uummm… I take that means you don’t want to talk about it. OK. I’m cool.
In a gratuitous, baseless, pointless, illogical, fictitious sense… yes.
It actually is a bad story. Full of plot holes and everything.
That said, there’s little point in coming into a thread about whether Harry Potter actually needed to die to beat Voldemort, just to complain that the books are silly.
What?! Man, thanks a fucking lot. 
Sigh.
The interesting thing about this ‘spoiler’ is, there’s little chance that it would assist someone unfamiliar with the books in any way in predicting the events therein.
Somewhat similarly (well, vaguely similarly), to reference the questions that lekatt posted, somebody who heard that “Jesus sacrificed himself for us” would be hard-pressed to guess that Jesus actually sacrificed himself to his father to save us from his father, because his father saw benefit in the bloody, otherwise pointless suffering and death of his son, and somehow that single bloody death pushed him across the line from “tortue everybody mercilessly forever” to “forgive (certain) people and let them live happily ever after”.
Yeah, I understand your point. In a thread about whether Jesus dying was meaningful, I should expect to have the plot of Harry Potter disclosed.
Again I apologize, and again, I think that if you think I’ve just laid out the remaining plot of that story, you may be in for a surprise or three…
I haven’t read anywhere close to this entire thread, so I’ll sum it up as quickly as I can. Short version.
Basically:
Pre-Christ
Humanity....................................................God
Post-Christ
Humanity-Death of Christ-God
To put it in words, the only way humanity could form a link with God is through the death of Jesus. (According to Jesus)
If you’re not a Christian, then his death is wasted on you.
Why can’t God form a link without killing a hippie? I thought he was all powerful.
I hope your ignorance is purposeful, to propose something like that.
God didn’t kill anybody, in fact out of his love for you, he sent himself down in the form of a gifted man (divine, miracles, etc) and let himself be crucified for YOUR sins…the tear that humanity’s sins left was so large that only God himself could patch it up. Since He makes the rules, He decided that He could take credit for all of our sins - and died on the cross.
So, you have to thank Jesus and offer your forgiveness, for Jesus is God. That’s how the link is formed.
Why couldn’t he patch it up without killing a hippie? Seriously, protesting that the hippie was God in human form doesn’t really answer the question. Why does God need a sacrifice to save people from himself? Why couldn’t he just go ahead and decide not to be a dickbag?
Also what, exactly are “sins,” and how can they have any effect on an omnimax God? Why are they his business?
If God really did decide to come to earth as a hippie and commit suicide to save people from himself, why hasn’t he ever bothered to prove it?
Your user name is kind of humorous in light of your preaching, by the way? Does Jesus approve of the chronic?
See, this is the sort of discussion where bringing in an entirely different religion is useful. Let’s take a look at Jesus versus Odin, and see who’s sacrifices are more meaningful as actions of the gods.
Jesus: He is God, so he has access to all that is known and knowable. He get’s beaten up for a bit, nailed to a cross, stabbed and dies. He goes to Hell for a bit. A day and a half later (dies late Friday, rises early Sunday), he’s back. He heads off to a paradise of a heaven. So, yeah, he has some suffering, but he knows (being omniscient and all) that he only has a short time of suffering coming before he gets to live out the rest of eternity in resplendent glory. And really, for what? He dies so that men can be free to break the rules that he (being god) set up in the first place. All he really had to do was say “You know what, that whole punishment thing is off. Come on up to heaven and let’s party.” and the same thing would have been accomplished.
Odin: He’s got two big sacrifices to talk about. First, he comes upon the well of knowledge. In order to know what is to come, he must make a sacrifice, so he plucks out his own eyeball and throws it in. In exchange for this, he is given all the knowledge that the well can give – chief among this is the fact that Ragnarok is to come and that he will perish in it. Talk about a kick in the balls! Second is a similar experience to Jesus’s. In order to gain knowledge of writing, he hangs himself from a tree, pierces himself with his own spear, and stays there for days. Just as he’s about to die, he reaches back and grasps the Runes and brings them back with him. For a similar amount of suffering that Jesus went through, at least Odin brings something useful, writing, to the world, rather than just forgiveness from arbitrary rules that he created and could just as easily undo with a word.
So, was Jesus’s death on the cross meaningful? Not a chance in hell.
He loves us, and all he wants is to be loved back. He could have programmed us to love him, obey him, without question. But ask yourself; would you prefer a son who loved you, or a son forced to love you?
Sins earn you a ticket to Hell. Everyone sins - if you’ve never sinned, you’re divine. Greed, gluttony, pride, envy, wrath, sloth and lust are sins. I’m not gonna explain them out to you. And he did prove it. He rose from the dead 3 days after dying.
As for smoking the herb, that is something else. Considering marijuana is simply a plant, I personally don’t see anything wrong with inhaling the results of applying heat to this plant.
Actually, Jesus did not know his own fate. Nor did he ever go to Hell. He was divine, he had never commited a sin in his lifetime. He didn’t want to throw billions of lives into the pits of Hell, to suffer for eternity, when He could save them. But He didn’t want to simply guarantee your entry to Heaven, so he gave you the choice. I don’t like your tone, by the way.
Also, if he created the entire universe, show a little respect for him, eh?
EDIT: Nobody has ever been to Hell, every soul is waiting for judgement day. Forgot about that.
“Love me or burn forever” isn’t “forcing” people ? And I see no reason to think God ( assuming it actual existed ) likes us, much less loves us. Neither the real world nor God’s supposed actions are consistent with love.
According to his followers, with no evidence it ever actually happened. That’s not proof.
Prometheus went through even worse than that for saving mankind from destruction and giving them fire. He had to be chained to a mountain and have his liver endlessly eaten by an eagle then regenerated and eaten again.
The Gospels don’t say say Jesus even went to hell for a second. Jesus said on the cross that he would be in Paradise that very day. He basically had one bad day.
If you don’t realize your God loves you, I feel sorry for you. This world is all you’re gonna get, and this world we live in is a ****hole.
If anything, you should be thankful that God even warned you what will happen if you don’t love him.
If I were you, I’d check this site out for evidence www.y-jesus.com
One bad day? If I created the universe, I wouldn’t have a single bad day.
Prometheus never existed…
I’ve had this question ever since I heard about the “He died for our sins” as a kid. It just doesn’t make much sense. He makes the rules (he’s omnipotent), so why doesn’t he change them to make everyone “saved” without having to become human and get crucified?
One way that it possibly could make sense is the following (I’m pretty sure this is theologically bogus) :
[ul]
[li]God is omnipotent, but cannot control humans because of “free will” (assume, for the sake of argument, that free will exists)[/li][li]He wants to get them to be nice to each other[/li][li]By knowing human nature, he knows that one way to get humans to be nice to each other would be for them to start believing in a specific religion[/li][li]He also knows that one thing that will get this religion off the ground is a major event that will shock people and be talked about for centuries to come: That event is being resurrected from the dead.[/li][li]So, he comes to Earth, gets killed, then is resurrected, and the religion does indeed take hold and spread[/li][/ul]
So, it’s possible the death of Jesus did not directly save humans, but indirectly, by helping spread Christianity throughout the world, Jesus’ death is helping save humans*
It’s almost like if you were a computer programmer and you design a game like The Sims, and you want the characters to change their behavior in a certain way. You could go and change the code, compile it, and start the simulation again from scratch, but that would be a hassle, and you know, based on your knowledge of the code, that another way to get them to behave a certain way is for you to immerse yourself in that world by getting an avatar and going around and doing “miracles” using the equivalent of the sudo command.
- Of course, there are many holes with this “explanation”, e.g. why didn’t Jesus, after his resurrection, go to many crowded places and show everyone that he was in fact resurrected. That would surely convince more people than simply showing himself to his disciples. But then again, given human nature, it is possible that that was not the best/fastest way to spread Christianity.
Psst. Might want to check your math.
What, so you’re saying that god isn’t omniscient?
That’ll be quite the shock to the millions of Christians (and others) who could recite for you the Apostle’s Creed by heart.
Even if that’s the case, there was still no need for all the drama. He could have made his hand-waving conditional and still skipped out on his lost weekend.
Aw, that one really hurts. :rolleyes:
If? If? Did you just dare to question that? Guess you better get ready for your trip to hell for blaspheming so!!!