The fallacy of Jesus dying for our sins (By Shabir Ally)

[Saint Frankenstein]

It's completely illogical. Why should I bear the burden of sin of Adam and Eve? Similarly why should Christ die for my sins? If I commit sin after His death I am going to hell anyway so what's the point? Only I am responsible for my own deeds. It seems that becoming flesh is a sin in Christianity.

We don't bear the guilt of Original Sin. We bear the effects of it in our flawed nature (however, we are still good, just temped to sin) and flawed bodies. We are each responsible for our own sins, but in a metaphorical way, we all killed Christ because our sinfulness as a species sent Him to the Cross in the first place.

However, the Crucifixion is the gateway to the Resurrection.

 

[Britedream]

We're still not talking the same language here, which is as I surmised at the outset. My response to you is:

How do you know God "wants" you "to believe in something, or do things in a certain way?" See? You're still operating under an assumption of physical cosmology. Christian theology simply doesn't operate that way.

In fact, I'm a little confused by your response. Can you phrase it another way?

How God Proceeded in getting his message to people, God send a prophet and provides him with prove that he is a messenger from God, gives him a command for people to follow. this is has been the case all along. simple and clear

Of course, prophets are human, they die after some time, then as time goes by, people tends to change God's message, once this happened, God sends another Prophet, to correct what has been done, or to bring new message all together.

As God decided to send his last messenger, he put the message a universal one, preserved the message from being corrupted, and put the prove in the message its self that it is from God.

 

[sojourner]

How God Proceeded in getting his message to people, God send a prophet and provides him with prove that he is a messenger from God, gives him a command for people to follow. this is has been the case all along. simple and clear

Of course, prophets are human, they die after some time, then as time goes by, people tends to change God's message, once this happened, God send another Prophet, to correct what has been done, or to bring new message all together.

As God decided to send his last messenger, he put the message a universal one, preserved the message from being corrupted, and put the prove in the message its self that it is from God.

OK. I see. First of all, I don't believe God has a "message." We speak of God in anthropomorphic terms to make it easier, but I don't think God has a "message." The prophets don't "bring God's message." The prophets speak "the way it works in God's world."

Second, some people (prophets) have unusual clarity for seeing truth, and that's what they speak -- again, not from a cosmological standpoint, but from an intuitive standpoint. I don't believe that truth is absolute. I believe truth is perspective-driven, and hence, not cosmological.

 

[Britedream]

OK. I see. First of all, I don't believe God has a "message." We speak of God in anthropomorphic terms to make it easier, but I don't think God has a "message." The prophets don't "bring God's message." The prophets speak "the way it works in God's world."

Second, some people (prophets) have unusual clarity for seeing truth, and that's what they speak -- again, not from a cosmological standpoint, but from an intuitive standpoint. I don't believe that truth is absolute. I believe truth is perspective-driven, and hence, not cosmological.

Please explain to me in layman's terms what do you mean by "The prophets speak "the way it works in God's world."

 

[sojourner]

Please explain to me in layman's terms what do you mean by "The prophets speak "the way it works in God's world."

Most people see prophecy as "prediction of the future." But that's not what prophecy is. Prophecy is a speaking of truth, and truth is "the way the world is." That's the best I can do. Hope it helps.

 

[Britedream]

Most people see prophecy as "prediction of the future." But that's not what prophecy is. Prophecy is a speaking of truth, and truth is "the way the world is." That's the best I can do. Hope it helps.

Thank you for the explanation.
if we look at Deuteronomy 18:18, we will find this "I will raise up a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell the people everything I command him."

Now, you can see this is a message from God to the Jews through Moses, stating that he will send a prophet to them,and this prophet will give God's message to them.

so, clearly prophets do deliver messages from God.

 

[sojourner]

Thank you for the explanation.
if we look at Deuteronomy 18:18, we will find this "I will raise up a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell the people everything I command him."

Now, you can see this is a message from God to the Jews through Moses, stating that he will send a prophet to them,and this prophet will give God's message to them.

so, clearly prophets do deliver messages from God.

No. We anthropomorphize God. The passage is metaphor.

 

[Britedream]

No. We anthropomorphize God. The passage is metaphor.

I am not the one who said that, Moses is uttering God's words as you can see; I will ....
if you say God can't speak then we have an issue here.

 

[Pegg]

It's completely illogical. Why should I bear the burden of sin of Adam and Eve? Similarly why should Christ die for my sins? If I commit sin after His death I am going to hell anyway so what's the point? Only I am responsible for my own deeds. It seems that becoming flesh is a sin in Christianity.

You dont bear the burden of Adam and Eves sin. You bear the burden of your own sins as the bible says.

The problem is that we are born with a genetic defect which predisposes us to do wrong. Thats why we do the wrong thing and sometimes we dont even realise it. And unfortunately, by doing wrong we are, like Adam, condemned to death.

God wants to change that for us. He knows that we were born with a defect and the way he selected to redeem us is by accepting the perfect life of his son in exchange for our imperfect life.

 

[sojourner]

I am not the one who said that, Moses is uttering God's words as you can see; I will ....
if you say God can't speak then we have an issue here.

God is Spirit. God has no mouth. There is no historical evidence for Moses. We anthropomorphize God, and we have these very mythic stories in which a Moses character is sort of larger than life. But none of that means that it actually, really happened in history. The myth helps facilitate theological understanding, but does not inform our physical history.

You say we have a problem? I said that a while back, and it upset you. Yes. We have a problem, because you don't understand that our religion is not based in physical cosmology. God is not an old man with a white beard in the sky that physically speaks to people. God, as presented in the bible and in the Tradition, is an anthropomorphic construction that helps to describe God -- not define God.

 

[nash8]

OK. I see. First of all, I don't believe God has a "message." We speak of God in anthropomorphic terms to make it easier, but I don't think God has a "message." The prophets don't "bring God's message." The prophets speak "the way it works in God's world."

Second, some people (prophets) have unusual clarity for seeing truth, and that's what they speak -- again, not from a cosmological standpoint, but from an intuitive standpoint. I don't believe that truth is absolute. I believe truth is perspective-driven, and hence, not cosmological.

Spoken like a true Prophet!!!

God is Spirit. God has no mouth. There is no historical evidence for Moses. We anthropomorphize God, and we have these very mythic stories in which a Moses character is sort of larger than life. But none of that means that it actually, really happened in history. The myth helps facilitate theological understanding, but does not inform our physical history.

You say we have a problem? I said that a while back, and it upset you. Yes. We have a problem, because you don't understand that our religion is not based in physical cosmology. God is not an old man with a white beard in the sky that physically speaks to people. God, as presented in the bible and in the Tradition, is an anthropomorphic construction that helps to describe God -- not define God.

While I agree with you in conception, I don't think that is how the majority of people within the Christian tradition, especially in modern times, but I would imagine in ancient times as well, view it.

You could make the connection that Yahweh within Judaism, was a kind of "old man with a white beard", at least in the sense that he was anthropomorphized as a being with some type of physical image, and not solely a purely spiritual entity. He was literally described as having traits that defined his being, and not just created as concepts to conceptualize divinity. This is also not true within all of Judaism as it is such a diverse belief system, but this particular conception can be argued. How this translates into Christianity however is another story.

I am of the opinion that Jesus' deity, whether defined is YHVH or not, was more along the lines that you speak of. A purely spiritual "entity" that was given attributes so that your average every day human could identify with him in a more personal way, and not necessarily by the J-man himself. I believe the Jesus' path was more experiential rather than associative, which does not necessarily go hand in hand with your everyday person's conception of religious experience.

 

[serp777]

We don't bear the guilt of Original Sin. We bear the effects of it in our flawed nature (however, we are still good, just temped to sin) and flawed bodies. We are each responsible for our own sins, but in a metaphorical way, we all killed Christ because our sinfulness as a species sent Him to the Cross in the first place.

However, the Crucifixion is the gateway to the Resurrection.

Judging individuals for the acts of some unrelated groups is barbaric and irrational. That kind of ignorance is what leads to countless wars throughout history. What you're saying is this:

God created us flawed on purpose, because he is all knowing and knew the sin we would commit before we would commit it. But then decided to save humanity from himself, from the laws that he created and knew we were going to break, by sacrificing his son to himself, to forgive us from himself, in order to save us from himself. It's incomprehensible.

But don't worry, you can cleanse yourself by following the right rituals, which include bathing in water, incantations, and eating bread. It's absurd.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Judging individuals for the acts of some unrelated groups is barbaric and irrational. That kind of ignorance is what leads to countless wars throughout history. What you're saying is this:

God created us flawed on purpose, because he is all knowing and knew the sin we would commit before we would commit it. But then decided to save humanity from himself, from the laws that he created and knew we were going to break, by sacrificing his son to himself, to forgive us from himself, in order to save us from himself. It's incomprehensible.

But don't worry, you can cleanse yourself by following the right rituals, which include bathing in water, incantations, and eating bread. It's absurd.

God did not create us flawed. He created us with free will. Due to how God experiences time by being outside of it and because He has limitless knowledge, He was able to see what would happen and so He had a plan in place before the universe was ever created. Knowing what would happen is not the same as causing it to happen.

Jesus' mission was to defeat sin and death and make a way for us to come back home to God. It wasn't about saving us from the Father. The Satisfaction and Penal Substitution Atonement theories are both wrong. We were cut off from God and so we needed a bridge to be made so that we could be reconciled to God. Jesus is that bridge between humanity and God. Jesus succeeded in His mission and so the gates of Heaven are open to us once more after being shut when Adam and Eve sinned.

 

[serp777]

God did not create us flawed. He created us with free will. Due to how God experiences time by being outside of it and because He has limitless knowledge, He was able to see what would happen and so He had a plan in place before the universe was ever created. Knowing what would happen is not the same as causing it to happen.

Jesus' mission was to defeat sin and death and make a way for us to come back home to God. It wasn't about saving us from the Father. The Satisfaction and Penal Substitution Atonement theories are both wrong. We were cut off from God and so we needed a bridge to be made so that we could be reconciled to God. Jesus is that bridge between humanity and God. Jesus succeeded in His mission and so the gates of Heaven are open to us once more after being shut when Adam and Eve sinned.

God certainly created us flawed. There are psychopaths, diseases, immoral murders and rapists, etc.

Furthermore, God did not really give us free will, since we had no choice but to have free will, which would defeat the premise.

"The Satisfaction and Penal Substitution Atonement theories are both wrong. "

Yeah how do you know that? You have some special hotline to God? What made you the next prophet?

And finally, Adam and eve did not exist. There was never a first pair of humans, which would be especially ridiculous since that would suggest that all humans are the result if inbreeding. Read about the reality of evolution.

"Knowing what would happen is not the same as causing it to happen."
God created everything and knew it was going to happen before it happened. That's like saying a bomber who left a bomb in an airport and knew it was going to explode an hour later wasn't at fault. Makes no sense.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

God certainly created us flawed. There are psychopaths, diseases, immoral murders and rapists, etc.

Those imperfections only existed after the Fall.

Furthermore, God did not really give us free will, since we had no choice but to have free will, which would defeat the premise.

Illogical.

Yeah how do you know that? You have some special hotline to God? What made you the next prophet?

They're theologically inconsistent, ignore the Resurrection and they were only formulated in the past millenia. For the first 1000 years of Christianity, the Church believed in the Ransom/Christus Victor, Recapitulation or Moral Influence theories or some mixture of the three.

And finally, Adam and eve did not exist. There was never a first pair of humans, which would be especially ridiculous since that would suggest that all humans are the result if inbreeding. Read about the reality of evolution.

I disagree.

God created everything and knew it was going to happen before it happened. That's like saying a bomber who left a bomb in an airport and knew it was going to explode an hour later wasn't at fault. Makes no sense.

Your analogy would work if God created the airport and not the bomb. God created the universe and after that, it was up to us to make our own decisions. I think creation was inevitable due to the nature of God. This is just the way it had to be.

 

[sojourner]

Spoken like a true Prophet!!!



While I agree with you in conception, I don't think that is how the majority of people within the Christian tradition, especially in modern times, but I would imagine in ancient times as well, view it.

You could make the connection that Yahweh within Judaism, was a kind of "old man with a white beard", at least in the sense that he was anthropomorphized as a being with some type of physical image, and not solely a purely spiritual entity. He was literally described as having traits that defined his being, and not just created as concepts to conceptualize divinity. This is also not true within all of Judaism as it is such a diverse belief system, but this particular conception can be argued. How this translates into Christianity however is another story.

I am of the opinion that Jesus' deity, whether defined is YHVH or not, was more along the lines that you speak of. A purely spiritual "entity" that was given attributes so that your average every day human could identify with him in a more personal way, and not necessarily by the J-man himself. I believe the Jesus' path was more experiential rather than associative, which does not necessarily go hand in hand with your everyday person's conception of religious experience.

I can mostly agree with this. But I think it's important to note that most people probably don't put enough thought into it to define it as closely as I have. When you talk to most people, they would say that, of course God doesn't have arms, legs, beard, etc. But yet they still talk seriously about God as if God were a human-like being.

 

[serp777]

Those imperfections only existed after the Fall.



Illogical.



They're theologically inconsistent, ignore the Resurrection and they were only formulated in the past millenia. For the first 1000 years of Christianity, the Church believed in the Ransom/Christus Victor, Recapitulation or Moral Influence theories or some mixture of the three.



I disagree.



Your analogy would work if God created the airport and not the bomb. God created the universe and after that, it was up to us to make our own decisions. I think creation was inevitable due to the nature of God. This is just the way it had to be.

"Those imperfections only existed after the Fall. "
An alleged fall that has absolutely no evidence supporting it. A fall that you claim happened, and claim that is allegedly something more than a metaphor.

"Illogical. "
No you. No explanation means you have no counter argument and my point still stands.

"They're theologically inconsistent, ignore the Resurrection and they were only formulated in the past millenia. For the first 1000 years of Christianity, the Church believed in the Ransom/Christus Victor, Recapitulation or Moral Influence theories or some mixture of the three. "

And you know those are wrong because you know, right? You know what is theologically consistent I guess and what isn't. Yeah right. I'll say that all of theology is inconsistent, since it includes Zeus, and Thor, and apollo, and polytheism, and Baal, and etc.

"Your analogy would work if God created the airport and not the bomb. God created the universe and after that, it was up to us to make our own decisions. I think creation was inevitable due to the nature of God. This is just the way it had to be."

Nah, you don't know the mind of God and what way had to be or did not have to be. Sorry, but you don't know what you cannot know. And you don't really understand analogies.

Creating the bomb is like creating the universe, and letting it go off is like waiting for humans to sin knowing that they were going to sin.

The key things here are intention and knowledge, of which God had both and the bomber also had.

"I disagree. "

I suppose you disagree with gravity, computers, medicine, astronomy, physics, and every other scientific field as well right?

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

"Those imperfections only existed after the Fall. "
An alleged fall that has absolutely no evidence supporting it. A fall that you claim happened, and claim that is allegedly something more than a metaphor.

"Illogical. "
No you. No explanation means you have no counter argument and my point still stands.

"They're theologically inconsistent, ignore the Resurrection and they were only formulated in the past millenia. For the first 1000 years of Christianity, the Church believed in the Ransom/Christus Victor, Recapitulation or Moral Influence theories or some mixture of the three. "

And you know those are wrong because you know, right? You know what is theologically consistent I guess and what isn't. Yeah right. I'll say that all of theology is inconsistent, since it includes Zeus, and Thor, and apollo, and polytheism, and Baal, and etc.

"Your analogy would work if God created the airport and not the bomb. God created the universe and after that, it was up to us to make our own decisions. I think creation was inevitable due to the nature of God. This is just the way it had to be."

Nah, you don't know the mind of God and what way had to be or did not have to be. Sorry, but you don't know what you cannot know. And you don't really understand analogies.

Creating the bomb is like creating the universe, and letting it go off is like waiting for humans to sin knowing that they were going to sin.

The key things here are intention and knowledge, of which God had both and the bomber also had.

"I disagree. "

I suppose you disagree with gravity, computers, medicine, astronomy, physics, and every other scientific field as well right?

I'm not taking the bait of rude trolls. You should learn how to discuss things in a half-way civil way.

 

[nash8]

I can mostly agree with this. But I think it's important to note that most people probably don't put enough thought into it to define it as closely as I have. When you talk to most people, they would say that, of course God doesn't have arms, legs, beard, etc. But yet they still talk seriously about God as if God were a human-like being.

Cognitive dissonance in action lol. But I totally agree with you. I am even guilty of doing it myself on occasion.

 

[serp777]

I'm not taking the bait of rude trolls. You should learn how to discuss things in a half-way civil way.

Rude troll? I guess your counterarguments were that bad that you're reverting to claiming that i'm allegedly rude and a troll. You're just another extremely oversensitive religious person.