Reasons not to believe Jesus

[Yefim Zverev]

I guess there are lots of Christians and previous Christians out there who have lots of idea on Jesus and Christianity. I want to learn what makes you believe in Jesus and Christianity if you are a believer.

But most important question is to previous Christians who got rid of their beliefs by certain logic or thinking. What negated religion and Jesus in you ? Which kind of thinking ? What did not work in his teachings or let's say Bible writers teachings in you.

Things that sound so nice like... Love every one... Forgive every one... What do you think about these ?

[RedAtheist]

I was never a Christian, but like everyone else I grew up assuming that Christianity was a good religion and that Jesus was a 'nice' person. After learning more about the Christian doctrine, I realised that there was nothing moral about it. Christianity emphasises the importance of faith and belief in God over the importance of moral behaviour. When it does advocate certain morals, those morals are often quite conservative and promote adherence to gender roles. This applies to fundamentalists especially, but also to some moderates who often feel, for example, that there is something morally icky about aborting a non-sentient fetus, even if they don't think it should be illegal.) Even if you try to adhere to all the rules of Christian you are still labeled as sinful by the religion, which sounds like to me like a nasty way to drain people of their self-esteem and any confidence they have in their own decision making capabilities.

As for Jesus, his message is naive at best and downright oppressive at worst. Sure it sounds nice, but in practise it does not work. This is ironic, since such as accusation is often thrown at Marx's ideas. As far as I'm concerned its Jesus's teaching that are idealistic and utopian. You should not love and forgive everyone. If you do, people who are not as nice and loving will take advantage of you. People who are oppressed, should definitely not love and forgive their oppressers. They need to overthrow them or at the very least stand up to them.

Jesus's message and the overall Christian message go very well together. They all aid in oppressing people, because anyone who followed all these ideas would be the perfect victim. They would be under the impression that resisting your enemies is the wrong way to go and that if you do chose to rise up and resist you will end up making terrible decisions due to your inherent evilness and unability to understand the world through the use of reason.

Jesus and Christianity are completely overrated and I think a large part of the reason why they have as much credibility as they do, is because people outside of the religion are unfamiliar with its teaching and have not studied the words of the supposedly loving new testement.

[Goblin]

I used to believe in Jesus. Then i grew up.

[Veovis]

Hey kids! Now that you know the truth about Santa Claus, just wait until you hear about Jesus!

[Zealot]

It was the religion itself, actually. The Christianity that is commonly taught and the Christianity as written in the Bible are two totally different things. That is what led to my disillusionment with Christianity at first. Then I started looking at the "other side" of the debate and I felt that Atheists often had good points and the evidence for evolution (and thus the uselessness of the requirement for a god) was undeniable. I just concluded that there was no god. God wasn't making my life any better than the Atheist next to me, in fact, it just made it worse to an extent. There was just no point in fooling myself anymore. Then, of course, I became a Marxist and was enlightened about the role of religion in society.

Also, Christianity, for a self-proclaimed religion of peace, had one of the most violent histories I've ever read about.

[roy]

i identified as a christian until i was 10 or 11, then i gradually came to realise i didn't have any religious conviction. i don't think this is a 'for or against' thing. you either believe or you don't.

[Brosip Tito]

It stopped being rammed down my throat around 9/10, I always considered myself a Christian til about 16, when all my friends were agnostics and I just stopped to think about why I believed, and couldn't come up with a reasonable answer.

16-18 an "agnostic", 18+ atheist.

[Left Leanings]

I attended the Church of England, from being quite young. It was my mother's decision, not mine. My dad never went, so I was always aware there was an alternative way of doing things. My brother hated it right from the start. But I got caught up in the theatre of the Church: the heady incense, the candles, the sung mass, the hymns etc. I served on the altar for a while, both as an acolyte (candle-bearer) and as the Master of Ceremonies. I was both a Baptized and a Confirmed Christian.

My religious beliefs were never rammed down my throat. It was something that I just did on a Sunday more than anything. If you're raised to believe, being childish, you will, just as many kids believe in the fairytale of Father Christmas. But as you become more educated, and think for yourself, the lack of rationality in supernatural claims, and in the specific claims made in the Bible pertaining to Jesus, become apparent. God is a Father Christmas figure - but for adults.

The teachings attributed to Jesus in the Bible, are unreliable anyway, since they were recorded in written form, not until about 70 years after his death. The later gospels, such as John, date from about 150 years after his death. There are also many gospels outside of the accepted Christian 'canon' (the approved gospels found in the Bible). Examples being Thomas, Mary Magdalene, even Judas. There was more than one church as well. And a bitter power struggle between the competing variants of Jesus's teachings, saw one church community win - and bitterly persecute the rest, and dispose of their gospels and teachings.

There is not even any reliable evidence, that the person of Jesus was a single historical figure. Theologians differentiate between the Jesus of history, and the Christ of Faith. It's quite likely that Jesus was actually more than one person, woven together into one central mythological figure. There were many around at the time, who opposed the Roman overlords and their collaborators, and many of them were firebrands and revolutionaries. These too claimed to be Messianic figures, or were treated as such. Jesus appears to have taken a different path, in that he is presented as a pacifist. Outside of Christian apology, there are few references to Jesus, so there is not much corrobarating evidence to indicate he was a single figure. There are far more independent and corroborating references to the Buddha as an actual historical figure - and he is a much older figure in the history of world religions.

I was also turned off Christianity and Jesus, by the unsophisticated and immature morality it espouses. People must or must not, behave in a certain way, cos it results in either reward or punishment.

Hogwash, all told. Thank fuck I shed by beliefs through education, critical thinking, humanity, compassion and atheism.

[Bostana]

I don't believe in Jesus because in the Bible Jesus does all these things to help people, cure the sick, give sight to the blind and so on. But that's just it he sounds like to nice of a guy to let all this evil in the world happen.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

I discovered Black Metal. Fuck logic and rationality.

[Left Leanings]

I don't believe in Jesus because in the Bible Jesus does all these things to help people, cure the sick, give sight to the blind and so on. But that's just it he sounds like to nice of a guy to let all this evil in the world happen.

Exactly.

God and Jesus are the same entity. Jesus is simply God incarnate/personified.

If the claims made for the Deity - that it is omnipresent, omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful) and all-loving, then human suffering would be non-existent.

Arguments for God granting 'free will' that causes human suffering is horsehit. Cos the Deity would have both the power and the inclination to grant both free will, and prevent human suffering at the same time.

If the deity is as described, then it should be spat upon for its callousness.

If the miracles of healing are so remarkable (and these are 'gifts' bestowed on his followers also), then why the need for modern medicine and hospitals. A trip to the local faith healer ought to do it lol.

It's hogwash. In the Bible you have the words of man, not of 'God'.

The deity does not exist.

[honest john's firing squad]

these threads have a tendency to marginalise and alienate all religious communists

[Left Leanings]

these threads have a tendency to marginalise and alienate all religious communists

It's all in the spirit of debate.

If the "religious communists" want to have their say, they can do so.

[Zostrianos]

I dabbled in Christianity a long time ago, when I was 16, 17 (and went as far as going to Church for a while, of my own volition). What made me change was a remarkable book I read, that proved that the Judeo-Christian faith is not a unique phenomenon, but has its origins in Pagan Semitic religions: Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel by Harvard professor F. M. Cross. That immediately shook my faith. This continued when I began looking into the real history of how Christianity took over the Roman empire (we were taught in high school that Christians were brutally persecuted, and then the emperor Constantine came along, and everyone lived happily ever after... ). I discovered how the Church immediately began persecuting other faiths, destroying temples and synagogues, murdering "heretics", reading facts like this:

"Our sources for the two and a quarter centuries following Nicaea allow a very rough count of the victims of credal differences: not less than twenty five thousand deaths (a little more than the 2000 or so Christians martyred by Rome don't you think?). A great many, but still only a small minority, were clergy; the rest, participants in crowds...All those who died met their end irregularly as targets of fury, not of legal action. Of bishops who died for their faith while in the custody of the secular powers, the examples can be counted on the fingers of one hand." (R. Macmullen "Voting about God in early church councils", p 56)

Also, from reading the Bible, I discovered inaccuracies and blatant falsehoods, the biggest one being the one about the Second Coming, when Jesus said it would take place in his disciple's lifetime: “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory....Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled”. (Matthew 24:30-32, 34)

I still admire Jesus' teachings, I think they were revolutionary in many ways, but as for religiously believing in him, no. I find my spiritual fulfilment in other religious philosophies, like Neoplatonism and the Hermetica.

[RedAtheist]

these threads have a tendency to marginalise and alienate all religious communists

Comments likes this have a tendency to marginalise and alienate all communists opposed to religion.

No, seriously, every other idea remotely relevent to the goal of creating a better world is debated among communists on this thread and in reality. Only when somebody has the nerve to criticise religion, are they accused of trying to 'exclude' or 'alienate' people. We are not excluding anybody we are merely criticising certain ideas. Religious people, who want to participate in a political organisation full of lively debate, need to get used to having their ideas challenged. It happens to everybody who gets involved in politics.

[Koba Junior]

It wasn't the religion that turned me off Christianity. That's the fault of Christians, particularly those that live in relative prosperity and the poor and uneducated living on the peripheral of that prosperity. They tend to be taken in by these spoiled upper-middle-class white guys and their reactionary ideology. These men resent their exploitation at the hands of higher capitalists, but their relative comfort has made them unaware of the exploitative character of their own actions.

Religion is a lot like drugs. It's all about set and setting. When you're relatively at peace and in a safe environment, you feel a little more confident in venturing into an altered state of consciousness. You give drugs to the bitter and stupid, however, calamity follows.

[honest john's firing squad]

Comments likes this have a tendency to marginalise and alienate all communists opposed to religion.

No, seriously, every other idea remotely relevent to the goal of creating a better world is debated among communists on this thread and in reality. Only when somebody has the nerve to criticise religion, are they accused of trying to 'exclude' or 'alienate' people. We are not excluding anybody we are merely criticising certain ideas. Religious people, who want to participate in a political organisation full of lively debate, need to get used to having their ideas challenged. It happens to everybody who gets involved in politics.

i'm an agnostic atheist myself but lol tell that to yourself next time some dumb "militant atheist" exclaims "I'VE FOUND THE LIGHT AT LAST I'M FREE OF RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION" or "Im soooo glad I ditched that childish nonsense looongg ago lol u religious ppl r stoopid babies" with a fervor almost as religious as what can be found in any abrahamic belief system.

really these threads just cater to self-aggrandising and obnoxious keyboard warriors so prevalent on the internet who for some reason have this profound sense of moral-intellectual superiority. oh well, i'm glad you guys can generally only be found in the deepest fathoms of the internet.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

i'm an agnostic atheist myself but lol tell that to yourself next time some dumb "militant atheist" exclaims "I'VE FOUND THE LIGHT AT LAST I'M FREE OF RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION" or "Im soooo glad I ditched that childish nonsense looongg ago lol u religious ppl r stoopid babies" with a fervor almost as religious as what can be found in any abrahamic belief system.

really these threads just cater to self-aggrandising and obnoxious keyboard warriors so prevalent on the internet who for some reason have this profound sense of moral-intellectual superiority. oh well, i'm glad you guys can generally only be found in the deepest fathoms of the internet.

Stupid rant, does not even make sense. Oh no, the poor oppressed religious people!!! If they want to be in an atmosphere supportive of religion, there are always religious forums for them to go to. Hell, they can even walk outside, take a random person, and start talking about religion. Odds are that person is religious, like a majority of humans are. If they are being marginalized, they can either give their opinions here or just go talk to one of the many religious people in the real world. We atheists don't really have the latter option.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I was raised catholic and just accepted it while I was younger, maybe a little before middle school I remember realizing there were aetheists and I was kind of shocked that they didn't believe in heaven and as I wraped my head around that I also remember thinking that the stories we were told in the bible were just impossible. So I decided I don't really believe those stories. I don't know if I just became agnostic or typical American "christian" (i.e. I believed in God and Jesus as a custom and my religiousness stopped there without even believing in the bible stories about them).

My only exposure to religion had been an urban catholic church that was racially diverse and apolitical (as far as I could tell, I never remember homosexuality or abortion coming up - I also remember being taught about evolution by catholic teachers without any discussion of creationism! - Evolution was simply the material mechanism through which god-created beings have changed over the eons). The social aspects I remember were mostly focused on "good works" and doing charity and the need to love everyone regardless of nationality (there were many immigrants in this church). Anyway, the point is that then I got to high school, not really beliving in religion, but not being against it either, but then I ran into the children of evangelicals and my attitude towards Christianity changed quite a bit. Also I was more aware of politics at this point and resented Ken-Doll what's-his-name and the Christian Coalition for all their bullshit like a good punk-rocker of that era would.

This continued in college which is like an evangelical hunting range. Ironically becoming a Marxist made me reconsider my views on religion and to separate the religious belief from the political agenda rather than just sort of crudely condemn all religious believers as reactionaries or dupes. It gave me a better and more reasonable explanation for some of the insanity that's cloaked in religion as well as the role of religion in society and disabused me from thinking that religion created bad politics rather than bad politics using religion as a vehicle.

[Left Leanings]

these threads have a tendency to marginalise and alienate all religious communists

It's all in the spirit of debate.

If the "religious communists" want to have their say, they can do so.

Comments likes this have a tendency to marginalise and alienate all communists opposed to religion.

No, seriously, every other idea remotely relevent to the goal of creating a better world is debated among communists on this thread and in reality. Only when somebody has the nerve to criticise religion, are they accused of trying to 'exclude' or 'alienate' people. We are not excluding anybody we are merely criticising certain ideas. Religious people, who want to participate in a political organisation full of lively debate, need to get used to having their ideas challenged. It happens to everybody who gets involved in politics.

i'm an agnostic atheist myself but lol tell that to yourself next time some dumb "militant atheist" exclaims "I'VE FOUND THE LIGHT AT LAST I'M FREE OF RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION" or "Im soooo glad I ditched that childish nonsense looongg ago lol u religious ppl r stoopid babies" with a fervor almost as religious as what can be found in any abrahamic belief system.

really these threads just cater to self-aggrandising and obnoxious keyboard warriors so prevalent on the internet who for some reason have this profound sense of moral-intellectual superiority. oh well, i'm glad you guys can generally only be found in the deepest fathoms of the internet.

First of all, you cannot be an "agnostic atheist". That is a contradiction in terms. An Agnostic is one who takes the position that they do not know whether God exists or not. They may not live their life with regard to religion. But intellectually, they are in a state of 'not knowing', and are undecided. An Atheist takes a more definite and bolder stance: they assert that God does not exist. You cannot be both agnostic and atheist on this stance at the same time. They are fundamentally different positions.

AS for people being alienated and marginalized. I see you have 'r.i.p. franz' under your username. A feference to Franz Fanionpants, no doubt. They guy who with his immature, abusive and patronizing posts, probably went a fair way to marginalizing and alienating many on these Boards himself - and has been given the bum's rush from here, and banned TWICE in the short time I have been posting. And the guy also claimed to be an 'educator', which is the American term for a school teacher. A fine example he sets, when there are high school/secondary school kids on here, who post with more decorum and grace than he ever has.

And was it not you also, who under the username of 'Miss Marple's Revenge', posted you didn't talk about politics, cos you 'have a life', in repsonse to a thread started by a young comrade, about his efforts to propagandize in school? That was a pretty marginalizing and counter-productive post right there, I reckon.

You - and your mate now in exile once again - are a fine pair together. And a classic example of "self-aggrandizing and obnoxious keyboard warriors", exhibiting marginalizing and alienating posts.