this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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The question really starts before that. Yahweh is supposed to be "omnipotent" or "all powerful". So, why was The Christ necessary at all? If Yahweh could shape reality just by saying things and they became real, couldn't he just say "I forgive you" and "Original Sin" would be forgiven?
So either Yahweh isn't all powerful and there is some greater power to which he is subservient; or, Yahweh just wanted to dip his dick in an unwilling woman to create his son/self to torture to death. All hail Yahweh!
Apparently bro has a pretty serious code of conduct and adheres to it to a T
Genocide is not part of it.
The thing is how you want to view it.
Option 1:
Neutral view of religion and history.
People tried to explain their existence and what they could observe. The Bible is just a big collection of stories that tried to explain their understanding of the world. Why it is how it is and who made it and why they made it like that. Why they have to suffer and can have fun....
Option 2:
Overall religious.
God is omnipotent but likes to do shit in a weird way for a reason. This is fine because this is important for some reason and not only what the result in the end is important but the way to it too. Gods decision is always the best.
Option 3:
Sarcastic
God is an asshole who just likes to play with the humans from time to time. Nothing he does is needed to make sense. He could in an instant remove all our problems and create a world where there is no need to suffer. However that would be boring. I mean look around most humans are assholes and we are being created in the image of God.
A person with a background in philosophy ought to be able to make a good faith (hehe) argument that God is not benevolent in any capacity and is doing the same as a toddler in a sandbox.
I had a professor make that exact argument... or perhaps he was quoting an argument of one of the greats. Anyway, the argument goes like this:
The first person then smugly smiles that they put God into a box and waits to hear the mental gymnastics from the Christian Philosopher.
The christian philosopher then brings up a few points that were straw manned:
The philosophers then keep asking questions to reduce the opponents argument until they conclude with the following question: "What is?" then they leave as friends.
The way you are confident that you have covered all arguments is a little grating on me. From my understanding of philosophy and christianity, there is another option, but your extremely broad strokes in "option 2" i guess encapsulates it because it explains all actions and reasons for actions as "weird" and "important for some reason" when describing both the process and the destination.
Option 4:
Kicking the kids out after they should be legal adults
God had a ton of kids. He didn't want them to have failure to launch, so he set up them to have "knowledge of good and evil" and imperfect parents then each of god's kids (now with bodies as humans) have the choice to act as a moral agent. Moral agents can choose to be dicks or altruistic. The best humans get to be "joint heirs with Christ" and inherit all that Christ inherits. The rest... fail to launch and ultimately get a really nice bedroom and computer but that's about it. The kicked-out kid's perspective on their parent right after getting kicked out is extremely mixed.
I never claimed that list to be complete
The straightforward answer is that Christ was the right tool for the job.
That is a thing Jesus repeated ad nauseam in his ministries. And since he's an Avatar of God, this is exactly what happened.
This is an age-old paradox of language. "Can God create a bolder so heavy that he cannot lift it? Either way, he must not be All Powerful!"
But it limits the way we look at the world to an entirely and superficially magical one. The idea of God as a Wizard in a big crooked hat who says strange words and waves hands and makes a thing happen.
Consider... This paradox is solved without any magical powers. A man with a chisel and a large lump of stone can create a bolder too big for him to lift my main strength. But then that same man can build a lever/pull system to lift said bolder. He has done both! Therefore man is All-Powerful!
God's favored discipline agreed to bare a child. And that child agreed to martyr himself in order to bring about a Christian faith. And that faith exists to bring light and hope and joy to the world. And its easy enough to find a Christian who can attest to that sense of hopefulness through their faithfulness. A seed planted 2000 years ago gives birth to a forest. Feels miraculous to me.
That gets to the problem with these logical angles of attack on a religious belief. They've all been done to death for a thousand years and more. And there are rhetorical rebuttals for any smug one-liner either side can bring to the table. But you can't logic someone out of a view they didn't logic themselves into. The idea of Jesus as a spiritual martyr who provides relief for your guilt and inner turmoil isn't something you can refute casually. Its like arguing with a homopath over the effectiveness of microdosing or with a yogi over the spiritual benefits of meditation.
At the end of the day, all you're saying is "This shouldn't make you feel better!" And all they need to refute you is "Ah, but it does."
Christ alive (hehe) you kinda missed the purpose of the New Testament didn’t you?
Jesus was the last child sacrifice.
That’s the story.
That’s the crucifixion in its entirety.
The rest is shoehorned in AND the best part of it none of it actually happened and there is no record of it except for second hand accounts generations later.
So one of the things Roman’s were really good at, records, didn’t record a Jesus being crucified.
It didn’t happen.
I mean you last line sums it up, If on your balance you can weight the sum total of human systematic logical effort against your anecdotal experience then what is the point of discussion at all?
And you want to know when that looks really ugly? When the faithful see things like "the light and hope brought by faith" and are blind to rivers of blood and human suffering that have not ceased to this day enabled and perpetuated by faith.
It doesn't matter if there is a god, by the things done in God's name the concept of faith must be reject for humanities sake.
These are George Carlin quips, not exhaustive mathematical proofs.
The blood and suffering flow as quickly from the machine logic of a Randroid Atheist as any Theocrat. Blaming a religious figment for natural disasters and manufactured cruelties is no more logical than attributing charity and compassion to the magic sky fairy.
That doesn't logically follow.