@Ogion, don't forge the babies born out of wed-lock.

Or any of the indigenous people of Africa or the Americas

Or australia...

@orathaic; on addiction: I wouldn't know about rats, but people I know that became addicts were invariably introduced to drugs by their friends. Even later, they were definitely part of a community (which I wouldn't have anything to do with, but that's beside the point). Anyway, this is irrelevant to whether they should be left alone (not "pushed") to do whatever they like or (here it is) pushed into a governmental program. I don't see what family and friends have to do with this, I'd say their choices are outside the scope of the discussion.

@On capitalism and community: everything you say is true. I don't see what you're arguing against, I never claimed communities were a commodity.

The whole premise of this issue is stupid. Why would an atheist care about Jesus in the first place? However:

If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. You have a duty to worship God, not because He will be imperfect and unhappy if you do not, but because you will be imperfect and unhappy.

If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world; in other words, I would look for the Church which the world hated. My reason for doing this would be, that if Christ is in any one of the churches of the world today, He must still be hated as He was when He was on earth in the flesh. If you would find Christ today, then find the Church that does not get along with the world. Look for the Church that is hated by the world as Christ was hated by the world. Look for the Church that is accused of being behind the times, as our Lord was accused of being ignorant and never having learned. Look for the Church which men sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord because He came from Nazareth. Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils. Look for the Church which, in seasons of bigotry, men say must be destroyed in the name of God as men crucified Christ and thought they had done a service to God. Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because He called Himself the Truth. Look for the Church which is rejected by the world as Our Lord was rejected by men. Look for the Church which amid the confusions of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its Voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly it is other worldly. since it is other-worldly, it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated as was Christ Himself. But only that which is Divine can be infinitely hated and infinitely loved. Therefore the Church is Divine.

@Capt Brad

An atheist would care about Jesus the same way he would care about Plato or Buddha. Even when you don't agree with these wise men, you can learn important things from them.

To be able to comment on your second statement, first I'd need to know what you mean when you say "God."

@Capt Brad's Church speech

Every Church is just an institution, a club, if you will. We should be discussing ideas, not Barcelona vs Real.

i disagree. if Jesus is not who the Church says he is there is no reason to consider him at all. there is nothing of his teachings that have any relevance unless the claim of his being the Son of God is true. Furthermore to consider him of any importance borders on stupidity as he had no education, came from nowhere, was reviled as a criminal, and rejected by his own.

However, unlike Budda or Plato or any other religious figure his birth, life, and death were all pre-announced centuries before he came. Whether you believe the Hebrew Scriptures or not, mention of the one to come was well documented. To this day Jews still wait for the one who was foreordained.

Actually, Barca v Real is a great topic, and probably much more productive. Another classico coming up next month. Could be scary

the indigenous people of ... the Americas

Hey Og the skinhead! lay off of my people. Speak for your own White people but not for the natives of America.

HALA MADRID

@Capt Brad, that is simply not true. The teachings of Jesus would be a deeply original take on the human condition regardless of whether any Church stood behind him. Many thoughtful works on Jesus have been produced that have nothing to do with the Church but examine solely what he said.

Oh, no, there's nothing of importance to be learned from studying the doctrine of someone foundational to the beliefs of, at last count, 2.2 billion of this world's people. This is just another bit of Liar/Lunatic/Lord brinksmanship.

@Lethologica, to be fair, belief is not an argument. Billions believed, and still believe, in witches.

Zmaj and Letho, you guys sound like the blind 'wisemen' examining the elephant.

@Capt Brad, I would agree with that. There's so many different ways you can approach the issue of elephant-Jesus (Buddha would have loved that image). You're touching the elephant too.

Aww, Zmaj, that's touching

@Zmaj
The question was why an atheist would care about Jesus. The fact that a helluva lot of people believe these things about Jesus would be a good reason for atheists to care, regardless of what they personally think of Jesus or his teachings, in order to understand his fellows.

@Lethologica
It will attract their attention, no doubt about that.

@Capt Brad
:)

@Zmaj
"The teachings of Jesus would be a deeply original take on the human condition regardless of whether any Church stood behind him."

It's not clear to me that Jesus' teachings are THAT original. They are rooted extremely deeply in the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament, which were penned well before Jesus was born. To be sure, His explanations and interpretations of those Scriptures were much at odds with those who held power in contemporary Judean society (and His willingness to challenge them openly, publicly, and authoritatively aroused their ire to the point that they were willing to manipulate the Roman prefect, with whom they were on less than the best of terms, into having Jesus crucified), but Jesus' teachings were not fashioned out of whole cloth, nor were they divorced from the teachings of the Jewish prophets that had preceded Him.

You might say, to rescue your original point a bit, that the teachings of the Old Testament in general were a unique take on the human condition, and Jesus being a part of that line of thought would also qualify......but you might get pushback on that point too from those who are in the habit of examining ancient middle-eastern religions.

@OS, Jesus was rooted in Jewish culture because he was a Jew. But that's as far as it goes.

His message used the trappings of the system he grew up in because that's all he knew. If he had grown up in China, he'd use Confucian or Daoist terminology. In India, he'd rely on Vedas or whatever.

But his essential tenets have nothing to do with Jewish or any other traditions before him.

Put simply, he's an extremist. He doesn't care about the state, about culture, about work, about history.

He cares only about the "inner light", his God, which is such a leap from the Jewish God of Laws that it took dozens of generations of interpreters to stitch together the Old and the New Testament to give them a semblance of unity.

"his essential tenets have nothing to do with Jewish or any other traditions before him."
On the contrary, they have everything to do with it. When John writes about Jesus saying "I am" (8.58 and, more amusingly but less clearly because silly English translators have added in the word "He" that doesn't show up in the original, in 18.6), this is a direct reference to Exodus (3.14), in which "I am" is the name of God. Far from Jesus' declaring that the inner light within Himself was God, a departure from the Old Testament, Jesus identifies Himself with the selfsame God who fills the Old Testament. Much of what Jesus says and does in John 13-17 (especially 17) follows in this vein as well.

As another example, when He was asked what the greatest commandment was, He didn't come up with something new or try to explain that the commands from the Old Testament weren't really what He was dealing with. What Jesus did was to draw a line out of Deuteronomy -- one that puts the "God of Laws" at the center of His teaching: "Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength."

Jesus also cared rather deeply about Old Testament history (particularly the prophets whom God had sent to Israel) and brought it up to make his case against the contemporary rulers and teachers:
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ ... Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar" (Matthew 23.30-31,34-35)

@Ogion, I won'entt argue with you about gay rights, even though there have been Christians speaking out in favor of gay rights for some time. But if you look at things over 2000 years instead of 20, it becomes clearer that Christianity has been pro-woman from the beginning. A few highlights: women were leaders in the early church. Women have been recognized as saints from the earliest times. Church leaders in Western Europe laid down the principle that a woman had to consent to her marriage, and later encouraged education and literacy for women. More recently, Chrsitianity has been ahead of every other world religion in accepting women in leadership roles. Yes you can find a lot of sexism in Christianity, but you will find at least as much sexism in every other religious tradition, including atheism.

^^"but you will find at least as much sexism in every other religious tradition, including atheism.":
Lol

@OS, your examples do not contradict what I said. Jesus juggles the concepts from the Old Testament because, as I said, he has nothing else to work with. He's no philosopher and has a very limited ability to create new concepts.

To use your first example, when he wants to say that God is inside him, he says "I am," appropriating the name everyone around him knows. That's all. To identify with the Old Testament God would mean that he claims to have the characteristics of that mythological being, which he never does.

The same applies to other examples. Of course he cares rather deeply about Old Testament. As I said, he'd "care rather deeply" about Daoism if he lived in China. It means nothing. He just picks things that suit his ends.

@pastoralan. Indeed, unfortunate that the early openness was so soon lost.

That was pretty radical at the time. Early Buddhism also had women as nuns which was radical at the time, but not with complete equality at that time. However, in most Buddhist traditions especially in the west there are as many or more women leaders. Asian traditions still bear the characteristics of their societies. Nevertheless it doesn't include systematic teachings of female inferiority (especially since gender is an illusion anyway)

@pastorlan. I heard there is a movie about Mary Magdalene coming out. Might be interesting to see an exploration of these issues for sure

"He's no philosopher and has a very limited ability to create new concepts."
Then where's the originality? In innovative application of old concepts? I could get behind that in a very narrow, with-reference-to-his-contemporaries-only way, but I'm really not sure that's where you're going. I'm in fact very unsure where you ARE going.

"Of course he cares rather deeply about Old Testament [history]."
Which is a turning away from your earlier statement that Jesus didn't much care about history. Excellent! Finding common ground!

"when he wants to say that God is inside him, he says 'I am,' appropriating the name everyone around him knows. That's all."
Erm, Jesus says, quite directly, that the Old Testament, Moses in particular, speaks of Him (Luke 24.27, John 5.46). That doesn't sit well with a theory of Jesus appropriating language from the Old Testament but disassociating it from its previous meaning.

"To identify with the Old Testament God would mean that he claims to have the characteristics of that mythological being, which he never does."
Except that He does claim (or is ascribed) characteristics of the Old Testament God -- He claims the power to forgive sins (Matthew 9.2-8), He claims the power to give eternal life (John 5.39-40), and He is described as having created all things (John 1.1-3).