Brainwashing

[Odds]

Ah, good old gut feeling. Faith is a cover all when you have no good reason to believe something.

By word of mouth initially. There are no contemporaneous records of Jesus. Worshipping a specific god (there are thousands) is just the luck of the draw, depending on where you were born.

God - "Worship me and I will save you".
Me - "Save me from what?"
God - "From all the bad things I'm going to do to you if you don't worship me".

The earliest Gospel accounts were written within a century of his execution and Paul's Epistles about 20-30 years after the event, so within living memory for some people and within a couple of generations at most, so it's not beyond credibility that accurate accounts could've been passed along.
The rest of your post regards Old Testament teaching so isn't really relevant...

...but it did remind me of Ashoka, the Buddhist ruler who initiated 'The Law of Piety' and "sent large numbers of missionaries to places as far afield as Greece and China, among all his neighbours as far as six hundred leagues, where the king of the Greeks named Antiochos dwells, and to the north of that Antiochos (where dwell) the four kings named severally Ptolemy, Antigonos, Megas, and Alexander (likewise) in the south, the Cholos and Pandyos as far as the Tamraparni river - and here, too, in the King's dominions - among the Greeks, Kambojas, the Nabhapantis of Nabhaka; among the Bojas, Pitinikas; Andhras and Pulindas - everywhere they follow the instruction of His Sacred Majety in the Law of Piety. Even where the envoys of His Sacred Majesty do not penetrate, these people, too, hearing His Sacred Majesty's ordinance based upon the Law of Piety and his instruction in that Law, practise, and will practise the Law.

@IRC.org

[The] "Presence of Buddhism in Palestine and Middle East is also mentioned in a number of Web sites under a number of topics but evidence is insufficient to identify any particular region. But a Web site under Dead Sea Scrolls mention of King Asoka of India sending Buddhist monks to Qumran region in Palestine."

BuddhistChannel.tv

The fabled tale of The Three Wise Men has always been taken to mean their origin was Persia but there's similarities between New Testament Christianity and Buddhism to ask whether it's possible travelling monks spread word of Ashoka's Piety Law and planted a seed that grew into a new religion. There's very little evidence so it becomes a matter of faith, i suppose. It's certainly possible.

I think Bertrand Russell pointed out the Sermon on the Mount was taken from a much older text, written by a Pharisee priest, 'The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs' and texts from the Maccabees are also in the mix, and explain so much about the origins of Christianity that became absorbed - or omitted - from the official Bible text, set down by the Septuagint.

 

[denso13]

The earliest Gospel accounts were written within a century of his execution and Paul's Epistles about 20-30 years after the event, so within living memory for some people and within a couple of generations at most, so it's not beyond credibility that accurate accounts could've been passed along.

You don't think an all powerful God could have done something which could have left no doubt rather than "it's not beyond credibility"?

The rest of your post regards Old Testament teaching so isn't really relevant...

Half the bible isn't relevant? Did Jesus put the story right? Course he didn't.

 

[carmanmemoranda]

Written within a century, means 3 or r generations


An awful lot would be hearsay by then, no real evidence at all.


Like fairy stories

And that assumes there is SOME evidence

 

[Odds]

Written within a century, means 3 or r generations later ?







































An awful lt would be hearsay by then, no real evidence at all.


Like fairy stories

And that assumes there is SOME evidence

At the end of WWII relatives of Jews taken to concentration camps learned of their fate from "The Song of Names" a mournful Jewish prayer, a days-long recitation of names of Holocaust victims set to music.
It's not beyond the ability for a teacher to learn a story and repeat that story in oral tradition.
Irish druids were expected to learn huge amounts of lore and recite them at a moments notice.

Because you cannot do this, do not assume others cannot.

 

[denso13]

It's not beyond the ability for a teacher to learn a story and repeat that story in oral tradition.

You can actually sit down with people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. No hearsay, but first hand accounts. They tend not to be believed.

 

[Odds]

You can actually sit down with people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. No hearsay, but first hand accounts. They tend not to be believed.

There are rare examples of someone having the ability to read two pages of a book at the same time. Do you believe that?

 

[carmanmemoranda]

None of which is evidence of any sort

 

[denso13]

Do you believe that?

Never looked in to it, I presume it is easily falsifiable.

 

[ReganAndCarter]

Maybe the schoolboy should have asked which chromosomes these 'other' genders have.

 

[Odds]

Never looked in to it, I presume it is easily falsifiable.

you should read more widely. Empiricism isn't the only fruit.

 

[denso13]

Empiricism isn't the only fruit.

Of course it isn't. That doesn't make fairy tails true though.

 

[Odds]

Of course it isn't. That doesn't make fairy tails true though.

It doesn't?

 

[denso13]

It doesn't?

Does it?

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Communism means state control of every part of a person's life; no freedom; no privacy; no joy; no family; no religion; no colour; lies; propaganda; restrictions of travel; ugly, grey, shoddy architecture and infrastructure; cold - no heating; shortages of food and everything else and poor quality of items that aren't on shortage. Everyone is equal though - equally poor that is, apart from the elites. Welcome to modern Britain!

(That clever enough?)

Thank you for managing to summarise the reality of communism. I suppose it's technically authoritarianism, but the two are so intertwined they're inseperable.

Captitalism uses wealth as its motivator - get out of bed and work, you'll get more money and can buy more stuff. Lie in bed all day and you'll starve - carrot and stick, it's tough but it works and is largely self-regulating. Not entirely, but it generally incentivises people to work so people produce stuff for themselves and each other, entirely out of self-interest, but the end result is that most people get wealthier, mainly as a result of all that work being done.

Communism pretty much removes the motivation of wealth (or poverty). If everyone's going to be equally rich (or poor) then there has to be a reason to bother getting out of bed and working. Usually the motivator ends up being fear, ultimately of violence from the state.

I'm pretty sure there's never been a successful communist country, it's failed as a marketing project so almost nobody would vote for it. But it hasn't gone away, it's been rebranded and hides behind and infests lots of other (worthy) causes, such as equality or environmentalism. Lots of eco protestors are just commies that have hijacked what was a good cause. They are Watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside. Here's a ridiculous example...

Access Restricted

The 19-year-old Swedish activist has announced that as well as tackling her usual area of climate action and awareness-spreading, she has now thrown her weight behind defeating the West’s “oppressive” capitalist system.

There you go, she obviously didn't get the memo about keeping these aims secret, but that is often the reality.

Similar applies to the example at the start of this thread - what starts as understandable concern for a minority with genuine gender issues ends up with kids being indoctrinated and those who don't express outright agreement being persecuted. Authoritarianism, communism, whatever, we need to nip this sort of state thought-control in the bud before we all end up chanting our mighty rulers' praises.

 

[Odds]

Does it?

It depends.
You're taking a literal approach to texts that are centuries old and require some lateral thinking and a broad understanding.
A brief example would be 'The Poetic Edda' which had been construed as nothing more than fables and fairy tales for hundreds of years until archaeologists began to dig up fragments of the culture and provide context for a reappraisal of the text.

This thread appears to have split between religion and state; an interesting development in regard to the OP 'Brainwashing'; no?