Jesus was either a liar or a lunatic or He is the risen Christ, the Lord of all Creation, the Alpha and the Omega, the King of Kings

or misquoted or misunderstood or didn't exist...

Exactly what I was thinking, Vynce.

Yeah, what I was going to say. Afterall, Muslims and Bahai (slightly anglicized, sorry, I'm lazy) both accept Jesus as a prophet, but not as a manifestation of a deity himself.

Yeah, he could have just been a guy that people looked up to when he was living, and then was immortalized when he was killed; kinda like JFK.

How many people it today's popular culture have been revered after their death and have had their flaws overlooked (cough, cough Reagan cough)?

What kind of person immortalizes JFK?

If Jesus was a liar then he was Good at lying.
If Jesus was a lunatic he was totally crazy.
If Jesus is the risen Christ then we should follow.
If Jesus is the Lord of all Creation we should thank Him.
If Jesus is the alpha the omega He is God.
If he is the King of Kings I'll bow down.

in the words fo ben Breedlove, "claim that shit and see how far it flies"

This is obviously a true dichotomy. No other possibilities exist.

D'A

Or he was an amalgam of people. Or he the stories of him were to excess. Or he stated truths as he saw them and had words put in his mouth. None, not one of the books of the new testament was written during the life of Yeshua ib Yosef. They were all written between one and three hundred years later and many didn't reach their final forms (what you read in the King James) until the thirteen hundreds CE. Changes and edits occurred, and the text was translated from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to German to English and the first three translations were largely made by amateur scribes in many cases with political axes to grind.

@ the claim, not @ you D'Arch, you're obviously being facitious (sp)

Jesus was Jesus.

@David: Word.

Guatama Buddha was either a liar or a lunatic or he found the path to communion with God, and his way should be followed by all who seek to escape from suffering and achieve Nirvana....

Claim it, Panda, claim it.

Christ is real....And humanity deffinately had to be cleansed.Me being the awsome beast I am still do not really understand the whole sacrifice your son thing. I would love to get deeper but this little box only lets me type so much.......pluss I really do not care about the whole human race being saved thingy.
Progress had to be made, it happened, WHATEVER.

don't blame the little box for your little attention span. I've seen some pretty darn big essays written in this little box, and if it's too small, use three or four of them. hell, make your own claims! we won't mind... unless they're as uninteresting as that excuse for why your argument doesn't actually have any substance.

As others have pointed out, many other possibilities exist besides those put forth in this claim -- it's a straw man.

This claim is an important facet of the Protestant Christian denominations. Basically, they propose that you can't "half-ass" Jesus... He was either the Messiah and the Son of God, or he was a crazy man who is burning in hell and the Christian faith is pointless. It isn't a strawman, in context. Jim Ley should've provided that context in his description.

?Really? Obviously these Protestants are unfamiliar with (or choose to ignore) the parable of the Samaritan.

How does the Good Samaritan mesh with this idea?

In any event, this belief has no biblical roots... it is relatively recent stems from Calvinism (indirectly).

Samaritans were not people you let your daughters near. Not people to be respected. Yet by doing good, the Samaritan in the parable was more beloved by God than a priest.

Soo, maybe Jesus *was* a ravening loony.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Him being fruitloops doesn't mean there isn't a higher being of love in the world.

Given that this is the case (which is a terrible given, but we are talking about religion here, so you'll have to get over it and forgive me), Jesus being crazy or not doesn't matter one wit. The man tried to do good in the world. God would love him even if the man was completely bonkers, and got nothing else right.

You do realize, don't you, that God loves everyone equally..?

Yes, the Good Samaritan demonstrated that even Gentiles can do good works. But, according to those same Protestant beliefs, works are meaningless. It is "by faith alone" that people get in to heaven. So, following this train of thought, intentions are meaningless. Jesus trying to do good wouldn't earn any favor with God; it is only because Jesus really is the Messiah that He sits at the right-hand of the Throne. Or he was just a crazy man with good intentions who is burning in hell and all Christians are equally fucked because they believed in him.

I'm not saying that all of this is necessarily in my system of belief, but this claim is from a Protestant Christian perspective so I am just trying to fill in any gray areas as to what exactly that perspective is.

Dammit Tad, I've got other stuff I'm supposed to be doing right now.

I'm just saying it's hard get a grasp on a belief structure that doesn't believe Jesus when he says that deeds count more than belief, and also believes that if he's wrong about anything, he's wrong about everything. I mean if they believe he's wrong about that, doesn't that mean they believe that he's a liar and a lunatic, and they're all going to hell?

Are you sure that this is standard Protestant doctrine?

I'm sure that it is the doctrine of at least the Bible Churches, the Baptists, the United Methodists, the Lutherans, and the Evangelists. I can't speak about the Episcopals or the Presbyterians (or any other denominations that I'm not thinking of) because I haven't finished my research yet.

They don't believe that He's wrong, nor do they think that He is a liar/lunatic. But they proclaim that if you don't accept Jesus as the Messiah, then you have to say that he is a liar and a lunatic. They don't believe in the middle-ground.

If you need to work on other things, then that's fine. We aren't arguing anything important, just discussing the different beliefs of different denominations that (I'm assuming) neither of us are a part of.

Yay for getting a Minor in Theology!

How bizzare. Thanks for the info, Tad. On a related note, I got the damn thing done. (sadly, in the most obtuse and backwards way imaginable. Oh, the embarrassing things that happen when you're better with JavaScript than Java. Maybe I'll have a chance to do it again after the demo.)

No problem.

And no, Buddha is not in the exact same lying/loony/divine boat as Jesus. Did Buddha sacrifice his life to emphasize his message or to save humanity? No. Neither did Mohammed. Neither did (insert other religious figure here).

actually, many of them did.

JCL: May I suggest taking a comparative religions class? Obvious ignorance does not go well with evangelical wankery.

Paul Johnson, author of A History of the Jews is quoted saying, "I doubt if there is any serious scholar alive now who would deny Jesus’ historical existence. Indeed, He is much better authenticated than many secular figures of antiquity whose existence no one has ever presumed to question."

Jim, i wish you'd get some of these authors on here to do their own talking, so we can see what kind of cred they've got. I'm sure someone said such a thing, but that doesn't make it true.

Paul Johnson has an axe to grind here. He's an avowed Catholic who is considered a movement conservative. He's not what I would call a source without bias. He is a recognized historian, But so's MAR Barker, who is totally out on a limb when he talks about a soft s in Sanskrit. He's qualified to make these comments, but he's never met a Sanskrit speaker.

There's a strange presumption that modern people have that if you go back in time, what you'd find is a bunch of unthinking barbarians who only believed in invisible gods. We somehow believe that it is only in modern day people can read the bible and say, "It's metaphorically true even if it isn't literally true."

I think that a lot of these stories may have been told when it was all still oral tradition the same way we told campfire stories. The fact people talked about Jesus doesn't mean they believed in him....

good summary line, Cob. claim it.

Fuck. . . Did you read the claim regarding that particular thought? I still think that this thought hasn't received enough attention.

According to Gag Halfrunt:
"Vell, he was just zis guy, you know?"

There is proof of his existence, whoever says that is lying or doesn't know. Not everyone believes that He is the son of God however. There are alot of atheists on Jyte.

I believe Jesus was who he claimed he was
acording to the Bible

but there are more logical posibilities

*IF* we are all "Gods' children" then Jesus is simply a bASStyrd child and the Christstain God is either a (statutory?) rapist, child molester, the first single-parent to commit incest on record *OR* GALL OF THE ABOVE and truly would be "the Lord of gall Creation" ~ ; )

Wow, auntie. You get points for being the first ignorant atheist I've heard from. We usually get mindless rants like yours only from the God-fearing crowd.

Question: Why did you agree with the claim?

jesus couldnt have been a liar because who in their right mind would die for a lie? As a matter of fact, had Jesus rejected his previous teachings he would have been freed. not to mention all of his apostles who died so gruesomely. If he was a lunatic how come he had so many followers. Then there were alot of lunatics as well.

@kodtrev: Have you met people? Dying for a lie they want to believe is something people do, every day.

That's what religion is all about.

no i have never met or heard of any one who died for something they absolutely knew was false. you lie to gain something. what did jesus gain?

Fame.

every one hated him.. what good is glory when you cant reap the benefits. I would like to be famous... but if i had to die to be famous then i wouldn't get a whole lot out of it.

Glory after death is looked upon quite highly by some.
What about religious suicide bombers? Do you think anyone would sign up if they followed your ideals?

How many followers did Jesus have while he was alive? Jim Jones had over 900 in Jonestown. Surely that's too many followers to be considered a lunatic.

if jesus was god like so many of you believe, wouldn't have known the glory it would bring? wasn't the whole point of the sacrifice to bridge the chasm brought about by the proverbial fall of Adam, the whole point of which was to bring a family unto himself? That's fairly self-serving postmortem. In that regard, since he supposedly still lives, he totally reaped the rewards and the glory of the sacrifice.

++Mime. Once again, it's clear that Jesus was a much more compelling and worthy character of adoration if he wasn't divine.

i heart your sexy, smart brains, GRK

Awww, shucks.

suicide bombers are martyrs... they die for some thing they actually believe. if you say that jesus was a liar than you can't compare him to a suicide bomber. if you told a bomber to go blow them self up because youd think they were cool they wouldn't. they do it to gain eternal life. And all though i dont know much about Jim Jones i can say that there were tonnns of lunatics who claimed to be the son of god but they never had the same impression on the world... and for the mime, yes he would know the glory it would bring... thats why he is the lord! not a liar

But martyrs aren't necessarily lunatics. Since we have numerous martyrs for conflicting causes, some of them are simply wrong. Neither liars nor lunatics, just sadly mistaken.

yea, but you can't compare martyrs to a "lying" jesus. martrys "believe"that they will gain something from their sacrifice like eternal happines in heaven. IFFF jesus were a liar then he would gain nothing from his death so why on earth would he do it?

I think you misunderstood GRK, I don't think he was calling Jesus a liar...

ok, so would you say he is a lunatic?

No. Please see the disagree vote, and read the claim you are commenting on.

I'm calling him neither a liar nor a lunatic.

Oops, my bad, I hadn't actually gotten around to disagreeing with this.

Also, why are you so obsessed with calling Jesus a liar?

well try this out.
http://www.aboundingjoy.com/lewis-fs.html
jesus had to be one of the above.
i used to be athiest however once i started reading into this stuff it really starts to come together.
I also suggest Pascal's Wager although it doesn't prove the christian God, it gives good reason to believe in a greater being.

No. Lewis is

1. A shitty novelist

2. A worse theologian.

Secondly, Pascal's Wager is obviously flawed. If you ask really nicely, I'll explain to you how Pascal's wager proves that the existence of a higher power is entirely irrelevant to human beings, in direct opposition to Pascal's assertion.

please do tell i would love to know

but then you have to say jesus was a liar or a lunatic then or maybe even the lord

Against my better judgment, I went ahead and read the Lewis quote. It was thankfully short.

My rebuttal. Bullshit. I disagree with the premise that Jesus was a bad moral teacher if he wasn't god. C.S. Lewis is a jackass.

Note that my assertions are as based in evidence, and include as much support for my argument as Lewis provides in his.

Why isn't it possible that Jesus was simply mistaken? People make mistakes. And there were countless other people in history who thought they knew the truth about god(s). And many other people who thought they were divine in some respect and were or would be a god. Some of them may have been lunatics, but some were probably simply wrong.

Pascal's wager suggests that either a god that treats us kindly for worshiping him either exists, or doesn't. There is no reason for making the scope that small. While discussing things I have no evidence for, it is equally reasonable to posit a god who will punish us for worshiping him.

There are an infinite amount of possible imaginary friends who will reward or punish belief or disbelief in different way. There are an equal number (infinite) of imaginary friends who will punish you for believing as will reward you. To put a finer point on it, for each god who will punish you for believing in a specific way, there is a god who will punish you in the same way for believing in a different way.
Therefore, there is no possible way to game the system, as every possible reward or punishment is counterbalanced.

Also, applying game theory is classy in a way I fear to put a finger on.

"but then you have to say jesus was a liar or a lunatic then or maybe even the lord "

No, I really don't. I can say that Jesus was this guy, who did a lot of good things, who told the truth as best he could, and whose words were corrupted throughout the ages, who was most certainly not a god.

Rachel i would say that is possible. But if i were to risk my life i would make sure i know what i am doing. And GRK i actually read Mere Christianity because i was tryin to disprove christianity. There is a lot more evidence given for that thought but i didnt want to bore you. jesus would have