Martin, I wonder if you would be so kind as to expand on your unequivocal statement:

>>You doubt the existence of an historical Jesus - a position that credentialed, serious historians universally reject. This puts you in the same category as those who endorse the existence of the Loch Ness Monster and the Bermuda Triangle.<<

Apart from the anecdotal evidence that we are all aware of, what is it that has convinced all these eminent, credentialed, serious - but unnamed - historians?

Thanks in advance.

Incidentally, your analogy is all wrong. You cannot criticise someone for a belief in something that is supported only by anecdotal evidence, such as the Loch Ness Monster or the Bermuda Triangle, while simultaneously chastising them for their non-belief in something with the same characteristics.

If Oliver were impolite, he would probably point out that it a charge more likely to be laid against you, for exactly the same reason.

But of course he is far too well-bred to do so.

I think as human beings we all hope for a "greater good" than what is the current experience, our moment in time, and that giving up that moment or "life time" is even for those stated "unbelievers" a fearful fact when considering the end of ones life and all that life has given or taken. Even a human being living the most miserable of existence will not throw away his life casually. One hopes for many things. An understanding of the "reason" behind human existence, your personal existence is not an "unreasonable" hope.
That religions compete for ideological ascension, kill in the name of that religion, kill the "unbeliever". Make war. Burn buildings. Desecrate buildings. Burn books, torture and maim and kill the authors. Threaten the lives of those members of their very society. Destroy other societies. Kill, kill, kill, kill....
This is religion? This is learning? This is an expression of love and human fellowship? Out of this cesspool of hatred I must pick a team in order to be considered religious or a person of faith! God will hate me? Punish me for not joining in?
How many more hundreds of years must we endure this stupidity? What's the learning curve here? Where's the saturation point? When all societies revolt in the name of humanity and no longer in the name of God?

The last hundred years of theological thinking inherited two main lines of theological pursuit: classical Christianity and anti-supernaturalism. The antisupernatural stream, at least in the Hebrew-Christian understanding of "supernatural," may be thought of as making a new methodological beginning with Descartes (who, ontologically, placed God as mediation between thought and substance).

The growing power of physical science, in taking away the need for the hypothesis of God, has created a new hub for man’s attention on this world. A new interest in history and the development of stringent historical methods, plus the birth of the psychological and the social sciences have combined to give this focus. Overwhelmingly, the nontheological intellectual leadership has veered sharply away from all suggestions of supernaturalism as an active alternative for man’s understanding of himself and of his world.

Fundamentalism is the modern, partly defensive and partly aggressive response of precritical, classical Christianity. It creates a permanent gulf between the believer and the thinker, and offers no real way out. Another minor theological movement of our time is the continuation of the liberal movement; but besides being out of fashion (which is no criterion of truth!), liberalism suffers from internal bleeding and from weakening due to inconsistency between its content of faith and its method.

All are agreed - Marcel, Jaspers, Heidegger, and Tillich - that the foundations of being have been shattered, that the old objective knowledge of God, and of the values and principles associated with him, is no longer valid, and that as a consequence modern man is spiritually uprooted. The Nietzschean prophecy seems fullfulled in that that we are "groping our way in an infinite nothingness."

Truly the twentieth century has been rough on the gods by which our fathers lived: honor, thrift, industry, honesty, and brotherly love. For with the death of the gods have disappeared a heaven of values and ideals. Surely anyone who is sensitive to our times can hear the plaintive cry: "Ye take away my gods, ... and what have I left?" (Micah).

Relda it comes down to this. I dont believe in god. God has no relevance to my life. The problem being is I am under constant bombardment by what I consider insane notions.

Non-Believers who are they? They are everybody, not everybody believes in the rainbow serpent. Question two Christians and their beliefs come undone you will find no two beliefs in the same god are actually of the same god even if those people belong to the same cult. This is why religion has always been stuck in a wheel of conflict.

Believers claim their values are good , as an outsider I can see their values are more corrupt than the common everyday person.

There is no claim a believer makes that is in fact true.

Still we are bombarded.

This 'secular religion ' conspiracy theory is utter garbage. If secular society did conspire against the superstitious chuches and temples would be shut down and Christians and muslims would be locked up in Baxter.

Yet this is the very essence of what god believers want to do to so called non-believers.

West, the mind of a healthy sceptic can inform, “The true-believer syndrome merits study by science. What is it that compels a person, past all reason, to believe the unbelievable. How can an otherwise sane individual become so enamored of a fantasy, an imposture, that even after it's exposed in the bright light of day he still clings to it--indeed, clings to it all the harder?”- M. Lamar Keene

Ironically, the early dramas of many religions concern the relationship between believers and unbelievers – first the believers are persecuted by the unbelievers, then later on the roles are often reversed.

A ‘true-believer’ often has a belief not based on evidence, but on devotion to a person. That devotion can be so great that even the most despicable behavior by one's guru can be rationalized. There are many examples of people so devoted to another that they will rationalize or ignore extreme mental and physical abuse by a cult leader (or spouse or boyfriend).

The ‘belief’ shown above has no real preponderance for free-will. Just as the chance effects of the quantum theory might suggest a basis for ‘free will’ within nature herself, albeit at levels quite miniscule, Newtonian physics appears to ‘contain’ it. Two levels of understanding are appropriate.

A constraint is applied – dispense with the muddled postmodern concept that all ideas are equal. You cannot argue that Ptolemy's construct of epicycles is as good an idea as Copernicus' sun-centered system. This is utter nonsense. Science at its best does seek the closest approximation of "truth" at a given time. With this in mind, any borrowed idea or concept of God becomes unimportant

~~THE GOSPEL ACCORDING OLIVER~~

1. Histographies do seem to challenge the religions. A reading of Arnold Toynbee (1947) would suggest that the Jews were a much maligned people, both, under the Egyptians, and, later, under the Greeks.

Circa 600 BCE ,Toynbee suggests, that the Jews looked backward to their happier, but archaic, past. “Archaism is an attempt to escape from an intolerable present by reconstructing an earlier phase in the life of a disintegrating society”. The complement, futurism, took-over, driving towards the goal of establishing a Jewish Empire on Earth.

The decline of Greek civilization and the subsequent interregnum lasted for hundreds of years. The Jews became emboldened enough to be assertive, but did so at an “impossible time” (Toynbee), i.e., Rome in the first century. [Bad timing guys!]

-- The futurist mainstream notion of a Messiah, was the establishment of Jewish Kingdom “on Earth”, probably from the House of David. [More Messiahs in Judea than on a bird cage floor.]

-- Jesus, Joh or whomever, “may” have lived [Martin, please note]. But, Jesus and his merry band would have not fitted-in with the traditional Judaic futurist mould. Their’s was the Kingdom of Heaven. This concept would not put the little troupe in conflict with Rome, but, rather, with other Jews.

[Hence, we have two revolutions. In the Right Corner, carrying the Torah, we have the Jewish Empire to Come and in the Left Corner, wearing the long white robes, we have the Kingdom of Heaven to Come. In the then, here and now; we have Pilate and Herod trying to keep their jobs.]

2. If Jesus abandoned Godhood to live amongst we plebs, this is called “detachment” (from heaven), and, is what the big kids call, palingenesiac transference. Said transference, sets us up for… yes, transfiguration. But, according Christianity, Jesus did not, become an “ordinary” man, not truly detached. [Well, Asherah, packed Jesus’ lunch box. It is to be expected.]

3. Catch is, the Christian Church maintains Jesus is divine. This is problematic. Problematic, because, if, Jesus is divine, he is NOT “detached” from the godhead....