Did the World Need Jesus to Teach Us How to Be Good?

[exile]

People often credit Jesus and the New Testament as the beginning of a moral civilization, and this would also appear why Jesus and the New Testament is often exalted, but did the world need Jesus to teach us how to be good?

 

[Amergin]

People often credit Jesus and the New Testament as the beginning of a moral civilization, and this would also appear why Jesus and the New Testament is often exalted, but did the world need Jesus to teach us how to be good?

There are people who are more moral than most Christians and are not believers in the Gospel Jesus. This includes the original Muslim followers of the teachings of Muhammad for the first four centuries of Islamic History. It also includes most Buddhists, Baha’i’s, most Mormons, Wiccans, Neo-Pagans, Jains, most modern Jews, many nature religions, and secular humanists.

In America which has the largest prison population in the world, and a population of 330,000,000 people. Of that population, atheists and agnostic non-theists constitute between 5% and 15%, with 33% of young people under 21. Keep in mind that many doctors, shopkeepers, bakers, and teachers must hide unbelief due to the risk of losing their jobs if "outed."

A study of 20 some US prisons, they found only 0.2% of prisoners to be atheists or other non-theists. Thus, Atheists and Non-Theists are grossly underrepresented in prisons compared to the general population. This is hard evidence that Atheists certainly less moral than the vast majority of Christians. It is quite the opposite. The majority of majority secular nations like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Germany, and France have homicide rates approximately of 1 per 100,000 population compared to 10 or higher per 100,000 for the USA, the most Christian nation on Earth.

Jesus did teach us a moral code that was noble. However, Christianity after deifying Jesus in the 4th Century as a new god decided that sins do not count. Salvation is obtained only by accepting Jesus as a god and redeemer. After dismissing the teachings of Jesus, a major bloody persecution of Pagans, and "heretical Christians" began under Theodosius II. The remaining history of Christianity from 393 CE to 1945 CE (Holocaust) is horrible with many millions of deaths, some for minor errors in interpreting dogma, other for superstition (witchcraft, blasphemy, and rejecting belief.)

 

[Princely]

Man fails to comprehend the word of the Lord because he is wicked. Good to God is not the same as good morals.

Scripture has it;

"No one is good except the One God".

"It is impossible for man to be saved but everything is possible for god".

"You have been told what is good and what the Lord requires of you, only to do what is right love goodness an walk humbly with the your God."

"Sow justice for yourself and reap the fruits of piety."

That's the word of the Lord who sent me.

I am the light of the world no one who follow me shall ever walk in darkness because he will possess the light of life.

 

[Amergin]

The world benefits (not needs) teachers like Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, and others. They all teach by reminding us of the morality that we have in our DNA programmed brain circuits.

I am an Evolutionary Ethicist. I feel that all moral and immoral classifications are not arbitrary at all. For the past 3 million years or longer, humans and protohumans through trial and error selected out a population that intuitively avoided certain behaviours. Culture and some consensus reinforced these "biological" behaviours. In family and clan groups, individuals who stole from a neighbour might be banished, or even killed by the tribe. Murderers of clan members elicited vengeance killing. Infanticide weakened the clan's future. Many who did kill babies did not pass on genes, and those who killed other people's babies were killed by the clan.

The result of this is that over time "defective" individuals (murders, child killers, thieves, adulterers, perhaps liars) were weeded out of the gene pool. Gradually these behaviours were formally prohibited by clan consensus, and by evolving religion. To reinforce moral (adaptive) behaviour, leaders emphasised that the behaviour was dictated by the gods or God.

Moral behaviour is behaviour that is protective of the gene pool, adaptive, beneficial, or at least neutral. Immoral behaviour was that which disrupted the family or tribe, weakened its adaptation, or failed to protect the gene pool.

Summary: Morality is not just subjective or arbitrary, it has a biological, genetic, and neurocognitively programmed structure of behaviour. It has some rather objective characteristics. We "intuitively" feel that murder is wrong, infanticide, theft, adultery, lying, unprovoked assault, perhaps sexual promiscuity, perhaps homosexuality. These were incorporated into evolving religion, and later by civic organisation. Their adherence protected the clan and its DNA. All comes from evolution.

The superstitious adoption of morality by the gods did reinforce behaviour in those individuals whose moral programming was weak, and fear of a dreadful deity could keep the borderline fellow in line.

Jesus helped many of us by his moral teachings but mainly those who accept his reality as a smart, wise, and ethical human being. His deification by the Romans distracted people from his teachings to focus on meme imposed worship of an idol.

 

[Amergin]

Murdering babies was intuitively wrong, whether done by German Nazis or by Israelite raiders of Canaanite cities. It is and always will be wrong. Religion has little to do with it. Judaism in the 12th or 13th century BCE barbaric conquest of Canaan, or Christianity in 1933-1945 CE Holocaust against the Jews. Religion cannot justify those crimes against humanity.

 

[radarmark]

People often credit Jesus and the New Testament as the beginning of a moral civilization, and this would also appear why Jesus and the New Testament is often exalted, but did the world need Jesus to teach us how to be good?

I am not as extreme as Amergin, but he is right pointing out this view is rubbish. There were morally good people before J!sus, and there will be morally good people after (and if) H! is forgotten.

There were and are morally good prople who have never heard of H!m and morally good people who have hear of, but rejected H!m.

Only the extreme kind of protestantism that was fostered in the USA could have asked this question. And like their belief in biblical literalism, it is just rubbish that does even rise to the level of high schoold debate.

All of this is just my opinion and assumes one is speaking of rational, provable, empirical data.

 

[exile]

Jesus did teach us a moral code that was noble. However, Christianity after deifying Jesus in the 4th Century as a new god decided that sins do not count. Salvation is obtained only by accepting Jesus as a god and redeemer. After dismissing the teachings of Jesus, a major bloody persecution of Pagans, and "heretical Christians" began under Theodosius II. The remaining history of Christianity from 393 CE to 1945 CE (Holocaust) is horrible with many millions of deaths, some for minor errors in interpreting dogma, other for superstition (witchcraft, blasphemy, and rejecting belief.)

If sins do not count in most Christian denominations then I don't see how Christianity could be called a moral religion.

 

[Amergin]

If sins do not count in most Christian denominations then I don't see how Christianity could be called a moral religion.

There are two diverging themes.

1. Jesus of Nazareth was a good and ethical man. He taught morals, fairness, justice, compassion, duty to help the underprivileged, forgiveness, love, and fairness to women. He was not a god. He never claimed to be a god. He actually told us in the gospels that he was subordinate to God. He did not know what God knew. He was not as good as God was (as he erroneously understood God.)

However, Jesus and his early followers emphasized established communes that taught sharing, honesty, and cooperation. His morality was intuitive morality that is encoded by our DNA into the brain circuits and a neurocircuit called the Moral Compass in the deep frontal lobe where we decide on an action if our ethical programme supports it. That Moral Compass vetoes an anticipated action that is contradicted by our morality programmes.

2. When the Romans created Christianity in the Third Century CE, it involved the classical deification of the actual human man, Jesus. It was not justified by the four gospels. When Athanasius and Tertullian fully deified Jesus into a major God, they sidestepped the charge of polytheism by calling their new human god the second god of a Trinity. Call them three gods or three persons in god, they are just word games.

With belief in, and mandatory worship of a false God seeming crucial, Athanasius, Constantine, and Theodosius II needed to sweeten the pot. They did this by minimizing the penalty for sin. Later (Lutherans) made sin completely trivial and without consequences if one worships the Trinity God invented in 2nd to 3rd Century. (Accepts Jesus into his heart.) That phrase is meaningless. Evangelical preachers actually brag about how much they sinned, abused women, drank alcohol, used recreational drugs, stole from others, killed, and lied. However, it does not matter because they have Jesus in their hearts.

The answer to your hypothesis is that Jesus was needed to revive and strengthen intuitive morality. Nevertheless, sadly, he failed because the fictitious Christ demanded worship not morality. That is why Christianity's history from 400 CE to now is such a horror story of thousands of wars, persecutions, injustice, oppression, Church abuse and murder of women, executions of heretics and blocking of scientific inquiry.

The victims of organised Christianity's persecutions, genocides, and wars are in the hundreds of millions if not higher. It does not surprise me that Christians have a higher crime rate than Atheists or other Non-Theists. It is because we atheists cannot sweep our sins under the rug. We remain guilty until we die. We must live with our regrets. There is no free lunch. Christians can sweep all sins under the rug by Catholic Confession or Evangelical "accepting Jesus into your heart or your spleen." It is unlikely that those “Christians” have regrets. It becomes a psychopathic religion.


Amergin
I don't think I am an extremist. I am a realistic pragmatist.

 

[wil]

Its actually quite simple....the WORLD did not need Jesus to be moral and/or good....CHRISTIANS did.

And it didn't take 100%.....

 

[Thomas]

People often credit Jesus and the New Testament as the beginning of a moral civilisation,

Do they? Who? I can't think of any morality Jesus preached that wasn't already known.

and this would also appear why Jesus and the New Testament is often exalted,

Is it? By whom?

I would have thought the essential message was union with the Divine. Everything else stands in relation to that.

God bless,

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

Murdering babies was intuitively wrong, whether done by German Nazis or by Israelite raiders of Canaanite cities. It is and always will be wrong.

Then you'll endorse the Catholic Church's stand against artificial insemination in that the death of many does not justify the life of one?
(Let alone the problem of disposing of tens of thousands of babies held in cryogenic suspension because they are superfluous to requirements?)

You will of course endorse the habit of the Jews around the time of Christ of 'rescuing' babies discarded by those who did not want them?

You will endorse the claim of the Catholic Church, for example, that life is sacred and is not something for men to toy around with in the name of 'science'?

And you will condemn those who believe that they have no responsibility towards the child conceived by their own actions, and furthermore they can dispose of that child as they choose, for the rights of the individual to act irresponsible outweigh the intuitive morality that suggests that the child conceived also has rights?

And by extension, you stand against euthanasia and so forth?

And yet science is pursuing all those ends. Strange ...

God bless,

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

Its actually quite simple....the WORLD did not need Jesus to be moral and/or good....CHRISTIANS did.

Excuse me Wil, but don't tar us all with your brush.

God bless

Thomas

 

[wil]

Originally Posted by wil
Its actually quite simple....the WORLD did not need Jesus to be moral and/or good....CHRISTIANS did.

Excuse me Wil, but don't tar us all with your brush.

God bless

Thomas

Tar? Me thinks thou dost protest too much...

Where would us Christians be without the Christ?

What would a Jew believe without the Torah and Moses?

Or a Muslim be without Mohammed and the Quran?

Or a Hindu without the Gita...

A Buddhist without Buddha?

Each member of each tradition needed their guru, prophet, godman, teachings, books, scholars....whatever to develop their current understanding of faith, morality and all that is....

Some develop their sense of this without the above...

I tarred no one....what you felt/perceived was of your own volition, not mine.

 

[taijasi]

The wickedest among the wicked, Cinedrion [Sanhedrin], certainly needed Jesus ~ CHRISTED Jesus ~ to demonstrate Goodness ... both before them and before the Crux of the world.

I mean, of course, the heart of Civilization at that time, from the exalted, to the lowest, to the salt of the Earth.

The Message, as many are well aware, has largely been missed, and the Man who taught us of God was quite misunderstood. The Mythos has no context for many a Christian today ... and this would not be such a tragedy if not for the con job wrought upon the Divine currency by the unscrupulous.

Perhaps a different mint is what we need today ... to remind us what the Blood, and the Water, the FIRE and the LIFE are really all about (or, *symbolize*). But, when Scriptures are studied in the dead-letter, when all we can see are the words in red, and when people don't even realize they're being SPOON-FED ...

... arguably, YES, the world needed, and needs AGAIN a Jesus, a Buddha, a Pythagoras or a Mohammad ~ to return [or Reappaear] and SHOW US what it means to Love one another, accept our neighbor as our Brother, and yes, to do what it takes to rid the world {bit by bit} of unnecessary suffering, sin and hatred [separativeness].

I should think that a Global Communications system would be a VITAL [consider, all ye who can see it] step forward ... as the etheric brain of the Logos organizes on levels hitherto unorganized or unactive/ated.

And yes, any fool can stand atop his ivory tower and cast loose change at the swine below, but it takes a bloke with cojones ~ a different cut of cloth ~ to descend from his buttressed Tor, cast the shudders wide, and step forth, going amongst the People ... calling each His OWN, and looking, learning, to see his face in everyOne.

Meanwhile, there are idiot savants all about ... and, idiots.

jesus, however, tended to Love them all ... and since he knew quite well about all there was to know ~ about the latter, the former, and also about the others like himself ... he observed careful judgment, wise discretion, about where he cast his err, Wisdom

Goodness, as it were, has enemies all about the land;
Look no further, for example, than your heart, your head, your hand.

{Fortunately, both obliged, and Rightly Gifted ~Empowered~ thereto,
Jesus was able to evoke the Go(o)(d)d(li)(n)ess ... in Him, in me, in You.}

I could almost cry, bc ppl still friggin do not get it. They would rather argue for a pile of feces,
then cry and whine about falling short, something about crapping in one hand, wishing in the other ...

Now YOU tell me why we're not all enlightened yet!

 

[exile]

Do they? Who? I can't think of any morality Jesus preached that wasn't already known.


Is it? By whom?

I would have thought the essential message was union with the Divine. Everything else stands in relation to that.

God bless,

Thomas

People, I guess laymen, attribute a moral civilization to the Bible and Jesus all the time on TV. If Christianity wasn't a moral religion then why do they do that? Someone put that thought in their minds. It's very ethnocentric and very disturbing.

 

[Amergin]

Then you'll endorse the Catholic Church's stand against artificial insemination in that the death of many does not justify the life of one?

I see nothing evil about artificial insemination. It is good for good people who desire their own child but cannot conceive for some biological factor.

(Let alone the problem of disposing of tens of thousands of babies held in cryogenic suspension because they are superfluous to requirements?)

The early foetus is not a human yet. Every time a good woman has a purely random miscarriage, she is not committing manslaughter. Every time a man masturbates, he is not killing a hundred millions half-humans. A woman fails to get pregnant is not killing a human being if she does not conceive. If she has sex when not in the ovarian cycle at the right time, it is not killing anyone. Using hormone pills to prevent ovulation is not killing a human being. If you have your gall bladder removed, the cells have a full human DNA profile just like you. However, that gall bladder, if destroyed is not murder of a human. I have no answer to keeping cryogenic fertilised foetuses in suspended animation. It is unpleasant to say the least. But even a fertilised foetus with a full complement of Human DNA in the right number of chromosomes does not make it human. Your skin cells, your gall bladder, your shed epithelial cells in your feces, your Leucocytes in the blood spilling when you are cut by your steak knife are not humans just because of the number and composition of DNA.

You will of course endorse the habit of the Jews around the time of Christ of 'rescuing' babies discarded by those who did not want them?

Of course. However, I would not endorse Israelites taking a virgin girl as a sex slave or concubine after brutally slaughtering the girl's parents. I would not endorse Hosea 13:16 urging that the women of Samaria be slain, and women with child, have the unborn child ripped out of its mother's abdomen with a sword. I think that the horrible atrocities of the Israelite Storm Troopers on undefended Canaanite cities was OK because God said so.

You will endorse the claim of the Catholic Church, for example, that life is sacred and is not something for men to toy around with in the name of 'science'?

Life is wonderful but it is not sacred. Nothing is sacred. I think that scientists who grow stem cells into organ replacements are doing wonderful and praiseworthy work. It is not Toying Around. The Catholic Church has no moral standing. It ordered or caused horrible wars in the name of Jesus (that is unforgivable.) It oppressed women. It persecuted dissenters, executing them with burning at the stake, crushing them under stone on wooden frames, or beheading them. Many wars were started against those of a different Christian Cult or Non-Christians (Muslims). The motives were mixed. They wanted conquest for profit, forced conversion of "wrong" believers, slaughtering intractible non-believers. Christianity endorsed the Trans-Atlantic African Slave trade, and the enslavement of Native Americans. Hundreds of Millions of people were killed either by direct order of the Church or by its extremist followers. The Horrors of the Bloody Catholic Church far exceed the debatable science of fetal implants, artificial insemination, or stem cell research to help suffering humans.

And you will condemn those who believe that they have no responsibility towards the child conceived by their own actions, and furthermore they can dispose of that child as they choose, for the rights of the individual to act irresponsible outweigh the intuitive morality that suggests that the child conceived also has rights?

A conceived fetus has no human rights because it is still differentiating cells in the programmed building of a future human being. The Rolls-Royce auto engine sitting on an assembly line is not a luxury automobile. Parts are put together in stages of the assembly line and must all be complete before the Rolls-Royce is a luxury automobile.

And by extension, you stand against euthanasia and so forth?

And yet science is pursuing all those ends. Strange ...

I only favour euthanasia if it is the desire of a suffering patient soon to die in pain. I favour voluntary, physician assisted suicide under very strict criteria and oversight. Could I do it? No I personally could not. I approve of birth control pills, condoms, vasectomies, tubal ligations, because there is no known commandment against them, and no rational excuse for Religion to intrude legislatively into the inside of a person's body. What is happening in America today is the steady trend toward a Christian Taliban as promoted by Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin, and a bunch of pretend celibate priests and bishops. BTW, priest celibacy must also exclude having sex with little boys. I urge victims to sue the Church and the Nazi Pope to help bring that foul institution, down. The Evangelicals are right about the Roman Church's evils.

God bless,

Thomas

Sìth Còmhla ri Firinn, (Peace with Truth)

Amergin

 

[Thomas]

I see nothing evil about artificial insemination. It is good for good people who desire their own child but cannot conceive for some biological factor.

So you're OK with a process that wastes more lives than it produces? The ends justify the means, and all that ...

The early foetus is not a human yet

A clever sleight of legalese handiwork. It will be, won't it? I mean, it's not going to be a table or a bicycle.

Every time a good woman has a purely random miscarriage, she is not committing manslaughter.

No, but then a miscarriage is not an informed decision to terminate a life before it has the chance to get established, is it?

Of course. However, I would not endorse Israelites...

When people have to reference something that happened millennia ago, it usually indicates a bankrupt argument. Politicians here in the UK do it to each other all the time.

To make a declaration, I do not agree with many of the Church's teachings, but I do listen to both sides of the argument (and there are those who raise the same moral issues who are not Christians, so that element of your argument is void).

What I do fear is the kind of argument that absolves oneself from any moral dimension or responsibility whatsoever, but justifies everything we do simply because we can.

Gandhi, for example, was absolutely against artificial methods of birth control. Does that make him a closet Catholic?

And Marie Stopes, the woman who pioneered birth control in the UK, did so because she wanted to control the reproduction of the working class. Her reasoning was pure fascist eugenics. She disowned her only son when he fell in love with a girl who suffered myopia because she saw he was introducing weakness into the bloodline ...

Here's a conundrum:
Doctors are trying to eliminate the 'deaf gene' ... the deaf are taking the case to the Court of Human Rights, as an example of eugenics ... should they count themselves lucky they war born before we found the 'cure' for deafness?

Bearing in mind that in future, when life insurance is a necessity for medical treatment, pre-birth scanning will eliminate those foetuses that indicate a tendency to draw on resources. If you do not terminate, no insurance, and you'll have to pay your own bills for healthcare.

(And that eugenics is already widely practiced in the health system here, as a matter of economic necessity, not the quality of life or well-being of the patient)

In the meantime, we're pouring billions into the latest nuclear deterrent, because we can ...

Brave New world indeed, eh?

God bless,

Thomas

 

[wil]

ah the connundrums.... I don't have issues about abortion as a stop gap safety matter, I do in using it simply as birth countrol. I don't have issues with condoms or the pill, I do have issues with artificial insemination, fertilizing 18 egss, planting the eight most viable, knocking off the ones least likely down to one or two...yeah..seems a bit much.

capital punishment and nuclear genocide...drone attacks...what have we become...

oh and much of this anihilation is done by those who claim Jesus as their leader...

yikes.

 

[radarmark]

wil, quite cogent. But I do not object to all AI, if a couple wants children and cannot do it the old-fashioned way, it is a morally neutral point (unless we start talking about over-population, which is a whole other bunck of connundrums).

 

[wil]

wil, quite cogent. But I do not object to all AI, if a couple wants children and cannot do it the old-fashioned way, it is a morally neutral point (unless we start talking about over-population, which is a whole other bunck of connundrums).

I never understood that a dozen or more eggs die to get one to work...nor the thousands, tens of thousands of dollars and heartache that folks go through with multiple attempts until I started talking to friends...

the number of people who succeed the first time seems low...and then for every successive attempt the odds of succeeding if you didn't the first time decrease dramtically...

and after all that grief, they go to another option, adoption...and become wonderfully loving parents, a lot of pain could be saved by going straight to adoption...