Is Christianity much different from Judaism and Islam?

Christianity is a case of ‘a religion is better than no religion’ which is optimal to a particular circumstances and time.
Given the very desperate psychological states of people in the past and even at present, I don’t think non-theistic spiritual practice are effective nor optimal for the masses.
I rate Buddhism [with other Eastern spiritualities] as the most superior of all religions but to be effective it is too advance for the present masses.
Christianity is so easy, just belief and viola one is saved and the angst is suppressed.

As I had stated elsewhere, ALL humans are infected with a ‘zombie parasite’ and when active [in the majority] within the human psyche compels the individual human toward believing and clinging to a supernatural being and therefrom to religion to relieve the related angst.

Thus no matter what if there is no god nor religion, humans will be driven to invent them to relieve them of the related angst, otherwise the majority of human will be paralyzed with psychological fears and anxieties.

The thing with god[s] and religions is some of them contain malignant evil elements that inspire and motivate their desperate believers who are evil prone to commit terrible evils and violence upon non-believers.

Some of the Eastern religions do not have any negative evil baggage in their doctrines thus they are useful to a greater extent than those with evil baggage. Nevertheless the resulting organization and those evil prone believers do commit by themselves but not in the name of religion.

The Abrahamic religions has evil elements with Judaism and Islam [the worst of all] contain tons of evil elements. Christianity has negative elements to hinder the progress of humanity but not as evil as Judaism and Islam.

All religions has their pros and cons in relation to the circumstances and time they exist. But what is very glaring is whatever pros in Islam at present is outweighing its cons into the future. As such we need to defang Islam as soon as possible followed by Judaism, Christianity and all other organized religions in the future and replace them with fool proof self-development programs to deal with the inherent unavoidable existential crisis.

In the future [I am optimistic with the trend of the exponential expansion of knowledge] we will naturally work toward enabling universal human values without a need for a God.

The Ancient Greek religion had been a polytheistic mysteries cult religion without any church and only with cult places before it became a cult church during the first three centuries A.D. (Julian the Apostate [Flavius Claudius Julianus] was one of its supporters, and it was based on Neopythagorism, Neoplatonism, Stoicism and probably part of a “pseudomorphis”). At that time, there were at least six greater religions in the Romam empire: (1) rests of the said Ancient polytheistic mysteries cult religion without any church and only with cult places, (2) the said Ancient Greek religion as a part of a “pseudomorphis” cult church, (3) Zoroastrianism and its derivations, e.g. Mazdaism, (4) Manichaeism, (5) Judaism, (6) Christianity and its many derivations, e.g. Jewish Christianity, Greek Christianity, Arianism, Catholicism …

In other words: Christianity changed a lot within four or (in certain regions) even seven centuries before its real stability through two of its main versions: the Greek (later called: “Orthodox”) one and the Catholic (Western) one. At this time, your mentioned “heretical Jewish sect of Judaism itself” had already vanished for a long time.

“Abrahamic” does not prove that the said three religions are the same and that they accept the Old Testament in the same way. All bananas, all apples, all oranges are subordinations of the superordination fruit, but nevertheless: they are not the same. All elephants, all cats, all dogs are species of the mammalia class, but nevertheless: they are not the same.

If I had (but I do not have [as you know]) to accept your “chimera” supposition and to answer the question which of the three “Abrahamic” religions matches which of the three animals lion, ram, snake the most, then I would say: “the lion matches Islam, the ram matches Christianity, the snake matches Judaism the most”. :wink:

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What I said was that Christianity is a heretical sect offshoot of Judaism where originally under Jesus discipleship the goal was to radically reform and change Judaism itself from the inside out not to become a new religion. Christianity only became a new separate religion or identity away from Judaism because the Pharisee rabbis stopped Jesus and had him killed who was himself a kind of rabbi looking to revise the old testament of the Jews. Either way Christianity and Christians embrace a sort of spiritual Judaism, Christians are spiritual Jews. For me there is very little difference between a Christian and a Jew.

If we want to get historically technical Zoroastrianism influenced Atenism which then preceded to influence Judaism. Christianity came about with Jesus and his followers that sought to radically transform or reform Judaism yet failed to do so where later it became its own distinct separate religion despite almost being indistinct from Judaism itself.

While all Christians and Jews never like admitting such Christianity is sort of like a weird step brother of Judaism that nobody likes talking about.

Islam is more of a political response to medieval Christian/European expansionism in that the Arabic nations and those nations surrounding them didn’t know what to do with a unified continental Europe under Christianity. They didn’t want to embrace Judaism or Christianity where instead they created their own religion of Allah with the prophet Mohammad. By doing so the Arabic and surrounding nations were able to compete against medieval Christian Europe yet retain their own distinct identity. It is because of all that Islam has always been a sort of reactionary religion to both Christianity and Judaism.

I still stand onto my position as an atheist and somewhat of a pagan sympathizer that I despise all three of those semitic Abrahamic religions. I am the ultimate anti semite and I make no apologies for being such. The seeds of Abraham are nothing but poison poisoning the well that is our planet. All three religions will not be happy until they bring about a global crisis stemming from the middle east that we see the emergence of today. All the followers and leaders of all three religions are bat shit insane or whacko. Once again, I make no apologies for my comments.

In a much better alternate historical timeline Rome and the rest of the world would of remained pagan where the likes of Constantine never came to be, Jews would of remained in a constant never ending diaspora scattered to the four winds, and the Arabs worshipped Ahura Mazda or similar gods where Islam never existed. If history played out like that instead of with what we have now the world would be better off. It’s unfortunate that we’re not so lucky.

How would you bring this what you just said into connection with what you said in your thread “Did The Romans Invent Jesus?”?

So, there’s two things I believe here. First, Moses was in fact an exiled Akhenaten of the old testament and secondly that the new testament with the story of Jesus was a Roman fabrication as a way to pacify the Roman province of Judea. The Jews back then were rebelling against the occupying Romans where the Roman emperor at the time with Titus Flavius Josephus [A Roman Jew] devised a way to supplant Jewish Rabbinic law or Judaism with Christianity as a way of making the Jews more manageable. While it didn’t destroy Judaism or Judaic Rabbinic law the introduction of Christianity certainly weakened it and the ancient Judea rebellion did also thereafter. What happened next was that this new religion was so successful in subduing a population as evident in ancient Judea that they eventually moved the project into Europe where began the purging of pagan Europeans by newly converted Christians.

I would say no. The historical Jesus may have been a result of both: the Romans’ invention to manage political affairs, but politics being what they are may follow either a belief in historical inevitability, - determination of events without exact causal referentiality, or the idea that people were following creative dictums of their own foreseeable effects of self prescribed causes.

At the very least , a mixture of both of these possible routes of acquisition of religion imply some generic consoderations bearing on religious motives of basic psychic functions of what the religious came to understand as the soul.

Christianity is an elaborate forgery of a religion in more ways than just one and I’m not talking merely about the Romans only either. For instance the very first Christians before Greeks or Romans were Jews, a topic for another time perhaps.

with love,
sanjay

I agree with Arminius on nearly every reply of his here. I especially enjoyed what James Saint said earlier about the projections of atheists unto themselves, I have been one of those and experienced others like that first hand. After having most of my family pass, seeing some high school friends take their own lives slowly or quickly, and being too poor to continue University studies, I turned to Christianity and I’ve been better off ever since, almost inverting those 3 major suffering points I just mentioned. I have beginners knowledge of philosophy and religious thought and I’ve barely entered adulthood so I doubt I can contribute anything of utility to this discussion due to lack of experience and knowledge.

Ezak42, I find Judaism and Islam much more deceptive and linguistically obfuscated over time than Christianity. Any obfuscations in Christianity can be traced back historically to omissions and transliteration differences. The atonement and the trinity seem clear to me, Muhammad’s magical and violent stature, along with historical studies and the empirical evidence of Moses and his proceeding prophets less clear. The logical faults are probably due to our nature, and to deny any truth in scripture only because of a few cherry picked fallacies undermines the entire purpose of establishing moral foundations that help us evolve and forgive in the best ways, while establishing a personal relationship with God to understand his interaction with us in our confusion. Do you think we will eventually unearth some sort of scientific origin that explains how a bunch of big brained sex monkeys overthrew erectus and neanderthalensis? Do you look at the OT books literally and the NT as a way to overthrow Rome by telling the story of a slave-god? In the beginning our language was confused, not to mention that time further divides our understanding of being. How will you choose to deal with random horrible happenings? Faith is better than no faith, Christianity being the most progressive and superior of all faith, comparable to Buddhism.

It kinda scares me the way zero_sum talks about his outlook towards modern middle eastern upheaval and the embellishment of a Jesus figure in Roman times for the sake of leveraging law and politics. He reminds me of a figure like Abdiel. The discussion of Christ as forgery reminds me of parts Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, and his exegesis of the early Jews in pagan times. There’s probably a lot of Hasidism in Isreal in modern times waiting for the Third Temple and their political “Messiah” to come out of the groundworks so Jews can be redeemed, a somewhat tribal fervor. Modern scientific study and historical reflection on the data has allowed for a lot more people, especially the younger like myself, to turn to pagan ideas or atheism. I find it related to morals and the evolution of language rather than anything people will usually ascribe to it as dogma, or religion, or truth. I find most of it laughable and share excitement for the future, forgiving and praying everyday along the way. Prayer is a simple, harmless ritual but most people think its schizophrenic or useless. Law of attraction? Alchemy and Paganism in apocryphal texts? Probably, possibly, and currently occurring.

It sux that your life sux but my life sux too, and youre using Christianity to cope.

send them all to the moon in my opinion. Im trying to be nice and not literally hitler, we can build a nice little moon utopia for them to be sent to, but the moon is where they all need to be sent. Same as AI too, put ai to the moon.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4f9m4OYkCY[/youtube]

My life doesn’t suck, for the most part. It sucked before it most recently sucked which I expect come in random waves in life, but for the past year and a half it’s bucking a downtrend that happened because of random crappy things I didn’t predict would affect me so negatively. I’d love to go to the moon, but I’d rather stay here to learn from each other and have adequate survival resources, also wouldn’t I be missing out on quality animations like that pony garbage if I did go to the moon? Do I get to bring the so-called non-critical logically fallible religious texts with me? Is the AI life threatening like terminator or ex machina? Or is the AI more of a wall-e or sunny who just cleans up after me and helps battle any dissenters?

How much different is a burka from an Easter bonnet?

Well, radically different. An Easter Bonnet is worn during Easter, and generally no one today is forced to wear it. IOW no one got a vitamin D deficiency from an Easter bonnet because of societal control. An Easter bonnet, given it’s temporary use, is not - certainly today - a sign that whoever wears it is property, not to be trusted, less than a man.

What’s the difference between a straight jacket and a tight t-shirt?

Power, whose got it and the life you live in one as opposed to the other.

Yes very different. And yet the burqa and the Easter bonnet are both products of patriarchies which view women as subordinate to men. Where the burqa is a norm the patriarchy is in full control. Where the Easter bonnet still has any meaning, it’s meaning has so devolved and diminished that its wearer likely is not conscious of it. Women were to keep their head covered in public lest they tempt the sons of God who in the antediluvian age had fucked them and produced a hybid race of giants.

I wouldn’t be shocked that the bonnet has these origins, but I can’t find that origin. Could you link it?

Head covering is practiced by women in many orthodox or fundamentalist Christian sects today. The Easter bonnet is but one instance of this more general Christian practice. The claimant to apostleship Paul of Tarsus in his first letter to the Corinthians says that the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. The angels he refers to are the fallen ones called “the sons of God” in Genesis 6. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim

Yes, but head covering has all sorts of roots, including decoration and protection from weather. And religious men wear hats also. So jumping from what some sects use hat wearing for doesn’t really work for me yet. And as far as I can find Easter hat wearing came about from both sexes dressing up on Easter. And sure, the women, being seen in a specific way by gender were prettified, hence flowers. But these women were generally not forced to wear hats all the time. And it almost has the opposite pull from the Burhka which is meant to eliminate from sight anything that another man might find attractive and any woman breaking that, in places where they are supposed to wear them, is in danger of violence by strangers and family. Women not wearing Easter hats or good ones might have, earlier in history and perhaps in some places today, found themselves socially on the outs. But so would men with the wrong car or suit or hair length.

I am not fully sure of your comment in the context of the thread since the Koran does not specifically say what apppropriate clothes women should wear just that they are appropriate. So we have Islam mixed with local cultural ideas about both women and appropriateness. Just as we have in female genital mutilation, say.

And while I do see some similar sexist roots between female genital mutilation and breast enhancement (which comes not out of Christianity but secular Western society) I’d be hard pressed to find myself asking what’s the difference.

Islam and the local cultures that are mixed with it and hard to separate out include a hatred of the self, the female, the body, ‘this life’ that is extreme, even compared to going back a few hundred years in Christianity and certainly compared with current Christianity. Islam means surrender, submission and the core ritual of prayers is a reflection of this core abnegation of the self.

In the abstract it is easy to see all the religions as more or less the same, some faults here, some positive aspects there. But the liklihood of all balancing out pretty neatly and evenly seems radically small to me. People will certainly kill from a Christian base, but to get suicide bombers with regularity you have to have a metaphysical self-hatred and hatred of the world really deeply built in. Christians have had much more power, and Christian based societies have had much more power and fire power for the last large chunk of centuries. And their body count is enormous. But the hatred of life in Islam, should it ever have power, would, I would guess make that body count pale in comparisom. But I would suggest that is not necessarily the best way to decide the degree of hatred. It is to look at what is left over in the person, the believer, once the memes have got inside them.

My position is fully supported at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_bonnet. I mentioned it only as a symbol of the fact that Christianity, Judaism and Islam all traditionally held that women are subordinate to men and while the principle of gender equality has made some inroads into traditions of male dominance to varying degrees in these religions, evidence of patriarchy is still prevalent even in the more liberal modernized versions of these institutions.