It has dawned upon me that 1/6 people on this planet, ie all the cristian jesus followers, have quite possibly been duped in to believing in a total myth. Yes, a total myth. This has got to be the biggest and most blatent fraud for a good number of centuries ?
If that is the case, should the "Fraud of the Age" award be given to jesus?
2007-11-13 05:20:40 · 20 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Of course this is a myth. Since there is NO evidence that god or jesus ever existed.
It is, after all, the longest running con-game in history. The goal? To fleece the gullible sheep of their money. Take a look at the Vatican or at many of the new mega-churches for undeniable evidence.
2007-11-13 05:23:29 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 4⤋
No, because while I believe it is all fantasy and myth, I do not think it was fraud. The Thomas story and the Emmaus story kind of hint at this. There had to be a little fraud, but not a lot. We do not know the original beliefs of the twelve, but we have hints at them. You can see the changes in Christian belief as the years pass by taking the Pauline writings and the Gospels and putting them in likely date order. I think what did happen, over time, as witnessess died, the stories got more fantastic, not through malice or willful evil, but because the culture of the time didn't view truth in the way we do.
I met a story teller once who said he never told the same story the same way twice, but they always told the truth. That is the culture these writings came into.
Further, it was a psychologically successful strategy given the circumstances, which is why it thrived. There are three possible conflict managment modalities, autonomy oriented, control oriented and cooperation oriented. In tribal societies, autonomy oriented behavior is usually called being an outlaw or an heretic. Jesus tried it and see how it worked out for him.
The Empire was a control based conflict system. Christianity was a cooperative system. If Jesus' message could be boiled down, it would be boiled down as "if you are going to live in a cooperative society (which the Jewish society was, tribal societies almost always have to be due to the diffusion of power), then you must act lovingly to hold that cooperation together. Of course in his mind there was a God involved and so his version was more complex, but his message works if you assume that the cooperative state is the optimal state given the environment.
Of course psychology and experience rule that out, it is merely one of three possible states. Optimality being a subjective idea and possibly an environmental constraint, in this Jesus was wrong. He was wrong because he couldn't have imagined autonomous systems of organization like baseball. His was a world of cooperative systems like basketball (where people give up the chance to score and pass it to a better teammate for an assist) or like football where only one person (the coach) is in charge.
A cooperative conflict modality meeting a control conflict modality means a lot of killing by the control modality. However, no one likes that outcome so it is only popular with the powerful, causing the weak to cooperatively band together until they also become powerful through their cooperativeness. Constantine permitted Christianity because he probably had no other real alternative. Violence is a limited solution. The Church then was able to develop a two solution network, cooperativeness and violence and control. An organization with two modalities is more powerful than an organization with one modality. Of course, you want to control who you do violence on. Likewise, every time autonomy reared its ugly head, neither the cooperative modality nor the control modality could handle it. So heretics were largely killed, exiled, punished or imprisoned for long periods.
Jesus would probably be astonished and proud that people thought his ideas were so good. To be fair, many of the ideas of Jesus and the Twelve, and I give more credit to the Twelve than to Jesus, are workable ideas and superior to many of the time. Unlike science however, the bad ideas do not get tossed out directly, rather they are ignored by the "faithful," at least all of them except the zealots.
Atheists should have more respect for Christianity. It may be false and it may be that there are better more refined solutions, but it works close enough for most people that they can use it and survive. It has thrived because it propogates useful ideas in useful ways.
2007-11-13 05:40:31 · answer #2 · answered by OPM 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
Actually it is closer to 2/6 that are Christian, and if you add Muslims who believe he was prophet you get a 3/6. If you add the people who use the date system of AD and BC before Christ you get perhaps another 5/6 . So are you don't have to be a Christian to believe Christ existed. However if you don't think He was God you should consider He was at least a good man with good values.
2007-11-13 05:29:43 · answer #3 · answered by Panda Lover 2 · 2⤊ 1⤋
No!!!! When you die you will see that it is not a myth when you come face to face with Him. I believe there is a Jesus and He lives all around us. No you cannot see Him but he is there.Just like the wind you cannot see it, but you can feel it and you know that it is there. If you are living your life the way God wants you to live it. You would also believe in Jesus and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He is real and waiting in Heaven for those who serve Him.
2007-11-13 05:27:33 · answer #4 · answered by Laughing with you not at you 6 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Once again, people hammering believers for proof of God and Jesus when they can offer no proof otherwise.
If Jesus was a fraud, what personal gain did the apostles receive from promoting His message? Why would they martyr themselves for a lie?
2007-11-13 05:29:48 · answer #5 · answered by Danny H 6 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Well, if you refering to the fact that the Jesus and the crucification occurance, then this very well may be possible. People are brought back into time in order to see this occurance. Not "people", by as they meditate, or nearly die by a stroke, they stay out long enough to see this occurences, and are sent back.
2007-11-13 05:25:00 · answer #6 · answered by Shawn 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I agree except for one thing . Why do you mention only Jesus ? How about his buddies WHVH , Allah , and all of the great gods of the past who were dumped into the garbage can ?
2007-11-13 05:44:21 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Check this webpage to know truth about Jesus. What he claimed, what he taught and how he died? Is Jesus God or God's son? You will find all the answers with 100% accuracy.
http://www.progressive-muslim.org/who-is-jesus.htm
2007-11-13 08:32:19 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
No, Jesus was not a fraud.
And followers of Jesus are called Christians (because another name for Jesus is Christ).
2007-11-13 05:25:00 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 1⤋
Well, I certainly don't think he should be given 'fraud of the age'. Don't go around saying christianity is a fraud because what if you are wrong.........
2007-11-13 05:25:31 · answer #10 · answered by dude man 1 · 1⤊ 1⤋