Good Reason

[Zzyzx]

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From the Internet

http://www.goodreasonblog.com/2015/12/c ... nt-is.html

Added question for debate and moved from General Chat to C&A upon request from others.

Does the story of God (or part of God) sacrificing himself to himself (or another part of himself) to atone for "sins" of humans make ANY sense?

[Elijah John]

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From the Internet

http://www.goodreasonblog.com/2015/12/c ... nt-is.html

As the apostle Paul said "He who knew no sin was made sin for us" The doctrine of the substitionary/vicarious atonement. It makes NO sense.

Good flow chart/cartoon. Illustrates some of the problems with that doctrine. Did you write this Z?

As a Theist though, I see couple of problems with the chart, God didn't "create" sin, God created humans with free will...sin is an abuse of free will. Sin is not part of God's will.

Secondly, the whole upholding justice thing. The principle of justice does not negate the the fact that God is the source of justice. We Theists see justice as ultimately coming from God and not an independent thing. For us, it is part of God's character.

Having said that, it is UNjust to:

a) kill an innocent for someone else
b) to have no sense of proportional punishment, (ie the eternal death penalty for every sin no matter how minor. Even the OT doesn't do that!
c) to create imperfect people, and then to punish them for being imperfect

to name just three.

And it would also be unjust to ascribe these miscarraiges of justice to God (even the God of the Bible) and then to mischaracterize that as "justice".

As Thomas Paine declared, "there can be no greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man, to the orders of the Almighty." Or words to that effect.

[Divine Insight]

Without a doubt this is the core issue with Christianity. If they want to claim that Jesus was the sacrificial ransom that was paid for our sins, then they need to explain who the ransom was paid to.

That should be an extremely simple thing for them to explain. But they can't explain it because it makes no sense no matter how we try to resolve it.

If they claim that the ransom was paid to Satan, then we have this God desperately appeasing Satan who would necessarily need to be a real threat to God. Otherwise what sense does it make that Satan could even demand a ransom from God?

So any attempt to claim that the ransom was paid to Satan necessarily fails unless they want to claim that Satan is more powerful than God that would allow Satan to demand a ransom from God.

The only other "all-powerful" entity in this story is God himself. But if God is demanding the ransom then as the cartoon suggests, God himself would be the scumbag. So that's not going to work either.

And as had also been brought up in the cartoon, even if Jesus death was some sort of ransom that had been paid to a scumbag, the ransom would have bounced three days later when Jesus was resurrected, and given eternal life which is the reward for the most holy.

We can't have Jesus being both the ransom for sin and obtaining the greatest reward of all saints simultaneously. That is an extreme self-contradiction.

The fable cannot be made to make sense. No one has ever justified this Christian tale. Nor can it be justified.

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Also, trying to claim that the Old Testament didn't demand death for petty sins cannot be maintained either. The old Testament most certainly did demand that people be stoned to death for nothing more than collecting wood on the Sabbath.

Getting rid of Christianity isn't going to save the Old Testament. The Old Testament has its own similar problems of a self-contradictory God who at one moment commands men "Thou Shalt Not Kill", and then continues to instruct them on how they are to stone each other to death for every little petty thing.

The Old Testament was already dead in the water long before Christianity was ever invented.

There is no excuse for this self-contradictory mythological tale at any point along the way. It fails in the Garden of Eden, and then just continues to fail more profoundly as it continues on after that.

[Elijah John]

Without a doubt this is the core issue with Christianity. If they want to claim that Jesus was the sacrificial ransom that was paid for our sins, then they need to explain who the ransom was paid to.

That should be an extremely simple thing for them to explain. But they can't explain it because it makes no sense no matter how we try to resolve it.

If they claim that the ransom was paid to Satan, then we have this God desperately appeasing Satan who would necessarily need to be a real threat to God. Otherwise what sense does it make that Satan could even demand a ransom from God?

So any attempt to claim that the ransom was paid to Satan necessarily fails unless they want to claim that Satan is more powerful than God that would allow Satan to demand a ransom from God.

The only other "all-powerful" entity in this story is God himself. But if God is demanding the ransom then as the cartoon suggests, God himself would be the scumbag. So that's not going to work either.

And as had also been brought up in the cartoon, even if Jesus death was some sort of ransom that had been paid to a scumbag, the ransom would have bounced three days later when Jesus was resurrected, and given eternal life which is the reward for the most holy.

We can't have Jesus being both the ransom for sin and obtaining the greatest reward of all saints simultaneously. That is an extreme self-contradiction.

The fable cannot be made to make sense. No one has ever justified this Christian tale. Nor can it be justified.

~~~~~~

Also, trying to claim that the Old Testament didn't demand death for petty sins cannot be maintained either. The old Testament most certainly did demand that people be stoned to death for nothing more than collecting wood on the Sabbath.

Getting rid of Christianity isn't going to save the Old Testament. The Old Testament has its own similar problems of a self-contradictory God who at one moment commands men "Thou Shalt Not Kill", and then continues to instruct them on how they are to stone each other to death for every little petty thing.

The Old Testament was already dead in the water long before Christianity was ever invented.

There is no excuse for this self-contradictory mythological tale at any point along the way. It fails in the Garden of Eden, and then just continues to fail more profoundly as it continues on after that.

Excellent points, but I blame all this on Paul, his twisted intepretation of the martyrdom of Jesus. I do not blame Jesus for this teaching. The few references in the Synoptics that SEEM To support this kind of thinking are the result of Paul's influence on these Gospels.

And even John does not explicity teach that Jesus death was a "ransom payment" for sin, only that God GAVE his only begotten Son.

It is only Paul who said: He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us".

But giving us Jesus by virtue of his birth is still giving his only begotten Son. To teach and to heal, and lead by example.

And I think both the story and you DI alluded to this. If Jesus DID pay for our sins, wouldn't he still have to be in the grave? After all, the wages of sin is death, according to Paul.

This is not to trivialize the horrendous ordeal of the crucifixion, but that martyrdom was not a "ransom payment". Jesus simply died for his beliefs, and it is left to the observer, contemporary or future, to ascribe meaning to it, (or not) and not to depend on Paul's interpretation.

And I agree, the OT can be harsh. But the death penalty is not prescribed for EVERY infraction of the Law...but granted, for the major ones, and even SOME which we moderns consider minor. Some, but not all.

[Divine Insight]

But giving us Jesus by virtue of his birth is still giving his only begotten Son. To teach and to heal, and lead by example.

Even that paradigm makes no sense in this religion. Jesus was hardly a very good example of how to live. To the contrary, he was actually a very bad example.

Moreover, any God who would have arranged this would need to be seriously insane. Let's not lose sight of the fact that a God who actually arranged to have his son born through a virgin mortal woman to teach and set examples for mankind, would also necessarily have had to have been the who who orchestrated and condoned the crucifixion of Jesus.

Why? Because there would be no excuse for why God would have needed to allow this to happen had it not been his "Ultimate Plan". We can't have this God sending Jesus to earth to teach and be an example to men and then have men crucifying Jesus and God saying. "Oh NO! I didn't mean for that to happen. I guess I have no choice now but to work that into my plans."

Sorry, but that doesn't stand as a rational explanation. We can't have this God jumping through the hoops of mortal corrupt priests.

Besides, you keep leaning back on the Old Testament like as if it makes some sort of sense. But the Old Testament has it own indefensible problems.

The very story of an "innocent" Adam and Eve who don't yet have the knowledge of good and evil being "guilty" of falling from grace to obtain this knowledge, it an indefensible oxymoron in its own right.

And then we can't ignore the Old Testament having this God repent that he had ever created humans when he had to drown them out in a flood.

That is not in harmony with a God who supposedly has a "Master Plan" and knows what he is doing. If this God had a "Master Plan" that is actually unfolding as he had planned then the Great Flood would have necessarily had to be part of that plan. Thus the Biblical God should have rejoiced that he had to drown humans out because that would mean that "His Master Plan" was going only just as expected.

The Old Testament is filled with its own absurdities and logical contradictions.

So you can't "save" Christianity by leaning on the Old Testament. The Old Testament has already proven to be quicksand itself. There is no "rock" there to lean on.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 5 by Divine Insight]

It is no surprise that prohets are killed. Jesus says as much in the 8th beattitude, as well in his lament for Jerusalem as a city that "kills the prophets".

He speaks of his predecessors...he likely knew what he was getting into.

If some humans want to go against the tide of God's will, and even kill His messengers, that does not mean the messenger OR message is wrong.

The Old Testament should be read in the context of it's times. It was an even more brutal time, and the humans that wrote it reflect those conditions. But they were evolving in Spirit and in Reason. (The trend is noticable from Moses to the Prophets, culminating in the NT prophets, John the Baptist, and Jesus)

Despite it's flaws, the OT is more straightforward than the NT, thanks to Paul's twisted speculations and theological gymnastics.

[Divine Insight]

Despite it's flaws, the OT is more straightforward than the NT.

In what way is the OT more "straightforward"?

Straightforward about what?

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Also, if you claim that the OT was straightforward, whilst the NT is not, then why would this God have inspired the writing of the NT? What kind of a "message" would that be?

Why should this God have any need to send any more messages to humanity if he had already made things straightforwardly clear in the OT?

[Elijah John]

Despite it's flaws, the OT is more straightforward than the NT.

In what way is the OT more "straightforward"?

Straightforward about what?

~~~~~

Also, if you claim that the OT was straightforward, whilst the NT is not, then why would this God have inspired the writing of the NT? What kind of a "message" would that be?

Why should this God have any need to send any more messages to humanity if he had already made things straightforwardly clear in the OT?

I believe that's how He works, prophet upon prophet, progressive revelation.

The OT is harsh, I agree...but is the NT less so? After all, the doctrine of the eternal torture of hell is a New Testament teaching, not an OT teaching.

The OT is more straightforward in that it posits a single God, not the nacent Tritheism or high Christologies.

The OT teaches simple repentance and forgiveness, not substitutionary atonement, as illustrated in the OP.

[Divine Insight]

The OT teaches simple repentance and forgiveness, not substitutionary atonement, as illustrated in the OP.

Where do you come up with this claim? The OT did indeed demand the blood sacrifices of animals to atone for sins. In fact, it described in extreme detail precisely how various sacrifices must be done.

So your claim that the OT doesn't teach atonement via the substitution of animal blood sacrifices is unsupportable.

This was a major reason that caused me to become highly suspicious of the Bible way back when I was still studying it as a Christian. I couldn't understand why an all-wise God would be commanding people to sacrifice animals to atone for their sins instead of simply demanding that they make restitution for the wrongs they have done.

It was actually the OT that convinced me that the God of Christianity cannot possibly be real. By the time I got back up to the NT I was already thoroughly convinced that the God of the OT could not possibly be real.

The position you continually offer to put Jesus up on a pedestal based upon the OT God, is a totally futile position as far as I'm concerned. You may as well be trying to use mythologies of Zeus or Thor to support Jesus on a pedestal.

The Old Testament God is in no shape to be "saving Jesus".

As I have already stated, you can't use the OT as a rock to lean on because the OT is already nothing but quicksand. There is nothing there to lean on. You keep demanding that there is, but the OT itself doesn't support your claims.

[Elijah John]

The OT teaches simple repentance and forgiveness, not substitutionary atonement, as illustrated in the OP.

Where do you come up with this claim? The OT did indeed demand the blood sacrifices of animals to atone for sins. In fact, it described in extreme detail precisely how various sacrifices must be done.

So your claim that the OT doesn't teach atonement via the substitution of animal blood sacrifices is unsupportable.

This was a major reason that caused me to become highly suspicious of the Bible way back when I was still studying it as a Christian. I couldn't understand why an all-wise God would be commanding people to sacrifice animals to atone for their sins instead of simply demanding that they make restitution for the wrongs they have done.

It was actually the OT that convinced me that the God of Christianity cannot possibly be real. By the time I got back up to the NT I was already thoroughly convinced that the God of the OT could not possibly be real.

The position you continually offer to put Jesus up on a pedestal based upon the OT God, is a totally futile position as far as I'm concerned. You may as well be trying to use mythologies of Zeus or Thor to support Jesus on a pedestal.

The Old Testament God is in no shape to be "saving Jesus".

As I have already stated, you can't use the OT as a rock to lean on because the OT is already nothing but quicksand. There is nothing there to lean on. You keep demanding that there is, but the OT itself doesn't support your claims.

Micah 6.6-8
Hosea 6.6
1 Samuel 15.22
Psalm 50.8-13
Jeremiah 7.21-24
Psalm 40.6
Hosea 14.2
Psalm 51.16-17
Ezekiel 18. 27-28
Psalm 141.1-2
Psalm 79.9
Proverbs 16.6

Granted the Bible is contradictory on this matter. The priestly tradition, Moses and Aaron, demand blood on behalf of YHVH.

Not so the Prophets. The Prophets (as demonstrated by the above verses) call for repentance and the qualities that go along with repentance. Things such as mercy, thanksgiving, humility, knowledge of God...THESE things atone for sin according the Prophets and the Psalmist.

And if you note, these verses often indicate that God wants these things INSTEAD of sacrifice, not in additon TO sacrifice. And in some cases, even abhors blood. Phrases such as repentance being BETTER THAN sacrifice, clearly indicate YHVH's preference.