From the human point of view, he seemed to fail himself - didn't he suffer a mental breakdown and commit suicide (or something)? — BrianW

Yes. From grief apparently.

He was sure Jesus was the messiah and was willing to be his tool and turn him in to bring on the end times. Jesus failed in his testing of the old myths and never returned to led the Jews.

Jesus' failure told Judas that he had helped murder an innocent man and not a messiah and that likely broke his heart and cause him to take his own life.

You will note in the story that Satan did not enter Judas till after Jesus gave him the sop that sealed the deal.

Regards
DL

If it's another book it's another topic or source. — Outlander

The source is the bible and Jewish traditions. I can always back up my views.

I post to lose discussions but cannot make it easy or I would be denying myself the pleasure of losing an argument fairly and lose winning overall, --- as I gain new information that is worthy of me.

Regards
DL

This reminds me, we also don't understand who the devil/satan is as an individual and what he symbolises in the inner/greater expression of human life.

And there seems to be more to the crucifixion plan than the disciples knew because Jesus refers to Peter as Satan when he refuses to accept Jesus' suffering and eventual death: — BrianW

I think all the disciples knew that Jesus wanted to test the messiah myth. He did and failed as he did not return to led the Jews. Peter might have been bright enough to try to talk Jesus out of it.

To your first quote.
Christians are conflicted on Satan as they sing of Adams sin as a happy fault and necessary to god's plan, yet curse Satan who insured that god's plan stayed on track.

Christians reverse the Jewish view of Satan as god's loyal opposition and helper for man and turned what Jews call Original Virtue to Original Sin.

Jews smart and consistent. Christians conflicted and stupid.

Regards
DL

Mainstream christianity seems to treat Judas as a traitor, that's for sure. I don't see how anyone could defend Judas with all the evidence stacked against him like that. Consider this though: who, if anyone, could've known the way things would pan out between Jesus and Judas and also be in a position of power to make Judas change his decision to betray the son of god to his enemies? God? — TheMadFool

Scriptures say that Yahweh never changes his mind. He chose to have Jesus die so Jesus had to die.

That means that Yahweh would have to insure that all the players involved in that killing did what Yahweh wanted them to do.

Mainstream Christianity is brain dead and morally corrupt and I do not want to believe their weird and immoral way.

I refuse to honor a genocidal and infanticidal god, even if such a foul prick existed.

The evidence for Judas being the hero is clear if you read the last supper and think about what is being said.

If he was a traitor then so were the other apostles who did nothing while knowing Judas was being sent to turn Jesus in.

Regards
DL

An “ism” isn’t the same thing as a religion. That’s the point. — Pfhorrest

You want the win without naming something to look at. Ok.

You win this argument on whatever group you had in mind.

Strange though. I post to lose arguments and thus learn something new, but you did not provide anything new.

Telling you that religio is/was mostly a secular tern and experts cannot agree on the definition of religion would not make any difference.

Regards
DL

You can have an ideology without being religious, — Pfhorrest

Give an example of someone with an ideology that cannot does not fit into an ism.

Regards
DL

I'm not Christian by the way. — Nuke

And you profess to know more than a Gnostic Christian about Christianity. How droll.

Regards
DL

Oops.

Perhaps you are right in all of your opinions but it doesn't benefit me to argue with you. — christian2017

I do not blame you for wanting to ignore me more. I am hard on the immoral.

Strange that you would willingly choose to be wrong though.

Do you have reason and logic that tells you why you prefer that position?

Please share.

Apologies, but you appear to have no understanding of what Christianity is all about, and no, I'm not going to teach you. Good luck with the holy jihad! — Nuke

Take Jesus as your scapegoat out of Christianity and what is left?

Nothing but a genocidal prick of a god.

Thanks for acknowledging that my inquisitor ways are working.

I stick to arguments and not the murders, that your religion seems to prefer.

Strange though that you invoked jihad instead of inquisitions, which is the Christian forte.

Some would see that as deflection or hypocrisy.

I just call it the usual poor Christian apologetics.

Regards
DL

What do you mean by "religious to keep their religions out of politics"? — Nuke

Things like when Bush went to war with Iraq because god told him to.
I also would include the faith test that your politicians have to lie about in order to gain support.

Are religious people not supposed to organize, advocate and vote like the rest of us? One rule for them, another for us? — Nuke

I do not care what the religious do except for picking my pocket with their un-earned tax breaks that you end I have to pay, thanks to the down fall religious exemptions create.

There should not be any difference in the law of the land they follow and what you and I follow.

J Ws for instance, cannot let their children die for want of a blood transfusion. I like that your government has forced your vile churches to pay for birth control even if they do not like it.

I assume you are an American and showed what they have done.

Regards
DL

Necessity is not sufficiency. — Pfhorrest

I agree.

That is why the religious are labelled hypocrites so often.

Regards
DL

Yes, tribal groups with ideologies they cling to, so far so good.

Though to quibble a bit we might recall that the vast majority of both believers and atheists are not clinging too tightly. In fact, most ignore their ideology most of the time.

Anyway, I don't quite see the point of labeling all ideologies as religions. Wouldn't that make the word religion essentially useless? If you seek a global term applying to all tribes, why not just use the word ideology? I could certainly agree atheism is an ideology. — Nuke

Not to the secular who seem to know what religions are.

Religio
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dedication from Roman Britain announcing that a local official has restored a locus religiosus[1]
The Latin term religiō, origin of the modern lexeme religion (via Old French/Middle Latin[2]) is of ultimately obscure etymology. It is recorded beginning in the 1st century BC, i.e. in Classical Latin at the beginning of the Roman Empire, notably by Cicero, in the sense of "scrupulous or strict observance of the traditional cultus". In classic antiquity, meant conscientiousness, sense of right, moral obligation, or duty towards anything[3] and was used mostly in secular or mundane contexts.[4][5]

True that most of us do not follow our ideologies that well, but to deny that we all have one and are even born with a moral sense would be incorrect.

To your overall point, if we were to have the real stats for believers versus non-believers, I think the vast majority would be in the non-belief side.

Some places show 95% Christian, while only 5% go to church even once a year.

Somebody is lying.

Regards
DL

They outsource their responsabilities because they think they are unable to "be". — Gus Lamarch

Nicely put.

Abdicating their responsibility for their sins and riding into heaven on their Jesus scapegoat is what Christianity is all about.

Strange how so called good Christian people follow such a vile and immoral ideology.

Regards
DL

What better way to make your case than to plant your argument squarely within the design and will of God? It isn't the first time God has been used for political purposes. — Frank Pray

No argument on your last.

As to your first, I prefer to keep political documents political with the crown having the final say and not some invisible guy in the sky.

I might feel differently if Yahweh was not such a satanic god.

but rather the accountability of governments formed under God. — Frank Pray

That rather excludes atheists from ever seeking office.

The U.S. has elected religious fools instead of intelligent and moral atheists as leaders in the past, and will likely do so till you have your next revolution to rid yourself of your vile two party polarized system.

Regards
DL

It would be sort of laughable to actually think people thought G-d literally descended from the heavens to bequeath them rights in some type of material form. — kudos

Yet so many there for us to laugh at.

The problem with a monarch is that if he is good, all is good. If he is more like a Trump, then the country becomes the laughing stock of the world.

Regards
DL

God given rights? Do the Easter Bunny or Father Christmas have any responsibilities? — Hot Potato

Yes they do as I enforce their right and do them when they fail to produce properly.

All parents do.

Regards
DL

No expert, but that sounds like a serious misreading. I don't think the founders sought a world free of religions, they just wanted government to stay out of the religion business. — Nuke

Yes, and also wanted the religious to keep their religions out of politics. That did not work given your political faith test.

I used the word secular as the world will go to a more laïcité form of secularism, and the U.S. would be well advised to do the same.

Regards
DL

Being that, I see it (rights) as an intersection of all that's good about the heart and the brain and that, my friend, is the mark of god's love and wisdom. — TheMadFool

Hmm.

Yet god so hated his son that he had him purposelessly killed.

One would really have to be a mad fool to see Yahweh, the genocidal Yahweh, as love and wisdom.

Regards
DL

And then I do think they think that rights do get enforced in the long run — Coben

I agree. A faith based garbage belief.

I also agree that the (cough), holy books need a lot of revisions.

So does the thinking of the homophobes and misogynous.

Regards
DL

Given? Is not anything of that sort taken?
Taken by people who accept other claims to authority than given by a State?
Christianity argued there was such a point of leverage before it became the State. — Valentinus

Which they enforced with inquisitions and murder. This aside.

Right can be taken once offered by the state.

IE. Governments give us the right to go at a given speed limit. Go over that and you come under a no right to exceed that limit law.

You swear your allegiance to the state and should not lie about it or just mouth the words without meaning them.

What state tells you to hold an allegiance to some other power or stste?

Regards
DL

Rights say nothing about bureaucracy. — Pfhorrest

Who protects and enforces your will when you wish to exercise your rights?

Who do you call when being robbed.

A bureaucracy. Right?

Regards
DL

Human relationship is one of egoism, a competition for power, and in some cases, aggressive behavior is acceptable. — Gus Lamarch

Yes, and sometimes demanded.

Regards
DL

On those grounds I think everyone, by virtue of their existence, is endowed with enough worth and dignity and value to warrant a certain amount of respect and honor. — NOS4A2

Do you apply this respect and honor to Hitler, Stalin and Yahweh?

Regards
DL

Rights are freedoms that the State allows you to have. We don't need rights, we need freedom to the individual. God is just an early phase of the embodiment of the State. — Gus Lamarch

Yes. A childish one.

I do not use the term "freedom".

You nor I can ever be free of the tribe. We have liberty, as your Statue of Liberty shows. It is not a statue of freedom.

As Socrates said of freedom when he scraped any notions of it, who will make your shoes?

Regards
DL

And an unenforced right doesn’t cease to exist, — Pfhorrest

True. It just becomes meaningless. A wish list.

The first duty of anyone with a right, is to insure that he enforces it for others, who reply in kind.

Regards
DL

Borges did a really great treatment of this — csalisbury

True, but he did not know where to land. My position, which seems to be the correct one.

Regards
DL

It's the monotheists who deviated (reformed) the older religion. — Marchesk

I agree with your sourse of early Gnostic Christianity. Chrestian Greeks and esoteric Jews seem to be the ones who gave birth to Christianity, --- after Christianity usurped their god, --- the same way that usurped the Jewish god and made him Christian.

Christianity was corrupted from it's earliest form. Just looking at the antics of the first few popes tell us that quite clearly.

Regards
DL

Sorry I can't post pictures. — TheMadFool

Then you ignore the story and how it is laid out.

Do you think the other apostles even know what was going on?

I think they either did and agreed with Jesus, er they were really stupid and did not understand what Jesus was all about.

If Judas was a traitor, then all the apostles were.

Regards
DL

He justified his actions in his own mind — prothero

This is true, as well as of all the other apostles who sat and did nothing to change Jesus' mind and attempt to prove the myth of a savior to be real. He failed.

Judas was a little of all three (we humans are complex). He justified his actions in his own mind just as we all justify our own less than noble actions on a daily basis. — prothero

What is less noble about helping a friend accomplish his mission of suicide?

I see that as more noble.

Regards
DL

Because no one knows what happens when we die. — Becky

Correct. Religions make the gullible victims to liars and con men. There should be a law against flagrant frauds.

Regards
DL

Atheism is not a religion. — Gus Lamarch

Since following an ideology is a prerequisite of religion, atheism can be considered a religion, since atheists draws on philosophical ideologies to guide ideas, behaviors, and actions, like that of any religion. That is why atheist churches are called atheist churches.

Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians
A new study shows how poorly we understand the beliefs of people who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular.

Americans are deeply religious people—and atheists are no exception. Western Europeans are deeply secular people—and Christians are no exception.

These twin statements are generalizations, but they capture the essence of a fascinating finding in a new study about Christian identity in Western Europe. By surveying almost 25,000 people in 15 countries in the region, and comparing the results with data previously gathered in the U.S., the Pew Research Center discovered three things.

First, researchers confirmed the widely known fact that, overall, Americans are much more religious than Western Europeans. They gauged religious commitment using standard questions, including “Do you believe in God with absolute certainty?” and “Do you pray daily?”

Second, the researchers found that American “nones”—those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular—are more religious than European nones. The notion that religiously unaffiliated people can be religious at all may seem contradictory, but if you disaffiliate from organized religion it does not necessarily mean you’ve sworn off belief in God, say, or prayer.

The third finding reported in the study is by far the most striking. As it turns out, “American ‘nones’ are as religious as—or even more religious than—Christians in several European countries, including France, Germany, and the U.K.”

“That was a surprise,” Neha Sahgal, the lead researcher on the study, told me. “That’s the comparison that’s fascinating to me.” She highlighted the fact that whereas only 23 percent of European Christians say they believe in God with absolute certainty, 27 percent of American nones say this.

America is a country so suffused with faith that religious attributes abound even among the secular. Consider the rise of “atheist churches,” which cater to Americans who have lost faith in supernatural deities but still crave community, enjoy singing with others, and want to think deeply about morality. It’s religion, minus all the God stuff. This is a phenomenon spreading across the country, from the Seattle Atheist Church to the North Texas Church of Freethought. The Oasis Network, which brings together non-believers to sing and learn every Sunday morning, has affiliates in nine U.S. cities.

Last month, almost 1,000 people streamed into a [Atheist] church in San Francisco for an unprecedented event billed as “Beyoncé Mass.” Most were people of color and members of the LGBTQ community. Many were secular. They used Queen Bey’s songs, which are replete with religious symbolism, as the basis for a communal celebration—one that had all the trappings of a religious service. That seemed completely fitting to some, including one reverend who said, “Beyoncé is a better theologian than many of the pastors and priests in our church today.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...theists-religious-european-christians/560936/

Regards
DL

but most theisms present a sense in which ultimately or deep down or both, certain rights are respected. And justice is enforced. — Coben

True. They want there to be retribution so much, they forget they are to love their enemies that they want to see brought to heel.

That love to hate is what keeps Christianity and Islam alive.

Inquisitions and jihads. Got to love them.

Regards
DL

as justice that comes from above. — EnPassant

What began above are laws were not worthy of men. The laws in heaven cannot be the same as laws on earth. Jews have always strove both for and against god. That is why they are mostly atheists.

Justice seek to punish the guilty and Yahweh's first justice call was for a bribe for him to punish the innocent instead of the guilty.

Yahweh is a high grade prick.

Regards
DL

makes your usage ambiguous at best. — tim wood

Given all the modifications to the U.S. constitution, that should be telling us all that it's language is garbage as it is poorly written.

I think the founders wanted a secular world free of religions and their vile genocidal gods that are somehow good.

Regards
DL

the right to die. — Frank Apisa

The only thing we can be sure of.

I see it more as a privilege as life is built on death. I do not mind helping promote new life.

Regards
DL

Christians thought that was Jesus. — Marchesk

Maybe — Marchesk

There could be and are many maybes in the contradictory scriptures. I took what I think is the majority view.

Few Christians that I know of have admitted to breaking the first commandment and put Jesus above Yahweh. At least none admit it when I accuse them of doing so.

Christians tend to run from such questions and any that have to do with morals and ethics.

If they would stop doing that, I could and would get a better view of their real beliefs.

Regards
DL

What exactly for the purposes of your thinking, does that term mean, in such terms that another may know if their own understanding comports with yours, to the end of having a discussion that might mke some sense. — tim wood

I quoted from the constitution which posits a creator god, and while that document does not name Yahweh, being that the U.S. was a predominantly Christian nation then and now, I took it to mean Yahweh.

Yahweh is not my god but I think most Americans do claim that he is theirs.

Regards
DL

I agree. That makes him the hero.

If he was not, then the other disciples would be seen as really stupid for just sitting there while knowing that he was on his way to turn Jesus in.

Regards
DL

it may have just been an exclamation. — Outlander

The scribes, I am sure, were quite careful in putting exactly what they wanted people to read as coming out of Jesus. They would not want readers to start reading other word and putting them in Jesus' mouth.

We are to read what is said, and not what we want the words to say.

In fact, the bible itself says not to add or subtract from what is said.

When the bible was written, almost no one read holy books literally, but to start second guessing the wording of the myth would have us likely miss the message it was trying to give.

Regards
DL