Opinion of Jesus Christ

[Beet]

I consider him to be the Savior. For those that say that Jesus may have been a good man but Christians have been bad, I think there's a lot of truth to that but it also isn't cut and dry. Didn't the monks of the Dark Ages preserve the academic traditions that eventually became scholasticism and the Renaissance? Didn't Christianity play a role in the anti-slavery and civil rights movements? There will always be bad people in the world who will try to twist anything to oppress others, but I don't think we can clearly say we added up all the positives and negatives of Christianity for the past two millenia and come up with a net positive/negative one way or another, from a utilitarian perspective.

[Beet]

It is a bit strange when Christians say (often implicitly) we should worship Jesus because he gave up his life so that we could have a chance to live. It's as if we worship him because he put himself below us. So it's as if we're worshiping ourselves. It's a bit.. narcissistic. The interpretation of Jesus' death that is less narcissistic is the idea that if God loved us, then how much should we love one another. It's less the idea that he died for us, personally, but that he died for everyone. But even so it's a bit narcissistic. The implication is that we're worthy of the death of God, which to some extent puts us on equal footing with God, which is just strange.

[Beet]

In my view, Jesus is nothing more than a fairy tale character regardless of his reality in whatever sense because of the worship of his legend.

What do you have against fairy tale characters, many of whom are more "real" than human beings who actually lived in terms of their impact on human life?  "Fictional" versus "Nonfictional" is a fairly irrelevant distinction.

Could you be so kind as to name a few?

Snow White is, in a very real sense, really a great deal more real than, for instance, Louie Gohmert. Likewise Princess Kaguya and her suitors are more real than almost the entire Japan Restoration Party and Movimento 5 Stelle combined. At this point it's an open question whether or not Vasilisa the Beautiful and Finist the Falcon are more real than Vladimir Putin.

In all seriousness, the line between "real" and "imaginary" or "fictional" is blurry at the best of times and more or less meaningless.  People create the reality that they need to help comprehend the world and that's not a bad thing.  Is a fictional character any less real than a dead person you never met and will never meet, or a celebrity you've followed in the press for ages but is totally out of your realm of reference?  To you, there's no real distinction that matters in a practical sense.

Well I think the criticism from the anti-religious standpoint would be that there's a distinction between the honestly fictional (like Snow White) and the fictional which tries to pass itself off as real (such as religions based on the testimony of miracles). You're essentially desiring the masses to live their lives according to a particular truth, all the while thinking that it is a lie in your heart.

[Beet]

In my view, Jesus is nothing more than a fairy tale character regardless of his reality in whatever sense because of the worship of his legend.

What do you have against fairy tale characters, many of whom are more "real" than human beings who actually lived in terms of their impact on human life?  "Fictional" versus "Nonfictional" is a fairly irrelevant distinction.

Could you be so kind as to name a few?

Snow White is, in a very real sense, really a great deal more real than, for instance, Louie Gohmert. Likewise Princess Kaguya and her suitors are more real than almost the entire Japan Restoration Party and Movimento 5 Stelle combined. At this point it's an open question whether or not Vasilisa the Beautiful and Finist the Falcon are more real than Vladimir Putin.

In all seriousness, the line between "real" and "imaginary" or "fictional" is blurry at the best of times and more or less meaningless.  People create the reality that they need to help comprehend the world and that's not a bad thing.  Is a fictional character any less real than a dead person you never met and will never meet, or a celebrity you've followed in the press for ages but is totally out of your realm of reference?  To you, there's no real distinction that matters in a practical sense.

Well I think the criticism from the anti-religious standpoint would be that there's a distinction between the honestly fictional (like Snow White) and the fictional which tries to pass itself off as real (such as religions based on the testimony of miracles). You're essentially desiring the masses to live their lives according to a particular truth, all the while thinking that it is a lie in your heart.

One could say that all systems of morality are particular to the cultural and historical context in which they are located. But that doesn't mean they aren't relevant for those contexts.

Well certainly, and apologies for being so crude here, but the fact that most people would have a problem with dishonesty is still floating contemptously beneath the surface of this discussion.

I'm summarizing the anti-religious standpoint here because it actually seems less disrespectful to simply reject religious claims than to consider them not even worth discussing.

[Beet]

Christianity has both an extremely low and an extremely high opinion of humanity, and holds both views at exactly the same time.

Precisely. The idea that humans are worth the son of God's death puts us on one of the biggest pedestals possible, but on the other hand, the idea that it was necessary due to our sinful nature is, IMO, also realistic.