[ExI] Trump

[Will Steinberg]

Regardless of whether Jesus existed, some person or group was responsible
for compiling a set of norms and mores that were *extremely* revolutionary
for the time, and, if the subject of proper exegeses, are still extremely
revolutionary for this time.

The teachings of Jesus are all about civil disobedience, nonviolent
resistance, unconditional and universal love, etc.

Paraphrased, he says stuff like:

Don't criticize someone's small flaws until you fix your huge flaws.
(Plank/mote line--basically repeated in the casting the first stone bit.)

The Torah says love your neighbor, but I say love your enemy too.

If someone who perceives themself as in a higher class than you insults
you, react in a way such that whether continuing to engage or walking away,
they are forced to make actions that imply you are of equal class.

He told his followers to be "as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as
doves"--i.e. if you have radical beliefs, act normal and blend in as much
as you can.

And he went in to the temple and turned over the tables of the money
lenders who were putting people into debt in exchange for animals to
sacrifice--sort of like a theme park where you have to buy tickets to do
anything, or company scrip.

The "New Testament" is also a very modernist piece of writing--four
parallel versions of the same story with different writing styles and
certain divergences.

Ancient spiritual literature is BRIMMING with legitimate and very
interesting moral, philosophical, and metaphysical ideas.  If you'll
remember, science emerged from natural philosophy, which emerged from
spiritual doctrines--they were the only information compilations addressing
what the sciences address today.

It's so passé to trash religion.  Obviously there are idiots who are
fundamentalists, who are too stupid to do deep reads and interpretation of
their bibles, but it's just as idiotic to forge long diatribes against
those people who aren't representative of religion at all.

The kind of stuff people like Dawkins write is as if I wrote a piece
criticizing science because of Dr. Mengele.  Dawkins is a great science
writer and a joke of a philosopher.

Sorry I guess that's off topic.  Hell is a stupid concept.  When you did
your mind is split into millions of individual thought strands that travel
tangent to their dual or resolution and are "reincarnated" memetically in
new or extant minds in search of their own karmic resolution (dialectical
materialism).
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