Not in the sense that someone like Thor or Hermes is a god.
That doesn’t help. Why would it not be in the same sense?
Since Jesus had no earthly father, he could only be half God,unless men humans are also gods. He would have no human male hormones etc. Many years ago the word God seems to be different than we look at it today, according to the writers of History there were many men who were called God, sort of a person with power not a supreme being.
I think you’re confused because you believe that if we define something as one thing, it cannot also meet the definition of another thing. Do we Christians believe that God became man (fully, including a human body, mind, and soul)? Yes. Do we believe that he ceased to be God in doing so? No. Do we believe that he left his power, and had to call upon it from himself? Yes?
If it helps, remember the doctrine of the Trinity. It was not easy for Christians to accept, either, yet most all Christians in the world were and still are driven to it. God’s rules are definitely not ours. He’s something utterly unlike man, yet more like man than anything else we really know of.
I’d rather argue that the majority of Christians, if they actually care and have tried at all, don’t grasp the concept of the Trinity as defined by their clergy/theologians. Ask any run-of-the-mill Christian to explain it, and I’m sure most couldn’t do it to any meaningful extent. At least I never could, neither as a former catholic nor as a current atheist.
Perhaps. At a bare minimum, we have theologians ready to explain if anyone asks, and if not, they can live quite well with the basic commandments. Of course, if more people did ask, we’d probably have fewer atheists.
Speaking as an agnostic raised in a fundamental Baptist home - accepting the story for the sake of discussion:
If your father is god, rising from the dead is less impressive than dying to start with.
Do you really think that of all things, this complicated, highly theological and IMHO far-fetched doctrine can be a major attraction for atheists to become Christian? Nah, I don’t think so.
The other way 'round, sah. Most of the people I know who became atheists were faithful enough in youth. It was usually in their teen years that they started drifting away, not because of any new information or a real change in belief, but because they simply got distracted. Life was happening, and they wanted in on it. If they were of an intellectual bent, they never bothered to study Christianity.
Eventually… they forget, and then imagine they were outgrowing something childish. I suppose, in a way, they did. They outgrew their young Christianity. Most never stopped to ask if there might be an adult Christianity.
But in direct response to you, I would also point out that every discipine is frankly complicated, highly arcane, and usually far-fetched on ths surface to those who don’t investigate it, Physics, chemistry, economics, psychology, literature - I find any of those more difficult to grasp than Theology.
I see that this tangent gets more and more away from the OP, but allow me one last time to reply.
That’s interesting, because in my personal experience (and that of many others), it was just the other way around. In my childhood and early adolescence, I very much took everything for granted that was taught to me about the catholic faith, but later, when the really complicated theological questions like yes, the Trinity, were discussed, I soon realized that not much of what I was told to believe could hold water, and I soon became an atheist. Only after that I really began to study the Bible and extra-biblical Christian doctrine and was confirmed time after time that “adult Christianity” was mostly incomprehensible at best, stupid and dangerous at worst.
I disagree. For instance, my discipline is electrical engineering and IT, and though I’ve one time or the other attributed all kinds of qualifiers like hard, frustrating, complicated etc. to it, I never considered it in any way arcane or far-fetched. This goes for many other fields of knowledge, whereas theology in special (and maybe, to an extent, philosophy, at least metaphysics) often requires me to accept non sequiturs that don’t exist in scientific and technical areas.
It’s a fatalistic religion that has torture and suffering at the center of its ideology.
Meaning, people should believe that they are worthless, evil and they should suffer, and they have a god to look up to a god that suffered too, therefore suffering should be a path to religious actualization.
You should have asked this during the Middle Ages with the dozens of Christian cults that went around self-abusing themselves to prove they were unworthy as people in this life but by suffering their god may accept them in their imaginary heaven.
There’s another major Abrahamic religion where believers still abuse themselves in public display to this day.
Human torture is a strong bond in religion – as it is in some political ideologies too, like conservatism.
Sad.
Why does it make no sense? Is it because a human can’t be divine?
Sorry, but I’m not understanding your point. Are you saying in order for something to be true it has to make sense?
I would guess that in some cases it’s because the crucifixion is a tangible event amongst a lot spirituality.
As a current believer, I would have no problem with that.
But here’s something I haven’t seen – or managed to miss – in this thread: I was taught that Jesus not only died a hideous physical death, He died with the weight of the whole world’s sins on his shoulders. I speculate that that has got to be a very special – and unique – pain in it’s own right.
Perhaps. I don’t know enough about why the Roman Catholic church (at least) chooses to have an image of the crucified Jesus in every church and reform churches display the empty cross. Referencing what I said above, perhaps the “Bench Press This” image would be a good one as well.
ETA: As you might guess, I have a pretty open attitude towards what others believe. I try not to judge.
Or perhaps More!
I was under the impression that without the suffering and death there could be no ressurection
.I have seen so much suffering in others that far out weigh the suffering Jesus was to have gone through. And it still is a wonder to me why a supreme being who created humans with faults, would punish them for not knowing something, and didn’t want them to know the difference between good and evil.
Our soldiers do a greater sacrifice every day, they don’t know if they will ressurect, some though they don’t die, suffer for many years as a result of their trying to make the world a better place. One need just visit a vet’s hospital.
It would seem that some see a supreme being as cruel a game player, and as I listen to people explain why God does such things, I would say it is insulting to a good loving ,all knowing,being.
No one can say they know anything about any supreme being, it is just conjecture or belief.
I was once told a way to understand the Trinity was to think of a chunk of Lunch meat; Look at it one way and it can look like a square, then look from the top and it is round, Now, the entire piece of meat is one, if the father is represented by the whole piece,And wants to share himself he divides into half, each are of the same meat but two pieces, since this is part of him it is now the son, then the fact that both wish to share each gives part of them selve to another and forms a third piece (which now could be called the holy spirit. They are all united but separate but of the same substance, of course the Lunch meat could be baloney!
Doesn’t work, I’m vegetarian. 
Crucifixion’s a doddle.