(November 3, 2014 at 10:22 am)polar bear Wrote: Am I the only one who is bothered that a group of men took a group of letters and molded a religion as best they could to fit their needs? And the job they did was quite flawed if we are being honest.
As it must be so, because Christianity was molded by many men over many generations on a framework that was itself a hodgepodge of previous contradictory faiths. Christianity is the bastard child of Judaism and Paganism (the maladjusted offspring later turned on and tried to destroy both parents but that's another topic). As a religion, one of it's many problems was patching together Jewish monotheism with pagan concepts of salvation, afterlife and an intercessor with the divine.
The Jewish religion had no concept of Hell and was sketchy on the afterlife (some passage of the OT flatly deny there even is one). The Jews believed in Sheol or "the grave", a term sometimes mistranslated to mean "Hell" but in fact it means oblivion.
To the Jews, the concept of an intercessor type of character, one needed to bridge the gap between us and the divine, was wholly blasphemous. The Jewish god Yahweh was a jealous and insecure god who demanded nothing less than undivided and direct attention. An intercessor was neither necessary nor tolerated. The first commandment makes it clear that there is to be no other god nor shall any bow down to idols. Isaiah 43:20-12 makes it clear that there are none beside him and that he alone judges and saves.
Early Christians wrestled with this conundrum for a good three centuries. The Trinity was invented as a confusing and convoluted patch, that Jesus is the same god and yet a separate person at the same time. The Trinity says that their god comes in three parts, three separate beings who are yet one and the same god yet separate yet one. So when Jesus was praying "not my will but thy will..." that's when he was fully human and a separate being. But when he was forgiving sins, that's when he was fully divine and one with his father god. Jesus flips back and forth between these two contradictory roles as needed to retroactively make the story make sense.
That's the big picture. More flaws creep in with the details as well. Not only were there different authors to scripture but we don't even know who many of them are. Pseudo-epigraphy and interpolation were serious problems. If you wanted to advance your theological agenda, you could "discover" a letter from Paul that just so happened to agree with you. It's estimated that a good half of the Pauline epistles are not "authentic".
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
