My big problem with Christianity

[Spiffor]

Good night

[Elok]

Frigging blood atonement. Okay, with the disclaimer that this is only the Orthodox Christian perspective as best I understand it:

Nobody "had" to die for our sins. God is the ultimate authority, source of all virtue ("every good and perfect thing is from above and comes down from him, the father of lights"-James), and there is no higher law of prices to be paid before there can be forgiveness. That doesn't even chime with scripture. By that reasoning, the prodigal son should have worked off his debt, and the servant in the parable would still owe ten thousand talents. Divine forgiveness, when granted, is absolute.
Christ's death as the new Passover Lamb was, as I believe monkspider said earlier, an act of guidance, not just a quick get-us-off-the-hook thing. Christ meant it when he said, "take up your cross and follow me." If we want to redeem the fallen portion of our nature, which we inherited from Adam (note that we inherited his predilection, NOT his guilt), we must be willing to follow the way he took, and give up all vice and spite, and all the world if need be. I have to go to class soon, but I'll continue this later.

[Elok]

C.S. Lewis's explanation towards the rear end of Mere Christianity does an excellent job, come to think of it. That's probably a better place to go if you want to understand the nature of the crucifixion and resurrection.

As to the certainty of Christ's death on the cross, you cannot fake death by crucifixion. Being hung on a cross forces your body into a position such that you must drag yourself up by the nails in your wrists every time you breathe. Cessation of movement, whether from unconsciousness or utter exhaustion, means asphyxiation and irreparable brain damage within ten minutes, even if you were resuscitated later. It would have required an intervening miracle of God to fake the crucifixion too.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
molly:

Glad you let the skeptics do your thinking for you.

Can you tell me what those terms mean? What time would each of these correspond to in our terms?

Secondly, can you tell me if the Jews reckon time in the same way as the Romans?

Gee, Benny baby, what’s the matter, can’t attack the argument, have to go for me instead?

Second time too, after the ‘chimpanzee-Australian’ comparison. Not very kerrisstian of you, is it? Or rather, perhaps it is....

What problem might I have with two accounts of a crucifixion of someone alleged to be the paramount leader and begetter of a world spanning religion, by two of his followers, that state different times for the crucifixion?

How many Passovers did the Jews have in a year?

One?

Two?

Fifty three?

Now if such an event as the crucifixion happened on a particular feast day, such as the Passover, and if there were alleged eyewitnesses who were Jewish or brought up in the Jewish faith, might not such a convergence of a high holy day and a crucifixion be more likely to stick in the mind, than if say, it happened on a random Tuesday at 11.30 in the morning?

I note you make reference to C.S. Lewis’s works. Allow him to dictate much of your thinking? Allow those dead sheepherders to do much of your thinking?

Blind faith is I think your affliction, not mine.

The ‘Sceptics’ Annotated Bible’ is a useful reference tool, like a dictionary, thesaurus or encyclopaedia.

It comes in handy when one wants to get past all those ‘Abishags begat Baba Louies unto the third generation, yea,’ and when people such as you claim that the synoptic gospels have a great deal of factual inerrancyor that their contradictions can be explained away without a tremendous amount of wishful thinking.

[Ben Kenobi]

C.S. Lewis's explanation towards the rear end of Mere Christianity does an excellent job, come to think of it. That's probably a better place to go if you want to understand the nature of the crucifixion and resurrection.

Elok:

Exactly my thought. I so much love that book.

[Ben Kenobi]

molly:

Can you answer either of my questions? I ask them, because that is what my rebuttal will be on.

How many Passovers did the Jews have in a year?

One.

Now if such an event as the crucifixion happened on a particular feast day, such as the Passover, and if there were alleged eyewitnesses who were Jewish or brought up in the Jewish faith, might not such a convergence of a high holy day and a crucifixion be more likely to stick in the mind, than if say, it happened on a random Tuesday at 11.30 in the morning?

I deny none of your points. I find it rather remarkable that we would know the exact time of Christ's crucifixion 2000 years after the event occurred.

Blind faith is I think your affliction, not mine.

Is it? Or do we both see a little of ourselves in each other?

[molly bloom]

Many Romans and Jews shared the same calculation of time- from sunset to sunset.

One would have to then imagine that two Jews, writing the gospels, would choose to use different methods of time calculating just so they could confuse the matter for their intended audience. Makes putting that message across so much easier....

And of course these two people would pay no special attention to the alleged time of the alleged death of their cult's leader, because let's face it, the death of one's god is such a trivial quotidian occurrence....

I have no idea what you see in me. What I see in you is a tendency to rely on assertion, unbolstered by any reference to the historical context of the bible and its use as propaganda by Jews and Christians.

Accounting for the success of Paul, for instance, by assuming some kind of truth in his message, means that one must also place a great deal of faith in the 'truth' of those Buddhist monks and merchants who gained so many converts in China- or those proselytizing merchants and sailors who gained so many converts for Islam in Central and South East Asia.

Your reference to the destruction of books in Islam (or by the Qu'ran) is again a bit of propaganda- not noticeably backed up by any quotes or reference to any websites.

[Ben Kenobi]

Molly, the Gospels were not written at the same time. John was written much later than the rest, in an essentially Roman civilisation. It makes little sense for him to write the time, in any other way than the Romans reckoned time.

This is not the case for the Synoptics, who wrote their Gospels quite earlier, around 55-60 AD. They used the Jewish reckoning of time, in accordance with the community in Judea.

For the Jews the 3rd hour would have been our 9am and the 6th hour of the Romans would be 6am our time. Thus, the 3rd hour comes after the 6th hour.

Accounting for the success of Paul,

I care not so much about the success of Paul, but rather the whys. Why would he convert in the first place. Why would the Christians accept him?

[Ben Kenobi]

Found it!

I read this claim in a good book about a year ago. Here's a much more substantive analysis on the standardisation of the Q'uran.

Interesting stuff.

http://answering-islam.org.uk/Green/uthman.htm

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Molly, the Gospels were not written at the same time. John was written much later than the rest, in an essentially Roman civilisation. It makes little sense for him to write the time, in any other way than the Romans reckoned time.

This is not the case for the Synoptics, who wrote their Gospels quite earlier, around 55-60 AD. They used the Jewish reckoning of time, in accordance with the community in Judea.

I care not so much about the success of Paul, but rather the whys. Why would he convert in the first place. Why would the Christians accept him?

The dates for John's gospel aren't fixed in stone- the dates I've seen range from 65 a.d. to 100 a.d. .

I'm sorry but this implies so much wishful thinking on your part- one of the alleged eyewitnesses, a Jew, (the closest to their leader) decides to write his account using the variation of Roman time that is out of synch with the Jewish calculation (you'll note that many Jews and Romans used the same calculation, as I stated) because it suddenly became a more 'Roman' civiliization.

The same civilization that had a shared calculation of time with the Jews? Who were at the time of the 'crucifixion' living in the Roman Empire? Under Roman law, and with a Roman governor.

The cultural milieu was Judaeo-Hellenistic-Roman- and remarkably accommodating of religious sects, unlike say the Zoroastrian priesthood in the Sassanid Empire, who were so antagonistic to Manichaeism, it flourished more in the Roman Empire and not in its Iranian homeland.

Why would Paul convert? Why does anyone? Why reject?

Why would the Christians accept him? Why do people believe Oral Roberts? Or Jerry Falwell? Or the Reverend Moon?

Because they're saps, is the short answer.

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Japher:

Think about it for a minute.

Both Moslems and Christians accept that the Romans nailed Christ to a cross. Where they differ, is that the Moslems insist Christ somehow survived. Now, I ask you, how is it possible for Christ to come off that cross alive, when the Romans want to kill Christ?

This is not true. According to Quran, Christ was not crucified in the first place. Accordingly, a likeness of him suffered that fate. 'God had ascended him to Him'. The difference on the matter is total, and challenges the whole idea of Christ's sacrifice. Christ is no superhuman, but a messenger, bringing the essence of the same message as that of Moses and all prophets before him. Man is warned not to imagine partners to God.

This is another theme that I'm really intrigued about Christianity. Why would I ever be responsible for the sins of someone that lived before me? That's against the very grain of basic logic.

What would you feel if the FBI showed up at your door and said your grandpa robbed a bank 100 years ago but was never caught, so now that they have traced his lineage, you have to do prison time of say, 20 years, for the crimes of your grandpa? Why is this an outrageous assertion, and why not I or you being 'guilty' of some sin that we had no part in? I find the idea of the Original Sin rather unholy in this respect, totally at contradiction with the glory of creation of the universe.

Islam asserts individual responsibility. Your life is a test for you, your actions and decisions in life define who you are. Your sins and good deeds belong to you. If you ask for forgiveness, you ask it from God, say from your heart, which is transparent to God, that you are sorry and pledge never to do it again. God knows your sincerity. You need no interlocutors, no intermediaries. Noone comes in between you and your Creator. God is not a guy with a long white beard sitting in the sky (I don't mean Christians think so, just to make the analogy more striking) but he's all around, he’s omnipresent in this universe and other universes that we don’t know of yet. He does not look upon Man with feudal hieararchies of lordship.

As for Trinity, it really is dumbfounding. What do you mean by Son of God? The biological descendant of God? God is above reproduction, or having an offspring in that respect. If you mean God loved Jesus just like a father loves his son, this makes more sense. But what about Jesus was God, or that he was Godly but accepted to be reduced to be a human? So what was he before? A co-God? How can you be God and Man at the same time? What kind of a limited conception of God is that?

And what about the Holy Spirit? Why would God need HS to do things? Need is a sign of imperfection, which is incompatible with the concept of God. Or else God chooses to do things through HS, in which case HS is a tool and hence not a creator...

As for the Bible, Christianity suffered 3 centuries of persecution, during which there emerged hundreds of versions of the Bible, and when things calmed down enough for Christians, the Holy Council that convened to sort things out were dumbstruck by the volume of different bibles in circulation, and through best of their efforts they could reduce the number only down to 4, which are still at contradiction with each other on some accounts. Only that shows that the Bible was surely interfered with. That selection process is bound to be subjective, and the data the chosen Bibles provide was bound to be inconclusive, so what emerged as Christianity today is general principles accepted through what is thought to be the message of God. Early Christian debate about the nature of Christ is a testament to this. Those who believed Jesus was human and those that thought he was God, or those that believed he was both believed in their points of view as fervently as the other groups believed in theirs. Only through imposition of one version over the rest, and its packaging as dogma provided some coherence.

On Muhammad's propethood. Propethood is not associated with Jews, despite the fact that many of the most prominent prophets were Semitic. All societies in history in their existence were sent a messenger, whether of minor significance or not. Muhammed's propethood is not based on his continuing the line of Jewish prophets, but that he was chosen by God to reveal the final message. That's the only criterion.

Comparatively, although you may reject the whole Islamic philosophy or religion in general, the case remains that Islam has much more internal consistency, and suffers none of the dogmatic question marks that has intrigued Christians for ages.

Having said all this, my intention is not offending anybody, and if anybody is offended by any of remarks, my apologies in advance. I should further say that whatever the dogmatic differences between Islam and Christianity, I respect the latter for all the good it represents in the world and peace it brings to the hearts of more than a billion people

Please correct any of my comments here if you think I'm speaking from misconceptions about Christianity, that would be a good opportunity to stand corrected

[CharlesBHoff]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


I see. Not really a fair comparison though. All the books they had, they just had to put them together and decide which ones were canonical and which were not. The Q'uran simply burned all books that did not agree with the official version.

You are wrong first the official Christian Church went around the Roman Empire murbering all people who didnot follow the official beilf of the Official Christian church, the official Christian Church sent alot of time trying to put down vary Heresy during the late Roman Empire allway thought the late middle age. Let name afew the Adoptionist Heresy, Albigensian Heresy,Arianisn (Contantine 1 support Arianism was than possible follower),Bogomil Heresy, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Cathar Heresy, Donatist Heresy,False Apostles, Manicheanist Heresy, Cathars, Bogomils, Aibigensians, Monophysite Heresy, Nestorian Heresy, Waldensians. Let not forget The Holy Office of the Inquisition who tourted and murber alots of people in cold blood.

If I print than book that doesnot follow the Authour of the Book the way he want it to appear he can go to than court and get than court order ordering those copy
destory. Than Islam Court declare those books inaccurate and order then destory. No hidden cath of these book appear yet. Islam have over 16 major sect
that get along with each other pretty well. All of these heresy was put down very burtal by the Church inclureing the rapeing of woman and childern.

[Shi Huangdi]

"I assume God doesn't exist, yet I tend to forgive people for their offenses That must be because I want to enter heaven after my death."

Can you give a logical reason for your actions? You could just be irrational in your forgiving.

[Ancyrean]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


I see. Not really a fair comparison though. All the books they had, they just had to put them together and decide which ones were canonical and which were not. The Q'uran simply burned all books that did not agree with the official version.

What provided for the unchanged nature of Quran was that as soon as Mohammed was revealed a part of Quran by God, dozens of disciples memorised it and put it down into writing. From that point on, they constantly checked and rechecked their memorisations with each other.

When finally there was a final effort to put the Quran into a single book, the same procedure was going on for years. So if there was any versions they burned, those were at variance with the Quran as was known through this process.

[CharlesBHoff]

When the Protant revolt start in Europe it split the once
unitif Western Roman Catholate Church into many peices that didnot talk to each other for a long time, the only time talk was to hurled insults at each other, some protant call the Pope at that time than anti-Christ and the Catholate called the Protant leaders anti-Chirst.
They didnot really start to talk to each other untril 1960's. Whele the Islamic world have is split alot early in the beginning it never was as hostle as the Protant and Catholate split that took part in the 1400's and it was never as bitter as the Christian breaking up.