(May 31, 2013 at 3:15 pm)Consilius Wrote: As a Christian, I take Jesus dying on a cross for humanity as a fact.

Yeah...as Bill Maher refers to it "the stupidest part."

"Jesus became sin, to put sin to death on the cross."

God said to Adam & Eve: "If you eat from the fruit of this tree (knowledge) you will surely die (by God's hand)." Which we did of our own free-will.

Death was meant for sinners, NOT the ONE who never sinned. (God) as Jesus died on the cross (a tree) (by human hands). Which He did of His free-will.

Jesus broke the curse God put against us! Now we are under God's Grace, and have been reconciled with God through Christ Jesus!

Man's sacrifice was not enough. And God is God, and without guilt. So, the "Man God" was needed to bridge the gap between us and God!

Jesus says many times in the Gospel that "we were given to Him by the Father"! LOVE IS THE REASON! Pure & Simple. And makes perfect sense in every way!

And through our Faith in ...yes... what we can't see, but only with our hearts and spirits we will attain Eternal Life, and God's Divinity! That's the Promise! Amen!

God comes down AS Jesus to die on a cross. In another sense, God sends Jesus, who willingly performs the task. Jesus exists in unison with God, he is not an celestial being doing him a favor.
Jesus is fully human and divine. Being human, Jesus lives a full human life as the son of Mary. He is also the revelation of God himself. That is why Jesus calls himself a 'Son of God' as well as the 'Son of Man'. He is where the human meets the divine and brings them together again by conquering the sin that set them apart.
I can't take Bill Maher seriously. He is an atheist comedian. His job is to make other atheists feel better about themselves by bagging on Christians, not to present an actual argument.

(May 31, 2013 at 3:55 pm)CleanShavenJesus Wrote:

(May 31, 2013 at 3:50 pm)Consilius Wrote: Yup. I was just trying to make my reply compatible to what Greatest said. He wanted to talk about God and Jesus as different people, so I went along with it, since they ARE different natures of one person.

As different natures of a single entity (God), how is it that the Son would be able to choose not to die for our sins if God set out onto Earth as the the Son. How would they have seperate thought processes? The Father and the Son are one in the same. For Jesus to choose not to die for our sins, it would require God to not have Jesus die for our sins because...he is God. I'm confusing myself, but you get what I mean.

No, not really.

We're one species on a teeny-tiny planet, in the teeny-tiny Solar System, which is one of at least 100 billion star systems in a teeny-tiny galaxy, which is one of hundreds billions of galaxies in the known Universe... How can the assumption that we are in any way significant in all of that be anything but arrogant and egotistical to the extreme?

I honestly don't see how "P is egotistical" follows from "person P believes that Jesus Christ died for P." By what rule of logic are you making this inference?

(June 1, 2013 at 3:49 am)NoraBrimstone Wrote: We're one species on a teeny-tiny planet, in the teeny-tiny Solar System, which is one of at least 100 billion star systems in a teeny-tiny galaxy, which is one of hundreds billions of galaxies in the known Universe... How can the assumption that we are in any way significant in all of that be anything but arrogant and egotistical to the extreme?

First of all, only ONE of these planets has life at all, and that is Earth. On this Earth, there are millions of species of different animals and plants. But animals are slaves to simply being animals; they do not collectively advance as society or make conscious decisions on whether or not to behave a certain way. Humans have these abilities. People can think, they can love, they can believe. Human society is changed by humans, and the record of these changes forms human history. Without humans, we have animals who just happen to be on an earth in a universe with no idea how they're there.
At the same time, human ability is limited; we can only do a number of concrete things. We have an ultimate being beyond ourselves, and we are a product of him that is subject to him. He keeps our ego down.
So don't underrate humanity, but don't overrate it either.

(May 31, 2013 at 3:15 pm)Consilius Wrote: As a Christian, I take Jesus dying on a cross for humanity as a fact.
Part of this belief is that we are not worth that sacrifice, and the love it took to make it is what we are impressed by.
Jesus' mission was voluntary, which means that neither did God the Father or humanity force him to do it.

You take Jesus dying on the cross as fact? And what evidence did you base that conclusion on?

(June 1, 2013 at 5:54 am)Consilius Wrote: First of all, only ONE of these planets has life at all, and that is Earth.

That's mathematically impossible. You fail.

First of all, Jesus Christ existed as a historical figure. Plenty of historians say so.
Dying on a cross? My evidence is that Christianity came to be the religion of millions when it started out surrounded by devout Jews who savagely killed its followers, and spread across the Roman Empire, despite that many more of it followers were killed as well.
Whatever these people preached, it had to be something worth listening to, and something worth believing as well, since so many people died for it.
It would take quite the conspiracy to make that stuff up. If Jesus Christ HAD been a story, it would have made as little sense to first century Jews and Romans as it does to you. In Jesus' time, gods didn't love people. And if they ever were on earth, they didn't die. So I also believe in the Christian story because it is so original.

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(June 1, 2013 at 6:25 am)NoraBrimstone Wrote:

(June 1, 2013 at 5:54 am)Consilius Wrote: First of all, only ONE of these planets has life at all, and that is Earth.

That's mathematically impossible. You fail.

Funny. For a math equation, it sure isn't working. Haven't you also heard about the calculation that if there was ever a race equal to, let alone superior to, humanity, that it would have contacted us by now?