[aristofun]

Even if one is a hardcore atheist and thinks that Jesus was only a weird jewish rabbi, not the god, one should celebrate the birthday of the most influential and awesome man in the history of mankind.

Merely out of respect to all his legacy and positive influence that changed the world to a better place than it was before him.

[asacrowflies]

What about all the horror death and suffering done in his name ? Like a huge proportion of these Christmas culture things come from pagan Norse culture that was very forcibly christianized in a rather brutal way??? You seem to be overlooking a lot to make someone "awesome" or at least the horrors done in their name long after death.

[aristofun]

All those horrors are not unique to human nature unfortunately, nor to the religion. Same or worth things were done in the name of any deity you can think of.

It’s not something that he brought to this world.

But what he brought was powerful and radical enough to slowly and eventually overcome many of the terrible animal-like human traits. Christian societies were the first that got rid of slavery, introduced human rights, democracy etc.

Yes, it took a long time to unravel and it’s not a finished process, but it’s not something that just happened. What feel natural for us today was not natural at all back then.

All critical ethical ideas that modern western civilization is based were either invented or popularized by that guy in some unique and unprecedented way.

[throwaway-11-1]

Absolutely not true and highly ahistorical. Seriously grow up

[aristofun]

Seriously grow up and learn to prove your points with some logic or examples.

[sethammons]

Oh my. Paste your stuff into ai and have an impartial conversation. You are not grounded in reality and I believe your views are dangerous because they rewrite truths into a package that has been and will continue to be used as a cudgel against others.

I challenge you to provide one thing that jesus introduced. It turns out, EVERYTHING he taught already existed. I can paste a table of data, but ai is cleaner and faster.

And democracy is _famously_ Greek. Over half six hundred years before Jesus lived.

His historical impact comes less from novelty and more from narrative power, charismatic delivery, and, later, institutional amplification. And it is largely Paul who should be credited for amplification.

[aristofun]

You know that greek democracy had very little to do with what we called democracy in the west right?

Show me other religion that taught to love your enemies and survived to these days at the same time. Just a tiny example of why you totally miss the point by not seeing how innovative was his ethical approach for that time. And yes, one of his great achievements is that he succeeded to make those simple and already existed ideas popular. This is novelty by itself.

[pavel_lishin]

> one should celebrate the birthday of the most influential and awesome man in the history of mankind.

Perhaps, but - and take this with as many grains of salt as you like, since I'm an atheist - I've heard decent arguments that he was not born anywhere near December.

Plus, everything associated with Christmas as Americans celebrate it has virtually no bearing on the actual events of his birth and/or life, except I suppose the gift-giving.

[raw_anon_1111]

There is no argument about whether Jesus was born on Christmas. Most theologians won’t argue that he was.

[aristofun]

Jesus was a real person, it’s a historical fact, not disputed by any worthwhile historians.

If 25 december is not an accurate birthday it’s okay, im happy with moving the celebration to other day if new findings arise.

I wasn’t saying that one particular way of celebrating is right or wrong. My point was about it’s only natural to pay respect to a man who influenced your life, no matter who you are and where you are in this world today. Apparently the degree of influence varies by many factors from almost zero to maximum possible.

[asacrowflies]

The man who influenced MY life for the better are you INSANE.... I AM NATIVE AMERICAN LMAO

[aristofun]

Tell me honestly.

Would you rather live today in a pagan war oriented society (and likely die or be enslaved in the next clan war) without all the technological achievements of the last centuries than in the society where you have all the opportunities to work at home or in a comfortable office and argue with a stranger on HN forum without risk of being scalped alive?

[asacrowflies]

Lol how vile. The usual claiming all progress and achievement globally for your in-group while spouting racist stupid white man's burden nonsense about how you saved us all lmao. Only modern Christians can be so gross while having that Utah Mormon esque smile.

[morgan814]

> war oriented society

Christianity loves going to war to “spread the word”. See the Crusades. See what’s going on in Israel. See Manifest Destiny. Or, I presume, those “don’t count” because they weren’t “real Christians”.

> and likely die or be enslaved in the next clan war

The Old Testament is full of slavery references and doesn’t indicate a problem with it. Yes, I know slaves must be set free after seven years. That doesn’t suddenly make it okay and it’s painful to watch people use that as a justification.

> technological achievements of the last centuries

Christians love to claim these advancements for themselves as long as it fits their story. Much of our mathematical advancements come from the Muslim world. And plenty of scientists that changed the world were under prosecution of Christianity.

But it is convenient that a doctor (who has spent years learning about the human body) can remove your bad gallbladder then attributing it to your god. Unless you’re a type of Christian that doesn’t believe in surgery, then it’s “of the devil”.

> without risk of being scalped alive?

Well, as long as you’re not a Palestinian trying to survive a genocide that is in part supported by fundamentalist Christians on the other side of the planet.

Frankly, your comment reeks of “white Jesus saved the world” or what many might refer to as racism. Your example of scalping really, really gives you away.

[aristofun]

> See the Crusades. See what’s going on in Israel

Really, christians are to blame for what’s going on today in Israel??

80th level of dumb, congrats! :)))

> Christians love to claim these advancements for themselves

If you play the game of putting hanging all the dead dogs to christianity, it’s only fair to also attribute all the good achievements to it.

Otherwise it doesn’t look fair or logical, isn’t it? Though I doubt you know what logic is :) you just want to spread hatred

Ps: crusades were pretty symmetrical and reasonable response to arabic expansion and aggression back then. Also it wasn’t in any way unique or more cruel than countless other conflicts and wars throughout the history, there is nothing uniquely “Christian” about it.

[asacrowflies]

And you wish to speak of technology as if that is from your Christ.... What happened to gallileo? Copernicus? Descartes? Almost every great philosopher and scientist for the past 500 years has been in direct conflict with Christianity.... And Christianity is the reason TODAY in America we have to deal with anti-vaxxera, evolution isn't real, young earth creationist etc etc.... maybe you should stfu before opening your mouth to spout such stupidity.

[aristofun]

Galileo, copernicus, descartes were all christians, also newton.

Some of them were in conflict with the church. Never with christ or god.

If you’re ignorant and uneducated enough to not see the difference between the 2 then there is no point to argue with you. You’re likely brainwashed.

Ps: Also if you didn’t know first western universities started as monasteries with monks seeking the truth in the name of christ.

[krapp]

>one should celebrate the birthday of the most influential and awesome man in the history of mankind.

Cool. So why don't you celebrate the birthday of Siddhartha Gautama? Or Confucius? Genghis Khan? Julius Caesar?

Because Jesus was not the most influential man in the history of the world. He was influential, but the world is bigger and history deeper than Christians want to believe.

Hell, the only reason anyone even still cares about Jesus is because the Roman emperor Constantine decided Christians were more valuable to him fighting in his army than being fed to lions. If not for him, Christianity would have just been another weird Levantine cult and would have probably died out. So why not celebrate Constantine's birthday instead?

Or the Apostle Paul's birthday? It was his idea to spread the faith to gentiles after all, and one could argue modern Christianity is more influenced by Paul than Jesus.

This is not an opportunity for you to proselytize me.

[aristofun]

> Siddhartha Gautama? Or Confucius? Genghis Khan? Julius Caesar?

Valid question.

Mentioned people are not as nearly influential. Buddha is close though. But there were many enlightened men before and after him. There were many other emperors. But no more figures like jesus, even modern eastern gurus often mention him and reference him as an example.

Paul and others were important for the religion yes, but without jesus and powerful message, influence there would have been nothing to work with. There a tons of examples in history of very popular jesus-like figures with even larger initial traction that nobody even knows today.

So accidentally or not - he is the winner. Why not celebrate that. And i assume that history is bigger than christians want to believe, cant know for sure, im not one.

The comment was not about the religion at all.

[errru]

jfc

>But no more figures like jesus, even modern eastern gurus often mention him and reference him as an example

Yeah, because they recognise good outside of some strictly foolish religious form because they are not christians.

[aristofun]

Dumb comment, not bringing any points to the discussion

[errru]

You're a programmer, you should be able to extrapolate the point about the statistic I was making.