Jesus > Superman

[David Walton]

The early Christians were also expecting his imminent return, which was retconned as time passed by.

This I don't argue. Clearly, the early Christians believed Christ would return in their immediate lifetime.

But their misunderstanding isn't really detrimental to my understanding of Christianity. Every generation thinks they're the one for some reason or another, but Jesus pointed out that the day and the hour belonged to God alone.

Further, Jesus conducted an act of violence in the Temple itself...

Again, context. Jesus chased the sellers out with a whip and overturned their tables, which isn't the equivalent of pulling a sword and saying, "Rome's days are over!"

[adkal]

This I don't argue. Clearly, the early Christians believed Christ would return in their immediate lifetime.

But their misunderstanding isn't really detrimental to my understanding of Christianity. Every generation thinks they're the one for some reason or another, but Jesus pointed out that the day and the hour belonged to God alone.

Which shows he isn't God since he wasn't privy to such knowledge

Again, context. Jesus chased the sellers out with a whip and overturned their tables, which isn't the equivalent of pulling a sword and saying, "Rome's days are over!"

Ah, all my intent with that reference was to show he committed a violent act - I made no suggestion, with that reference, that he did an act of 'extreme' violence.

[FIFTY-TWO (52)]

because of His works, we can accept Jesus was God incarnate, because we also have Old Testament accounts of God not granting miracles to support the words of someone not truly acting in His name; God actually said that He would be the enzyme for peoples' works who are truly acting in His name or that He would refuse to act if they were not acting in His name; thus, if Jesus was essentially blaspheming, He wouldn't have gotten away with just one act, as Jesus would have been untruthful in claiming to be the Son of God; and God Himself is by far the best lie detector.

More of this half-baked (literally) notion of Jesus being God. He never said he was God. Others may have written such things, but Jesus doesn't ever call himself God.
Again, the deification of Christ came to us via the Catholic Church, and they've used this dogma to thread even more nonsense into a faith whose beliefs are based mostly on what I'd assume are drug-induced fever dreams , i.e. Mary being the "mother of God". It's ridiculous and should be called out for the fairy tale BS that it is.

[FIFTY-TWO (52)]

before I came to be at this mortal realm through the birth process, I'd already had a certain relationship with God the Father, so, coupled with my memory, certain experiences simply reminded me of who/what I really was previously;

Say wha?!
Okay, I think I may have had enough.

[David Walton]

Which shows he isn't God since he wasn't privy to such knowledge

Christians hold to the Paradox that Jesus Christ is fully human and divine.

The nature of that experience is a Mystery that involves Christ's voluntary submission to human limitations.

More of this half-baked (literally) notion of Jesus being God.He never said he was God. Others may have written such things, but Jesus doesn't ever call himself God.

Hard to say with any certainty if you weren't there, isn't it? There's a variety of explanations you'd need to be open to...unless you're willing to step out on faith.

Again, the deification of Christ came to us via the Catholic Church, and they've used this dogma to thread even more nonsense into a faith whose beliefs are based mostly on what I'd assume are drug-induced fever dreams , i.e. Mary being the "mother of God". It's ridiculous and should be called out for the fairy tale BS that it is.

My first point is one I'd hope most of us can agree on: fairy tales aren't BS.

As to Christian dogma being 'drug-induced fever dreams' you're right to say you'd assume, as you weren't there when they were being developed.

Your argument seems emotionally driven. Not that there's anything wrong with that; unless of course you're challenging Christianity on the basis that it's an emotionally driven fever dream. Then it becomes something of a complication.

[Ish Kabbible]

The 2 things in common between Jesus and Superman is they are both fictional and Jewish.

[dshipp17]

Christians hold to the Paradox that Jesus Christ is fully human and divine.

The nature of that experience is a Mystery that involves Christ's voluntary submission to human limitations.



Hard to say with any certainty if you weren't there, isn't it? There's a variety of explanations you'd need to be open to...unless you're willing to step out on faith.




My first point is one I'd hope most of us can agree on: fairy tales aren't BS.

As to Christian dogma being 'drug-induced fever dreams' you're right to say you'd assume, as you weren't there when they were being developed.

Your argument seems emotionally driven. Not that there's anything wrong with that; unless of course you're challenging Christianity on the basis that it's an emotionally driven fever dream. Then it becomes something of a complication.

Very good post; clearly, his posts do appear to be emotionally driven. SLVN, on the other hand, offers logical, neutral rebuttals, but premised on dismissing eyewitness testimony as evidence.

[Flash Gordon]

before I came to be at this mortal realm through the birth process, I'd already had a certain relationship with God the Father, so, coupled with my memory, certain experiences simply reminded me of who/what I really was previously;

Whoa, really? Me too! In fact we went to see Field of Dreams together once. Even God the Father loves a good ole Kevin Costner flick.

[FIFTY-TWO (52)]

Christians hold to the Paradox that Jesus Christ is fully human and divine.

The early Christians didn't. Even in his letters, Paul insists that Christ was born as every other man is born and must submit himself unto God.

The nature of that experience is a Mystery that involves Christ's voluntary submission to human limitations.

Actually it's BS made up by the Catholic Church. Jesus never said he was God. And he never said his mother, Mary, was the mother of God. The Catholic Church wove that tale.

Hard to say with any certainty if you weren't there, isn't it?

Really? Why do you believe in any of it if you weren't there?
At no point in the Bible did Jesus say he was God. He wasn't that crazy.

There's a variety of explanations you'd need to be open to...unless you're willing to step out on faith.

No, there's a certain historicity to the proclamation of Christ as God, and it didn't start with the early Christians, but with Catholic and Eastern Orthodox clergy hundreds of years after Christ's death.

My first point is one I'd hope most of us can agree on: fairy tales aren't BS.

Depends on the fairy tale.

As to Christian dogma being 'drug-induced fever dreams' you're right to say you'd assume, as you weren't there when they were being developed.

Yep.

Your argument seems emotionally driven. Not that there's anything wrong with that; unless of course you're challenging Christianity on the basis that it's an emotionally driven fever dream. Then it becomes something of a complication.

Christianity isn't based on the premise that Jesus is God, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. The notion that a bunch of men in councils got together and fashioned the plot that would bring the Catholic Church to supreme dominance and bleed into mainstream Christianity is not "emotionally driven". It's fact. It was these men in councils that placed on Jesus those things Jesus, himself, never reached for: deification.

[Deadman25]

The 2 things in common between Jesus and Superman is they are both fictional and Jewish.

Kryptonians are Jewish ?


also I think Jesus wins

[Mr. Holmes]

Yes, Kryptonians are basically sci-fi Jews.

[dupersuper]

Why does this need to be out there? Did someone start up a cult worshipping Superman or something?

Yeah, Darkseid. Didn't you read Action Comics Weekly?

Jesus already accomplished what He set out to accomplished

Much like Bush Sr. accomplished all his goals in 1 term.

Jesus will act again; His time to act again has yet to come again.

The same is true of King Arthur.

Oh, it's true; I strongly believe that, with increasing vigor, as the days go by; thank you Jesus.

Yes, we can all see your vigor. Do you ever talk about just comic books any more?

God does not operate according to the flawed sense of entitlement and holding of "fairness" as the paramount virtue that has warped the thinking of western society. It has become difficult for people to believe in the love of God and Jesus Christ because we think we should be able to make the rules. We have become unable to understand the meaning or worth of humility. God is omnipotent and therefore defines what is good, just, and evil, and I am thankful for that because I definitely am not able to rely on my own sensibilities to define them. Christ has conquered death for humanity, but you choose to refuse it because it is not on your terms? It is difficult and joyous to live as a Christian. It requires acting against base urges instead of celebrating them much of the time, but it is indescribably fulfilling to accept the love and grace of God instead of one's own desires.

Yes yes, it's all our entitled western notion of not randomly killing countless innocent people because one offended you that prevents us from seeing how awesome God is and causes us to regard these stories as ridiculous.

Hard to say with any certainty if you weren't there, isn't it?

Could you point this out to dship please?

Yes, Kryptonians are basically sci-fi Jews.

Every one knows sci-fi Jews are from Druidia.

[666MasterOfPuppets]

The same is true of King Arthur.

Could you point this out to dship please?

This. Like I said before, the Bible is a book with little historical accuracy. When you compare the customs and lifestyle of the Jews back in those days you will see things in The bible that just don't add up (i.e., Mary being a "virgin" when Jesus was conceived). In that moment you start to think something's fishy. It's clear that whoever wrote the gospels modified and added things in order to adapt what happened to their views of "sanctity", or "holiness", or whatever you wanna call it. If God is all mercy, he wouldn't send his own son to sacrifice himself to Him in order to "forgive mankind's sins". That doesn't make any sense. Besides, he supposedly came back from the dead, so there's really no sacrifice, is there? The way I think of Jesus is as a wise man that tried to show people a "peaceful" way to live. And a man who lived his life, period. Then there's the whole Mary Magdalene issue. Is it really so hard to believe that he loved a woman and mated with her? Hell, recent findings say that God (the Creator) had a wife. And her mentions were misteriously wiped out from the books.

[dancj]

please don't try to use your common sense and logic to try to explain the motivations of a universal deity
you might as well go on about the virtues of the banana

Yeah, my bad.

Case in point:

God does not operate according to the flawed sense of entitlement and holding of "fairness" as the paramount virtue that has warped the thinking of western society. It has become difficult for people to believe in the love of God and Jesus Christ because we think we should be able to make the rules. We have become unable to understand the meaning or worth of humility. God is omnipotent and therefore defines what is good, just, and evil, and I am thankful for that because I definitely am not able to rely on my own sensibilities to define them. Christ has conquered death for humanity, but you choose to refuse it because it is not on your terms? It is difficult and joyous to live as a Christian. It requires acting against base urges instead of celebrating them much of the time, but it is indescribably fulfilling to accept the love and grace of God instead of one's own desires.

In other words "I refuse to listen to any kind of reason".

Sorry - that doesn't cut it. No one - not even your god - can justify mass genocide as being acceptable.

[slvn]

SLVN, on the other hand, offers logical, neutral rebuttals,

Thanks.

but premised on dismissing eyewitness testimony as evidence.

Sorry if I came off that way. No, I don't dismiss eyewitness testimony as evidence. I don't know how anyone could do history without it. I would agree, for example, that, very broadly speaking and all other things being equal, the more credible eyewitness accounts you have that a man named Jesus lived at a certain time and a certain place and said certain public words and performed certain public acts, the more evidentiary certainty you can have that this is accurate. (Without such testimony or other evidence, of course, you can still have the non-evidentiary certainty that faith provides.)

However, I don't believe, generally speaking, that you can have eyewitness evidence of "things unseen"; a person's divinity would not, as far as I know, be directly observable, but would have to be inferred. Even if there is eyewitness testimony that Jesus came back from the dead, this doesn't necessarily prove that he was divine; Lazarus is supposed to have come back from the dead too, and he's not divine. How could an eyewitness "see" that Jesus resurrected himself whereas Lazarus was raised by a power outside himself?

Secondarily, I'm not sure that we do have sufficient direct eyewitness accounts that Jesus came back from the dead. You speak of "thousands" of eyewitnesses, but as far as I'm aware we know of most of those, if at all, only indirectly, not in their own words. And though I know there is disagreement about this, it still seems that the bulk of scholarship suggests that the texts we have of the Gospels emerged significantly after Jesus was gone from this world. They may ultimately be based on eyewitness accounts, but we have those accounts only indirectly. If some Zoroastrian text tells me that there were thousands of eyewitnesses to the deeds of Mitra, I won't necessarily find that to be convincing evidence. (If thousands of individual contemporaneous eyewitness accounts are found, then THAT will be intriguing....)

But to say that something has not been proven is not to say that it has been disproven. The resurrection and divinity of Jesus have not been disproven. And even if they were somehow "disproven" by evidence, you could still choose to believe in them as an act of faith.

To return again to the topic--I'm not sure how much historicity matters to the importance of the figures who inspire and challenge us. If Superman were to gain the symbolic and cultural importance of Jesus, I don't think it would matter that everyone know that Superman didn't historically, literally exists. What matters is what he stands for. But, with all due respect to Superman--and I really am impressed with how quickly and deeply this character has become a modern myth--his importance as an icon isn't remotely comparable to that of Jesus.