Christian God theme debunked.

That "someone" was God himself. You're acting like Jesus was some random. Dude, God made Jesus for this purpose!

 

God made Jesus for what purpose?

 

God created man in our own likeness and image and saw that it was good, very good.

As you do unto the least of these my brethren you do also to me. You are right, not some random dude but a dude equal to the least.

What purpose have you given to god's creation?

 

What purpose have you given to god's creation?

I don't answer your questions. You can speak up and share a bit before I go down any roads directed by you.

 

thedope, did Jesus mention anything about doing unto the least of these my sisteren?

 

he's googling, give him a minute.

 

That's what I was thinking too. It did away with the voodoo. Mercy replaced the sacrificial system.

 

It replaces the sacrificial system to the extent we are merciful. I think the idea of the ultimate sacrifice satisfying the need for sacrifice is the science of those who think that blood sacrifice is necessary. The bloodthirsty must have their fill.

Scapegoating however was for the purpose of hardness of heart and is not intended to fulfill the law. A remedy for the people sought by the people. In jesus' time the people sought freedom from oppression and that comes with the apprehension of truth.

When we start to present in hierarchical terms vanity has crept in. In the kingdom of heaven the first shall become last and the last first. The perception of heaven is fundamentally different in every proportion from the perception of the earth , upside down, backwards, and inside out.

 

God created man in our own likeness and image and saw that it was good, very good. I do not give purpose to gods creation but am given gods purpose in creation. In this world we exist for and with each other and we are created in holiness to create the good.

 

Agree. I think the world is still in need of a lot more mercy and forgiveness. Social status, power, and pride mean little in the long run.

 

Yes---this is a very important point.

What God's plan is, is an existential problem (and I use existential here in terms of human existence and experience). Whatever plans god is, we are only human and it is impossible for us to ever know from his/her/its perspective. One could argue that it comes to us through revelation and was recorded in the Bible. But it wasn't God that recorded that, it was human beings. And they understood it from their cultural perspective.

You say that you would not follow a god that does atrocious things, but what about a God that allows atrocious things to happen? It is easy to argue that a God of unconditional love would not plan World War II to befall mankind. It is harder to argue the problem of why a loving God would allow such a terrible thing to happen.

And what about the whole apocalypse thing? Why would a God of unconditional love wish such a horrible end to mankind, except perhaps for his chosen ones. There are certainly those who believe the two World Wars to be a part of apocolyptic prophecy, and that it is the third one that will end in the final battle of Armageddon. The problem of whether or not God would have the bloody crucifixion of his son in his plans fits right along with all of these other problems.

And then comes the tying of the crucifixion into forgiveness of sins. That we as humans are born with original sin, committed by a couple that, if they had never done that, none of us would be alive today. Why must we ask forgiveness from a father for something we were born oblivious to? Did you ask to be born?

What is worse, a God that would play a joke on Abraham by causing him to almost sacrifice his own son, or a God that would take some of his children who did exactly as he said and give them eternal happiness, but condemn all the rest of his children to eternal pain and suffering in a prison that is the furthest in the universe from him? Or God that does both?

We as humans can only try to understand God from our own perspective, from our own existentialist existence and experience. Our own communications to God are probably our most subjective experiencue we can face. We try to make sense of what God is to us, and what he wants of us. What happens to us between us and God is so subjective that there is no way we can prove what happened. We can't even objectively prove if God exists. But we can find that proof subjectively---if you really need it. Only we ourselves know what happened when it comes to dealing with such things---and we often question that even. But only you can come to a subjective understanding of what God wants of you.

In the Bible, Jesus presents two versions of God, one is a god of unconditional love, and the other is a God of vengeance. If you accept the Bible as the unquestionable word of God, then you would accept both versions as one and the same God.

It sounds like you have found that for you God is the first one, the God of unconditional love. That is my God too.

But we cannot escape the fact that we as mortals cannot fully understand what God truly deems as right, and what it is that we should do or be. At least on an objective level that transcends the subjective.

I would say that of all the bad things that have happened in the history of humankind, that we have always had free will. But buried within that free will, there has been a purpose. We have made a lot of steps back, but overall we have made plenty of steps forward. It is unacceptable today, for example, to lock our daughters outside of the walls around our residence, leaving them to the desires and wills of an angry mob of men, while we protect a man of god inside our residence. And through all of this, we have never had our free will taken away from us, even if some of us are stupid enough to let it be controlled by others who lead the masses (e.g. Hitler).

Whether the crucifixion story is true or false, it served its purpose in history. Good and bad has come of it----for example, the population of two whole continents was almost completely wiped out by disease and murder under the crucifix. And the really ironic thing, they had their own crucifix. But on the other hand, it has played its part in bringing mankind to where we are today. And we still have our free will.

In the long run we work things out and move forward. We encounter new problems, and take a step back. Then the process starts over again. But in the longer run, we move forward more than backward---and most importantly God always gives us our free will.

Maybe scripture is absolutely the word of God---if that is what you have found in your own experience and path through life---that is your subjective conclusion.

Maybe your version of Christianity is one of truly unconditional love---that is your subjective conclusion. Maybe your an atheist... and so on. We all have our own trip.

(And if anyone is now struggling with their Christianity over the questions I raised, and wish they hadn't read this post----well, read Kierkegaard's, Fear and Trembling, and, Sickness unto Death to get back on track as a devout Christian---he explores the question of Abraham and the sacrifice of his son.)

 

A lot of what you say God about "allowing" atrocious things to happen are simply a matter of perspective.
Again, as I pointed out to Storch, those are completely anthropomorphic conceptualizations of God.
As you point out, such an approach is folly and leads to an apparent disparity between the different aspects of God as portrayed in the Bible.
One also needs to keep in mind that as far as the Biblical religions are concerned, death is not the end and what comes after death is intrinsically much more important and significant than what happens in life.
That is why the seemingly inhuman disciplinarian facet of God, or at least if you are only considering things from a mortal perspective, which is again folly when discussing Biblical religions.
It is important to remember that all the "human" qualities attributed to God were/are done so solely for our benefit in understanding, not God's.

One thing that really opened my eyes to the why/how God could both be a God of unconditional love as well a jealous and vengeful God was
I became a parent.

Instantly I "knew" unconditional love, and very shortly after the birth of my first child, I also "knew" what it meant to be jealous, protective, and the directing disciplinarian hand in my daughters life.
Made complete and total sense to me from an experiential perspective.
Hence the concept of God as a "Father" figure.
Does it mean that God does fully and completely conform to the mold presented in the Bible?
Of course not. All the above traits are still our attempt to relate to and understand man's relationship with God through the lens of human experience.

So we have yet again a misunderstanding of the core tenants and beliefs of Christianity based on the old "horse before the cart" syndrome.

It is the failure to understand these underlying concepts that often present as irreconcilable the differing "faces" of God for many people, but the disparity lies within their own incomplete apprehension of the situation.

I'm confident that MVW and thedope will "get" my point, other folks, not so sure about.

Oh and Storch, I have already answered you and explained why I chose not to add more crap to the pot by merely flinging out another opinion.
You asked some specific questions relating to specific religion and those answers are to be found in the source material.
In your OP you made a few ludicrous remarks then asked "explain how that works", to which I provided, as previously stated, a good starting point to get an explanation.
You aren't interested in the actual explanation as given in the source material, but rather just want to argue opinions.
and I'm the one avoiding the topic?

If you don't like it, sorry, I didn't make up the rules for properly researching and understanding a topic.
But hey, if you feel opinion alone will suffice, more power to ya, but I'm done playing this game.:2thumbsup:

 

Yeah, I know. Unconditional love is some ethical substance which fails the mark for anyone in particular in the Christmas Season.

But the unconditional lovers exist. If Christian they will disclose themselves in the entertainment establishments. Better to learn from the Muslims, and commit the 'unconditional' to heart with respect to the hypocrisy in explaining Nature? This is the way to morals about the nature of the substance of books never in agreement with, call it, social ecology.

So every reason to return to the God theme. The particular sacrifice adjusts to the universal religious concepts. In the contrary the Christian religious concepts are NOT debunked. They face an uncompromising lack of humility at the governing responsibility. God is realized different for various religious ideas, but the Christian is informed to be the universal attitude of the meaning of ethically substantial development for awareness of a business action.

 

Ha you see that is the problem with most of you Christians, you are all far too set in your way. The fact that the Christian doctrine espouses unprovable, destructive, anti-free will belief is sad. Jesus would remove your kind from the temple himself if he was here to see it. The grace of a God to a people who never needed grace in the first place? Kinda defeats the purpose doesn't it.

 

God or bad here? It seems I went beyond good and evil. Humility by itself is good or bad; I meant it bad there. The Christian attitude is an attitude of debunking bureaucracy; and either that is bad, OR the attitude of the universal self-consciousness is verging upon western tyranny over the other religious views of nothing other than God.

 

NG,

You know that my arguement is that, contrary to the popular christian idea, God does not solve his problems, or anyone else's problems by requiring the torture and death of someone innocent; and that prior to the crucifixion event, he didn't require people to find an animal without blemish so that it could be killed, its blood drained, and its lifeless corpse offered up to him in return for resetting some imaginary sin-clock back to zero. Obviously, that's why I said that the spin that's been put on the crucifixion by a backward thinking culture sounds exactly like some kind of voodoo thing, like killing a chicken and using its blood to cast a spell or to remove one.

That's what I said. I then asked you if that is what you believe, and that if it is what you believe, how you can reconcile that belief with the idea that God is intelligent. Your answer is so vague as to be nonexistent. You refer me to some reference material that will explain things. I have my doubts about that since that source material left you incapable of articulating any of it into a counter arguement, which is so reminiscent of the times I've asked the same question to other christians, only to recieve the "it's in the Bible" explanation from them. They appear to be nothing without their book, and so do you.

When asked about reconciling the idea of a sin-nullifying crucifixion with an intelligent God, you have no answer. The best you could come up with is--in your own words--" . . . I provided, as previously stated, a good starting point to get an explanation." I believe that that's just another way of saying, "Yeah, I agree that the christion concept of God really appears to degrade his mentality, but if you read what I've read, you, too, can become pacified, though unable to explain exactly why." You shouldn't settle like that.

You believe that I'm ". . . not interested in the actual explanation as given in the source material, but rather just want to argue opinions." Sorry, my friend, but you've offered nothing like "the acual explanation." You can't even put into words what you've obviously read. That should tell you something about the material you are referring to. It was obviously way over your head. Sometimes, people will come to the conclusion that when material is over their head, that's a good rationale for agreeing with it.

So, to sum up, the christian spin on the crucifixion is based on a primitive idea of a God who requires primitive recompense for a primitive and imaginary concept of original sin. To understand that, one must be capable of thinking outside the Bible.

 

MVW,

This is good: "And then comes the tying of the crucifixion into forgiveness of sins. That we as humans are born with original sin, committed by a couple that, if they had never done that, none of us would be alive today. Why must we ask forgiveness from a father for something we were born oblivious to? Did you ask to be born?"

 

As long as you got that corrected for the Zoroastrian God created phony Devil idea. War is good; greed is Good; hate is what lasts for the Negative sufferings of Infidels.:2thumbsup:

 

Yes, that goes without saying.