Josh McDowell

[Ace Otana]

God is the ultimate judge and his justice requires that something innocent and pure be sacrificed to atone for the sins humans commit (which echoes the coming of Christ).

Which makes no sense. God is supposedly all knowing, so surely he could of thought of a better way of going about it. I can think of a far more civilised way, one where no one gets hurt. If I had god's powers and infinite wisdom, no one would need to be harmed or sacrificed. God is incompetent.

How does it [sacrificing] make God more inclined to forgive?

It doesn't, because "god" is only a fragmentation of your over active imagination. Which is why god always seems to be on your side. He exists only in your mind, you control him. Try it. Make him angry, make him pleased. All this time, you controlled him.

By sacrificing and burning an offering to the Lord people were asking God to see them in the light of the sacrifice, as pure and innocent, meaning they acknowledged their deeds were evil and were asking to be given their innocence back. If the people sent a tainted sacrifice they are asking to be doubly cursed and mocked a holy God!

Rituals that are meaningless and worthless. Blinded by faith and incapable of reason. They've made up their own fairytales and deluded themselves into believing it.

3. God is essentially sacrificing himself, as a means to convince himself to forgive us.

He can't sacrifice himself, he has nothing to sacrifice. Besides anything that goes wrong is his fault entirely. He designed and created everything, he even knew the future with pin point accuracy. He's all knowing. So there is no excuse.

In order for humans to be redeemed we would need a pure and innocent sacrifice.

Pointless, no sacrifice was ever required. Killing people for something like a crazy unproven belief is madness. You could be terribly wrong and the life lost would have been for nothing. What makes it worse is that this one existence only ever comes once, and once dead, you cease to exist and you'll never return. It's like playing roulette, putting all your money even your life on one single number. I will not play with my existence so carelessly.

4. Moral justice demands that the criminal alone must be punished for his transgressions.

No atheist chooses to suffer. No one chooses hell (as far as I'm aware). Rejecting a crazy belief is normal and logical. It's madness to think that a god would harm you horrificly for something so trivial and harmless.

God chose to reedem us through Jesus Christ, otherwise separation from him would be our only choice, and that is a cruel fate for all the humans that descended from Adam & Eve, to only be given the choice to die.

Why would god punish those who had nothing to do with Adam and Eve?
It's like me locking you up for life for something your granddad did. Doesn't make any sense.

5. No one can take the place of someone else's sins, even if that person were willing.

Sin is just a concept, so nothing need be said.

6. It is morally wrong to accept an offer to take my place for the things I have done wrong.

It is also morally wrong to punish generations of people for something that happened thousands of years ago.

If we think over our sins, we can agree that no one deserves to pay for the evil we have committed, but us.

I haven't committed a single wrong. So how can I be punished? I have nothing to apologise for. In fact it's the other way round, it's your god that needs to apologise.