I’m not arguing that. Sin depends on the action and the intent. I believe in objective morality, but not absolute morality. This thread isn’t about me however, I only popped in originally to argue against the Bible being a work of fiction ala LotR. Nobody has to believe it’s inspired by God, but calling it nonsense is a tad extreme. Alas, if I were a better scholar I would have links to back up my assumptions.
I sure hope not.
The notion of oblivion almost scares me more than Hell
How so? It’s so because of intent. When making something up, there is usually no intention to make a work of fiction co-incide with fact. When writing something and being mistaken or inaccurate, the intent is still to spread a form of truth.
As far as the OP is concerned, to sum up, they are there only Christian because Jesus died on the cross. Ergo, no crucifixion, no modern day Christianity. The question is sort of fallacious, in that it assumes that something called “Christianity” would exist somewhat as it does now if Jesus had not died on the cross, when as I pointed out in my first post, and others have alluded to, if something else had happened then it would probably have become a sect of Judaism of some sort, or Jesus would merely have been an important preacher.
As to the follow-up debates:
Again, I think this may be a bit of semantics. My point was that according to you (what you were taught, whatever) God has an objective standard on which he judges. This standard, cannot be varied by God because it’s intrinsic to God’s nature. Strike the second sentence where I reference the specifics of “absolute” versus your “objective” morality, and the point still stands. In this debate, God seems to have needed to create a loophole in order to save his own creation from eternal damnation, which seems rather odd to me.
No way, allegorical and metaphorical work doesn’t have anything at all to do with the truth, but it can still convey a powerful and specific moral message, which many of the stories in the Bible do. On the other hand, errors in transcribing or remembering when attempting to convey a literal event that is meant to be read as a historical transcript, could skew the entire document because everybody believes it was an attempt to be exactly accurate.
Either way, as pointed out above by Sunrazor, if you believe in the story as providing a correct religious message, then it doesn’t matter. If you believe it, find joy, purpose and fulfillment in believing it, and do your best to adhere to what you believe is true, then more power to you, because that’s the earthly purpose of religion for many (and then many others twist it to their own ends…)
If you dont mind me just picking this point to argue, I beg to differ. Jesus forgave sins on his own authority, which in the Jewish cultural tradition at the time, was a bold statement of his divinity. At that time, only God could forgive sins directly. Fully human, fully man mystery and what not.
Who requires forgiveness? Humanity. Why do they need forgiveness? Because God says so. Who is the only one who can forgive them? God. So what is God’s plan? To send his son to sacrifice himself for humanity’s sins. Who requires a sacrifice? God does.
I suggest what ‘more’ was needed was for God to just get over himself and
Bloody submit button and 5 minute limit for editing! :mad: Replace the above with this.
Who requires forgiveness? Humanity. Why do they need forgiveness? Because God says so. Who is the only one who can forgive them? God. So what is God’s plan? To send his son to sacrifice himself for humanity’s sins. Who requires a sacrifice? God does.
So, God sends a sacrifice to himself so that he can forgive some arbitrary laws that he thought up in the first place.
And I wonder why I’m an atheist with such evidence as this that God is so caring and just and wonderful.
Clearly, the whole premise of Christianity requires Jesus’ death. This raises the further interesting question: how did God ensure that the Romans would kill Jesus? He couldn’t simply *make * them kill Jesus–the whole point, for example, of the free will theodicy is that God doesn’t interfere in our free will, even if doing so would produce good outcomes. I guess Jesus could continue to agitate in the hopes that the Romans would eventually get fed up with him and kill him, but again–given the Romans’ free will, there is no guarantee they would do so. (And besides, Jesus himself didn’t seem so hot on the idea of being crucified. Matthew 26:39: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” So he probably wasn’t trying that hard to get the Romans to kill him in the first place.) So what gives?
Having had this lovingly explained to me by someone I can only describe as a mad Catholic (two traits being independant), the way it fits together is to have a strikingly limited view of God’s omnipotence, especially in the form of God’s ability to create rules or definitions and then never ever change them.
The answer to the old question about the ungodly heavy rock, according to one anonymous comrade of mine, is that yes, God can create such a thing. In fact, God could create a sort of billboard saying “I will never do such and such,” and then would, in fact, be unable to ever do such and such, unable to ever renege on his contracts.
The whole story of original sin, therefore, becomes a giant sort of SLAGIATT where God painted himself into a corner.
Theistically speaking, the cucifixion/salvation deal has always been explained to me based on a flawed definition of justice, wherin the an innocent is punished and the guilty goes free, and somehow this is ‘just’. No matter how I think of it, there is no way a scapegoat is just; it works if you’re merely trying to satisfy the bloodlust of the wronged or the accuser, but not for anything else.
It seems in biblical societies the notion of guilt/sin being ‘transferable’ was commonly accepted: ‘sins of the fathers’ and that sort of thing. In modern society, of course, we don’t accept such things; if a killer escapes we can’t just put his brother or some innocent bystander in thumbscrews and call it justice. If there’s a reasonable way to reconcile this societal gap, I’ve never seen it presented.
With Jesus it goes a bit further. Jesus being God created and owns everyone, in that sense we are his property, as is everything. He as owner is the one responsible for the damage His property has done. He has the choice to give up that property or to make restitution when the evil one puts in a claim.
If God owns everyone and everything, then it is a case of his property damaging his property, and therefore he owes nobody anything. What possible claim could “the evil one” have, since God owns everything (including the evil one)?
Essentially, the ‘meta-level’ responsibility sums to zero, leaving only individual responsibility. It was an interesting approach to the problem though.
When you get into the situation of owning people it gets a bit more fuzzy then you like to make it out to be. People can be owned as slaves and also as children, neither concept we really adhear to. As a slave if you cause damage to another you can just be given to that person, as a child it is far more likely that the parent will pay for the crime of the child and the child will eventually be set free.
As for Satan, also a created being, and ‘owned’ by God, I don’t know if this is entirely true that God owns Satan anymore. God may have given Satan his freedom, which he used to turn against God, and will be cast down in a eternal POW camp.
Yes I know that is backpeddling on the God owns everything statement above. His children, when set free will become one with God however so God owns his ‘freed children’ because God owns God.
As for Satan, well he gets to own himself all by himself, no longer owned by God.
I’m willing to grant Satan his liberty (closing my eyes to the fact that God will eventually exert his authority over satan as you noted, so clearly he isn’t a completely free agent) and thereby sidestep any issues about God being responsible for Satan’s deeds, which is a separate debate.
Satan being an independent agent changes nothing, since the problem isn’t Satan being God’s possession, it’s the injured party being in God’s posession. If my kid breaks my stereo, then I don’t have to pay my neighbor for the stereo. The only question is whether I punish the kid or not. Similarly, what possible claim could our neigbor Satan have on deeds done amongst God’s possessions?
If you start to split hairs about some things not being in God’s possesion, such as claiming that evil people or the planet earth now belong to Satan, you simply get bizarre effects like it being evil to hurt bad people or trees, but not to blow away a god-fearing Christian. I’m not thinking this ‘possession’ thing is a route that’s going to work.
I don’t acknowledge God’s or anyone’s right to own a person. And I certainly wouldn’t classify any being that owns a person as anything but evil, and deserving of death.
Nor do I buy the idea that creating a being gives you any sort of moral superiority over them, or the right to control them. Even with children, I regard it as morally questionable and accept it only because children simply aren’t capable of managing their own lives. Adults, however, are, and even if God created us I don’t see why that gives him the right to tell us to do anything.
To be fair, what he’s positing is that being our creator/possessor/whatever grants God responibility for our actions; the question of whether we’re actually slaves or not is a separate issue. I don’t think that merely being accountable for the actions of another makes you worthy of death.
Perhaps a superior/inferior (as in a workplace or military environment) would be an even better analogy to frame this particular potential solution to the transfer-of-punishment issue, so as to avoid sideline moral issues creeping in.
No need to railroad him for points pheriperal to the issue, eh?
Before the crucifixion, there was no innocent person (with some exceptions). All it took before that point was 1 sin to merit seperation from God, which resulted in the Mosaic Law being set-up as a type of primitive “next-best-thing.” I’m not a big expert on Leviticus, but I think most people agree that the 10 Commandments are common sense advice for the betterment of the human race.
Anyhow, I always thought Jesus had the right to take everyone’s sins onto himself, because HE was the one who was being sinned against. He was the prosecutor in the heavenly trial and thus had full authority to drop the charges and assume the reperation cost unto himself.
In modern society, crimes are not transferrable because they are between individuals, groups, or nations. God, however, is the ultimate transgressee. That is, if you believe in the Christian God to begin with…and here we go again.
So… A person commits a crime against Jesus. (Never mind the dude he actually stabbed.) Jesus, the victim, then punishes himself for the crime. Transgressor goes scot free.
This is justice…how? Two wrongs don’t make a right, you know. If Jesus merely dropped the charges, that’s mercy. Jesus sweating it in Galilee and then getting himself tacked up on a cross for the crimes he was/will be the victim for is :dubious:.
