Have to admit I'm on board with Jesus' teachings. Whether there was actually such a person or not, I don't know. As with everything, I'm not 100% in favor of everything that's in the Bible about Jesus but the whole do-unto-others bit I think should be a general rule of thumb.
And forgiveness is not a bad concept. If you forgive yourself and forgive others, it can be freeing. It's the anal-ness of the church that turns me off. And they can't even get the meaning of their own scriptures right.
And so much of the Bible is so downright hateful and/or cruel. The contradictions and hypocrisies are so off-putting and really obvious to those that don't accept their blind faith.
I view the Bible as more one group's version of history and of their parables about their origin.
How about the "Slaves obey your masters - even the cruelones" bit? Or just the bits that fit your own moral compass?
Yeah. Slavery is cruel. We did it over here too. It was cruel over here, also.
Yeah, but you can live by these precepts, expounded by Confucius, Budda, et al & leave jeezus out of it entirely. And why, exactly, do you feel a need to post this on here, btw?
Why not?
The "do unto others" bit, aka The Golden Rule, predates Jesus by a long stretch. Forgiveness is a core tenet of Taoism, which predates Jesus by a long stretch.
Every single instance of goodness from the Bibles, New or Old Testament, can be found in other sources that predate them.
Most of what's in the Bible was drawn from Sumerian writings. Just because something IS in the Bible doesn't automatically make it bad. Or good.
That which Jesus said that was good was not original
That which Jesus said that was orginal was not good
Is that true? I'm not even sure there was a Jesus. There are those who will tell you he was invented hundreds of years after he was supposedly born.
@david75090 I would pretty much go along with that, but in this case and context I was referring to the character commonly known as Jesus of Nazareth appearing in the so called "Holy" Bible.