Is Religion Doing More Harm Than Good These Days?(OT)

August West: But they tend to do things like want to replace the teaching of evolution in schools with some crap like intelligent design or elect politicians hostile to gay rights or make abortion illegal.

Fat Dad: I don't tell people what they should believe so, conversely, I dislike people telling me what I supposedly think or feel or know about the subject.

Craig,
Is there anything that you rely upon that has come to you by a second account? Have you talked to or listened to those who have had the direct experiences of all the many beliefs that you hold to be credible / true?

I have no interest in gang piling on them at this time when they are under such right wing pressure of bigotry, hate and misunderstanding.

HFCS: MikeL is a "post-modernist" - (2) the latter whose main purpose - besides arguing pretty much any point made in terms of its antipode - is to level, that is, zero out, every interpretation or value (system).

I wouldn't be so concerned about what they believe if they didn't act upon those beliefs. But they tend to do things like want to replace the teaching of evolution in schools with some crap like intelligent design or elect politicians hostile to gay rights or make abortion illegal.

And even with that, delusion is still a bad thing.

If society has convinced somebody that they are, and should be, a second class citizen and that's all right and proper ....

Do you just shrug and say they are entitled to their belief?

Yes there is plenty I take from second account reports

but if smells like BS, then I check it out further
and if it turns out to be wrong, then I reject it.

And the whole Jesus thing smells to high heaven, not only is it second accounts, it was probably changed to add mystical elements and the magnitude of the Son of God identity in later Versions of the second hand accounts

Everything has changed since biblical times
including what was written in the bible

Using a razor and glue, Jefferson cut and pasted his arrangement of selected verses from the King James Version[8] of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in chronological order—putting together excerpts from one text with those of another to create a single narrative. Thus he begins with Luke 2 and Luke 3, then follows with Mark 1 and Matthew 3. He provides a record of which verses he selected, and of the order he chose in his Table of the Texts from the Evangelists employed in this Narrative and of the order of their arrangement.

Consistent with his naturalistic outlook and intent, most supernatural events are not included in Jefferson's heavily edited compilation. Paul K. Conkin states that "For the teachings of Jesus he concentrated on his milder admonitions (the Sermon on the Mount) and his most memorable parables. What resulted is a reasonably coherent, but at places oddly truncated, biography. If necessary to exclude the miraculous, Jefferson would cut the text even in mid-verse."[9] Historian Edwin Scott Gaustad explains, "If a moral lesson was embedded in a miracle, the lesson survived in Jeffersonian scripture, but the miracle did not. Even when this took some rather careful cutting with scissors or razor, Jefferson managed to maintain Jesus' role as a great moral teacher, not as a shaman or faith healer."[10]
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No gnostic texts have been discovered that pre-date Christianity

The Gnostic ideas and systems flourished in the Mediterranean world in the second century AD, in conjunction with and influenced by the early Christian movements
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"Hey @joshharkinson, your article is outright libelous about me. Expect a public retraction from you and @MotherJones." -Dave Rubin

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