WHY was Jesus cricified?

[orangebox21]

So you do understand what atonement is, but you reject Christ's sacrificial atonement because it makes no emotional, logical, nor moral sense to you?

Bingo! We have a winner.

---- Seriously though, I view it as a myth. I'm not rejecting forgiveness from anything really because I don't believe there is any god out there to either be injured or do the forgiving. What I am saying is that even assuming the salvation myth were true, it's nutty as a bag of hammers. And the shear nuttiness of it makes the Christian god's existence that much less probable.

Alright, thanks for the answer.

If you assume there is no God, then it logically follows there is no sacrificial atonement of Christ. Based upon your assumption your conclusion follows. If there is no God, there is no sin (legal debt) against Him, therefore there is no atonement.

In the last two sentences you said that if you assume salvation to be true, and I fully understand that you don't, it is as nutty as a bag of hammers. If you assume that Bible is true (the biblical plan of salvation) then:

According to the Bible...
does God exist?
is sin a legal debt to God?
are you a sinner and thus legally in debt to God?
what is the punishment for the debt?
what is the payment for the debt?
if someone were to pay the debt for you, does that fit the definition of atonement? of sacrifice?
who has paid the debt for you?
is salvation the result of Christ's finished work on the cross to those who believe?
how nutty are hammers?