Contents Updated: Monday, October 04, 1999
1. Jesus tried to convince his hearers that he was particularly close to God:
No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. (Mt 11:27)
Jesus promised everlasting life to those who believe he was the Son:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (Jn 3:16)
This alone is a contradiction because God could not have loved all the world if some unbelievers were not to be saved. According to John, an unreliable witness, Jesus even claimed to be God:
I and my Father are one. (John 10:30)
By this claim, he accepts liability for the unethical acts of Yehouah and, even if Jesus is not claiming to be God, he always spoke of his father as perfect. Yet, according to Luke 4:16, Jesus could read and was familiar with the scriptures, and must have known of the tyranny of God described in the scriptures. It cannot be a sign of perfection in man or divinity to call a cruel despot perfect.
2. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah expected by the Jews:
And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said. (Mt 26:63-64)
Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am. (Mk 15:61-62)
Then said they all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye say that I am. (Lk 22:70)
The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. (Jn 4:25-26)
The Jews considered the messiah only to be a man, not a god but we are addressing Christian beliefs and Christians consider Jesus's claim to be the Christ or the Messiah to be a claim to divinity. If he claimed divinity falsely or by self-deception, he made a serious mistake. The Jews did not accept his claim, and many Christians today deny that he was the Jewish Messiah. Either he was truly the predicted Messiah or he made an inexcusable error, because that was his claim.
3. Jesus insisted that salvation depended upon belief that he was the Christ and that unbelievers suffered eternally:
If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. (Jn 8:24)
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels... And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Mt 25:31-46)
Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation. (Mk 3:29)
Except ye repent ye shall perish. (Luke 13:3)
If thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched. (Mk 9:43)
How can ye escape the damnation of hell? (Mt 23:33)
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. (Mark 16:16)
Besides claiming to be the personal key to salvation for those who believe it, Jesus scared people into belief by threats of eternal torment. Jesus took up the Persian theological idea of a fiery hell for sinners:
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. (Mt 25:41)
Jesus mentions the tortures of hell again in Luke 16:23, lest there should be any mistake. The author of Revelations relishes the sufferings of the tormented. Yet though Jesus was a god and the son of God he never once did what would have convinced everyone that hell was real. He never gave any of the multitudes who followed him a single vision of the fiery place. It could easily have come down through history from multiple impeccable sources that hell was seen by thousands. It didn't because it wasn't.
Torture in hell fire sounds so awful it is hardly surprising that the simple are persuaded to become Christians. But if they think that they will thereby automatically avoid the hot tongs and charred flesh, they had better look again—it can't be that easy. The way to life the kindly Creator offers is narrow, and to be found by few; that many of his own creations, which he pronounced to be good, are called but few chosen (Matthew 22:13; Luke 13:23). It must be quite hard if we can expect hell fire simply for telling someone they are a fool.
But what better way is there to get superstitious people eating out of your hand than to threaten them with such a place if they do not do as you wish? In midsummer 1999, the Jesuits declare that there are no fiery furnaces or demons in hell. Eternal fire is a metaphor for the agony of eternal separation from God. Anglican now accept what there progressives have long said—"a good God could not allow anyone to suffer torment."
It is too polite to say that Jesus made a mistake when he taught a physical hell and condemned people to spend eternity in torment for the doubtful sin of disbelief. Either there was no mistake and Jesus was a demagogue or he has been misrepresented. The best we can believe about Jesus is that he was not responsible for many of the statements attributed to him in the gospels. They were written by priests of the early church intent on controlling the gullible.
4. Jesus taught the doctrine of the Atonement but admitted himself that his atoning blood was largely wasted:
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Mt 26:28)
Many are called but few are chosen. (Mt 22:14)
Earlier in the same gospel, this is confirmed when he said:
Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Mt 7:14)
Itwas echoed in Luke:
Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. (Lk 13:24)
5. Jesus not only claimed the power to remit sins but also gave his disciples the power:
Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained. (Jn 20:23)
How can sins be remitted? If Vlad the Impaler impaled a thousand people and kept ten thousand in dank, damp dungeons until they died, then asked for his sins to be remitted, would they be? If they were, how would it help those who suffered and the course of justice? Not everyone could have their sins remitted, though. The disciples were free to retain some peoples sins. Perhaps Vlad would have his sins retained. Do Christians realize that their sins might not be remitted when they confess them and ask forgiveness? Something somewhere is not right.
6. Jesus made a distinction between himself and the Comforter or Paraclete:
It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you... And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever. (John 14:16)
Christians must believe the Comforter is the spiritual Jesus himself because it could only come when the physical Jesus had departed. It cannot be the Holy Ghost as some say because the Holy Ghost was separate from Jesus and entered and departed while Jesus was alive. But if the Comforter is Jesus, why does he call it another Comforter? And if it is not the Holy Ghost, why have twenty centuries gone by with no sign of this comforter arriving to abide with people forever. Many horrible atrocities have occurred in those twenty centuries, often committed by Christians, so why were people denied a Comforter for so long. Jesus must have got it wrong.
7. Jesus believed in angels and devils, often referring to these imaginary supernatural beings as if they existed:
Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? (Mt 26:53)
So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth. (Mt 13:49)
Jesus believed in demoniacal possession, casting out devils on several occasions, and devils in were among the first to recognize Christ's divinity:
What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? (Mt 8:29)
Let us alone, thou Jesus of Nazareth; art thou come to destroy us? I know thee, who thou art, the Holy One of God. (Lk 4:34)
And unclean Spirits when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. (Mk 3:11)
8. Jesus frequently referred to heaven as a place above the earth:
And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. (Mk 13:26)
And ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. (Mk 14:62)
Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man. (Jn 1:51)
No one has ever seen any sign of heaven in the clouds or in the sky, though today we have aeroplanes, telescopes and rocket vehicles. Christians today will therefore say this is poetry and that heaven is elsewhere, a transcendental place, in another dimension or simultaneously everywhere, or whatever you are happy to believe. Let us accept they are right, but then God or the son of God was wrong.
9. When Jesus was transfigured, and talked with the ghosts or otherwise resurrected figures of Moses and Elias he commanded his disciples:
Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead. (Mt 17:9)
Jesus spoke with two dead and probably mythical people, and then, according to the creeds, himself rose from the dead, descended into hell and ascended bodily into heaven. Either conditions on earth were different in the first century from those of the end of the second millennium, or Jesus was mistaken in his conception of God, heaven, hell, angels, devils and himself.
10. Jesus often offered as true, stories in which the laws of Nature are gratuitously ignored:
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Mt 12:40)
Evidently Jesus, who is at least the son of God, according to the Christians, took the scriptural story of Jonah and the whale to be true history. Science denies that anyone could be three days inside a fish and live to tell the tale. But his prophecy was wrong. He was not three nights and three days in the tomb but only two nights and one day, from Friday night to Sunday morning. Jesus's prophecy is not wrong by modern scientific standards but simply by comparing two parts of the same Holy Book. Do his modern day followers who are better educated than most people were when Jesus lived ever think about these mistakes and contradictions?
11. Jesus also accepted as historically true, the tale of Noah's ark:
They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. (Luke 17:27)
But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark. (Mt 24:37-38)
In ancient times there were severe floods in many places, as archaeologists have shown, but there was never any world wide flood and there is simply not enough water around to flood the earth to the top of mount Ararat. Even if there were, many more mountain tops would not have been submersed and the scriptural story must have been wrong. Jesus was not an all-knowing God or an aspect of one, unless this God is a liar. The truth is that Ararat was the highest mountain that the Old Testament authors knew.
12. Jesus was quite wrong in thinking that the end of the world was imminent. He refers to its urgency in the following quotations:
Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Mt 4:17)
Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. (Mt 10:23)
There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. (Mt 16:28)
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come ... Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. (Mk 9:1)
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. (Mk 1:15)
So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. (Mt 24:74-34; Mk 13:29-30; Lk 21:32)
The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. (Jn 5:28-29)
Jesus was certain that the day of judgement was coming soon when he lived in the first century. Two millennia later we are still waiting. This error has got to be the most stupendous of all, yet in the whole of those two thousand years people have continued to believe that Jesus was a god. His own firmest belief in an imminent end of the world was indisputably wrong. Jesus was so concerned about the future life because he thought that life as he knew it was about to end. It did not! He was simply wrong. Why do people think he was perfect? Why do they still think he is coming soon?
13. Jesus willy nilly broke the laws of Nature. He could calm storms at a command, could walk on water, could raise people from death, could feed crowds with hardly any food. These are the sort of things that believers expect their god to do, but they are things that have never been seen by any reliable witness today. Yet the gospels tell us in Matthew that Jesus performed miracles gratuitously to impress the disciples of John the Baptist:
Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. (Mt 11:4-5)
Jesus in Mark and John assured his disciples that they too would be able to perform miracles:
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. (Mk 16:17-18)
He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do. (Jn 14:12)
The disciples at Pentecost received the Holy Spirit and began to do even more remarkable miracles than did Jesus. Yet the passage of the Holy Spirit from generation to generation must dilute it down because there is no sign nowadays that any of the disciples of Jesus who have received the Holy Spirit can do any such amazing tricks. Even Roman Catholic Popes are not noted for casting out devils. The earliest accusation against Jesus by critics of Christianity in its earliest days, was that he was a sorcerer. The accusation was probably made on the basis of these tales told about him rather than any proof that he ever performed a miracle. Jesus was an Essene and they were indebted to the Persian religion. They might have been called Magians after the Magi and from which also came the word magician.
14. The remarks of Jesus in John on the subject of death were not accurate insofar as science has been able to prove.
If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death. (Jn 8:51)
Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. (Jn 11:26)
Jesus must have meant natural death, if his own resurrection was supposed to have proved it, but because there is not a person on earth that believes that the dead can come back to life, Jesus was utterly mistaken even for Christians. Christians now pretend that the life he meant was a transcendental one—that believers in him would live forever in heaven. He still seems to be wrong though, or rather strangely imprecise for a god, because he promised eternal life to unbelievers too, but it was an everlasting life of torture in hell.
15. Jesus, when Lazarus was reported ill, said:
This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. (Jn 11:4)
So he let Lazarus, one of the believers whom he loved, die so that he could gratuitously raise him from the dead to glorify God, adding:
Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe. (Jn 11:15)
The confusion between earthly death and loss of eternal life was shown in the remark of Jesus to Martha:
I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.
Once again Christians take it that Jesus means everlasting life in the balmy place but the demonstration raised Lazarus from the dead back into life in this world—he resurrected him, as he said. He did not give him eternal life. When Martha reminded Jesus that Lazarus had been dead four days, Jesus replied:
Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
The point is that the Persians believed that the soul did not depart the physical body of the dead until three days had lapsed, during which they were tormented in hell for their earthly sins. This is why resurrected gods always lie in the tomb for three days, then they are resurrected just before their spirit departs for judgement. The raising of Lazarus was special because he had been dead for four days and his spirit had notionally departed. That is why Martha had to believe strongly, and why, to the first believers, it was an astonishing miracle when miracles apparently were commonplace.
Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.
If Lazarus was raised from the dead into eternal life he must still be around and should be the ultimate proof that Jesus was the son of god and the Saviour. Where is he? Perhaps he has gone into retirement because he now understands what an awful prospect eternal life is. He will still be alive when the universe dies of heat death. At that time, of course, the fires of hell will be doused and the sinner and the saved will end up the same—cold.
16. Jesus suggests a promise of protection that God has never fulfilled.
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. (Mt 10:29-31)
It does not need to be said that Christians enjoy no more Godly protection than Moslems, Buddhists or atheists. Though it sounds greatly comforting, it is evidently not so and it is the greatest puzzle to understand why intelligent Christians nevertheless accept it.
17. While it is surely true that prayer has beneficial psychological effects on people, it can offer no material benefits like a wish on a magic lamp. Jesus did not only promise spiritual benefits from prayer, but also that the physical world would respond to pious appeals to God. In :
Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. (Mt 18:19)
If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. (Mt 21:21-22)
What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mk 11:24)
If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible unto you. (Mt 17:20)
Again we are faced with silly promises which simply are not true. The faith that moved mountains exists nowhere except in poetry. Christians have immense faith. They believe Jesus is a god even though the gospels are full of evidence that Jesus was unable to come up with the goods. Perhaps even the best Christians do not have enough faith to move a mountain—there is no story that Jesus did. But it must be fairly easy to make a die fall the right way up, or a little roulette ball fall into the right slot, or bring up the winning lottery numbers. No Christian has ever shown that they have the faith to accomplish these things. If they did, other Christians would accuse them of selling their soul to the devil.
18. Jesus did not teach clearly. This passage in John is totally obscure:
And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin because they believe not on Me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. (Jn 16:8-11)
He admitted teaching in parables that were meant to be obscure:
These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. (Jn 16:25)
That time has never come. The Father has never been plainly shown. Various interpretations have been made of these parables and difficult passages by scholars of distinction. Often, no one is sure what he meant.
19. Matthew and Luke give long genealogies to prove that Jesus was descended from David, but Jesus himself—if he was the messiah—denied it:
If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? (Mt 22:41-45)
He was making the point that sons or descendants always call their elder, Lord, in Jewish etiquette. Yet David, the founder of the line, is calling the messiah, his descendant, Lord, in one of the psalms he wrote. That David should refer to the messiah as Lord proves, for Jesus, that the messiah was not a descendant of David, despite Jewish expectations. He, as messiah, was not a son of David! Perhaps it was a subtle admission that God not David was his father, but then Christians have to explain why God in his aspect of the Holy Ghost wrote the long genealogies into the bible. Evidently the Holy Ghost was not in the know. Whichever way you look at it, God is imperfect, if he wrote the bible.
20. On the subject of witnesses there is great confusion. We get the following statements, all obscure or even contradictory:
If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. (Jn 5:31)
But at the same time:
Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true. (Jn 8:14)
It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me. (Jn 8:17-18)
Yet:
I and my Father are one. (Jn 10:30)
And then again:
My Father is greater than I. (Jn 14:28)
In Jewish law two witnesses are necessary and Jesus tries to meet it technically by claiming the two are himself and his father God, but elsewhere he claims he is one with his father. So, in fact, there is only one witness and the Jewish legal requirement is not met. Furthermore, it is hard to understand why the messiah had to bother about legal technicalities. Surely God could have sent an angel or even spoken himself from a cloud, as he does elsewhere, and the point would have been simply made.
21. Jesus is supposed to be the judge of the world, but his statement of the case leaves the issue ambiguous:
For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son. (Jn 5:22)
I judge no man. And yet if I judge, my judgment is true. (Jn 8:16)
And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. (Jn 12:47)
For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind. (Jn 10:39)
Plainly this is another farrago of unreason. It provides endless opportunities for theologians to add vast tomes to the nonsense already there, but the truth is that John's gospel was late and accumulated a lot of inconsistent fodder. Of course Christians cannot admit this because it throws out the whole idea that the Holy Spirit watched over the compilation of the bible to make sure that it was true.
22. The Jews would have been appalled when Jesus said:
Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life. (Jn 6:53-58)
To be ritually pure, Jewish food has to be free of blood. The Jews abhor eating blood. This could not have been said by a Jew and it could not have been said, therefore, by Jesus. However, it mimics the practices of Pagan religions in the first century and that is its source. Essenes merely sprinkled a few drops of wine symbolising the new covenant.
23. Jesus says that people were to remain as children and not seek mental improvement to become wise:
I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. (Mt 11:25)
Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. (Mk 10:15)
The only beneficiaries of injunctions like these are the priests who prefer their flock to be simple minded and not prone to question the religion too deeply. They succeeded excellently.
24. Jesus says it is easy to be a Christian:
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Mt 11:30)
In other places he trowels on the hardships that they will endure. Such blatant contradictions are not worthy of a god, yet the gospels show Jesus contradicting himself constantly.
25. Christians were to demonstrate their good works or charitable acts before men to glorify God but in the next chapter they were not to:
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Mt 5:16)
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. (Mt 6:1)
26. Awkwardly for Christians, Jesus honoured the laws of Moses:
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. (Mt 5:17-18)
And yet elsewhere he supposedly abrogates the law or aspects of it. Again he was being contradictory.
26. Jesus explained his obscurity in this way:
Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand. (Lk 8:10)
But unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. (Mk 4:11-12)
Hitherto we onlookers thought that the saviour of the world wanted to convert people. It seems we were mistaken. What do Christians make of this? Is there any Christian that wished Jesus had been clearer? If there is they are admitting that their god was not perfect.
27. Often Jesus gives commands that Christians freely renounce, saying they are inappropriate for today. Do they realize that in so doing they are again admitting that their god was not perfect. He did not have the foresight to make rules which would hold in quite different circumstances. One could easily forgive the real Jesus because he plainly expected the world to end within a few decades at the most, so he was not trying to make rules which would hold two thousand years later.
The relation between employer and employee is one that requires practical guidance. What advice did Jesus have to give? In the parable of the labourers, an employer hired men to work in his vineyard for twelve hours for a penny, but he paid the same wage to other workers who toiled only nine, six, three and one hour. When those who had worked longest resented this treatment, as any worker who was not a slave would, Jesus gave the employer's answer:
Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last. (Mt 20:1-16)
The answer is true but it is not fair. The employer kept his side of the bargain but it seems ill-designed to get the workforce working happily. Jesus approves of paying the last men to turn up a better rate then the willing or hungry workers who turned up after breakfast. It is not equitable for worker or employer today. Employers would want to encourage their workers to start early, not to stroll along half way through the afternoon and get the same pay.
Elsewhere Jesus said:
The labourer is worthy of his hire. (Lk 10:7)
It contradicts the foregoing but seems a much better principle. Yet, Jesus still has contempt for the hired man:
The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. (Jn 10:13)
28. In the parable of the talents the servant who did not lend his money at interest to make profits but instead conserved it was condemned:
And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Mt 25:30)
Just as he had little regard for hired men, Jesus had little regard for servants who had to be beaten with many stripes (Lk 12:47) when disobedient and even beaten when they were not disobedient, but not so severely (Lk 12:48). These servants were obviously not employees but slaves who were treated as chattels and beaten as the masters liked. It is hardly surprising that slave owners took him at his word and were inhumanly cruel, on God's say so. Christians will be glad to know that these ideas were Luke's not Jesus's. Essenes abhored slaand they held no slaves.
In the parable of the unmerciful servant, Jesus taught the duty of forgiveness. A lord had given a servant who owed him money extra time to pay. But the servant who was owed lesser sums by a subordinate had him thrown into prison. Told by the other servants, the master rightly rebuked the servant but then had him tortured as punishment:
And his lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormenters, till he should pay all that was due unto him. (Mt 18:34)
This sounds quite mild because the word "torment" has decayed in meaning. People use it today to mean "annoy." In the seventeenth century it meant "torture," and that is the proper translation of the Greek, as the revised Standard Version points out in a footnote, mistranslating it to "jailers" in the main text as most modern bibles dishonestly do. Jesus advocated torture for those who did not pass on a kindness. Christians might say it is meant to illustrate hell for sinners, but that makes it infinitely worse.
29. Jesus admired poverty and, although he is described as a carpenter in the gospels, he never seemed to be in his workshop. He said:
Blessed be ye poor. (Lk 6:20)
Conversely he hated riches. Nothing in his teaching is more certain, though you will find few Christians respectful of their god enough to take any notice.
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. (Mt 6:10)
A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Mt 19:23-24)
The beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried, and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments. (Lk 16:22-23)
But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. (Lk 6:24)
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus even told people not to bother seeking food or clothes because God would look after everyone just as he does birds and flowers (Mt 6:25-31). There must be few of the two billion Christians in the world who run their lives on this principle even though their god told them so. If any actually do, they will be despised by the rest as lazy idlers.
Most people who are poor do not consider it a blessing but a curse. It might be psychologically good for impoverished believers to imagine that they will be eternally blessed for being poor on earth while the rich will be eternally damned, but meanwhile the rich are crowing and, even though they also profess Christianity, they are not queueing up to give away their wealth in exchange for eternal life. When some of them do, it is when they are expecting to die in the hope of buying salvation, just as they bought everything else and everyone else in life. Who are the fools?
But Jesus's advocacy of poverty was contrary. He promises that his followers:
…shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life. (Mk 10:30)
If this means that they will get rich in this time then it contradicts his blessing of the poor. If it is clever because a hundred times nothing is still nothing then he was fooling those he addressed who the gospels repeatedly tell us were not too smart. That remains the case today, should the son of God be using such double talk?
30. Not only did Jesus decry the rich he was a communist. How many Christian rednecks in the Bible Belt of America know that? All right, all of them do know it, but they will not admit it is communism. According to Acts:
All that believed were together and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need… Neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32)
The disciples practised communism because Jesus told them to. When he sent the disciples out to convert Israel he told them to carry no possessions. Most people in the western world hate communism but Jesus taught it, or so his disciples thought. How can any modern Christian know better? It was the preactice of the Essenes, so certainly true of Jesus and his followers.
31. Jesus seemed to believe an unkind servant should be tortured until he paid his debts in full. "Tortured" is mistranslated "jailed" by the purveyors of that curious type of truth, apparently synonymous with lies, called God's truth. "Jailed" is bad enough. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus wanted to see debtors' prisons:
Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. (Mt 5:25-26)
32. Jesus in his normal life is admired most as a healer of physical sickness or disabilities. He believed both sin and sickness were caused by demons to be cast out. Modern science has not been able to confirm Jesus's belief. Disabilities can sometimes be cured by surgical techniques or helped by technology, but no one ever reported a demon scuttling away when someone used a hearing aid or had a flu injection. Christians will claim that Jesus merely used the terminology and beliefs of the time but that shows he never expected his words to be revered as the absolute words of God two millennia later.
On the other hand, if Jesus really could cure disease and also knew, as an aspect of God, that he was laying down rules that people would follow centuries later, why did he not explain how these diseases could be cured? Millions of sick people could have been saved a lot of suffering that way. Scientists and doctors who are not revered as gods, indeed, are reviled by some extreme Christians, have done far more to alleviate distress than Jesus did in his lifetime.
33. The pacific character of Jesus was established early in the career of Christianity. The best non-theological explanation of Jesus is that he was an Essene religious leader intent on recapturing Judaea from the Romans by stirring up sedition among his fellow Jews. In short he was a terrorist or a revolutionary fighting for Jewish national freedom in a Roman colony. Some people in the Empire knew this and they had to be quickly refuted by the church establishing Jesus as a peaceful Jesus not the one known as a seditionist. So he became the Prince of Peace.
The apparent contradiction in some of Jesus's sayings from the revolutionary truth, and indeed many other contradictions, arise because Jesus distinguished between Jews who he regarded as brothers—or potential brothers—and the enemy, the Romans. Most of the sayings of Jesus regarding violence or non-resistance were for Jews only and even then they were references to solving personal disputes not international ones. He did not try to tell foreign nations that they should not fight wars when he speaks about them:
And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. (Mt 24:6-7)
Evidently he thought wars were inevitable and did not suggest that people should refuse to fight in armies to resist wars. Jesus tells a disciple traditionally thought to have been Peter:
Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. (Mt 26:52)
The warning is practical advice, pointing out the plain facts of fighting—it was dangerous. It contains in itself no ethical principle—it does not say it is morally wrong to take up the sword. In typical contradictory style, he also told his disciples to buy swords:
He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one… And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough. (Lk 22:36 )
This refutes totally the myth of Jesus as the Prince of Peace. Like most of the Christian beliefs, it is an illusion belied by the Holy Books themselves, but unintelligibly ignored by believers. Jesus does seem to recommend peace in several places in the gospels:
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (Mt 5:9)
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. (Mt 5:44)
But they are belied by as many places in the gospels when he seems violent:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. (Mt 10:34)
In John, Jesus is happy to condone fighting for kingdoms in this world but refrains from doing so because his kingdom is in another world:
My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews. (Jn 18:36)
Since Jesus was no less contradictory on the question of pacifism than on any other subject, it is only right to consider all of his statements in the balance, not just to take odd ones that suit out of context. Jesus sometimes preached non-resistance but armed his disciples with swords. No man of principle can hold both views. If one is right the other is wrong. So Jesus must have been wrong sometimes, whichever of the two views you prefer.
34. Jesus occasionally eulogized marriage:
For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh… What therefore God hath Joined together, let not man put asunder. (Mt 19:5-6)
More often he praised celibacy as the only one disposing to salvation. In Matthew, it sounds as though Jesus is merely describing what happens in the resurrected world:
In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. (Mt 22:30)
Jesus is explaining that he expected people to become asexual angels when they entered God's kingdom. It seemed logical to him that those serious about seeing the face of God should begin how they expected to continue—chaste! So, he declares that people must not marry if they are to be considered worthy of the other world, not only denying the natural sexual functions of the human body but contradicting Jewish thought of the time:
The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage. (Lk 20:34-35)
Do married Christians realize that they are already barred from the kingdom of heaven because they are married? Do the priests of the Anglican Church realize that? No wonder Catholic priests refuse to marry.
Jesus even tells his followers to leave their wives and they will get not only everlasting life but also more in this world:
There is no man that hath left… wife, or children for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting. (Lk 18:29-30)
When he came across a woman who had committed adultery and the Pharisees wanted to stone her, Jesus was tolerant:
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her… Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more. (Jn 8:7-11)
In Matthew, he sounds even more tolerant, allowing that:
The harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. (Mt 21:31)
He was calling the chief priests and the elders of the people names. Or maybe the expression was hyperbolic, but then Jesus is saying that priests and politicians have less chance of getting to heaven than harlots, who can have little chance if the saying means anything. Do the priests and politicians of our Christian world realize that they have counted themselves out of the kingdom of heaven? Of course they do but, unlike the gullible punter, they know they will lose nothing—it's all baloney.
However, there was no tolerance in Matthew for the man who lusted after a woman:
Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Mt 5:28)
As in most of these things, Christians have taken them to be universal, timeless precepts when they were precepts which applied locally in time and space, in this case, to Essenian celibate monks.
35. Christians like to believe that Jesus was opposed to divorce, saying that divorce is adultery on both parts, so that a man who divorces his wife makes her commit adultery as well as himself. But Jesus did permit divorce, because the phrase saving for the cause of fornication is usually deliberately omitted from the citation from Matthew:
It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. (Mt 5:31-32)
Nowadays there must be millions of Christians who have sought and been granted a divorce for reasons other than infidelity. Do they realize that they are disobeying their God? If they do, how do they reconcile their position with remaining Christians.
36. For all the Christians take Jesus to be a god, his judgement of character was atrocious. The gospels repeatedly say his disciples were a bad lot—at the best totally stupid and incomprehending, at worst cowards, selfish, greedy. Jesus selected Judas to be the treasurer of the apostles' joint funds, but later admitted his error:
Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spoke of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for it was he that should betray him, being one of the twelve. (Jn 6:70-71)
Elsewhere Jesus also says that Simon Peter is the devil, saying to him:
Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. (Mt 16:23)
Jesus made such a hash of choosing his disciples that he loved only one of them:
When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! (Jn 19:26)
37. Jesus admitted that in himself he was incompetent:
I can of mine own self do nothing. (Jn 5:30)
But, even with the help of god, he failed because no one believed him, and earlier even his disciples did not belief him:
But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him. (Jn 12:37)
For neither did his brethren believe in him. (Jn 7:5)
In Mark, some of his friends thought he was mad:
And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself. (Mk 3:21)
Christians say Jesus triumphed on the cross but he certainly failed in his life.
38. Christians look upon the Nazarene as the perfect example of what a man should be. In their opinion, if everyone would act as Jesus did all would be well. Even Christians who reject Jesus's divinity think he was a great man. Was he such a great role model?
The cursing of the fig tree is the act in Jesus's life which was for the theologians most out of character for Jesus. Jesus came to the fig tree which was out of season and therefore not in fruit:
Now in the morning, as he returned into the city, and when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away. (Mt 21:18-19)
Why did the Prince of Peace take such a hard line against an innocent fig tree merely doing what Nature intended? In fact the incident was not real but a distorted parable in which the fig tree stood for the Roman Empire. But no Christian will believe that because it is not so represented in the good book.
39. Jesus is harsh to the brother who does not confess to the church of a wrong he has done:
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee… tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican. (Mt 18:15-17)
When Jesus says treat him like a gentile or a publican he means shun him—gentiles and publicans were shunned by pious Jews—proving that Jesus was not the friend of publicans and gentiles that the church likes to pretend.
40. Jesus warned against using strong language in strong terms when he said a man who called someone a fool was in danger of hell fire. Christians frequently use strong language, hell fire or no hell fire, especially as their master did:
O generation of vipers! how can ye, being evil, speak good things? (Mt 12:34)
Woe unto you, hypocrites, for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him two-fold more the child of hell than yourselves. (Mt 23:15)
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? (Mt 23:33)
If I should say I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you. (Jn 8:55)
All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers. (Jn 10:8)
Presumably Jesus was confident that, since he was God, he was in no danger of hell fire himself, but should ordinary Christians assume they can disobey God's rules just as they like, merely because a son of God did?
Nowadays when people swear vulgarly every third word, it seems quite mild but Jesus, the son of God, had told people not to do it on pain of hell fire. Do Christians realize this?
41. In Matt. 8:28-34 Jesus cure a man of being possessed by 2000 demons, a creditable act of large dimensions even by the miraculous standards of the bible. The demons are not happy just to be sent away, so Jesus sends them into 2000 pigs which jump over a cliff into a lake and drown. It all adds local colour for a Christian but for a Naturalist it is grossly inconsiderate of another species and of the living of the poor peasant or peasants depending upon the pigs for their income. They were domestic pigs not wild ones because the gospel tells us. Why did a kind god ignore these facets of his wonders? Is he really good?
In John 2:15 we get that evangelists account of the cleansing of the Temple:
And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;
Christians consider this one of the noblest acts of Jesus's career. For them he is protecting the house of God. It is not a house that they have any concern for themselves because it is Jewish not Christian, but they believe it shows great nobility and loyalty to his Father on the part of Jesus. In fact, of course, he was breaking the law, and that is why he was crucified. It might seem harsh to us but it was the law of the Romans, and Jesus lived in a Roman colony. Christians insist that Jesus was a divine innocent yet admire him for the act of vandalism which led to his crucifixion. And can anyone believe that this gentle quiet pacifist with only a few pieces of string as a weapon could have stopped a whole market place from operating? John invents the absurd whip to emphasize the lack of violence but it has the opposite effect of drawing attention to its absurdity.
Either the destruction of the pigs or the destruction of the traders stands in the Temple would have been sufficient today to get Jesus arrested. They were just as criminal then—more so—the punishment of one of them was crucifixion.
42. It is plain to anyone with brain cells in their head that the person called Jesus in John's gospel was different from the person with the same name in Matthew, Mark and Luke. One of the clearest ways of seeing this is in the estimation that Jesus had of himself. In the earlier gospels he is modest but in the fourth gospel he is an egomaniac. In the earlier gospels Jesus rarely uses the personal pronoun "I." In the last gospel he cannot say a sentence without saying "I," or "me:"
I am the light of the world. (Jn 8:12)
If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. (Jn 8:24)
I am the Son of God. (Jn 10:36)
I am the resurrection and the life. (Jn 11:25)
Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. (Jn 11:26)
If Jesus were really God the creator, he must know that people are rightly suspicious of braggarts and that is how the Jesus of John's gospel sounds. Why didn't Jesus brag as much in the earlier gospels? He hardly brags at all in Mark. The fact is that John's gospel was written almost a century after Jesus died and the man the author describes satisfies the image of a god of the early second century.
43. Jesus could be insufferably rude. Even as a boy, he inconsiderately left his parents (one of whom was Joseph, not God Almighty) and they had to go out of their way to find him, sick with worry. Was he sorry and apologised to his parents for his lack of concern? Not likely! This messiah has the arrogance of a god, not the manners of a gentleman:
And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? (Lk 2:48)
In pre-Benjamin Spock days most parents would have belted him across the ear for such rudeness. But Jesus evidently was not well brought up. The gospels do not show Jesus showing his mother much respect. He hardly spoke to her without being ill-mannered:
And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? (Jn 2:4)
In Matthew, Jesus denies his mother and his brothers:
But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? (Mt 12:34)
On one occasion, Jesus insulted his dinner host:
A certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye fools… (Lk 11:37-40)
Jesus failed to follow Jewish convention, particularly offending his Pharisaic host, by not washing. He then defended his uncleanliness and ungraciously abused his host. Jesus did not have to accept the invitation if he did not like Pharisees. Pharisees did not like Jesus either but this one seemed to be trying to be friendly. However, the story is a Lukan invention.
Jesus wanted his followers to have clean hearts rather than in clean hands, believing that to eat with unwashed hands defileth not a man. As a result Christianity has produced the filthiest specimens of humanity that ever offended the senses of man. Dirt, and not cleanliness, was deemed next to godliness by the saints of old. The filthier a human being became, the holier he grew. It was regarded in the middle ages, when everything was sacrificed to religion, as almost a sin to keep clean. It was waste of time to care for the body. It was taught that it was holier to worship than to wash. These dirty old saints were nasty for Christ's sake. They went unclean because Jesus had encouraged nastiness. Dirty Christians still abide, but because science has prevailed over superstition, the reign of dirt has been moderated. Clean infidelity is preferable, even to Christians, to nasty piety. Rags might adorn a saint today, but not dirt.
Jesus calls a Syrophoenician woman's daughter a dog when the woman asked him to help her daughter:
Jesus saith unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. (Mk 7:25-29)
His best friend, Peter, tried to persuade Jesus that his plan to go to Jerusalem into danger was wrong but Jesus turned on him and said:
Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me. (Mt 16:23)
All of these show Jesus in a bad light—bad-tempered, bad mannered and churlish. Is this the role model parents want for their children?
44. Jesus ended the parable of the unjust steward, who had cheated his employer, with the following astonishing advice:
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fall, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. (Lk 16:1-9)
Christians struggle to explain this advice which seems counter to everything that Jesus normally taught. Attempts are always made to read into it what is not there but, as it stands, it plainly advocates opportunism rather than morality. If Luke or an editor of the gospel got it wrong, Christians must blame the error on the Holy Ghost who is again found wanting. If this is historical, Jesus is advising his somewhat unworldly followers, whom he calls the Children of Light, an Essene expression, to be more shrewd, like the crook, not to be more dishonest, though Luke plainly did not understand it either and put in his silly interpretation.
45. Liberal Christians who are ready to abandon almost all of the outrageous and supernatural passages of the bible, retain their faith by falling back upon the ethical system of Jesus as a wise man. The essence of this system of personal morals is the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1 to 7:29. Even then not many of its admirers would think it proper to abide by all the teachings in it. Do Christians actually believe:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Christians will argue about what it means but, on the face of it, it means it is blessed to be depressed. No one could accept that as good advice, least of all depressive people. The only other meaning would be that it is blessed to have the spirit of poorness. This is probably the correct interpretation of an obscure sentence and it agrees with the teachings of Jesus elsewhere, but they are the teachings that no one in a capitalist country could accept. It is also an Essene expression.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
There is much to commend meekness, no doubt, but few people would regard it as a blessing and if they do, they do not live by it. There is scarcely a film made nowadays that does not do the opposite of this beatitude—they glorify aggression, conquest and thuggery. Do Christians refuse to watch them because they violate one of the expressed principles of their god?
When Jesus told the multitude, in Matthew 5:29ff and 18:8-9, to dismember themselves by cutting off the offending parts of the body rather than think lustily about a woman, did he mean it to be so? In this permissive age does any Christian consider cutting off any bits of his body rather than seducing his neighbour's wife. In a former age, some Christians thought they should do as Jesus recommended. Origen, the early Christian apologist, castrated himself for his natural desires. If anyone did that today, there is not a Christian in the world who would not consider him mad and condemn it, but Origen, a leading Christian apologist of his time, actually did it. Was Origen mad to do what Jesus, his god, told him to do? Or are Christians today right to ignore their god's mistaken advice? If so, why is he a god?
It seems that God made us all sexual animals just to torture us—a good god?
Probably a third of all Christians today will divorce and remarry without feeling it necessary to repudiate their religion, as a Catholic priest would have to, simply to marry. Yet Jesus was adamant that:
Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
Those who permit remarriage after divorce should admit Jesus was wrong.
Jesus told people to turn the other cheek when they had been wronged. It was meant to be a metaphor for:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.
Christians will say that Jesus was only advising passivity when provoked, but that is not what he says. He says: Do not resist evil. He does not qualify the statement. At the least Jesus was being imprecise and therefore not perfect. Even if Jesus meant only that people should not fight, do Christians today accept it? Should Christians not defend themselves, become soldiers or join the police. Plainly they do. Jesus must have been wrong or modern Christians are not Christian.
Jesus can have had no regard for civil law for he advises that instead of defending a case, it should be immmediately conceded and additional compensation given:
If any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
Since Jesus believed in poverty, this advice is consistent, but no Christian follows it today, and so Christians must think that Jesus was wrong.
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Yehouah was supposed to have been Jesus's father in heaven, and Jesus had read the scriptures. How then was Yehouah perfect when he was, as Thomas Jefferson put it, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.
The Lord's Prayer is a vain petition, which must be unnecessary if God is really omnipotent and full of lovingkindness. If the Lord's Prayer is unnecessary then Jesus was telling people to offer up a pointless prayer.
Take no thought for the morrow.
Jesus thought that the morrow would be in the eternal life of God's kingdom. His advice is consistent with that view. The kingdom of God however is still not here. Jesus was mistaken. Is there a Christian alive who takes no thought for the morrow. Those who do are ignoring their god and therefore agreeing that he was wrong. Any Christian who has a pension ought to get rid of it, if they want to show they believe Jesus was perfect.
For Christians to plead that mankind is imperfect despite their god's instructions itself ignores the instruction to be perfect like God in heaven. There is no escape clause which allows the Christian not to bother trying to be perfect because it is too hard. That Christians make this an excuse proves that they do not believe Jesus was asking anything reasonable of them. He was therefore wrong.
The Golden Rule is thought the epitome of Jesus's teaching, though Jesus himself acknowledged that he had it from the scriptures:
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them… for this is the law and the prophets. (Mt 7:12)
Jesus taught the Golden Rule in this positive way "…do … do…" but this form offers the chance to do to others what they do not like and that cannot have been the intention. A masochist likes to be tortured by others, so should he torture people? The rule offered by Confucius and the Jewish sages was in the negative form:
What you do not like when done to yourself, do not to others.
People consider it inferior to the positive form presumably because it allows indifference more easily. The negative form might logically be no better than the positive form but it is not so easy to justify your actions through double negatives than it is through a single one. The best rule is the rule of kindness:
Do unto others what best pleases them.
46. Only Christians can find sense or justice in the betrayal of Jesus by Judas and the curse placed on him:
The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born. (Mt 26:24)
Jesus who was also God, Christians believe, had to be betrayed. Jesus could have given himself up as a sacrifice voluntarily, but instead God planned a betrayal—it was God's plan, after all. Why then was the betrayer, who was only playing a role in the plan, condemned?
47. Jesus said:
Be not afraid of them that kill the body. (Lk 12:4)
But, when threatened with bodily injury himself, he was afraid:
Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself. (Jn 8:59)
Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him. But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence. (Mt 12:14-15)
He also prayed in Gethsemane to be relieved of his burden, scarcely accepting his own advice not to be afraid of facing his executioners:
Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour. (Luke 22:42; Jn 12:23-27)
Furthermore, if it was his and his Father's plan that he should die, what did he expect to be the result of his prayer? Elsewhere Jesus says that prayers are answered, people only had to ask. Jesus realized his own mistake in trusting in God when, on the cross, he cries:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Mark 15:34)
Not only does this prove prayer does not work, it proves that Jesus could not have been God and that God is not perfect as Jesus believed, else he would have had compassion.
If Jesus were really the Son of God, it would be reasonable to expect him to behave with unusual knowledge of nature. Yet he shows no unusual knowledge of how things actually are and repeatedly shows himself to be as ignorant as the average person of the time. Indeed he was more ignorant by far than many of the Hellenistic people that he despised. They had considerable knowledge already about the nature of the world and the Romans were superb soldiers and engineers.
Jesus never uses the word "philosophy" or mentions the word "science." Everything was produced and controlled by the arbitrary power of an angry vengeful God. He evidently had no idea of a ruling principle in Nature or of the existence of natural law as controlling anything. Many doctrines attributed to Jesus are contradicted by modern science.
He saw no limits to the possible. God moved things and for God anything was possible. God was a supernatural being, who possessed unlimited power and who ruled and controlled everything by his arbitrary will, without any law or any limitation to its exercises. He firmly believed that God was about to fulfil His part of the covenant He had entered into with His Chosen People by uniting heaven and earth into a kingdom of God which would make the world free of sin and corruption. Hence he told his disciples they would have anything they prayed for and that, by faith alone, they could roll mountains into the sea, or bring to a halt the rage of a furious storm at sea.
He never taught that the practice of virtue contains its own reward, because for him the reward came from God. He never taught people to measure the right and wrong of their actions by their effect upon people, society or the world in general. And he omitted to teach the most important lesson that we can learn—to accept responsibility for our actions and not blame them on others, whether other people or supernatural demons. Nor did he teach that no one can attain happiness without exercising as many of their mental and physical faculties as they are able. Indeed his principle follower, Paul, advocated ignorance, to the detriment of the world for a thousand years at least. If he had taught any of these lessons and his followers had followed them rather than ignoring his teachings as they always have, he would have done more to advance the happiness of the human race than all the sermons of the apostles and priests from then until now.
Jesus declared he came to call sinners to repentance (Mt 9:13)—a mental process, which consists of arousing guilty feelings to force people back to the pre-rational innocence of childhood, offered as a god-like state of being. Consequently repentant sinners often condemn the good as well as the bad in their lifetime behaviour. If Jesus forgave sins, as he is believed to have done, the grounds can be equally dubious. Forgiveness of sins does nothing about the sinful act already committed, or about cancelling its effects upon people, society and nature. Genuinely wicked acts should surely never be forgiven, if criminals and tyrants are to learn to expect justice. Forgiveness is only justified when people are overwhelmed by guilt over something which they could not avoid or for which they were not responsible.
Christian belief is the antithesis of science, which is why bishops and preachers decried, and still decry, science. Science demands evidence. Belief demands only the mediation of some self-appointed expert in God. Rationally, without evidence, no one should believe. With it, no one should rationally disbelieve. Christians pretend to offer evidence but it is a sham. Refute their evidence and they still believe.
Nothing could more completely demonstrate a total ignorance of astronomy than Jesus saying the stars would fall to earth (Mk 13:25). Stars which are much larger than the earth itself could not fall to earth. Perhaps in this context the expression can be forgiven since Jesus is speaking of the end of the world as we know it and what better image could generate the thought than the falling of stars, but it proves that the words of the New Testament should not be taken literally.
The conflagration of the world, the gathering of the elect, and the commencement of God's heavenly kingdom, which he several times predicted would take place before his generation passed away (Mt 24:34), proves a belief in old myths rather than the modern truths of astronomy and science, as well as an inability to prophesy—a curious failing in a Son of God.
He believed similar things had happened before. He accepts the truth of the myth of the flood (Lk 17:27) in which only Noah and his ark were saved. Today we are amazed at the widespread belief in flood myths, but there is no evidence of any universal flood in the time of men upon the earth, and any flood able to put a large vessel on the top of a high mountain must have left signs of itself. The fact is that few people do not experience floods. Most people live in lowland areas because they are best for farming and even those who live in highlands are subject to flash floods which can be even more instantaneously devastating. There is a firm basis in the whole of humanity for horror stories of floods to be retold. The Biblical flood is identical in all key respects with earlier stories found on cuneiform tablets in Babylonia. Where did the priests come from who re-wrote the Jewish scriptures under the guidance of Ezra's school? Babylon!
Jesus seems foolish, unscientific, bad-tempered and arrogant when he cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season (Mk 11:13). Of all the passages in the gospels that are difficult for Christians, this is the worst. Jesus is out of his Christian character. When seen historically not religiously, it is quite different. The fig tree was a symbol of Rome!
Christians admire the beauty and charm of Jesus's teachings, as self-evidently divine, but his central doctrines were not original, and were often neither beautiful nor charming. He upholds the innumerable atrocities of the Old, and adds worse terrors and atrocities of its own in the shape of eternal torture. Nor did he so far value his own teachings as to put them consistently into practice.
When the lawyer came to ask Jesus, before a large crowd, what he should do to inherit eternal life, he had a wonderful opportunity to enunciate new and revealing precepts of wisdom and morality. Yet what happened? He merely repeated maxims well known from the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Some of his wise sayings were uttered long before by sages like Confucius who anticipated Jesus by some 550 years when he offered his version of the Golden Rule, and said of it:
Thou hast need of this law alone; it is the foundation of all the rest.He clarified what he meant by adding:
Acknowledge thy benefits by return of other benefits, but never avenge injuries.
The cursing of the barren fig-tree seems a display of folly and childish petulance, and what could be more unjust than Jesus's maxim:
Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath? (Mt 13:12)
Can anyone seriously believe that the revelation which Christian priests offer is of divine origin, when Jesus says:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, but a sword (Mt 10:34),
and is anyone honestly surprised when in the twentieth century alone a hundred million people are killed by Christians? Jesus's prophecy has been fulfilled literally. The Christian revelation is so barbarous that no one could be surprised that bloodshed should prepare its way.
Christians claim that Jesus's teaching and moral system are too faultless to challenge, and too perfect to improve. This is witless nonsense. Most of the precepts taken by his followers for 2000 years to be timeless and universal were nothing of the kind. Significantly, today Christians habitually ignore most of Jesus's universal injunctions with no thought of hell fire. They see no contradiction in claiming to embrace Christianity though they do not live it out, or even attempt to do so! They impose upon the world a system of morality intended for a particular time and place but pushed to such extremes that its own professed admirers are obliged to ignore it in their daily rounds. They long ago abandoned it as an impracticable duty. Its requisitions are daily violated and trampled under foot by all Christians.
Where is the professed Christian who:
No Christian lives up to these precepts or tries to do so. A species is characterised by certain fixed features. A Christian is supposedly characterised by following the precepts cited by the evangelists of Christ in the gospels. In taxonomy, one might allow that a feature might have been lost for some good reason or another in a species, yet the remaining features are sufficient still to identify the creature to which it belongs. Practically the only feature Christians have retained is the name Christian, and that was not given to them by Jesus! If someone can be a Christian while openly and habitually violating the precepts of Christ, then the word has no meaning.
These precepts belonged to an apocalyptic sect of Judaism which died out as Christianity formed. They were hard enough to follow then, but later became impossible to follow, so Christian bishops simply said, Forget it! The practical precepts of Christianity have now been so diluted that all that remains is a self satisfied set of back-patters feeling comfortable in their ignorance by the praise of their equally smug friends.
To any observant and unbiased mind a strange contrast is visible in the practical life of the Christian Jesus. He had a deep sympathy for poor, unfortunate and downtrodden people and he seemed to want to ease their sufferings. But as a religious leader, he seemed to demand obedience and if anyone dissented his whole nature seemingly changed. It was no longer, Blessed are ye, but Cursed are ye, or Woe unto you. Especially in John's gospel, he seemed to teach that the world was to be saved through faith specifically in him and his way. All who did not honour him were to be dishonoured by the Father and without faith in him, it is impossible to please God.
He was ardent toward friends and bitter toward enemies, and extolled his own religious ideals while denouncing all others. His way was the only way. All who did not walk therein, or conform thereto, were loaded with curses and imprecations. All who could not accomplish the impossible mental achievement of believing everything he set forth or urged upon their credence, and that, too, without evidence, were to be eternally damned.
He declared that all who were not for him were against him, and all who were not on the same road were heathens and publicans. His disciples were enjoined to shake off the dust from their feet as a manifestation of displeasure toward those who could not conscientiously subscribe to their creeds and dogmas. He then could tolerate no such thing as liberty of conscience, or freedom of thought, or the right to differ with him in religious belief. We discover a vein of intolerance and sectarianism in the apparently otherwise kind and loving Jesus.
None of this can be properly explained in terms of the divine son of God. Only by appreciating that the historical Jesus and the sect to which he belonged had double standards can these puzzles be explained. Jesus was kind and sympathetic towards his countrymen and co-religionists, the Jews, who were mainly impoverished and oppressed by the foreign tyrants, the Romans. The poor, oppressed Jews he loved and wanted to free from their oppression. The foreigners who were exploiting the Jews and the Jews who collaborated with the foreigners to keep wealthy, those he called publicans in the Bible, he hated. He was eventually hung as a rebel against the occupying power—Christians say unjustly. His fate was the fate of a rebel because he was a rebel. Examined as history all the evidence points to that conclusion.
Jesus, thinking that the end of the world was nigh, had no ideas about rules and diktats to control future people's lives. His teachings can only be taken as applying to his own time.
Christians frequently write on the internet that Jesus would be coming soon. It is hard indeed for merely rational people to understand whether Christians know the meaning of most of the words they read or use. Jesus said the kingdom would come within a generation of his life. He meant within 40 years of when he lived in the first century. It is now 2000 years later and a Christian is indignant that someone else cannot accept that Jesus will come soon. There can be no hope at all that anyone like that will ever be reasonable. It is difficult not to believe that someone who cannot read English in their own bible is sane, let alone intelligent or rational.
Nevertheless there must be far more Christians able to read and understand, like the rest of us, who must be disturbed that God or the Holy Ghost can be so contradictory and perverse. Even that thought is such a challenge to their faith that they will immediately try to shrug off, leaving the perpetual puzzle that Christianity creates of why God gives us brains to allow us to reason then tells us not to use them. No sane person could accept that such a god is sane.
It is more sensible to accept that unscrupulous exploiters, not God, have tried to stop people from using their wits. When Christians realize that the book they think was written by God was written by evangelists and priests who wanted to control people and make them do as they wanted, then they will have taken a great step to freedom. Fresh ideas, as they arose, have had to be forced on to the church—the evangelists and priests of each age. Each age sees a miracle—the unchanging God reluctantly accepts a change and the Holy Books get another step out of date. But Christians either do not notice or do not care! Yet the God of the bible is now so out of synchonization with the world that He must soon be discarded or the world will be.
If Jesus really had power to condemn unbelievers to eternal damnation, all people should obey his every word. If Jesus was impeccable in his advice and his teachings, he should be followed literally. No matter which of these two options the Christians choose, they should sell all their possessions, trust in the heavenly Father and take no thought for the morrow—that is Jesus's way to salvation. If Jesus was neither a God nor an infallible man, he was simply a man. To worship him as a God or as a perfect being is perverse.
Jesus can be regarded as God, man or myth, but to be significant he must be judged by his works, as he himself affirmed. If he is to be offered as a perfect icon, a role model or a god to be revered, then, no matter whether he lived or not, he must be found to be essentially flawless in word and deed. By the gospel evidence alone, Jesus was seriously flawed. If it be argued that the flaws have been introduced, then the bible has no authority and the whole picture is unbelievable.
Jesus is not an acceptable role model. His sayings are often obscure and interpreted in different ways. He gave us many rules to live by but they were not practical rules and mainly they have been abandoned. He failed to consider the needs of the future. Jesus offered but did not deliver the knowledge so much needed by people to enable them to shape their course through life. People are still confused about how to live correctly, how best to meet each situation, what action is suited to the occasion.
If Jesus came to save the world two thousand years ago, why is it still in a mess? Christians can hardly say that the world is better than it was because of Christianity. Whenever Christianity has been at its strongest, the world has been a terrifying and horrific place to be in. Why?—because of the Christians! As we have noted above, few of the tenets of Jesus are applied in the modern world, yet the world is better than it has been whenever priests have been dominant.
Christians are beguiled with the idea of a completed revelation. It is simpler to know precisely what to do in life and be gratified that you are doing right. The trouble is that they are not doing right. And the strength of their belief makes them resist change so that they are implacably conservative. That is what the church wants.
The Christian Jesus is a myth. The myth has surely been built around a person in history but, like Faustus, Robin Hood and William Tell his exploits have grown to smother the man. Their lives are more fanciful than real. If you eliminate from the life of Jesus as unhistorical his birth, his miracles, his ideas about God, his resurrection, ascension and messianic mission, Christ disappears as well. This, though, is a harsh way to treat him. The truth is that miracles, his ideas about God and his messianic mission were an important part of the historic Jesus. It is simply that they were not what Christians have always taken them to be. Jesus was an entirely Jewish phenomenon, a phenomenon of his times, explicable in that milieu and, indeed, similar to several other even more shadowy figures.
The gospels show themselves to be compilations of wise sayings and proverbs attracted around a stylised image of a man thought to have been a god. If the god is rejected, the wisdom of the sayings and proverbs does not necessarily all go too. As a compilation, they do not pretend to be an ethical system. They can be contradictory because too many cooks spoil the broth but nonetheless many hands make light work. If a complete ethical system is needed it must be sought elsewhere but if the compilation be accepted for application according to the circumstances, as appropriately defined by the historical situation, then hardly any saying need go.
Knowledge is cumulative. The teachings of Jesus, once considered perfection, have been changed in practice if not in theology. Many of the precepts of Jesus are simply no longer followed even by devout Christians. In their place are principles which are practised by these Christians daily. Logically they should recognize this and adopt a moral system which allows for change. The system which embodies change is the natural system where nothing is constant.
Critics of Jesus or Christianity are accused of being destructive—faith should not be destroyed unless there is something to replace it. Not here! Put in its place the superior concept of Nature which, unlike the invisible, intractable, ineffable God, is seen, felt and spoken about daily.
Stories are not true, even stories about God. The truth is what we see in nature or what we can deduce to explain what we see. Thus even truth is subject to change but, if we are honest, we can have a truth which is up to date, a truth based on the best information available. If that is combined with intuitive caution we have the best principles of continuity and change simultaneously at our disposal.
Every pleasure is not a sin, but rejection of theology does not imply indifference to evil. Nature warns against excess more strongly than any ancient command. The fear of natural or man-decreed punishment in this world should be as potent as the dread of eternal torment threatened by Jesus. Instead of depending upon Jesus because we are scared, we must seek the Truth. This requires more practical courage than professing Jesus, whose teachings can be construed to mean whatever the reader desires.
Jesus made mistakes. Every instance cited may not appeal to all readers as worthy of criticism, but there can be no doubt in the mind of any honest thinker that many of Jesus's ideas were erroneous or unsuitable as universal maxims. His theology was filled with superstitions, his cosmology was that of the pre-scientific era, he expected the end of the world within a generation, his conception of sin was theological rather than ethical, he failed to convince his hearers by his oratory, he exaggerated the results possible from prayer and he related parables that gave a false sense of values.
Christian parents hold up Jesus to their children as an ideal person, but Jesus denied this perfection:
Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. (Mt 19:17)
Jesus thought God was perfect. To anyone reading the Jewish scriptures he was anything but, but Jesus said he was less perfect than God. Why then do Christians deny what Jesus said himself about himself? Easy, isn't it! It is because they positively ignore almost everything that the gospel Jesus said in favour of their own idiosyncratic construct of him.
They have a purely emotional picture of Jesus quite unrelated to anything the gospels say about him. The truth can only be that Christians do not read the gospels or the scriptures. Otherwise they would know that they were talking nonsense in almost everything they hold concerning Jesus and God. People are brought up as Christians and taught kiddy stories about Jesus at school and Sunday school. They never turn to the bible as adults, probably because they have better things to do and read, but that leaves them with the kiddy image they were first given.
Christians should grow up.