While We Were Still Enemies, Jesus Died for Us

I think most nonbelievers "hostile to Christians" are only hostile when Christians try to shove their beliefs down folks' throats. Anti-women abortion policies come to mind.

 

Who says Jesus isn't just another guy with Big Ideas?

 

Aside from the doctrine of hell itself, few doctrines are more disgusting and immoral than that of substitutionary atonement.

 

I don't know about that, but I do know that many of them are hypocrites who are fond of trying to ram their own beliefs down other people's throats. When it comes to the right to self-proprietorship (see my signature), elements on both the Left and the Right are engaged in a race to the bottom where everyone loses in the end.

You do realize that there are women who oppose abortion, don't you? While I don't support their position, the notion that they are "anti-women" is ridiculous.

 

1. If you can extend your own life, on your own power, then obviously you do not need the Author of Life in order to continue to exist.
2. All the passages on the existence of those who reject the redemptive work of God, that I've been able to find, are comparative, it's "like this" or "it's like that", I don't know that it's actual torture beyond the eternal awareness that the person has made a very bad decision and its permanent.
3. Redemption is undeserved, though as deeply appreciated by the redeemed as it is possible to appreciate.
4. We do not believe without evidence.
   1. The world began to exist a finite time ago. That existence has a cause. That cause is more powerful than the universe, more complex than the universe, nonphysical, and since it acted at a particular instant in time, intelligent. When one steps back and looks at those characteristics of the Creator, it looks quite familiar to Theists.
   2. A second evidence is absolute morality. We all know that some things are absolutely wrong, and without a Creator it is very difficult to explain how absolute morality would exist.
   3. A third line of evidence is the fine tuning of the universe, deliberately fashioned so that humans could arise and being the search for their creator, the knowledge of which seems to be stamped into the core of our being.
   4. And then we that believe have the direct communication from the Holy Spirit to affirm us. While I understand that isn't empirical evidence for you, it most certainly is for us.
5. Certainly God was aware of the potential for loss when He granted free moral choice to created beings.

 

The existence of a creator does nothing to explain morality. In fact, it makes it more difficult to explain. As for ABSOLUTE morality, name one thing, other than disobeying God, that is absolutely wrong.

 

Many people do, obviously, but it's entirely possible that he was just that.

Furthermore, I think it's unfortunate that many of his most valuable contributions to Western Civilization have been obscured if not lost by all the religious and supernatural stuff surrounding him.

 

When He created humans, and chose to restrain Himself from defending against their attack, they were able to make the free moral choice to kill Him.

And He used that act of sacrifice on His part, to offer redemption, freely, to all who desire it.

 

Christian, Muslim or Mormon all believe in Jesus

 

What contributions did he make that don't involve appealing to anything religious or supernatural?

 

Not all moral values are subjective, some are most certainly objective. We most certainly may find ourselves obligated or forbidden to perform an action regardless of what we think. Since God exists, there are objective moral values and we have objective moral duties to fulfill.

A historical example of acts that were objectively rather than subjectively wrong would be Nazi anti-Semitism. Now the Nazis that killed those they saw as 'unfit' thought it was a good act. It was not. It was objectively wrong and would have been even if the Nazis had won World War II, succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them. How would objective morality exist outside of the existence of God?

 

Christianity is a middle eastern religion, unless he is referring to the Mormon version - that one is American made

 

Again, God does nothing to explain that. The best you can offer is that God will punish us if we don't follow those obligations, which does nothing to explain their existence. Additionally, the Greeks pointed out well before Jesus was born the problem with this theory. We'll get to that in a second. Also, there's a bit of a difference between absolute morality, as you brought up before, and objective morality, which is what you are talking about now.

You don't need God to know that genocide is wrong. Hell, according to the Bible, God specifically ordered very similar measures himself.

Bad when done to Jews but good when done to Amalekites. How do you reconcile that?

How would it exist with God? Ever hear of the Euthyphro Dilemma?

Meanwhile, there are many objective moral theories that don't require God: utilitarianism, deontology, virtue theory, etc. In fact, the only moral theory I know of that absolutely requires God is divine command theory, and it would be a stretch to call that one objective. It also reduces morality to being entirely arbitrary. It's just whatever God feels like.

 

According to some he was responsible, at least in part, for laying the foundations of Western Individualism and Liberalism. Part of this was overthrowing the assumption and acceptance of natural inequality in the Ancient World, where the Order of the Cosmos dictated who and what an individual was. Another would be the assertion that it is our individual agency that defines us, not our place or role in our family and society. Another would be shifting the basic unit of Western society from the family to the individual.

 

And where do you get all of this from his teachings?

 

Unsure what you're getting at here. But my perspective is one of trying to determine reality, and that isn't determined by what I need or don't need. What I want/need is only an obstacle that could cause me to too easily accept or dismiss things, if I were unaware of it.

And also I don't really believe there is a god, so first we would need to establish there is one at all. But I do think if there is one, it wouldn't resemble the christian god.

True, not all assert it's actual torture. But the underlying point is the same. To put people into a good or bad eternal box based upon one inherently uninformed and arbitrary choice is not logical or moral.

I disagree. I think people are great. But if it were true that people are so inherently sinful that they universally deserve damnation, then the fault would be with the creator either in how they crafted them, or in expecting too much. It would be like abandoning a dog for not doing calculus.

If you mean the world, science has that pretty covered already. If you mean the universe, making up some kind of infinitely complex creator doesn't actually solve the mysteries of the universe, it only introduces confusion and obscures one problem with a new problem to solve.

Morality is logic combined with directives we get for survival. Human survival has always been about cooperation and innovation. Morality is required to optimize these things. A society in which we constantly hurt each other and have to watch our backs is vulnerable to a society that gets along better and becomes more powerful. The ultimate power is if we can all work together, but the unit of survival historically has been the tribe. Indeed, the immorality that is described and sometimes endorsed in the bible is tribe on tribe violence.

The role of religion is to comfort people against the unknown and against loss, despair, and powerlessness. Or to control people. The fact that so many different religions have come to different conclusions argues against your point. Christianity wasn't here for most of history, and many religions have been lost because they were less abstract than today's religions, e.g. we know that Zeus doesn't throw lightning. But an ineffable god is hard to destroy when people so desperately want to believe in an afterlife and a protector. There's obviously an appeal to believing in paradise after life and a loving creator. The main mystery to me is how people lie to themselves so well.

Had the universe been different, the seekers of the divine would be different too and create new gods in their own images. Or maybe there are already many other intelligent species in the universe, but they found that space travel was not practical, or the universe is so big we just haven't seen them yet.

I wish I could just be content to accept I may never know if there's life after death. But I do feel confident christians aren't correct.

Yeah that's hard to imagine. There certainly has never been a foreign voice in my head. And I am not sure I would trust it if there was, would probably assume I am psychotic.

Free moral choice is meaningless given nobody is sinless enough without grace, per christians, and the grace is given based upon an entirely stupid criterion - having the cultural background and/or a lack of a skeptical mind to actually believe a god would sacrifice his son/self to change his own rules. Does it really seem fair or logical to you?

 

God is self-existent. There is no need to have a discussion about the cause of an entity that has always existed and carries within itself the means of its existence. The Universe is not such an entity. Per our reigning scientific theory of origins, the universe began to exist a finite time ago, therefore, there was a cause for that existence.

 

could say the energy is self-existent then too then, energy existed before our Universe

 

By that logic, I can just call morality self-existent. But I didn't ask about a cause for God or even the universe. I asked about a cause for morality. I'll get into the other stuff in a minute, but if you aren't willing to discuss morality, then can I trust you will actually discuss the other stuff? But if you aren't willing to discuss morality, and you clearly aren't, then I have good reason to believe that the universe requires no creator: the B theory of time. Time is relative. To say that the universe requires a cause is to claim that causality requires a cause. This is a nonsensical claim. Unlike your God, I have good reason to believe that the universe exists. And I have no reason to believe that it requires a cause. Much the opposite, in fact.

 

Observable universe, actually. Doesn't mean there aren't other "universes" that we simply cannot interact with. Instead of making up a cause or assuming there must be one based upon our tiny slivers of experience, perhaps it would be best to say we don't know.

 

And even with our observable universe, even if we assume for a moment that it is the only one (which we shouldn't), we're talking about the expansion of space AND TIME. And time itself is relative. There's no reason to believe that the Big Bang implies a creation event.

 

Or the choices that they chose to make. While this is not the direction you are coming from, it does bear on your point and it's something that I've been wrestling with. Some people who are in need of God's forgiveness have a very difficult time accepting that it's freely given. I no longer am one of those people. I do believe that God is responsible for the existence of sin evil and since He is, I'm equally certain that He has the solution. If it's existence was beyond His power, would it be logical for me to believe He can eradicate it? Maybe, but, that's not my belief.

There are two main ways that I see God as responsible for evil, and therefore see perfect harmony is His free offer of redemption for those that desire it:

1. By granting us real Free Will, we also have the power to reject Him and to misuse our gifts to harm others. And according to scripture we are not the only created beings with will, Angelic beings, already enjoying eternal spiritual existence, have a will, a number rejected Him and use their power to great harm. I also believe that spiritual bodies that we will have in our eternal existence are immensely powerful and that it would be a tremendously destructive act to grant them to those that have not willingly sworn allegiance to God.
2. The second way that I think that God is responsible for sin is because He gave us the measurement system by which we know that some things are good and others are evil. Without a standard of morality we would have no way of knowing, and since I believe morality came from God, I also believe that immorality was inherent in that bestowment.

In our reigning theory of origins at Time (T) = zero the physical world did not exist. At T = any value, the physical world exists and the Cause has already acted. Science deals with the physical. Science is bounded before we work backwards to T=0 because the physical world is bounded. So science can only inferentially explore past that point, and frankly it's no longer science but metaphysics, which isn't to disparage it, rather it is simply to state facts.

You clearly have not experienced the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Experience that and you will be on the other side trying to explain to yourself how you can go on rejecting the free gift of salvation when the truth has been so clearly revealed to you. When God revealed Himself to me, personally, there was a significant part of me that did not want to become a Christian, but, it was even more clear to me that the gospel was true and required a response. I can show you that the message is not contradictory, but I cannot show you that it is not a difficult message, and without that personal revelation I have no idea how one would accept the message, but it is a message that can be sought, if you seek it with all your heart.

Me the same, the only problem was that it made a hell of a lot more sense that thoughts I produced on my own. It was powerful constant rebuking of my normal thought stream clearly and simply articulating where I was wrong and what was right. And it was undeniably clear that it was right and I was wrong.

We do not see His sacrifice as inconsistent with His own rules, rather a fulfillment of the sacrificial system already revealed, and again, this is not an easy message, but the message has always been that "without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin." It's generally accepted within Christianity that the animal sacrificial system looked forward to Christ's sacrifice of Himself on the Cross, and now we all look back to it.

 

My sister-in-law. She had a "surprise" when she was 40, was sicker than a dog more months, and ended up with a very smart, personable daughter. But as opposed as she was to abortion, she is 110% behind women making the choice for themselves.

They're prepared to make women second class citizens by forcing them to give birth against their wishes. I see that as anti-women.

 

I don't know if we can attribute great thoughts to the guy.

 

I'm fond of the whole Golden Rule thing, but it isn't like he invented it.