Christianity and the End Times

The Unitarian call to prayer that we used ended with:

quote:

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We do this knowing that prayer does not change things, but prayer changes us and we are the agents of change.

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Similarly, the proper purpose of an invocation to start a meeting would be to remind everybody present of what they are there for in order for everybody to put themselves in the proper frame of mind. How do you know that? Wasn't that written by Man? Wasn't that Man putting words in his god's mouth?Everything that we know about any god is the stories Man has told and written about that god.

As others have said, it may have psychological effects, much like waving a chicken over your head. But if you expect it to provide you with your daily bread, you're better off going to work instead. That's the expectation of the shamans who wrote the commandments. Of course, one of the major aspects of loving "God" with your whole being is keeping the shamans provided with roast ox.

Shamans wrote the commandments? This is news. Were Moses and Aaron Shamans?Of course one mans Roast Ox is another mans spare change. Edited by Phat, : added quip

Yes. I don't promise anybody communion with God in exchange for spare change.

Your spare change is communion. You don't even need to bring God up.One side discussion is whether Moses used God to maintain power or whether he really thought the people needed the imagery.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

It's human-to-human communion. I don't have to bring up leprechauns either.

So was Jesus. Jesus did bring up His Father a lot. I wonder if he would do that today?

Then so was Long John Silver. Today He could be an atheist without being lynched.

Everything you're made of, and I do mean everything, came to being about 13.7 billion years ago when the universe was created. Doesn't make much difference if it was cooked into a different configuration then globbed into a sun or a planet or a people. It's all the same stuff.Remember, we're talking about your god using some majik words to supposedly create the universe except the universe was already around for 13.7 blyrs before any word, a human construct, came into being so your god was late on the scene.Somewhere around 250,000 years ago some young pretty pre-proto-human girl was just sitting on a stone near the fire when a handsome pre-proto-human boy walked up and handed her a good hunk of fresh liver he received from the hunters. She smiled through her browning teeth and hairy lips lighting up her eyes below her protruding hairy uni-brow and said thank you.Well, actually she said something like "grrug-ugh" but he understood and smiled back beneath his own protruding hairy uni-brow. So they sat there side by side eating hunks of liver with blood and bile dripping down their fingers and arms making little grunting noises at each other. Ah, young love.Anyway that was the first word to exist in the universe. Tens of thousands of years later when your god finally was thunk into existence I guess he tried to speak the universe into creation right dab in the middle of an already existing universe.Like I said ... way too late. Really bad form for an omniscient being, too, but he was new at this and hadn't been properly prepared by his makers.So, if your story is that your god tried to speak the universe into existance by saying words then it was a frightful cockup having intruded on an already existing creation ... and billions of years after that original one was already in place. Actually the verdict was rendered some many millennia ago and all appeals have been exhausted.Your god was spoken into existence but not until humans had already developed words and grammar and syntax and about a thousand other gods prior.

In our all-inclusive world, I see that as a possibility. But His message would not change.

Not exactly. We believe that God came before dirt. God existed before the singularity before the Big Bang. But of course, I can't prove it objectively.
I just want to straighten you out on what "my God" means. Logically you can say that "star stuff" was around before any humans wrote a book or dreamed up some God that uttered the initial Word. We won't agree on this context.

So, would you still worship an atheist Jesus? While still rejecting His message?

No. What could such a Jesus do for anybody? He would be like many humans....a legend in his own mind. He would by definition be unconnected from anything greater than Himself. He would preach that evidence was the method for determining the truth. His vocabulary would contain no words like "Faith" or "Belief". And even if He did speak of belief, We still couldn't "see" His Father. No character like that was written in the message.

So that's the bottom line? Jesus is some celestial butler? But we're not unconnected from anything greater than ourselves. We're connected to each other. The group is greater than the individual. That's the point of being a social species. That's the point of helping each other. Even Jesus understood that. He did. Read the story of doubting Thomas again (John 20:19-29). So much the better.

Are you suggesting that IF Jesus existed and IF
He was to exist today, humanity would be better off were He an atheist?That's quite a rabbit trail you have there.