The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “ten”, deals with the arcane doctrine (well, it’s not really so arcane) of “substitutionary atonenement.” Them’s fancy words for “Jesus died for your sins.”
Here’s how the site Compelling Truth explains substitutionary atonement. This is classic theobabble (my emphasis):
Romans 6:23 teaches us two things. First, it tells us that without Christ’s substitutionary atonement, there is no doubt that we are doomed. In the Bible, death refers to separation. When a body dies, the soul is separated from the body. This is the physical death that we all experience. When a person dies without Jesus, his soul is separated from God (spiritual death). Spiritual death will result in eternity in hell, from which there is no escape. The second lesson contained in this verse is that eternal life is available through Jesus Christ to those who believe.
Here is how the substitute works. Jesus Christ is God (John 1:1-18) and is therefore an infinite being. We are finite, created beings. Since the sins we commit are against an infinite being (God), the punishment must also be infinite. There are two ways for this punishment to be carried out. Either an infinite being must die once to pay for sins (the cross), or finite beings must to pay for their sins infinitely (hell). Jesus lovingly offered Himself up and died in our place when He was crucified on the cross. This was an infinite Being making a one-time payment for sins that satisfied God’s requirement (Hebrews 10:10, 14). When this happened, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). This atonement is spoken of again, in 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”
What a thicket of bad logic! Why, for instance, must sins against an infinite being be given an infinite punishment? If you don’t accept Jesus as your savior, for instance, many Christians think you’ll fry for eternity—infinite punishment. But God and Allah are supposed to be merciful, and why should such a being make us suffer infinitely for doubting Jesus? Isn’t it in their capacity to give us limited punishment?
And why would God allow someone else to die horribly for sins supposedly committed by others? What kind of sense does that make? This is one aspect of Christianity that, although apparently universally accepted by theologians, still puzzles me. Under many forms of Christianity, you can be as horrible a person as you want throughout your life, but if, right before you die, you say you accept Jesus as savior, all is forgiven. You get a pass to Heaven. (This is, of course, the doctrne of “sola fide”: salvation by faith alone.) And that makes no sense, either. But I’m just a poor evolutionary biologist, apparently unable to grasp the nuances of Sophisticated Theology™. I’d be glad to hear readers’ explanations.
But I digress. Theobabble always angers me. Here’s Jesus and Mo:
“Why, for instance, must sins against an infinite being be given an infinite punishment?”
Sure…the opposite reasoning exists, too. The mathematical limit of one sin divided by n as n approaches infinity is zero, therefore deserving no punishment.
That sounds like the kind of religion I could get excited about. Are there any other rules?
Just that you can’t divide by zero.
Not to mention the fact that this “Infinite” being is no way harmed, diminished or inconvenienced by any amount of “sin” committed by his creations. he could just snap his metaphorical fingers and forgive us all, problem solved. It apparently just pisses him off that we don’t live up to the impossible standards he’s set for us (don’t forget, just picking up firewood on the sabbath or looking at another person with a twinkle in your eye constitutes “sin”), despite the fact that he could have created us incapable of sinning in the first place.
Christian theology is such an irrational, incoherent stew of nonsense it just beggars belief that any intelligent person can take it seriously. In that sense, many of the old pagan religions had a much simpler and internally consistent structure of belief. The gods are powerful (though not infinite), capricious, egotistical bullies who won’t lift a finger to help you unless you bribe them with sycophantic praise and sacrificial offerings. By making their god infinite, ominipotent and omniscient, the Christians have rendered all of this pointless. God isn’t affected by sins he knew we were going to commit from the very start but still insists we go through the motions of his cosmic puppet-show.
Although how the old gods got any benefit from a dead, burned goat is also unclear.
You’d think they would prefer them medium rare. That’s how I like goat chops.
Well, for Yahweh, it was that “sweet savour unto the Lord”.
It’s in Numbers 15:3-15 where the detailed recipes for various occasions are given.
Further down it also says that this applies to all future generations and that any who knowingly fail to sacrifice bullocks or rams, etc. unto Him as required, are to be shunned.
Something tells me not many Jews, Orthodox or Cultural, are following these roolz.
It was the priests who got the benefit, of course. Even where the food got destroyed completely, they still got to make an example of anyone they felt like and force him to lose a prize animal or two, at his own hand, no less.
Here is Emily Dickinson’s gloss on ‘sola fide:’
‘Faith’ is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who SEE!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency!
[note: caps for italics, which I don’t know how to do on WordPress.]
Let me see if this works:
That was clever!
Doesn’t twocing* donkeys count as a sin then?
Twocing, UK plod-speak for stealing cars, taking without owner’s consent.
Pronounced Too-sing or twok-ing?
Twokking.
It comes from “taking without the owners consent” which is an offence introduced because charges of theft were being thrown out. The intention to permananently deprive the owner of the vehicle could not be proved.
This whole rationale for Jesus’ death is so half-baked that I think the apostles made it up on the fly after their “messiah” was killed. They had to rationalize what happened, and didn’t have much time to think it through. Viola–substitutional atonement.
(Don’t want to get into an argument about whether Jesus really existed or not…I could go either way on that, but it is more parsimonious to think that the apostles were following a real person.)
Jesus isn’t killed :
( 155 ) And [We cursed them] for their breaking of the covenant and their disbelief in the signs of Allah and their killing of the prophets without right and their saying, “Our hearts are wrapped”. Rather, Allah has sealed them because of their disbelief, so they believe not, except for a few.
( 156 ) And [We cursed them] for their disbelief and their saying against Mary a great slander,
( 157 ) And [for] their saying, “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.
( 158 ) Rather, Allah raised him to Himself. And ever is Allah Exalted in Might and Wise.
( 159 ) And there is none from the People of the Scripture but that he will surely believe in Jesus before his death. And on the Day of Resurrection he will be against them a witness.
( 160 ) For wrongdoing on the part of the Jews, We made unlawful for them [certain] good foods which had been lawful to them, and for their averting from the way of Allah many [people],
( 161 ) And [for] their taking of usury while they had been forbidden from it, and their consuming of the people’s wealth unjustly. And we have prepared for the disbelievers among them a painful punishment.
( 162 ) But those firm in knowledge among them and the believers believe in what has been revealed to you, [O Muhammad], and what was revealed before you. And the establishers of prayer [especially] and the givers of zakah and the believers in Allah and the Last Day – those We will give a great reward.
So based on verse 157, someone else who looked like Jesus was killed. This is sort of similar to the story in the Monty Python movie The Life of Brian.
Yes that it they killed another who looked like Messiah
That’s from the Qur’an, not the Bible! ninjanetwork is alluding to Muslim beliefs, not Christian ones.
Yes, I know.
“it is more parsimonious to think that the apostles were following a real person.”
Don’t you think this has been allowed for among those who has found no more than myth in the myth, thus far?
My analysis is that it is even more parsimonious to ask for what evidence there is that there were ‘apostles’. They are no less myth and no more historical persons than the jeebus myth. Perhaps less, since text analyses of their presumed texts has shown, I take it, that 3 (or 4 ?) out of 4 “apostles” were synthetic.
Or are you thinking of Paul “the Apostle”? He was more in the business of making the religion up than “following” it.
This would be a long discussion that would be interesting at another time. Paul seems to be real, according to most scholars, and he claims to have visited some of the apostles.
And Paul’s writing does not favors for Christianity. He claims that the risen Jesus was a spirit or vision (ie no physical evidence), contrary to Church doctrine. If he really met the apostles, then apparently they also did not claim they had physical experience of the resurrected Jesus. (Paul claims that they agreed with him.) His letters are therefore strong evidence that the later Gospel accounts of the resurrection are bullshit.
“does not favors” -> “does no favors”
We don’t have evidence that any apostles were surprised by (or witnessed, or even claimed to witness, or believe in) Christ’s earthly death – or life, let alone that they made up rationalizations for it.
As it stands, we can’t show that anybody even told any stories of an earthly Jesus within several decades of the years he would have lived. But they did preach of his redepmtive sacrifice – minus any biographical detail.
Richard Carrier makes a very compelling case for the opposite hypothesis of yours – that the
theological rationale came first (born from interpretation of Jewish prophecies in light of contemporary events.) Then the “historical” stories were later made up to support it.
A “historicized” mythical Jesus is arguably a more parsimonious explanation for the evidence we actually have. Rather than the evidence people assume we have.
Sorry. I don’t want an argument either. I agree that we just don’t know. But I do think that the presumption of historicity is given far too much credence.
I appreciate that. I read Richard Carrier regularly and agree that the mythicist argument is respectable. But there are some things that do suggest historicity.
You said “we can’t show that anybody even told any stories of an earthly Jesus within several decades of the years he would have lived.” I agree that Paul (the main source from that time period)is slightly ambiguous about whether the pre-resurrection Jesus was an earthly being. But that ambiguity is fairly weak evidence for the mythicist thesis. This must be weighted against mention of James “the brother of Jesus”, and other stuff, all of which can be disputed, but which fits historicity well, in my non-expert opinion. I admit I’ve stopped paying much attention to this issue, since it doesn’t really matter to me whether or not a real human was involved, and I can’t see how one could ever convincingly show that there wasn’t.
The important thing is the bad quality of the evidence for the resurrection, and that evidence would be just as poor even if a Jesus-like character really had been crucified. We needn’t saddle ourselves with an additional burden of proof for the non-existence of Jesus. I think Richard Carrier once wrote something to that effect when he recommended that atheists avoid the mythicist argument when arguing with a Christian.
“…burden of proof for the non-existence…”
Do we really have such a burden? I don’t think so. You’re being too nice.
Christianity exists. Most of the cults where we have any kind of reliable evidence about their origins have a founder that started the whole thing off, therefore it is likely that Christianity has a founder.
It is unlikely that the founder of Christianity is Paul because his own writing suggests it existed before he started evangelising, so let us call the founder of Christianity “Yeshua” (the name that becomes “Jesus” when Latinised via Greek).
Can we call Yeshua Jesus i.e. is the Jesus of the Bible the result of accreting myth onto the original founder of Christianity or is he wholly myth and Yeshua completely forgotten? I don’t know the answer. I’d like for the myth of Jesus in the Bible to be based on the real founder because it would make the historical study of the Bible story more interesting IMO, but truth obstinately ignores my likes and dislikes.
Richard Carrier himself wrote a nice article about the abundance of kooks and wackos of the Gospel epoch:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/kooks.html
Seems playing a divinity was a good occupation then (as now). As Richard would say, this affects the Bayesian prior probability that there was a real person at the center of the Jesus myth.
“Theobabble” – I thought you’d “coyned” a new word, but it’s apparently already a thing:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=theobabble
I thought I had, too! Oh well, great minds. . .
James 2:14-26 seems to not agree with the get out of jail free card idea of the sola fide doctrine. A relevant line: “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
I just remembered this came to me from last weeks’ episode of the Walking Dead.
I was wondering if you got that from WD. And father Gabriel finally did some “works”.
Yes, this is a source of great dissension between various sects of Christianity. Salvation by faith alone, or by works?
or by works alone (the goats and sheep verses) or only by child birth for us women folk (per Paul) or by accepting what JC said or believing he is god….
such choices!
I really don’t understand how it counts as “dying” when you just come back to life after the weekend. (And thus I don’t understand how that counts as a “sacrifice”.)
Of course, “substitutionary atonement” is just one explanation for why Jesus dying somehow saved humanity — there are numerous other theories. I think it is instructive that while all Christians agree Jesus had to die to save us, they don’t agree as to why.
I suppose saying, “Jesus had a bad weekend for our sins” doesn’t carry as much dramatic oomph as claiming he “died for our sins”. Utterly nonsensical either way.
And one bad weekend for an infinite being – not even the equivalent of a stubbed toe for a human. I think the suffering of even the most privileged human outweighs that of God/Jesus, and should be enough to get anyone into heaven. 🙂
Ah, but if an infinite God has to live as a finite human, this is such degradation (like sentencing a human to live as a worm, only infinitely worse）that Jesus had already suffered infinitely even before he got to the cross； that was the real sacrifice. I too can speak theobabble.
You’re far too good at it … 🙂
Yes; that seems theologically sound.
I tried sola fide once. The rainbow trout was better.
You need to marinade it in magic sauce for a few days to get rid of the stench of hypocrisy and self-righteousness and then garnish it with delusion and wishful thinking and then you may be able to choke it down without activating the gag reflex.
The whole business would only make sense to a small child with a large section of blank space in the brain to be filled in. Anything is accepted and it is nearly permanent. No questions and no reasoning.
I’m sorry – that’s republicans not small children.
It probably makes more sense in Latin – as long as you don’t know Latin.
Richard Dawkins wrote about the puzzle of why the threat of punishment was so extreme. If I remember correctly, it was necessary to threaten super harsh punishment to sort of compensate for the absurdity of the whole claim that there was an afterlife.
Ah; an attempt to make Pascal’s wager a smarter bet and encourage toeing the line. Certainly could be. OTOH, the ancient church seems to have had no compunction about meting out harsh punishments in this life in order to encourage toeing the line.
And even there they were hypocritical cowards – the Inquisition, for example, sentenced people to death, but they handed the person over to secular authorities to carry out the sentence. That way they didn’t sully their blessed hands with violence. Given that they are the cause of the violence, I personally consider them far more culpable than those they dominated with their religion.
“Atonement” is a large component of everyday Mormon theological discourse. It is mentioned almost every time a member gives his/her “testimony,” the confession of faith declaration of knowledge that the LDS church is true. The “testimony” itself is usually the capstone of a talk by a member at sacrament services. One of the church presidents is often quoted as saying other Christian groups have “too much cross and not enough garden.” He refers to the relative emphasis on the death of Jesus as compared to Jesus’s acceptance of all our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane. I always thought that atonement to be among the strangest and most incomprehensible Christian concepts out there, losing to transubstantiation by a length. I am not a Mormon and never have been one, but my wife is and I have learned a bit about the church.
( 163 ) Indeed, We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], as We revealed to Noah and the prophets after him. And we revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, the Descendants, Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon, and to David We gave the book [of Psalms].
( 164 ) And [We sent] messengers about whom We have related [their stories] to you before and messengers about whom We have not related to you. And Allah spoke to Moses with [direct] speech.
( 165 ) [We sent] messengers as bringers of good tidings and warners so that mankind will have no argument against Allah after the messengers. And ever is Allah Exalted in Might and Wise.
( 166 ) But Allah bears witness to that which He has revealed to you. He has sent it down with His knowledge, and the angels bear witness [as well]. And sufficient is Allah as Witness.
( 167 ) Indeed, those who disbelieve and avert [people] from the way of Allah have certainly gone far astray.
( 168 ) Indeed, those who disbelieve and commit wrong [or injustice] – never will Allah forgive them, nor will He guide them to a path.
( 169 ) Except the path of Hell; they will abide therein forever. And that, for Allah, is [always] easy.
( 170 ) O Mankind, the Messenger has come to you with the truth from your Lord, so believe; it is better for you. But if you disbelieve – then indeed, to Allah belongs whatever is in the heavens and earth. And ever is Allah Knowing and Wise.
Why do you keep quoting the Qur’an? We’re talking about Christian beliefs here, ok?
We are talking the truth not beliefs
Same question again, if we are talking facts why are you quoting a known myth?
( 1 ) Say, “He is Allah, [who is] One,
( 2 ) Allah, the Eternal Refuge.
( 3 ) He neither begets nor is born,
( 4 ) Nor is there to Him any equivalent.”
I for one thank ninjaguy for demonstrating that islam and christianity are equally ridiculous.
(And a new question: why do you think anyone else would be interested in even more superstition, especially boring quotes from it?)
Yes sir it God blessing
What is truth?!
Messiah,Jesus is raised by God and not killed
( 1 ) Say, “He is Allah, [who is] One,
( 2 ) Allah, the Eternal Refuge.
( 3 ) He neither begets nor is born,
( 4 ) Nor is there to Him any equivalent.”
You are in the wrong place mush, with your ridiculous goddiness. Get back uder your bridge, troll.
Thank u
Why, beauty, of course!
That’s one answer to Pilate’s question, but is it all ye need to know?
Well, as an Earthling, I suppose so.
“I must now ask thee,” said Gangler, “who are the gods that men are bound to believe in?”
“There are twelve gods,” replied Har, “to whom divine honours ought to be rendered.”
“Nor are the goddesses,” added Jafnhar, “less divine and mighty.”
My lord your lord the one creator of the earth and more
( 1 ) Say, “He is Allah, [who is] One,
( 2 ) Allah, the Eternal Refuge.
( 3 ) He neither begets nor is born,
( 4 ) Nor is there to Him any equivalent.”
The all-wise Odin in other words pre-dates the allah. Gods are just pointless for crying out loud!
( 1 ) Say, “He is Allah, [who is] One,
( 2 ) Allah, the Eternal Refuge.
( 3 ) He neither begets nor is born,
( 4 ) Nor is there to Him any equivalent.”
except for all of the other gods just like him. As usual, theists end up with making the same claims as each other, and they have exactly the same evidence: nothing.
Exactly!
ninjanetwork,
Could you please stop proselytizing? I believe it’s not welcome here.
If you have an argument to make do so, but quoting your scripture and beliefs is the equivalent of spam.
Yes and spam is harim, you should know that.
😀
Eternal Refuge. Only a blinkered fool would string those two words together.
“neither begets nor is born”…I think you mean nor was begot, nor was born.
Haven’t a son haven’t a father
Oh, dear. I thought you were actually making a point farther upthread (response to Lou).
I did too! Like you and someone else, my initial assumption was that he was demonstrating the equal ridiculousness and illogic of all religious texts by providing an example from the Qur’an.
Me too!!!
I suppose Muslim proselytizing isn’t what we expect here, and we all applied Occam’s Razor. Which only goes to prove the other rule, that there’s always an exception to the rule. 🙂
Me too!
You are right – it is utter tripe.
I note that they can’t accept evolution of any kind as soon as the subject becomes their mythic ‘sin’. No, we must be ‘created’.
And we must be created to be slaves, finite instead of “infinite”. Except when it comes to punishment, because an “infinite” being can’t accommodate the fairness and morality of the punishment fitting the punished. Then we have to be tortured slaves.
And this religion is considered ‘moral’? Ye gods!
Why can’t the assumption be: we are finite beings, therefore our punishment is finite? It’s all completely arbitrary, as one would expect from something made up.
Excuse me, but what about all the people who lived BEFORE Christ, without whose lives and sacrifices none of us would be here? How can they be punished for something they could not “know”? It is so “convenient” to just ignore the larger logical questions, as though history begins with Jesus.
There is a lovely story aboy the conversion of Radbod, Duke of the Frisians, that is relevant to that.
“It is said that Radbod was nearly baptised, but refused when he was told that he would not be able to find any of his ancestors in Heaven after his death, since he preferred spending eternity in Hell with his pagan ancestors than in Heaven with his enemies, especially the Franks.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbad,_King_of_the_Frisians
Don’t worry. The Mormons are on it.
I sure hope the Mormons don’t forget Thunn the Cro Magnon, Pete the proto-primate, Eric the shrew and Myron the amoeba when they construct my ancestry.
Myron was your great^n-grandpa too? Small world. Dude, we’re cousins!
Well, given that he is ancestral to every multi-celled organism that has ever existed, not really much of a surprise, cousin. 🙂
Hey, it’s religion. Anything goes. At least Mo spent the money…that’s pragmatic, not theological.
Here’s something I don’t understand about Christian theology. Perhaps somebody could help. Jesus supposedly died for our sins. But, he was only dead for a few days and then was resurrected and flew off to heaven. Where is the sacrifice here? It seems that he took a short nap and then returned to live with his father (who was also himself apparently) in eternal bliss.
Maybe you also have to be an infinite being to understand it?
I’m sure xians would respond that being crucified and killed is still no fun, even if you do get resurrected.
You still have to wonder, though. It seems to me that mere mortals who are killed in attempts to save others have made a greater sacrifice than JC, as they don’t get to be walking around feeling fine a few days later.
Yes, that’s what I’ve always said. This whole “amazing sacrifice” thing…human beings regularly make greater sacrifices for other people. The atheist who puts his life in danger for another person is risking, on that world view, far more than a Being who is All Powerful, Eternal and will pop right back to normal right after dying.
And, can an infinite being die, even for two days?
If so what happens to the planet while he’s dead? They seemed to get on fine without him.
And what about when he was undercover as Jesus, especially as a child? Did he pop back to heaven at night to catch up on the prayer backlog?
Being omnipotent, He obviously can be in much more than two places at once.
It only stands to reason…
Details … 🙂
It’s not even as if he had to suffer any pain. As Magic Man he can just magic away the pain. Obviously he has to put on a good show for the followers, but I’m sure a bit of method acting wouldn’t be beyond his infinite capabilities.
It’s quite simple really. People like the salvation story because it absolves them of responsibility to behave themselves, and allows them to think that they’re special. It’s a get-into-heaven-free card.
While at the same time secure in the knowledge that they’re special, better than everyone else, and somehow more moral.
It seems that animal sacrifice was part of all religious practices (non eastern at least) for thousands of years. The function here was to appease a deity by killing something or someone as a benefit to the deity itself. Now in Christianity the crucifying of Jesus appears as a relic of paganism emptied of its original function.
In this case the benefit is to the people who accept the sacrifice and not to the deity
who, since being all powerful, is also no doubt pleased. Christianity is full of these
mythological references of ancient beliefs.
I see very little original ideas there.
It has always seemed to me to be nothing more than an elaboration of the ancient Hebrew idea of the “scapegoat”.
From Wikipedia:
The scapegoat was a goat that was designated (Hebrew לַעֲזָאזֵֽל ) la-aza’zeyl; “for absolute removal”, (for symbolic removal of the people’s sins with the literal removal of the goat) and outcast in the desert as part of the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement, that began during the Exodus with the original Tabernacle and continued through the times of the temples in Jerusalem.
Once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Cohen Gadol sacrificed a bull as a sin offering to atone for sins he may have committed unintentionally throughout the year. Subsequently he took two goats and presented them at the door of the tabernacle. Two goats were chosen by lot: one to be “for YHWH”, which was offered as a blood sacrifice, and the other to be the scapegoat to be sent away into the wilderness. The blood of the slain goat was taken into the Holy of Holies behind the sacred veil and sprinkled on the mercy seat, the lid of the ark of the covenant. Later in the ceremonies of the day, the High Priest confessed the intentional sins of the Israelites to God placing them figuratively on the head of the other goat, the Azazel scapegoat, who would symbolically “take them away”.
—-
We would not believe today (not even “figuratively”) that we could put the responsibility for our actions on some dumb animal (*), so why is the Xtian “Atonement” any more reasonable?
(*) Imagine how that would play out in a court of law:
Defending counsel: “The defendant admits to the charges, m’lud, but fortunately he has a pet cat that will atone in his place.”
Justice: “An extra three months for contempt of court. Next!”
I’ve often pondered that perhaps Christianity “caught on” because people didn’t have to sacrifice their best grain and wine and animals anymore. Christianity was an economic boon.
The three great banes of Western Christianity IMO are
1) The doctrine of original sin- you are born evil by nature with a genetically inherited guilt making you damned by default (made standard by St. Augustine but believed earlier in some form by Tertullian whom Bible scholar Paula Fredriksen has described as the 2nd century equivalent of the tea party [in a video lecture not in print])
2) The doctrine of substitutionary atonement- that Jesus paid the price for your sins (including being born a descendent of Adam) by a substitutionary sacrifice
3) That the “sins of the flesh” are the most serious & deadly, moreso than lack of integrity in financial dealings or arrogance or theft.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity believes in none of the above, and seems on the surface to have a more internally morally coherent system of belief, but given their history of anti-Semitism and homophobia, I can’t call that a bed of roses. (But EOC has hardly any persecution of witches and heretics, and a polite refusal of the Crusades, so brownie points there.)
Various theologians have attempted to finagle the atonement into something more morally sensible. But weirdly, it is the worst versions that consistently have the most traction with the lay public.
(In early Christianity, the death of Jesus was a ransom paid to the devil, not to God the Father, which at least circumvents the problem of sacrificing to oneself. This view is in fact what one gets effectively in C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, and oddly Lewis’ fundamentalist fans don’t seem to mind.)
You’ve given me an idea: If Christians are so sure of this, why don’t they get their scientists (the ones we always hear about who see no conflict between religion and science) to study the human genome with a view to identifying the “original sin gene”?
Brilliant! This this discussion appears to have been invaded by a real, live, true Muslim believer. I wonder how he stumbled across WEIT?
His foreskin senses were tingling?
This subject reminds me that I recently re-visited the debate between Christopher Hitchen and “Theologian” Alister Mcgrath.
Mcgrath, IMO, is the most cringe-inducing, hair-pulling example of the mush-minded thinking that passes for “sophistication” in liberal Christianity. He seems utterly incapable of saying anything he believes with clarity or specificity, instead speaking in generalities, constantly spewing eddies of ambiguity in which to place his God beliefs.
Hitchens knew this and tried, vainly, to get Mcgrath to state something he actually believes in Christianity. Mcgrath offered – in his typical hazy depiction – Christ’s sacrifice as an offer to us, as being profound. Hitchens rightly exoriated Mcgrath on this, explaining in no uncertain terms why the substitutionary atonement of other people’s sins via the torture and death of an innocent is a morally vile concept and should be rejected by any decent person.
Mcgrath’s response was simply to say something along the lines of “well we will have different interpretations, I interpret Christ’s sacrifice as a gift from God, something I could not attain myself.”
In other words, just re-stating things in a way so vague as to ignore the actual troubling details of the “offer.” An utter failure in light of Hitchens’ critique. And yet Theologians like Mcgrath will, on their own time, harangue New Atheists for the naivete and shallowness of their critiques.
Yeesh.
In decades of looking into Christianity it has boggled my mind that literally nothing
in Christianity makes sense. Zero. Every belief and tenet immediately crashes catastrophically into the wall of reason and reality.
We will have different interpretations of armed robbery. I interpret it as a great boon to the perpetrator; a step toward financial security, one the perpetrator could not have attained otherwise.
It occurred to me that this “infinite ‘victim’ so infinite penalty” thing is just like the old English (and other) laws where if you wronged a commoner you got a lighter sentence than if you wronged a noble.
(Of course, even if you grant that appalling premise, why does infinite follow? The original universalists were to deny this, of course.)
It seems to me that we are not really talking about punishment but rather revenge.
As I see it, punishment is a form of coercion, a way of persuading a subordinate to behave the way that you want him or her to. If we agree that there a people who do not behave the way that the rest of us feel that they should, from small children to adults who are what we would call criminals, then it would appear that some kind of punishments are necessary. However, if we are going to be civilised about it, this punishment should be the minimum needed to keep these badly behaved persons in line.
Good point.
Of course, there is Nahum 1:2.
…at Jerry’s request….
A READERS “FULL EXPLANATION”:
God,being infinite, does not piss around with finite things.
Get that!
Now, given gods predilections for the infinite, you might ask why he/she/it created such a buggered up entity such as Man. No problemo, Man is INFINITELY buggered up, not just “sort-of buggered up”. Similarly, because of gods infinite nature, all religious explanation of his/her/it’s infinite attributes are infinity implausible, and as such “pisses all understanding”
Their math is quite incoherent. If we are finite beings, and apparently capable of only finite deeds (before we die, that is, after which we can suffer for an eternity), then any sin we commit is also finite. God/Jesus is an infinite being, so any sin we commit is irrelevant: any finite transgression against any infinite being is mathematically indistinguishable from no transgression against an infinite being.
So not only was Jesus’ alleged infinite sacrifice unnecessary, any finite being can sin as much as they want (finite being + finite time = finite sin) and any infinite being will always be completely unaffected by it.
So, Christianity + mathematics = nihilism?
I do not grant them the existence of ‘sin’.
Sin is an offense against a god, an imaginary being; making it non-existent as well.
Sin is an imaginary disease, designed to sell you an imaginary cure.
See the link below for former-fundamentalist Ken Pulliam’s monumental exploration of the Penal Substitutionary Theory of Atonement. Sadly, Pulliam died shortly before he completed it.
http://formerfundy.blogspot.com/2010/07/index-to-articles-on-atonement.html
I agree with the comment early in this list that maybe one first needs to understand why sacrificing animals was thought to work.
If that doesn’t make sense the Jesus stuff is even more odd.
“… and is therefore an infinite being.”
Thinking about this if god is infinite then god must include my agnostic arse. If it did not then god would not be infinite.
I can now go around telling anyone who would listen that my backside is divine.
Hope this displays OK.
“Here is a visual representation of a well-known biochemical reaction, the Krebs Cycle. ” It looks complicated. Look at all of the chemical terms. Each one is a defined term. Without that formal definition of terms, the information displayed in the image is meaningless. You can imagine how useless chemistry would be if water was defined as H20 and/or NaCl.
Now let’s look at a description of how “substitutionary atonenement” works. Let’s imagine the Pope on a stage at a conference with a visual aid helping to explain the concept. Imagine lots of circles and arrows and labels, and His Holimess pontificating on their meaning. Next, imagine Jerry Falwell presenting his version. (I know he’s dead, but, hey, miracles.) How many circles will his his presentation have? How many arrows? Would the labels he uses be similar to the Pope’s labels? Would they have the same meaning? I can’t help but feel that their explanations would be on a level similar this cartoon For theologians, step two is too hard, and being seen as a comedian is undignified.”
Nope, it didn’t .. here are the two pics I wanted to show.
kreb’s cycle
cartoon
Substitutionary theory of atonement was a late development in Christendom.
The earliest theory was the recapitulation theory as developed by St. Athanasius:
http://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/2011/11/09/the-recapitulation-theory/
It essentially holds that God became man so that man can become like God. The point of the crucifixion was not to glorify pain and suffering, but to overcome the power of death itself, so that humans can transcend death.
This is still the view of Eastern Orthodoxy.
I recognize this is a myth, but it is both different as well as the oldest living myth in Christianity. It was an attempt by Christians to articulate an answer to the question of how to know what is the true Good/good.