No sense – Jesus died for me

Religion and Secularism
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They obviously look at it from a different angle. He’s God. He can do whatever he wants with his creation and there is nothing inherently wrong or bad without that because he is perfectly good and cannot do evil. And he’s certainly not “sinful” by anyone’s measure because sin is really nothing more than that which displeases God. So it is impossible for God to sin.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m with you on this one. Destroying children, commanding his people to dash the heads of babies against rocks, all very deplorable things. But you just can’t beat the argument, “Who are you to question God? Doesn’t he have the right to do what he wants with his own creation?” And I know, there is a big difference between breaking your own toys and causing pain and suffering to sentient beings for your own amusement, even if you did create them. I get that. But it’s not an argument you’ll sway the true believer with.

I also don’t disagree with that last paragraph one bit. I told my Witness friend that the Bible was a “Choose your own adventure” because you could make it say whatever you want. If you want a real eye opening experience about how true that actually is, talk to 3 different people in 3 different religions about their religions. Let each one know that you’re talking to the others. If they don’t know you’re talking to the others they will try to use the Bible to prove that theirs is the right religion. No matter what questions you ask, it’s always the same. I have to keep reminding my Witness friend that I don’t even believe God exists, much less that he wrote or inspired the bible, or that there is one true religion, so his Bible quotes mean nothing to me. But it’s still all he knows. But if they know you’re talking to the other people then they’ll use the Bible to show you how the other two are wrong instead. The moment they know they have competition they move from showing they are right to attacking the competition. You will quickly see beyond doubt that it’s all bullshit, if you haven’t already bought the “God is definitely real” nonsense, anyway.

22

@Widder,

I know you’re not checking in as often lately, but hopefully you’re safe at home now, maybe more time on your hands. These threads are an interesting idea but I don’t want to keep responding with my view of the myths while you are on a different, perhaps parallel path. If you listen to Matt Dillahunty, he often talks about being careful not to make an argument against transubstantiation if you are arguing with a Baptist. They don’t believe in that, so it means nothing to them that you don’t believe it. You will lose credibility in the discussion.

Why should you care? It’s all BS right? Depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. That’s what I’ve had trouble with from your OP. You say,

And, given that nobody remembered the sacrifice until decades later, it almost certainly was just a story, created by the founders of the Catholic church as a means of transitioning the religion into a new era; a way to modernize the religion without technically “changing” any of the beliefs.

Well, I don’t believe there was ever some group of church leaders who got together and laid out their powerpoints about how to modernize the religion. Individuals, like Paul, wrote things and went around getting followers, and those that got more followers survived, until someone who had followers with swords came along, etc. etc.

Then you go on to apply modern logic to the question of how the crucifixion actually saves us. Of course there is no logic to that, and you demonstrate it. There are a dozen or so religious responses; “mysterious ways”, “god is love”, “you can’t understand the trinity”, to name a few. Individuals either realize the narrative doesn’t do anything for them or they don’t. I think they should be challenged and debated, but there is no logical argument that can instantly stop someone from being illogical.

So, I didn’t lay out specific options here, but maybe you pick them out from what I’m saying. Or I could get more specific if you want.

23
Widder said: So it is impossible for God to sin.
Then how is it possible God can tell humans killing is a sin? "Do as I say not as do", is not a moral argument.

 

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They obviously look at it from a different angle. He’s God. He can do whatever he wants with his creation and there is nothing inherently wrong or bad without that because he is perfectly good and cannot do evil.
But he is an inhabitant of our minds. Has absolutely nothing to do with the physical biological reality that Earth, or her biosphere, or her hominids exist within.

So in essence all this beating about the God-Bush is little more than arguing about which TV program one likes best.

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Then how is it possible God can tell humans killing is a sin? -- Write4U
Not sure why you're asking this. Widder goes on to address it. It's similar to Xain's cries that you can't "counter" nihilism. If you accept previous statements of his, and if you accept the conclusions, and if you define nihilism the way he does, he's right. So Widder is right when he says,
But you just can’t beat the argument,
You can go back over the premises, explain what logic is, question some step where they made a leap of faith, but if they don't agree with you on what logic is and that faith is not truth, you can't "beat" them. So unless you have a solution to hard solipsism, I don't think there is an end to this. If you don't have a reason for why things are the way they are, then your answer to what to do will rely on a premise that has a chance of being wrong. It's Munchausen's trilemma.
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lausten said; You can go back over the premises, explain what logic is, question some step where they made a leap of faith, but if they don’t agree with you on what logic is and that faith is not truth, you can’t “beat” them. So unless you have a solution to hard solipsism
I do. If it is God that tells you to kill someone, then it cannot be a sin, can it? Who then decides if killing someone is a sin or a divine command from a sinless God?

Were the Crusades justifiably sinless? Was the conviction and burning of witches sinless because it was God’s punishment administered by humans?

Answer these questions and see if you can possibly come up with a persuasive argument. I understand the believer may not feel the need to justify an god given command to others, but in a secular world a “divine command to kill someone” is still considered murder or at least insanity. Neither one meets the common standard of being “innocent of sin”. You’re guilty or insane, IMO, that is a hard solipsism.

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Murder and insanity are defined relative to some standard. There is no standard in solipsism except the self. I need to get outside today, so TBC.

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I understand the definition of solipsism, but that does not superceed the law. Even law enforcement officers cannot meet out justice. Even as they have permission to use force, they still must obey the rule of law.

The rule of law is based on secular logic and personal belief is superceeded by secular law. This is why we have the Establishment Clause, in order to avoid conflicting interpretation or application of a bunch of different laws… If one does not observe the Establishment Clause, that in itself is a crime.

There can only be one law, else there might as well be no law at all.

 

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We’re on two different topics here Write4U. Secular law is generally followed by those who believe God is in charge and created all laws. Some of them also think the Establishment Clause is designed to protect them from non-Christian influence on their country. I think we have corralled them to some degree but it could be said that degree is "just barely ". So, I agree with what you’re saying, that there is just one law. Part of that law is citizen participation in making and updating laws. That’s where we cross over into my topic.

Using abortion as an example. Secular law protects a woman’s right, but that doesn’t mean a pro-lifer has to like it. A few have gone beyond mere protesting, fortunately not lately. Many more have been working diligently to chip away at those rights, to make it more difficult for them to exercise them by reducing their access to clinics. There’s are the arguments that I say you can’t win using logic. They choose an arbitrary point, fertilization, then they make up things about a “heartbeat” at 18 days, and they will go to extreme measures with fake videos, all because of a mistaken interpretation of what God thinks. It’s not even scripturally defensible.

I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what sin is. I asked several Christians. Most will say something like, “just read the Bible, it’s obvious”. The best system you could find would be Calvinism. It’s not any more logical than any other, but it has some consistency. It’s freaking Medieval too. What has never happened, is someone said, “huh, I never thought about it, let’s look that up in the Bible, oh darn, this is full of contradictions, and almost no specifics.” Individuals eventually do come to that conclusion, but it usually takes a few years.

30

Widdershins wrote:

So why did Jesus need to die for my sins? He didn’t. He needed to die for the religion.
 

My response:

Actually, Jesus DID have to die for all of our sins. Here’s why:

God told our ancestors, Adam and Eve, not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because he did not want them to know evil because he loved them and did not want them to endure the suffering that evil brings. But the devil made them believe that God didn’t really love them and that he was keeping something good from them so they disobeyed God and ate of the fruit.

You may ask why he gave them the choice. It’s because God created humankind to be in a loving relationship with him and with each other. True love must be given by choice, freely. It cannot be coerced. This is why God didn’t make us mere automatons, programmed to love. But if you give someone the choice to love you, you also give them the choice to not love you and that’s what Adam and Eve chose – not to love God. And so sin/evil entered the world.

Kind begets kind. Horses give birth to horses. Cows give birth to cows. And sinners give birth to sinners. This means that all human beings have been born as sinners. Our spirits are dead in sin. It doesn’t matter if we are kind to animals and children or whether we give money to charity or if obey the laws of the land. We are sinners and there is nothing we can do about it.

God cannot have sin in his presence. This means that we will always be disconnected from him. In the Old Testament, the Israelites sacrificed animals to cover their sins, but that sacrifice was only temporary and had to be repeated over and over and over again. There was only one kind of sacrifice that could atone for the Sin of humankind; that was the sacrifice of a human being. However, just as the lambs that were sacrificed had to be unblemished (Ex. 12:5), so, too, did the human sacrifice. In human terms, that means he had to be sin-free. But we have already established that no human being is sinless.

So enter Jesus who, as God Incarnate, was free of sin because he was God and able to atone for our sins because he was man simultaneously. He is the unblemished lamb (1 Peter 1:19). When a person accepts Christ, the Holy Spirit brings that person’s dead spirit alive in Christ (Rom. 8:10). He exchanges our sins for the righteousness of Jesus. We are given right-standing with God when we accept the free gift of salvation that Christ and Christ alone can give. And his sacrifice was done once and for all (Heb. 10:1-18).

So “the story” is not enough as you claim, Widdershins. A mere story would do no one any good. If Jesus did not come as God Incarnate, did not die and rise from the dead, then humanity would be right where it was when Adam and Eve sinned – separated from God, unable to do anything to regain their relationship with him, still dead in sin.

As Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias put it, Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive.

31

lausten wrote:

I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what sin is. I asked several Christians. Most will say something like, “just read the Bible, it’s obvious”.
 

Sin is rebellion against God. Sin is transgressing his laws. See here:

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Well Said…

jesus said people would be hardened by this world and be dull of hearing matt 13:15

all we can do is present the good news so there are without excuse rom 1:20

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@dovesong

Jesus was Not a real person.

The attached video is approximately 10 minutes long.

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Very good @widdershins what you said is totally true!..there is a price for sin…even when we marry we must give out the brideprice! nothing comes easy…thats why Jesus is needed.God bless you…repentance is easy but not attornement…about repentance i guess here we can learn more >> REPENTANCE THAT TOUCHES THE HEART OF THE LORD.

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@gideonsrepp

 

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If God is power enough to create the universe and everything in it, why do you suppose he chose a book to communicate with us? Why wouldn’t this God have written this book himself instead of choosing humans? And why hasn’t God given us any objective evidence for his existence? And what kind of all knowing super entity requires worship or it has murderous temper tantrum‘s? And what kind of all loving God would allow a child to be raped?

38

Ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto and ditto.

39

Here is a post about a non penal substitution approach to atonement: https://darthpausanias.blogspot.com/2020/09/eviscerating-conservative-evangelical.html

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I didn’t read far into this because it started out as a bunch of nonsense. If you look at the description of this approach in the beginning you can easily see why.

(1) Man has sinned against God; (2) God is holy and cannot excuse sin (ners); (3) God’s holiness results in his anger and wrath focused against sin(ners); (4) Jesus Christ, the Son of God bore the full wrath against sin(ners); (5) This propitiation enables God to righteously forgive sinners, declare them righteous, and thereby reconcile them to himself (Pulliam, 189)
That description doesn't make sense logically. Parts 1-4 are all past tense while part 5 apparently extends to the rest of eternity. If you're very angry then yes, you can take a sledge hammer to an old car and take your anger out on that and maybe feel better afterwards. But that's not going to help you the next time that same thing happens.

And what was this “wrath” that Jesus supposedly bore? Being nailed to a cross by people for six hours? Does that sound like the wrath of God to you? No cities burning, no ground opening and swallowing anyone up, no being smitten with boils and emrods, no frogs or locusts, just chilling on the cross for a fraction of the time it usually took to die up there, a punishment easily delivered by man because it was.

What’s more, you can’t even reconcile this with the accounts in the Bible. There is an Old Testament, before Jesus came along. And in that Old Testament people did go to Heaven. One person was even taken there physically. God didn’t have a whipping boy back then, but he was still able to forgive sin without one.