As Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained,
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
I think I have read EVERYTHING Rand ever wrote. As I have said before, for a young person just starting out, her ideas are energizing. With the wisdom of time and experience, though, I came to believe that her philosophy lacks compassion or very much reality of what life is like. It is not spiritual enough for me. I like Jesus'/Buddha's/Gandhi's/any humanitarian's ideas better than hers, and feel that they reflect me better.
Jewel is right that a bunch of atheists discussing Jesus is not going very far, but I do think you are confusing the Old Testament with Jesus' beliefs. A bunch of men wanted to harness the power of Jesus for their own ends in the several-hundred year period after his death, and wrote whatever about him, without any regard for accuracy. What Jesus probably said is quite a small body of statements. From his life, we know that he surrounded himself with women, who were powerful and well respected in his circle, that he was not vengeful, that he had compassion for the poor and the sick, and not much else, really, do we know. The Essenes were probably vegetarians (they may have eaten fish). Jesus was a radical leftist. And perhaps a Buddhist--there is much in common between his philosophy and Buddhism, and many believe he traveled to India and lived there for awhile (or perhaps even China). The harsh, judgmental, narrow-minded, warmongering, homosexual hating, zealously patriotic views of much of the American rightwing have absolutely nothing in common with Jesus. |
