Originally Posted by JB3

well said. Jesus was a man, and a member of a persecuted enslaved people in an occupied city where once the kingdom of Judah stood, and was killed for his movement, and that movement has a lot in common with modern communist ideals, which both Communists and Christians will all deny.

Secondly its only after the extreme passage of time that he's been deified, several hundred years before he was made into a religious figure of extreme importance.

He was simply a man, and a man who in his own time clearly didn't have an immediately lasting effect, as less than 80 years passed after his death before the Jewish Zealots rose up violently instead and were brutally put down by the Romans. They enjoyed a bit more initial success than Jesus, but ultimately caused the final destruction of the temple of temple mount as retaliation.

For a modern time comparison, call Jesus a figure similar to Ghandi, and the Zealots similar to the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Only in ancient times, neither movement saw anymore success than the warsaw ghetto.

As far as whether there is a god, my feeling is that I were to believe in any theological invention of man, the Greek polythiesm simply makes more sense, of gods warring constantly with each and playing humanity off each other for their own amusement. If humans are in the image of anything, a palace of conniving fighting gods with endless plots and drama sounds about right.

However, I think its presumptuous of us to claim there is a diety and that we are in his image, we've only been on this planet for an eye blink of 200 thousand years or so. Very much the new kids on the block, if there is a god, hes probably a reptile similar to a dinosaur, since they were here 825 times longer than us.