I rejected the christ story around age 8. I told my mother that it seemed like a fairy tale. She got pretty upset.
I’m a history nerd, so maybe this won’t apply to you. But learning about the early stages of christianity has been a lot of fun for nearly two years. Who’d have thought, right?
If you enjoy reading and learning and you dislike the hold that religion has on society, you might enjoy learning about the earliest stages of the church. There’s so much material. The starter that I’ll recommend is The Passover Plot. I’ve become way more radical after this, but I think this might be a good bridge for readers who are beginning their exploration. Hope you enjoy!
It is really fascinating how religions begin and spread and evolve. I think the fact that no advanced civilisation has appeared without its own religion is a strong indication that religion is a very powerful element in the development of human society. The fact that no two civilisations that arose fully independently of each other had the same religion is pretty clear evidence that not only does the exact content of the religion not matter, but none of the religions that appeared have any real truth to them.
Study of religion and its history is definitely enlightening when one wants to understand the history of human society. It’s a bit of a shame that so many people today still believe that there’s any truth in their particular religion. But I do think that once everyone is on the same page, that study will be a lot more fruitful due to no longer being hindered by religious followers getting upset or reading too much into some scientific finding or other e.g. Christians who are emboldened by any evidence that there actually was a person at that time who heard voices in his head which he took to be God talking to him. No dear, people who hear voices in their head need medical treatment, do not try to look at their lives for guidance about important issues in your own life.
No dear, people who hear voices in their head need medical treatment, do not try to look at their lives for guidance about important issues in your own life.
Ha, so true. Or, if you’re in the times when this was not understood, call them a witch and stone them!
I knew one lady who was having a psychotic break who looked at me and was like “Can I use this {pointing at the desk phone} The voices in my head say I’m having a panic attack.”
So, like. THOSE voices are okay. (she was having some sorta something and needed help, so it’s like “uh. sure. This is our address and, uh, let them know a security guard will guide them in.” (I was said security guard.)
She got her help. Hope she’s okay.
You might like the PBS series “From Jesus To Christ.”
Downloading now, about to watch. In a different part of the thread, I praised a book (and got the title wrong), How Jesus Became God. Because he wasn’t god, he was the messiah, you dumb christian idiots. Whooo.
Yale has free courses on YouTube covering both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Very good history of religion material.
Thank you for the referal! I’ll check that out.
It’s nice that you had fun. But honestly, I think there are more interesting things to learn.
Nah, I’ve really enjoyed finding out how far removed from their faith christians in the USA have become. And, as mentioned, I’m a history nerd. This is my jam.
it’s really not just christians in america. Christians were removed from the basics of the faith pretty quickly. It’s why the second coming got slapped in there- all those unfullfilled messianic prophecies. Don’t worry, he’ll do the war-thing when he gets back. he just ran off for some milk.
If you haven’t, take a look at Bart Ehrman’s work. He differs from me in that he thinks Jesus was one actual person, but generally he does a masterful job pointing out the contradictions, mythic references, and historic implausibilites in the christians’ book of pious fairy tales.
it’s funny.
“jesus” (yeshua?) was a fairly common name. so was “joseph”. It’d be like a millenial named Michael naming their kid Brayden.
There was probably a dozen of them in that part of the world. There might have been a dozen of them in nazareth, even.
And, to be perfectly honest, faith healing/mystic scams were super common. usually they got knifed in the street or on the road, but the romans were getting pretty tired of all the dead bodies left lying around. (It was untidy. romans were a tidy people. /s. they just wanted to be the ones with the authority.)
I’ve read three of his books. Well, two and a half. The one on how stories change over time wasn’t interesting to me because I already accepted that.
As I recall, How Jesus Became God was good.
I also really enjoyed The Darkening Age, The Christian Destruction of the Classical World. Great book about the methodical and iconoclastic dismantling of Grecian and Roman temples and religions.
From Amazon:
they were violent, ruthless, and fundamentally intolerant.
this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth, and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed.
Holy shit, I’m ordering it now. And it completely makes sense because Paul was a violent asshole who killed people and he was their first major champion (with James trying to clean up the mess).
