The Reasons why "Just Following Jesus" Doesn't work

[drfuzzy]

[Rekeisha]

Christianity is the privilege to know a God who would take on your rightful punishment in order to be like Him and with Him for all eternity no matter what the world says about you or God. None of what you said is taught in the Bible.

[drfuzzy]

Christianity is the privilege to know a God who would take on your rightful punishment in order to be like Him and with Him for all eternity no matter what the world says about you or God. None of what you said is taught in the Bible.

Your god doesn't exist.  The mythological Yahweh is one of the most evil creations humankind has ever invented.  Your wholly babble is a bunch of badly-written, contradictory bronze age fairy tales.  I was raised fundamentalist and have most of the hideous damn thing memorized.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Christianity is the privilege to know a God who would take on your rightful punishment in order to be like Him and with Him for all eternity no matter what the world says about you or God. None of what you said is taught in the Bible.

"Rightful punishment"?

Look, it's really simple:

1) Your Yahweh is a storm-god of the Canaan region (worshiped by the Israelites as El, from which Isra-el gets its name, and later YHWH from the Edomites' YHW), whom the priests of the people who would become known as the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews decided was more powerful than all the other regional gods (such as Baal). We see the roots of this deity's promotion to the Most High Among Other Gods™ in verses like Psalm 82:1, which modern monotheists write-off as talking about human Powers that Be™, but to anyone without a "there must only be one god and that is God" prejudice, it's as plain as day that they failed to excise one of the origin roots of the religion... because the Psalms were precious tradition, I suppose. Or perhaps the priests who did the redacting didn't catch it.

In short, your roots are showing.

2) This being you call God, named Yahweh (or whatever), supposedly created the universe and everything in it; every law of physics, etc, is at the divine behest, who willed it into being. That means that this "rightful" punishment was made by this God when he supposedly created us the way we are. There is no reasonable way to tell me that Yahweh wouldn't have known the nature of his creations when he created them, as your story goes. That means he deliberately laid a trap into which he knew we would fall, then murdered almost everyone, and finally sent himself in human form to be murdered on our behalf, instead of simply forgiving us for behaving as we were created to behave. What a sick, sick fuck!

There is no need to punish us, and thus no need to forgive us of anything... and a vicarious blood sacrifice is about the most disgusting, sick way I can think to accomplish the thing you claim God had to do. It's not really a surprise development when you realize it's the evolution of an idea originally cobbled together from twelve tribes of sheep-sacrificing nomads led by priests who genuinely believed blood was a magical cleanser (see for instance, Leviticus 14).

In short, your story is about an appalling being who is not deserving of worship. But, like the spouse of a violent man, when we point this out to you, you simply go on about his good qualities and ignore the points your friends are making about how abusive he is.

3) All of what we say is taught in the Bible... or is absorbed from Christian culture, which is often less-Biblical than it thinks (for one easy instance, their fierce and fanatical opposition to abortion when the Bible has nothing to say on the subject, and in fact spells out a method for a forced miscarriage of a woman who cheats on her husband, in Numbers 5 : 11-31), and amounts to the same thing. Like I said, above, you are simply picking out the good stuff and ignoring the stuff that's tricky for you. The term for this is "cognitive dissonance", and I know from experience (as does Redbeard) the difficulty of maintaining that wall of separation between facts and your beliefs. We hope you can free your mind, someday.

In short, if you would truly take a step back from your emotional attachment to this idea and REALLY LOOK at what the claims of the Bible are, as told to you by people who are not in your social circles, you would be surprised at how obvious this is.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Heh, I went to RationalWiki and found the following, at the bottom of the entry for YHWH:

YHWH the god

Evidence from archaeological excavations (in the Douglas Adamsian tradition of "The Institute of Taking Impossibly Long Times to Find Out What's Painfully Obvious," as even a cursory reading of the millennia-old Tanakh or Old Testament with a right mind — although we're not sure how often that happens) strongly suggests that YHWH wasn't the only God, just one that Abraham promised to worship so he could take all of Palestine, put the men to the sword, the towns to the torch, and the women to bed. The deal also included sacrificing the good stuff — the gold, silver, wine, and animals — to the Lord, i.e. making His priests rich.
Evidences found in the Canaanite city of Ugarit suggests the ancient Israelites practiced a polytheistic North-west Semitic religion, with a creator god, El. Yahweh was associated with El, and became the "national god" of the Hebrews. There is some evidence of a god "YW" who was the Son of El; YW is generally considered to either be YHWH or be some play on words to make a closer association. El (and therefor YHWH) had a wife, incidentally named Asherah) — amazingly the Mormons got it right for once, and we'll all get our own planet called The Battlestar Galactica, from which humans will evolve in to Cylons and found the Twelve Colonies of Man, and revert to polytheism.
Because YHWH so obviously made such a lousy cosmic protector, killing his own vassals with plagues, Hellfire and brimstone, His patron kingdoms being ground into dust by the Assyrians and whatnot, He was beefed up by a merger with El, making Him not only the particular God of the Hebrews but also THE MOST POWERFUL GOD IN THE COSMOS. It's quite clear through even a cursory reading of the Old Testament (e.g. the First Commandment) that even then the Israelites did not consider Yahweh to be the only god, merely the most important one. Needless to say that He's frequently mentioned in plural (Elohim), and the single-most repeated phrase in the Old Testament is, "I am the YHWH your Elohim, the El of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
YHWH appears to be pro-choice.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/YHWH

[Angrboda]

Christianity is the privilege to know a God who would take on your rightful punishment in order to be like Him and with Him for all eternity no matter what the world says about you or God. None of what you said is taught in the Bible.

You didn't actually read it, did you? 7-9 are definitely in the bible.

[Rekeisha]

He didn't need to "make a way"; he needed to forgive us for being literally unable to obey his rules. Instead, what he did was offer a vicarious sacrifice of blood-magic (of himself) in order to atone for the infractions against the rules he made (himself), and in order to "cash in" that atonement, one must submit to the will of this deity-- which just happens to consist of a lot of the weird prejudices and world-views common in the ancient Near East, among a particular people in Canaan.

How this isn't the most obvious priest-con-game on the planet baffles me. Listening to you Christers prattling on about the "love of God" and then listing all the things God expects of you (and me!) is a bit like watching the movie The Invention of Lying, where everyone just automatically believes everything Ricky Gervais says.

Paul uses the word "agape", which means "selfless love, one that demands no repayment" (according to the translators at BibleHub), and yet those of us outside your little (big) cult can clearly see that there are numerous strings attached... apparently, including sacrificing your ability to actually understand what humans have discovered since the invention of the Scientific Method in favor of the priest-writings of Bronze/Iron Age sheepherder-warrior-priests.

Let me know if I am wrong about your world view, I am basing it off a discussion we had last year about the function of the world, but you don't think the world to have a way it ought to work. So your judgment on this "false god" you created doesn't matter, because there is no right or wrong. What matters is only that which people agree upon in your part of the world, at this current time and date. If tomorrow society believes differently then your world view may change with it. Right? Yet, if you want to use the Bible to form a proper view of God then let's look at all of it.

But if you try an use the Bible to support your view, or even use it to counter my beliefs, the you must use all of it; not simply picking and choosing bits and pieces (particularly as stand alones, outside the contexts of what came before it in its own pages)...
He creates everything for Himself (as He is the creator) and made them in a way where they would glorify Him, as creator, He is the only thing worth praising/worshiping/obeying. Then mankind rejects His provision and believes the lie that they could be their own god. They lived without shame or pain in harmony with the world and each other. Yet, they would rather believe a lie than live under the protection of God. This throws mankind into sin. This causes one son to murder the other out of envy. Then others begin to collect women as if they were trophies. People are so evil that God is done with them and decides to flood the earth. Yet, He shows mercy to 8 people because He made a promise to Adam and Eve that He would send someone to defeat evil. The flood doesn't show how evil God is but how depraved man is. No one is worth saving, out of all the people on the earth the only reason He saved the family of 8 is because of His mercy. This is known  because when that family got off the boat they sinned. So God tells man to disperse and fill the earth, but they don't they build a tower to their own glory. So, God makes them disperse by confusing their languages. After this He picks a man in order to make him into a nation so that He might bless the world through Him/them. He frees that nation out of slavery from an evil King who would rather call himself god then submit to God. The nation He saves hates Him and complains constantly although God saved them from slavery and provides their needs and even is among them. So after wandering for 40yrs, because they would rather have that then to trust God to give them the land He promised. He does bring their children into the land. So what do they do. They disobey and follow after other gods and do their own thing, which result in evil and depravity. So after they receive a good prophet they ask for a king again wanting man to rule them instead of God. They have one bad king after another because people are evil. Yet, God keeps his promises. Even in exile, which is one of his promises for them if they disobeyed, he brings them back and defeats their enemies. So do they act right? No. They become self righteous and religions thinking they can earn their way to God. They would be the very people who would crucify the one they claim to serve. Yet, through all of this God has been giving promises about sending a messiah who will cover their sins. As well as promising to remove their heart of stone and giving them a new heart. He does do this when he sends Jesus who is a perfect man because He is God. He didn't come to condemn but to save. Man deserves nothing but just punishment from God but He instead makes a way for us to want to obey Him and love Him. He makes it possible for us to know him as well as be like him in behavior and thought. That we may be free from evil and dwell in His glory forever living as we are supposed to. He shows His enemies love, mercy, and grace so that they might repent from their sins, and believe in His promises,anoints them with His Spirit, adopting them as His Children.But if you are going to refuse Him and lie to yourself about His nature you will receive the full weight of it. He is a just and Holy God and He doesn't waiver. I am going to be honest with you, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. I unfortunately do not have the ability to fully make this clear to you how unimaginable His wrath will be.

You can roll your eyes, you can call me crazy, you can say I belong to a cult but the truth isone day you must face Him and the question is: will you have to pay for your transgressions against Him by drinking the cup of judgment, or will you rest in His arms because He granted you true life through your faith and obedience?

This is TRUTH: God will crush out your evil; with the depths of His love, or with the cup of His wrath

[Redbeard The Pink]

You say that my statements are assertions and you say that the universe doesn't need an intelligent being behind to make it be ordered. Can you prove this? How is order kept?

What I'm actually saying is that there is no logical reason to infer that order requires intelligence to exist, and you could easily disprove that assertion by giving a logical reason. I'll wait.


Order isn't kept. It's a naturally occurring phenomenon.

I apologize if I gave you that idea. I believe that the only reason there is anything is because of God who is the creator of everything. Without God there would be nothing.

I know that's what you believe.

Does an organized room demand intelligence? When is the last observable case of spontaneous organization?

The Universe is not an organized room. What made you jump from order to organization? Things don't have to be put into order. They can fall into order.

What would you accept as proof?

Empirical data.

behaving consistently and having a way it should function are two different things. If things don't have a function then there isn't a certain way they should work. So justice and love are arbitrary no matter the human consensus.  Can you name one thing that has no function?

I'm gonna put this as simply as I can (good luck understanding it):


Reality doesn't have a way that it "should" work. It only has a way that it does work.


If it doesn't have a function, then yes, there is no certain way that it should work, but if it has consistency (even in the absence of function), then there is a certain way that it works, and that can be observed and used to draw conclusions because it's consistent (not because things "should" turn out a specific way, but because they just do).

Again I apologize that I have not been clear. I believe that it is God who is the originator of justice, science, and love. He created all things and justice and love are a reflection of His nature. He is the reason that life is sustained and why we as humans long for love as well as justice. I do not believe in God because of a religion but because I know Him.

Bully for you. There's no evidence that Gaud invented any of that, and there's plenty of evidence that those things are human words for human concepts, so you don't get to forward the claim that I'm borrowing anything from you or your religion. Justice, science, and love were created by human beings, not an invisible sky wizard.

This is TRUTH: God will crush out your evil; with the depths of His love, or with the cup of His wrath

Threaten us all you like; we're not scared of your imaginary friend.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

But if you are going to refuse Him and lie to yourself about His nature you will receive the full weight of it. He is a just and Holy God and He doesn't waiver. I am going to be honest with you, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. I unfortunately do not have the ability to fully make this clear to you how unimaginable His wrath will be.

You can roll your eyes, you can call me crazy, you can say I belong to a cult but the truth is one day you must face Him and the question is: will you have to pay for your transgressions against Him by drinking the cup of judgment, or will you rest in His arms because He granted you true life through your faith and obedience?

This is TRUTH: God will crush out your evil [...] with the cup of His wrath

(Internal citations omitted. Bold emphasis my own.)

Wooooooooooo, your imaginary friend is terrifying!! I suppose I should cower before your "loving" god, right? So why don't you tell me again how loving this invisible friend of yours is, when I refuse to submit and obey?

But remember, folks, it's a free gift! FREE, they tell you.

Except you have to obey. God wants to love you. He wants to give you everything. He doesn't want to have to hurt you, but he will if you don't submit to his will.

Do you seriously not understand that you're worshiping someone whose actions make him the moral equivalent of a mugger or a rapist? Do you seriously not understand that this kind of threat, invented by Israelite priests, is morally indistinguishable from what a Mafia thug says to the people they're trying to squeeze for money?

"It used to be pretty bad around here. We've been running this neighborhood for years, and you made the choice to start up a business here on this street. It's our territory. We figure you owe us for keeping it as peaceful as it has been. For a small fee, we can make sure nothing bad happens to you and your nice little business, here." - A Mafia Shakedown

"I been in love with you ever since you chose to walk in here wearing that little black dress. So I brought you to me to tell you how much I love you. Just give me what I want and you can go free; otherwise, I'm going to have to hurt you... but if you let me love you like I want to love you, and love me back, then I'll give you everything you ever wanted. I'm sorry, but you made the choice to make me fall in love with you, and now there are obligations." - A Rapist

"Even though I created you exactly as you are, and I make every rule in this universe, I have decided that how you speak, with whom you have sexual relations, and most of the things related to every other moral code on the planet are called 'sins', and they mean that I have to hurt you unless you worship me. But if you do, you'll go to paradise. Otherwise, it's pain... torture in flames, forever. You will receive the full weight of it. Let me just fully make this clear to you how unimaginable my wrath will be." - Your God

Can you seriously not grasp this? Are you so indoctrinated that you don't understand that not one Bible verse you cited was one I had not already read and understood? I know what your claims are; what you don't seem to be willing to see is that they're deeply and truly fucked up, from any perspective other than having been indoctrinated from childhood to accept these things as real (even if you're not a Christian, in our culture we're bombarded with messages about this religion, to the point it becomes as though they are real), and no sane person would be willing to worship that monster of a God.

If any being, god or alien or human, were to exhibit the traits described in the Bible (both the loving and the vicious), and was to actually come here and try to bribe me with the carrot-and-stick of paradise or vengeance (heaven and hell) in that way, I would defy it. I would wage war upon it, were it within my power to do so.  And if you had not been brainwashed by your overgrown cult, you would defy it, too.

[Expired]

Christianity is the privilege to know a God who would take on your rightful punishment in order to be like Him and with Him for all eternity no matter what the world says about you or God. None of what you said is taught in the Bible.

Eternity is quite a long time, I don't think I've got the attention span to enjoy it.