this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024

88 points (91.5% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35913 readers

1205 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

ja2@lemmy.world

_MoveSwiftly@lemmy.world

Rooki@lemmy.world

Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world

automodbeta@lemmy.world

L3s@lemmy.world

What's the term for someone that likes Jesus of Nazareth, but doesn't identify with church, religious dogma, or whatever? (lemmy.autism.place)

submitted 1 month ago by BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

96 comments fedilink hide all child comments

They think, "Jesus was cool. I like him, and I'm gonna try to be like him." Kind of like their guiding light is what would Jesus do? But there isn't a focus on identification, recruiting others, judging others based on their religion, fear of God, fear of punishment for sinning, respect for clergy as an authority, rituals, worship, etc. Basically, just the example of Jesus' life.

inb4: Christian lol!! got em!

(page 2) 46 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Good question, but I guess it also goes down to what you think Jesus was. Do you think he was God Incarnate or had a divine nature? Do you think he was a prophet of God, but himself simply human? Or just a cool guy, but nothing divine? In the first case, you are a Christian, even if you don't identify with any of the well known versions of Christianity. After all, many different conceptions of Christianity have existed.

In the third case, I don't think there is or should be a term for it. After all, is there a word for someone who thinks Marcus Antoninus was a cool guy? If that's not something that constitutes an important part of who you are and how you think, why should you be called anything in regards to it? Maybe depending on just how much you like him, we might call you a Jesus fan. Jesus fanboy or fangirl at worst. But there needsn't be a specific word.

Now, the middle case, where you recognize Jesus as a prophet is an interesting one, because several religions would qualify, including Manichaeism, Islam and Druzism; and as far as I know there isn't a term that englobes them all without also including Judaism... If I were to invent a term for that, I might go with "jesuic" or "yeshuaic", by analogy with the word "abrahamic" that englobes those who recognize Abraham as a prophet.

[–] BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place 2 points 1 month ago

Thanks! This gave me a lot to think about

[–] BonerMan@ani.social 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Atheist?

[–] BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place 2 points 1 month ago (4 children)

To me, that seems to exclude the Jesus part tho.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Adherence to a moral standard is secular, even if the source is a mythological text that is the foundation of a religion.

Keep in mind that the religious figure of Jesus predates Christianity.

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What part does it exclude?

[–] BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

it doesn't mention Jesus

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Maybe I'm losing the context, when are you using this term? If you wanted a simple term to get the idea across you could just say you're a "Christian atheist", no? Most people probably don't care tbh, so it's unclear when you need to be making these distinctions. I only say this because "atheism" doesn't exclude Christ's secular / moral teachings, and the concern with Christ not being mentioned in a term like atheism makes me wonder why that's relevant.

[–] BonerMan@ani.social -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The guy was a real scientifically proven to have existed person. Being interested in him and not religion is having a interest in history therefore being atheist.

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

We have no direct evidence of Christ's existence, there is no "scientific proof" of Christ's existence as a person. Instead what we have is historical evidence, i.e. people wrote about him, so he probably existed. It's the best evidence we have that Christ lived, and it's generally good enough in the discipline of history - but it's not the same standard of evidence as used in science.

[–] Rolando@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You're right, but just to rephrase:

The natural sciences aren't in the business of saying whether or not a given person existed.
If you think of history as a social science, then there may be "scientific" methodologies that determine whether or not a given person existed, but that's not what's generally though of as "scientifically proven"

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago

Right, I'm not trying to indirectly make a point about Christ not being likely to have existed or anything, just making a point about the language: Christ's existence hasn't been scientifically proven, it's just that historians agree that it's a reasonable guess based on the texts that were left behind and mentioned him.

Archaeologists might use scientific methodologies, e.g. carbon dating, to estimate how old a text is, for example, but I wouldn't consider this scientific proof that someone existed.

[–] BonerMan@ani.social 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Bro, he was Jesus from Nazareth not "Christ" and yes we do have documents and texts from that time naming him, these documents predate the Bible. Its not clear where his body actually is, however there is scientifically enough evidence of his existence that it can be called a fact, even the resurrection can be scientifically explained with sedatives that did exist naturally around the time and where used together with Vinegar, wich is named in the Bible as a pretty significant element of the crucifixion.

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't see the point in policing whether he is referred to as Christ or Jesus from Nazareth - is there some meaningful distinction here?

Also documents are not scientific evidence. The documents are enough evidence to consider it a historical fact, but that's, again, not the same thing as a scientific fact, and it is not backed with any material or physical evidence. Not that we expect or demand such evidence, I'm only pointing this out because you claimed there is scientific proof where there is none.

Regardless, I would be curious to get your receipts on those documents referencing Christ that predate the gospels, I hadn't heard of that before!

Speculation about the resurrection being faked with sedatives is irrelevant to this discussion, but since you brought it up, why not entertain more likely alternatives: towards the end of the book of John, Mary saw the resurrected Christ in the tomb and was the first to see him, yet she did not recognize him:

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

If he took sedatives, why did he look like a different person such that she thought he was the gardener? Why not think the resurrected person was just falsely claiming to be Christ, since he didn't look like him anyway? Why resort to more elaborate explanations when we have more simple ones at hand?

There is also the issue about how Christ supposedly survived being eviscerated and tortured before being hung on the cross, even if he did have access to sedatives. It's just not likely he survived that, and the sedatives don't explain that away.

[–] BonerMan@ani.social 0 points 1 month ago

The distinction is that in all documents besides the Bible he is named Jesus from Nazareth and not "Christ" wich does make a big difference im this discussion.

The remaining comment of yours reads a bit like a conspiracy theory, historical documents are indeed scientific evidence, when checked against fraud and forgery, all together are proof. You make it sound like you think the someone made up a person and forged documents that are scientifically proven older than Christianity. There is physical evidence as well, but after all that time its pretty vague from my knowledge.

I by all means am absolutely not religious, but its a fact that the person Jesus from Nazareth did exist, and that his written down life is very consistent and plausible, can be checked against other sources from different parties of interest.

Why his "resurrection" is of interest, is because the the crypt was empty and doesn't necessarily have to have been staged on purpose. Its less likely that a looker like did take part in that thing.

Torture back then is a loose term, it was most likely a whip and punching, most other methods where not necessarily used. And even though infections are a bad thing, especially during that time, most people actually survived, there are some sources that describe the torturing of criminals for confessions, it was likely pretty sanitary compared to the middle ages, especially because they actually did disinfect the wounds with... Vinegar and Herbs, wich is also the stuf he was given hanging on the cross, we know for a fact that there are herbs growing in that area that are natural sedatives and some are very strong.

The description of looks may or may not be accurate, especially because nobody expects a dead person to just appear in front of someone. Furthermore, days of hanging on the cross and spending time in a cave will change the appearance of a person, so. That is actually a pice of evidence with lower credibility and can be neglected.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] MissJinx@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

So you have your faith but don't subscribe to crazy rules writen by men that have nothing to do with the faith?!

I would call you "Intelligent"

[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Follower? Fan? Enjoyer? lol

[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago

Disciple would fit

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

In terms of religion, atheist. Adherence to a moral standard is secular and does not require a supreme being.

[–] dudenas@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 month ago

Such term would be useful. Christianity does not seem to follow this leftwing liberal immigrant.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Christ-like, I'm certain its a secular reference to exemplars of Christ-like behaviors and humanistic interests

[–] BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place 2 points 1 month ago

I like this one too! Thank you

[–] the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Usually when I hear people described as "Christ-like," it's used to demote how much power and influence that person has over others - for example, "Donald Trump is a Christ-like figure among the alt-right." Someone going around and calling themselves that would come across as strange at best.

[–] stsquad@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago

Church of England? They are pretty vanilla and low key in my experience.

load more comments