the jesus message of love is an important part of life…but equally important is reason and the scientific method…we need both
Need for what? I think that the aim of science concerns life in this world. At least applied science is. Jesus’ message was not “do X because it is the best way to live this life”, but to “do X because the kingdom of God is upon you”.
If that is true, then the Nietzscheans are correct and Christianity is anti-life and ultimately destructive. It therefore needs to be dumped in a trash heap.
we don’t need to trash jesus or science
Jesus IS the message! Has anyone got an idea of what He gave to this world? Has any one an experience of a profound conversion, on account of Jesu? It is a profound experience of letting go. While looking for this blog I accidentally lost it, and found myself in another forum, I don’t know how it could have happened, but came on a Cabala forum, where the warning was to all novices to be careful with it, the spiritual energy harnessed by it can lead to severe pursuit by evil spirits, who may trick you into believing that they are the beneficial form of high energy. can the study of the Cabala lead one into the discovery of the soul of Jesus? our rational mind dismisses this idea, with the deat of God, of Jesus, we have become privy to the witnessing of something else, the death of our souls. This is much more dangerous. Let’s not dismiss something which has occupied men for the last two thousand years, so casually, flippantly.
my soul is not dead orb…I am not getting rid of jesus but the church needs to love science
I didn’t mean to indicate that Your soul is dead. However, as we are all members of Christs community,at least those of us who live in any community with a semblance of imbued Christian values, can not help but be effected by what has been termed the death of God. You’d have to live on Mars not to have felt the effects of the last two hundred years give and take,upon the secular thoughts and feelings which are prevalent in today’s society. the death of God is a primary significant event in the history of re,if ion, and its subsequent following is the death of the individual soul. This happens whether one wants to believe it or not. Churches have ceased to be places of worship imbued with the sense of the mystical revelation of God’s presence, and are becoming places of congregation merely to exchange opinions and social gatherings.
when you go to church what are you worshipping…how can anyone know if god is dead…we don’t even agree on the nature of god
All you have to do is to keep your eyes and ears open and see corruption everywhere and hypocrisy where churches have become lucrative money making businesses, peophelia by the clergy being commonplace, where does God come into this? I am afraid He leaves by the back door.
what do you do at your church…do you worship
I used to go to church regularly, stopped going since five years ago. But that does not mean I don’t believe in Jesus. I am a Catholic, and the rite is well established. I used to do what every body else did, attend mass, Holy Communion, after confessing of sins, abide by Christ rules governing Special days such as in Advent and Fasting, do the Stations of the Cross, and when called upon community’s Serivice duties,including the passing of the collection basket.
If Jesus doesn’t recommend what is best for you, then he has to be ignored.
If Jesus wants you to suffer in this life in order to get something in an afterlife, then he has to be ignored.
If God is evil , then He should not be worshiped.
I disagree. Jesus does not give any indication (unlike Socrates) that he is fundamentally against life, but against a type of life, a life of suffering. His miracles give life, give health, give sustenance. But make no mistake- it is a teaching that is apocalyptic, concerned with end of days, a day of judgment, after which life is once affirmed (against the opinion of nietzscheans), purified and everlasting, free of suffering.
Is being against suffering the same as being against life? I make the distinction because I do not believe the Buddhist characterization of life. And being against suffering is not necessarily destructive as we see with Jesus’ own life. The creation of an afterlife is rather the source of strength for some to live this life, even if not for its sake.
Believing in an afterlife, which of greater importance than this life is not destructive in another sense. Because this life is secondary in value to the afterlife, the misery encountered in this life is re-evaluated. Now, that does not mean that people cease to ask of God and God for divine intervention in issue dealing with prolonging or improving this life, but when all fails, the person, or those who survive him or her continue on with the hope that this life of pain is not the only life.
Again, they find life in the after-life, so it is not anti-life.
Your arguments may turn me into an anti-Christian. 
Let me be clear.
God is the creator of life, truth, knowledge, justice, honor, reason, pleasure, courage, community, virtue, …
If He is not he source of these things, then He should not be worshiped.
Show us the source of all that is good, and that is the true God.
Away with the god of misery and an imagined afterlife.
If this is the only life that God created, then so be it. If there is more, then that is a great gift but not something to be lived for.
I do not see anything here that is incompatible with the belief in an afterlife. Secondly, if that is your version of God, sans after-life, then admit that is incompatible with the Bible and move on.
Now, you believe in a God that is the “creator of life, truth, knowledge, justice, honor, reason, pleasure, courage, community, virtue, …”. Why do you believe in this rather than believe that these are all created by humanity? If you are so committed to the idea of the afterlife is merely something “imagined”, then couldn’t the same be said of this “God”?
For God is, in my opinion an add on to this life. It stands as much as a hang-on, in view of science, as an afterlife.
You say “If there is more, then that is a great gift but not something to be lived for”-- same can be said of God: If there is a God then that is great, but not something to live for or worship. But you do apparently worship This because it is the creator of…al those things. What I cannot see is why such concepts are incompatible with the belief in an afterlife? And why do you think that this is a “god of misery”? If there is no afterlife, then you’re correct, but if there is an afterlife, free of misery, then how can that be true?
The Bible is only about an afterlife? If that is true, then I can move on.
These are all created by humanity? How? There is only random mutation which produces evolution?
Sure.
Add-on? Are you an atheist? God is a convenient construct?
God created this life… but it’s only for suffering and misery because the real life is in heaven. But God does not show the actual, real life in heaven. That remains an uncertain unknown. Because …
God is stupid,
God is silly.
God is a lunatic.
Seriously?
What kind of idiot do you think that God is?
I don’t think Jesus’ message was simply love. I think he was frustrated by the extreme legalism of the Jews, and so when he was pressed on the law, and what the law is, he summed it all up with a single word: love. (Who needs a thousand rules or ten rules when one rule, the rule of love, will do just as well?..)
But love is not the point. If anything, it’s a good rule, or rule of thumb. But as a law, or in the form of a law, it still has the same effect as law, and the same legalism can arise: that is, we start trying to love in all that we do, just as the Jews try to follow their laws in all that they do, when maybe, sometimes, that’s just not possible, and maybe not even right … Despite the law.
Now, in the spirit of your post, you might agree, and I might compare love to wisdom (v reason), and put the question thus: Is the point love, or is it wisdom? Is it the wisdom of love, or is it the love of wisdom, that should really drive us?
I think if anything that Jesus was about wisdom, not love. The problem is: wisdom is hard, harder even than love. It means discerning, in every situation, what is right. It requires a people of maturity (recall the origin of the law: given by Moses to Israel, in their time of weakness and immaturity in the desert, when they couldn’t find their own way…). Law, even the law of love, relieves us of this need to think. Law tells us what we should do, so that we don’t need to figure it out for ourselves… The law of love says don’t think, just love. This might be right 99% of the time, but that remaining 1%, well, is the exception that breaks the rule and blows the whole thing up…
I think Jesus was very much aware of this, and for wisdom, which is bigger than love. even though love is a large part of wisdom… (I wouldn’t draw a clean line between them as you seem to…)
the point of the thread…the church needs to have jesus and science…
Hello phyllo
Not “only”, but the NT, for example, could not be understood without this concept in mind. So I guess you have to move on.
Well evolution is the leading candidate according to science. But what is “truth”? Truth is what we believe and trust. God is not needed to create truth, strictkly speaking. Knowledge is a correspondence between what we believe with what is. Again God does not create this. Justice, honor are relative to a particular time and a particular society. We are shock by some of the prescriptions of The Law, which according to the Bible (and some conservatives) is the source of Justice. Reason, pleasure, courage, community, virtue, again all strike me as activities of social individuals and not inexplicable without God creating them. But if you need God to guarantee these, then have at it.
Do you remember what I am defending? You say that the afterlife is a construct of the imagination, right? My response is “well, couldn’t you say the same about God? But if you don’t say that about God, then why say it about the afterlife?” Implying to something else is afoot and that you are not being objective on this matter.
No. God created life. It is as real here as it is in the afterlife. But this life is not the end, but a means to an end. It is a fallen state away from God, it is imperfect because it is apart from God, but not unreal. Is is NOT ONLY suffering, but it is not the best life either, and because of that there is suffering.
Unknown? Read the NT. Then write about Heaven.