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The absurdity of Christianity and the sin of unbelief

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
So if some-one steals from me, I should find some-one else to punish if the thief dies before his arrest?
No....you or they would never have enough money, or valuable anything, to equal the value of perfect human unending life.

But Jesus, as a perfect human, did. As God's servant, the value of his sacrifice belongs to God. (You know God's judgment: tooth-for-tooth, life-for-life...so perfect life, would require a perfect life. And no imperfect human could provide it.)
He will apply its value to those who accept God's sovereignty.
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
But if some-one steals from me then the thief is the one who needs to repay me. How could the situation be redeemed by some-one else giving me the money? That still leaves the thief as a thief.

Do you know about the redemption laws in Israel and how they worked? Why Christ is called "the Redeemer"?

A man could find himself in debt (either through a mistake, a bad decision, or even through no fault on his part) but still be liable to pay it. If the man had children and he needed to provide for the rest of his family, going to jail or selling himself as a slave to the one to whom the debt was owed, would rob the family of their breadwinner. So a man could offer his son to work for payment of the debt, thereby saving the rest of the family from the consequences of his absence.

If the son was a good person, putting the needs of his family above his own, he would willingly offer himself for their benefit. (Jews usually had big families) His services to the one owed the debt could pay it off until the debt was cleared. But what if the debt was so enormous that his services would never be enough? Perhaps then his own children would have to keep working to try and bring it down.....or a rich benefactor could step in and offer to pay the debt for him.

Remember the illustration of the unforgiving slave? (Matthew 18:21-35) Jehovah is the King in that illustration who has forgiven us for the debt left by Adam....paying the debt himself....offering his own son as full payment.

Using God's law as a baseline here, we see that an enormous debt was incurred when Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, plunging himself and his family into a debt that they could never pay as long as they lived...no one could ever pay back what Adam owed because no one had the means.

The great benefactor stepped in and offered the required payment at great cost to himself, out of compassion for the innocent victims of Adam's disobedience, he gladly did it.....the son did also.

That is how we see it.
 

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
Yeah? It's fascinating when someone decides he/she knows what Christianity teaches. My guess is that many Christians would be offended by your claims, even as many, if not most, who consider themselves Christians are offended by each other's claims.
I admit that many Bible-believing religious folk probably have been offended by my posts...I'm hoping that at least some will view them as stepping stones, rather than stumbling blocks. My posts mainly apply to Organizations, not to specific individuals.
 

ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
I was simply explaining why the Scriptures make no sense to you.
Really, it's all up to each of us, individually, to receive His help. - Hebrews11:6

"Right faith"? No...first, one must have a proper, i.e., reverent, heart attitude. Then, with Jehovah God's help, you can develop the right faith.

This is all circular. You seem to be saying I need to show reverence to something I see absolutely no reason to take seriously. The story is (for reasons already given) both absurd and unbelievable on the face of it. Where is a rational person, concerned with objective evidence and logical self-consistency, supposed to start?
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
Yeah? It's fascinating when someone decides he/she knows what Christianity teaches. My guess is that many Christians would be offended by your claims, even as many, if not most, who consider themselves Christians are offended by each other's claims.

If one was to use the Bible instead of church doctrine and tradition to find the truth, then maybe there would be a whole lot less arguing and a good deal more agreement. Jesus certainly offended the religious Jews of his day, choosing to spend his time with sinners rather than to rub shoulders with the educated elite of Jewish society. (Matthew 23:1-12)

The "lost sheep of the house of Israel" were lost because they were "sheep without a shepherd". Jesus offered to be their shepherd. They responded to his love and compassion. (Matthew 11:28-29)

Sometimes the truth is offensive until we recognize it as the truth.....and then the lies we once believed, become more offensive. :(
 

ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
If one was to use the Bible instead of church doctrine and tradition to find the truth, then maybe there would be a whole lot less arguing and a good deal more agreement.

I do wish Christians would read the bible. OK, that's not meant to be taken literally (!). I know they look at all the words - what I mean is: I wish they would read it to see what it actually says, rather than to confirm what they already 'know'.

There seriously isn't a coherent message - that's why you get all sorts of different groups who all claim to be following the bible. I read it fully expecting to find the message that had been preached to me in my youth, and it just wasn't there - neither was any other clear message.
 

WalterTrull

Godfella
There seriously isn't a coherent message...
Ya see...
The key is to read the collection of allegory, parable, metaphor, etc, by quite varied authors, with often very dissimilar histories, and find the coherence. Descriptions of sometimes partially seen truths, viewed from very different directions, can seem at first quite contradictory.
 

GoodbyeDave

Well-Known Member
But Jesus, as a perfect human, did. As God's servant, the value of his sacrifice belongs to God. (You know God's judgment: tooth-for-tooth, life-for-life...so perfect life, would require a perfect life.
It still doesn't make sense. We were talking about justice, and now you shift the goal posts and bring in sacrifice. How does the death of Jesus benefit mankind? All attempted explanations, like yours, rely on arguments that accept the concepts that you're trying to defend.

Do you know about the redemption laws in Israel and how they worked? A man could find himself in debt … [and] … offer his son to work for payment of the debt … an enormous debt was incurred when Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, plunging himself and his family into a debt that they could never pay as long as they lived ... The great benefactor stepped in and offered the required payment at great cost to himself
Again, the arguments only make sense to those who are predisposed to accept them. What has the legal system of ancient Israel go to do with anyone else? Also, how do the laws of debt relate to "sin"? If I owe some-one money, obviously a benefactor can step in and pay my debt. But if I have committed a crime, then punishing some-one else is the antithesis of justice!
 

ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
The key is to read the collection of allegory, parable, metaphor, etc, by quite varied authors, with often very dissimilar histories, and find the coherence. Descriptions of sometimes partially seen truths, viewed from very different directions, can seem at first quite contradictory.

Sounds a lot like cherry-picking. The problem is that different groups of people see different messages. That's really all you need to know to conclude that, even if there is a message in the bible, it is far from clear and it is very easy to misunderstand.
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
It still doesn't make sense. We were talking about justice, and now you shift the goal posts and bring in sacrifice. How does the death of Jesus benefit mankind? All attempted explanations, like yours, rely on arguments that accept the concepts that you're trying to defend.

Those concepts come from the Bible. If you leave the Bible's explanation out of the equation, nothing makes sense.
It would be like trying to explain color to someone born blind.

Again, the arguments only make sense to those who are predisposed to accept them. What has the legal system of ancient Israel go to do with anyone else? Also, how do the laws of debt relate to "sin"? If I owe some-one money, obviously a benefactor can step in and pay my debt. But if I have committed a crime, then punishing some-one else is the antithesis of justice!

We can become debtors in many ways....not just with money.The Bible uses it because people understand that kind of debt.

I will give you an example of how a "debt" can be passed on to children without their consent and with no way to cancel it. Genetically inherited disease. Do children ask for these diseases to be passed down from an afflicted parent, like a bad debt? Do parents bring these children into the world knowing the risks, but hoping their children won't be too badly affected? Sometimes they do. At other times they will take the responsible step of remaining childless. Adoption isn't always an option when a parent knows that their condition is progressive and terminal. In the big scheme of things we are all dying anyway.....all suffering from the same terminal illness. No one wants to die....so if there was a cure for death, wouldn't we grab it?

When Adam and his wife withdrew from their Creator, they virtually unplugged themselves from his 'life support', thinking that they could breath quite well on their own....but their sin created a genetic mutation of some sort that was inheritable. It made them susceptible to all manner of physical breakdown, affecting every cell in their body. They had no control over this and neither did their offspring...it was a natural consequence of their own actions.....all of them inherited the same defect.

The Great Physician said that this genetic condition could only be remedied by someone donating their unique DNA, which would restore everyone to perfect health.....but in doing so they would forfeit their own life. That person volunteered willingly, even though the procedure would be painful. Would you not welcome the generosity and self-sacrifice of such a person, giving up their life to save everyone who lined up to accept their donation?

In all parts of creation we see equal opposites. They are a natural part of the way things are.
The Creator required an equal opposite to pay for what Adam denied his children. A perfect sinless life was lost...and a perfect sinless life had to be given, to balance the scales of justice.

There is no other way to describe what transpired. Israel's redemption laws explain it well.

If it makes no sense to you then it makes no sense......not much we can do about that. You cannot convince someone who isn't prepared to be convinced, nor can you "make a silk purse out of a sow's ear"...as the saying goes. To God's people, it all makes perfect sense because his spirit is what is opening up their understanding. Those "outside" will just never get it....no amount of explaining will do.

We tried......
 

loverofhumanity

We are all the leaves of one tree
Premium Member
Christianity is one of the most absurd religions in the world. It is a religion that teaches that God fathered himself, as well as his son, so that his son is his father and his father is his son, and his son's father is his father's father's son. Or something like that. In any case, the deity supposedly died via sacrificing himself to himself to let out all of his wrath toward his creations upon himself. He was mad at humans for their sinful nature that he created them with, and so he took out all of his anger upon himself, so that he could save humanity from going to Hell. The sacrificial atonement covers ALL sins, with the exception of one, namely, the sin of unbelief, which is punishable by an eternity in Hell. All other sins, no matter how evil, are excused, but unbelief in the deity or the sacrifice the deity made is punishable by an eternity of damnation, and in fact is the *only* thing that matters in determining whether one spends eternity in Hell or in the "Kingdom of Heaven" as it is so often referred to. Is this weird or what? Even as a child, I remember thinking about how weird it was that Christianity had such a crazy story, and that BELIEF was the sole criterion for determining one's eternal fate, and that unbelief was the only sin in the religion.

Jesus taught to love all humanity. I hardly call that absurd. If we all practised this law of love there would now be peace in the world.
 

Vinayaka

devotee
Premium Member
Jesus taught to love all humanity. I hardly call that absurd. If we all practised this law of love there would now be peace in the world.

So have lots of others taught that. Seems people don't listen. I guess unbelievers, homosexuals, idol worshipers, and a few more folks just aren't part of humanity. It's like the 'democracy' of the ancient Greeks. Slaves weren't considered citizens. Some democracy.
 

74x12

Well-Known Member
Christianity is one of the most absurd religions in the world. It is a religion that teaches that God fathered himself, as well as his son, so that his son is his father and his father is his son, and his son's father is his father's father's son. Or something like that. In any case, the deity supposedly died via sacrificing himself to himself to let out all of his wrath toward his creations upon himself. He was mad at humans for their sinful nature that he created them with, and so he took out all of his anger upon himself, so that he could save humanity from going to Hell. The sacrificial atonement covers ALL sins, with the exception of one, namely, the sin of unbelief, which is punishable by an eternity in Hell. All other sins, no matter how evil, are excused, but unbelief in the deity or the sacrifice the deity made is punishable by an eternity of damnation, and in fact is the *only* thing that matters in determining whether one spends eternity in Hell or in the "Kingdom of Heaven" as it is so often referred to. Is this weird or what? Even as a child, I remember thinking about how weird it was that Christianity had such a crazy story, and that BELIEF was the sole criterion for determining one's eternal fate, and that unbelief was the only sin in the religion.
That's really a poor and even mistaken understanding of it all.

Jesus is the Word of Life. (1 John 1:1) This Word was silent so long as alive. Just as the holy Spirit hovered in silence over the waters in Genesis 1:2. His death breaks His body. (1 Corinthians 11:24) Breaks the silence. God says Let there be Light. (Genesis 1:3) The Word of Life can then give life by the resurrection. The people that sat in darkness have seen a great Light. (Isaiah 9:2) Upon them has the Light shined. The resurrection is life from the dead. The waters are people. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. (Isaiah 60:2) ... the darkness is the shadow of death. (Isaiah 9:2) That's what Jesus came for. "to loose those appointed to death". (Psalm 102:20) People are saved by becoming one with the Resurrection. That is becoming a part of Jesus' body which is alive forevermore and cannot die anymore. Thus Jesus is the resurrection and the Life. (John 11:25) Jesus is our Life.
 

loverofhumanity

We are all the leaves of one tree
Premium Member
So have lots of others taught that. Seems people don't listen. I guess unbelievers, homosexuals, idol worshipers, and a few more folks just aren't part of humanity. It's like the 'democracy' of the ancient Greeks. Slaves weren't considered citizens. Some democracy.

That’s what is most important today I believe, to accept all people as equals regardless of disposition.

Whatever people call themselves, to me they are fellow equal human beings.
 

GoodbyeDave

Well-Known Member
Those concepts come from the Bible. If you leave the Bible's explanation out of the equation, nothing makes sense.
At last we agree on something! Your beliefs make perfect sense once you accept the Bible. The problem is that if some-one doesn't accept your beliefs, then they're not going to accept the Bible in the first place.

If it makes no sense to you then it makes no sense … not much we can do about that.
But there is something that you could do, in theory. You could provide us with reasons to accept the Bible that are not circular, that do not rely on it. If you could actually do that, people would not be calling Christianity absurd.
 

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
Interesting qualifier: "pretty much".
Well, the Scriptures indicate that Judas Iscariot won’t.
But people like Korah and Dathan — who outright rebelled against Moses — will be. (All who go to she’ol after death, will experience a resurrection. And Ecclesiastes 9:10 states everyone (who reads it) is going to she’ol.)

And certainly, for those who never knew them — Jehovah God and His Son Jesus, I mean — their perfect justice (Deuteronomy 32:4) would suggest such a merciful action.
 

1213

Well-Known Member
Christianity is one of the most absurd religions in the world. It is a religion that teaches that God fathered himself, as well as his son, so that his son is his father and his father is his son, and his son's father is his father's father's son. Or something like that. In any case, the deity supposedly died via sacrificing himself to himself to let out all of his wrath toward his creations upon himself. He was mad at humans for their sinful nature that he created them with, and so he took out all of his anger upon himself, so that he could save humanity from going to Hell. The sacrificial atonement covers ALL sins, with the exception of one, namely, the sin of unbelief, which is punishable by an eternity in Hell. All other sins, no matter how evil, are excused, but unbelief in the deity or the sacrifice the deity made is punishable by an eternity of damnation, and in fact is the *only* thing that matters in determining whether one spends eternity in Hell or in the "Kingdom of Heaven" as it is so often referred to. Is this weird or what? Even as a child, I remember thinking about how weird it was that Christianity had such a crazy story, and that BELIEF was the sole criterion for determining one's eternal fate, and that unbelief was the only sin in the religion.

I agree that you have absurd version. I recommend to read the Bible, it is not the same story you have.
 
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