If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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Dontaskme
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Dontaskme »

Belinda wrote:DontAskMe wrote:
But we cannot deny that the awareness in you is the same awareness in me, and the same awareness that is in a cat or an ant.
We can deny it!

It is true enough that humans, cats, and ants are aware. Each individual human, cat, or ant is aware of its own experience, which differs from individual to individual.The awareness of you and me, DontAskMe, is not the same awareness . You are not aware of very much that I am aware of, and I am not aware of most of what you are aware of. Cats and ants are aware of wondrous experiences that you and I can only guess at.
Just to pick up on this common error made about awareness to clarify by placing it into it's proper clarity.

There is no separate person to deny awareness. Awareness is known as it is being. Being is not a person, a person is a conceptual idea arising in awareness being a person...the person cannot know for it's already known by awareness as prior knower to the known. Knower being inseparable from the known.

The person that appears to be aware of it's own experience is a thought appearing in awareness as an experience, a thought/experience is not the experiencer, it is the experience of awareness experiencing itself as you, me, them, us...and everything..etc..

Awareness is one ..In the same context as oxygen is to life...we all breathe, draw upon the same one sustenance, the same one air, without which life would not be.

I cannot be aware of you because there is no you to be aware of...there is only awareness in which the thought of you, and me, and them, and others arises... thoughts are ALL different and cannot know themselves simply because they are already known to awareness which is the only knower.

This is what God is.

THIS THIS THIS THIS

HERE HERE HERE

NOW NOW NOW

THIS IS IT
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Belinda »

Dubious, that video which you recommended contains the good theme of political machinations with their base in power and ambitions to power . I am not sure that video is the best medium for a complicated historical narrative, for me anyway. I'd rather have it in a book despite that the photographs are memorable, and the depicted faces, horses, and other decor surrounding the main actors provide me with a key to the sequences of events connected with them. Can you recommend a book like the video? Thank you for the link. It was worth the long time it took to view it.

I will have to answer DontAskMe and Immanuel Can later, DV.
uwot
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by uwot »

Dontaskme wrote:Now, we all have awareness, yet what arises in that is different for all of us.
Well, yes we all have different experiences.
Dontaskme wrote:But we cannot deny that the awareness in you is the same awareness in me, and the same awareness that is in a cat or an ant.
It really depends what you mean, but whatever sense you are applying to 'awareness', I think it can be denied that it is the same experience, or even type of experience. There is a very famous paper by the American Thomas Nagel; What is it like to be a bat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_i ... e_a_Bat%3F which discusses that issue.
Dontaskme wrote:If there was no God aka this absolute all pervading eternal infinite all knowing awareness aka unconditional LOVE/LIGHT... then it wouldn't matter if we choose to be a mass murderer or a mother teresa..we can do what ever we want because we're all just going to end up in the fertilizer pit anyway, so it wouldn't matter what we do...there would be no higher conscience guiding us, we would have no innate knowing of a higher purpose for living... if we are just temporal beings with no purpose other than to become worm fodder at death...then what's the point of any values or morals...where do they come from, and why do they exist?
As I said, this is basically divine command theory advocated by William Lane Craig and Immanuel Can. The problem with it is that morality becomes whatever god decides. This from WLC's wiki page:
"As a Divine command theorist, Craig believes God had the moral right to command the killing of the Canaanites if they refused to leave their land, as depicted in the Book of Deuteronomy. This has led to some controversy. Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has repeatedly refused to debate Craig, and has given what he calls Craig's defense of genocide as one of his reasons."
Dontaskme wrote:Can humans live that way? without a higher conscience?
Many of us do.
Dontaskme wrote:In other words we don't have a mind ..we are the mind.
It's possible, but I don't think you have made a compelling case.
Dontaskme wrote:Sorry if this sounds very convoluted...
It's messy, but I think you could turn it into a tenable argument.
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

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uwot wrote:
Dontaskme wrote:Now, we all have awareness, yet what arises in that is different for all of us.
Well, yes we all have different experiences.
Dontaskme wrote:But we cannot deny that the awareness in you is the same awareness in me, and the same awareness that is in a cat or an ant.
It really depends what you mean, but whatever sense you are applying to 'awareness', I think it can be denied that it is the same experience, or even type of experience. There is a very famous paper by the American Thomas Nagel; What is it like to be a bat? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_i ... e_a_Bat%3F which discusses that issue.
Awareness is not an experience. . there ate only ''experiences'' in life. That what is not an experience is the experiencing as and through a mind body mechanism, where a thought claims I am aware, this is my awareness...there is no one to claim but the thought itself which is illusory.. therefore, No one is aware...meaning Everything is awareness aware of itself. Reality is a verb.
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Dontaskme »

uwot wrote: As I said, this is basically divine command theory advocated by William Lane Craig and Immanuel Can. The problem with it is that morality becomes whatever god decides. This from WLC's wiki page:
"As a Divine command theorist, Craig believes God had the moral right to command the killing of the Canaanites if they refused to leave their land, as depicted in the Book of Deuteronomy. This has led to some controversy. Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has repeatedly refused to debate Craig, and has given what he calls Craig's defense of genocide as one of his reasons."
A lot of the Bible authors were just human translators translating the events that were taking place in real-space and time....Only God the immutable one can bear true I witness account to what actually happened...God (our higher self) does not demand anything from us. He just looks on in detachment watching us make our own mistakes. That said, he's always there/here when we need him - when there the desire for correction as any loving wise Father would be for his child.. Unless we enjoy living in sin and corruption and misery, which I doubt we do, and is what makes us human in the first place...being of God's image. (Jesus, God as a man) It's only humans that make / cause all the trouble on this planet.

Why else would we have a free will to choose a way of life. We get to choose our way to live.

God has graciously provided this beautiful garden in which to play and live, and therefore it is our responsibility to care for it or not.

We have to cultivate and take care of it ourselves...a well kept garden begets a beautiful result. Negligence has it's own reward...it's our call as to what looks and feels good, or what's the best flavor of i-scream. The garden will always be here for us for ever and ever, it'll still be here well after we've been and left our muddy foot-print all over it. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
ForCruxSake
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by ForCruxSake »

Dontaskme wrote:If there was no God aka this absolute all pervading eternal infinite all knowing awareness aka unconditional LOVE/LIGHT... then it wouldn't matter if we choose to be a mass murderer or a mother teresa..we can do what ever we want because we're all just going to end up in the fertilizer pit anyway, so it wouldn't matter what we do...there would be no higher conscience guiding us, we would have no innate knowing of a higher purpose for living... if we are just temporal beings with no purpose other than to become worm fodder at death...then what's the point of any values or morals...where do they come from, and why do they exist?
That's the biggy isn't it, to which Douglas Adams had a supercomputer answer "42".

Could it not just as well be argued that assuming everything we do is bent towards survival, morality is just another development that ensures that?

We don't kill in order to survive. A community that grows helps protect itself by dint of numbers and accumulation of resources.

We then find excuses to kill, when we hit population booms that fight over resources to ensure their best survival, even though God said, "Thou shalt no kill"? We call it 'war', and somehow it's legitimised killing.

Could it not be that God is an invention to embed the morality that ensures our survival in those less capable, or respectful, of thinking through what it actually does take to survive?

Or was God's only true purpose, in His design of us, to give us the instinct to survive to no real purpose?

Didn't God also create our more debased selves, so far removed from the 'higher consciousness' that we can be greedy, envious, gluttonous souls who might hit someone over the head with a blunt instrument just because we fancy another person's wife, if only for the way she cooks?

Such a contradictory way to design us. What would be the point of that? 42???

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 05734.html

(Go on, it's worth the read :D )
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Belinda »

DontAskMe wrote:
I cannot be aware of you because there is no you to be aware of...there is only awareness in which the thought of you, and me, and them, and others arises... thoughts are ALL different and cannot know themselves simply because they are already known to awareness which is the only knower.
This is the key sentence among what you wrote.I know of this theory of human existence. An old friend of mine expressed it as "I am spirit and I have a body".

I prefer the theory of existence that goes " My mind is the idea of my body": in other words my mind and my body are different ways to what I am, and my mind cannot exist without my body which is necessary for experiencing all sensations, and my body cannot exist without my mind.

I say "I", which is what Don'tAskMe is much concerned with, i.e.the subject of the awareness. I can say the same thing without mentioning "me" or "I". I can express what I mean in the form of; mind is the idea of the body.

DontAskMe is also much concerned with God as Originator of all, and Arbiter of all judgements. However nature is an adequate explanation of creation without any reference to the intentions, plans, or ideas of a Creator.

God as Arbiter of all judgements is more complicated . However nature and reason combine to explain how cooperation between humans as individuals and as collectives serves life better than killings , cruelty , and oppression.

If we "do what we want anyway" as DontAskMe expresses the problem with morality, we wouldn't be living up to the full capabilities of reason and forethought. We would also be offending against that innate sympathy which seems to be a fixed attribute of human nature when the human in question has been socialised so as to nurture her human sympathy.

DontAskMe wrote:

God has graciously provided this beautiful garden in which to play and live, and therefore it is our responsibility to care for it or not.
We have to cultivate and take care of it ourselves...a well kept garden begets a beautiful result. Negligence has it's own reward...it's our call as to what looks and feels good, or what's the best flavor of i-scream. The garden will always be here for us for ever and ever, it'll still be here well after we've been and left our muddy foot-print all over it. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
I agree with your thoughts and I value your aspirations about our precious Earth. I guess the Earth will survive all human "muddy footprints". But many species have been exterminated by man. Many more are at high risk of extermination due to man's "muddy footprints" .It is not enough to leave it to God's intervention to save the biosphere, we must act and act now. e.g. stop eating meat or at least eat about one fifth of the meat we eat now.

E.g. stop buying unnecessary stuff.
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Dontaskme »

ForCruxSake wrote:
Dontaskme wrote:If there was no God aka this absolute all pervading eternal infinite all knowing awareness aka unconditional LOVE/LIGHT... then it wouldn't matter if we choose to be a mass murderer or a mother teresa..we can do what ever we want because we're all just going to end up in the fertilizer pit anyway, so it wouldn't matter what we do...there would be no higher conscience guiding us, we would have no innate knowing of a higher purpose for living... if we are just temporal beings with no purpose other than to become worm fodder at death...then what's the point of any values or morals...where do they come from, and why do they exist?
That's the biggy isn't it, to which Douglas Adams had a supercomputer answer "42".

Could it not just as well be argued that assuming everything we do is bent towards survival, morality is just another development that ensures that?

We don't kill in order to survive. A community that grows helps protect itself by dint of numbers and accumulation of resources.

We then find excuses to kill, when we hit population booms that fight over resources to ensure their best survival, even though God said, "Thou shalt no kill"? We call it 'war', and somehow it's legitimised killing.

Could it not be that God is an invention to embed the morality that ensures our survival in those less capable, or respectful, of thinking through what it actually does take to survive?

Or was God's only true purpose, in His design of us, to give us the instinct to survive to no real purpose?

Didn't God also create our more debased selves, so far removed from the 'higher consciousness' that we can be greedy, envious, gluttonous souls who might hit someone over the head with a blunt instrument just because we fancy another person's wife, if only for the way she cooks?

Such a contradictory way to design us. What would be the point of that? 42???

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 05734.html

(Go on, it's worth the read :D )
'' Such a contradictory way to design us. What would be the point of that? ''.. well it's just another gift, but this one comes with an added twist, we have to unravel...not wanting it to be made too easy for us...else it might get an extremely boring game.

So thanks for the tip, but I'm through with second hand knowledge, I prefer to get my knowledge straight from the sources mouth. ..that quiet innocent , silent little voice in my head screaming look at me, look at me, I want to be heard now... the one I generally take no notice of, but now I'm in there all the time sucking the life force out of the poor little thing..:wink:

If we are being good to each other just to survive..that means we have created our self, if we believe there is some one here that has to survive...then only that sense of self can be made to be responsible for it's own creation. Nothing is of God's fault...because God is faultless, innocent and pure, depicted by Jesus the man, did you not believe that Jesus was telling the truth?

So then if there is a sense of other, then of course we are going to do what ever it takes to defend that one. Even though there's not actually anything there to defend, except an idea.


So then, now we have a sense of ''other'' in the story of 'me' it appears I have to defend my desire to live, I simply cannot die, even though Jesus promised us that we cannot die..., we were just being pussy's thinking that we had to defend our self from our own created self...and if that means killing someone else so that I may live... then that's exactly what I have to do...no thought for the one who created that other :cry: :cry:


Or then I could just pretend to be a really good person and be their friend so that they won't see me as a threat to them and kill me first. :wink:
Either way ..we're all living one big fat lie. :roll:


And is why those who see through this well established illusion of me verses them ..have overcome the world of trouble and are living in paradise, just as God planned. 8)
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote:
Belinda wrote: Immanuel Can, it's ignorant to say "merely myth". Important myths reveal foundation world views of a people at some specific time.
Yeah, that's anthropologists rubbish, the sort of nonsense that Jung and Eliade spouted. I've seen what they have to say, and there's no reason for buying any of that. This is really old stuff, like Fraser's "Golden Bough" and all that -- it's been debunked decades ago. And honestly, when they talk about "myth" and their "secret meanings," or "archetypes," I think their 'discipline' is operating only one step above alchemy on the scale of "scientific" thought. It's certainly neither systematic nor verifiable by normal scientific methods. It's their own form of myth-making, really.

Now, the truth is that some myths are just fictions. And a few, but only a few , are attempts to articulate a deeper truth. But whenever someone calls something a "myth" in this second sense (as you have here) they need to say what "deep truth" that "myth" attempts to articulate. So we should see if you can explain the "foundational world view" that accounts for the alleged "mythic" significance of the crucifixion, no?

Meanwhile, we should keep in the backs of our minds that the historicity of the crucifixion in no longer in any serious historical doubt, since the old theories that attempt to "explain" it with reference to alternate narratives have all been thoroughly debunked, and the positive historical attestation for it we have is better than almost any event in ancient history.

So much for it being a "myth," I would say.
Some myths are so durably meaningful..
And some are not. So?
...that they last for centuries and can explain the foundation beliefs of different peoples.
Great! Well, what is this universal "mythic" explanation for the crucifixion? Have you one, or were you just speaking generally, not of this particular case?

Fictions can explain morality better than religious preachers and philosophers can. Fiction, obviously, includes reading for relaxation and some escape from daily cares, and it is often good as long as it doesn't tell outright lies like pornography does. Other fiction invents characters and sets them in what could be real moral dilemmas. When we read that sort of fiction we enter into the fictional characters' thoughts and sort of have a mental discussion with them, and wonder very much what they will decide to do or what happens to them. Myths are fiction whether or not they have some foundation in historical fact.

I am not talking about secret meanings or archetypes, with relation to myths, I'm talking about inspirational stories. These are often historical ,or have some historical basis, hpwever the inspirations and aspirations are not invariably good, as we saw with the "Aryan" myth that Hitler created.

The Crucifixion as told by the Gospel writers is mythical in the sense of an important story. The theme of the Crucifixion is the final sacrifice of Christ. The power of this myth is that it tells us that the good person is called upon to sacrifice even their life. It is a very challenging myth and the theme scares us. The theme of supreme sacrifice has been twisted in several ways, e.g. terrorist suicide bombers, but the myth of Christ on the Cross fixes the theme of supreme sacrifice to service to others.

The myth of The Garden in Genesis is not about morality but is a poetry which shows how man has responsibility and freedom of action , alone of all other denizens of the Garden.
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Dontaskme »

Belinda wrote:
I prefer the theory of existence that goes " My mind is the idea of my body": in other words my mind and my body are different ways to what I am, and my mind cannot exist without my body which is necessary for experiencing all sensations, and my body cannot exist without my mind.
Huh, did you think that was / is your body/mind? .. do you think that was/is your face looking back at you in the mirror? Do you think that is you the named one lying dead in that casket?

You have no way of knowing anything about SELF...you only have knowledge of self. . . which is not REAL SELF ... it is a bad translation, a mental narrative...a fictional story.

The Real Self already existed before the ''idea of you'' got to know about who you are/not.

You were in the Garden of Eden, paradise. But you the creator of you did not hold you there captive against your will, you gave yourself the free will to do, and think and act as you please. That's when you ate from the tree of knowledge, you wanted to know things, up until that innocence of knowledge.. you were pure innocence living among nature and it's all it's splendor, you even got to lie down with the lions and tigers, magnificent as they are...it was too good to be true, but true nonetheless.

But again, you were not held prisoner in paradise, so at some point, you wanted to cut yourself off from having being given the beautiful life without ever having to earn it yourself, so you decided to put your free will to the test and ate from the tree of knowledge to see if you could find out more about earning your own way in life, choosing for yourself how to live your life.
That's when you became self aware...through the opposites of innocent and guilty of not wanting just to live in paradise that was already a given, but never forced upon you. You decided to leave paradise to see what else was around...which you could only have discovered through the tree of knowledge..so it is knowledge that tells you you exist and nothing else.

And Now that you know yourself, now that you became self-aware..you also know other...which appears to be separate from you. And this is when all the fun and games really started to begin.

You now have moved from innocence to not innocent. All because YOU wanted this. And now your complaining because you don't like the not innocent part of yourself and want to get back to the Garden where you now know to be the better option, forgetting that you voluntarily left it..no one ever forced you into it...And the good thing about the garden is, it will never leave you..even though you left it. Only True love never leaves...lying love is false hope filled with despair and misery. The misery self of what can you give me that I don't think I already have?

So paradise is still here waiting for your return because it's always there for you when you need it, it loves you unconditionally.
But because you chose to leave, you now are in a situation where you have to drag yourself through hell just to get yourself back into paradise where you've always belonged...because it's safe there. At least there, you'll feel loved and secure. You'll always have that real love to fall back on if you struggle to find it for yourself outside yourself in the world of opposites..aka the world of knowledge...
Belinda wrote:I say "I", which is what Don'tAskMe is much concerned with, i.e.the subject of the awareness. I can say the same thing without mentioning "me" or "I". I can express what I mean in the form of; mind is the idea of the body.
There is no subject of awareness. Awareness is the subject without an object...objects appear in it...objects have no reality in and of themselves apart from what is objectifying them.

So it's not your I..the I is prior to you making a claim on it..the you making a claim on it....is a thought arising in it, it's an illusion.
If the mind is the idea of the body. Then just try asking your arm to tell you what the time is..I doubt very much you'll get an answer, and you may end up being late for your appointment with yourself.


.
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificesacrificed

Post by ForCruxSake »

Dontaskme wrote: '' Such a contradictory way to design us. What would be the point of that? ''.. well it's just another gift, but this one comes with an added twist, we have to unravel...not wanting it to be made too easy for us...else it might get an extremely boring game.
So Life's a boring game that He's created, as a gift? That He wants to pep up , for us, by having us discover it's point? Like an escape room scenario? Or a reality game show 'I'm Just God Fodder... Get me out if here!' ('I've sort if used that line before ... Sorry for being boring enough to repeat it. You may not have seen it and it possibly justify's the boring element in God's design, when he made me.)[/quote]

So in order to play this game and work out the answer, where are rules, usually found on the box? I've read the Bible and the Qu'ran, and I'm afraid they don't count. They're not particularly clear or consistent. The Ramayana and Bhagvadgita are pretty good, but they're just action movie treatments (if we're continuing along the metaphorical route of discussion) and the Torah is pretty much just the Old Testament of the Bible, in Hebrew.

So please continue to be patient with us who have yet to understand how to play this game.
Dontaskme wrote:So thanks for the tip, but I'm through with second hand knowledge,
What was secondhand knowledge? What I said? I thought I was just asking questions about what else might be possible. That was all from my enquiring mind. I have no idea what 'practising' (is this even possible?) learned atheists might posit.[/quote]

Or were you referring to the Independent article? I just thought you might find that an entertaining read.
Dontaskme wrote:I prefer to get my knowledge straight from the sources mouth. ..that quiet innocent , silent little voice in my head screaming look at me, look at me, I want to be heard now... the one I generally take no notice of, but now I'm in there all the time sucking the life force out of the poor little thing..:wink:
Silent voices? Isn't that a contradiction in terms.
My brother has the same thing... except his voices aren't silent. He's been diagnosed schizophrenic. That's absolutely true, I am not being sarcastic. He absolutely believes in everything he is being told and it took him years to accept that, whilst not everyone can hear those voices, he mustn't blame himself for their lack of acceptance of what those voices are telling him, or that he need force their messages on others.

It's not been as successful for him as it may have been for Jack Kerouac, but he's best described as a kindly, 'religious' person, and a functioning schizophrenic.
Dontaskme wrote:If we are being good to each other just to survive..that means we have created our self, if we believe there is some one here that has to survive...then only that sense of self can be made to be responsible for it's own creation. Nothing is of God's fault...because God is faultless, innocent and pure, depicted by Jesus the man, did you not believe that Jesus was telling the truth?
Our sense of self must be a perception. If we create all perception, then yes. But it's amassed from data we receive. I receive no such data from God to perceive Him at all, other than as a imaginative construct we have created.

We are self propagating and made from stardust, or so I'm told. Can't explain much further back than that... but God still strikes me as a contradictory construct.

How can nothing be God's fault? Surely EVERYTHING is God's fault... or responsibility, if you will, if you are a believer?

With respect to Jesus, I'm a little dubious. Too much History Channel programming, I suspect. casting doubt on destroyed testimonies, or gospels, and even 'evidence' of several contenders to the post of messiah, around at the time, from gathered testimonies of Romans, Jews and other learned scribes who may just have been passing through. So I'm not entirely convinced.

In a world where Trump can be elected President, then it's not impossible that Jesus could be 'the Messiah', but it's hardly proven. The whole narrative of the need for a messiah itself has yet to be proven, as we aren't quite all decided on 'God', are we?

We appear to have come full circle here on a parting of ways for what might, or might not, be true. But I'm here, patiently waiting for any real confirmation, whilst I do my bit on the survival front.
Dontaskme wrote:So then if there is a sense of other, then of course we are going to do what ever it takes to defend that one. Even though there's not actually anything there to defend, except an idea.
Is the 'other' referred to in this context, man or God???

(Short pause for long thought)

It's God! It has to be... and yes, he's just an idea.
Dontaskme wrote:So then, now we have a sense of ''other'' in the story of 'me'..
We do???
Dontaskme wrote: .. it appears I have to defend my desire to live, I simply cannot die, even though Jesus promised us that we cannot die..., we were just being pussy's thinking that we had to defend our self from our own created self...and if that means killing someone else so that I may live... then that's exactly what I have to do...no thought for the one who created that other :cry: :cry:
I too am crying because I've lost the path of thinking I thought you were taking. I've no idea what you are claiming. :cry:
Dontaskme wrote:Or then I could just pretend to be a really good person and be their friend so that they won't see me as a threat to them and kill me first. :wink:
Either way ..we're all living one big fat lie. :roll:
In several differing opposing factions, it seems. There is no unity because there is no unifying truth.

If I had strayed off the path of your thinking earlier, it is now night time in that forest. I am in the dark, here.

But nice doing business with you. :)
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Dontaskme »

ForCruxSake your more than entitled to the God of your own understanding.

I've got mine, and that is my prerogative. I'm merely singing my God, while you are singing yous.

My God has no argument with itself. It's totally self-fulfilling. It teaches itself everything it didn't know.

We all hold all our own little pieces of the puzzle... I've got all my pieces now, my puzzle is complete.

I'm just showing off the picture... no one is forced to like it.

Image
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by ForCruxSake »

Dontaskme wrote:ForCruxSake your more than entitled to the God of your own understanding.

I've got mine, and that is my prerogative. I'm merely singing my God, while you are singing yous.

My God has no argument with itself. It's totally self-fulfilling. It teaches itself everything it didn't know.

We all hold all our own little pieces of the puzzle... I've got all my pieces now, my puzzle is complete.

I'm just showing off the picture... no one is forced to like it.
Beautifully tolerant and supported by a lovely image.

I don't think I have a God. I did once, and was very rewarded by my belief, mainly by parental love... Not His... But actual parental love. Then I went to a decent grammar school, CofE, where they taught me to question and I stopped 'feeling' Him. Or believing in the version I was taught. Gradually over time, with every new thought, he just faded away, occasionally reemerging if Life felt intolerable. So it's not as if I don't understand you. I just realised I might have been constructing him, like an imaginary friend, when I needed him.

Now when Life is intolerable, I just try to occupy myself with better things and get out and about a bit. Remind myself that Life isn't all about what everything means, it's about experiencing what it is.

It's great. Now I have an enormous sense of wonder, that will always need feeding, rather than a fixed ethos, that might always have needed ranting. It doesn't exclude God. It just wonders. :)
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Immanuel Can
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Belinda wrote:Fictions can explain morality better than religious preachers and philosophers can.
That is true. Jesus, for example, often used parables or stories to make moral points. But always, always, there was a moral point about real life behind the stories.

And if those stories are what anthropologists call "myths," then their "mythic implication" (i.e the real-world moral payoff) should always be possible to specify. Otherwise, we would not know they were "myths" at all.
I am not talking about secret meanings or archetypes, with relation to myths, I'm talking about inspirational stories. These are often historical ,or have some historical basis, hpwever the inspirations and aspirations are not invariably good, as we saw with the "Aryan" myth that Hitler created.
That's the problem. His myths inspired genocide. Something isn't automatically good if it's got mythic importance, just as you say. It may be an evil myth, like the myth of racial superiority or of female inferiority.

So to call something a "myth" isn't to dignify it in any way. It's just to say that it has a mythic-message to send to people. That message may be good or bad.

Note too, that Hitler's "myths" -- at least many of them -- were passed off as facts. It was because the Myth of the Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy was presented as truth that it had any power.

If it had been presented as merely a pretty story about morality, could it have inspired the Holocaust? Probably not. Probably, people had to believe that Jews were really conspiring to take over Germany and the world before those same people could be induced to kill them without conscience.
The Crucifixion as told by the Gospel writers is mythical in the sense of an important story.
That's a half truth. The only reason it was important to them is that they considered it real. You can be sure of that, because

a) the story was told and believed widely even while the involved parties were still alive and could refute it with real-world evidence, if it had been merely a myth,

b) the disciples and other people who told of the crucifixion died for it...a thing people do not do for things they know to be merely pretty stories about morality, and

c) the doctrine of the Christian church specifically affirms that if the crucifixion didn't actually happen, it has no value -- mythic or otherwise -- at all.

1 Cor. 15:17, for example, says, "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." That would show that the OP question is not about "mythic" value, but about historical reality or nothing.
The theme of the Crucifixion is the final sacrifice of Christ. The power of this myth is that it tells us that the good person is called upon to sacrifice even their life.
Problem: the OP question assumes that Christ is a special case in relation to God. In fact, that is what Christians think as well, which is why the question is put that way, I suspect. If what you were saying was true, why would not the death of Caesar, or Alexander, Pablo Picasso or Jim Morrison be every bit as "mythic"? They were (arguably) great men and public figures. But nobody adjures us to "die like Jim" or "die like Pablo". So why has this particular death become so overwhelmingly "mythic" in its power?

I think you've missed the "mythic" point there. There is one, but it's not that "the good person is called upon to be sacrificed." The sacrifice of Jesus is not one that can be replicated by an ordinary person to the necessary effect.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: If God is so merciful, then why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Dontaskme wrote:
I'm just showing off the picture... no one is forced to like it.

Image
Umm..."The God of the Gaps" is a derisive expression that both Christians and skeptics use to show that the very idea of a gap-dependent "God" is irrational. They don't believe in it. Nobody does.

You've missed the irony, I fear.
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