LISTEN, CHRISTIANS!

[MTL]

Huggy74,

Forgive me if someone has asked you this before;
I am new and I find the prospect of digging through all past threads, a bit daunting,
so if you'll allow me to ask:

Your profile says that you "believe in God, not Religion";

This is a view I have no problem with, whatsoever
(and one that I wish more people would adopt).

However, in this post you espouse Christian dogma....that Jesus IS God.

To me, that IS Religion....which your profile claims to eschew.

This seems incongruous to me.

If you are interested in elucidating, I'm interested to hear what you have to say on it.

I believe there is one supreme being which in and of itself is not a religion, a religion is man made and consists of a set of beliefs and traditions instructing you on what you can and can't do. A christian is free to do whatever he wants to do, there are no rules, but if you call yourself a christian and willfully commit sin, then it shows that the spirit of God isn't in you. A person with the spirit of God, would have no desire to sin, and therefore need no "religion"

I'll use this analogy, say two people are in love and decide to get married. Religion would be like having a list of do's and don'ts that you had to follow during the course of the marriage.

In a true marriage the husband or wife is free to do what they want, but loves each other so much that they would never do anything to hurt the other. But IF one so happened to mess up and have an affair and was truly repentant, then the other loves them enough to forgive them.

Willfully having affairs shows that they never truly love their spouse to begin with.

Short answer.. I don't belong to a denomination or any organization.

I see.  Thank you for replying.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children;- Genesis 3:16

Yes...I know...I'm fully aware of this passage. That's kind of why I said that. You obviously missed the point. The point is that if this passage is true, your god is a sadistic fuck by his own account to punish all the women of the human race for a single transgression of one woman. Every time your god does anything, for that matter, it's generally some heinously evil bullshit that he somehow insists we brought on ourselves. Your god, if he existed as written, is completely amoral and the worst kind of abuser.

I have never claimed God existed in a trinity, he has only ever been One God..


Are you married? do you have kids? If so then you a husband, father, and son.... does that make you three different people?

Semantic bullshit, semantic bullshit, and more semantic bullshit.

If god the son and god the father are the same person, then who is he the son of? I get whose father you think he is (everyone's...how lucky we all would be...), but whose son is he?

Besides, even if he sacrificed himself so we didn't have to account for our own actions, how is that admirable? Why require blood sacrifice at all? Why does sin require blood? If god made those rules, he could have just as easily made a system less capricious and brutal. If he did not make those rules, and refers to rules higher than himself, than he is not all-powerful, nor is he the highest source of universal morality. 

So you admit that science has committed that atrocity and that you don't believe "vicarious redemption" ever actually happened anyway. It seems you should make better use of your time and protest science.

Oh, I see what you're saying here. Look...the fact that scientists infected a bunch of black dudes with syphilis isn't a failing of science. It's a failing of those people's ethics. I don't know the specifics of that case, but if we could interview those scientists, we might find many of them had religious motivation both for being willing to sacrifice other humans for the greater good, and for choosing black people as the appropriate sacrifice. Racism and human sacrifice are both things that christianity especially seems to squee over, so I'd pin it on them, personally, but that would be making ungrounded assertions. The best I can do is speculate, I suppose.

[Tonus]

Who's mad at god, Randy?

I name some names, they deny it, I look stupid...

Nah. Not gonna do it.

Just take off your atheist-colored glasses and read the posts without bias. You'll see.

"Clear" isn't a color.

[Rhondazvous]

I see Esq has already addressed Huggy with the point I was going to make.  More succinct than I would've, too.  Typical.  

Ok, the Muppet thing was a joke, but seriously, what the fuck? My dear cousin is a little person, and she just got married to the love of her life this weekend, and he is also a little person. Using the word "midget" as a slur in any sense is ignorant and backward. You think Jesus would call someone a mental midget? Do you say retard, too? Fuck. Grow up.

Huggy is just trying to, in his mind, insult us like we insult him.  Thing is, we insult him after poking holes in his bullshit, or in response to his insufferable twatery (it's a word now!).  He does it at the start in an attempt to... I don't know, actually.  Be edgy or something.

Maybe if he had a cogent argument he would be able to let it stand on its own merits rather than his current tactic of preemptively poisoning the well with ad homs while throwing all manner of shit against the wall in the hopes that something sticks or, perhaps, hoping we won't notice how specious that shit is while we're dealing with his insults.

I don't recall anyone insulting him. Does he not hold the opinion that it's up to atheists to prove that god doesn't exist? Well, somebody called him a motherfucker, so by his own line of reason, it's up to him to prove that he is not. If he can't then it's not an insult. It's an observation.

[Huggy Bear]

Are you saying a cure doesn't free from what distresses or harms?
Are you saying a cure doesn't extricate from or help to overcome something detrimental?
Are you saying a cure doesn't offset the bad effect of?

A cure is indeed redemption because it is meant to restore you back to health. Just as Jesus' sacrifice was to restore man back to what he originally was in the beginning.

Are you just not reading my posts before you disagree with them? Come back when you actually understand why we object to the Jesus narrative's vicarious redemption, because I don't have the time for someone who refuses to know what he's talking about, but still thinks he has some informed position from which to disagree. The objection to the Jesus redemption is not present in the medical one; if you're intent on just playing definition games to attempt to win points then I'll just use your terminology. It doesn't get you any closer to being right, anyway.

"Driving," is not the objectionable part of "drunk driving," and "redemption" is not at issue in this discussion, if we're to go along with your definitions.

here is your definition.

It doesn't matter whether the sins were those of the current day or all future ones, the issue is that the Jesus scenario concerns someone taking on the atonement of people who should, morally and personally, be doing the atonement themselves.

Let me put it simply, syphilis is a std.
If one were to say, obey the bible and not engage in premarital sex and remain faithful to their spouse, then one should not contract syphilis.. but if you engage in premarital unprotected sex and contract syphilis then THAT IS YOUR OWN FAULT, and they should suffer the consequences of their actions right?

But due to the sacrifice of human test subjects, those infected, THROUGH THEIR OWN ACTIONS are able to restore themselves back to a healthy condition. Experimenting on themselves to find their own cure would be an impossibility.

Likewise as the bible state the punishment for sin is DEATH... this means TOTAL ANNIHILATION, a price that is impossible to pay because to pay it means to be removed from existence, got it? So it is necessary for someone else to pay it.

The funny thing is your advocating that everyone should be wiped out of existence (thought you were against genocide?), Jesus death was to prevent that exact scenario from happening.

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, - Revelation 5:1-6

[Mystical]

The mistake you make is separating Jesus from God, they are one and the same.

A child is born into this world through blood, and pain, do you consider that to be sadistic?

Side Question if you don't mind, if god and Jesus are the same, then why would god even need to  sacrifice himself to himself just so he could forgive himself (Jesus taking on all sins)? Is there an even higher power than god that god must answer to that required a blood sacrifice? Or did god just not want to say "I forgive you"?

Hi again Randy, haven't forgotten about you--if you replied to me I will be going back to seek it out; haven't had a chance to check! 


~Luckie~

[Rhondazvous]

The mistake you make is separating Jesus from God, they are one and the same.

A child is born into this world through blood, and pain, do you consider that to be sadistic?

Childbirth is a natural process. Why would a loving god create a system of law that necessitates blood and pain and sacrifice to bring life? You sound as if you believe these is some law above god that he must obey. If he must obey his own law then he created the law and is not a loving god.

[Esquilax]

Let me put it simply, syphilis is a std.
If one were to say, obey the bible and not engage in premarital sex and remain faithful to their spouse, they one should not contract syphilis.. but if you engage in premarital unprotected sex and contract syphilis then THAT IS YOUR OWN FAULT, and your saying they should suffer the consequences of their actions right?

Actually no, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that fairly meted out justice is an important response to immoral acts. However, contracting syphilis is an amoral act, in that there's no repercussions beyond the personal through which to give it a moral dimension on its own. Before you start blustering about how the bible says sex is immoral, I'd remind you that I don't place any stock in fiat command, and instead formulate my morals based on a consideration of effects and intent, within a framework of what can be reasonably predicted at any given time.

All that is, of course, beside the point, because you keep wanting to make this about medicine when the actual problem is with Jesus. The reason I object to the Jesus story is because, by taking punishment for the sins of others he has committed an immoral, counterproductive act. Justice and atonement, the punishment for crimes and selfless redress for harmful action, serves a number of easily justifiable pragmatic purposes that are at the core of both concepts: personal accountability for harmful acts is a deterrent to further harm to the community, and it removes people who could be a danger from society. Atonement is a means of personal growth, where one sincerely goes to the person they have wronged to make amends, which is important in itself. By taking the punishment for these acts, Jesus has robbed justice of its purpose, and stunted the growth of others by removing the need for atonement. His "sacrifice" is either directly harmful, where it concerns real crimes, or it's unnecessary, where it concerns the magical thinking supernatural "crimes" that only exist because god sez so.

It's so obvious, if you were a normal person and not a blowhard I'd have a hard time believing you weren't getting it: if a man beats his wife and another man goes to jail in his stead, has the first man improved? Has he been rendered not dangerous to his wife? No: he's just learned that he can get away with it. At the very best, he's still a violent person in close quarters with a helpless woman that, if we take the bible seriously, can't divorce him. Nothing improves because of this vicarious redemption, it doesn't do any of the things that punishment is supposed to do, and no I don't think "making the guilty party suffer" is a part of that, which removes your syphilis example from the running right away.

Regarding medicine, nobody is "guilty" of being sick, sickness is not a crime that people commit, and there's no need to atone because there's nobody to atone to. Within the context of how I view morality, there is no need for redemption there, for one, and even if there was that redemption does not come with the problematic aspects of the biblical narrative because there's nothing in the use of medicine that subverts the purpose of medicine.

The ethics of the medical experiments in question aren't contested; obviously they were bad. But they happened, and it is in keeping with the purview of medicine to use the knowledge gained through them to prevent further sickness; in this case, the sacrifice works as intended, prevents suffering, and effects good. In the case of Jesus, the sacrifice does not work as a force for good, and ends up causing suffering by giving its adherents a mindset where the price has already been paid, so they have no accountability themselves. The Jesus example subverts the cause of justice and atonement that it claims to champion, whereas the medical example is consistent with the principles of healing and the prevention of harm that it champions, and therein lies the important difference. You can't just go "but they're both redemption!" here, Huggy.

... Not that it'll stop you, of course.

Likewise as the bible state the punishment for sin is DEATH... this means TOTAL ANNIHILATION, a price that is impossible to pay because to pay it means to be removed from existence, got it? So it is necessary for someone else to pay it.

The funny thing is your advocating that everyone should be wiped out of existence (thought you were against genocide?), Jesus death was to prevent that exact scenario from happening.

Yep. You got me. That's exactly what I'm advocating for.

Could it be that perhaps I find the concept of sin entirely arbitrary and unnecessary? Something that god could have gotten rid of with no great effort, because "offending god" is not some instant immoral act? So that what I'm advocating is not "everyone pay the price for their own sins," but "god should grow up and remove the whole pointless concept in favor of a realistic system devoid of the frothing exaggeration at the heart of sin"?

[Godscreated]

Wished I had gotten here earlier in the thread, sorry fellow Christians. Like I just said to Rhondazvous, there are many here that are mad at God and many of the Christians who were here in the past have said so also. Just because those atheist deny they are not mad at God they can't hide their real feelings, at some time or other they will show their true self. One doesn't have to come out and say they are mad and an atheist wouldn't because the others would be all over that person for claiming to be an atheist, so atheist are very careful not to say such a thing, they can't stand having the truth told, so denial is their only way out.

Min, Esq, Cin, Nei and many others, all that one needs to do is read with attention and see they are mad at God and His people, actually the better word here for what they do is hate, it's what Christ said of them.

GC

Get bent GC. You're no better qualified than any of the other ass-hats to tell us what we feel.

Why you write it down and present it for all to see, most atheist here parrot each other, so much so nothing new is being added to good conversation by atheist. Look at your language, that seems to me to be an indication of what's in your heart.

GC

[Godscreated]

Min, Esq, Cin, Nei and many others, all that one needs to do is read with attention and see they are mad at God and His people, actually the better word here for what they do is hate, it's what Christ said of them.

So now we have the truth. Your pigheaded insistence that we are mad at god is not based on what we say but on Jesus antiquated assumption that people   would hate him. If Jesus said fire is cold you could burn your ass off and not be disabused because if Jesus said fire is cold then you're just going to believe that no matter what.

Vic is right, you are mad at reality. Reality gives the lie to your precious beliefs and you hate that. Can't stand it, sit it or lay it.

It's hard to take one serious when they use such an analogy as fire is cold, when Jesus plainly speaks of the fires of hell as you used it in another thread causes smoke and we all know that it takes heat to due such. I'm not mad at reality, that would be stupid reality is what it is and has no control of life. It is in fact the picture of life.

GC