Quoting from Daylight Atheism (I made some text bold, though):
It makes no sense whatsoever that an infinite, omnipotent god would need to incarnate himself as a human and then subject himself to an agonizing and bloody death just so he could persuade himself to forgive us and save us from the cruel fate he created for us. It makes even less sense that the all-wise creator of the universe would manifest himself in an isolated corner of the world during a primitive age of its history, teach proverbs identical to those of the other belief systems of the day, promise to return quickly to destroy the world, and then vanish utterly for a span of time now going on two thousand years, leaving behind no trace except for a few hazy memories and anonymous writings that he had ever been here at all.
I don’t think I could have said it better myself. 
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I almost hesitate to respond because the statement you quoted are the rant of the uniformed, the “village atheist” not a true informed skeptic.
First, God’s purpose was not to “persuade himself to forgive us and save us from the cruel fate he created for us.” Jesus came to save His people from their sins. Matthew 1:21 “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins.”
Second, Hell is the full, final, and eternal expression of God’s wrath. Hell was created for the Devil and his angels not mankind. Matthew 25:41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” In Adam mankind fell into sin (Romans 5:12) since then all men practice sin Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The just penalty of sin is death Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God did not have to rescue anyone, but by His grace He chose to rescue some. Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Ephesians 2:4-9 “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
Third, the message that Jesus taught was and still is unique, He did not “teach proverbs identical to those of the other belief systems of the day.” The people of His day notice the clear distinction in His teaching. Matthew 7:29 “for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Matthew 5:27-28 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus taught that mankind needs a supernatural rebirth or regeneration given by the grace of God alone. John 3:3 “ Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”” This new birth is expressed in ones faith or belief in Jesus, John 1:12-13 “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” This faith comes through the hearing of the proclamation of God’s message. Romans 10:17 “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”
Fourth, in response to your statement about the “…promise to return quickly to destroy the world, and then vanish utterly for a span of time now going on two thousand years” you are measuring time in relation to your finite world not infinity. 2 Peter 3:8 “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” Furthermore, the reason Christ has not returned yet is because of His mercy. He is still redeeming mankind, perhaps He will redeem you. 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”
Fifth, the statemetnt “,,,leaving behind no trace except for a few hazy memories and anonymous writings that he had ever been here at all” is naïve because the New Testament is the most well attested ancient book of all time. There are over 5,000 ancient documents that have survived to directly attest to its witness. The second most attested book is Homer’s Iliad, it has 643 documents most other ancient books only have a few supporting documents.
So if you want to suppress the truth about God you may want to reconsider your argument or better yet surrender to the truth. God has manifested the truth of His character in all of mankind’s conscience (a concept of morality) and in the creation of the world (intelligent design). Man’s problem is that he suppresses this truth in unrighteousness because he would rather worship himself rather than the creator. Romans
1:18-25 (NASB95)
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen
Romans 10:9-10 (NASB95)
9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation..
Despite Wayne’s sophomoric characterization of my article, his claims fail to hold up against the facts. Let’s consider them each in turn:
“First, God’s purpose was not to “persuade himself to forgive us and save us from the cruel fate he created for us.” Jesus came to save His people from their sins.”
It appears that Wayne is not actually disagreeing with this point - he just dislikes the way I phrased it, that’s all. Nevertheless, my assertion stands. Christianity teaches that God, despite being all-powerful, couldn’t just simply forgive humanity for their sins without first subjecting himself to an agonizing death, a doctrine which should strike any fair-minded person as laughable.
“Second, Hell is the full, final, and eternal expression of God’s wrath. Hell was created for the Devil and his angels not mankind.”
Given that the Bible teaches that the majority of humanity will end up there (Matthew 7:13), I fail to see what difference this makes.
“Third, the message that Jesus taught was and still is unique, He did not “teach proverbs identical to those of the other belief systems of the day.””
This is an extremely uninformed claim, though I’m not surprised that a Christian apologist would assiduously steer clear of evidence showing his belief system was not as unique as he’d like to think it is. There is nothing particularly new or original about any of Jesus’ teachings. The idea of Hell came to Christianity from Judaism by way of Zoroastrianism and the Greek polytheistic religions - the gospels even depict Jesus as using the word “Hades”, the Greek underworld, to describe it several times. The idea of a divine savior dying and rising again, and human beings finding salvation through that act, was also not original to Christianity but was a common theme of many mystery religions of the day. Gods like Tammuz, Osiris, Inanna, and the Dioscuri are other examples of mystery-religion saviors, some of them long predating Jesus, that are claimed to have performed such an act. And Jesus’ moral teachings, too, are not particularly original. Teachings like hose about loving your enemies and the blessings bestowed upon the poor were taught by groups like the Cynics, a movement of wandering philosophers common during the day. Even Jesus’ divine status is not original to Christianity. The “Logos”, Greek for “Word”, was believed by ancient sects such as the Stoics (who first appeared around 300 BCE) to be the agent of creation and God’s intermediary with the world. Sound familiar?
The similarities between Christianity and the pagan religions of the day are so obvious and well-known that even early Christian apologists freely admitted them. That’s why first-century apologist Justin Martyr could write things like this:
“And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.”
“Fourth, in response to your statement about the “…promise to return quickly to destroy the world, and then vanish utterly for a span of time now going on two thousand years” you are measuring time in relation to your finite world not infinity.”
Again, not a disagreement with my statement, merely a substanceless retort along the lines of, “Just wait and see - you’ll be sorry!”
“Fifth, the statemetnt “,,,leaving behind no trace except for a few hazy memories and anonymous writings that he had ever been here at all” is naïve because the New Testament is the most well attested ancient book of all time. There are over 5,000 ancient documents that have survived to directly attest to its witness.”
Wayne conveniently neglects to mention when those documents are from. The very first Christian commentator who mentions the four gospels by name and states that they are authoritative is Irenaeus of Lyons, around 180 CE. Hardly a news flash. The very earliest copies *we* possess date from 300 CE, much later still, and we have no way of knowing if these copies agree with what the earliest Christians wrote and used. I freely grant that the gospels we have now are probably much the same as the ones that existed in the year 300; that tells us nothing about how much they may have changed before then or to what degree they are rooted in actual history.
Wayne, as soon as you start quoting scripture, you enter the world of circular reasoning. You’re quoting a text to prove itself. And you call the original poster an “uninformed village atheist?”
Scripture proves absolutely nothing. If you are using numbered quotes from scripture in an argument, it doesn’t qualify as anything other than an issue of literary criticism.
When you say: “Hell is the full, final, and eternal expression of God’s wrath.” or “the message that Jesus taught”
You should instead say, “in my favorite mythology, there’s a place called Hell that really scares me.” or “the character named Jesus said:”
When you say: “the New Testament is the most well attested ancient book of all time” or “The second most attested book is Homer’s Iliad”
Attestation doesn’t prove the Bible isn’t fiction. There’s no evidence whatsoever that Jesus even lived–see “The God Who Wasn’t There.” There’s no evidence whatsoever for the supernatural miracles. The Iliad is a completely different kind of book. It is respected as literature–not reality. It came mostly from the oral tradition, and we know how reliable that is.
Of course God is not going to make sense. I doubt that I would regard him as a supreme being if I was able to understand him as much as I understand another human.
Of course the Easter Bunny is not going to make sense. I doubt that I would regard him as a supreme being if I was able to understand him as much as I understand another human.
Ergo, the Easter Bunny must exist..
I like that quote. Christianity really does seem to reach the height of absurdity in some of its beliefs. The God they worship is an angry, petty man who seems to need us to fulfill his desires in order for him to be happy. Instead of us being created in God’s likeness, religion creates God in our likeness, giving him negative traits like jealousy and vengeance. Our supposed free will is given to us only so that we may make the choices that are expected of us otherwise we will be punished. I don’t see what is so loving about this.
I do believe in “God”, but not the God of religion. I think it does more harm than good by turning people away from a healthy kind of spirituality.
I know very well that christians are very capable to provide a lot of reasons and so-called evidence to let you know God exists.
I had been a Christian for more than 30 years. I am so happy not to be a Christian now. I quitted because I really felt unhappy when I was leading a Christian life. Most important of all, I could not stand anymore the Christian’s way of thinking.
I want to be honest to everybody. I am happy and free now. I will feel happy if my Christian friends share with me how God has guided, helped, or educated them. I am familiar with all styles of religious languages, which I now think are the ways to strengthen one’s belief, but not rational at all.
Once, a very kind your male-friend shared with me how she was guided by God. She said she lived with her parents very unhappily because they always quarrelled. She felt insecure and angry. She kept praying to God everyday. She was so honest to tell me that God did not change anything. Then she told me a secret. She said God was knid and all mighty. God knew what she wanted but God intended to let her get used to that unhappily family environment. She tuned her voice louder then, and told me that the bad situation was there but she had changed. She knew it was wrong for her to feel unhappy with her parents. Instead of asking God to help her parents, she asked God to escalate her ability to feel calm and happy although she was still in an noisy and unhappy. She told me that she was then much better than before.
I thank her for her sharings, and told her that I congratulate her for what she had got from God. Somehow, I thought by that time that her experience was a typical disaster for an individual to face the failure of her hope. God failed her but she had no room to complain. Her good will to ask God for a warm family had to be replaced without choice.
Examples like this kind are common in church. It’s only humans who make mistakes because of their sins. Yes, we make mistakes but the girl didn’t. Her concerns over her family was discouraged by her continuous prayers. Most christians are devoted, and do not dare to say anything negative. I feel sorry for my female friend becaue she was losing her mind.
Nice quote, I’m sure its very persuasive to someonewho isn’t familiar with religion. I agree that there are several very ironic features to christianity, thought i’m not about to put myself on a pedestal and claim that i know the unknowable. So i will simply direct this question at the athor of this quote, who is obviously far more knowledgable about the mechanics of divine entities.
I just don’t understand how anyone could comment on what behavior that “makes sense” for an infinite, omnipotent entity. Without themselves being omnipotent(having infinate influence) or omniscient(having infinate-knowledge)
Certainly nobody has that athority, the only statement that could refute christianity, would be one that proves that such a deity is impossible.
Agian you’ve found an interesting subject for debate. Keep it up!.
Rev: the problem is that the described illogical and irrational behavior of the so-called omnipotent being is much better explained by “primitive Bronze Age shepherds made it up” than by any other explanation.
Does it make any sense that you can do something (such as forgiving your children), and yet an all-powerful god can’t, unless he first incarnates as a human and “dies for their sins”? Nope. What does make sense is that, thousands of years ago, some primitive people had to come up with an explanation for something — even if that “something” was a story they themselves had invented the day before — and that was the best they could come up with.
Much like “72 dark-haired virgins” was the best reward primitive Muslims were able to think of, even though they were talking about a supposedly omnipotent god.
Rev,
If you truly believe that you must be X to understand X, as is the principle behind your assertions that we cannot speak of any aspect of this supposed “god” being or the religion that was created along with this notion of a “god” then it follows that no one understands cars. That should sound silly, but this is necessitated by your position (and since I am engaging in reductio ad absurdum, the fact that it sounds silly is the point). You see neither you nor I can run as fast as a car can go, we cannot ever experience internal combustion, we have no wheels, etc. Therefore by your argument, we cannot know or understand cars. Yet, clearly we do in fact understand cars for we have created them (just as this “god” was created, except that cars actually exist!
)
Since the argument leads to a false conclusion from all true premises, necessarily the argument form is invalid. This means that your objection to the observations about what would be required were such a being to exist, are not supported, that is to say that they fail to actually be objections at all.
But then too there are more clear and equally fatal problems such as those Pedro raises, which run along the lines of inherent contradictions. If the characteristics are to be attributed to some entity, then those characteristics must be understood by those attributing the characteristics. So since xnty does claim that this “god” has certain charateristics, they have already abandoned any support for your argument. Since we do understand the characteristics then, we can easily observe that they are inherently contradictory, therefore no such entity can possibly exist.
@ tx,
I am not a doctor, Therefore i cannot be the judge of his practice. I am not a partical physicist, and therefore cannot claim that an electrons behavior is irratic or unusual. One must have the same knowledge in order to pass judgement, otherwise you would become the critic of knowledge that you do not have. So to clairify, you need not be X to understand X, but you must know what a doctor(x) knows to judge (x)his actions.
Therefore one must know what an omnipotent being knows to state that its actions are irrational.
Sure you can judge the results of ones actions without having the same knowledge. For Example i could tell you if a mechanic j nmdid a good job of repairing my engine, by noting if it ran better or worse after the repair. But only another mechanic could state that it was irrational to replace the mass-airflow sensor without first running a diagnostic.
Because we do not know the mechanics of the afterlife, or if there is one, we cannot yet judge the actions(or results of the action) of an omnipotent being.
Once more..
If there is a Christian God, and he is omnipotent as they claim, then you must either prove his non-existance or have an equivalent knowledge.
Rev: can you prove that the gods of all the other religions don’t exist? Nope.
Are you omnipotent or omniscient? No.
I assume you believe in, and worship them all, by your own logic. Right?
“Disprove it or accept it” is simply absurd. Sorry.
Pedro:
Im agnostic, i don’t believe one way or the other.
I never said that you should believe in a god if you can’t prove it untrue. Sorry if i was misleading in my position. I just feel that its arrogance to state that one side is absurd, when the answers are unknowable. Clearly alot of scientific evidence would discredit Christianity as well as any other Blind Faith religion, unless you know that critical answer about the nature of gods existance, you have a little bit of blind faith in your own assumptions.
“Disprove it or accept it” is absurd, and that is certainly not a position i would encourage anyone to have.
Rev,
Fortunately logic and knowledge are not hamstringed as you would have us believe. You are STILL arguing that I must be X in order to comment in any fashion whatsoever upon X. The fact is that I can prove a politician to be a liar without every having been a liar or a politician. I need not experience what he experiences or have the power he has to understand the concepts of honesty and coercion.
With the notions of “god” you have (and in this case you explicitely cite) omnipotence, which it inherently and necessarily contradictory. I do not have to *be* omnipotent in order to know this, for all I need to know is 1. basic sound reasoning, 2. the meaning of “omnipotence” and 3. what constitutes a contradiction.
Fortunately I, and countless others, have these characteristics so we stand as very clear counter-examples to your claims, thus proving conclusively that your claims are simply false.
There is simply no identity relationship necessary for understanding any particular characteristic. If this were true, then it would never be possible to recognize that any other has any ability which you do not have. I can understand a great artist without having his vision or talent. I can understand the mechanic without being a mechanic. I can understand the irrational lunatic without being a lunatic myself.
What you are doing is arguing for accepting the conclusion as axiomatically true, as well as trying to grant special privilege to xnty that is not granted to any other position. The rules of reason work equally for all subjects, so we cannot simply stipulate that one subject is off limits and beyond question.
All the information I know represents a tiny sliver of all the information that could exist in the world. Is it possible that in the rest of the information there might be evidence that God is real?
Not when the very notion of a god is self contradictory and literally nonsensical. No amount of knowledge will cause x to equal not x, or for circles to be square.
I have posted a reply TX’ to your position, it is rather long, so i have posted it on my own blog. The title of the post is called the philosophy of contradiction. I hope you will rad and reply as i have included your last reply directed at me in the post, in order to present the other side of the argument to my readers.
Again i have posted another link to your blog, I try to encourage everyone to visit due to your abundance of good debate topics.
read[quote comment="11347"]I hope you will rad and reply….[/quote]
*read* not rad
Rev, out of pure courtesy I visited your blog and quickly again refuted your claims. You still have not addressed the issues raised. If you wish to engage me any further on this, how about going over to the forum?
[quote post="231"]Again i have posted another link to your blog[/quote]
Hey, I thought this blog was mine!
TX is right on this. I have no problem with a discussion of the subject of the original post, but I think the current discussion has deviated somewhat from it. To start new threads, the Way of the Mind Forum is the right place.
One other thing: this entire post of mine is a quote (which I like quite a lot) from another site, Daylight Atheism (written by the same author as Ebon Musings, and one of my favorite atheism-related blogs). You may possibly want to talk to the source, so, again, here is the original post.
As a wannabe jewish convert, I left Christianity because it mad god look like some mean pointless asshole. Basically to put it, Christian believe that if you don’t know or believe in Jesus you will burn in hell.-fact
Now lets say some random guy off the streets kicks your ass because you don’t know his mother. That would be a bad reason why to kick somebody ass.
to comparision, to throw somebody in hell because they don’t believe in jesus or don’t know him would be a bad reason to throw people in hell. Besides, it says in the old testament that jeses can’t be the messiah because he didn’t build the first temple, and he isn’t related to King David on his father side, because he has no father-male(not god, god has no gender) side. done. I said it. Oh yeah, Atheist, if your going to be atheist focus on all religions, not just one perticular one.
JWM-
[quote post="231"]Oh yeah, Atheist, if your going to be atheist focus on all religions, not just one perticular one.[/quote]
I assure you we do. Christianity is just all over the place. A lot of us grew up Christian, and know it’s horrible flaws, (one of which you point out above), and frankly it’s pushed in everybody’s face more than any other religion.
Just because you don’t see us pointing out flaws in Judaism, doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t.
It appears that you are arguing a strawman since the non-existence of a god is not focused upon a particular notion of a god.
This guy hit the nail on the head.
No matter what you’re reasoning for God doing this….
We’re suggesting that an all powerful and omnipotent God can’t forgive sins without a human sacrifice. As a former Presbyterian minister of mine once said, “I am not a fan of the sacrificial view of Christianity as it suggests a limit it Gods power”.. and even hints that this need for a sacrifice shows ‘weakness compared to Satan”
The point it, how could an all powerful God require a human sacrifice to forgive mankind of sin.. Or as some would say the original sin. Add to this that this ’son’ was also God incarnate. The saying is that “god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son” but he actually gave himself? Raised himself from the dead to sit at the right hand side of himself in heaven? Jesus did not say that he was God(maybe hinted at in John, but John is the least credible of the gospels in my opinion(and many scholars)
Remember, at this time, it was practice to offer burnt offering to Gods in forgiveness of sins. Jesus on the cross was intended as the sacrificial lamb, so that by believing in him, we don’t need to sacrifice animals in the temples anymore! But this wasn’t just a human sacrifice? It was a deity! The sinless man/god.
And what a coincidence that ‘man/gods’ were kind of popular in that region in that time period… both before and after the time of Christ? Many were born around the winter solstice and raised from the dead at the vernal equinox. Some were nailed to a cross or tree.
Now, do I take anything away from the teachings of Christ? No, certainly not! Yes, he teachings were very much like other belief systems, but his teachings were to show the corruptions of the Jewish faith at the time and how to live God’s kingdom on earth, to love one another, and supply a helping hand to EVERYONE..
The selling of sacrificial animals for profit in the Temple? The corruption of the pharoses and priests, spending time helping those that other Jews cast aside, the prostitutes, lepers, etc. OK, I’ve ready it all, and studied this stuff all my life. It’s my view that the ‘pre-Easter’ Jesus was simply a man who was trying to change the wrongs of the church, he gained a following, and angered the roman authorities by tossing over the tables in the temple on Passover! That would get you crucified in a heartbeat! And it did. His followers who expected a messiah were heartbroken; their world had collapses, so they started to build the ‘post Easter’ Jesus, full of legends. The found vague scriptures in the Old Testament as signs of Jesus, many of them obviously had different meaning. They created a myth that was very similar to other beliefs at the time!
Jesus rose from the dead! Jesus did miracles! Hey.. Maybe Jesus was like this other guy that was crucified and was raised from the dead! Maybe he was like this man/god we heard about. They believed it. Jesus message was lost in a pagan sacrificial man/god myth! In addition, when the church was recognized by Rome, it was ‘integrated’ to include pagan beliefs! The winter solstice birth (darkest day of the year, after birth, the days get longer as the ‘light’ is in the world), and dead at the vernal equinox, a time of rebirth! (Come on, the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox? how Pagan is that!). Even worship on Sunday doesn’t make sense, except when you consider that Constantine allowed Sunday for worship due to the “SUN” god Apollo! You have a Son, a SUN, SUNDAY. Prior to this is was SATURDAY.. the SABBATH. Wow, even the image of Jesus is nothing like in the bible but much more resembles the Greek or roman Gods in their long hair and white faces (Jesus had short dark wooly hair according to the bible). Some say that Jesus image was modeled after the great statue of Zeus!(one of the 7 ancient wonders of the world) making him easier to accept by the Pagans!
Once the church was recognized, Councils were formed to decide what the beliefs were and what documents would be accepted. Certain documents were thrown out, and some suggest were destroyed whenever possible (it’s suggested that this maybe the reason for arson in the great library at Alexandria!, conspiracy theory?) This is where the Creeds we recite on Sunday come from! “I believe in one god, the father, the son, the holy spirit and that Jesus died, decended into hell and was raised on the third day to sit at the right hand of God”.
Oh! Wait! third day? How is that possible, Mark, Mathew and Luke say he was crucified on Friday.. he died before sundown(start of the Sabbath). That would put him as being dead 1 day and rose on the second night. Is that three days? Bad math! John puts the sacrifice on a Thursday(and waives the last supper for a foot washing) This was to coincide his sacrifice with that of the Passover lamb, but still only gives us 2 full says and 2.5 nights, MAYBE I’ll give you that he was raised before the start of the third day.. If you believe John over the three synoptic gospels!
Ever see Penn and Tellers Bulls**t? They had a good point about the legend of Elvis. He died but there are people today that swear he’s still alive, didn’t do drugs. Legends and stories survive despite whether they’re read or not. Sometimes, we lose the point behind the legend.. to love one another and help each other get through this thing called life. Elvis was a great performer; Jesus was a GREAT man with a message worth living by. As long as you can weed through the hocus pocus, much as Thomas Jefferson did in his abridged version of the bible.. then we’re OK.
Skip to the dark ages.. Who copied the works of Josephus, the Jewish historian? This is often given as proof that Jesus existed at all. First of all, he wasn’t even born until 60 years or so after Jesus death, so his writings were a little out of date. Second, the writings appear to be our of place, the style and location don’t match up with the surrounding text, and to just say “this man was the messiah” in between the documentation of two thieves? Doesn’t the messiah warrant more than two sentences? Why that is some older copies of his works don’t have these mentions of Jesus? I’ll tell you why, because Monks made copies of the old works, NO PRINTING PRESS.. so once the original was changed and discarded, it becomes the new reality(think of the movie memento, what he wrote on the photos became his memories, so once he lied to himself once, all his future were based on this original lie.)
But why lie? Isn’t Jesus great enough as a ’son’, someone who shows us how to deliver Gods kingdom here on earth? Why do we need to exaggerate what he said or what he stood for?
I attend services, but I do it for the message of helping others(and my wife makes me), I do it to make this world a better place, and because I believe that the actions of a ‘group’ of people to help those less fortunate IS “God”, whether a supreme being exists or not, there is a little “God” in everyone, and when we come together to do good, that is when we do “Gods Work”… whether we do it in the name of God or not.
But in the end, the original statement that God came to earth to live as a man so that he could suffer and die so that he couhanld raise himself from the dead to sit by the right hand of himself in heaven so that God can have the power to forgive us and grant us eternal life.. Is so blasphemous (in my opinion) and just plane offensive. I cringe every time I hear the statements of faith. I do not recite what I do not believe.. and swallow the rest for the sake of my wife.
I’m convinced that many people struggle with believing what is difficult to believe. People come to church for different reasons. It’s difficult to believe, and you HAVE to suspend logic. I’ve searched all my life, but the deeper I look, the less evidence there is for this being real. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING falls the side of BS. The argument that some things ‘had to happen” because why else would he get a following if it wasn’t true. Is as bad as saying that were created as is by God because we’re too complex to have happened by chance(it didn’t it evolved.) Try this our. Does Big Foot exist? Can you say that he ‘must’ exist despite any evidence just because some people swear on their life that he does?
All this being said.. Some people find that this is everything in their life. It gives them a sense of belonging, a purpose in life, a rock to give support in the toughest times of life. Imaginary(or not) Gods never fail to be there when you need them. He can give hope, love, or even keep you in line by fearing eternal damnation.. all depending on your viewpoint and your needs.. So I say to you.. celebrate your faith! if this is your faith, and it helps you, please; don’t let me tell you otherwise. I’m just stating here the very essence of my trouble with this faith. The only thing I ask is that you in turn, do the same for me. Respect my views and I’ll respect yours. After all.. didn’t Jesus teach us to respect one another? Love your enemies, he even approaches gentiles/non Jews. Love for everyone as aren’t we ALL God’s people?
That’s all for now.. hope that made sense.