This is the sixteenth chapter in the series My List: Believe the Bible? Read why I started this list in About Me.
“According to the Christian revelation, God’s own great love propitiated his own holy wrath through the gift of his own dear Son, who took our place, bore our sin and died our death. Thus God himself gave himself to save us from himself.”
—John Stott, The Message of Romans, 115
This quote by John Stott (British Anglican clergyman and leader in the worldwide evangelical movement) sums up Christianity very well. God requires blood and death as a payment for sin. To appease God’s need for blood and death, he decided to sacrifice himself to himself instead.
It became clear to God that Jews could not live up to his wise laws. They continually used his name in vain, worked on the Sabbath and sometimes didn’t kill disobedient children and homosexuals. Ritualistically slaughtering goats and lambs didn’t seem to be working, so he had to come up with a new way to deal with sin.
Solution:
To impregnate a woman with himself, live as a human for thirty years in sinless anonymity, and eventually be slaughtered as a blood sacrifice to himself at age 33. Brilliant.
All sarcasm aside, how does this story make any sense? Why does this god require blood when he teaches Christians to love their enemies and turn the other cheek? Do as I say, but not as I do?
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
–Mark 10:44-46
I’ve heard the analogy that the act of Jesus’ sacrifice is the same as me taking a bullet to save my family. This sounds like a very noble analogy, but it only works if you’re also the one holding the gun. A better analogy is you have your family held at gunpoint, but instead kill yourself to save them from yourself. I guess that is a loving act in some sort of demented way.
The fact is the story of Jesus is not only based in highly unreliable testimony from unknown authors, but also completely illogical. You can’t say “I love you” and follow it up with a fiery eternal threat. You also can’t claim to be just and require blood to pay for every petty mistake. But you certainly can’t look at the story of a bloody human sacrifice as anything more than a primitive and barbaric relic from an ancient religion that should have become extinct many years ago.
November 17, 2009 at 11:57 pm |
Oh, you don’t understand God’s way, because God is beyond your understanding. It is the epitome of arrogance to think that you can know everything. Don’t you believe there could be something beyond your understanding? The real reason you don’t believe in God is that you’re angry with Him. It’s just a phase though; you’ll see that Jesus loves you.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go kill some fig trees for no apparent reason on my way to kissing Hank’s ass.
Speaking of which, is there anywhere where I can find a good “Kissing Hank’s Ass” poster or t-shirt?
November 18, 2009 at 1:17 am |
You’ve successfully included every Christian cliché in one comment. Very impressive. You’ve either taken Christian blog comment 101 course, or you’re a well disguised fake Fundie. Welcome.
November 18, 2009 at 7:46 am |
Oh, I’m not that well-disguised; I have a scarlet A on my blog.
I’m not sure where the longer reply you posted went. I got it in my email, but I don’t see it here. I’m guess you changed it after looking up “Kissing Hank’s Ass”?
The fig tree thing is a reference to a passage in the Bible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursing_the_fig_tree
The “Kissing Hank’s Ass” reference is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDp7pkEcJVQ
November 18, 2009 at 10:18 am
I’m very familiar with the biblical fig tree story, but I initially missed the “Hank” reference and mistook you for the real thing. Google helped me track it down. So I updated my original comment.
I’ve had many comments on this blog that read exactly like yours. So I automatically assumed it was the real thing. Arrogant judgement followed by a “Jesus loves you” and “I’ll be praying for you.”
Atheists are automatically assumed to be pompous assholes. But I don’t claim to know everything and welcome comments here from anyone who disagrees with me. Which is more offensive: Questioning an invisible god’s existence, or Calling a person a blind fool? It all depends on which side of the fence you are on.
We can agree to disagree and enjoy the discussion along the way.
November 18, 2009 at 7:54 pm |
Howdy, Poe!
November 18, 2009 at 1:42 am |
So if he was here on Earth for those 33 years, who was running things in Heaven and making sure that reality didn’t collapse upon itself?
November 18, 2009 at 3:30 am |
I like the look in peoples faces when you ask them about this. I really don’t think christians think to much about what they are saying when they say he died for our sins.
November 18, 2009 at 9:26 am |
I really like the way you made your argument. I actually addressed this same issue on my blog today and now have updated it to link here.
http://atheistsanswer.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/the-jesus-problem/
November 18, 2009 at 11:02 am |
As I read somewhere, God sacrificed himself to himself to redeem us from eternal torment that he himself created to punish a rib woman who listened to a talking snake and ate from a magic tree.
Oh and he is omnipotent and omniscient… Go figure…
November 18, 2009 at 1:58 pm |
Great post – there’s a lot here.
I’ll submit that the current mainstream understanding of who Jesus Christ is (and Who He is not) has caused much confusion in the Church at large and I believe that helps make the “gave himself to save us from himself” so… unappealing.
(There is not a single verse anywhere in Scripture that hints in any way that “God” was a sacrifice for sin.)
It seems much of the “misunderstanding” about God has two do with two of His characteristics: God is just and God is love.
(I imagine that we, as humans, can choose to define what is “just” in our perspective and what is “love” in our perspectives (you know, everything is relative and all that), which I think adds to the confusion when difficult records arise.)
The original sin was only justifiable by death (Romans 6:23). God provided a way out through sin offerings (sacrifices) in the Old Testament which became the pattern which Christ would follow.
The great subject of the Bible is JC and God sums it up in Romans 5:19:
“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”
November 18, 2009 at 4:42 pm |
And you honestly think any of what you just said makes sense? I’m not trying to slam you here. It just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me. Here is what it looks like from my perspective:
Why? And who decided that? God, correct?
So he also decided that he was going to punish people for violating the rule he made up, unless they gave him blood sacrifices?
Why? If Jesus was God incarnate, why didn’t he just say, “look I’m going to forgive you guys, but you’d better straighten up after this.” Then perform a few mind-boggling miracles until he has them convinced? Why blood sacrifice of himself to himself? Or was he not God incarnate? And if he wasn’t God incarnate, repeat the above with “my dad is” in place of “I’m.”
November 19, 2009 at 11:56 am |
It helps to think of sin as debt, something owed.
If God is righteous/just and says “Don’t sin because the penalty(payment) for sin is death” and then Adam does sin…
Does/Can God remain righteous in saying, “Ah, forget about what I said earlier – I changed my mind about the whole wages-of-sin-is-death thing?”
The first sacrifice recorded in the Bible occurs in Genesis 3:21:
“Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.”
It was God who made skin outfits; some animal had to pay the price to “cover” mankind. And on and on and on (until JC, who was the perfect/final “covering” for mankind).
But, if you’re asking why didn’t God just *poof* and start 2.0… I don’t think that’s in the Bible.
November 19, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Adam does sin. But given that he didn’t know the difference between good and evil until after he ate the fruit, I’m not feeling like it’s fair to judge him for it.
But my actual question is, why didn’t he just forgive them? I mean, that’s what I did with my kids when they were little and didn’t know any better. You just tell them it was wrong, and not to do it again. At least until they are able to actually understand what they’re doing and why it’s wrong.
And why does everybody else have to pay for something we didn’t do? Did you eat the knowledge fruit? I didn’t. Admittedly, I most likely would have, even knowing full well the consequences. I’d take knowledge over immortality any day. But I don’t feel like it’s ok to hold me responsible for something I didn’t do. And I don’t feel like it’s ok to hold somebody else (Jesus) responsible for something he didn’t do.
I guess I just disagree with the moral of the story, so to speak.
November 19, 2009 at 10:27 pm
If God is righteous/just and says “Don’t sin because the penalty(payment) for sin is death” and then Adam does sin…
Does/Can God remain righteous in saying, “Ah, forget about what I said earlier – I changed my mind about the whole wages-of-sin-is-death thing?”
Well, that is pretty much the whole point of the Jesus as Sacrifice story: God changed his mind and came up with a scheme through which he could pretend that the original sin-debt had been paid by a rich benefactor (God/Jesus). After that, nobody has to die; not for original sin, not for his own personal transgressions.
God arranged to pay the debt himself through the agency of Jesus/God. He canceled the debt by paying himself from his own funds. This is all mumbo-jumbo to obscure that he did, in fact, simply abolish “the whole wages-of-sin-is-death thing”. Supposedly the torture-death of a perfectly innocent person satisfied the sin-debt, but that explanation is a fraud because Jesus did not really die in the technical way that Christians use the word (although he had a couple of really bad days): less than 72 hours after the crucifixion he was living happily with his dad in heaven.
Following that charade, Christians are guaranteed an eternal life in the presence of God with a new perfect body and soul, free of ancestral sin-debt and absolved of any sin-debt for their own transgressions.
While God thinks he had, and has retained, the description of “righteous”.
November 18, 2009 at 8:02 pm |
If there’s no hint that JC was a sacrifice, then why does the very earliest Christian art identify him with a lamb? Those early Christians must have been confused, just like modern ones.
For me, the bigger question is why did Jews and Christians adopt the pagan practice of sacrificing animals (or anything, for that matter)? What does a supreme being get out of smelling roast meat?
November 19, 2009 at 11:20 am |
To clarify, there are no scriptures that say that “God” would be a sacrifice for sin. There are boatloads about JC, though…
As for “why” the bulls and goats:
Hebrews 9:22, “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.”
… and Hebrews 10:1-14.
November 19, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Rich, that passage does not answer the question of *why* God *chose* to require bloodshed for forgiveness.
November 20, 2009 at 7:08 am
” Khorne’s followers worship their god on the battlefield, praising him with battle cries such as
“Blood for the Blood God!” or “Skulls for the Skull Throne!”
His followers also offer him praise and attempt to win his favor by savagely attacking each other when there are no other battles to be fought.”
( World of Warcraft)
November 18, 2009 at 2:37 pm |
Ironically, the Family Guy episode “I Dream of Jesus” was on yesterday.
November 18, 2009 at 3:17 pm |
This is something that has always bothered me.
Honestly, the best solution that the most intelligent and capable being could think of to solve the problem of sin was to sacrifice His son thousands of years after the fact and still botch the follow-up so badly that the vast majority of people still don’t accept it and thusly render it an ineffective solution.
So, really, because of something that the first human was tricked into doing, being the quintessential gullible soul who had no knowledge of deceit and, therefore, doomed to be tricked by his Creator who had also created the trickster knowing full well what would happen beforehand, God has doomed all of humanity to a fiery death, only remedying the situation in a horribly minuscule fashion, thereby only redeeming a tiny fraction of people who He, in His book, claims to want to save the totality of.
In result, we have an all-powerful, all-knowing construct who claims to want to save humanity and not torture them forever while, at the same time, setting the stage and the resulting punishment to do just that and only swooping in thousands of years to save a small fraction. So, God doesn’t get what He wants, despite having ultimate power and wisdom and most of humanity burns in hell forever.
Please forgive me if that’s convoluted, I’m not the one who wrote the source material.
November 18, 2009 at 5:13 pm |
Yeah, that’s pretty much how it reads to me.
God gives them no knowledge of right and wrong, sticks them in front of a do-not-eat tree, says they’ll die if they eat the fruit, and then wanders off and leaves them alone with the guy who is going to tell them that they won’t really die from eating the fruit. Knowing full well what is going to happen. Then he comes back all pissed off like he didn’t just set them up, and tells them they can’t have any immortality fruit, so HAHA, you really ARE going to die! And then he evicts them for good measure.
Then one day he’s, what, bored? So he decides to show up in person so people can kill him? (Skipping right past the whole pregnant, married, virgin thing….) And once they kill him he won’t be pissed off at them anymore because their ancestors fell into his setup? Except the ones who don’t do what he tells them to do, whom he loves, but is going to toss into the Pit of Doom and Fire for all eternity for not following directions.
Yeah, I’m not getting the logic here. Thing’s full of plot holes you could drive a truck through.
November 18, 2009 at 9:00 pm |
It all makes perfect sense to me now! God is a large, bureaucratic organization.
November 19, 2009 at 12:03 pm |
What follow-up was blotched?
Did God create the devil?
Did God tell them what they were allowed to do and not do?
Should God have overstepped free will to prevent the Fall? And would it have been genuine free will without a choice?
November 19, 2009 at 12:57 pm |
“Should God have overstepped free will to prevent the Fall? And would it have been genuine free will without a choice?”
There’s an excellent point made about omniscience and omnipotence. I wish I could credit the source, but honestly, I forgot. I believe it was a Greek philosopher, but I can’t say for certain.
At any rate, to be omniscient and omnipotent is to be responsible for every action anyone ever makes. Put it simply, if you can know everything and do anything, then by performing any action at all, you know exactly what the ramifications are from execution until eternity.
Let’s put this into context. God not only performed an action, He set up the entire scenario that Adam found himself in. God, being omniscient, would know, then, the result of the actions that He, Himself, took leading up to the fall. Who’s to say that by the modification, omission, or addition of any slight detail would have resulted in a completely different outcome? In a word: God. God, with His infinite wisdom and knowledge, knew every scenario possible and had the capability of setting any one of them into motion. Therefore, even before Adam fell, He not only knew what would happen to Adam, He also knew that He would be sending the vast majority of humanity to suffer eternally because of it.
If we are to believe that God and His will is perfect and that this will is to save all of humanity, as is evidenced in 2 Timothy, then how could one account for the sheer imperfectness of a plan that involves so much loss? In practical terms, perfection is that which is a 1:0 ratio of gain to loss. What we see with God, at least in His desire to save souls, is a ratio that is heavily weighted towards loss.
Even if you ignore the notion that God is directly responsible for the result of a scenario that He set up, knowing full well what would happen, then how do you explain the sheer imperfection of God’s plan? Are you honestly suggesting that it is beyond God’s capability and wisdom to implement a plan that flawlessly incorporates salvation and free will?
Even supposing that free will is fundamentally important to this plan, why not make the choice more abundantly clear? A person makes obvious choices in life all the time; choosing to use bleach to clean a bathtub instead of drinking it, for example. While the example is not perfect, it is scalable. Seemingly “no-brainer” decisions are still a matter of free-choice. An option that is infinitely more beneficial and attractive than any alternative doesn’t eliminate free will.
In this vein, we’re to believe that God is not sufficiently capable of rationalizing a situation by which every human being who has ever existed is given a clear and reasonable choice in the matter of salvation. Even many Christians, in their evangelizing, try to boil the situation down to going to hell or living for eternity in bliss. If such is the case, why can’t this be made more obvious to everyone?
Instead, we have a plan by which people suffer and die, only to go to hell because they were not provided sufficient evidence, or any at all, to save them from their fate. You can blame them for their decisions, or you can blame the being that put them into that situation to begin with, knowing full well how the scenario would play out.
This is the categorical analysis I took when determining that either God was evil or imaginary several years ago. It was never meant as a “gotcha” for Christians, but rather, as a means to objectively approach my own belief in God. The conclusion I came to was that God was either evil, incompetent, or imaginary. Even though I initially resisted the latter, the former two concepts proved damaging to my psyche. It took a while for me to accept a world that wasn’t subject to the whims of a deity. To be honest, it makes more sense to me this way.
November 19, 2009 at 1:13 pm |
Um… I thought so. Did I misunderstand that part?
Yes, it does say that in the story.
He should have just gone ahead and given them the fruit in the first place if he wanted them to obey his rules. They didn’t know the difference between good and evil until after they ate the fruit. How could they have known they were doing anything wrong? You can tell a baby not to put his hand on the hot stove, but if you leave him alone with the hot stove and he does it anyway, whose fault is it?
Again, I really don’t agree with the moral of this story. It reads to me like the god character is a foul tempered brat. And when the snake tells them (truthfully) that they won’t die from eating the fruit, and that they’ll actually just get knowledge, that’s supposed to make him evil? And knowledge is what god didn’t want them to have?? No, I don’t like the moral here one bit.
November 20, 2009 at 9:51 pm |
The devil is the god of the OT, the god of this world as Paul calls him, who caused the fall on purpose. He lied as god of this world in saying “in the day you eat it you will die” knowing good and well that instead of killing Adam that day he would let him live another 900 years so he could have lots of kids who he would then torment with diseases and pain and kill with horrible deaths, and then broil in hell for all eternity afterwards. He also lied as the serpent (for he was in the serpent) in saying “you will not die” for they would die, just not that day, since he had lied earlier too. Jesus references all this when he says to the Jews in John 8:44 “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” For who told the first lie in the Bible???? The god of this world, the god that spoke to Adam and said he would die IN THE DAY he ate the fruit, and the god who also animated the serpent to make the second lie, and thus to ‘murder’ all men from then on by providing himself with the excuse of ‘original sin.’
The OT god even admits to being Satan, for look at 2nd Samuel 24:1 “And again the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah” and then at 1st Chronicles 21:1 “And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.”
Notice anything??? In one of these ‘inerrant’ texts we have it stated that Yahweh (the OT god) provoked David to number Israel because he was mad, but in the other it says that Satan did it. So, then, they are one and the same.
Thanks be to the Heavenly Father, the Better God, for sending Jesus Chrestos to save us from the OT god!
November 20, 2009 at 10:09 pm
I don’t think the serpent lied. He said the fruit wouldn’t kill them. It didn’t. The god killed them as punishment for eating the fruit. I guess it depends on your favored translation, though.
But I wholeheartedly agree that the OT god character is evil.
November 20, 2009 at 10:51 pm |
butterflyfish3d, you could be right in saying the serpent character did not lie. Nor is that a new interpretation. For in ancient times some Gnostic sects interpreted the serpent either as Jesus or as Sophia appearing to grant men the knowledge of morality and thus make them better than their creator, usually termed ‘Ialdabaoth’ by the Gnostics.
November 18, 2009 at 6:01 pm |
How do you kill God? It’s not like Jesus actually even died. He went to Satan’s house for sleep over Friday night and back in time for a fish breakfast on Sunday. God, being God, had to know that Jesus wasn’t going to die. (Or he wouldn’t be a god).
Jesus, being God, had to know he was not going to die. (same reason). He had lots to do. Had to go to Abraham’s bosom (where ever the hell that was). He had to go do the hell stuff. Now, being God he sits at the right hand of God.
Jesus wasn’t sacrifice. A sacrifice dies. You can’t sacrifice a lamb or a goat to a god and the put the same lamb back in it’s pen Sunday morning and say that you sacrificed anything.
If you could kill Jesus, then he’s not a god. If Jesus did not die then he’s not a sacrifice.
November 19, 2009 at 12:08 pm |
You make a very interesting point (that many Christians don’t bat an eye at) — how could be God and die if sin was all about death?
And if He didn’t *really* die, did His sacrifice do the trick?
Keep asking!
November 18, 2009 at 9:45 pm |
No all Christians believe Jesus was God. Some, like the Jehova’s witness believe Jesus was just the son of God, originally an angel and then made man. Two separate beings. Actually, the bible support more this point of view than the trinity.
Jesus was sent to earth to die as a ransom payment or something like that because we were disobedient with God.
Yeah, I know, it still doesn’t make any sense.
November 20, 2009 at 7:26 pm |
“To appease God’s need for blood and death, he decided to sacrifice himself to himself instead.”
Just a caricature created by the Roman Empire in the Commodian period when they were persecuting Chrestianity out of existence to replace it with this nonsense.
November 24, 2009 at 7:42 am |
“Who was this Chrestos or Chreston with which Christos became confused with? We have already seen that Chrestos was a common Greek proper name, meaning “good”. further, we see in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopaedie, under “Chrestos”, that the inscription Chrestos is to be seen on a Mithras relief in the Vatican. We also read in J.M. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology, p. 331, that Osiris, the Sun-deity of Egypt, was reverenced as Chrestos. ” http://www.iahushua.com/ST-RP/christ.htm
Once again I must ask why Judaism and Christianity borrowed so much from older religions?
“He was a God from outside our universe who came and did good to make the god of this world jealous ” I see you’re well on your way to creating your own religion. I look forward to your books, DVDs and special blessings knick-knacks. Google has a good shopping cart.
November 24, 2009 at 10:16 pm |
Chrestos is a title, not a proper name. Yes, it means ‘good’ or ‘morally excellent’ or some such. How is using a common Greek term borrowing from Paganism? I’m sure Pagans would refer to their gods as good, just like Christians refer to their God as God. Is that borrowing from Paganism because Gott used to be the name of a Pagan god? (I’ve seen Messianic Jews argue this and say you have to call Jesus Yeshua and Elohim and so on because if you say ‘God’ that’s Pagan and you’ll go burn in Gehenna [can't say 'hell'' cuz that's Pagan]). We have to allow for the simple usage of common terms without labeling them as borrowing from other religions, because that charge is asinine in the case of common words like ‘good.’
November 27, 2009 at 10:42 am
“Gott used to be the name of a Pagan god ”
No, “gott” is a title. (Meine Familie Kommt aus Deutschland.) You can’t have it both ways.
You’re the one who has made such a big deal about “Chrestianity” vs Christianity, and now you say what you call it isn’t important? Fine with me, I don’t care what label you put on superstition.
Please, go back to the “God from outside our universe” theme. I’m curious to know if he got here through a black hole.
November 20, 2009 at 7:32 pm |
He was a God from outside our universe who came and did good to make the god of this world jealous and crucify him so he could then descend to hell and rescue all the righteous who the god of this world was tormenting from it, and he then (after taking them up to his Father in the 3rd Heaven) came back down and confronted the god of this world and condemned him, making him beg that instead of killing him he would just take all those who believe in him as compensation for his having crucified him. That’s how the story went before that scoundrel Ireneaus the Roman Empire sponsored persecutor and establisher of Catholic ‘orthdoxoy.’
November 24, 2009 at 12:55 pm |
Listen, I really don’t think you understand where we’re all coming from.
Your beliefs are just as grounded in reality as Christianity. Unless you can provide proof that your religion is more correct than any other, without using “evidence” that could also be used for any other supernatural claim (a la the Flying Spaghetti Monster conundrum), then stop proselytizing.
To each his own and all that. Believe what you want, but you’re fighting a steep uphill battle with a cardboard sword here.
November 24, 2009 at 10:17 pm |
I’m saying what Christianity said at first when it was still Chrestianity. The point is that the inconsistency that is being attacked here is not the original position of the religion. The religion was made inconsistent by Roman tyrants as a means of control.
November 24, 2009 at 11:51 pm
I wonder whether the Romans made the Old Testament inconsistent, too.
What practical result are you trying to achieve? If everyone here were to understand your view in its full glory and were to find that it has no inconsistencies, what would you expect to happen?
It seems unlikely that any of the regulars would return to theism and adopt your Chrestian beliefs. The inconsistencies are the cracks in the surface which allowed the former Christians to see that the particular theist system of their family or community is not believable. But that is just the beginning. Once free of indoctrination, it is easy to see that all religions are fantastic and absurd, even when the lore is consistent. It would be strange indeed (rare, anyway) for someone to leave religion, become an atheist, and then later adopt another religion.
It also seems unlikely that they would stop talking about inconsistencies in the Bible. They are talking about their experiences with the systems they rejected and (to some extent) are talking to living people who still believe those systems. Either way, the Roman canon and present practice are what is relevant.
If education is your goal, well that’s good. All this talk of modified documents, selected doctrines, and intimidated writers helps to show that the entire field lives by fabrication.
November 25, 2009 at 8:16 pm
I am not saying this for atheists but for Christians. They have no need to defend the genocides of the OT or the virgin birth, or Romans 11, because originally Paul’s epistles made NO use of the OT nor did the gospels. They’ve been sold a bill of goods by Rome. True Protestants should reject the Catholic canon and return to a purified Chrestianity. Atheists can do whatever the h e double hockey-sticks they want to do. Atheism is a personal problem that I don’t want to get involved with.
November 25, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Well then WTF are you doing saying it here? Go yap at Christians on their own sites.
November 25, 2009 at 9:10 pm
If no Christians show up here, why does the blog point out biblical contradiction? Is this a “pat yourself on the back for turning your back on God” blog, or is it making an attempt to inform Christians that there are contradictions in the Bible? Somehow I thought it was at least partially the latter. I think you’re scared I might convert you to Chrestianity, since you see there are no contradictions in it and that it came before Christianity.
November 25, 2009 at 9:49 pm
LOL. I think you’re suffering from wishful thinking. I’m more likely to join the cult of Zeus. Or maybe Ba’al. Poor Ba’al never gets any respect.
As for turning my back? That’s a pretty arrogant thing to say. (Of course, arrogance is pretty much par for the course with Christians.) I have no more turned my back on your imaginary deity than I have turned my back on every other imaginary deity ever invented. And I find most of the others more personable. In fact, now that I think on it, I can’t come up with any other god or goddess who claims to have wiped out the entire human race down to a single family for not living up to his/her standards (although Kali and Lord Shiva do a fair bit of destruction in various stories). But it seems to me that your made up god is the most evil of them all.
No, you won’t convert me. LOL.
I can’t speak for the intent of the blog. It’s not my blog. But it would seem to me that someone who actually gave a crap about informing Christians of anything would be doing so where more than just the occasional troll Christian hangs out.
November 28, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Nobody can understand what the frick your “Chrestianity” is. Set up your own site and invite people to read your personal revelations.
Just promise us you won’t advocate violence against Catholics or destruction of church property. Whatever else the Catholics have done, they have done a great job of preserving some of the world’s finest art and manuscripts, which are available for appreciation by Christian and pagan alike.
“The religion was made inconsistent by Roman tyrants as a means of control.” What tyrants? What control? Did you fail to notice that the Roman Empire disintegrated shortly after the adoption of Christianity? History buffs are going to have a field day with statements like that.
November 28, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Regarding religious control and the disintegration of the Roman Empire: it might be that the control attempt failed; or that it controlled the wrong thing.
Indeed, don’t advocate violence against anybody or destruction of anything. Presumably, the good god and the bad god can duke it out personally in their own supernatural space where it does not need to affect the physical world.
Rey:
The blog points out biblical contradiction and other issues that preoccupied theBEattitude for the last few years as he struggled to reconcile the hype with the reality of the Christian religion. He says that he still likes to discuss these topics and apparently so do others who had similar experiences. Informing Christians does not seem to be high on their agenda.
Most of the Christians who comment here seem to be dedicated to the dogma of their particular sects and do not appear to be open to any change in their personal views; their intent seems to be not to consider new ideas but to correct theBEattitude and bring him back into the fold. The other big expected group of Christian readers consists of those who are struggling with these issues as theBEattitude did; but, as they rarely comment, their numbers are even less known than the numbers of other believers.
So this might not be a good environment for spreading Chrestian ideas; but, of course, you will assess that for yourself.
November 29, 2009 at 2:49 am
@Verbifex:
Wow, that was way nicer than the way I said it.
November 22, 2009 at 1:22 pm |
“Even many Christians, in their evangelizing, try to boil the situation down to going to hell or living for eternity in bliss. If such is the case, why can’t this be made more obvious to everyone?”
Christianity is a FAITH-BASED proposition. It REQUIRES the belief in the UNSEEN. If it were “more obvious,” it would be science, not spirituality. You’re essentially asking why spirituality isn’t scientific. That would be like asking “Why aren’t rocks spongy and soft?”
I fully understand how hard it is to believe in something–let alone worship something!–that cannot be proven with hard scientific evidence. But IF you can accept the proposition that God is LOVE, and his LOVE is flowing through all the people in your life whom love you and whom you love in return, and that love increases exponentially as you put others before yourselves and follow Jesus’ teachings to the best of your ability, you will have all the evidence you need for His existence.
I honestly don’t know why anyone would be against a religion that pines for a race of people who practiced the golden rule consistently and held true to the fruits of its spirit, which are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, goodness, and self control. (Gal 5:22). How many of you who hate God so much can honestly say you practice those values consistently every day of your life? Granted, they are easier said than done because our NATURE is selfishness, but I can attest they are possible, and the constant practicing of them results in a nearness to God and a feeling of inner peace and joyful fulfillment that I could never put into words. Inner peace as the result of practicing the fruits of the spirit is all I need for evidence. GOD WORKS. It is that simple for me.
Peace and love,
Mark
November 22, 2009 at 1:43 pm |
So, people go to hell because God can’t be bothered to express His love to them?
Think about what you’re saying. God loves humanity so much that He would rather condemn the vast majority of them to eternal suffering than allow them a reasonable chance to believe and, thusly, be saved?
How does that reconcile itself with the New Testament? Jesus, being God incarnate, performed miracles and acts of power with the intention of having people believe. After all, isn’t that the message in John concerning the resurrection of Lazarus?
John 11:40-44
“Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’ ”
Here, Jesus, himself, proves that there is no requirement to believe in the unseen. In fact, Jesus performed works of power on many, many occasions so that people would see and, thus, believe.
Would Saul have become Paul if Jesus didn’t dramatically appear to him? Are we to think that the self-professed least of all Christians was worth more of God’s time than us? Aren’t all of us “lost sheep” equally precious in God’s eyes? Therefore, shouldn’t He, as in the parable in Luke 15, seek us out and bring us back to the fold?
Your response is inconsistent with God’s behavior in the New Testament. The only verse backing your claim is the retort made to Thomas which states that it is better to believe without having seen. However, nowhere in the Bible does it state that it is a requirement.
Secondly, if God was concerned about saving humanity, then He would do so. You’ll note that I never asked God to appear in my initial post. I simply said that it should be well within the capability of God to incorporate all of these aspects into a successful plan.
Do you suggest that it is impossible for God to successfully execute a plan that saves all of humanity while preserving their free will and not revealing Himself? Surely, with unlimited intellect and capability, this should be a cakewalk. However, we see this is absolutely not the case.
Finally, I don’t hate God. I don’t think God exists. By that logic, you hate invisible pink unicorns, leprechauns, celestial teapots, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
November 22, 2009 at 4:31 pm |
You say that love is all that really matters as I read this. Tell me then why hate is so important to the way most that call themselves christian is? If you need examples then you aren’t seeing the way people act in life.
November 23, 2009 at 2:09 am |
Um, what? That was just a bunch of flowery words that mean exactly nothing. It’s like you got high and sat around going “and if you love love, then love loves you back. And then that there is god talking, man.” And all the other stoners go “Whoa! Dude!” I mean seriously. Would you accept that happiness is evidence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Or that the sun is evidence of Apollo? What if I feel like it’s true? Is it evidence then?
Have you read the bible? The whole thing, not just the parts the pastor cherry picks for you? There’s a whole lot of evil sh*t going on in there, that is passed off as good. God is in there exterminating people left and right at a whim. He destroys Job and kills his family just so he can win a bet. He sends bears to eat 42 little children for teasing Elisha about being bald. I find the whole thing to be particularly horrific.
So you’re saying a warm fuzzy feeling is proof of a supernatural, omniscient, omnipotent being, who is invisible, inaudible, does not affect the world in any tangible, measurable way, who loves us, but punishes us for things we didn’t do (original sin), and then tells us it’s our own fault? … Yeah, um, … Sorry, that does not sound anything like evidence to me.
Also I don’t “hate” your god any more than I “hate” Sauron or Voldemort.
November 24, 2009 at 7:32 am |
“I honestly don’t know why anyone would be against a religion that pines for a race of people who practiced the golden rule consistently and held true to the fruits of its spirit, which are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, goodness, and self control.”
What religion is that? Certainly not anything practiced today. Are you out there actively promoting legislation to combat all forms of discrimination, or is your “love” all in your mind?
I can still be against it because it would still require me to give up reason and logic, deny much about we have learned about the world and the human mind in the past century, and demand submission to some imaginary being.
Get it straight- atheists don’t hate imaginary beings, we just hate to see people making bad decisions based on make-believe, faith , superstition, and unquestioning obedience to authority.
July 20, 2010 at 10:17 pm |
we were forbidden to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We were to know only good The fruit that this tree of knowledge produced was death. How does one know and percieve evil? Sin of the flesh . We lost our spiritual bodies and were clothed with garments of animal skins
July 22, 2010 at 11:06 am |
And then Humpty Dumpty fell off a wall and a fork ran away with a spoon.
Ancient folklore is something a rational person would not base their life on. But whatever works for you.