(August 21, 2013 at 7:53 am)Tonus Wrote: Most (all?) Christian denominations believe that god took on a human form and offered it as a sacrifice that presents imperfect and sinful humans the opportunity to be saved. The Biblical story of Jesus' life tells us that he succeeded in this endeavor. As a hypothetical, what do you think would have happened had he failed? I can only really imagine that he would have failed by committing a sin and therefore becoming imperfect.
First, an explanation of the poll options:
1- Didn't happen: this is the one to select if you lack imagination or are worried about speculating on such things. Since the Bible tells us that Jesus succeeded in offering a perfect life as a sacrifice, you find the whole discussion to be moot.
2- Couldn't happen: there are two ways to consider this. One, that it would have been impossible for Jesus to sin. That would imply that the whole thing was rigged. Two, that as a perfect human being, Jesus could only have committed a sin through a willful act. And that would have been completely contrary to what he took on a human form to do, as well as giving Satan a victory. That also implies that the game was rigged, in that Jesus would have had to act against his nature in order to fail.
3- Reset button: this is where things can get interesting. Let's assume that he did fail. He knowingly committed a sin and could no longer offer up his human form as a ransom for humanity. What would happen? Would he simply conjure up a new body and start over? Would he consider the whole experiment a failure and wipe out Earth, or even the whole universe? It's not like the next Earth/universe would ever have to know that he messed up. In all honesty, what do you think would have been the ramifications of failure?
4- The End of All Things: or would failure have created a paradox that would have necessarily destroyed even god himself? If Jesus failed, then Satan was right. If Jesus failed, then creation was not "good" and god was not infallible. God would have become something competely contrary to his nature and could not survive such a discrepancy.
The fourth option makes the second one seem the most plausible. It was impossible for god to fail, and therefore the game was rigged. Jesus could not have done any differently than he did, which made his sacrifice superfluous. Does that make sense?
BONUS QUESTION: Is it possible that this isn't the first universe that god created? Or the first planet populated with sentient beings? Maybe we're the third or fourth iteration, and god is STILL getting it wrong? If he wiped everything out and started over, how would we know? Maybe he just seems infallible because we haven't searched far enough in the universe to find the carpet that he swept his earlier messes under?
HOW WOULD WE KNOW???? omg!
Actually - the Mythical christ - in the Bible - did BREAK the laws of his religion and so was NOT perfect to begin with.
The word "sin" however - in this context - is a meaningless word
In religions - sin is an offense against a god. There being no gods proven to exist - there is NO such offense to establish.
If you choose to use the bible - and the actions of the "god" in the bible to establish sin - the god CREATED evil - murdered - and performed all sorts of EVIL acts - AND said everything was "GOOD". So - with a god as described - how could one offend a depraved monster like the god of the bible and actually commit a "sin".
Now - if the god is "all knowing - past - present - and future" as the religion claimed - everything that happens and happened was already known by the god BEFORE it happened - and therefore NONE of it can be changed to something the god did not know. S0 - since EVERYTHING must be pre-ordained to have an all knowing god - then the story was not of FREE WILL - since no one can OPT to do something the god does not know.
AS far as saving is concerned - we already know that the FABLE of EDEN is just a MYTH - and did not happen as claimed in the bible - since there were humans on earth long before the beginning of the bible - and the Universe existed Billions of years before the "creation" of 6000 years ago in the bible- THE claim of the god creation in the bible is nothing more than a fraud.
That having been said - why does ANYONE believe this nonsense - it is because they were taught to long before they had a chance to make up their own minds. A rational and educated person would look at the bible as a whole - and religious claims - and LAUGH.
