[Serious] Trying close to my best to rationalize Christianity

[Fake Messiah]

It's hard to rationalize Christianity because it makes no sense. Why did Jesus or anyone else, god or human, have to suffer and die? Human sacrifice? Really? If this did happen, as Christians say it did and for the reasons they say it did, there needs to be some better reasoning, some rational explanation for why it was necessary. Why would a god need to rely on such a disgusting and primitive act to forgive us and save us from his judgment?
Most societies on Earth realized centuries ago that ritual human sacrifice is as barbaric as it is unproductive. Tossing virgins into a volcano or carving out some guy’s heart atop a temple once might have seemed like sensible investments for better times ahead, but eventually it dawned on most that such practices were cruel, stupid, and unnecessary. As an act of punishment and/or religious rite, it is beneath us. We are better than that. So why would God need such an act to offer humankind an escape clause?

Why would God have to do anything to provide us with a route to salvation and heaven? Couldn’t he simply have skipped the whole slow, agonizing death of Jesus and just forgiven us? Is he bound by some laws that even he must follow? What is going on?

[brewer]

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is this you: http://www.adwaitha-hermitage.net/reminisc/sixth.html

If so 1985 called and wants its web design back.

He/it's just here to try and sell something and should probably be ignored. The avatar is at a site: encuentra24.com

[Simon Moon]

Trying to rationalize the irrational...

Yeah, seems like a ridiculous (one might even say, an irrational) undertaking. And no, your OP didn't even get close to your stated goal.

Christian theology has an omni-max god, creating the universe (all 200 billion galaxies, each with 100+ billion stars, and most of those with an uncountable number of planets), to act as a 'soul filtering machine'© for a small number of hairless apes, on one specific planet in a nondescript corner of the Milky Way.

As long as we're speculating, what plans did this god have for the other advanced civilizations (that most likely actually exist (unlike your god) somewhere in the universe)? Did the same "Passion Play" play out all over the universe?

Then, this god, knowing that humanity would one day develop the scientific method, and understand what good standards of evidence are, decides to communicate with his creation in the worst method possible. Appears to a mostly illiterate tribe in a very small geographical area on Earth, then waits decades or centuries to have his fallible creation record his message: in languages he would know would die out, filled with translation errors, with no originals available, by non-eyewitnesses, with no corroborating evidence of accounts, stories that directly contradict reality, etc, etc.

He sets up a situation with Adam and Eve, where they are certain to fail, then because of his own screw up, he punishes his creation for eternity. But wait, he waits a few centuries, then sets up another situation where he comes to earth, to have himself sacrificed to himself, to act as a loophole for rules he created. And the only way for his creation to prevent their own eternal punishment, is to be gullible enough to believe all this.

Sorry, but there is no way to rationalize Christianity.

[downbeatplumb]

Methinks I smell an evolved sock.

Programming God Jordan or whatever he was called?

[LastPoet]

Methinks I smell an evolved sock.

Programming God Jordan or whatever he was called?

I'd reckon the focus on AI is a giveaway.

[sausagerock]

Soul forging isn't made reasonable or unreasonable on account of the number of gods, or the state of their character. As suspected, you use rationalization as a stand-in for rational. They mean very different things, and while you categorized your efforts as rationalization, and succeeded- characterizing them as rational would fail.

Yes, maybe so. Here I haven't touched arguments that would propose it as rational. Clearing this up, I won't either, just trying to explain it as a possibility that can't be ruled out completely and is worthy for brainstorming.

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Hello fellas - from sausage - yeah I can't take this seriously.

Stopped after the 'greeting'.

Don't, I'm just a wanker philosopher that is trying to philosophize and find people who like free form discussions from another perspective.

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OP, apply the issues you use to disprove other religions to yours.

Interesting stuff actually. Last year I had a course in ancient culture history. There were similarities in all of them combined with local practices. They mostly differed in thoughts on how to access this virtuous living with multiple theories on top that don't necessarily go crossroads with others, if we are willing to understand metaphors as we are doing it while reading Nietzche for example.
I believe, to name something, that reincarnation theory from India, which proposes that we reincarnate until we are worthy enough to go to the afterlife goes quite well with idea that I laid out. A consciousness lives and learns and develops in this test site multiple times until ready.

I am still looking through different cultures and their beliefs but currently I'm quite surprised that it is possible to interpret many of them being about the same thing. Another idea I've had is that maybe on this one platform, that is our universe, there were actually multiple creators, like different groups of this higher civilization that are trying different approaches, thus different religions.
Why are they all in this one Earth and not scattered throughout universe? Maybe they are, but seeing as it's quite the quantity of coincidences for life to exist, maybe it's not that easy for them to make many more like that.

Old ones are the ones which are worth talking about. After ancient religions, where there are shitload of them, it's looking very obvious like they just take one of the old ones and add very human philosophy to them. They seem shallow af.

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One sci-fi to explain another, don't confuse the two. Science fiction is btw in most cases before science.

god is science fiction =

Science fiction is ideas of what could be.
For example, Higgs Boson whas science fiction before proven. Even black holes were science fiction until the first photo of it. ET is a science fiction and so is simulation theory and therefore a creator or God.

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Welcome to the forums, sausagerock. It's an interesting analogy but stretching it too far seems unavoidable because of the immense differences between our characteristics and those ascribed to God. Adam and Eve may be reasonably analogous to the first pair of sapient devices, but we are not reasonably analogous to God and his angels.

It might be better to take Genesis as an allegory where the fall of Adam and Eve represents humanity becoming conscious of good and evil. That's the Baha'i interpretation. Not taking the account so literally resolves many issues, such as punishing people for doing something wrong when they did it before they knew what right and wrong were.

Yes, of course! I perhaps have to mention that I believe that Adam and Eve are not necessarily two people but just those who lived in the creator society and were exiled when proved themselves as unreliable. I see Genesis as symbols, not so much literally.

If we create an AI, it is quite possible that we will try to present ourselves more different from them than we actually are, as it would be dangerous and quite extreme for us to create someone to compete in survival and thriving.

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Or, if you wanted to make christianity rational, rather than rationalize over some item of dogma....take the rational approach and leave theological interpretation behind altogether.

We were not created by any god, and there is no soul forge. The stories represent human desires and etiological devices important to the cultures of origin.

I don't really see it as a wise move to be certain in these kind of topics and don't recommend it.
It is interesting though that religion was necessary for us. Why not just learn as all other animals do by just believing ad learning from empirical facts? Why wasn't it like that?

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It's hard to rationalize Christianity because it makes no sense. Why did Jesus or anyone else, god or human, have to suffer and die? Human sacrifice? Really? If this did happen, as Christians say it did and for the reasons they say it did, there needs to be some better reasoning, some rational explanation for why it was necessary. Why would a god need to rely on such a disgusting and primitive act to forgive us and save us from his judgment?
Most societies on Earth realized centuries ago that ritual human sacrifice is as barbaric as it is unproductive. Tossing virgins into a volcano or carving out some guy’s heart atop a temple once might have seemed like sensible investments for better times ahead, but eventually it dawned on most that such practices were cruel, stupid, and unnecessary. As an act of punishment and/or religious rite, it is beneath us. We are better than that. So why would God need such an act to offer humankind an escape clause?

Why would God have to do anything to provide us with a route to salvation and heaven? Couldn’t he simply have skipped the whole slow, agonizing death of Jesus and just forgiven us? Is he bound by some laws that even he must follow? What is going on?

So, as I explained in original post, to understand it, we must look at it from the perspective of creator who has tried a lot of different things to make the perfect human for Him. Jesus was for them to understand us better, forgiveness doesn't work without complete understanding.
Human sacrifices were a thing and the New Testament made them obsolete, that was before many other cultures that it was classified as barbaric. Throughout Bible there are different methods tried to make us cool, many failed and human sacrifice was one (just as destroying cities and what not).

[Mister Agenda]

If our AI's don't work right, we'll just adjust them (assuming they can't stop us).

[sausagerock]

Biggest problem with AI is going to be figuring out whether they work fine or not to rule out a possibility of them manipulating us. That's a tough task and we don't have even a close idea as to how that might work.

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Uh, you didn't really comment my post so much as laid out your view of Christianity.

Comment on YOUR ideas I will, though I see that I must repeat myself a bit...

As I keep explaining, which is actually very obvious reading Bible, God's (or the higher creator-people) power isn't as omni-max as many are naively thinking for some reason. It is clear that humans they created were not perfect and that methods they tried were not perfect either. Their power is pretty mighty in relation to us though. If they created us then basically they can manipulate unimaginable things, as this might be just a simulation on maybe some sort of a computer. Imagine this simulation being run by us for it to make sense.

ET hypothesis, no matter how likely that might seem, has less ground to stand on for there is factually nothing at all that a larger group of people have agreed on experiencing. Saying that ET is more likely to exist than God requires some logical arguments, taking in account what information we have on both topics. I don't rule out ET though, I think that this universe can hold multiple simulations from higher civilizations.

So, about why he wasn't just always around. As creators were dealing with an AI, they had to make a system that is absolutely convincing in the end whether this AI will hold you for authority and trust you completely or not. Bible shows a way that would work quite convincingly. If under these circumstances and options we can take in our life still believe that the ones our creators gave us are the best, we most certainly are thinking similarly like them and would be cool to live among them. More points also because we have to trust that quite a bit, takes effort.

Again, they did not really expect them to fail, the rest of your argument seems like just not taking in account my original one, sorry

[Abaddon_ire]

Yes, we can all acknowledge it is a speculation.

OK, you are engaged in speculation. No evidence expected.

There is a certain ''want'' in people to make a humanoid more than something else, we are trying to do that for quite a while and seems that a person's replica is what we are aiming for in this business.

There is? Please provide some evidence.

As said before, we could understand it better if we look at our civilization in the seat of a creator.

Nope. We have no need of some arbitrary "creator". Why would we?

We are not perfect and none of our creations are quite perfect as well,

Nobody claimed perfection on behalf of anything. Except some imaginary god, and that holds no water.

but we are in a way all mighty to our creations, same would go for our creators.

False. Even if we created AI of some sort, nobody is claiming to be perfect. Except for the imaginary "god".

It is another speculation or theory, but there are verses where God refers to himself as ''we'', no scholars have really agreed as to why is it so, but most believe it is not Holy Trinity and the royal ''we'' seems just as even shadier speculation. Old testament also has interesting parts of God speaking to Abraham I think in a form of two young men, who were referred to as ''God'', not angels.

Nope. It is rather clear that jahweh is an inherited deity from a pantheon of many rival gods. Difficult to concieve that you know anything much about it if you are unaware of the history.

Of course we would set up rules to AI, otherwise we would compare with them in many cases. Humans wouldn't do that.

Wait. "Of course we would set up rules for AI but humans wouldn't do that"? That is incoherent.

If you switch off what you have built, what would be the point of it? It must run and be developed until it is done, not bail on first glitch, no?

So if, for example, my cooker developed a short circuit fault, I should not disconnect it, rather, I should let it burn down my home just to see how it turns out. That is your suggestion. Really?

Every creation has it's flaws.

Demonstrate that.

You are looking at AI as we are capable of making, not as a civilization far more advanced would.

You have no means to determine what ANY civilisation may or may not do. You are simply making things up out of whole cloth. You have no reason tho think that an advanced civilisation would not consider us vermin to be exterminated.

Different problems and different gains. (you know, even hard drives can fuck up over time and should be formatted because of trash left from data over time in a seemingly straight forward and full proof system. Look at our computers and think about all the glitches and lags we have there even in mechanics as simple as they have. Now imagine it 10 000 times more complex).

What a load of crap.I make my living out of designing robust systems. You have no clue.

We torture animals and even other people for stupider reasons. To torture AI for the reason to develop it and make it better makes sense.

What? Torture is bad so to fix it let's have more torture? Are you fucking serious?

Bible God does things he regrets, like the big flood. He corrected himself by attempting to not destroy corrupt civilizations in such manner. He made people live shorter lives, he made updates in New testament and what not. He changes his mind and tactics.

So bible god is a shoddy non-god. ~OK.

He has tried a lot on us to see what works, and not much has, but of course he has been brutal to us so that we understand his might.

So you god is a bumbling fool. Nice.

Quite simple, there is one that is the most important - love your neighbor and God as yourself. After that follows the Ten ones. If you can't follow the first to follow some other, it is wrong action.

False. Clearly, you have not read your magic book. There are some 613 commandments. Of which, jebus, in the NT endorsed 5 explicitly, and all 613 implicitly. Plus two that were never part of god's commands but shamelessly swiped from elsewhere. Your god is a plagiarist.

No, the three propositions are quite rational, you should check out the subject, it is quite thought provoking.

Not really. Thoughts and ramblings of primitive goatherders are not relevant to anything.

Thanks for input so far!

You may regret that. I have little time for anyone who worships a deity that they flat out state is an idiot as you have done.

[The Grand Nudger]

Soul forging isn't made reasonable or unreasonable on account of the number of gods, or the state of their character.  As suspected, you use rationalization as a stand-in for rational.  They mean very different things, and while you categorized your efforts as rationalization, and succeeded- characterizing them as rational would fail.

Yes, maybe so. Here I haven't touched arguments that would propose it as rational. Clearing this up, I won't either, just trying to explain it as a possibility that can't be ruled out completely and is worthy for brainstorming.

There's a distinctly less ridiculous subject for brainstorming described below.  

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Or, if you wanted to make christianity rational, rather than rationalize over some item of dogma....take the rational approach and leave theological interpretation behind altogether.

We were not created by any god, and there is no soul forge.  The stories represent human desires and etiological devices important to the cultures of origin.

I don't really see it as a wise move to be certain in these kind of topics and don't  recommend it.
It is interesting though that religion was necessary for us. Why not just learn as all other animals do by just believing ad learning from empirical facts? Why wasn't it like that?

You don't see it as wise to state, with certainty, that the stories in magic book represent human desires and etiological devices?  You do, however, see it as wise to pile more garbage on the heap..hilariously insisting that religion was necessary while asking why we don't learn the way that we do?

Personally, and since we're talking about things we think might be wise.....I think it would be wise to explore why you wished there was a soul forge, and why this particular fantasy appeals to you over other bits of fiction. Not with us, I don't think you'd be capable of doing anything even close to that with us, here.