But wait!
What about all the records written about Jesus (well Yashua, but what’s in a name really?) from when he was alive?
Oh yeah, there isn’t a single scholar that thinks that there is a single word written about Jesus from the time of Jesus.
But the Epistles of Paul were likely written within 20 years of Jesus’s death so surely he collected lots of eye witness testimony.
Oh yeah, he never mentions ANYTHING from earth. His Jesus stories come to him through revelation and are about Jesus in heaven. Never mentions Joseph, Mary, a birth, apostles. His is a spiritual story not a story of a man on earth.
What about the historians that mention Jesus?
Oh yeah, there isn’t any mention of Jesus or Christians by any Historian until about 90 CE. That is 60 years after Jesus supposedly died. That is when the Christian movement started to get enough traction to be noticed. There isn’t a single scholar that thinks that ANY of the historians who wrote about Jesus was actually alive when Jesus was alive.
Ah, but don’t forget the ace in the hole. The Gospels are a detailed account of Jesus’s life written by eye witnesses (his apostles).
Oh yeah, Papias tells us that the Gospels were started by a man named Mark in the 130s. Justin Martyr lets us know that they were not yet in their present form by 150. Mathew, Mark and Luke seem to be 3 separate eyewitness accounts, but they are actually one story copied word for word and then expanded on by three authors probably in about 160 CE time frame.
There isn’t a scrap of evidence that Jesus ever existed, but there is a plausible story for how the myth got going.
FKS
A logical contradiction?
Philosophy is academic imperfection.
Schrodingers’s cat might be dead
Or alive, it is said.
To prove it, requires physical inspection.
No no see here’s how they know it’s knowledge. It’s written down. In a book. It says it, right there in the Gospel. The Gospel, you know. Where the rock was rolled away and there was nobody inside. That’s knowledge.
Yet again I have to take Author to task for not creating jokes but instead transcribing things said by religious people into a cartoon.
This isn’t funny! It’s real! The fact that there are so many morons of this magnitude in the world is no laughing matter.
fks, if I may say, there is an element of churlishness in the opinion that Jesus never even existed. If this was not Jesus and we did not (mostly) have an xtian heritage, we would be intrigued to think that the man of legend might actually exist and probably wonder what the real person – if such there were – was like. Think Robin Hood.
Suppose that there was such a person. Did his followers at the time believe he performed any of the miracles? Did he believe it as well? It’s not impossible. Faith healers are all fakes but not all are charlatans.
Nicholas Humphrey has a fascinating speculation in his book Soul Searching (which, btw is a superb debunking of all the supernatural) based on Humphrey’s acquaintance with a boy and his father who, back in the Uri Geller days, could miraculously (sic) bend spoons. It was a mixture of well intended, mutual and self deceit and group wishful thinking. Father and son were committed to what he describes as a Folie à deux.
I think it’s perfectly feasible that a historical Jesus could have existed and that he and his followers believed that he had miraculous powers of some kind. Lack of contemporary written evidence no more disproves this thesis than lack of fossil evidence disproves evolution. Sure, the legend was embellished, but the synoptic gospels, based on the unknown Q document, are pretty specific as compared to Robin Hood, say.
I suspect Paul’s reluctance to engage with xtians in Palestine was a half conscious ploy to avoid bringing the newly minted legend into contact with evidence of the real thing.
They are in bed together because it is winter and they friendly religious, each waiting for the other to make a mistake and then kill the other! Both their good books say so…
I’m not a Christian, but I have no problem in accepting the fact that Yeshua was a legitimate descendant from King David and therefore entitled to be regarded as King or ‘Mashiach’ aka Messiah. Equally, I have no problem with the so- called Resurrection. In my view Yeshua was still alive when taken down from the cross early and was subsequently revived, though maimed by his experience. Those who thought him truly dead would indeed have thought it a miracle when they met him subsequently.
I think that Christianity is a ‘manufactured myth’ conceived by Constantine and given effect at the Council of Nicaea.
I recommend ‘King Jesus’ by Robert Graves. Although a novel, it presents interesting ideas and is undeservingly out of print. And, the books by Australian theologian Barbara Thiering, whose detailed critical analysis of the New Testament, as far as I know, has not been proved wrong in any material respect. She reveals an ‘undertext’ – hidden meanings understandable only by initiates, utilising the ‘pesher’ technique.
Where do you get your datings from? The common view amongst almost all serious biblical scholars is that the gospel of Mark was written before AD 80, that is before the destruction of the Temple probably around AD 65, roughly 30 years after Jesus’ death. Mathew and Luke who wrote after the destruction of the Temple both had access to Mark’s gospel and expanded it in their own ways. They also had access to a second – now lost – common source usually referred to as Q, which is – although tentatively – believed to be even earlier. Q was a collection of sayings of Jesus, not an account of his life and deeds. The claim that there was some doomsday priest in Judea around that time who was then executed for causing a ruckus in the Temple during the Passover feast is not so outlandish, and we have more evidence for Jesus then for most other people of antiquity except for politicians. Then we have the letters of Paul, our earliest Christian writings. The reason they don’t tell stories of Jesus’ life and deeds is that they were letters to Christian congregations dealing with matters of theology and church politics, not gospels meant for posterity. And since the Christian theology is of course not based on what Jesus said, but on the stories that were made up after his death (the resurrection, the second coming etc.), it’s only natural that he did not dwell on the man much. But he presupposes that the readers – who lived before the gospel of Mark was written – knew about the man. That’s evidence enough for me for a claim that is in itself not very weird or unusual.
Than there are of course the bits that just don’t sound as if they were made up. Why is the man from Nazareth? Everybody knows the Messiah is supposed to be from Bethlehem. That’s why both Luke and Mathew made up two very different miraculous stories to get him there. If the whole character was invented he could have been from Bethlehem, period. If you read between the lines in the gospels you will find an uncomfortable admission that Jesus did not make that much of a splash during his lifetime (He scolds the people of Kapernaun, the small village where he had had his base during his whole ministry, for not believing in him, etc.). These are not the characteristics you’d give a made up character.
Soul Searching is indeed a splendid book for anyone with the sceptical bent (or Skeptic for those in the Colonies); and yahweh’s comment segues me straight into my favourite self-aggrandising anecdote:
In the early 90’s whilst working on the River Thames, I found Uri Geller’s luxury boat moored up outside his mansion near Reading (’twas a big boat named Paranormal as I recall). It had been left insecure and no-one was around ……. oh yes! I’m afraid I was young and mischievous back then.
So, I crept on board, found his cutlery drawer and physically bent his silverware through 90 degrees! It was an act of faith in natural justice and I was simply following my conscience …….. I can’t confirm if its true but we heard he later rang the local Police and they just fell about laughing.
I think the historical existence of one or more messiah figures who formed the basis of the early Christian cult is moot. The resurrection bit is either a falsification or a misinterpretation of whatever actually happened (if anything).
I’d recommend Michael Moorcock’s ‘Behold the Man’ for a great sci-fi take on how the Jesus myth arose.
As for the historical bit, I have no problem with the concept that a Joshua bar Joseph existed and was one of man anti-establishment figures around (as well as almost certainly being the first hippy 😉 ) but the son of Yahweh? He could just as easily have been the son of Zeus, or Quetzocoatl, or Baal…
If that story is true, you are definitely my hero of the day! If not, you at least gave me one hearty laugh and a wonderful thought! Thanks in any case.
Puts me in mind of the – admittedly far less heroic – idea I once had, of standing next to Jehovah’s Witnesses countering their ‘Awake!’ signs with my own ‘Go back to sleep!’ sign.
@Hotrats
“Actually Spike was born in Poona, India, so perhaps he’s more ‘Paki’* than ‘Paddy’.”
Except at the time of his birth there was no India or Pakistan, but a part of colonial Britain, and one took one’s parents nationality. I’m afraid Sir Terence remains a true ‘Paddy’ which has the advantage of being a term of endearment and certainly not a racial slur.
Except, JohnM, in Spike’s case it wasn’t that simple. Despite being the son of soldier in the British Army (and having served during the war himself), his birth in India led to a situation, under the Thatcher government, where he was denied UK citizenship. He accepted the offer of Irish citizenship to prevent the threat of deportation from the UK.
Sir T was always Irish by virtue of jus sanguinis, but until being refused a British passport, he’d probably never had the need to identify his nationality..
@JohnM
May I beg to differ, Spike was born in 1918, a time when Ireland was part of the UK, his mother was English and his father from Ireland. He then served in the British Army during the second world war, that’s British enough for me. It was the UK government that declared him stateless, much to our shame in my opinion.
Yahweh,
I have been an atheist for over 30 years, but like you and reggv, I always just assumed there was a real man behind the Jesus legend. A few years ago I got on a kick of trying to find out how the Bible was written. Some of it is actual history, some pure fabrication. To what extent does science and scholarship inform us which is which? If disbelieving in Christ were mere churlishness on my part, then I would have disbelieved for decades instead of just the last few years. My disbelief is based on a willingness to allow the evidence to speak for itself. Since I haven’t investigated any of the original evidence myself (I don’t know Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew etc.) I rely on scholars. Several scholars have made very convincing cases that there was no historical Jesus. The rebuttals from Christian apologists are largely along the lines of “that guy is a poo poo head”. A strong case has been made for the never-existence of Jesus. Christian apologist scholars are aware of this case, but their rebuttals are lame. So I conclude that there is no effective rebuttal and that the scholars arguing that Jesus never existed have proven their case.
Foundationist,
I agree with you that most scholars place the Gospels much earlier than I did above. But what is their logic and what is their evidence? Their evidence is zero. There is logic to it though. The logic is that since the Gospels were written by four of the actual apostles, they MUST have been written within forty to fifty years of the death of Jesus (30 CE) but since internal evidence suggests that they were written after the first Jewish Roman war (66 – 73 CE) those apostles must have started writing right away in 74 CE and finished up pretty soon before they died of old age, so like you say above, 80 CE. In other words, you get an early date for the Gospels by assuming the apostles were real and lived during the time of a real Jesus and that they are actually the authors. Most scholars don’t even think about the date. There is an established date and if you question it then you must be some kind of idiot, so they just repeat it. This is what I have seen when I read the scholars who talk about the Q document. They think really hard about who copied from whom and therefore who wrote first, but they don’t think very hard about when the copying took place or when the original took place. So my late dates follow a very simple logic; 1) when Christians are talking about their religion there is no way they go more than five minutes without mentioning the bible. 2) We have millions of words from second century Christian Church fathers talking about their religion. 3) The first time one of them ever mentions the Gospels is about 180 CE.
Therefore the Gospels (edition 1) were compiled very near 180 CE.
There is iron clad proof that some of the material in the Gospels was copied from Josephus Flavius who wrote in the 90s CE. I actually think that the internal evidence that shows that the gospels were written later than the 70 CE Jewish revolt could just as easily be evidence that they were written after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE. Now we know for sure that some of the story of a living Christ had been committed to paper prior to 135. We also know that the story was considerably more fleshed out by 150 CE. But IF the gospels were actually written in 80 CE then the least we can say is that they weren’t in wide circulation. Church fathers didn’t know about them. So one could imagine that the Gospel writers wrote their stuff and then mutually agreed to put it in the tomb of Jesus and roll the stone back in place so they weren’t discovered until around 180 CE. The problem with this hypothesis is that then we would actually have original documents. You know holy documents that nobody would ever mess with or redact? In actuality there are literally thousands of gospel manuscripts dating from the late second century to the late fourth century showing edits from thousands of authors that add up to over one hundred thousand edits! (Some German scholars put the number at about 200,000). For example Mark originally ended with “He is not here for he has risen”. Nine different authors have penned nine different endings after that.
In closing: I think that Q was written mid second century. The first version of the Gospels was complete about 160 to 180. And of course the thing continued to evolve until the Council of Carthage in about 400 when it was canonized.
FKS
Foundationist,
I got so caught up in answering your date question that I forgot you had actually argued for a real person that had spawned the Jesus legend.
There is actually only one piece of evidence for the existence of Christ. It is so famous (because it is alone) that it actually has a name. It is called the Testimonium Flavium. Since the vast majority of scholars for the last 1000 years have concluded that it is a forgery, it is called the Testimonium Flavianum Forgery.
Why is the man from Nazareth? Because the old testament said Christ would be a nazerite (like Samson) and the authors of the myth erred and thought that meant he needed to come from Nazereth.
“In my view Yeshua was still alive when taken down from the cross early and was subsequently revived, though maimed by his experience.”
If you believe the gospels, you can find supporting evidence. He was crucified in the morning and taken down in the afternoon. That’s not very long for a procedure that can potentially take days to kill the victim. I don’t doubt that he could have *looked* dead by late afternoon, but I find it plausible that he might not have *been* dead.
Nobody sees much of him afterward. I could understand a desire to lay low after surviving all that.
Another bit of evidence is that there some place in southeast asia where people have themselves crucified as part of some sort of religious ritual. They usually do not die. They probably don’t get the full treatment, but it’s obviously not immediately fatal.
“I suspect Paul’s reluctance to engage with xtians in Palestine was a half conscious ploy to avoid bringing the newly minted legend into contact with evidence of the real thing.”
I think you nailed it there, yahweh.
Chiefy,
That image cracks me up.
Paul: Jesus is your salvation!
Heckler: You mean Stinky Jesus? The one who farted a lot?
Paul: No. Er.. Um. Celestial Jesus. Yeah. That’s it. Celestial Jesus!
@ Mike N
I hope the C&B clientel will forgive us for this O/T exchange.
Found this in a w/pedia talk page. It seems a fairly precise summary and the last sentence of it essentially says jus sanguinus
“A father born in what’s now the Republic of Ireland was not sufficient to qualify for citizenship of the UK & Colonies when this was introduced in 1949. And at the time, British mothers could not pass on their citizenship. Spike could have applied for registration as a UK citizen on the basis of UK residence but reportedly refused to do so. Due to his father’s birthplace he was an Irish citizen automatically.”
Interestingly, it appears he did hold a UK passport at one time, but it is clear from anecdotes passed down in sundry biographies that he preferred to be Irish. Perhaps if he’d known that you thought of him as British … 🙂
@floridakitesurfer, there is actually a help of a lot of real evidence that the gospels were all written by roughly 90CE. I’m happy to provide a list if that would help.
In fact, more than 95% of all critical biblical scholars agree that the newest gospel, the non-synoptic Revelation, could not have been written later than 100CE, due to very clear handwriting analysis. There’s actually no controversy.
I’m not just appealing to authority here, you can verify this for yourself. It’s actually bloody fascinating how tiny changes in lettering can place even the small fragment of John’s gospel that exists (OP95? I think…) within a 15..20 year span. Actually, if it had been written 100 years later, the dating would only be 70..120 years!
Very cool stuff. Check out Bart Ehrman’s “Forged” for brilliant explanations, or if you’re more adventurous, try “Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament”.
You should probably back up your lies with evidence. What evidence? Well, he couldn’t be resurrected and not resurrected.
Don’t believe me, read this book by a slightly less absurd Glenn Beck, because appeal to authority is better than getting a degree in not being a fuckwit.
Here’s some reading for you.
Several books have been written in response to Bart’s works, including Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus by Timothy Paul Jones; Misrepresenting Jesus: Debunking Bart D. Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus by Edward D. Andrews; Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth: An Evaluation of Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? by Richard Carrier, D.M. Murdock, Earl Doherty, René Salm, David Fitzgerald, Frank R. Zindler, and Robert M. Price; and The End of an Illusion: How Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?” Has Laid the Case for an Historical Jesus to Rest by Earl Doherty.
Once everyone understands that revealed religion is snake-oil and bollocks, no matter how little or how much evidence there is for the lives of the central character(s), then the world will be a better place and we can get on with our lives.
So lets agree that a Uri-Geller-style illusionist existed ca.2000 years ago, that he got topped for preferring boys over girls, and that latter-day con-artists akin to Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard and N. Ron Madoff created sufficiently big vats, of the aforementioned snake-oil to grow massive multi-national corporations around them.
But, hey, I’m ranting at the choir (again), and should probably stop …
In my humble opinion, I find it plausible that a real person existed who taught the sort of things that Jesus is described as saying in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The end of the world and Judgement Day is coming soon, perhaps next Thursday, certainly before Jesus’ generation has passed away, and very few will be saved, therefore we should all get serious about doing what Moses taught, because final exams are coming up. Bust your a** to rack up as much credit as you can in the limited time remaining. Sell everything you own and distribute the money to the poor. Follow the entire Law of Moses down to the last iota (except don’t bother with the dietary laws). Forgive everybody, abstain from judging anybody, concentrate on purifying your own character. Abstain from all sin, even in your thoughts… consider self-castration to help abstain from lust, which is spiritually equivalent to adultery. Strive to “be perfect, even as your father in Heaven is perfect”.
The gospel of John was written at LEAST 70 years after the alleged time of Jesus, after that generation HAD passed away, and it contains none of this: no apocalyptic warnings that The End Is Near, no extreme and drastic ethical teachings, not even any mention of Hell. IMHO John is a late forgery written to praise Jesus to the skies while burying what he taught.
I went through the four gospels to collect everything Jesus is reported to have said about ethics, what his followers should DO, and that’s how it looks to me. I wrote up my findings here: http://www.atheistnexus.org/profiles/blogs/the-ethics-of-jesus
JohnM says:
January 16, 2014 at 11:01 pm
@ Mike N
I hope the C&B clientel will forgive us for this O/T exchange.
Don’t worry, John, there’s really no such thing as off-topic here. Think of the C&B comments as real bar-room banter rather than a strictly regimented, ‘must-stick-to-one-theme-throughout-the-thread-or-else’ kind of site. It’s what makes J&M the best place to be.
Now, of course Jesus was real. How else do you explain his mugshot appearing on so many pieces of toast and patches of mould?
Let’s say there is a crazy guy that has usurped the position of a school bus driver and is about to drive a bunch of innocent children off of a cliff to their death. Christians know that if the police get involved the children have a shot, but if you attempt to save the children with prayer then they are doomed. But even though Christians acknowledge that God WILL NOT grab a bus out of mid-air to save a bunch of children, they frequently affirm that God WILL paint a self-portrait using burn marks on a tortilla. The following story along with the idea that God might be an anal retentive artist may be the explanation…
Archangel Gabriel: Hi God! Watcha doing?
God: I am giving a loyal servant proof of my existence by etching my likeness in the burn marks on his toast.
Archangel Gabriel: Cool!
God: Yeah, I’m just finishing up the…
Archangel Gabriel: God! There is a bus load of…
God: Don’t interrupt! I am the lord thy GOD!
Archangel Gabriel: But God, the children are…
God: Shh shh. I am almost finished…THERE. (muffled crash in background) Perfect! Now what was so urgent Gabriel?
Archangel Gabriel: (weakly) um… Never mind.
@fks
I’m sure God made it up to them by letting them all into heaven – including those who hadn’t accepted Jesus and therefore had no pre-ordained right to enter. So everything turned out just peachy, as it happens. Praise be to Dr. Pangloss and bring on the next bus crash.
Nice story, fks, despite the obvious flaw. You said that the bus was full of innocent children, but thanks to the antics of Adam and his cloned twin sister Eve there is no such beast as an innocent child; they are all sinners simply by dint of being born.
@Foundaationist
So why does Paul NEVER so much as cite ANY of the gospels? not once does he do so. Even in the epistles that seem to be written by him. The ones not written by him don’t do so either.
It was only when the Council of Niceae decided what was canon and what wasn’t that the gospels get a mention. I expect they were plumped in as nice stories for the proles, nothing more.
fks, apologies for jumping to conclusions about your reasoning. I still think that the balance of probabilities indicates some real person behind the legend although I agree it’s not necessary. Scientology and Mormonism have given us two entirely made up creeds in recent history, so it is not impossible that Paul (or someone) just made the lot up. And lack of reference to the gospels would certainly point to their not being contemporaneous.
BTW your reference to a “self-portrait using burn marks on a tortilla” is what Nicholas Humphrey refers to as ‘unwarranted design’ – a feature of all supernatural demonstrations which work, but only in the most peculiar way and rarely in a way which would be useful.
For a laugh check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-25793358
on the BBC website.
If this is the calibre of “thinking” of elected officials we are definitely in seriously sheep dit.
Meanwhile, in other news, we have http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25791938
This is A SIGN that The Almighty (a guy called Odin, by the way) is truly pissed off with the damned churches and wants them to give all their money to medical research and ESA.
That’s at least as logical as UKIP’s insanity.
djdummy: Gospels check the modern world. Patrick O’Donovan. Is this the furture of irsh politics
Congratulations – I guess this finally counts as an ‘off-topic’ contribution – making no coherent contribution to anything in the thread. ‘Gospels check the modern world’ – what is this, a cryptic crossword clue?
To answer your question, the hapless backbencher who managed to confuse the anonymous TOR network with open-source browsers (calling for Chromium and Firefox to be banned!), seems destined only to return to the obscurity he so breifly transcended, so uh, no. (For the full, not particularly edifying, story, http://www.zdnet.com/irish-td-attacks-open-source-browsers-anonymous-networks-7000025224 )
djdummy:
Gospels check the modern world. Patrick O’Donovan. Is this the furture of irsh politics
Congratulations – I guess this finally counts as an ‘off-topic’ contribution – making no coherent contribution to anything in the thread. ‘Gospels check the modern world’ – what is this, a cryptic crossword clue?
For the cryptic crossword clue,”Gospels check the modern world”, never in a million years would I have come up with the correct answer, per AoS, viz. “kquote”. Really, really awesome.
Yea, I know. I probably lied by ticking the “not a spammer” box for this post, but hey, I freely acknowledge I’m not perfect
And now for something completely different.
Loving as I do both science and art glass, the web page I’m about to link to (from a post by Lynna, OM at Pharyngula) shows is pure porn.
You have been warned! http://www.buzzfeed.com/kellyoakes/12-beautiful-glass-sculptures-of-things-that-could-kill-you
Glass sculptures of viruses. Mmmmmmmm. And it’s my birthday in a couple of days, my dear, dear friends………… 🙂
I forgot an e and you went on a crusade. My Uncle was a great man he told me so himself He said I am a great man and you cant argue with facts like that. Spike Milligan
Djdummy, crusade? Not even a tirade. Moreover it was not the Spike post (which was most pertinent to the ‘toon) but the impenetrable one about gospels and Irish politics that triggered something. Had it escaped from another forum? Was it perhaps on your clipboard ready for an eager right-click? Was it indeed a wrong click?
Author, great strip and lovely reveal of the Grauniad. Have you a link to the inspiration for Jesus’ logic in this piece? I do appreciate seeing the source of some of the idiocy up there.
JohnM, Aye, I have guessed as much previously and am as happy as the next to allow and to help. Indeed I was only appealing for clarification because hes last three posts were equally nonsensical rather than cryptic (or certainly would have been had we not had the pleasure of the Milligan quote properly formatted and pertinently posted earlier).
Crypticism can be fun and nonsense can be funny but those posts were like wading through treacle and I would have wanted to be sure of a reason to step inside.
I think I can see what djdummy is suggesting. It seems to be a concern that if O’Donovan achieves his aim in closing down anonymous networks then we wouldn’t be here enjoying Author’s genius.
Having no knowledge of how the interweb works I couldn’t even begin to know whether the concern is valid from a technological viewpoint, but as Ireland isn’t (yet) an autocracy or a theocracy then from a political viewpoint I can safely say that O’Donovan dowsn’t stand a chance.
What any of that has to do with the gospels is anybody’s guess.
Oh, you mythicists cut me up! So funny. Heh heh heh.
Well, since your ad-hom attacks are par for your course, and no-one in your list of authorities has said anything new (let alone actual physical evidence-based) in four decades, I’ll wait until an actual scholar with actual biblical textual learning and published,peer-reviewed hypotheses says something apart from “no, you are.”
Thanks for trying out. Sorry, you won’t be going to Jerusalem.
@document : I should’ve guessed. I still speak fluent Drunk, but only after my fourth or fifth glass of red. Hmmm, I wonder if ‘red’ Drunk is a different accent to ‘beer’ Drunk, or ‘insert poison of your choice’ Drunk? Prob’ly not, most pubs have conversations over all sorts of ethanol brews. Just like here!
Cephas Atheos, I think it would be fair to say that an individual may have a drunk ‘accent’ that differs according to what (s)he’s been drinking, rather than any specific beverage giving a uniform accent to all that drink it – with the exception of super-strength lagers and ciders, which turn everybody violent.
Although I very rarely drink nowadays, back in the day I found that red wine caused me to break into serious conversation; whisky and beer gave me a comedic accent; gin gave the accent a maudlin quality; vodka was best avoided as just a single shot was enough to cause the red mist to descend (with the exception of Stoli, which for some curious reason had a very sleepy accent), and Absinthe just turned me catatonic, so no accent there whatsoever.
Totally lol – it’s too late for me.
I posted to the wrong thread when I swapped browsers lol.
What I tried to say was:
OK – so I got my email wrong – So sorry AoS.
The offer of a drink stands, and dear Author will eventually recognise me and reinstate my ‘picture’ (pretty please).
All will become clear when I come out of moderation!
ps Author – is there any way I can tell you all my aliases? Cos I’ve made this mistake before lol.
So I was doing a quick browse-by to see if there was anything new and I noticed that botanist posted to the wrong thread becauce of swapped trousers lol.
Yes. Wee drams are involved.
Happy Birthday, Acolyte! Sorry, didn’t get you any glass viruses. I could probably get you infected with Echinococcus multilocularis, if you were willing to do some very kinky things. But I’d rather get drunk with you. Red wine, whiskey, and gin all sound perfectly acceptable for a night out. (I’ll wait with the vodka until I can get my hands on TARDIS. Could be fun, though, eh?) How about Raki or Ouzo or similar aniseed based spirits? With some olives, spicy garlic-flavoured beef-sausage and goat cheese, perhaps?
Lacking the wonderful gift of my drunken company, I wish you a lovely birthday with Mrs. Sagan and all the little Carls and Carlas you have spawned.
Sa?l???n?za, benim arkada??m!
Majid Nawaz in the news big time, for J & Mo again.
Author, you are awesome for making these toons (cant wait to see your toon about Nawaz and the idiots who are calling for his death/boycott).
You will become the focus of the debate again and no one knows who you are! Are you God? An angel? Keep making this toon forever!
Thanks, FreeFox. I’ll take a rain check on the Echinococcus multilocularis if you don’t mind, but I’ve got an inkling that you would indeed be wonderful drunken company so I’ll happily share a pastis or two with you.
@Bhagwan “…no one knows who you are!”
I do hope you are correct about that, but I suspect the NSA may know. However, as long as only J, Mo and Moses are the only ones lampooned our dear Author should be safe. Just as long as he doesn’t put out a ‘toon featuring the Koch brothers …
JohnM, ‘….Just as long as he doesn’t put out a ‘toon featuring the Koch brothers’
Can’t for the life of me think how the Koch brothers might be depicted in cartoon form… ;-).
AOS, fks, et alia: Self-portraits on toast can be done by any decent human artist. Just paint a negative of the desired image with any sludge which retards combustion, leaving the image to burn gently.
Weeping statues require patience, a modicum of knowledge of the structure of ceramics and scraping three areas of glaze, one on top and two near the “eyes”, it’s not a complex trick though practice with a few similar statues will allow one to perfect the magic trick before presenting it to your audience. That is, as any stage magician will tell you, a required part of all magics.
Moving and rocking statues can require some knowledge of electronics, wiring and camouflage but can often be highly effective in convincing the rubes to pert with your money. (All money belongs to the confidence tricksters, some of it is just temporarily misplaced. Adjusting its location to its proper place, their bank account, is much of the substance of religion.)
Anyway, no image of Mo’ or Josh has ever been seen. Those portraits are actually paintings of their superbly evil alien replicant replacements for their extremely evil alternate reality doubles of their most evil future-looped older versions of their evillest robot duplicates of their eviller mad-scientist-made clones of their evil twins.
And they are evil. It says so in the KJV.
John B. Hodges: thank you for the work in your excellent “Ethics…” piece. May we pass around the URL?
Not to dampen your enthusiasm or detract from your efforts in any way but there are many sects, cults and other oddsbodies that already run with the idea that tomorrow we die. The “Jahweh’s Witless” lot have been saying the trump of doom will sound in this generation for well over a century and they are only one of many sad bunches who seem to hate being alive.
I did ask one pair of door-stepping JW’s to give me all of their money as they evidently didn’t need it and I had a baby to feed. Their “faith” evidently didn’t stretch that far which was a pity, I could have made a good living were they not hypocritical fraudsters preying on the stupid.
Hmm. A Kickstarter concept?
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
Where does it say that it came through the walls? How did you guys conclude that?
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
March 15, 2011
Popegasm. Like an orgasm but without that feeling of … well …. of everything, really.
As a real atheist I believe in Jesus and Mo!
But wait!
What about all the records written about Jesus (well Yashua, but what’s in a name really?) from when he was alive?
Oh yeah, there isn’t a single scholar that thinks that there is a single word written about Jesus from the time of Jesus.
But the Epistles of Paul were likely written within 20 years of Jesus’s death so surely he collected lots of eye witness testimony.
Oh yeah, he never mentions ANYTHING from earth. His Jesus stories come to him through revelation and are about Jesus in heaven. Never mentions Joseph, Mary, a birth, apostles. His is a spiritual story not a story of a man on earth.
What about the historians that mention Jesus?
Oh yeah, there isn’t any mention of Jesus or Christians by any Historian until about 90 CE. That is 60 years after Jesus supposedly died. That is when the Christian movement started to get enough traction to be noticed. There isn’t a single scholar that thinks that ANY of the historians who wrote about Jesus was actually alive when Jesus was alive.
Ah, but don’t forget the ace in the hole. The Gospels are a detailed account of Jesus’s life written by eye witnesses (his apostles).
Oh yeah, Papias tells us that the Gospels were started by a man named Mark in the 130s. Justin Martyr lets us know that they were not yet in their present form by 150. Mathew, Mark and Luke seem to be 3 separate eyewitness accounts, but they are actually one story copied word for word and then expanded on by three authors probably in about 160 CE time frame.
There isn’t a scrap of evidence that Jesus ever existed, but there is a plausible story for how the myth got going.
FKS
Logic:
Round
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
This could be easily explained by Schrödinger’s resurrection….
A logical contradiction?
Philosophy is academic imperfection.
Schrodingers’s cat might be dead
Or alive, it is said.
To prove it, requires physical inspection.
Not bad at all, Nasser
Why are they still in bed?
fks, there’s tons of evidence for Jesus’ existence – as long as you’re prepared to accept hearsay and wishful thinking as evidence.
I liked Philip Pullman’s take on the resurrection trick in his book The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.
Spoiler Alert!
Jesus and Christ are identical twins.
Nassar, whatever you’ve been putting in your coffee is working wonders. 🙂
machigai, I think they are still recovering from the new years party.
Machigai; reading The Guardian in bed is one of life’s great luxuries
No no see here’s how they know it’s knowledge. It’s written down. In a book. It says it, right there in the Gospel. The Gospel, you know. Where the rock was rolled away and there was nobody inside. That’s knowledge.
@ OB
Not only that, it’s all over the Internet. Hundreds of sites. So of course it must be true.
We are all humans:
http://imgur.com/gallery/V8lVK
Yet again I have to take Author to task for not creating jokes but instead transcribing things said by religious people into a cartoon.
This isn’t funny! It’s real! The fact that there are so many morons of this magnitude in the world is no laughing matter.
Dan, you really need to take your irony meter to the shop for calibration.
My uncle was a great man
he told me so him self.
He said I am a great man
and you can’t argue with
facts like that.
Spik Milligan.
@djdummy
Sir Terence Milligan was no spik. He was a paddy 🙂
Sorry e at the end of Spik.
John M:
Actually Spike was born in Poona, India, so perhaps he’s more ‘Paki’* than ‘Paddy’.
*Note for those unused to UK racist stereotypes, Poona is in India not Pakistan, but ‘Paki’ is a generalised insult for all sub-continentals.
????
????????????
Wow.
I have a whole keyboard of these things!
(if it actually works)
????
So, no then 🙁
fks, if I may say, there is an element of churlishness in the opinion that Jesus never even existed. If this was not Jesus and we did not (mostly) have an xtian heritage, we would be intrigued to think that the man of legend might actually exist and probably wonder what the real person – if such there were – was like. Think Robin Hood.
Suppose that there was such a person. Did his followers at the time believe he performed any of the miracles? Did he believe it as well? It’s not impossible. Faith healers are all fakes but not all are charlatans.
Nicholas Humphrey has a fascinating speculation in his book Soul Searching (which, btw is a superb debunking of all the supernatural) based on Humphrey’s acquaintance with a boy and his father who, back in the Uri Geller days, could miraculously (sic) bend spoons. It was a mixture of well intended, mutual and self deceit and group wishful thinking. Father and son were committed to what he describes as a Folie à deux.
I think it’s perfectly feasible that a historical Jesus could have existed and that he and his followers believed that he had miraculous powers of some kind. Lack of contemporary written evidence no more disproves this thesis than lack of fossil evidence disproves evolution. Sure, the legend was embellished, but the synoptic gospels, based on the unknown Q document, are pretty specific as compared to Robin Hood, say.
I suspect Paul’s reluctance to engage with xtians in Palestine was a half conscious ploy to avoid bringing the newly minted legend into contact with evidence of the real thing.
They are in bed together because it is winter and they friendly religious, each waiting for the other to make a mistake and then kill the other! Both their good books say so…
I’m not a Christian, but I have no problem in accepting the fact that Yeshua was a legitimate descendant from King David and therefore entitled to be regarded as King or ‘Mashiach’ aka Messiah. Equally, I have no problem with the so- called Resurrection. In my view Yeshua was still alive when taken down from the cross early and was subsequently revived, though maimed by his experience. Those who thought him truly dead would indeed have thought it a miracle when they met him subsequently.
I think that Christianity is a ‘manufactured myth’ conceived by Constantine and given effect at the Council of Nicaea.
I recommend ‘King Jesus’ by Robert Graves. Although a novel, it presents interesting ideas and is undeservingly out of print. And, the books by Australian theologian Barbara Thiering, whose detailed critical analysis of the New Testament, as far as I know, has not been proved wrong in any material respect. She reveals an ‘undertext’ – hidden meanings understandable only by initiates, utilising the ‘pesher’ technique.
@floridakitesurfer
Where do you get your datings from? The common view amongst almost all serious biblical scholars is that the gospel of Mark was written before AD 80, that is before the destruction of the Temple probably around AD 65, roughly 30 years after Jesus’ death. Mathew and Luke who wrote after the destruction of the Temple both had access to Mark’s gospel and expanded it in their own ways. They also had access to a second – now lost – common source usually referred to as Q, which is – although tentatively – believed to be even earlier. Q was a collection of sayings of Jesus, not an account of his life and deeds. The claim that there was some doomsday priest in Judea around that time who was then executed for causing a ruckus in the Temple during the Passover feast is not so outlandish, and we have more evidence for Jesus then for most other people of antiquity except for politicians. Then we have the letters of Paul, our earliest Christian writings. The reason they don’t tell stories of Jesus’ life and deeds is that they were letters to Christian congregations dealing with matters of theology and church politics, not gospels meant for posterity. And since the Christian theology is of course not based on what Jesus said, but on the stories that were made up after his death (the resurrection, the second coming etc.), it’s only natural that he did not dwell on the man much. But he presupposes that the readers – who lived before the gospel of Mark was written – knew about the man. That’s evidence enough for me for a claim that is in itself not very weird or unusual.
Than there are of course the bits that just don’t sound as if they were made up. Why is the man from Nazareth? Everybody knows the Messiah is supposed to be from Bethlehem. That’s why both Luke and Mathew made up two very different miraculous stories to get him there. If the whole character was invented he could have been from Bethlehem, period. If you read between the lines in the gospels you will find an uncomfortable admission that Jesus did not make that much of a splash during his lifetime (He scolds the people of Kapernaun, the small village where he had had his base during his whole ministry, for not believing in him, etc.). These are not the characteristics you’d give a made up character.
Soul Searching is indeed a splendid book for anyone with the sceptical bent (or Skeptic for those in the Colonies); and yahweh’s comment segues me straight into my favourite self-aggrandising anecdote:
In the early 90’s whilst working on the River Thames, I found Uri Geller’s luxury boat moored up outside his mansion near Reading (’twas a big boat named Paranormal as I recall). It had been left insecure and no-one was around ……. oh yes! I’m afraid I was young and mischievous back then.
So, I crept on board, found his cutlery drawer and physically bent his silverware through 90 degrees! It was an act of faith in natural justice and I was simply following my conscience …….. I can’t confirm if its true but we heard he later rang the local Police and they just fell about laughing.
Some things just have to be done!
I think the historical existence of one or more messiah figures who formed the basis of the early Christian cult is moot. The resurrection bit is either a falsification or a misinterpretation of whatever actually happened (if anything).
I’d recommend Michael Moorcock’s ‘Behold the Man’ for a great sci-fi take on how the Jesus myth arose.
As for the historical bit, I have no problem with the concept that a Joshua bar Joseph existed and was one of man anti-establishment figures around (as well as almost certainly being the first hippy 😉 ) but the son of Yahweh? He could just as easily have been the son of Zeus, or Quetzocoatl, or Baal…
@Sly-Fi:
If that story is true, you are definitely my hero of the day! If not, you at least gave me one hearty laugh and a wonderful thought! Thanks in any case.
Puts me in mind of the – admittedly far less heroic – idea I once had, of standing next to Jehovah’s Witnesses countering their ‘Awake!’ signs with my own ‘Go back to sleep!’ sign.
@Hotrats
“Actually Spike was born in Poona, India, so perhaps he’s more ‘Paki’* than ‘Paddy’.”
Except at the time of his birth there was no India or Pakistan, but a part of colonial Britain, and one took one’s parents nationality. I’m afraid Sir Terence remains a true ‘Paddy’ which has the advantage of being a term of endearment and certainly not a racial slur.
Except, JohnM, in Spike’s case it wasn’t that simple. Despite being the son of soldier in the British Army (and having served during the war himself), his birth in India led to a situation, under the Thatcher government, where he was denied UK citizenship. He accepted the offer of Irish citizenship to prevent the threat of deportation from the UK.
@ Mike N
Sir T was always Irish by virtue of jus sanguinis, but until being refused a British passport, he’d probably never had the need to identify his nationality..
Foundationist – it is indeed true.
@JohnM
May I beg to differ, Spike was born in 1918, a time when Ireland was part of the UK, his mother was English and his father from Ireland. He then served in the British Army during the second world war, that’s British enough for me. It was the UK government that declared him stateless, much to our shame in my opinion.
Yahweh,
I have been an atheist for over 30 years, but like you and reggv, I always just assumed there was a real man behind the Jesus legend. A few years ago I got on a kick of trying to find out how the Bible was written. Some of it is actual history, some pure fabrication. To what extent does science and scholarship inform us which is which? If disbelieving in Christ were mere churlishness on my part, then I would have disbelieved for decades instead of just the last few years. My disbelief is based on a willingness to allow the evidence to speak for itself. Since I haven’t investigated any of the original evidence myself (I don’t know Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew etc.) I rely on scholars. Several scholars have made very convincing cases that there was no historical Jesus. The rebuttals from Christian apologists are largely along the lines of “that guy is a poo poo head”. A strong case has been made for the never-existence of Jesus. Christian apologist scholars are aware of this case, but their rebuttals are lame. So I conclude that there is no effective rebuttal and that the scholars arguing that Jesus never existed have proven their case.
Foundationist,
I agree with you that most scholars place the Gospels much earlier than I did above. But what is their logic and what is their evidence? Their evidence is zero. There is logic to it though. The logic is that since the Gospels were written by four of the actual apostles, they MUST have been written within forty to fifty years of the death of Jesus (30 CE) but since internal evidence suggests that they were written after the first Jewish Roman war (66 – 73 CE) those apostles must have started writing right away in 74 CE and finished up pretty soon before they died of old age, so like you say above, 80 CE. In other words, you get an early date for the Gospels by assuming the apostles were real and lived during the time of a real Jesus and that they are actually the authors. Most scholars don’t even think about the date. There is an established date and if you question it then you must be some kind of idiot, so they just repeat it. This is what I have seen when I read the scholars who talk about the Q document. They think really hard about who copied from whom and therefore who wrote first, but they don’t think very hard about when the copying took place or when the original took place. So my late dates follow a very simple logic; 1) when Christians are talking about their religion there is no way they go more than five minutes without mentioning the bible. 2) We have millions of words from second century Christian Church fathers talking about their religion. 3) The first time one of them ever mentions the Gospels is about 180 CE.
Therefore the Gospels (edition 1) were compiled very near 180 CE.
There is iron clad proof that some of the material in the Gospels was copied from Josephus Flavius who wrote in the 90s CE. I actually think that the internal evidence that shows that the gospels were written later than the 70 CE Jewish revolt could just as easily be evidence that they were written after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE. Now we know for sure that some of the story of a living Christ had been committed to paper prior to 135. We also know that the story was considerably more fleshed out by 150 CE. But IF the gospels were actually written in 80 CE then the least we can say is that they weren’t in wide circulation. Church fathers didn’t know about them. So one could imagine that the Gospel writers wrote their stuff and then mutually agreed to put it in the tomb of Jesus and roll the stone back in place so they weren’t discovered until around 180 CE. The problem with this hypothesis is that then we would actually have original documents. You know holy documents that nobody would ever mess with or redact? In actuality there are literally thousands of gospel manuscripts dating from the late second century to the late fourth century showing edits from thousands of authors that add up to over one hundred thousand edits! (Some German scholars put the number at about 200,000). For example Mark originally ended with “He is not here for he has risen”. Nine different authors have penned nine different endings after that.
In closing: I think that Q was written mid second century. The first version of the Gospels was complete about 160 to 180. And of course the thing continued to evolve until the Council of Carthage in about 400 when it was canonized.
FKS
Foundationist,
I got so caught up in answering your date question that I forgot you had actually argued for a real person that had spawned the Jesus legend.
There is actually only one piece of evidence for the existence of Christ. It is so famous (because it is alone) that it actually has a name. It is called the Testimonium Flavium. Since the vast majority of scholars for the last 1000 years have concluded that it is a forgery, it is called the Testimonium Flavianum Forgery.
Why is the man from Nazareth? Because the old testament said Christ would be a nazerite (like Samson) and the authors of the myth erred and thought that meant he needed to come from Nazereth.
“In my view Yeshua was still alive when taken down from the cross early and was subsequently revived, though maimed by his experience.”
If you believe the gospels, you can find supporting evidence. He was crucified in the morning and taken down in the afternoon. That’s not very long for a procedure that can potentially take days to kill the victim. I don’t doubt that he could have *looked* dead by late afternoon, but I find it plausible that he might not have *been* dead.
Nobody sees much of him afterward. I could understand a desire to lay low after surviving all that.
Another bit of evidence is that there some place in southeast asia where people have themselves crucified as part of some sort of religious ritual. They usually do not die. They probably don’t get the full treatment, but it’s obviously not immediately fatal.
@reggv ‘King Jesus’ is actually available for kindle (thanks for the tip)
“I suspect Paul’s reluctance to engage with xtians in Palestine was a half conscious ploy to avoid bringing the newly minted legend into contact with evidence of the real thing.”
I think you nailed it there, yahweh.
Chiefy,
That image cracks me up.
Paul: Jesus is your salvation!
Heckler: You mean Stinky Jesus? The one who farted a lot?
Paul: No. Er.. Um. Celestial Jesus. Yeah. That’s it. Celestial Jesus!
@ Mike N
I hope the C&B clientel will forgive us for this O/T exchange.
Found this in a w/pedia talk page. It seems a fairly precise summary and the last sentence of it essentially says jus sanguinus
“A father born in what’s now the Republic of Ireland was not sufficient to qualify for citizenship of the UK & Colonies when this was introduced in 1949. And at the time, British mothers could not pass on their citizenship. Spike could have applied for registration as a UK citizen on the basis of UK residence but reportedly refused to do so. Due to his father’s birthplace he was an Irish citizen automatically.”
Interestingly, it appears he did hold a UK passport at one time, but it is clear from anecdotes passed down in sundry biographies that he preferred to be Irish. Perhaps if he’d known that you thought of him as British … 🙂
@floridakitesurfer, there is actually a help of a lot of real evidence that the gospels were all written by roughly 90CE. I’m happy to provide a list if that would help.
In fact, more than 95% of all critical biblical scholars agree that the newest gospel, the non-synoptic Revelation, could not have been written later than 100CE, due to very clear handwriting analysis. There’s actually no controversy.
I’m not just appealing to authority here, you can verify this for yourself. It’s actually bloody fascinating how tiny changes in lettering can place even the small fragment of John’s gospel that exists (OP95? I think…) within a 15..20 year span. Actually, if it had been written 100 years later, the dating would only be 70..120 years!
Very cool stuff. Check out Bart Ehrman’s “Forged” for brilliant explanations, or if you’re more adventurous, try “Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament”.
@Cephas
You should probably back up your lies with evidence. What evidence? Well, he couldn’t be resurrected and not resurrected.
Don’t believe me, read this book by a slightly less absurd Glenn Beck, because appeal to authority is better than getting a degree in not being a fuckwit.
Here’s some reading for you.
Several books have been written in response to Bart’s works, including Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus by Timothy Paul Jones; Misrepresenting Jesus: Debunking Bart D. Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus by Edward D. Andrews; Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth: An Evaluation of Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? by Richard Carrier, D.M. Murdock, Earl Doherty, René Salm, David Fitzgerald, Frank R. Zindler, and Robert M. Price; and The End of an Illusion: How Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?” Has Laid the Case for an Historical Jesus to Rest by Earl Doherty.
SALEM HYPOTHESIS, HOOOO!
Once everyone understands that revealed religion is snake-oil and bollocks, no matter how little or how much evidence there is for the lives of the central character(s), then the world will be a better place and we can get on with our lives.
So lets agree that a Uri-Geller-style illusionist existed ca.2000 years ago, that he got topped for preferring boys over girls, and that latter-day con-artists akin to Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard and N. Ron Madoff created sufficiently big vats, of the aforementioned snake-oil to grow massive multi-national corporations around them.
But, hey, I’m ranting at the choir (again), and should probably stop …
Sorry about the errant punctuation. Add and subtract commas as you see fit.
In my humble opinion, I find it plausible that a real person existed who taught the sort of things that Jesus is described as saying in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The end of the world and Judgement Day is coming soon, perhaps next Thursday, certainly before Jesus’ generation has passed away, and very few will be saved, therefore we should all get serious about doing what Moses taught, because final exams are coming up. Bust your a** to rack up as much credit as you can in the limited time remaining. Sell everything you own and distribute the money to the poor. Follow the entire Law of Moses down to the last iota (except don’t bother with the dietary laws). Forgive everybody, abstain from judging anybody, concentrate on purifying your own character. Abstain from all sin, even in your thoughts… consider self-castration to help abstain from lust, which is spiritually equivalent to adultery. Strive to “be perfect, even as your father in Heaven is perfect”.
The gospel of John was written at LEAST 70 years after the alleged time of Jesus, after that generation HAD passed away, and it contains none of this: no apocalyptic warnings that The End Is Near, no extreme and drastic ethical teachings, not even any mention of Hell. IMHO John is a late forgery written to praise Jesus to the skies while burying what he taught.
I went through the four gospels to collect everything Jesus is reported to have said about ethics, what his followers should DO, and that’s how it looks to me. I wrote up my findings here:
http://www.atheistnexus.org/profiles/blogs/the-ethics-of-jesus
Don’t worry, John, there’s really no such thing as off-topic here. Think of the C&B comments as real bar-room banter rather than a strictly regimented, ‘must-stick-to-one-theme-throughout-the-thread-or-else’ kind of site. It’s what makes J&M the best place to be.
Now, of course Jesus was real. How else do you explain his mugshot appearing on so many pieces of toast and patches of mould?
Let’s say there is a crazy guy that has usurped the position of a school bus driver and is about to drive a bunch of innocent children off of a cliff to their death. Christians know that if the police get involved the children have a shot, but if you attempt to save the children with prayer then they are doomed. But even though Christians acknowledge that God WILL NOT grab a bus out of mid-air to save a bunch of children, they frequently affirm that God WILL paint a self-portrait using burn marks on a tortilla. The following story along with the idea that God might be an anal retentive artist may be the explanation…
Archangel Gabriel: Hi God! Watcha doing?
God: I am giving a loyal servant proof of my existence by etching my likeness in the burn marks on his toast.
Archangel Gabriel: Cool!
God: Yeah, I’m just finishing up the…
Archangel Gabriel: God! There is a bus load of…
God: Don’t interrupt! I am the lord thy GOD!
Archangel Gabriel: But God, the children are…
God: Shh shh. I am almost finished…THERE. (muffled crash in background) Perfect! Now what was so urgent Gabriel?
Archangel Gabriel: (weakly) um… Never mind.
@fks
I’m sure God made it up to them by letting them all into heaven – including those who hadn’t accepted Jesus and therefore had no pre-ordained right to enter. So everything turned out just peachy, as it happens. Praise be to Dr. Pangloss and bring on the next bus crash.
Nice story, fks, despite the obvious flaw. You said that the bus was full of innocent children, but thanks to the antics of Adam and his cloned twin sister Eve there is no such beast as an innocent child; they are all sinners simply by dint of being born.
@Foundaationist
So why does Paul NEVER so much as cite ANY of the gospels? not once does he do so. Even in the epistles that seem to be written by him. The ones not written by him don’t do so either.
It was only when the Council of Niceae decided what was canon and what wasn’t that the gospels get a mention. I expect they were plumped in as nice stories for the proles, nothing more.
fks, apologies for jumping to conclusions about your reasoning. I still think that the balance of probabilities indicates some real person behind the legend although I agree it’s not necessary. Scientology and Mormonism have given us two entirely made up creeds in recent history, so it is not impossible that Paul (or someone) just made the lot up. And lack of reference to the gospels would certainly point to their not being contemporaneous.
BTW your reference to a “self-portrait using burn marks on a tortilla” is what Nicholas Humphrey refers to as ‘unwarranted design’ – a feature of all supernatural demonstrations which work, but only in the most peculiar way and rarely in a way which would be useful.
Gospels check the modern world. Patrick O’Donovan. Is this the furture of irsh politics
For a laugh check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-25793358
on the BBC website.
If this is the calibre of “thinking” of elected officials we are definitely in seriously sheep dit.
Meanwhile, in other news, we have http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25791938
This is A SIGN that The Almighty (a guy called Odin, by the way) is truly pissed off with the damned churches and wants them to give all their money to medical research and ESA.
That’s at least as logical as UKIP’s insanity.
djdummy:
Gospels check the modern world. Patrick O’Donovan. Is this the furture of irsh politics
Congratulations – I guess this finally counts as an ‘off-topic’ contribution – making no coherent contribution to anything in the thread. ‘Gospels check the modern world’ – what is this, a cryptic crossword clue?
To answer your question, the hapless backbencher who managed to confuse the anonymous TOR network with open-source browsers (calling for Chromium and Firefox to be banned!), seems destined only to return to the obscurity he so breifly transcended, so uh, no. (For the full, not particularly edifying, story, http://www.zdnet.com/irish-td-attacks-open-source-browsers-anonymous-networks-7000025224 )
kquote>hotrats says:
January 19, 2014 at 6:04 pm
djdummy:
Gospels check the modern world. Patrick O’Donovan. Is this the furture of irsh politics
Congratulations – I guess this finally counts as an ‘off-topic’ contribution – making no coherent contribution to anything in the thread. ‘Gospels check the modern world’ – what is this, a cryptic crossword clue?
🙂 🙂
There’s nowt better than a kquote.
For those who have not see this one :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=w6ef7B1EwLg
For the cryptic crossword clue,”Gospels check the modern world”, never in a million years would I have come up with the correct answer, per AoS, viz. “kquote”. Really, really awesome.
Yea, I know. I probably lied by ticking the “not a spammer” box for this post, but hey, I freely acknowledge I’m not perfect
And now for something completely different.
Loving as I do both science and art glass, the web page I’m about to link to (from a post by Lynna, OM at Pharyngula) shows is pure porn.
You have been warned!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kellyoakes/12-beautiful-glass-sculptures-of-things-that-could-kill-you
Glass sculptures of viruses. Mmmmmmmm. And it’s my birthday in a couple of days, my dear, dear friends………… 🙂
I forgot an e and you went on a crusade. My Uncle was a great man he told me so himself He said I am a great man and you cant argue with facts like that. Spike Milligan
AOC do you think what this guy is proposing has no relevance Patrick O’Donovan to this cartoon.
Off-topic’ contribution Hotrats. What he means is so importent to you? It is what he wants to do is important Its not a matter of faith its knowledge
KQuote? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak9ArKBdSY4
Djdummy, crusade? Not even a tirade. Moreover it was not the Spike post (which was most pertinent to the ‘toon) but the impenetrable one about gospels and Irish politics that triggered something. Had it escaped from another forum? Was it perhaps on your clipboard ready for an eager right-click? Was it indeed a wrong click?
Author, great strip and lovely reveal of the Grauniad. Have you a link to the inspiration for Jesus’ logic in this piece? I do appreciate seeing the source of some of the idiocy up there.
@ WW
It’s possible djdummy may not be a native English speaker, so maybe we should cut him/her some slack.
JohnM, Aye, I have guessed as much previously and am as happy as the next to allow and to help. Indeed I was only appealing for clarification because hes last three posts were equally nonsensical rather than cryptic (or certainly would have been had we not had the pleasure of the Milligan quote properly formatted and pertinently posted earlier).
Crypticism can be fun and nonsense can be funny but those posts were like wading through treacle and I would have wanted to be sure of a reason to step inside.
I think I can see what djdummy is suggesting. It seems to be a concern that if O’Donovan achieves his aim in closing down anonymous networks then we wouldn’t be here enjoying Author’s genius.
Having no knowledge of how the interweb works I couldn’t even begin to know whether the concern is valid from a technological viewpoint, but as Ireland isn’t (yet) an autocracy or a theocracy then from a political viewpoint I can safely say that O’Donovan dowsn’t stand a chance.
What any of that has to do with the gospels is anybody’s guess.
Thank you AOS, you see the point. Apologies to all who deserve them. Will not text drunk again.
@Nibien: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh, you mythicists cut me up! So funny. Heh heh heh.
Well, since your ad-hom attacks are par for your course, and no-one in your list of authorities has said anything new (let alone actual physical evidence-based) in four decades, I’ll wait until an actual scholar with actual biblical textual learning and published,peer-reviewed hypotheses says something apart from “no, you are.”
Thanks for trying out. Sorry, you won’t be going to Jerusalem.
@document : I should’ve guessed. I still speak fluent Drunk, but only after my fourth or fifth glass of red. Hmmm, I wonder if ‘red’ Drunk is a different accent to ‘beer’ Drunk, or ‘insert poison of your choice’ Drunk? Prob’ly not, most pubs have conversations over all sorts of ethanol brews. Just like here!
Autocorrect fail : for ‘@document’, read ‘@djdummy’… D’oh!
Happy Birthday AoS Dear Friend. Have a drink – what would you like?
Cephas Atheos, I think it would be fair to say that an individual may have a drunk ‘accent’ that differs according to what (s)he’s been drinking, rather than any specific beverage giving a uniform accent to all that drink it – with the exception of super-strength lagers and ciders, which turn everybody violent.
Although I very rarely drink nowadays, back in the day I found that red wine caused me to break into serious conversation; whisky and beer gave me a comedic accent; gin gave the accent a maudlin quality; vodka was best avoided as just a single shot was enough to cause the red mist to descend (with the exception of Stoli, which for some curious reason had a very sleepy accent), and Absinthe just turned me catatonic, so no accent there whatsoever.
Just in case you all missed my earlier hint:- http://www.buzzfeed.com/kellyoakes/12-beautiful-glass-sculptures-of-things-that-could-kill-you . But be quick, it’s only my birthday for another 23hrs 42mins.
🙂 🙂 🙂
Totally lol – it’s too late for me.
I posted to the wrong thread when I swapped browsers lol.
What I tried to say was:
OK – so I got my email wrong – So sorry AoS.
The offer of a drink stands, and dear Author will eventually recognise me and reinstate my ‘picture’ (pretty please).
All will become clear when I come out of moderation!
ps Author – is there any way I can tell you all my aliases? Cos I’ve made this mistake before lol.
To remove your confusion AoS I tried to wish you a Happy Birthday and messed up xx
Cheers, botanist, I do allow myself a wee glass every now and then so I’ll take a small single malt if I may.
Bottoms up!
So I was doing a quick browse-by to see if there was anything new and I noticed that botanist posted to the wrong thread becauce of swapped trousers lol.
Yes. Wee drams are involved.
Happy Birthday, Acolyte! Sorry, didn’t get you any glass viruses. I could probably get you infected with Echinococcus multilocularis, if you were willing to do some very kinky things. But I’d rather get drunk with you. Red wine, whiskey, and gin all sound perfectly acceptable for a night out. (I’ll wait with the vodka until I can get my hands on TARDIS. Could be fun, though, eh?) How about Raki or Ouzo or similar aniseed based spirits? With some olives, spicy garlic-flavoured beef-sausage and goat cheese, perhaps?
Lacking the wonderful gift of my drunken company, I wish you a lovely birthday with Mrs. Sagan and all the little Carls and Carlas you have spawned.
Sa?l???n?za, benim arkada??m!
Majid Nawaz in the news big time, for J & Mo again.
Author, you are awesome for making these toons (cant wait to see your toon about Nawaz and the idiots who are calling for his death/boycott).
You will become the focus of the debate again and no one knows who you are! Are you God? An angel? Keep making this toon forever!
Thanks, FreeFox. I’ll take a rain check on the Echinococcus multilocularis if you don’t mind, but I’ve got an inkling that you would indeed be wonderful drunken company so I’ll happily share a pastis or two with you.
AoS – please accept his link with my best wishes for your birthday.
Finally a shadowy organisation bent on world domination we can all get behind….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usDuyoec6Lc
@Bhagwan “…no one knows who you are!”
I do hope you are correct about that, but I suspect the NSA may know. However, as long as only J, Mo and Moses are the only ones lampooned our dear Author should be safe. Just as long as he doesn’t put out a ‘toon featuring the Koch brothers …
JohnM, ‘….Just as long as he doesn’t put out a ‘toon featuring the Koch brothers’
Can’t for the life of me think how the Koch brothers might be depicted in cartoon form… ;-).
Thanks for that, JoJo. I quite like Mitchell and Webb but hadn’t seen the Knights Tippler sketch.
AoS: You’re welcome… It’s a personal favourite, along with ‘Homeopathic A&E’, ‘Nutritionists’ ‘The Good Samaritan’ and ‘Abraham and Ivan’… 🙂
Personally I am partial to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU
Got to say I’m a fan of Sir Digby Chicken Caeser – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QACSo5xk3dE
AOS, fks, et alia: Self-portraits on toast can be done by any decent human artist. Just paint a negative of the desired image with any sludge which retards combustion, leaving the image to burn gently.
Weeping statues require patience, a modicum of knowledge of the structure of ceramics and scraping three areas of glaze, one on top and two near the “eyes”, it’s not a complex trick though practice with a few similar statues will allow one to perfect the magic trick before presenting it to your audience. That is, as any stage magician will tell you, a required part of all magics.
Moving and rocking statues can require some knowledge of electronics, wiring and camouflage but can often be highly effective in convincing the rubes to pert with your money. (All money belongs to the confidence tricksters, some of it is just temporarily misplaced. Adjusting its location to its proper place, their bank account, is much of the substance of religion.)
Anyway, no image of Mo’ or Josh has ever been seen. Those portraits are actually paintings of their superbly evil alien replicant replacements for their extremely evil alternate reality doubles of their most evil future-looped older versions of their evillest robot duplicates of their eviller mad-scientist-made clones of their evil twins.
And they are evil.
It says so in the KJV.
John B. Hodges: thank you for the work in your excellent “Ethics…” piece. May we pass around the URL?
Not to dampen your enthusiasm or detract from your efforts in any way but there are many sects, cults and other oddsbodies that already run with the idea that tomorrow we die. The “Jahweh’s Witless” lot have been saying the trump of doom will sound in this generation for well over a century and they are only one of many sad bunches who seem to hate being alive.
I did ask one pair of door-stepping JW’s to give me all of their money as they evidently didn’t need it and I had a baby to feed. Their “faith” evidently didn’t stretch that far which was a pity, I could have made a good living were they not hypocritical fraudsters preying on the stupid.
Hmm. A Kickstarter concept?
This doesn’t exactly work in this context… the proof he was resurrected is that he’s right there talking.
I like popegasm. It is when you are atheist and think the pope is nice.
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
Where does it say that it came through the walls? How did you guys conclude that?