LISTEN, CHRISTIANS!

[Huggy Bear]

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Not accurate.
Jesus' death was a cure for sin (the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world), Not just for sins that had been committed, for there were future generations to benefit that didn't yet exist to commit sin.

I don't really care? It's your story, and your contention doesn't even discuss the actual objection I had. It doesn't matter whether the sins were those of the current day or all future ones, the issue is that the Jesus scenario concerns someone taking on the atonement of people who should, morally and personally, be doing the atonement themselves. This is an issue that medicine does not have, since sickness is not something one is guilty of and needs to atone for, it's something one is afflicted with. The actual problem with scapegoating atonement isn't present in the other part of your comparison.

Jesus made the choice to sacrifice his life, he didn't have to do it, yet you guys seem to think that  to be immoral.

If I arranged it so that I took the punishment and allowed a serial killer to walk free, would that be immoral? What you're describing is justice being averted; yes, someone stood to gain something from Jesus' sacrifice, but not all gain is deserved. The whole point of justice is to punish those who do evil in order to make evil less palatable as an option, the whole point of atonement is to have the person grow through self-sacrifice so they hopefully avoid the need for it in future, it's an expression of sincere guilt and a need for redress, something Jesus' crucifixion robs us of.

That is, of course, ignoring the fact that the entire thing was completely unnecessary, a charge I've laid out before to which your response was little more than "that's the way it is!"  

Now compare that to the earlier example of syphilis I gave. syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease, so wouldn't you say that if a person contracts it, it's their own fault?

Not necessarily. Making huge blanket generalizations just leaves you wrong more times than not, Huggy. But that's beside the point, because one is never "guilty" of syphilis. They made a choice that had as an unforeseen consequence- and it is an unforeseen consequence because nobody who fully knows that the consequence of a given sexual encounter will be syphilis will actually go through with it- a serious disease. There is nobody to atone to in that scenario, no harm to another person. There's nothing to be redeemed for, and hence no vicarious redemption.

Yet you can be cured of syphilis thanks to the 40 years of African-American men being (unbeknownst to them) infected with the disease in the name of scientific progress..

And you know what? I'm against that, I think that's an obscene violation of ethics, that those experiments took place. I feel the need to say that, since you apparently just assume that everyone advocates for every single atrocity unless they voice otherwise.  

These men died to provide a cure for a disease of people that were sexually irresponsible.....vicarious redemption.

Except without the redemption part, so you're still a goddamn idiot.

Again, how are they not comparable?

The things that we are objecting to in the Jesus narrative are not present in the medicine one. They are not comparable in the way that actually matters, if you want to start calling people hypocrites over this.

Not that it's going to stop you, since you're incapable of admitting- possibly even seeing?- your own wrongdoing at any point.

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