On 7/10/2025 at 6:44 PM, sethoflagos said:

Thy kingdom come. It's a wish for a blessed future. Not applicable to past or present.

Indeed, but why can't you be content/happy, now?

On 7/10/2025 at 8:43 PM, pinball1970 said:

Regarding Genesis?

Regarding the bible, I try too steer clear of cherry picking... 😉

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, but why can't you be content/happy, now?

It doesn't generate a survival advantage to those populations who have to endure boreal winters.

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

For instance, "Our 'father'" how many of us can claim to be the son of god?

If you said child - everyone who wants to. Aren’t we referred to as her children? (John 3:2)

The Old Testament God clearly resembles a Bronze Age chieftain - he is violent, whimsical and doesn't tolerate criticism.

He's clearly modeled after humans, not the other way around.

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Regarding the bible, I try too steer clear of cherry picking... 😉

My point was that the Lords prayer is nothing to do with Genesis.

6 hours ago, swansont said:

If you said child - everyone who wants to. Aren’t we referred to as her children? (John 3:2)

Yes, I think it's the reborn idea: "..no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born through water and the Spirit..." And in the Prologue to St John's gospel it says "to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God (implicitly through spiritual rebirth at baptism). Also, in the Beatitudes, the peacemakers "shall be called children of God".

And more generally, God the Father is so called in part because he is the creator of everything, including mankind. Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.

So it seems to be fairly pervasive imagery in Christianity.

Edited July 15Jul 15 by exchemist

16 hours ago, pinball1970 said:

My point was that the Lords prayer is nothing to do with Genesis.

I think it's a re-interpretation of the old message/teaching, that Jesus, verbally authored; my point is, we are entirely dependent on the received wisdom of those that wrote down an approximation of what was said by Jesus and his crew.

We don't know that Jesus actually believed in god, I don't think his message needs a god to be valid.

For instance "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing".

Which seems to be an echo of

"Virtue Socrates argues that living a virtuous life and protecting the soul's integrity is more important than material success or avoiding suffering. He believed that injustice caused more harm than pain to the soul, and therefore it was better to be a victim than an offender."

28 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

We don't know that Jesus actually believed in god,

Huh!? That is kind of the whole point of his ministry!

12 minutes ago, pinball1970 said:

Huh!? That is kind of the whole point of his ministry!

Did he tell you that?

19 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Did he tell you that?

This is what modern scholarship have consensus on, mainly.

First century apocalyptic Jew, associated with John the Baptist, had followers, was a preacher, teacher and healer, was executed by Roman authorities.

The "apocalyptic Jew" part goes with being a theist. The New Kingdom is on its way, repent and hear the good news.

3 hours ago, pinball1970 said:

This is what modern scholarship have consensus on, mainly.

First century apocalyptic Jew, associated with John the Baptist, had followers, was a preacher, teacher and healer, was executed by Roman authorities.

The "apocalyptic Jew" part goes with being a theist. The New Kingdom is on its way, repent and hear the good news.

The thing is we often conflate our scientific knowledge with a greater philosophical intelligence and since we've killed god scientifically, we no longer need god philosophically.

For Jesus to successfully re-interpret an older text based on a god, he had to understand the philosophical reason to employ a god; he thought outside the box labelled god and inadvertently started a new religion, imagine how angry he'd be at the modern scholar's... 😇

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

The thing is we often conflate our scientific knowledge with a greater philosophical intelligence and since we've killed god scientifically, we no longer need god philosophically

This is history not science. In science we can replicate the experiment if we need to, we cannot do that with the past. History is not the past, it is building a picture of what what most likely happened in the past, based on probability.

This can change depending on texts and archaeology that may be discovered.

We cannot "kill" god since God is a concept, an idea, a belief, an ancient history and today's reality. God exists for people.

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

For Jesus to successfully re-interpret an older text based on a god, he had to understand the philosophical reason to employ a god; he thought outside the box labelled god and inadvertently started a new religion, imagine how angry he'd be at the modern scholar's..

Jesus was a pious Jew who followed Mosaic law, that was important to him if you put weight on themes from the Gospels.

Put god above all others, follow the letter of the law (not leaving one iota) and treat your neighbour as yourself.

On 7/15/2025 at 6:51 PM, Otto Kretschmer said:

The Old Testament God clearly resembles a Bronze Age chieftain - he is violent, whimsical and doesn't tolerate criticism.

He's clearly modeled after humans, not the other way around.

Yes, and it is interesting how that picture of God evolves in the Old Testament. At the start, he is just the God of Israel, just one among many, though supposedly superior to the gods of other tribes and nations. At some point this changes to a belief that the other gods are mere idols, i.e. fakes, and there is only one god.

And how do last two pages relate to the topic? Oh, I know, quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

I only want to say, that it's easier not to believe, than to believe. Because when you believe and look around, you want to ask "Lord, what's going on?"

Edited July 17Jul 17 by m_m

1 hour ago, m_m said:

And how do last two pages relate to the topic? Oh, I know, quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

I only want to say, that it's easier not to believe, than to believe. Because when you believe and look around, you want to ask "Lord, what's going on?"

Children can be the image of their parents.

4 hours ago, exchemist said:

Yes, and it is interesting how that picture of God evolves in the Old Testament. At the start, he is just the God of Israel, just one among many, though supposedly superior to the gods of other tribes and nations. At some point this changes to a belief that the other gods are mere idols, i.e. fakes, and there is only one god.

The Chinese used to have a similar idea during the Shang dynasty with the supreme god being the Shangdi but later the Zhou conquered China and replaced him with a more impersonal idea of Heaven.

Edited July 17Jul 17 by Otto Kretschmer

4 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

The Chinese used to have a similar idea during the Shang dynasty with the supreme god being the Shangdi but later the Zhou conquered China and replaced him with a more impersonal idea of Heaven.

The Chinese subsequently took this type of social projection very much further. By the the time of the medieval Ming dynasty (1368-1644), the Chinese imagination had populated their model of heaven with a vast celestial bureaucracy of local magistrates, prefects, provincial governors, and imperial censors, which exactly mirrored the intricate and labyrinthine civil service system found on earth in China at that time  - complete with literary examinations which had to be passed to obtain promotions.

This motif can be found in several  major Chinese collections of ghost stories dating from 1378 in the early Ming dynasty, and most especially in another large collection of supernatural ghost stories called the Liaozhai ( 聊齋 ) written by Pu Songling during the following Qing dynasty, over a 40 year period from around 1670 onwards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Tales_from_a_Chinese_Studio

The Liaozhai was first translated into English by Herbert Giles in 1880 under the title  ‘Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio’.

I think "likeness" means something like "analogue", very much in line with what perhaps @toucana seems to be suggesting from the Greek translation of the Septuagint: Man "handles" things, so it's a natural extrapolation to think there must be a "handler of all things".

On 7/2/2025 at 4:44 AM, iNow said:

Humans create god(s) in their own image, not the other way around

Couldn't agree more.

23 hours ago, pinball1970 said:

This is history not science. In science we can replicate the experiment if we need to, we cannot do that with the past. History is not the past, it is building a picture of what what most likely happened in the past, based on probability.

This can change depending on texts and archaeology that may be discovered.

We cannot "kill" god since God is a concept, an idea, a belief, an ancient history and today's reality. God exists for people.

So you agree with me...

23 hours ago, pinball1970 said:

Jesus was a pious Jew who followed Mosaic law, that was important to him if you put weight on themes from the Gospels.

Put god above all others, follow the letter of the law (not leaving one iota) and treat your neighbour as yourself.

I think Jesus was an alcoholic, until his spell in the wilderness, and they tend to put the booze first...

On 7/18/2025 at 2:00 PM, dimreepr said:

So you agree with me...

No, if Jesus did not believe in god then the whole of the NT does not make sense.

On 7/18/2025 at 2:00 PM, dimreepr said:

I think Jesus was an alcoholic,

No idea, seems unlikely as he would have not have had a following.

They had wine and stories about it at that time, so he could have drank it if it was affordable.

45 minutes ago, pinball1970 said:

No, if Jesus did not believe in god then the whole of the NT does not make sense.

Seriously?

What a foolery... 😉

AFAIK Jesus obviously did believe in God but his beliefs differed from those of modern day Christians - he very much viewed himself as just another Jewish prophet and intended his teachings to be for Jews only. Until 70 AD Christianity was divided into two groups, the followers of Paul of Tarsos who were universalists and believed the message of Christ to be for everyone and Jewish followers of Jesus who believed Jesus had preached only for Jews, the latter group took part in the First Jewish Revolt and were decimated. The universalists were thus left as the only group of Christians.

Edited July 20Jul 20 by Otto Kretschmer

50 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Seriously?

Yes, no serious scholar thinks Jesus was an atheist.

1 hour ago, pinball1970 said:

No, if Jesus did not believe in god then the whole of the NT does not make sense.

No idea, seems unlikely as he would have not have had a following.

They had wine and stories about it at that time, so he could have drank it if it was affordable.

Both St Matthew and St Luke's gospels have Jesus making a joke about this, saying John the Baptist came, not eating nor drinking and you say "He is possessed!". And now I come, eating and drinking, and you say "Look, a glutton and a drunkard!". In other words, there's just no pleasing some people.

1 hour ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Jewish prophet and intended his teachings to be for Jews only

I will check but I am not sure that is correct.