RE: Christianity almost impossible without indoctrination
February 15, 2014 at 12:56 pm
Quite agreed. Christianity goes well beyond positing that a god exists and makes assertions about the nature and activities of this god "Yahweh" that should be clearly absurd to anyone not indoctrinated.
According to Christianity, their god had to become his own son so that he could sacrifice himself upon a cross as the only means to appease his own wrath, convince himself to forgive us and allow himself to change a rule that he made in the first place. Anyone who doesn't believe this will be tortured forever by the god who loves us so much.
The concept of blood sacrifice to appease the wrath of the gods is nothing new but Christianity takes it to a new level of madness by proposing that their god sent his own son to be that sacrifice. Why does Yahweh need to kill his own son just to convince himself to forgive us? I can do that without killing anyone. Yet we are told that Jesus sacrifice on the cross was the only way that divine forgiveness was even possible.
Christianity then escalates the madness by telling us that Jesus and his father Yahweh, along a Holy Spirit, are all part of the same god-substance-thing. It's the only religion that tries to be monotheistic and polytheistic at the same time. So Yahweh is really sacrificing himself in the form of his own son who is also him. So bleeding on a cross is apparently instrumental in convincing himself to forgive us.
The babbling nonsense of the Trinity is utterly incoherent, even to the best Christian minds through the ages that tried to unravel it. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all separate persons but part of the same substance being. Or is that separate beings but part of the same substance person? In any event, the best way to understand it is to realize it was a theological compromise between strict Jewish monotheism and an intercessor godling. Judaism needed no such intercessor and, in fact, having one was strictly forbidden by Yahweh (see Isaiah 43:10-12) and yet we're required to have one according to Jesus (John 14:6).
So Jesus is God when the story and theology requires it and not-God when the story or theology requires it. This is laughably contrived as a story telling device and doesn't work much better as the basis for a religion.
Finally, we come to the salvation scheme and eternal Hell. Opinions differ on the issue of how salvation is attained. Indeed,
even the Bible flip flops all over the place on what should be an important issue to be absolutely clear on. Regardless, the bottom line is we need to believe in a good and just god who will eternally torture beings. This theological point is often a reason ex-Christians cite for their deconversion.
So yes, it's a great big pile of crazy. It amazes me that anyone EVER believed it, never mind in today's age. Evolution is the least of the Bible's problems. It creates a god that has motivations impossible to fathom except as the creation of a class of priests.
I've played a great many role-playing games (traditional table top interactive story-telling type) with so many universes where the supernatural forces and gods are real. Always, as a part of good story telling, the motivations of gods, whether good or evil, are clearly explained. I can't imagine an RPG that would be centered around the Christian universe. Neither the motivations of their god nor the opposing devil make any sense.
