II. Background (11/11/09 )

 


I do all this because

1. I had come to the conclusion that the Jesus story/concept (s/c) was not as foolish as it had first appeared -- that my earlier rejection of Jesus was premature and that I had best re-think my conclusion… This COULD be VERY important…
2. Not that my earlier rejection was necessarily wrong -- just that I had, indeed, missed a lot of interesting “caveats” that first time around.
3. Then, as I did my research and re-thinking, I was finding a lot of seemingly supportive evidence – yet, my honest, over-all opinion didn’t seem to be changing from “torn.” It was like I was a juggler of evidence and could keep only so many evidential “pins” (exhibits), in the air at once -- and as I added new pins, my older pins kept falling out. It seemed that in order to properly affect my honest over-all opinion, a piece of evidence had to be “excited,” and my older pieces kept losing their excitement. Since I could only keep so many pieces excited at once, adding new excited pieces didn’t change my honest opinion.
4. (The above was a little hard to explain (and probably, was not explained effectively), but the following is even harder. But then, since I’m the only one listening, it hardly matters.) It then occurred to me that poor formulation, and organization could be my excuse – I was, in effect, just piling up scraps of paper. I figured that good sound-bites would be especially “stimulating,” and good organization would allow me to properly go from one sound-bite to the next appropriate sound-bite. That was the vague idea. And, such might allow for a qualitative difference in my ability to keep pins in the air.
5. I suspect that the importance of developing and referring to good sound-bites is the extent to which GOOD sound-bites excite the right (“holistic”) hemisphere of our brains. The right hemisphere seems to be the “air” I’ve been trying to fill with pins. I suspect that our eye onto “salvation” is the right hemisphere of our brains – whether “salvation” is real or not. (More about that later.)
6. I think that we skeptics in general missed a lot that first time around, and need to re-evaluate the issue with the overlooked caveats clearly in mind. The Jesus concept/story/story (c/s) is not nearly as foolish as it first appears. And, I would like to remind – or inform -- other skeptics, perhaps teenagers especially, of the overlooked evidence, or caveats. This is certainly something I would like to eventually do with this book if I can get that far. And, as mentioned above, this issue COULD be VERY important…

7. I have come to the conclusion that the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh, the Old Testament) did “prophesie” a Messiah, and very possibly a Messiah along the lines of Jesus.
8. I have also come to the conclusion that prophecy (and the supernatural in general) may be quite real.
9. In addition, I now think that I understand what the New Testament Jesus was urging us to do – whether any of the above is true or not.
10. (I’ll have to explain this later.)
11. And the thing is, if he was indeed the prophesied Jewish Messiah, I should probably do what he was urging -- if I can – for my own good…

12. SO FAR, I do NOT believe that failing to do this thing he was asking would send me to eternal damnation – though at this point, I don’t fully reject ANYTHING that the Bible MIGHT be saying.
13. But, I do think that doing what he asked is possible (at least for a lot of people) – it is a real neurological event.
14. And does (often, at least) turn lives around for the much better.
15. And also, it does sound like the “right” thing to do, anyway – if there be “right”…

16. See, I accept that to the fully analytic mind, the Jesus story is just a complicated, and FOOLISH, Jewish myth -- with little or no basis in fact or reason.
17. Admittedly, from my perspective (perceiving myself as ”fully analytic”), it is easy to suspect that Jesus was just a very charismatic, religious fanatic -- liberally embellished by his biographers -- taking advantage of the pressing need of humanity to believe in, and worship, SOMEthing…
18. I mean, those biographers were talking MIRACLES here…

19. So anyway, I have “recently” come to the conclusion that there is much more to the Jesus story than first meets the analytic eye…
20. The Jesus story is not nearly as foolish as it first appears -- and might actually be true...
21. In fact, I think that there’s a “good chance” that it IS true… (Whatever that means exactly…)
22. I just need to look a little under the surface to get a hint of greater things.

23. So, If YOU are not ME, take a look WITH me as I lift the flap…
24. Up the rabbit hole!

 

But first, is this a bunch of Foolishness?