Logic reason and evidence will lead you to the truth. Emotions based on primitive superstitions will not.
Hmm. As a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, my guess would be that all of the potential witnesses who could have attested to his human frailty and mortality would have been conveniently dead by then. Also, I imagine that the timing was convenient for the author(s), whatever the purpose may have been at that time.
Exactly. Like Noah, Moses, Adam & Eve, the Jesus story was just borrowed from previous religions (with names changed). However, my arguement isn't for or against the existence of a supreme being, it's against those that actually believe the bible to be the "divinely inspired word" of God. (In which it can't possibly be).
Here, Jefferson is advocating the separation of truth from illusion - "fables". He advocates reason and freedom of thought directed toward the restoration of the truth about me. Jefferson shows here that underneath the fables, he believes there is something "genuine" about what I taught as it was originally presented. It would not be reasonable, then, to think that reason and freedom of thought will lead you away from what is genuine about my teachings. Rather, they will lead you toward. Reason will lead you toward my teachings because they do indeed address error at its source, so that it can be undone. My teachings reside in a part of your mind that knows the truth. Reason takes you to where you can recognize this. Jesus
This is an ureasonable "B group" type "guess" not based on Jeffersonian principles. Piling more fables on top of fables is not reasonable. Jesus
If you remove the "artificial scaffolding" hiding the structure, you will see the structure clearly. Here are a few planks of scaffolding, artfully erected, worthy of doing away with: !. That God made man. 2 That God made the earth. 3. That God makes threats and punishes. 4. That you need to sacrifice to appease such God. 5. That the earth made man. 6. That things just happen to you. These are errors in thought - myths - that make you what you seem to be...men. For man is an error of thought. When the thought is corrected, he is no longer "man" but equal to "God". Jesus
Stretching? All you do is find convenient quotes, that require little thought, and then whine when someone else does the same? How does constantly quoting others help anything? For every quote, there are opposites on the other side. How does finding people who agree with you prove anything? Think on your own, for a change.
The first lesson that truth would teach is: "The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. Your faith in nothing deceives you. You will love the truth because you can understand it." This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end, the only one. Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. Nothing is so alien to such minds as the simple truth, and nothing are they less inclined to listen to. There is no substitute for truth. The world you have faith in is an attempt to substitute...to make real what is not true. It deceives you because that is what you made it for. To be a happy learner, you must be happy to unlearn what you have taught yourself about the world. Accepting truth as true, the lessons will come quickly and gladly. The universe of learning will open up to you in all its gracious simplicity. With truth before you, you will not look back. You learned to make the world. How else could something so unlike yourself be made? Having made it to deceive yourself, you have succeeded to the extent that you are now unable to see through the deception without a Teacher. That Teacher has always been available, even as you have steadfastly learned to suffer. There is no need to learn through pain. Gentle lessons are acquired joyously, and are remembered gladly. What gives you happiness you want to learn, and not forget. Your question is whether the means by which the truth is learned will give you joy. If you believed it would, the learning of it would be no problem. The world you see is the result of a selection process. This is what perception is for. It literally picks out as the mind directs. It is your shopping basket full of things you want to taste. These selections are made as you listen to the voice of the ego. Perception is a choice and not a fact. But on this choice depends far more than you may realize as yet. For on the voice you choose to hear, and on the sights you choose to see, depends entirely your whole belief in what you are. Perception witnesses to this belief, and never to reality. Reality need no cooperation from you to be itself. But your awareness of it needs you help, because it is your choice. Listen to what the ego says, and see what it directs you to see, and it is sure that you will see yourself as tiny, vulnerable and afraid. You will believe you are helpless prey to forces beyond your control, and far more powerful than you are. And you will think the world you made directs your destiny. This will be your faith. But never believe because it is your faith it makes reality. Faith and perception and belief can be misplaced, and serve the great deciever's needs as well as truth. But reason has no place at all in madness. Faith and belief are strong in madness, guiding perception toward what the mind has valued. But reason enters not at all in this. For perception would fall away at once if reason were applied. There is no reason in insanity, for it depends entirely on reason's absence. The ego never uses it, because it does not realize it exists. The partially insane have access to it, and only they have need of it. Knowledge does not depend on it, and madness keeps it out. Reason is beyond the ego's range of means. It serves instead to open up the doors to knowledge that you closed in order to make this insane world. The part of the mind where reason lies was dedicated, by your will in union with your Father's, to the undoing of insanity. Faith and belief, upheld by reason, cannot fail to lead to changed perception. And in this change is room made way for vision. Madness and reason see the same things, but it is certain that they look upon them differently. Madness is an attack upon reason that drives it out of the mind, and takes its place. Reason does not attack, but takes the place of madness quietly, replacing madness if it be the choice of the insane to listen to it. But the insane do not know their own will, for they believe they see the body, and let their madness tell them it is real. Reason would be incapable of this. And if you would defend the body against your reason, you will not understand the body or yourself. Truth has rushed to meet you since you called on it. If you knew Who walks beside you on the way you have chosen, fear would be impossible. You do not know because the journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it. You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. There is no compromise between the two. If one is real, the other must be false, for what is real denies its opposite. There is no choice in vision but this one. What you decide in this determines all you see and think is real and hold as true. On this one choice does all your world depend, for here you have established what you are, as flesh or spirit, in your own belief. If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. Choose spirit and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes and bless your sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and comfort and to bless. continued...
...continued from above... If you choose to see the body, you behold a world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all. This one appears and disappears in death, that one is doomed to suffering and loss. And no one is exactly the same as he was a minute ago, nor will he be the same a minute later. Who can have trust where so much change is seen? Who is worthy if he is but dust? Salvation is the undoing of all this. Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not. It merely asks that this should be your choice. You do not need help to see the body. But you do not understand how to see a world apart from it. It is your world salvation will undo, and let you see another world your eyes could never find. Be not concerned how this could ever be. You have yet to realize how the world you see has arisen to meet your sight. If you did, it would be gone. The means are given you by which to see the world that will replace the one you made. Your will be done! On Heaven as on earth this is forever true. It matters not where you believe you are, nor what you think the truth about yourself must really be. It makes no difference what you look upon, nor what you choose to feel or think or wish. For God Himself has said, "Your will be done". And it is done to you accordingly. One vision, clearly seen, that does not fit the picture as it was perceived before will change the world for eyes that learn to see, because the concept of the self has changed. Those who see bodies are choosing to see the Son of God not as he is, but as they prefer. But this concept of yourself will never stand against the truth of what you are. It is a concept, and concepts are not difficult to change. Concepts are needed while perception lasts, and changing concepts is salvations task. For it must deal in contrasts, not in truth, which has no opposite and cannot change. By focusing on the good in a brother, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the good. And this will be your concept of yourself, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. You live in that world just as much as you live in this one. For both are concepts of yourself, which can be interchanged but never jointly held. The contrast is far greater than you think, and you will love this concept of yourself because it was not made for you alone. The concept of yourself that now you hold would guarantee your function here remain forever unaccomplished and undone. So it dooms you to depression and futility. Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you can see yourself another way. Would you not rather look upon yourself as needed for salvation of the world, instead of as salvation's enemy? The concept of the self stands like a shield, a silent barricade before the truth, and hides it from your eyes. All things you see are images, because you look on them as through a barrier that dims your sight and warps your vision, so that you behold nothing with clarity. Whatever form temptation seems to take, it always reflects a wish to be a self you are not. And from that wish a concept arises, teaching that you are the thing you wish to be. It will remain your concept of yourself until the wish that fathered it no longer is held dear. But while you cherish it, you will behold your brother in the likeness of the self whose image has the wish made of you. For seeing represents a wish, because it has no power to create. Images are not creations, so they are not permanent. Every means is given you to change all concepts born of fear. Temptation is a wish to stay in hell and misery. What else can bodies offer? They give you failed dreams, treachery, pain, and despair, with no hope except to die and end the dream of fear. This is temptation. The images you make cannot prevail against what God Himself would have you be. Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again. The saviors of the world, who see like Christ, are merely those who choose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen apart from Him. These are those who are in the habit of responding to temptation with affirmations such as: " I am as God created me. His Son can suffer nothing. And I am His Son. " This invites Christ's strength to prevail, replacing all your weakness with the strength that comes from God and that can never fail. Such statements are able to raise the dead, and make miracles as natural as breathing. For in that choice are false distinctions gone, illusory alternative laid by and nothing left to interfere with truth. Jesus