Absolutely. When I saw the headline I thought the same thing. Bad actors will try to sew exactly that thought in liberal circles as long as Dems have the momentum.

We can’t buy into it and need to resolve ourselves to fight like hell until election day, regardless of what “the polls” or “the experts” say. We need to make Kamala win in an indisputable landslide. We need to send a message that will make Trump and his acolytes political pariahs from now on.

Seems like an early church numbers game to me. Paul realizes, I think, that if they’re going to convert a substantial number of non Jews, they’re going to need to drop the “now cut your penis” requirement for entry.

A strong argument to your point: Kissinger dies at 100. Frank Zappa, 52. I think there is no god but can’t rule out a.

I dunno. I blame lack of engagement. We have to post content. Engage. I see tons of posts upvoted but a huge lack of OC. If we don’t use the platform, it dies.

I’ve never felt more sure about the Christian god being bullshit than now. Why would a loving god even give birth to someone just to have them live their life in a prison, hungry their whole lives? Christianity says the Palestinians are all going to hell, those of age, because they didn’t convert to Christianity. Fucking ridiculous. Where the fuck is god? Why does anyone still believe in this nonsense?

Islam gets no pass. I understand Islam less than Christianity but it is objectively false and awful also, based on what I do understand, which is plenty. They subjugate and marginalize women, scorn and hate gays beyond what Christian’s do. Islam stabs cartoonists (multiple times) for their “dangerous” drawings, wtf? They fly planes into buildings full of parents. They shoot up music venues (Paris). They murder (mostly liberal, pro Palestinian) Jews in their homes, feeling righteous as they slaughter. Islam is garbage. These religions are all fucking garbage. Why can’t we abandon them?

My personal opinion, watching the carnage in Israel and Gaza, and as an American who lived through and past 9/11; Reacting with anger and fear causes terrible decisions that seem better in the moment than they are. There is too much collateral damage. It isn’t ok to kill innocents. Blowing up children with bombs isn’t any different than killing them any other terrible way. This is not the path to victory in the long term. How can these survivors not loathe Israel forever? What is the end game? Israel has all the power. I hope they ask themselves what they want the future to look like soon because they appear to be insuring a nightmare for some generations currently.

There’s nothing odd about asking for a source. Wtf are you on about?

I said to my oldest child just today "There is a commandment that says you can’t say “goddamnit”, or “Jesus Christ!” but nothing, nothing about slavery. I’ll double back and mention war also tomorrow. So much suffering would have been prevented by an actual god if he’d been less narcissistic back on Mount Sinai. Seems to have wasted several on making sure his ass was the only one kissed and missed a bunch of other important stuff.

And just for fun, the Harper Collins Study Bible footnotes on the flood story, since the article quotes it:

The flood story is an amalgam of two texts, the J version and the P version, along with some editorial passages that harmonize the two texts…

The Biblical flood stories are related to the older Mesopotamian flood tradition (in Atrahasis and Gilgamesh tablet 11), in which the destroyer god (Enlil) and the savior god (Enki) are two different gods in conflict. In biblical monotheism, one God combines these two impulses, and the moral conflict is transposed from the divine realm to the relationship between God and humans and the problem of human immorality.

Thanks for the alt link. I should done that when the sign was still up.

Sorry, without the video, I thought some Christian was trying to put the screws to me.

Says: error opening link

For Jesus to come back? Fucking right. Muther fucker has some explaining to do.

There is, of course, no reason to think he is coming back. I am not afraid of 2000 year old Mediterranean mythology, nor should anyone be. Even if I was so deluded, the mythology clearly says he’ll brb within that generation and that generation died thousands of years ago.

If someone has a better summary please feel free to post. I’m feeling apoplectic after watching the speaker role go to a Christian nutjob today and am frankly getting pretty depressed.

I got volume 1 and 2 (old and new testament) in the mail the other day. The two of them together is a daunting 1200 pages. The content, so far, seems phenomenal. Asimov writes it as a study companion. Book by book, chapter by chapter, this appears to be his commentary on all of it. What he’s learned about it that he believes is significant. I’ll make a new post after I am enjoying his notes on Genesis so far.

But, by your argument, you do have enough evidence to rule out benevolence, no?

The religious blame the bad things on Satan, not God. Pretty convenient. God gets all of the credit an none of the blame. It’s delusional.

Also, what rational argument suggests there is eternal pain and suffering? Some old Mediterranean folk lore twisted through time, with more Faust and Inferno (Dante) than scripture in the current belief? I don’t see any reason to rationally believe there is eternal pain and suffering.

The simple obvious answer is that there is no God. If there is, I want no part of an afterlife with him.

“God is so moral that he doesn’t need earthly morals” is an absolutely laughable justification. May God strike me dead before I click the “reply” button, if I’m wrong.

Totally agree. I appreciate Ehrman, both from a personal level and for his contributions. He’s been really helpful to me in my late deconstruction and has been an inspiration for me to dig deeper and learn more.

Satan and Hell terrified me completely as a child. I was able to shake it but can still feel the scars. Too bad this is buried. I think further discussion on hell would be fun for me and beneficial for others here. Still willing to learn more about it all. I am pretty far past being afraid of the fictional version I was raised with but the concept of eternal torture hung me up for a long time during deconstruction (see my first post in this community for my overall view, boiled down).

I’m reading Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient world, on your suggestion. This seems like solid gold to answering my questions I posted. I appreciate the direction. I see there is a bunch to cover but this is doing a great job of getting me started.

It’s a bit like reconstructing what a shredded document soaked in water until it’s a giant ball of mush might have once said.

I’m starting to really understand that the more I read. Between secrecy of practice, what’s been destroyed or hidden or removed on purpose, and the purposeful purging of information by the victors, there isn’t much left to show. Hopefully archaeology will continue to give us new pieces to the puzzle.

For the scope of this community, I find that knowledge on this and other Biblical topics help me see Christianity for what it is; just another belief of people, created solely by people. I was heavily indoctrinated as a child and my deconstruction contained many struggles and moments of weakness when I questioned my questioning relentlessly. All of the indoctrinated guilt is built on a foundation of Biblical justification. Scholarly knowledge of the Bible, the time period in which it was written, and the people that wrote it has been the only effective medicine for me, long term, to loosen the hold those childhood lessons held over me.

Specifically to the topic of this post; If the concept of salvation predates Jesus by centuries and the Biblical “path to salvation” is just a new iteration of the soteria from Greek initiation rituals, how can any of it (Christianity or the Bible) be true? There’s no more weight to salvation and by extension, no heaven or hell. Nothing worth fearing. Nothing worth believing.

Thank you. Good information and I grabbed that book and will read it. I had a feeling [email protected] would show up holding the lantern 😊

If Moses was a priest of Osiris, then was the concept of salvation baked into Judaism of the time? I’m specifically interested in the concept of “being saved” through initiation and how it evolved into the rituals of modern Christianity.

I’m reading deeper into that link I posted.

The followers of Dionysos derived many of their eschatological beliefs and ritual prescriptions from Orphic literature, a corpus of theogonic poems and hymns. The mythical Thracian poet Orpheus, the archetypical musician, theologian, and mystagogue, was credited with the introduction of the mysteries into the Greek world. According to myth, Orpheus’ reclusion that followed his unsuccessful attempt to bring back his wife Eurydice from the Underworld or, alternatively, his invention of homosexuality brought about the tragic, violent death he suffered at the hands of Thracian women.

It’s getting juicy. (I know I’m a nerd).

Bacchic-Orphic beliefs and practices: itinerant religion specialists and purveyors of secret knowledge, called orpheotelestai, performed the teletai, private rites for the remission of sins. For the Orphics, Dionysos was a savior god with redeeming qualities.

Sounding familiar.

From the Titans’ ashes the human race was born, burdened by the horrific inheritance of an “original sin.”

Then from the Kybele, cult:

Known among the Greeks as Kybele, or Great Mother of the Gods…Ritual purity was a prerequisite of initiation into the ecstatic cult of the Mother. Her priests, the Korybantes, and followers worshipped her with wild, loud music produced by cymbals (13.225.5a,b) and frenzied dancing, which, like the revels in honor of Dionysos, carried the participants despite and beyond themselves.

I recognize dogma and ritual I grew up with mixed in here.