Magus55

I don't know how to make it any clearer to you.

Why does the government make up arbitrary rules? Why is it a law to wear a seatbelt? What does the government care if we get killed in a car accident? I don't know the reason for all the laws - I can't see the consequences of disobeying them in the future - if I could, i would be God. Since I believe God to be perfect and infallible, I trust He knows what He's doing, whether my insignificant mind can understand it or not. God created the Universe, and is the Sovereign ruler over it - I may not understand all His ways, but I trust Him and know that He does the right things.

He had to make those laws to keep humanity from either suffering from the consequences or from going against His divine nature ( sin). Masturbation is wrong because it leads to lust. Lust goes against God's virtue or self-control and is a sin - hence why He forbid it. I don't know why He forbid pork, I didn't live 3000 years ago - maybe it was prone to disease and parasites back them? E-coli maybe and they couldn't cook it well enough? I'm Jewish and I don't even know all the laws - thats why God came to earth and fulfilled them for us - because we couldn't do it ourselves.

Could you elaborate on your last line about Jesus and dying? Humans die from sin - Jesus was immortal before coming to Earth - so he should have never died - one reason His death was so significant. If Jesus didn't want to save us from our sin, or pay our debt - He could have called on God the Father at any time to bring Him home - but Jesus agreed to stay because He wanted us to have a way to be saved. He loves us too much to leave us with no way to escape God's righteous judgement.

Magus55

Crucifiction was the main means of execution in those days. The Romans executed Jesus with their own free will, the way they execute anyone else.

How would old age be a meaningful and selfless sacrifice? God is eternal - time means nothing to him. Jesus' pure blood washes away our sins.

God didn't require it to be crucifiction afaik. It had to be the act of Jesus giving His mortal life for ours though. But God is required to punish law breakers because He is just and righteous. Jesus wasn't a law breaker - he followed every law - so He wasn't required to be punished. He chose to suffer for our sake.


What makes you think there was a better option? God chose this way for a good reason - do I know that reason? No - as the cliche goes - God works in mysterious ways. But God is perfect so this was probably the only way.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by Magus55
Masturbation is wrong because it leads to lust.

How does masturbation lead to lust? I'd think it relieved lust.

Lust goes against God's virtue or self-control and is a sin - hence why He forbid it.

Does rape go against God's virtue or self-control? If so, why is a rape victim ordered to marry her rapist in the Old Testament?

I don't know why He forbid pork, I didn't live 3000 years ago - maybe it was prone to disease and parasites back them?

Interestingly enough, all meat was prone to disease and parasites back then.

E-coli maybe

E. coli can be found in beef as well. You don't see God forbidding beef, though. What's up with that?

Demigawd

Perhaps that verse was written during a particularly nasty pig-tainting plague, and the priest/scribe was being topical. Hence, the very human nature, rather than divine, of the bible is highlighted.

When you study the bible, Magus55, you study history through a specific mythology. There are thousands of mythologies, past and present; and they all interweave as the ages go by.

Biff the unclean

Why does the government make up arbitrary rules?
It doesn't, that why they debate every law
Why is it a law to wear a seatbelt?
To keep your dumb ass from getting killed
What does the government care if we get killed in a car accident?
You stop paying taxes, your relatives sue, your insurance company loses money and has to pay lower taxes.
I don't know the reason for all the laws - I can't see the consequences of disobeying them in the future - if I could, i would be God.
Or even better, you'd be Biff.
Since I believe God to be perfect and infallible, I trust He knows what He's doing, whether my insignificant mind can understand it or not.
And yet another Xian with this "insignificant mind" bull shite. Who keeps telling you that you are too stupid to see through this nonsense? You can't tell what God is doing because there isn't any God doing anything.
God created the Universe, and is the Sovereign ruler over it - I may not understand all His ways, but I trust Him and know that He does the right things.
What God? Have you ever seen any Gods? All you have is an old book of fairy tales

He had to make those laws to keep humanity from either suffering from the consequences or from going against His divine nature ( sin).
Sounds like a guy who beats his wife because she didn't follow his every whim.
Masturbation is wrong because it leads to lust. Lust goes against God's virtue or self-control
What's the first command that God gives in your silly story? BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY He orders you to be lusty!! He doesn't forbid it.
I don't know why He forbid pork, I didn't live 3000 years ago - maybe it was prone to disease and parasites back them?
Everybody who lived around the Jews ate it with no problems at all. Remember the story of Jesus killing a whole herd of some farmers pigs and the people chasing him away?
I'm Jewish
I don't believe that for a second. If you are I feel sorry for your parents. They must be very disappointed that their son joined a Christian cult.
If you were a Jew you would know that there was no need for Jesus to save us from sin.

He loves us too much to leave us with no way to escape God's righteous judgement
So you admit that it's God sacrificing God to save men from God. So why did you deny that?

Biff the unclean

Crucifiction
{insult deleted} How many times do people have to tell you. FIXION not fiction.
The Romans executed Jesus with their own free will,
The NT says that Jews killed Jesus
How would old age be a meaningful and selfless sacrifice?
You obviously aren't old, I am. The sacrifice adds up.

God is eternal - time means nothing to him.
God is also immortal so death means nothing either
Jesus' pure blood washes away our sins.
Human sacrifices are against God's law. You don't need human blood to wash away sin you have--to this very day in the religion you betrayed-atonement.

It had to be the act of Jesus giving His mortal life for ours though.
Had to be? By whose rules? If you say God it would make God a blood lusting monster.
But God is required to punish law breakers because He is just and righteous.
Then Jesus and his Grace are meaningless and a waste of an innocent life.
Jesus wasn't a law breaker - he followed every law - so He wasn't required to be punished.
What about the dead pigs, the bull whipped merchants, the blasted fruit tree, the broken homes?
He chose to suffer for our sake.
Who asked him?

as the cliche goes - God works in mysterious ways. But God is perfect so this was probably the only way.
There's nothing mysterious at all. Everything becomes clear when you acknowledge one simple fact.
There are no Gods.

Mageth

Jesus is both God and human. He retains his divine nature, but also takes on a human nature. He is lower than God the Father because on Earth, he was mortal.

"Mortal"? Are you speaking about the God Jesus or the Human Jesus? If the God Jesus, he was not mortal - God did not die on the Cross, unless you think God can be killed. All that "died" on the cross was the human body - and even that popped up better than ever less than 40 hours later. I would hardly classify that as "mortal."

BTW, the world's mythologies are replete with god/human offspring - Hercules, for one. Your Jesus sounds like just another Greek/Roman offspring of a union between a god and a human.

Mageth

Crucifiction was the main means of execution in those days. The Romans executed Jesus with their own free will, the way they execute anyone else.

And if Jesus, being God, didn't want them to execute him, do you think they could have anyway? Give me a break.

How would old age be a meaningful and selfless sacrifice?

What exactly is so "meaningful" about a man being brutally tortured and murdered on a cross??? And you still haven't answered the question - why did god need someone to die, and not just die a peaceful death, but to die a bloody, painful death?

God is eternal - time means nothing to him. Jesus' pure blood washes away our sins.

And again, why does the supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god require blood to cleanse sins? Can't you see the primitive barbarism of that?

God didn't require it to be crucifiction afaik. It had to be the act of Jesus giving His mortal life for ours though.

So, he could have "given" his mortal life as an old man on his deathbed. Why was it required that he be brutally executed? Why does a supposedly loving, kind, benevolent god need someone to give their life in an execution, shed their blood?

But God is required to punish law breakers because He is just and righteous.

Just and righteous people don't require, or even allow, someone to go through the brutality of an execution by crucifixion. Justice and righteousness does not require blood and suffering for transgressions.

Jesus wasn't a law breaker - he followed every law -

You haven't read the gospels very closely. The Pharisees called him several times on Laws he broke - and he made excuses every time as to why he could break the Law.

...so He wasn't required to be punished. He chose to suffer for our sake.

This goes back to my response to your assertion that "Romans executed Jesus with their own free will", which was in response to my claim that God sacrificed himself. In so choosing, that's exactly what he did. If he hadn't so chosen, do you think the Romans, or Jews, could have killed him, being God and all?

What makes you think there was a better option?

Well, if I, lowly human that I am, can think of multible better options (which I easily could), I would assume that God could - after all, he planned the whole thing from before the beginning. I would start by not putting that damn tree in the garden, and if I did making sure the serpent didn't get in. And if he did anyway, I'd come down and straighten things up right away rather than waiting a couple of thousand years. And in any case I wouldn't set up the law so that animals and, ultimately, a human, had to die bloody deaths to cover up my mistakes.

God chose this way for a good reason - do I know that reason? No -

Then you can make no claim that the reason was "good", if you don't even know what it was. Sheesh.

...as the cliche goes - God works in mysterious ways.

The typical Xian copout when faced with a question that they can't answer, a question generated by the bizzareness and brutality of the religion they've created for themselves.

But God is perfect so this was probably the only way.

I don't see how a "perfect" god can be resolved with the idea of a god that can create, with foreknowledge, a system in which he knows the humans will rebel, and that requires the brutality of blood sacrifice for the atonement of sins, and not just any blood, but the blood of a man-god.

NonHomogenized

No, I think he got it right. It's fiction

Quote:

The Romans executed Jesus with their own free will, The NT says that Jews killed Jesus How would old age be a meaningful and selfless sacrifice? You obviously aren't old, I am. The sacrifice adds up.

Or, for a real sacrifice, Jesus could have not only gotten old, but lost his hair, teeth, control of his bowels, etc...

Quote:

God is eternal - time means nothing to him. God is also immortal so death means nothing either Jesus' pure blood washes away our sins. Human sacrifices are against God's law. You don't need human blood to wash away sin you have--to this very day in the religion you betrayed-atonement.

I think we're still ignoring the important issue: Why would an all-powerful being have to kill (and ressurrect) himself in order to save his creations from punishment, at his hands, because of a rule he made? Couldn't he sorta go, "well, since *I* made you this way, I guess it's kinda my fault, so I'll give you a freebie on this one."?

Quote:

as the cliche goes - God works in mysterious ways. But God is perfect so this was probably the only way. There's nothing mysterious at all. Everything becomes clear when you acknowledge one simple fact. There are no Gods.

I love this (il)logic! "God is all-powerful and, therefore, perfect. So, if he did something horrific for an idiotic reason, like saving us from himself, then it's obviously the best thing he could have done."

Personally, I would have, instead, gone "screw it! I'm all-powerful, so I'll use my powers to simply forgive you poor bastards for breaking laws that not only did I make, but I made you in such a way that you couldn't help but break them."
Or, maybe, I wouldn't have screwed up so badly to begin with, were I all-powerful. I'd like to think I wouldn't. I don't know how I *could*, that's for sure.

But, as you say, things become a lot less mysterious when you don't assume gods exist.

winstonjen

Magus:

If he really loved us, he would change his nature so that forgiveness did NOT require a blood sacrifice.

And why didn't he come down himself? Is god the father a coward? Think of it this way - is it harder to go to war or to send your son to war?