Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Osbert · 08-11-2006, 05:15 AM

The main purpose of all "solar deities" is to do exactly what it says on the tin:
die and resurrect. The allegory is only complete when that happens.
If you are able to identify sufficiently with a personal Jesus you can do that yourself all your active life.

Dark Virtue · 08-11-2006, 09:52 AM

If I can add another question...why did God not only require a sacrifice of blood in the OT, but a burnt sacrifice as well.

What purpose did this serve?

Osbert · 08-11-2006, 11:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jesus_is_creepy

I'm a bit confused if jesus was dead for three days where was he during that time? He couldn't be in heaven and he was obviously dead so not on earth.

Jesus is also supposed to be the Logos (Mercury) and when the planet Mercury is hidden by the Sun it takes three days to pop out again.

Nero's Boot · 08-12-2006, 05:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark Virtue

If I can add another question...why did God not only require a sacrifice of blood in the OT, but a burnt sacrifice as well.

What purpose did this serve?

BibleGod loves suffering, misery and submissive humiliation. Hence, why he enjoys helpless creatures being burnt in his name.

--BibleGod is a regular sadist of the Nth degree NB

xaxxat · 08-12-2006, 10:54 AM

If His crucifixion was offered up as a sacrifice, why was the ceremomy performed by the Romans? Does being killed by pagans count? Did the prophecies predict that?

Transplanar · 08-12-2006, 03:38 PM

This discussion is getting a bit more one sided that I would have hoped for. Can a mod possibly move this to a spot where it can get more responses from both sides of the issue?

Amaleq13 · 08-12-2006, 11:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Transplanar

This discussion is getting a bit more one sided that I would have hoped for. Can a mod possibly move this to a spot where it can get more responses from both sides of the issue?

GRD?

John Kesler · 08-13-2006, 08:01 AM

The ancient Greeks practiced something called pharmakos, a brief summary of which appears here, emphasis mine:

Quote:

In ancient Athens, the character and the ritual of the pharmakos had the task of expelling and shutting out the evil (out of the body and out of the city). The Athenians maintained several outcasts at the public expense. When plague, famine, drought or other calamities befell the city, they sacrificed some of the outcasts as a purification and a remedy. The pharmakos, the scapegoat, was led to the outside of the city and killed in order to purify the city's interior. The evil that had affected the inside of the city from the outside, was thus returned to the outside in order to protect the inside. But the representative of the outside (the pharmakos) was nonetheless kept in the very heart of the inside, the city. In order to be led out of the city, the scapegoat must have already been within the city...

This practice is similar to the "scapegoat" ritual of Leviticus 16, which says in part:

Quote:

21 Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. 22 The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.

There are numerous NT passages which teach that Jesus' death served the same function as the scapegoat and the human outcasts--he was killed as a substitute for others. (See 1 Peter 3:18 as just one example.) The major doctrine of Christendom is tied to the ancient belief that killing a person or animal is fair and efficacious in cleansing evil in others and/or appeasing an offended deity. If it were practiced today, it would be seen as patently unfair, even by most professing Christians.

Solo · 08-13-2006, 08:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaBuster

You make an interesting point. If Jesus was truly the immortal, eternal son of God, then the ultimate sacrifice would have been if he had died on the cross and stayed dead.

Actually, I believe that was originally the idea of all the "true" Jesus followers which Saul sought to extirpate first from the outside, and then, as Paul, from the inside of the Church. (BTW, I believe that Paul was not "faking" his conversion).

The original idea was that Jesus was dead, but that the resurrection of the "dead" (who were not "really" dead) that he preached (and enacted in cultic rituals), was transferrable psychic wares that conferred prophetic, and healing, powers and assured immunity from the effects of real death. Hence, e.g. the belief of the Thomasian communities, that anyone visited by the Spirit becomes Jesus' twin.

Jiri

Breathe · 08-13-2006, 08:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Transplanar

If God is capable of making a human woman from a rib bone, it seems easy enough that God can bend the rules of reality any way he pleases to whatever end he chooses. Christians keep saying how God sacrificed his own son to forgive our sins but... why did he have to do that? Couldn't he have just snapped his fingers and made it so?

Never mind the fact that Jesus was killed by non-Christians. It wasn't like he went out with a thunderbolt clashing down on his body to save the world from sin superman style. Was it Jesus's intention all along to die for the sins of man? Was it an afterthought as he carried his cross along before his crucifixion?

Furthermore, if God and Jesus are supposed to be of one substance... this makes even less sense. It sounds more and more like it's essentially a publicity stunt more than an actual procedure that was required to forgive mankind for their sins.

Am I missing something here? If God has the power to make a woman from a rib bone without a fuss, why is it that God had to have his son (or... himself?) killed in order for that to be accomplished?

Perhaps because we don't believe that anything too freely given, or easily won, is valuable? It would have been easy for God to say, *Poof!*"You're all forgiven evermore, forever and ever, so mote it be", but would the people of that time, who were already so used to animal and human sacrifice as a means of forgiveness, have accepted forgiveness so freely given, and involving no suffering? Perhaps the death of Jesus was not so much to wash away our sins, but instead a gesture of forgiveness that could be easily understood and accepted at that time. A symbolic gesture?

Just an idea....

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08-11-2006, 05:15 AM	#11
Osbert Regular Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Italy Posts: 412	The main purpose of all "solar deities" is to do exactly what it says on the tin: die and resurrect. The allegory is only complete when that happens. If you are able to identify sufficiently with a personal Jesus you can do that yourself all your active life.

08-11-2006, 09:52 AM	#12
Dark Virtue Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 759	If I can add another question...why did God not only require a sacrifice of blood in the OT, but a burnt sacrifice as well. What purpose did this serve?

08-12-2006, 10:54 AM	#15
xaxxat Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Space Station 33 Posts: 2,543	If His crucifixion was offered up as a sacrifice, why was the ceremomy performed by the Romans? Does being killed by pagans count? Did the prophecies predict that?

08-12-2006, 03:38 PM	#16
Transplanar Regular Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Vermont, USA Posts: 146	This discussion is getting a bit more one sided that I would have hoped for. Can a mod possibly move this to a spot where it can get more responses from both sides of the issue?

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