are thrown [at will] to the spectators [... which] helps us "to understand the pleasure-seeking ferocity with which the Romans vented themselves in anti-Christian persecutions," observes Daniel-Rops, ... "very rare, were spectators who manifested their disapproval." ... In that pagan environment, the situation of women was appalling. In general they had almost no rights, and were practically considered slaves of their husbands, that is, when they had the privilege of being married. The religions themselves, even the most elevated ones, led women - and naturally men as well - into great depravity. That of the Chaldeans, for example, was sinister and corrupt, featuring lubricious practices in the temples. The Phoenician religion also incited the degradation of women. ... Once a year, Athens and other cities held an event in which an enormous phallic sculpture was borne in procession. Men and women went through the streets, singing, leaping and dancing around this idol. Feminine honour was being damaged by the custom of polygamy which was generalised in many regions, while, in other places, polyandry was in force. Equally degrading was incest, especially common in Persia, but also in Greece. In India, among the cruel pagan practices spanning millennia, custom demanded that the widow be burned alongside the body of her husband. ... In Athens, to prevent partiality toward daughters in questions of inheritance, the law fell into an even greater aberration in encouraging incest to resolve such problems, even demanding the destruction of two already constituted homes, if need be. In Rome, during the era in which the Good News of Jesus Christ was being preached, the institution of the family found itself in a grave crisis. Abortion and child abandonment reached shocking proportions. The birth-rate decreased. Wealthy men preferred to remain single and surround themselves with innumerable slave women rather than subject themselves to the inconveniences of marriage. Children Before the Ail-Powerful State ... The Greco-Roman family was also totalitarian from certain perspectives. Thus, Roman law gave a dictatorial power to the pater familias. In Greece, similar laws were in vigour. The father had the right to reject his newborn son, or to sell him as a slave. He could also condemn his wife, son, daughter, or any other dweller in his house to death - the sentence being executed without delay; the State authorities did not interfere. In Sparta, comments Coulanges, "the State had the right not to tolerate that its citizens be deformed or ill-constituted. It therefore ordered the father to whom such a child was born, to make it die." According to the same author, this law was equally found in the ancient codes of Rome and even Aristotle and Plato included this practice in their legislative proposals. In Carthage and Phoenicia, children were offered in sacrifice to the idols; ... "children belong less to their parents than to the city." [Plato] What is denominated by today's press as paedophilia was largely practised in the ancient world, under the protection of law, through the influence of the pagan religions. In Greece, the sexual corruption of boys, more precisely called pederasty, was carried out as a legalised practice. Every adult male who was not a slave, had the right to practise it. Such was the custom in Persia and in other places, where it was maintained for centuries. Rome also became contaminated by the Grecian evil, to the point that many emperors procured male adolescents as lovers. Boys who were considered comely, if they had been made prisoners of war, or had been abducted or sold by their parents, were mutilated for the purpose of feeding the trafficking of eunuchs. Not even sons of the nobility escaped. In Greece - especially Athens - the victims of pederasty were not only prisoners of war, the abducted, or slaves. Any boy could become the target of the infamous desires of adult men, and the custom was to yield. If a father, endowed with a remnant of moral sensibility, desired to spare his sons this tragedy, he had to act before it happened, employing slaves, who would watch over the son like hawks. ... The schools - the highly acclaimed Academies - were places where students, from the age of 12 or even younger, became the prey of the masters. The Athenian laws went so far as to protect and encourage this practice, even regulating flirtation and "love-making" between men and boys. Greeks such as Solon, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Xenophon, Thucydides, Aeschines and Aristophanes, famous in the world of literature, the arts, philosophy and politics, practised and extolled pederasty. Greek philosophy reached the point of debating this infamous practice, without ever completely condemning it. Even Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were not exempt from this evil. ... The Greeks stooped to consider the natural relationship between man and woman as inferior to the relationship between man and boy. ... Saint Justin, in his Apologetics, ... vituperates the custom of rejected children - boys and girls - being made slaves for prostitution. The Arrival of Gospel Values The message of Jesus Christ threw the worm-eaten ancient world off balance. It censured libertinism and cruelty, and upheld the freedom to practice the good, chastity, virginity, innocence, conjugal fidelity, love of enemies, charity, abnegation, goodness toward the weak, and dignity for all human beings, created in the image and likeness of God. https://www.faith.org.uk/article/july-august-2010-the-moral-world-before-christianity So before Christ preached the Gospel, the world was a very dark and terrible place. He gave slaves and children and women dignity and worth by preaching that they too were made in the image of God. His ideas at the time were VERY RADICAL. He indeed changed the world with his life and death. |
Anonymous
Yes, the story of "Jesus" has had a big impact. People like a good story. |
Anonymous
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There are historical records of Jesus outside of the Bible. Very few people deny he was a real man who walked the earth. There would not be archeological evidence of Jesus became he was a peasant, and peasants from that time period didn’t leave a trail.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t sources outside the Bible which refer to Jesus. There are. He’s referred to in pagan, Jewish, and Christian writings outside the New Testament. The Jewish historian Josephus is especially interesting. In the pages of his works you can read about New Testament people like the high priests Annas and Caiaphas, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, King Herod, John the Baptist, even Jesus himself and his brother James. There have also been interesting archaeological discoveries as well bearing on the gospels. For example, in 1961 the first archaeological evidence concerning Pilate was unearthed in the town of Caesarea; it was an inscription of a dedication bearing Pilate’s name and title. Even more recently, in 1990 the actual tomb of Caiaphas, the high priest who presided over Jesus’s trial, was discovered south of Jerusalem. Indeed, the tomb beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is in all probability the tomb in which Jesus himself was laid by Joseph of Arimathea following the crucifixion. According to Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar at Emory University, Even the most critical historian can confidently assert that a Jew named Jesus worked as a teacher and wonder-worker in Palestine during the reign of Tiberius, was executed by crucifixion under the prefect Pontius Pilate and continued to have followers after his death. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/the-evidence-for-jesus/ |
Anonymous
Yes, everyone loves a good story. Especially if it helps control the masses. |
Anonymous
I don't want this thread to devolve into debate that is well documented elsewhere, but let's at least say that the above statement is questionable. However I don't think most atheists are really concerned if there was a real person to whom the myths of Jesus is ascribed, so I am not sure the question really adds anything of value to either side. There are, of course, mountains of evidence that the myths of the bible are found (numerous times) elsewhere in historical mythology that predates Jesus' claimed existence. |
Anonymous
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Better for whom? For one's own soul? For the community? Your question makes no sense.
People have done terrible things in the name of religion. Think of the Crusades. All those good Christians murdering infidels. And of course people have done terrible things outside of any religion. People do terrible things every day. People do good deeds every day. Most of the time neither has anything to do with religion and it doesn't even always have a bearing on whether they're a good person. |
Anonymous
Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed.[5][6][7][note 1] Reconstructions of the historical Jesus are based on the Pauline epistles and the Gospels, while several non-Biblical sources also bear witness to the historical existence of Jesus. Since the 18th century, three separate scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and developing new and different research criteria.[9][10] Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, and the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.[11][12][13][14] Historical Jesus scholars typically contend that he was a Galilean Jew living in a time of messianic and apocalyptic expectations.[15][16] Some scholars credit the apocalyptic declarations of the gospels to him, while others portray his "Kingdom of God" as a moral one, and not apocalyptic in nature.[17] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus You are absolutely wrong. |
Anonymous
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One of the most important historical references to Jesus’ crucifixion comes from Tacitus. In Annals 15.44, the historian recounts how Nero blamed the hated “Chrestians” (again, a misspelling of Christians) for the fire that devastated Rome in 64 CE. The group, he said, was founded by one called “Christ” who had been executed during the reign of Tiberius by the procurator (governor) Pontius Pilate. He described them as a suppressed group and their faith as a deadly superstition that originated in Judea and spread to Rome.
Around 175 CE, Celsus wrote a sustained attack on Christians and their founder in True Teaching. Though his original text no longer exists, much of what he wrote is contained in Origen’s response, Against Celsus (c. 250 CE). Celsus mocked the Christian belief in the virgin birth and charged that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a poor Jewish woman named Mary. Mary, he claimed, was divorced by her husband and convicted of adultery after having sex with a soldier named Panthera.3 There are non-Christian histories that document the man Christ. Among scholars of the New Testament of the Christian Bible, though, there is little disagreement that he actually lived. Lawrence Mykytiuk, an associate professor of library science at Purdue University and author of a 2015 Biblical Archaeology Review article on the extra-biblical evidence of Jesus, notes that there was no debate about the issue in ancient times either. “Jewish rabbis who did not like Jesus or his followers accused him of being a magician and leading people astray,” he says, “but they never said he didn’t exist.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/news/was-jesus-real-historical-evidence |
Anonymous
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Why The Pre-Jesus Mythologies Fail To Prove Jesus Is A Myth
https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/why-the-pre-jesus-mythologies-fail-to-prove-jesus-is-a-myth/ Is Jesus Simply a Retelling of the Horus Mythology? https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/is-jesus-simply-a-retelling-of-the-horus-myth/ The answer is no. Claim: Horus was born in a cave, his birth announced by an angel, heralded by a star and attended by shepherds. Truth: There is no reference to a cave or manger in the Egyptian birth story of Horus. In fact, none of these details are present in the ancient Egyptian stories of Horus. Horus was born in a swamp. His birth was not heralded by an angel. There was no star. Claim: Horus attended a special rite of passage at the age of twelve and there is no data on the child from the age of 12 to 30. Truth: There is no continuous effort in the Horus mythology to account for all these years, so there are no real gaps in the chronology. Horus never taught in any temple at twelve (as did Jesus). Claim: Horus was baptized in a river at the age of 30, and his baptizer was later beheaded. Truth: Horus was never baptized. While conspiracy theorists often point to “Anup the Baptizer” (claiming he was later beheaded), there is no such person in Horus’ story. Claim: Horus had 12 disciples. Truth: Horus had only four disciples (called ‘Heru-Shemsu’), but at some point in his story there is reference to sixteen followers and a group of unnumbered followers who join Horus in battle (called ‘mesnui’). Claim: Horus performed miracles, exorcized demons, raised someone from the dead, and walked on water. Truth: Horus certainly performed miracles (he was, after all, described as a god). But there was no mention of exorcizing demons, raising people from the dead or walking on water. Claim: Horus was called “Iusa”, the “ever-becoming son” and the “Holy Child”. Truth: No one in Egyptian history was ever called “Iusa” (the word does not exist) nor was anyone called “Holy Child”. Claim: Horus delivered a “Sermon on the Mount”, and his followers recounted his sayings. He was transfigured on the Mount. Truth: Horus never delivered a “Sermon on the Mount”, nor was he transfigured. Claim: Horus was crucified between two thieves, buried for three days in a tomb, and was resurrected. Truth: Horus is not reported to have died at all in the vast majority of Egyptian narratives. There is also no crucifixion story. Instead, Horus is usually described as eventually merging with Re (the Sun god) after which he “dies” and is “reborn” every day as the sun rises. There is a parallel account describing Horus’ death and detailing how he was cast in pieces into the water, later fished out by a crocodile at Isis’ request. Claim: Horus was called “Way”, “the Truth the Light”, “Messiah”, “God’s Anointed Son”, “Son of Man”, “Good Shepherd”, “Lamb of God”, “Word made flesh”, “Word of Truth”, “the KRST” or “Anointed One”. Truth: None of these titles are in Egyptian history, but Horus is called by several names you might expect for any god in mythology: “Great God”, “Chief of the Powers”, “Master of Heaven”, and “Avenger of His Father”. Horus was not called “the Krst”. This word in Egyptian means “burial” (it wasn’t a title at all). Claim: Horus was “the Fisher” and was associated with the Fish, Lamb and Lion. Truth: Some of conspiracy theorists associate Horus with fish (by virtue of the fact that Horus was a fish in some portion of the ancient narrative), but there is no evidence Horus was ever called a “fisher” or was ever associated with the Lion or the Lamb. Claim: Horus came to fulfill the Law, and was supposed to reign one thousand years. Truth: There was no Egyptian “law” for Horus to fulfill, and there is no mention of a thousand year reign in Egyptian mythology. |
Anonymous
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If only you understood how what you posted totally supports the other position.
Every single point you make drives home the similarities. It's like that SNL sketch, "No it's fine, we call ourselves Jon Bovi! It's totally different!" 
Also, you responded to a post that admitted a man Jesus may have existed, and even prominent scholars and atheists like Bart Ehrmann believe that is true; however that gives no documentation to the historicity of the supernatural Jesus, and none of the supernatural aspects have any contemporaneous accounts. Wouldn't they have been big news? |
Anonymous
Well. It created the world’s largest religion with approximately 2.4 billion members 2 thousand years later, so you could say big news is an understatement. The Bible documents Jesus well....the most read book in the world is the Bible. Writer James Chapman created a list of the most read books in the world based on the number of copies each book sold over the last 50 years. He found that the Bible far outsold any other book, with a whopping 3.9 billion copies sold over the last 50 years. Pretty good for a troublesome Jewish boy who never existed. |
Anonymous
The Bible is a wonderful book but it's not documentation in the historical or archaeological sense. It's not independent evidence. Which isn't to say that events or personages mentioned didn't exist, but if someone wants proof, there has to be independent proof. There's never been any historical proof found of Israelites in Egypt, for example. That doesn't stop Jews from celebrating a major religious holiday associated with liberation, but if one is interested in archaeology, it must be acknowledged. There's enough evidence of Jesus that it's pretty clear he existed. Of course there can never be evidence that he performed miracles or was the son of G-d because those are matters of faith and not archaeology. |