2231 Sleepnover.

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When the Teen first came to live with us she got invited to sleepovers quite a lot it seems like, but she had a very hard time staying the entire night, for various reasons. I remember having to go retrieve her a few times. That was really soon after she lost her dad & it was very difficult for her.

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How did he know it wasn’t the teaching of Christ if they were teaching him the um, teachings of Christ? Curse you self-defining and (non?) circular logic.

The joke is always “Atheists have no basis of morality” but this dude already had one from … the Care Bears, common sense, generic critical thinking, Superman?… and knew his basis of morality and applies it to Jesus [instead of the other way around].

I’m guessing that Ramon means- that the camp was not teaching what [Ramon] believes are the teachings of Christ, meaning- what is written in the New Testament as the teachings + sayings of Jesus Christ.

I don’t think that the comic has shown us a lot about- what Ramon thinks are the teachings of Jesus. It could be that the comic will tell us more about that, later on.

Jesus Christ taught love and compassion. Unfortunately, he didn’t write any of it down and no one else did for another few centuries, add to the fact that when Christiandom was originally formed many years after that a bunch of old guys curated his teachings into what we now know as the New Testament.

Basically organized religion is a farce and you should figure out for yourself what God wants like Ramon.

Which is why I like the Unitarian church, which basically tells you to figure it out for yourself and gives you a variety of resources to help you do so. As a result it ends up having followers from a variety of so-called faiths. At my local church, we have a majority of Christians, and also jews, atheists, wiccans, and others. We get along, because we all are trying to be good people without fighting about the symbols we use to express it.

We do not accept a “faith” of hate.

Isn’t getting along with other religions what evil is? They all warn us about the “Others.”

Actually there are plenty of religions that co-exist quite happily with others. Taoism, Zen, Shinto, Confucianism don’t really demand to be your spiritual everything.

It’s the missionizing faiths, primarily Christianity and Islam that really cultivate the sort of tribalism that wants to exclude alternate belief systems. And every faith has its cults and cults tend to be that way just from being cults.

It seems a bit excessive to say “organized religion is a farce”. YMMV. You can still get value out of it even if everything Christ is quoted as saying has come to us through several centuries of the “telephone” game.

I think organized religion becomes more farcical the same way any other organization does…as it acquires power and status in its world. Or more correctly as the craving for power and status become more important.

And this i where Ramon’s observations are important. A cult of Christianity is going to sow fear and doubt about the rest of the world. Ramon picked up on it.

“…another few centuries…”

Try another few decades. The New Testament was completed well before 100AD, within 67 years of the death of Christ. It contains elements that scholars have traced back to within 20 years of His death. That simply isn’t enough time for legendary elements to have creeped into the narrative.

And to make matters worse, the narrative was published in exactly the area where there still lived people who could falsify what was said. Sure, people in Espania — or even Rome — might not have heard about the Rabbi who supposedly rose from the dead, but not the enemies of the new-founded cult in Jerusalem.

And then you have Josephus basically confirming the whole story in the late 60’s AD.

So, sorry, historically there just isn’t enough time for a “telephone game” to happen.

It’s not a telephone game and I never questioned the legendary elements, only the ones that blatantly contradicted the overall teaching of Love for our fellow man/woman. It’s powerful and influential people wanting to use Christ as a means of accruing power for themselves. There were in fact several different groups of them leading different ‘Jesus movements’ until the formation of Christendom as a sociopolitical polity by leaders of State over 300 years AD. It doesn’t matter how many people actually met and knew him. In a few generations, if that, all anybody would know is what the Church/State told them and that’s exactly what happened.

Also, nice job with the super-specific fact-checking, even though given that the average life expectancy back then was 35yrs so I don’t know how some guy 60yrs after Christ died would know what happened or be able to confirm the accuracy of a book that few, for the better part of the next 1517 years, would be able to read or even get their hands on a copy.

Unfortunately, your view of how people act in regard to historic events is both naive and narrow, but if you want to use your free will and insist that Jesus is evil then by all means go ahead, I’ll just continue using mine’s to believe that He isn’t and hopefully sometime after our mutual deaths we can get together and see who was right.

Winner gets a soda.

Some of the new testament was not written until the second century. Josephus only wrote about what the Christians of his time believed and is not a reliable source for wether or not any of it was true. There are no contemporary writings by independent writers of the time jesus supposedly walked corroborating what is written in the new testament. What we do have is in contradiction to the gospel. For instance pilat was removed from office for excessive cruelty, and the tradition of letting criminals go never existed. The real pilat would have laughed at the Jews telling him to crucify jesus. Then ordered all of them crucified for bothering him.

“And to make matters worse, the narrative was published in exactly the area where there still lived people who could falsify what was said.”

Huh, I didn’t think about sadducees, pharisees, and other opponents mucking around with the narrative so soon.

I remember pointing out to mixed groups of christians the centuries of copying over and over again from different books and translating into different languages would have changed the books we have today from the actual words spoken at the original sermons and very first authors’ versions. The King James versions I grew up with had a load of translation footnotes in bottom sections of each page regarding greek and a few other languages.

I ended up ruffling some feathers pointing this out to other christians. I was confused when one responded the current version is perfect because it’s the Word of God.

I’m not sure how other religions squabble over their holy texts.

On the plus side, I’m assuming most of us in the comment section below are from where difference of religion or atheist are mere discussions rather than hatred, bitter violence, or death.

Let’s not forget that the entire Christian movement was essentially hijacked by Saul of Tarsus and his followers. If you read only the Gospels there is a much more simple message.

Actually, we have fragments of Bible copies and translations from the early and mid 2nd centuries, and they agree with most later, more complete copies. Remarkable, no? Also, it’s very much in contrast with the dogma in the name of science I was fed at school. Many popular beliefs about the Bible have everything to do with propaganda and nothing to do with the facts. One of the big things to remember when you’re considering these things is the established, so-called Christian churches from the 4th century onward looked to Greek philosophy as its primary guideline, and the Bible secondary if at all. One big result was mysogyny, which was absolutely blatant in Greek culture but you have to stretch points all over the place to make the Bible support mysogyny. It wasn’t just the Christians. Somewhere between 500 and 300 BCE, one of the major Jewish sects developed a taste for Greek philosophy too.

I read a book once in which they presented the story of Abraham being tolc by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, but tben at tbe very last moment God intervenes and stops the whoke charade. The usual spin is that it’s God testing Abraham’s faith. But this book looked at it differently — that Abfraham followed the instructions to tge end as a test of God — that a god tgat would demand such a sacrifice for real is not a god worth worshipping.

He knows it’s not the teaching of Christ because well.. he is Jesus so he would know what he meant. But all jokes aside. Ramon strikes me as a kid who read the Bible while growing up *before* the “Hand of God” cult took his parents. This helped him form a basis on what *he* thinks the teachings of Christ are. For example, Jesus talked very frequently about loving your fellow man regardless of their nature. So ANY reference of bigotry, no matter how subtle, would be an instant affront to the word of the Son of God.

I mean just looking it up in the King James version of the bible it references how loving your neighbor is *necessary* to being a faithful adherent several times. One of which Jesus personally says that there are two great commandments: One is to love god, Two is to love your neighbor.

Furthermore, while they are listed as “one and two” Jesus basically says it’s the “same thing” not actually ranking one higher than the other but putting them both equally.

While I am not a strict believer in any religion. I feel Jesus was a cool guy and pretty much had the right idea about things. And anyone preaching hate in his name is automatically a liar and a crook trying to push their own agenda to manipulate others.

Hi Jackie.
I’m sorry to hear that you + the Teen went through that unhappy event.
I hope that you two are doing better, right now.

You don’t have to be a Christian to know that neither God nor Jesus ever preached violence and prejudice against others (although God did do some nasty things for various justifications). Granted, many people look to the 2nd Commandment as justification for violence against nonbelievers…but those people also overlook one of Jesus’s lessons in Matthew: you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

I always wondered what shaped Ramon’s worldview. We’re getting to see some of what made Evrina befriend him.

(They are friends, right? Evrina is sometimes a bit hard to read like that.)

I guess so.

But- I think she gets really mad about how he runs his business, with no biz skills,…so I guess that means she yells at him, almost constantly, when she’s at work.

Please pardon me, but this will be a long post:

In my opinion-
I do not mean to be negative to any organization(s), or to any nation, but, in the US, I think that the tendency of some US, religious people to ignore + [give a wide berth to] people outside of their religion- comes out of a tradition by [most?] US people, to want two choices in a situation, and no more than two choices.

That is- Most US people want the choices to be: YES or NO, or…”right” and “wrong”.

In the 1990s, Robert Fulghum, the author of the book, “Uh-Oh”, had said something like- “We Americans like to have people be definite- let your yes mean yes, and your non mean no. We don’t like anything in-between. And we don’t like more than two choices.”
[ FWIW- Some of my friends are Christians, + I saw how they acted, + did their religious life. That’s what I’m thinking about, when I write this message].

I think the tendency of most US, religious people to see people of another religion as “outsiders”, or as “an opponent”, is more from a tradition of most US ppl. not moving beyond the unhelpful, and I think…wrong, idea of- “If you’re outside of our group, then you are wrong”, or “if you’re not in our group, then how can you be morally good?” The boxes of “the people who are with us are right, + those who are not with us are wrong”, are the only two boxes that they know how to put people in.
I’m not excusing that, but it is how they operting, when they work with other people.

So, I think, Fulghum’s observation on many US people only learning to use two choices, yes/this is right, or no/this is wrong, is still a problem in this current time.
I’m hoping that most people, whether they are: people in a religion, people in the Christian religion, people of the Shinto religion, are…Hindus, deists, atheists, agnostics, and any others, will- learn to find + discover people out of their groups…and [make friends with them], and learn to peacefully tolerate their traditions, rather than only being friends + neighbors with their separate groups.

Or, as a friend of mine wisely, once said- “Don’t take it so hard. It’s a good thing for us, to open our eyes a little wider.”

Yes, definitely.

To be fair, I like my Yes to mean yes, and my No to mean no. But I also like my maybe to mean maybe and my it’s complicated be an understatement, because that’s how the world is. Maybe. I dunno, it’s complicated.

Way too many people in this country seem to think that being acquainted with someone means that person is morally right, despite the fact that they argue with individuals about technical quibbles all the time. Also in my family. Sigh.

I wish I’d been that strong… or rather that smart. I was for a while, but the trouble was it wasn’t the church. It was my father and his drug supplier trying to set up a little cult, aparently with my mother as the figurehead. My father had it set up in a way that the church wouldn’t question anything. I really think God protected my mind for a few years, but I kept refusing opportunities to get help and eventually, when I saw the fear in my adult sister’s eyes, I thought I was wrong and started trying to accept it.

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