runner wrote: "What you seem to be saying Loudmouth is that you agree with the golden rule do unto others as you would want done to you. This was a very foreign concept before Jesus spoke these words."

Dear runner,

That is complete nonsense. The Golden Rule was around long before Jesus hit the scene. He was not a Christian but a Jew who recycled bits from the Jewish Bible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

"The Golden Rule appears in the following Biblical verse: "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD." (Leviticus 19:18)"

The Golden Rule was around before the Jewish Bible was written:

"Possibly the earliest affirmation of reciprocity reflecting the Ancient Egyptian concept of Maat appears in the story of The Eloquent Peasant, which dates to the Middle Kingdom (c. 2040 – c. 1650 BC): "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do."

The Golden Rule is common to many ethical systems. Jesus was just one of many people who said more or less the same thing. He neither invented love, the Golden Rule nor the wheel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule tells about it.

david f

take off your Christophobic glasses and stop quoting secular dogma

'Some have accused Jesus of “borrowing” the idea of the Golden Rule from the Eastern religions. However, the texts for Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, cited above, were all written between 500 and 400 BC, at the earliest. Jesus takes the Golden Rule from Leviticus, written about 1450 BC. So, Jesus’ source for the Golden Rule predates the “silver rule” by about 1,000 years. Who “borrowed” from whom?

Dear runner,

It was you who claimed that Jesus invented the Golden Rule. That was completely false. There is no reason to think that anyone borrowed the Golden Rule from anyone. It's a good way to live, and people got the idea independently.

however, you wrote: "This was a very foreign concept before Jesus spoke these words."

That statement is false. You also wrote: "take off your Christophobic glasses and stop quoting secular dogma"

The above is an odd statement since I cited NO secular sources. I don't think you have the least idea what the word, secular, means. I cited only religious sources. Your superstition is not the only superstition.

The Spiritual Gospel of Saint Jesus of Galilee retold:
http://www.dabase.org/up-6.htm

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Dear Peter,

.

You wrote :

« At Christmas the Church proclaims that God has a human face »
.

That’s correct, Peter. God is whatever the Church decides to make him. In addition to giving him a human face, as you note a little further in your article this month, it also proclaims that he is a “three-in-one” homo-sexual entity - father, son and holy ghost.

Face masks are probably one of the oldest cultural traditions of humanity. In 2003, BBC News, quoting an article published in the journal Antiquity, announced that a mask 35,000 years-old had been found on the banks of the Loire river in France.

The BBC reporter noted that the 77,000 year-old engraved ochre pieces found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa are probably the oldest example of modern human art generally accepted by the scientific community, though some anthropologists consider that certain rock objects 200,000 years-old may also have been sculptured by primitive artists :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3256228.stm
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The concept of an anthropomorphic deity is unique to Christianity among the three principal Abrahamic monotheistic religions. Both Judaism and Islam reject an anthropomorphic deity, believing that God is beyond human comprehension. Neither Yahweh nor Allah has a face nor anything else human for that matter.

The word mask derives from the Middle French word “masque” with which, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it was originally identical, and from which, not surprisingly, both the French and English word “masquerade” derives.

Presumably, the Christian "god" also has a heart, though I, personally, have seen no evidence of this to date.

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Congratulations Calwest in managing to count as far as five; and quite remarkable for someone of your intellectual capacity.

I hear Graham has an opening for a volunteer/unpaid assistant editor and someone able to count five full stops as a feat of intellectual endurance/acumen, must be in high demand............
Rhrosty.
P.S. Now be a good boy an count the full stops in this one, just to enhance/engage/work on your considerable mental faculties/prove your former effort wasn't a fluke.