Jesus For the Left, Jesus For the Right - By Bob Johnson

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Mr. Johnson has been critiqued before in our blog. He is a self-proclaimed deist, a philosophy which apparently supplies him with the solution to all the religious and social problems. Why this might be so, however, is never explained.

He is one of those guys who simply writes something down and that makes it fact. He does this over and over in the below article. He proclaims things as mythical, false, or evil without so much as an explanation. He doesn't like Christianity at all, and makes sure you know that. 

Mr. Johnson is not a thoughtful writer. He simply has a vague idea about this or that and writes about them.

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A recent poll conducted by the University of Maryland asked if the United States should be officially declared a Christian nation. 78% of Republicans who are evangelical or "born-again" Christians are in favor of declaring America is a Christian nation. 52% of Democrats who are evangelical or "born-again" Christians are also in favor of officially having the United States declared a Christian nation.

Many people in the political/religious left believe that if the US was actually declared a Christian nation, the US would then have to start being more humane and caring. This belief is based on their false, but widespread and popular, impression of Jesus being a compassionate and caring man/rabbi/deity. It conveniently ignores the cruelty promoted by Jesus, such as believe or burn in hell for eternity, and only focuses on the "nice" things the anonymous authors of the Christian gospels wrote about Jesus. (Some truly odd statements. Why is it relevant if the US were declared a Christian nation? Why does the author think it's cruelty for Jesus to identify the negative fate of evil-doers? Why is it important that some parts of the Bible do not identify its writers?)

This religious left article states:

"If 'America' truly became Christian, we'd have to address the issue of hunger on the one hand and extreme wealth on the other. We'd have to deal with the fact (as Richard Wolff argues in the video above) that the tradition in question favors socialism rather than capitalism. We'd be forced to recognize the truth of liberation theology."

The author of the article goes on to define "liberation theology" as, "reflection on the following of Christ from the viewpoint of the world's poor and oppressed." He also states that Jesus belonged to the world's poor and oppressed.

Believing that Jesus actually existed as a man can only be done if you put a lot of credence and unearned trust in the anonymous authors of the Christian gospels. (Now the author moves on to the next irrelevancy. In context of the above quote, why should anyone be concerned if Jesus actually existed?)

There are no contemporaries of Jesus who ever wrote anything about him (The author may just as well asked why there are no photographs of Jesus. 

This atheist author does an excellent job debunking this claim.)

(Josephus, a Jewish leader in the Jewish-Roman Wars who surrendered to the Romans and cooperated with them, mentions Jesus twice in his Antiquities of the Jews, but he was not a contemporary of Jesus, having been born in 37 CE and died in 100 CE. He also wrote in the same work that Abraham taught science to the ancient Egyptians who then taught it to the ancient Greeks!). The Romans left no written account of Jesus or the alleged trial and crucifixion of Jesus, nor did they leave a record of the incredible claim in Matthew 27:50-53 which, if true, would definitely have been recorded, that of dead people in cemeteries around Jerusalem coming back to life when Jesus died on a Friday afternoon, hanging out at their graves until the following Sunday morning when Jesus also came back to life at which time the Bible zombies all went into Jerusalem and "appeared unto many." (This is an Argument From Silence.)

(It's also interesting to note that according to the Talmud, the rabbis claim the Jews tried and executed Jesus, not the Romans. The Talmud claims Jesus was killed by stoning and then his body was hung on a tree until sundown. An interesting, informative and well documented book on this is Jesus in the Talmud by Peter Schafer.) (Why are these counter-claims relevant? It appears the author really wanted to write a different article about how stupid Christianity is. He seems to have forgotten what this article was to be about.)

Liberation theology is a form of Christian theology. Christian theology is based on man-made irrational myths. Thomas Paine did a great job of shinning the light of our gift from God of innate reason on Christian theology. In The Age of Reason he wrote:

"The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing."

The religious left is correct in asserting that the early Christians practiced a form of communism. Acts 4:34 - 5:11 tells the story of the early Christians selling their homes and real estate and giving the money to Peter and the apostles which was then allegedly divided among the Christians who needed it. (This is not "a form of communism." The voluntary giving of people has nothing to do with communism.)

 As the story goes, one Christian couple sold their home but did not give all of the proceeds to Peter and the apostles. This, allegedly, angered God and, like the NKVD/KGB/Communist China secret police, God killed the dissidents. (The preposterous analogy is truly amusing for its infantile posturing.)

This is a part of the Christian Bible the religious right ignores. (A quick survey of the internet reveled hundreds of sermons preached on this passage. Hardly ignored...)

The religious left likes to focus on Bible content like the above promotion of Communism, quotes such as "blessed are the peacemakers" (which reminds me of Monty Python's outstanding film Life of Brian and the part where a man standing at the back of the crowd listening to Jesus' sermon on the mount/beatitudes thought Jesus said "blessed are the cheesemakers" and that he didn't mean it should be taken literally as it includes all manufacturers of dairy products) and "as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise". (Another completely irrelevant tangent and an odd one at that. The reader is probably beginning to see why the author is not a thoughtful writer.)

However, there are other quotes the anonymous authors of the Christian gospels attributed to Jesus, which the religious left likes to ignore.

Shortly after the beatitudes, Jesus is making it clear he is not doing away with the ungodly and cruel Hebrew Bible and its brutal commands (this would be because, IF Jesus really did exist as a mere man, he was a religious/superstitious Jew who falsely believed the Hebrew Bible is the Word of God). (He just keeps going on and on, doesn't he? What in the world might the relevance of all these disparaging remarks be?)

Matthew 5:17-19 has Jesus teaching:

"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

The above quote shows Jesus was delusional and believed not only that the Hebrew Bible was the Word of God, but that he was the Jewish messiah who was fulfilling Jewish prophecy which would usher in a new heaven and earth. (Yet another gratuitous pot-shot. Clearly the author is irrational and unable to think clearly when it comes to Jesus.)

Also, it's important to keep in mind what some of these Hebrew Bible laws commanded, such as the killing of gay men (Leviticus 20:13), the killing of wizards (Leviticus 20:27), the killing of witches (Exodus 22:18), the killing of Jews who work on the Jewish sabbath (Exodus 35:2), allowing Jews to own Gentiles and their children as slaves "for ever," (Leviticus 25:44-46), ad nauseum. (Ad nauseum indeed. Will the author ever get past his Christian bashing and address the actual topic of his screed?)

Matthew 25:14-30 has Jesus telling a parable that promotes the idea of God as being cruel, greedy and violent, just as the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament portrays God, and ends with the statement:

"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

It is not at all surprising that both the religious left and the religious right are able to use the Christian Bible to promote their opposing agendas. (Yeah, yeah. Get to the point, if there is one.)

This has been going on for years. A major example of it was seen in the US Civil War. In the US Civil War the North used the Bible to attack slavery while the South used the same Bible to promote slavery. (Sigh. Will this ever end?)

These facts show the truth to this statement from Thomas Paine that is found in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition: "...the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one chooses to make it." (How do we know Paine wrote this? How do we know Paine ever existed? Do we have some physical evidence?)

It's time to move beyond the delusion that we need to hold on to the ancient "revealed" religions/superstitions in the 21st century. (Ahhh. So this is his real point, to impugn any form of Christianity.)

Thomas Paine was correct when, in The Age of Reason, he called for a revolution in religion based on our innate God-given reason and Deism. (Whoa. This came out of left field. Right at the end, a single statement about the supposed superiority of deism. That is, his religion, which still involves a God who is as potentially "mythical" as Jesus, which contains doctrines, tenets, commands, and beliefs derived from, well, what... This is the basis for a supposed revolution that will result in... well, what?

Based on the author's presentation, we would suggest that reason has not resulted from his deism.)