The cornerstone of Christianity is human sacrifice. Is Christianity a moral creed?

God is perfect and omnipotent and omniscient and cannot tolerate imperfect humans in His presence, so He creates humans with the potential for imperfection. I don't think so. "Through means that are not comprehensible from our current perspective..." ( in other words, a "mystery"). Another possibility is that fallible humans made it up and called it a mystery. The part that you find acceptable may be the result of your socially-constructed and conditioned worldview shaped by religious indoctrination. Anything is possible, but your explanation doesn't pass the smell test. It seems inconsistent with the hermeneutic of love Jesus gave us as our guide to scripture.

 

It has become that, yes, thanks to those who read myths literally, and who have become idol worshipers like Christians and Muslims.

If not for the literal reading of myths, we would have retained the messages in scriptures and would have developed a much better ideology for the world.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

What is God?

Further.
Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.



Regards
DL

 

Do that for us please.

Regards
DL

 

Nothing will pass "the smell test" as long as you have your skeptometer adjusted to meet your presuppositions. I have offered you a coherent, logical explanation, yet you seem to reject it and point out, as the only stumbling block you've found, the fact that an element of the explanation is currently unknowable through our current understanding. The fact that an element of the hypotheses is unknowable has not stopped scientists from presenting their theories as true and continuing to research them.

The hermeneutic of love preached by Jesus referred to this life, not the afterlife. Jesus also speaks about hell and punishment more than 50 times in The New Testament. How do you reconcile that with His message of love?

 

Your "coherent, logical argument" presents the paradox of a deity who insists on perfection, creates imperfect beings, blames them for his folly, and then decides to let the death of an innocent man atone for guilty ones. And then invokes a "mystery" in an attempt to mask the contradiction. That's about as logical as a silent scream. To avoid blasphemy, we might suppose instead that the premises are the work of human error on the part of the men with agendas who concocted a deity with these properties in the first place. I don't really see anything in what Jesus taught that deals with penal subsititutionary atonement for original sin, especially by His own crucifixion.

As for those more than fifty references to hell in the New Testament, what version are you using. Even the KJV mentions it half that much, and it has the most I'm aware of because it renders gahenna, hades, tartaros as "hell". I suspect that Jesus, like the Essenes and Pharisees of the day, believed in hell. I do too, metaphorically.

 

In terms of religion, Christianity is still a relatively new ideology manufactured from many of the world's cultural beliefs put into one song, is pretty evident, so I don't believe at all that humans were created to be perfect because we were never meant to be, and "God" was never this nice deity people think he was either.

 

God is just a flowing, creative force of unbridled passion, fury, and love. Humans weren't created with a logic or purpose in mind, or at least, the original lifeforms in all of creation were not. They were simply, and, even if indirectly, we were created as an act of sheer power and passion. God is too busy creating to stop for a minute and judge us. When we meet God it's either get on board for the ride or haunt the Earth.

 

I do not believe in Original Sin, so that is one of the first problems I have with Christianity.

But the idea of Jesus being sacrificed for the sins of mankind has a very ancient planter culture precedent. It originated with the vegetative cycle and an early concept that the Earth as Goddess was eternal, while the vegetation, and even the sky as changing with the seasons represented God who would die and be reborn. In the older Goddess cultures the Queen would represent the Goddess and would take on an annual consort who would possibly produce a son. In some cultures he was sacrificed and be reborn as the son, in other cultures the sacrifice was only ritual. As a masculine understanding of the universe gained a stronger foothold, and the power of the goddess began to wane, the King took power over the early States and it was he who began to be seen as the one who had to be sacrificed. Only the purpose now began to focus more on keeping the Goddess happy (or the Sky Father as the case began to be), and so it was regarded as atonement for the sins of the people. His sacrifice was ritualistic as he was reborn by the grace of the goddess.

This sacrifice was directly related to the blood sacrifice, but the blood sacrifice itself is much older, coming from our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the paleolithic or earlier. The blood sacrifice was important to assure rebirth, so it makes sense that in order for the seasons to change, and for the vegetation to come back, that there needed to be a blood sacrifice to return the life giving force to the earth----blood passed from the hunt/sacrificial altar/grave to the earth and then back to the womb of the earth/animal/human. Since God or the Sky Father is not a physical entity of earth, it was understood that he could only be reached through death, and so the blood sacrifice was also necessary to communicate or enter into the presence of God.

The revolutionary thing that Christianity did is that it replaced the actual blood sacrifice with the crucifixion. This actually amounts to a modernization of the blood sacrifice that made it purely ritual. No more messing with animals, or rituals that took time and resources. This streamline of the sacrifice made it very easy to export and to control----in other words----it was a modernization that helped make it a powerful political force, perfect for centralizing power----just what Rome needed. (I should clarify that the communion, and even the language that was used in it, is much older than Christianity, but the blood sacrifice was still used through out the Middle East.)

I have trouble believing that the crucifixion story originated in the Middle East, because it is filled with too many Indo-European motifs. First of all it represents the god sacrificing himself to himself. There is no precedent for that in the Middle East where the God always came back due to the grace of the Goddess. The oldest example of the male God sacrificing himself to himself is found in the oldest Indo-European writing: The Rig Veda. Also Jesus came to the earth through the star (the Star of David) and left through the star (the cross), I say this because the Greek word for cross and crucifixion are from the etymological root for star. This would have made sense to the more northerly Indo-European populations where the North Star was logically connected to the axis mundi (the World Tree/World Mountain) which was the portal to the other side. To people living in the Middle East, a world tree or world mountain did not need to be connected to a pole star as there was less experience of a fixed portion of the sky that did not move in the more southerly lattitudes. Therefore celestial symbolism in the Middle East did not emphasize the North Star. Consider, for example, the pyramids at Giza which lined up with Orion's belt rather than the North Star.

The story of Jesus had everything a Roman leader would want for conquest, and control. It eliminated the multiple gods which were problematic, particularly for solidifying political control. It turned the blood sacrifice into an easily performed abstract ritual that was more suited to a larger, centrally controlled audience. It derailed the power of the Goddess thereby validating the power of the king, and which was also more suitable for the rational and objectivistic nature and philosophy of Roman Culture and its war machine. It provided a surrogate Goddess in the form of Mother Mary to appease the pagan need for a feminine dynamic, while maintaining dominance of the masculine.

Because of this, the spread of Christianity across Europe set the wheels in motion for the rise of the Modern Age. At a social level the masculine, objective and rational nature of Christianity had a logical end-conclusion based in materialism, empircism, and atheism.

 

I do not think the bible was meant to form a religion around it.

I think is was written as a consolidation of many thinking systems so that it could be used for talking points before Christians became idol worshipers and literal readers of myths. The Gnostic Gospels were written for the same purpose.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2

Further.
Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.



Regards
DL

 

Yep. God is all and we are the only ones who can perceive it. Thus we are Gods.

Regards
DL

 

A good presentation. Thanks.

I almost choked on "rational nature of Christianity", which the literal reading of the myth belies, but otherwise, a good rendering.

Regards
DL

 

So what does the discovery that you're a god do for you? Enable you to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Heal the sick? Know the future? Walk on water? Get on better with the ladies? I'' admit, it must be great for your self-esteem, but are you worthy? And are you a good god or an evil god? From your nasty Gnostic comments, I worry. Good thing you don't have any special powers like a real god. If you could do one miracle for us, I'd be impressed.

 

Supernaturalstupid thinking is for children. Grow up.

I do not make nasty comments that are not true. Truth is the last thing you seem to care about.

Regards
DL

 

So you're a non-supernatural god, with no special powers. What exactly is that? What are your godlike powers? Does your wife agree with your assessment. Does she call you "Divinity"? As for truth, you might do a reality check on your god claims.

 

So tell us what a real god's special powers are.

 

That was my question. Historically, they necessarily include powers beyond those of mere mortals.
"God : being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality Greek gods of love and war."
Definition of GOD

 

Oh, I'm sorry. I mistakenly thought that you believe in a god.

 

What special powers have you seen a God do?

Keep the scriptures and their message pure perhaps?



Regards
DL

 

Historically. Are you serious?

Here is the history you should remember.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

What is God?

Further.
Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.



Regards
DL

 

While ignoring that ancient emperors declared themselves to be Gods and their sons, sons of God.

Regards
DL