https://imgur.com/gallery/iHGv4vE

I want to watch this movie now. More on my intended topic, however, is watching this supposedly Christian lady and her supposedly Christian husband (second hand), and their reactions to this.

Lots of theological questions come to my mind. Like, why couldn't Jesus (God) stop the assassins himself? Does mortal time travel somehow prevent God's plan from happening? How is there any stake at all in this?

I think this is an excellent view of why Christianity's central story is so bad for any storytelling effort. There can't really be any stakes at all unless you ignore the whole omnipotent/omniscient thing. The most you can do is just try to tell the story itself (Like in Passion) and just do an honest, straight effort to portray it. Any effort at creative interpretation ends up blasphemous.

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Your post just gave to me a thought.

Some of us atheists feel that Jesus was a real person, just not divine; while others figure that Jesus is a made up character. Personally, I could not care less because whether or not he was real does not change the fact that we have no evidence for gods.

Let us suppose that Jesus was real but not divine. Let us suppose that the an atheist believe that Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism are bad and that since Islam and Mormonism arose from Christianity, one could get rid of all 3 by removing Jesus from history.

The Atheist builds a timemachine, travels back to when Jesus was a baby, before his ritual sexual genital mutilation (this marks jews so that they cannot leave the faith and makes it very easy for antisemites to know whom to murder and genocide) and takes intact baby Jesus back to the future to raise as an intact atheist, in an atheistic post-scarcity society with spacecolonies and where everyone is an immortal transhuman. ¡The Atheist discovers that religions very similar to Christianity,, Mormonism, and Islam still exist!:

The Hebrews wanted a Savior so much that when none stepped into the the role, ¡they just made up character! ¡What an ironic twist!

¿Do you believe that will make an interesting movie? Surely, the Christians, Moslems, and Mormons would hate it.

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What an ironic twist!

Not irony. It would need to be unexpected rather than, like, completely and utterly in-character. Irony is getting killed by an ambulance. The primary purpose of an ambulance is to save lives, and by getting run over by one you met an ironic end. An organization or group of organizations centered around the concept of lying to people and making shit up continuing to make shit up isn't even remotely like irony.

Do you believe that will make an interesting movie? Surely, the Christians, Moslems, and Mormons would hate it.

I don't think it would make an interesting movie. For the same reason Assassin 33 A.D. isn't interesting. The conclusion isn't ever in question, really. As you noted, it isn't important whether or not Jesus (a particular man) lived or was real. The legend remains fiction. That the fiction continues to be crafted and spread remains detached from the life/existence of any particular man.

In order to be a good story, there has to be some doubt about the conclusion. The better job a movie does of convincing us, at least temporarily, that the conclusion is uncertain, the better the movie is. "Will he make it?" We know from an abundance of stories, movies, and games that he will. But when the rope begins to fray, the killer sneaks closer, the spider extends its fangs, we're led to believe for a moment maybe it won't be OK.

Let's step out of movie/fiction for a moment. Assume we do actually invent time travel, reach post-scarcity, and transhumanism leads us to immortality. We could set aside various debates on how time travel could work and/or paradoxes. We go back in time, take "Jesus" from his timeline, and transplant him into ours. Religion fails to be erased from history. What conclusions can we draw from these results? Either we got the wrong infant boy and the real one continued on with the legend, or there was never a real one to begin with and our grabbing some random infant was utterly pointless.

Rather than waste our time with this nonsense, why not go back to the beginning and share our tech with the earliest humans. Bring them into post-scarcity and use our infinite patience, resources, and time to educate and guide them to what we have. That would be a far more appealing use of our wealth. We could reduce suffering in the world and improve satisfaction and happiness tremendously.

Now, in terms of "story", I don't see religion surviving that process. It wouldn't be relevant ever. The drive of humanity towards religious expression would be seen for the flaw it is and be practiced away from the way skills like critical thinking are practiced towards. The process of transhumanism would include the training away from such major flaws.

Now, if you want to go back to fiction and present a setting where this doesn't happen but instead your babyknapping idea does, you'd have to explain how. You'd have to do the work of explaining how religion manages to survive time-travel-capable, post-scarcity, immoral transhumans. The lack of proper conclusion leaves us with a bad movie that taps into this overwhelming resource but refrains from doing the best it can in favor of your plot.

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Unlike Alanis Nadine Morissette, I know the difference between ironies and hummers, but it seems ironic to me because the scientist expected utopy, but nothing changed. It would be more than a bummer because we would not have other religious nuts, but Christians without a Jesus, despite the original timeline having Jesus. It is not verry ironic. We could make it more ironic:

The atheist looks for Jesus but cannot find him. He gets lonely and has sex with an unmarried prostitute. Her name is Mary. After he returns to his time, she discovers that she is pregnant. A man named Joseph feels sorry for her having to raise a child alone and marries with her. They joke that she conceived as a virgin because she was unmarried at the time. Mary births Jesus. ¿Are predestinationparadoxes ironic enough? That is a very different movie and probably just as awful as my 1st try.

Setting that aside, I see why you do not believe that it would make a good movie. You now no why I failed to publish stories.

As an aside, I do not get why Atheist argue about whether Jesus was real or not:

• We do not have enough information to tell.
• It does not matter anyway.

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As an aside, I do not get why Atheist argue about whether Jesus was real or not:

People argue about a lot of things. People still argue about things from DBZ. Pointless arguments are things people do. I don't know what value they expect to get out of it, but that's for them to figure out not me.

Despite not being my place, I could offer up a hypothesis: some of them don't yet realize how pointless it is, and the argument serves to get them to that understanding.

Take note of a distinction that you and I agree on reflexively: Some human male named Jesus is not the same as "the son of God/human version of God who did miracles, died on a cross, and was resurrected three days later." It's entirely probable that some human male named Jesus lived in that time period and in that region of the world. It's even possible that he interacted with several other people and stories arose from whatever mundane things he did. If we went back in time to 20 A.D. and met Jesus, somehow had some way of confirming this was the actual Jesus, chances are it would be a pretty unspectacular meeting.

We make distinct from that the mythical person. The fictional character that turned water into wine. Whether real Jesus did or did not exist is irrelevant. Proving he existed does not prove the miracles. The miracles themselves must be proven to have actually happened. And, if they are somehow proven, it still doesn't matter who did them.

Another hypothesis is that theist fanboys of Jesus don't typically make that distinction. They think he's real. They think the miracles are real. As a real person and real attributes, you can't separate them. Having conversations with these theists may often result in having to have this argument in order to bring the theist to the same understanding we're at.

it seems ironic to me because the scientist expected utopy, but nothing changed.

Wrong sort of "expectations." Back to my ambulance example: the irony doesn't come from our expectation that ambulance drivers are super skilled at driving and never make mistakes. Our expectations are subverted on a narrative level: we expect the arrival of an ambulance to be the succor of an injured person in critical condition. For that ambulance to end the person subverts our expectations.

The wrong expectations you're describing are simply someone making a mistake. They think they have a good plan, but the plan fails. You simply didn't get the results you planned for.

Are predestinationparadoxes ironic enough?

No.

I honestly don't know how we could turn any topic so far in the conversation into an irony.

Setting that aside

Back on topic:

One of the points I mentioned above is how difficult it is for Christian creative types to create. This feels like an inherent flaw of monotheism, as a logical conclusion of polytheism/etc. before it.

We know at least roughly what the evolution of religion was like. It began with animism, attributing human thought to inanimate objects and natural events. "Spirits" and the like, if you will. Generally, a hierarchy of these spirits is produced. The more powerful ones are more meaningful to appease/worship. You eventually give rise to several gods for various major portfolio items. Pantheons tend to generate a central, "head" god that leads the others. Either due to having the most important/revered portfolio or happenstance of birthright. Following that inclination to focus most on the most important gods, the less important ones become less popular and fade away. You're eventually led to the theological notion that a solitary god of everything makes more sense than several gods.

However, when you're creating stories, you're telling about interesting conflict. If your protagonist is fighting against something and eventually overcomes that thing, that's the basis for a story. But when you toss in an all-powerful, all-knowing God you remove the possibility of conflict. If that man is with God, he wouldn't properly have a conflict with other followers of God. And anyone standing against God or God's followers is doomed to fail (a recurring theme in the Bible). You certainly couldn't have a conflict with God, and it's conversely impossible to give God any conflict at all.

Christian content creators are basically limited to just one conflict: man vs himself. Be it expressed through his faltering faith or struggles with temptation.

Now, they're free to create non-Christian content. But content that attempts to include this all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, creator of everything are irrational settings. As noted in my reaction to Assassin 33 A.D., you're attempting to take what is the most important event and person in your mythos and spin some story around it. That is incompatible with their own notion that God's plan is absolute. They're attempting to tell a story in which the almighty is somehow threatened by time-traveling Muslims. That, without intervention somehow, the Muslim assassins will erase that resurrection event from time. That God would somehow let his plan be erased. That downgrades the supposed miracle-value of this event into just some mundane thing that mere humans can influence.

From the perspective of someone who believes in these things, this isn't good storytelling. From the perspective of someone, like us, who doesn't believe in these things, the importance of the resurrection is lacking. For both of us, the stakes aren't reasonable. Bad storytelling.

To make this even more clear. Let's take an event that is important to me: the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Muslim assassins go back in time to slay the founding fathers. It's up to some hero to foil this plan.

This works because the stakes are reasonable. The founding fathers, while important and influential, are mere mortal humans. It's reasonable to believe that modern men with modern tech could destroy them and their work. Furthermore, what alternate present could we get from this heinous crime? We could imagine powerful time-traveling men would be able to wield great influence over the colony and direct its destiny in some way. We don't presume that the victims of this plot (the founding fathers) would be immune to meddling as an all-powerful deity would be. We don't presume that, sans interference, the plot would fail outright. The interference is important and necessary to prevent calamity.

Back to either of your story ideas: there is a lack of compelling conflict either way. In your first idea, there is someone who tries a thing and it fails to change. In the second idea, you're just describing a weird event that falls together through happenstance. In neither case is their particularly any conflict. Go back to the setting you described. Immortal transhumanists living in post-scarcity life. With access to time travel. What conflict is being presented? None. Someone is just thinking, "gee. I could maybe get rid of religion. This would be a good thing." (I agree). But it pails in comparison to, "gee. I could maybe get rid of suffering. This would be a good thing." The person in your story fails because they're trying to make a tiny edit that otherwise leaves the past mostly intact, but will have some huge ripple effect. But then no change happens at all.

It's not that you're not creative enough to tell a story. It's that religion is utterly opposed to creativity. When you craft a story, you want that story to be about the most interesting person in the story, focus on the most interesting events in the story, and entertain your readers. When you set aside the most interesting thing in the story to focus on second best, you're setting yourself up for a bad story. When you place God into a setting, that is the most important thing possible. Everything else is second best or worse.

Imagine this exaggerated example:

A man opens a door to a room. He flips on the lights in the room. Inside are several objects. In the center of the room is a table upon which is a pen. Off to one side is a large dragon, crouched down to barely fit under the ceiling. The man walks into the room, picks up the pen, then walks out so that he can add milk to his shopping list for tomorrow.

We don't really care about the man or his grocery shopping. We want to know why there is a dragon in this room. We want to know why this man is so uninterested in the dragon. What is going on here?

By adding the dragon, we draw attention to it. If our story ignores it, we'll be frustrated. The story isn't satisfying the curiosity it has built-in us for this dragon. Even if we don't want our story to be about this dragon, it is about this dragon.

A man opens a door to a room. He flips on the lights in the room. Inside are several objects. In the center of the room is a table upon which is a pen. Off to one side is a large dog, crouched down to barely fit on its bed. The man walks into the room, picks up the pen, then walks out so that he can add milk to his shopping list for tomorrow.

A slight change to the story, removing the dragon and replacing it with a dog, changes it greatly. It's much more possible that we could be interested in the man and his grocery plans now.

Christianity has put a large dragon in the room whenever they try to tell any other story. Religion asserts that there is a large dragon in the room. As atheists, we're generally of the mindset of, "no. There isn't a dragon in the room, stop lying." Myself, as an anti-theist, is generally of the mindset of, "not only isn't there a dragon in the room, you liar, you're dimwitted for thinking this is even a good story."

Assassin 33 A.D. is a bad story that I want to watch. Christians think it is also a bad story, at least the two in that twitter thread. We think it is bad for generally different reasons. For storytelling purposes though, I think we fundamentally agree. The philosophical/theological arguments aside, Christianity makes for bad storytelling. I think this could serve as a good angle to discuss from when showing just how ridiculously silly theists are being.

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I contemplated your idea for an hour now. I have 2 thoughts about it:

¿How would we know how far to go back? It could lead to infinite recursion.

I took my 1st thought and ran with it:

Our intrepid bunch of atheists keep going back in time to T=0. At that point they discover that they need to initialize the universe. ¡These godless atheists are the Gods!

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I thought about how the original movie would be bad because the outcome is preordained, and then it hit me that Mad TV did a parody back in the 11990s where a Christian could not bear the thought the Crucifiction of Jesus, so sent back a T-800 for saving him. Jesus had to stop the Terminator saving him, over and over again:

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That poster looks like the cover of a Young adult novel. Probably worth a watch. If only for the cringe, popcorn and premise.

Reading the thread title, for a moment I thought this was going to be about an upcoming Assassin's creed game...

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Another interesting question it raises is that even if the muslim time terrorists did kill Jesus, would that 'not count' in the eyes of God? Cause God's whole plan was to have Jesus get murdered in order to be able to forgive people. Is it like, only the Romans could have killed him or else it doesn't count as a sacrifice and God can't forgive people?

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There were actually tons of mystery cults in the vein of Christianity running around at the time. I have almost zero doubt that if you went back in time and killed the historical Jesus you'd just enable one of the other mystery cults to become the dominant religion.

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Not only would Muslims killing Jesus count as Jesus dying for Humanity as far as Christians are concerned, but Muslims believe that Jesus is the Penultimate Prophet (Mohamed is the Final Prophet); so now, they would not want to murder him. Muslims wanting to kill Jesus is like Christians wanting to kill Moses.

Christians screwing up both their own theology and the theology of other religions in poorly made Christian Movies is nothing new. I recommend the PodCast GodAwful Movies:

GodAwful Movies

GodAwful Movies is a PodCast mocking terrible religious movies MST3KStyle. One can subscribe to the PodCast from the PodCastPlayer in your Phone.

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It looks a little like the movie Independence Day to me.

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My 1st impression was the game Assassins' Creed too.