Status Updates From Jesus Potter Harry Christ: ...

p 475 It is meaningless to argue that there is evidence for Jesus Christ; instead it can only be claimed that the historical Jesus is a meaningful belief, which the text hastens to establish, but which is ultimately dependent on the creative constructive power of human faith. The belief in the historical Jesus constitutes a subjective truth which is self-supporting and completely irrespective of historical evidence.

I like the analogy of Pascal's wager to that of Neo of Matrix deciding to take the red pill out of faith: Deciding to believe without supporting evidence.

p 470 Rather than evidence, it is based on the passionate belief and the experiential consequences of that belief. The true heart of the argument for Christians is this: If Jesus doesn't exist, he would be meaningful to me. Therefore he is historical. (That's why, it's called "faith", man)

p 470 Rather than evidence, it is based on the passionate belief and the experiential consequences of that belief. The true heart of the argument for Christians is this: If Jesus doesn't exist, he would be meaningful to me. Therefore he is historical. (That's why, it's called "faith", man)

p 458 Keep in mind that this is now several centuries after the fact, and the church is voting on whether and to what extent Jesus Christ was human based on theological need rather than historical evidence.

p 461 The only truth, it was decided, is that which is mysterious and impossible; what cannot be understood but only believed.

p. 430 Salvation no longer required an active, life-long pursuit of the divine but an immediate and absolute forgiveness, based on nothing more than accepting Jesus Christ as savior.

p. 423... …Reason began to be viewed as an enemy to the truth, while blind faith in scripture, and a blind eye to anyone...

… Rather than question why their faith had so many critics, they claimed that God had made the gospel sound...

p. 428 This simplicity was a powerful tool and motivator… it inspired Christians to act, rather than contemplate.

p. 423... …Reason began to be viewed as an enemy to the truth, while blind faith in scripture, and a blind eye to anyone...

… Rather than question why their faith had so many critics, they claimed that God had made the gospel sound...

p. 428 This simplicity was a powerful tool and motivator… it inspired Christians to act, rather than contemplate.

p. 423... …Reason began to be viewed as an enemy to the truth, while blind faith in scripture, and a blind eye to anyone...

… Rather than question why their faith had so many critics, they claimed that God had made the gospel sound...

p. 428 This simplicity was a powerful tool and motivator… it inspired Christians to act, rather than contemplate.

This chapter on "reuniting with the higher self" is more interesting to me than the previous on on "Draco" being the mythical and religious symbol of the dragon's head and tail, masculine and feminine, love and strife or Yin and Yang. The reuniting is more appealing as such as depicted in mythical fables such as Daphne and Apollo, Psyche and Eros, Perseus and Andromeda, etc..

Reached the point where the author cites the parallelism between Jesus with mythical characters such as Gilgamesh, Dionysus, Pythagoras, Orpheus, Asclepuis, Adonis, Osiris/ Horus, Mithras, etc. could show that their attributes or elements could have been incorporated to make up later the Christian beliefs of a historical Jesus as we know it.

Fuck... Okay. I'm at the "final conclusion" and this is incredible. I know it's taking me forever to get through it, but that's because I do better with nonfiction as audio, so when I have time chunks of time available, I'm listening to it. I love it so much!

I'm loving the reminders of how many different gods, myths, and legends both came before and influenced the Jesus myth.

Fascinating start to this book. I'm a huge Harry Potter nerd and an atheist, so reading this when I discovered it was kind of a given, but I'm also not a huge non-fiction reader, so it will be slow progress... :-)