Atheism

Yeah, and? Have you ever looked at what Jesus commanded his followers to do?

why do you assume I haven't.

One of the last commands he gives to teach ALL. not just the nice stuff. All the stuff. Jesus taught obedience to the written law, and the commands of the prophets. (Mat 28:20, John 14:15,21)

Jesus never overturned anything from the law. he taught obedience to it, and told them to adhere to everything. If you tell a kid how to keep their room clean, and you say "you need to do these things"... like getting rid of trash, putting toys away, laundry in a hamper or pile out the way or something, make the bed, all that stuff... and they're like "but what's the most important thing"... and you're like "Getting rid of the trash"... and that's the only thing they do, you're not going to be very happy with them, are you? no. You might say something like "hey it's great that you're doing the trash, but I need you to do the other stuff too. if you don't you'll get grounded"

So when Jesus says "hey, these are the two greatest commandments"... he's not disregarding anything. he's not saying you don't have to put your laundry away, just that it's more important to get the stanky trash outta there.

And he even says this:

^17^“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ^18^ For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ^19^ Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ^20^ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

• Mat5:17-20, NRSVUE, emphasis mine.

It's very important to note that his beef with the pharisees is that they've left the written law and moved to an oral tradition. You can see this, for example, in mark 7:8-13

***^8^“You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” *** ^9^ Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! ^10^ For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ ^11^ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God), ^12^ then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, ^13^ thus nullifying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
-NSRVUE, emphasis still mine.

Some people at the time were saying "hey, this stuff is for god" and using that as a justification to not fulfill their obligations to their parents (support in old age.) Keep very front and center here, that the law Jesus is citing as this lovely little gotcha is Deuteronomy 21:18-21:

^18^ “If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, ^19^then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. ^20^ They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ ^21^ Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear and be afraid.

It's also important that we recognize that what we have a very different understanding of "neighbor" and Jesus would have. (or indeed the author of Leviticus said (where he got that from.) he would not have considered slaves, for example, to be neighbors, and that it was perfectly fine to beat them for any old reason. Even to the last inch of their lives, so long as they didn't die that day. Very loving, no?

What Jesus said, when addressing the idea of people who would be thrown into fire, was this: (Matthew 25:41-46 NASB)

It's good to know that I'm dealing with someone that thinks eternal torture is justifiable in any form.

Those are the people being eternally tormented - those who would not serve the least of these.

until you read the other stuff he said...

There’s so much more to expound on as well.

Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount:

the "blessed be's" aren't commandments. all he's saying is some vague assurance that people who are in a bad way will be taken care of. He's not directing anyone to actually take care of them (and indeed, elsewhere, he tells such to not worry since god will take care of it. mat 6:25+26, luke 12:22-24. please ignore that birds do regularly cache food, and that they do starve, and such, that's unimportant....)

Later, in Acts, Peter meets a centurion, who is the first Gentile to receive the Holy Spirit:

Blatantly irrelevant. The Apostles and early church made the distinction between christian and non-christian, rather than inclusion in an ethnic identity. they still didn't consider slaves to be people. or women, for that matter. Or else they wouldn't have said things like "slave, obey your master", and would have said things like "masters, free your slaves". Even in the letter to Philemon about Onesimus, Paul didn't say "free your salves' or even "free this slave". and indeed he made the slave carry the letter back.

The Messiah was indeed prophesied to defeat the enemies of Israel. He was also prophesied to be rejected by the people of Israel.

(Isaiah 53:2-5 NASB)

yes. yes. the suffering servant. which is a personification of the people of Israel. this is actually part of number of declarations by Deutero-Isaiah promising the restoration and liberation of the kingdom of Israel. It was written in the sixth century during the babylonian captivity which started around 586bce, with the fall of Jerusalem, and ended about 539 bce when Cyrus (persians) roflstomped the babylonians, and the second temple being rebuilt and rededicated around 516.

It has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus, and was fulfilled ~500+ years prior. If you're about to add that there was some sort of second fulfillment... you're reading things into it to justify something that simply isn't there. No one, not I, not you, not the first century jews listening to Jesus have any reason at all to believe this was about Jesus.

And lets be totally clear: even if it was somehow inexplicitly about jesus... The jews in the first century weren't in exile. The temple wasn't destroyed, it wasn't rebuilt (the second temple was destroyed around 70 ce. when the romans roflstomped them again.)

I won’t say the problem isn’t organized religion.

Christianity is an organized collection of religions.

Which would also line up with how Jesus acted toward the Pharisees and Sadducees.

you mean by being a fundamentalist going back to the organized system of laws? yeah. he told them not to be pompous assholes. so what?

Later, in the Temple:

(snip) (Mark 11:15-18 NASB)

That's from Jeremiah 7. just so we're clear... this is from before the Babylonian exile (Jeremiah goes into the exile a bit.) in the 7th century BCE. Specifically. In it god is condemning them for worshiping other gods and being assholes... and he causes the Babylonians to do the invasion thing and do the enslavement thing. Which then leads into deutero-isiah's promise to restore the nation.

It- again- has absolutely nothing at all to do with jesus, and Jesus didn't fulfill anything about what god said he would actually cause. There was no burning, and the land of jerusalem didn't become a wasteland (which it did after the Babylonians came through.)

Jesus showed up, flipped the script on organized religion, and they killed him. I do think Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron. It makes a show of faith and positions a government as an authority of God. This is not what Jesus commanded.

No he didn't? he called for going back to an older version of organized religion. And once again. what was the messiah supposed to do? Institute a global, authoritarian theocracy, in which non-israelites serve the israelites. What did Jesus say he was going to do? institute a global authoritarian theocracy in which non-believers would be thrown into eternal torment. It's only when none of that happened that people started going "oh, he meant spiritually"... and that's a load of horseshite.

The amount of excuses made for what is ultimately a bunch of lies and false prophecies is astounding. I would suggest you ignore what the anonymous authors of the gospels were saying about all the prophecies jesus fuflilled and instead go back and read the actual passages in which the messianic prophecies were given. And while you're reading them, go look up the events surrounding them and when jewish- not christian- shcolars say those prophecies were fulfilled or were about.

because the authors of mathew and luke couldn't even speak the same languages as Jesus, never mind read ancient hebrew. Hell they barely could understand the greek translations they were using. (For example, the whole virgin birth thing comes from Isaiah 7:14, in which there's no virgins mentioned. the original hebrew word translates to 'a young woman who is with child',)

(John 18:33-37 NASB)

oh. so it was all just meant to be "spiritual"? tell me, how does one defeat oppressors spiritually? did he cast Dissonant Whispers? or maybe Vicious Mockery.

(Matthew 19:21-24)

Which brings us back to what I said originally. I rather assume he had a cheesy-car-salesman-grin and a hand out. Like every charlatan pretending to be a faith healer who sees a whale come by.