Jesus’ so called sacrifice.
Can someone please explain the big deal about Jesus giving his life? Christians are quick to spit this non-sense exclamatory, viewing me as an unappreciative demon. Perhaps these glitches in evolution forgot that just a few days later, he was resurrected. Doesn’t sound like much of a sacrifice to me. Because afterall, he was resurrected and brought to heaven, a paradise for fuck’s sake! One day he was chilling in a time where he had to use his own bare hands to wipe the shit off his ass, and the next thing you know, he’s hanging out in an incomprehensible extacy of paradise, being pampered like he’s the son of god. So where does the sacrifice fit in?
For god so loved man, he retracted his only begotten, spoiled rotten son from the humid bowels of earth and into the air-conditioned luxury resort of heaven. This is lunacy of the highest caliber.
On the other hand, countless humans have actually lost their lives for a cause without the luxury of resurrection. Atrocities are happening as you read this text. A baby could be getting its skull smashed in with a brick in order to torture the parents of an opposing political or religious agenda. A parent could be, right now, having their jugular sliced open, the immediate area painted in fresh, warm blood. Someone’s brother could be getting shot repeatedly in the upper torso, with a high-velocity, semi-automatic rifle with bullets that scatter shell fragments upon impact. Someone’s sister could be slitting her wrists in the bath tub after being repeatedly and violently raped by a close uncle. Someone’s cousin could be tied, gagged, and doused with lighter fluid only to ignite into shrieking screams as the flesh melts off the body, while cries that describe their transition into a dark death, as tones of pain, leaving whoever unfortunate enough to hear this grousom death, forever scarred and changed. And Christians have the audacity to tell me why I should appreciate Jesus’ sacrifice? The narcissism of Christianity is mind numbing at least. Anyway that’s all for now… Amen.
August 18, 2009 at 12:10 am
I see you have been fed the typical religious tripe about who Jesus is. This by its very nature makes you a person with a religious mindset, even though you – by your very nature – don’t want to be a religious person. Religious people have been saying all of this for centuries without explanation of how evil entered the world and why we’re all here and all that good stuff that philosophers make money selling books about. I can’t say that I have all the answers. What I can tell you is that Jesus is not up in heaven sipping on a Coca-Cola while the world goes to hell in a handbasket?
This is obviously an atheist blog, and I am obviously a Christian. So if you want to discuss this further in an intelligent way, then feel free to respond to my comment and maybe we can have a friendly discussion, even if we don’t agree.
August 18, 2009 at 3:56 am
“I see you have been fed the typical religious tripe about who Jesus is. This by its very nature makes you a person with a religious mindset, even though you – by your very nature – don’t want to be a religious person.”
Disbelief in something shouldn’t be equated to any belief. It just doesn’t follow because if you carry along that line, absolutely everything becomes a belief. The best way to get illustrate it is the quote by Don Hirschberg, “Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.”
In this post he’s conceding points that are commonly given by Christians in order to show their absurdity. It doesn’t mean that he really thinks that Jesus even existed, let alone that he rose from the dead. Citing the arguments he’s opposed to in order to shed a critical light on them does not make him a religious person. It’s not that he “doesn’t want” to be a religious person, he just isn’t. It’s like calling someone who rejects magic a mystic.
He covered the resurrection and Jesus’s eventual place in heaven. These are two of the main tenets of Christianity. If you don’t believe them, or believe them only metaphorically, ask yourself how you got into that position while still being able to call yourself a Christian. If you do sincerely believe them, refute. Give us good reasons to agree with you.
I understand that he may not be speaking to your specific brand of Christian theology, and that’s okay. It’s also okay to disagree with him, given that you are clear about your points. What isn’t okay, or even honest, is to argue semantics and try to make disbelief a belief.
September 15, 2009 at 10:45 am
This response is almost identical to the posts I receive on my blog. Do they teach this sort of mindlessness in church these days? Do they teach anti-intellectualism? Oh wait, I think I just answered my own question.
August 19, 2009 at 11:41 pm
cap,
The author is an atheist, so obviously he doesn’t believe Jesus existed (at least not as Jesus declared himself to be). Otherwise he wouldn’t be a very good atheist.
To your phrasing “He covered the resurrection and Jesus’s eventual place in heaven. These are two of the main tenets of Christianity.” Something is left out. Remember that Jesus said he came from heaven. So let me paint a little different picture for you. Jesus was in heaven (perhaps sipping on a Coca-Cola). He volunteered to come down here and be with us and be like us. That was a sacrifice.
Now I know you don’t believe this, but for the sake of discussion, let’s say Jesus did start out in heaven in full honor and majesty. Then he came down and lived as we did in the flesh. Then he surrendered himself to be nailed to a tree bare naked. Once dead, he was raised from the dead and is alive now.
The author is right that Jesus is in heaven. But he isn’t sipping on a Coca-Cola. He is busy praying/interceding on our behalf and on behalf of this world. The sacrifice is that he chose to leave his heavenly home and be butchered like a murderer on our behalf.
Now I realize you don’t believe this. But the author wanted to know what the sacrifice was. So there you go. One last note: I abbreviated Jesus’ story, so if you think I left anything important out, let me know.
August 20, 2009 at 2:36 am
The reason I was pointing out the author’s concession of Christian points in order to make his own is that your original post was kind of hard to pull a clear argument out of. I took it that you were saying, by calling his outline “religious tripe”, that you didn’t believe all of it yourself. Again, can you provide good reasons for us to believe this?
The one main point that was somewhat clear from your original post was that when atheists give arguments against religious belief, their arguments should be considered religious. Do you have a good rationale for asserting this?
Of course I left something out when saying “two OF THE main tenets.” I left a ton of stuff out. I can’t be expected to be comprehensive in a blog response. Anyway, this is what i got from this response. I’m fine with an abbreviated version if you are.
1) Jesus is relaxing in heaven
2) Jesus volunteers to live as a human (this is the sacrifice)
3) Jesus voluntarily surrenders to be killed on our behalf (also a sacrifice)
4) Jesus rises from the dead and goes to heaven
5) Jesus now regularly intervenes by praying(?) on our behalf
Firstly, are Jesus and god two separate entities? If yes, we are left with polytheism, and you are left with one more god to give evidence for (which I’m still waiting to hear, by the way).
If no,
Why does Jesus need to pray to himself (God) on our behalf?
Why was Jesus relaxing in the first place? If it’s important for him to intervene, why wasn’t he doing so before he came down and got killed?
Why doesn’t God just be straightforward and forgive people, rather than playing an emotional con game? If God and Jesus are one, he’s sending himself down to be sacrificed in order to impress himself. If he’s fully capable of stopping it (which I’m assuming is true, since he can answer prayers and bring people back from the dead), that’s no sacrifice. That’s self-indulgent self-mutilation.
On another side of things, let’s say Jesus was part of God, but split off and became a regular human while on Earth. Miracles go out the window if he’s on his vacation from heaven as just a mortal human. If he’s not just a mortal man, back to the paragraph above. If he is a mortal man, but somehow capable of performing miracles, here we go…
Why didn’t he miraculously prevent his own death? If he could, but just didn’t, that’s suicide. If he could, but didn’t because he wanted to die as a sacrifice for sins of humanity (past and future), what kind of a god are we supposed to be praying to? If god’s idea of payback for sins that we are supposed to have committed and/or inherited is human sacrifice, how intelligent can this creator possibly be? The whole idea of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross is an emotional blackmail game. It’s an attempt to take away your autonomy. Because you had no say in the matter, you have no choice. I don’t know about you, but if I was there, I would have tried to stop him from being killed (assuming Jesus really did exist). Since I couldn’t have stopped him from being killed, it’s not an encumbrance that I, or you, need to carry with us. We couldn’t have helped this man, and we are not responsible for the deeds of people that died 2,000 years ago.
I’m rambling with the questions, but my point is that it’s not a sacrifice. If Jesus can take a break from heaven for 35 Earth years, come back from the dead, and go back to heaven, this is not a sacrifice. It would be different if he actually lost something. It couldn’t have been a sacrifice for him to lose his human life because, as you said above, it was a sacrifice for him to even volunteer to HAVE his human life. Either being human was a sacrifice, or going back to heaven was a sacrifice. Pick one.
By the way, none of this helps with the overwhelming lack of evidence for any of the claims your positing. I should also mention (as I’m sure you’ve read about before) the studies on intercessory prayer.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567
I’m sure you’ll find a reason to dismiss them, just as long as they don’t support your claim that God intervenes.
You don’t have to answer all of these questions. I just want a good reason before I agree with you that Jesus’s death was a sacrifice to us, while not contradicting other attributes generally attributed to god by Christians.
August 21, 2009 at 6:40 am
I’m going to try to answer your questions in order:
When I said “religious tripe”, I was referring to the fact that many Christians like to make Jesus things that He is not. Of course I believe in Jesus, because I know Him. The author’s original assertions about Jesus appear to be based on what he/she has heard about Jesus from stuck-in-their-ways religious people, not people who have experienced Jesus. That’s all I was saying.
“Arguments being religious” – I was saying the author appeared to be spouting religious ideas from stuck-in-their-ways religious people, not that the author was religious. That’s all I was saying.
On your five points from the abbreviated argument, remove point #1, because it’s not true. And the other four are sacrifices. In a way, Jesus is still sacrificing for us.
Then, let’s see. You asked some questions and made some arguments regarding the nature of God. Since you are an atheist and don’t believe God exists, I’m not going to discuss this with you. Because you still wouldn’t believe God exists when I’m done. If you want more information on the nature of God, there’s this really popular book called the Bible that you could read and figure it out for yourself.
Staying on the sacrifice. Jesus sacrificed himself and paid for sins that he did not commit. It would be like me sending you to the electric chair for someone else’s capital offense. Only multiply this for billions of people. Then when you’re done, you are raised to life and are working to pray for the people who committed the crime. This could also be considered a sacrifice. See what I’m saying?
I read the short study/abstract you posted in your reply. I would would like to know who was doing the praying. Who was doing the praying? If it was atheists praying out of their own mind into thin air, then of course nothing happened. Only the prayer of faith heals the sick.
God’s intervention: Of course God intervenes. He’s not going to abandon His creation. He has intervened in my life many times and sustains my life today. I have experienced this myself and don’t have to believe just because I read about it in a book (i.e. this is not mere mental assent to a fact). I experience God. And this is something you will not be able to disprove unless you are willing to experience for yourself the God you say doesn’t exist.
August 22, 2009 at 1:30 am
I’ll refer to the last two messages you posted by their date, so one is the 19 and the other is 21.
19 “So let me paint a little different picture for you. Jesus was in heaven (perhaps sipping on a Coca-Cola). He volunteered to come down here and be with us and be like us. That was a sacrifice.”
and
21 “On your five points from the abbreviated argument, remove point #1, because it’s not true”
point number one is “1) Jesus is relaxing in heaven”
contradiction, if i’m not wrong.
“Since you are an atheist and don’t believe God exists, I’m not going to discuss this with you”
Given what we’ve been discussing (whether Jesus’s death was a sacrifice), it’s not important that I don’t believe in God. What is important is that the attributes given to God and Jesus line up with the whole idea that Jesus’s death was a sacrifice. You have given an analogy about Jesus being sent to the electric chair, but this answers no questions. It restates the premise without adding content. I understand that you are asserting that Jesus’s death was a sacrifice. Now that we have that out of the way, HOW is it a sacrifice if Jesus can rise from the dead and go to heaven? Are God and Jesus now one entity (after Jesus’s going to heaven)? If so, why does Jesus need to pray to himself? I won’t repeat the other questions because they’re already up on my other ridiculously long message
(sorry). I thought you would have picked a handful of the major questions to respond to.
“If you want more information on the nature of God, there’s this really popular book called the Bible that you could read and figure it out for yourself.”
There is a huge problem with using the Bible as a guide to the nature of God in this conversation. It is open to interpretation (given the huge amount of denominations and the fact that I should figure it out myself). It doesn’t say what you, Chris, believe. If we’re going to continue to talk about this, I want to know what you believe God’s attributes are so that I can understand where you’re coming from.
“I read the short study/abstract you posted in your reply. I would would like to know who was doing the praying. Who was doing the praying?”
Atheists were not doing the praying. The prayers were given by 100 teams in congregations across the United States. There were three groups of patients. 1) Those that received prayers and didn’t know it. 2) Those that received prayers and did know it. 3) The control, those that didn’t receive prayers and didn’t know it. Prayers were given at least once per day.
“I experience God. And this is something you will not be able to disprove unless you are willing to experience for yourself the God you say doesn’t exist.”
How would me experiencing God disprove that there is a God? That sentence doesn’t make sense. Anyway, since I can’t prove a negative (especially about something so amorphous), and since the experience is subjectively yours, why bring it up? You’re essentially saying that I need faith and personal events to experience and believe in God, but also shrugging off a study that contradicts your idea that God intervenes. If you’re going to believe it anyway, and if nothing is going to change your mind, why even bother posting in these comments? I’m asking you to change my mind, I just want a set of good reasons (about both God, and that Jesus’s death was a sacrifice) and some good evidence to contradict that in place against the fundamentals of Christianity. As long as you want me to trust your deep inner-feeling that God exists, couldn’t I just do the same in the opposite direction?
Based on my reasoning and personal experience, I stopped believing in God when I was 8. No traumatic incidents, not out of rebellion, just out of thinking carefully about the claims being made. Over all of these years, I haven’t heard a single solid reason to change my mind. I’m not dogmatic, there just aren’t any good reasons to believe. Nobody can know anything for ABSOLUTELY certain (especially something so detatched from the physical world), but it doesn’t follow that its likelihood is on par with its unlikelihood. I’m atheist by default. It doesn’t demote my deep feelings and experiences throughout my life from holy and godly happenings to less important mental gestures, it elevates them. I understand that I am human and that my life is important, and so is yours. I understand that it will have as much meaning as I give it. I understand that I need to be good to other people to help keep the world in a better shape than it otherwise would be without me. I just don’t need to project that onto a cosmic screen and give my thoughts the voice of a being that is said to have created the Universe.
Because of all of this, I’m not relying on an afterlife or an authority to pull me out of jams and dictate my morals. I don’t behave well simply for an eternal reward. I don’t need to be told that these things are important, and I don’t need to ask for forgiveness for things I haven’t done. I don’t need to suspend my critical thinking in order to have the same experiences that you do. If you’re going to throw in the catch-all and attribute all of this to God, you have the burden of proof to back up your claim if you want to be persuasive. Likewise, I would have the burden of proof if I attributed all of your experiences to a cyborg dentist that created the Universe as a dare at a slumber party.
Sorry about the long message
August 22, 2009 at 3:05 am
I didn’t catch this before posting, but
“you have given an analogy about Jesus being sent to the electric chair”
should be
“ou have given an analogy about Jesus and being sent to the electric chair”
August 23, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I’ll make my reply brief.
Contradiction: 19 The word “perhaps” is very important. Jesus is King. So “perhaps” he had a moment before coming to earth as a human to sip on a Coca-Cola. Perhaps. But let’s not forget that he created everything, so he was busy. 21 Jesus is absolutely not now relaxing in heaven. He is still at work. So it’s not that Jesus was raised from the dead and then clocked out. So since Jesus is still working on our behalf (and really has been all along), doesn’t this create a sacrificial situation?
Since you are an atheist: I feel like I sorta answered the sacrifice portion in my response above. Understanding the oneness of God is actually quite simple, and you (since you appear to be a studied person) already know the basic Christian tenets about the Trinity. So I don’t see the point of getting into that. And it’s okay (for the sake of this debate) if you don’t understand the nature of God and the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You’re an atheist – which makes you a spiritually ignorant person. You are mentally an intelligent person who can put together a good argument, but you have no spiritual experience. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be a very good atheist. I can’t fix that for you.
Reading the Bible: The Bible isn’t really that difficult to understand to people who want to hear what God has to say. You are correct that there are a lot of denominations (and as such, many ideas about God and Jesus). I will not defend the Church in this country on that point. Trust me, I know about the ridiculous things that are going on churches today. This does not change the fact that Jesus is King. On what I believe: Hopefully, this reply helps. I obviously believe in the Trinity, and I believe that God is at work in this world today to help people. What more do you want to know? As a spiritually ignorant person, I don’t know how you could understand much more than that.
Short study/abstract: Glad you responded to this. Unfortunately, the state of the church in the US is so sad that many Christians (probably the majority) don’t even believe that God heals today – which I think is ridiculous. So if the prayer requests were given to a group of Christians who don’t believe God heals, you probably won’t get any better results than giving them to atheists. God heals today. I’ve seen it too many times myself to believe that God doesn’t heal today. Also, I don’t know how we even got onto this subject.
I experience God: Here is where I apologize to you. The fact that an eight-year-old child in America (where there are so many churches) has not had the opportunity to experience their creator for real is a sin. And it’s not your sin. It is the sin of the Church in this country (I’ll even throw myself in there for good measure). If the people in church did a better job of living their faith and demonstrating who God really is, you might not have the opinions you have today. Therefore, it is not you yourself who made you spiritually ignorant (at least not totally), the Church in America helped make you spiritually ignorant and helped turn you into an ‘atheist by default’.
One last thing, like Paul at the Aeropagus, I don’t have a lot of time to debate. I am looking for people who want to experience God. I actually was intrigued by the author’s original post, and thought I might jump in. It’s one thing to beat on hypocritical Christians. It is another for a spiritually ignorant person to talk bad about Jesus’s sacrifice, when they don’t know anything about Jesus. It’s been great talking to you, cap. Maybe we’ll meet in the real world someday. Oh, by the way, I do have some videos of people experiencing God (and I was present for most of the video footage – it’s not some third-party experience). I haven’t shared them, because I don’t get the idea that you would believe God exists and acts in the world today no matter what I show you.
So unless you have anything pressing to say (and if you do, keep it brief), I’ll have to say good-bye. Again, good talking to you, cap.
August 23, 2009 at 10:47 pm
My apologies. I thought it was going to come out short.
August 24, 2009 at 5:24 am
i’ll break my response up categorically, since some parts of your post are related and it’s easier to answer them this way.
“unless you have anything pressing to say (and if you do, keep it brief), I’ll have to say good-bye”
no, i won’t keep it brief. if i have something to say, i’ll type as long as i want to. if you don’t want to read it, you don’t have to. if you haven’t noticed, i’ve been asking questions throughout all of these posts. you haven’t answered a single one without a logical fallacy, a dodge, a set of circular reasoning, an anecdote, a distraction/non-answer, or a combination of all of these. none of these answer any of my questions, which is why i have to keep repeating them.
“The word “perhaps” is very important”
I don’t want to argue sentence structure, but this is pure bullshit. If you’re going to put “perhaps” in parenthesis, it can be safely removed from your sentence while your sentence delivers its original message. here’s an example. “my car is dirty (and maybe wet).” it doesn’t mean that my car is MAYBE DIRTY. it means my car is MAYBE WET. likewise, you posit that he was in heaven beforehand, putting (perhaps drinking a coca-cola) in parenthesis for comedic effect. the only difference is that it was later in your interest to remove the certainty of Jesus being in heaven before being human. presto! *maybe drinking a coke* becomes *maybe being in heaven*. if we’re going to discuss this, be straight and honest. don’t weasel around and play with words. be as clear as you can with your initial message. it’s probably too late for this, but it’s a main reason we’re not getting anywhere.
“So since Jesus is still working on our behalf (and really has been all along), doesn’t this create a sacrificial situation?”
“Since you are an atheist: I feel like I sorta answered the sacrifice portion in my response above”
“I don’t see the point of getting into that”
the point of getting into the nature of god, the trinity, jesus, and the whole lot, is to match your beliefs of these systems to the claim that jesus’s death/prayer to god is a sacrifice. here’s the problem, as i’ve stated before, JESUS PRAYING TO HIMSELF. why?
here’s another few concerns.
god being all knowing, loving, powerful. aside from these being contradictory, why didn’t god save jesus from being killed? if god is all knowing, why pray to begin with? god knows you need it, god knows you love him, why does he need you to beg? does he need to be reminded? there are so many problems with all of this. if i keep it up, i’m going to end up going into a repeat cycle of all of my last questions, because you aren’t answering any of them. you’re rephrasing things, and making me ask more questions.
here are some dodges and non-answers you’ve thrown out.
“You are correct that there are a lot of denominations (and as such, many ideas about God and Jesus). I will not defend the Church in this country on that point. Trust me, I know about the ridiculous things that are going on churches today. This does not change the fact that Jesus is King.”
**this has nothing to do with my original point. my point was an aside as to why i needed to know what you believed, rather than what the bible said.**
“On what I believe: Hopefully, this reply helps. I obviously believe in the Trinity, and I believe that God is at work in this world today to help people.”
**vagueness is every obscurantist debater’s best friend. i gathered that you believed these fuzzy ideas already from your previous posts. i’m asking you WHAT GOD’S ATTRIBUTES ARE and to DESCRIBE WHAT YOU BELIEVE ABOUT THE TRINITY SPECIFICALLY**
“So if the prayer requests were given to a group of Christians who don’t believe God heals, you probably won’t get any better results than giving them to atheists”
maybe more christians would believe god heals if they actually had prayers answered, and not just slight twisted ankles heal 2 days earlier than usual. doesn’t the fact that they don’t believe in the healing power of prayer say something about its results? it just seems like they’re jaded from repeatedly being disappointed. christianity is spattered with whole idea that you have to believe something is going to happen (or has happened) before you actually see any reason for it. it’s a self-sustaining mechanism that has taken shape throughout the development of christianity… and religion in general. in the paragraph i lifted the above quote from, you’re just typifying the defense of a set of seemingly mundane, but ultimately destructive memes.
“Also, I don’t know how we even got onto this subject.”
you brought up the healing power of prayer.
“I do have some videos of people experiencing God (and I was present for most of the video footage – it’s not some third-party experience)”
yes, and i’ve watched thousands of hindus have amazingly emotional experiences on the banks of the ganges. this does not make hinduism any more plausible. the fact that someone else believes something is not a reason to believe it yourself.
“You’re an atheist – which makes you a spiritually ignorant person”
you repeated this a lot, and this is where you’re terribly wrong. spirituality is a slippery word. if you want to define spirituality as supernaturalism (which is what you seem to be doing), you’re on your own. you’re done looking for real answers, and you ultimately don’t care if you get them. you’re accepting the base of all of this on authority, and then using your own mental and emotional experiences as confirmation that it’s true. i mean, look everywhere in the world. everybody that feels the things that we both feel attribute them to the religion they were either brought up in, or converted to. we have pentecostals wrangling snakes and speaking in tongues, hindus having visions at the shrine of karttikeya, hazrat mirza hearing the voice of allah, and so forth. by making your repeated appeals to personal experience, you’re just asking me to take all of these things as equally valid. nothing makes christianity special except that it’s the dominant religion of the u.s.. if the worldwide popularity of a deep revelation and conviction determined its validity, we should both be muslims.
by even suggesting that there are some things that we can’t investigate (which is implicit in the whole idea of supernaturalism), you seem to have managed to wind up in the position you’re in. no answers. just conviction based on 2,000 year old authority and anecdotes without reasoning. i don’t want to be an asshole, but i may get scathing because this cuts straight to the biggest problem i have with the implications of religious belief. the fact that one sect or another “has the answers”, or thinks that “god speaks to them”, or whatever particular brand of 21st century shamanism has managed to survive, does not mean that they have a monopoly on what it is to have deep, existential, and emotional feelings. by accepting all of this nonsense (namely the trinity) you have successfully conceded that you don’t really give a shit what’s real. you’re just taking comfort in a majority opinion, while defending a set of dead and destroyed arguments. the “spiritually ignorant” line seems to be your dying breath against reason. as usual, it’s a non-answer.
i actually care about answers. i have profound existential thoughts, experiences, and questions. here’s the difference: i don’t take the first set of answers i’m given. i’m willing to look for answers, and continue to look if nothing satisfying surfaces. you, on the other hand, have a book. this book was written by humans and partially dictated by god. you can interpret, re-interpret, and take your unrelated experiences as confirmation that it’s true, but that’s the end of it for you. i’m going to continue to be “spiritually ignorant” and keep looking and learning. have fun at the dead-end of arrogant certainty.
your first post: an invitation to a thoughtful debate
“if you want to discuss this further in an intelligent way, then feel free to respond to my comment and maybe we can have a friendly discussion”
your last post: quitting a reasoned and thoughtful debate that doesn’t take assertion as fact
(you are) “spiritually ignorant” (5 times)
“You are mentally an intelligent person who can put together a good argument, but you have no spiritual experience.”
“One last thing, like Paul at the Aeropagus, I don’t have a lot of time to debate. I am looking for people who want to experience God.”
if you don’t have time to debate, you’re just looking for gullible people. you won’t find them here. i’m asking questions with interest to see why your religion is true, but you haven’t given a single satisfactory answer. you have completely failed at giving me ANY good reason to believe in god. if you don’t have any that weren’t obliterated hundreds of years ago, bye.
August 25, 2009 at 12:13 am
This is my last reply. In the passage of scripture where Paul addresses the Aeropagus (Acts 17), he addresses this grouping of brilliant Athenian minds only one time. They wanted to hear more from him, but he never comes back. It’s obvious why he never came back. He didn’t have anything else to say. The people who wanted to hear walked away with him and helped him turn the first century world upside down. The rest of the Aeropagites just kept on standing around debating while Paul changed the world.
Talk is cheap. The reason I say you (and other atheists) are spiritually ignorant and lack spiritual experience is not to upset you. I am stating a fact. Look, when someone goes to the doctor and the doctor finds a big ol’ cancerous tumor that’s going to kill them in six weeks, nobody calls you. Ever. They call us – the people who believe Jesus sacrificed his freedom to come to earth, paid for death to be destroyed with his own body and blood, and is still at work to fulfill death’s final demise. The people who can pull the power of God from the spirit realm into the physical realm are the ones who get the call, not the ones who don’t believe it can happen. And in a number of cases the tumor dissolves. It doesn’t happen as often as we would like, but it happens regularly. Death is not 100% defeated yet, but it is on its way out the door.
I apologize that I am not as great a debater as yourself, cap. I am not as eloquent as you are. But when people are in a pinch, at the end of the day they call people like me, not you. You can’t help them.
You may think I’m crazy. Some of the Aeropagites mocked Paul when he spoke to them of the resurrection. But it was all said and done, they were on top of a hill flapping their jaws while Paul changed the planet. Good day.
August 25, 2009 at 1:51 am
great response. it seems like you didn’t even read my last one.
“Look, when someone goes to the doctor and the doctor finds a big ol’ cancerous tumor that’s going to kill them in six weeks, nobody calls you. Ever. They call us”
they “call you” because they already halfway believe what you do, and are desperate. they think that their life is about to end, and they haven’t been equipped with the ability to deal with things like this. when people get into a desperate situation and don’t know what to do, they’re vulnerable. i can understand that. it’s the reason that religion has found its way into the AA program, and it’s the reason why our country was flooded with christianity after september 11th. wouldn’t everyone be better off knowing how cope, recover, accept, and to deal with situations like these than to rely one the church when they have trouble? you seem to take an arrogant pride in the misconception that your church has the monopoly on emotional support. if everything you’re saying really did work, doctors, therapists, and secular help in general would be unnecessary.
“Death is not 100% defeated yet, but it is on its way out the door.”
yeah. get back to me in about 70 years when we’re both dead.
“You may think I’m crazy”
i don’t think you’re crazy. i think your ideas are. i think you’re narrow minded and unimaginative for believing them, and arrogant to make so many unwarranted assumptions about the way that the world operates. your message above (about “they come to us” and “you can’t help them”) is just an example of something i said earlier. you take a sense of security in being part of this large group of certain, powerful (but unelected), and self-important people. hopefully people in general will become better informed about social support and general community so that they don’t feel like they have to depend on the community that surrounds your blatantly made up beliefs. i have a hope that one day it reaches a critical mass, and power supporting the entire house of cards that is the american church comes tumbling down.
as i ended my last post…
“if you don’t have any (arguments) that weren’t obliterated hundreds of years ago, bye”