(June 20, 2016 at 6:46 pm)madog Wrote: 4) yes I'll give you that .... I am interpreting a story that came through text in the bible ...
Great. We've agreed on something!
Quote:5) I believe I have been doing that? In the world they created the "God" character had the power to achieve his objectives without sacrificing his son (himself) .....
Really? Then why would it matter, in a discussion about whether or not Jesus's passion is vicarious suicide, whether or not Jesus himself actually wrote the story down (which you have continuously challenged me on)? Also, statements like this:
"If "God" wanted his message clearly recorded he would have used his son to record his message not those that were already sinful in his eyes."
This does not assume the world of the author's invention in order to understand it. In their world, God didn't send his son to write down his own message. Your insistence that the world invented by the author's should have included this aspect is not a serious engagement with that world. Instead, given that God did not send his son to write down his message in the world of the authors, an intelligent question to ask about the text is, "why" rather than "they made a mistake".
Quote:It is made harder because there are so many interpretations of the story from cherry picking and interpretations by those with their own agenda ....
=). I really enjoyed this statement, especially given the next one.
Quote:So what is so intelligible about me choosing the bits that suit my conclusion or is that reserved for all those Christians from all the thousands of denominations that choose the bits that suit their conclusions?
I think you meant "unintelligible". Clearly, I find their cherry picking and conclusions as inadequate as yours. Do you want to try to understand the message in the fullest sense possible, or would you rather use logical fallacies to suit your conclusion? You don't strike me as someone who typically does that. So why do it here?
Quote:The Jesus character they created was also the God character that was sacrificing himself, so arguably it was murder if the God caused the death ..... or suicide if the Jesus purposefully allowed his own death ....
This hinges on two inadequate assumptions: 1) your assuming that you adequately grasp the meaning of Trinity and the incarnation, and 2) your assumption that you adequately grasp the concept of suicide (which, Lotsy has already pointed to inadequacies)
you have shown a reluctance to budge on either of those.
Quote:But according to the story neither the father or the son died ..... so not a sacrifice. what did they give up?
Are you sure about that? It is pretty evident from the text that the authors claim that Jesus died, and stayed dead until the third day. Do you want to engage with that piece of the story or ignore it?
Quote:I have not seen where scholarly theists and atheists have come to an agreement over whether the Jesus character committed suicide by his actions? Please show me where ....
Exactly. They haven't. I haven't even seen an atheist scholar come to that conclusion. Why? Probably because it's not a scholarly conclusion given the information in the text. They come to all sorts of other conclusions... you might check those out.
Quote:Maybe you should be telling Christians, most of which are indoctrinated and often haven't read a bible fully "that you don't have all of the information to form your own intelligent judgment" ....
What makes you think that I don't?