Stoid – the questions you pose have been posed ever since our ancestors first developed enough self-realization to understand that there was something beyond what they could experience first-hand.
I am not a philosopher, but I’ll be happy to take a shot at giving my personal perspective on a few of your points.
Is it any easier to believe that everything in the universe was compressed into an inconceivably small mass and suddenly, for no reason at all, exploded and keeps expanding to this day? And that somehow one or several of the clumps of matter from this explosion had exactly the right conditions for life to develop? Let’s face it, the creation of the universe is a mystery and a miracle no matter what you believe.
The concept of a “prime mover” goes back at least to Rousseau, and was embraced by my father (the agnostic) – and they both were a lot more rational than I am.
Compelling evidence or not, I submit that there remain things for which we simply can not find a rational explanation.
And yet, if I read your earlier post correctly, at some point in your life, you chose to accept that there was a “historical” Jesus, if not a divine one.
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If you’re familiar with the Gospels, you will recall that Jesus, too, had doubts, and the night before He died, prayed for strength.
Ah, the heart of the issue.
Was the commandment not to eat from the tree cruel or hard-hearted? Was God a sadist for putting temptation in front of mankind? Only if you accept the premise that doing the right thing when you have no choice in the matter is somehow preferable to having a choice.
And once mankind chose to exercise the free will to go against the will of God, it became known as “original sin” in some Christian sects, and “sin” in the others.
Personally, I prefer to categorize “original sin” as self-centerdness – the propensity of humans to put their desire for short-term gratification above the greater good.
If we are led to sin by self-centerdness, then it stands to reason that we can only be led away from sin by selflessness. Somewhere along the line, there must have been an act so powerful that it counterbalanced the original sin of Adam and Eve, and all the sins that mankind chose to commit afterward.
Only the supreme sacrifice of a perfect person – a person who despite doubts and temptations never chose to sin – would be enough. And only the resurrection of that person could show the triumph of life (and salvation) over death (and sin). And (so the logic goes) only God in the form of a human could be that perfect, and yet choose freely to make that sacrifice. And only God would have the power of life and death to rise from the dead.
This exceedingly long response is my awkward way of saying that “believe in Jesus and you are saved” is not the point. The point is that Jesus was the culmination of all that went before.
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Good words to live by, no matter who we are or what we belive.
