Reply to a comment  Reply to this comment  EnviroLefty2 writes:
We didn't need Jesus to tell us to treat one another decently.
Jesus lived in a civilized region overseen by the Roman Empire.
Humans didn't reach that level of development without making
concessions.  Jesus was an anti-Old Testament Jew. No matter how
often modern-day preachers point at alleged prophetic statements
in the Old Testament that are supposedly borne out in the New
Testament, Jesus wasn't hung up on anything but the
Commandments. He most certainly opposed the interposition of a
priest class between believers and their deity. Jesus would weep
to see the church built in his name!  It gets worse. The ascetic
lifestyle taught by Jesus would never win many converts. The
Roman Empire was an oppressive weight on the Eastern
Mediterranean. Jesus was a convenient hook for a politico-
religious movement. All he needed was a background story that
would win converts.  More than 200 scholars at the Westar
Institute determined that barely 18% of th