Ah - so they think if they aren’t wearing the cross he’ll have forgotten about the whole crucifixion thing?
I mean, to be fair he was only up there for like half a day - so short they allegedly needed to poke him given how unusual dying that quickly was for the execution method (though it was suspiciously shortly after drinking something in two accounts).
So yeah, maybe they have a point and a reminder is warranted.
“Hey you, remember that they nailed you to a cross! Don’t forget! The most important thing in your life was that. You said some other stuff that I don’t really remember and usually zone out about on Sundays, but for sure the whole getting nailed to wood part was really really important and the ultimate summation of your life’s purpose. It was somehow necessary because I like to look at boobs on the Internet. So thanks for that, and again - don’t forget about it, because I’m sure it was very forgettable.”
No no no no, you have it backwards. They’re not trying to remind Jesus of the cross, they’re trying to remind themselves just how painful of a death that the alleged Redeemer of man had to go through.
That part never made any sense to me either. Why do sins need to be forgiven and how does torturing someone allow forgiveness? Seems like torturing and killing the son of god would be a serious sin by itself.
Couldn’t god just realize he created flawed beings and forgive them himself, or not hold a grudge about it? Humans are how he made them according to the religion.
You ask good questions, but if you’re really interested you can look into Christian apologetics re: free will. There are some interesting answers awaiting you. But the gist of it is that God didn’t create flawed beings, he created beings with free will that chose to be flawed.
And Christianity has never said free will is a flawed design, because humans having free will is one of the most important aspects of the religion and is very fundamental to what it means to be a human (a concept that is true both in and outside of Christianity, unless you believe in destiny or something). It is not a flaw to have free will, otherwise God himself would be flawed. In a regular context, it’s kind of like you’re not flawed for existing, but you’re flawed if you do negative things with your existence. I would personally have to be convinced that having free will is a flaw/a negative thing
To quickly answer your first couple questions: death is the punishment for sinning and Jesus is supposed to be perfect and sinless and thus should not die. but instead he died in place of other sinners, kind of like taking the blame for them. And yes, torturing and killing the son of God was indeed a sin, the people who did it were sinful. I don’t think anyone has said otherwise. The ones who killed Jesus were not his followers or supporters
So… these are excellent questions and I’m afraid I personally can’t answer all of them since I’m not that knowledgeable here. But I do believe people smarter than I have come up with better answers than I will give too. I’m afraid I don’t understand your question regarding original sin being forgiven. I’ll try to answer the rest from my experiences, though
So think of it this way: if God created humans to have free will, this means they can choose to be bad. You may be asking, why would God create a world where bad can exist? Doesn’t that seem flawed? But if God were to create a world where bad can’t exist, then humans wouldn’t have true free will. God didn’t create the world with bad things in it, he created the world as good (in Genesis, the first chapter of the bible, he continually says “it is good” after everything he creates.)
So God creates the world as good and put humans with free will into the world. And because they have true free will, they also have the choice of making the world bad, which is what ended up happening. The pint is, “Bad” as a concept must exist in order for there to be true free will
So if bad can exist, then logically there has to be consequences for bad things. Otherwise it’s not bad. If there are no consequences it can’t be bad, it just doesn’t make any sense. So sinning, which is the bad we’ve been talking about, has the consequence of death. I hope that kind of answers the question of “why do people have to be punished for sins”
Humans were not intended to be ignorant, and they were already intelligent. They just didn’t have specific knowledge. And this is true even to this day. We as humans don’t know everything and we never will. But humans had free will even before they had the knowledge from eating the fruit. They willingly disobeyed God’s instructions before they even ate the fruit. They were already intelligent. I guess in a sense they were designed to be ignorant if by ignorant you mean “does not have unending knowledge about everything in existence”. Then indeed, humans were never designed to have 100% of all the answers. If they did, they would be no different from God. And this is clear even to this day. Not even science can explain everything and we’re always discovering/learning new things. An aside: from here you can kind of see that the bible is pretty accurate about the way it describes humans objectively, from having free will to having gaps in complete knowledge of the universe
God didn’t take anything out on Jesus, but Jesus sacrificed himself for other humans. I’m not sure of the imagery of hell, note that I could be wrong here , but Hell is separation from God, not necessarily a physical torturing session. And this makes sense, when you sin, you go further away from God since you’re disobeying him. And when you disobey someone, that means you don’t trust them. And if you don’t trust them, you’re not getting any closer to them. And hell is just eternal separation from God, which, to a Christian, is the worst thing you can experience if you truly believe God is the greatest gift and biggest form of love you can experience. That’s kind of the gist of it
I couldn’t answer your questions on humans in hell before crucification since I need to sleep now, but I do have some ideas/potential answers. I do think it is a question worth looking into, for both you and I!
i’m giving you free will now i’m punishing you for making the choice i didn’t like
but seriously, i do appreciate your well-written comment - it’s just that it all gets very tiresome. i have been listening to/reading the apologetics and arguments, getting invited, prayed and ranted at. i have been nodding my head politely, smiling awkwardly, and dodging questions for a great many years, when really i just want to do my own thing and be left in peace with it (without words like “sinner” and “evil” getting tossed around).
I mean, even in a society you have free will and get punished for not confirming to it? Do you think societies as a whole with laws and rules are tiresome and you don’t want words like “criminal” tossed around? Are you going to just leave society and not live in community with others?
You can do your own thing for sure. But everyone, even people who believe and are Christian, are sinners. Literally everyone is a sinner. You can still be at peace with your own thing anyway, even in a religious context. Christians find peace while admitting to being sinners. I’m not saying you need to, you’re totally free to do your own thing. I’m just explaining things really
let me put it this way - it seemed to me that you were interested in explaining your perspective, as if simply offering information to contribute to a greater understanding. when someone expressed their disinterest in your explanation or indicated they did not find it sufficient, it seemed to me as if you were quickly negative. i was left with the impression that you are fundamentally less interested in dialogue and understanding, and more interested in convincing.
this is very typical of conversation with christians in a my 40+ year experience as a non-christian living in the bible belt. i tire of the efforts to explain christianity, when i have, in fact, heard it so extensively for so long. i tire of the conversations that are not REALLY intended to explain, but to solicit agreement and convert.
in other words - i wish more christians recognized that it may not be that non-christians don’t understand your faith, they may simply not agree and not want to hear about it again. and approaching them as if you are interested in dialogue when you really want to convince them feels disingenuous.
these were my thoughts when i read your conversation with the other user above.
I don’t know what part of “death-cultsplainin’” and me replying with “copium” makes you think there was a “conversation” going on
Let me explain my thoughts. I have taken time to write up something for someone else and someone- an unrelated party, barges in and pretty rudely replies with no intention to say anything, just to write a snide one word comment as if it’s supposed to be anything other than a disrespectful comment.
Does it seem like when I said “thanks for contributing nothing to our discussion” I was trying to convert someone? I don’t know where you got that idea. I was expressing that one word replies aren’t good conversation at all. It’s just annoying. My thoughts here are that it’s pretty rude to come into a conversation just to go “haha cultist”. I think people who look down on religion need to stop finding every opportunity to disrespect and be condescending to others who are invested in the topic.
Someone asked questions and I was just answering them. And for some reason you think I am in the wrong here when someone is clearly replying to me without an interest in actually talking to me. You know that person could have easily said nothing. If someone “may not want to hear it again” there are numerous solutions to this: close the thread, collapse the comment, reply with “sorry I really don’t like this”. Snarkily replying with “cultist” is not one of them. It’s just rude and disrespectful. Maybe you guys should stop conflating disrespect with actual expression of disinterest, because it’s not.
In no circumstance do I find one word snarky replies a sufficient or respectful way to reply to someone engaging in an actual discussion. Like ever. Religious discussion context or not, it’s just a terrible reply. Idk why you think me replying with “yes whatever you want” is somehow me trying to convince him into a religion, like what. You are projecting and inserting things into this situation that are not there
look, i don’t think you’re a bad person or something, and honestly i regret saying anything.
i’m just letting you know that, you may sometimes get snarky one-word replies because people tire of hearing about it. i would bet money the greatest majority of non-christians in the us, who are open about their non-christianity, have heard all this before.
again - it’s not that most of us don’t understand your faith, it’s that many of us are not interested in having it explained again and are unlikely to agree with your beliefs. there are people you simply will not convince of your correctness, no matter how many explanations you provide.
Yes, I know all of this and get it. I get that you’re tired of it. But all I see is someone being unnecessarily snarky in someone else’s conversation and you defending and justifying it with “we’re tired of it”. I didn’t make a big deal of it at all, if someone’s going to disrespect me like that I’m not giving it the time of day, but you’re here justifying it so now I have to reply why it’s not an ok response and have to justify my own reply because you projected that I am trying to convert this random drive by commenter when I was clearly not
Why don’t we just accept that you two are being unnecessarily disrespectful? I do not enter other people’s conversations and reply with “I don’t want to hear this”. That’s all there is to it
no, i don’t agree that i was being disrespectful - and i think it’s interesting that someone trying to explain a non-christian pov to you is received that way.
i think i wasted my time. this is why i typically nod politely when christians talk to me, it’s just easier.
I typically nod politely when Christians talk to me, it’s just easier.
So when you say “whatever you say” it’s just easier, but when I say it in reply to a one word comment that’s just disrespectful it’s me trying to convert someone to Christianity… ok. Do you not see your hypocrisy? You are the one who is accusing me of something and when I justify myself and disagree you’re just like “I’m wasting my time”. I did not come into your conversation to tell you about Christianity, you came into mine to tell me I’m trying to convert someone when i wasn’t at all. I was literally just equally replying snarkily
I understand non Christian povs. I’m just saying, Christian discussion or not, “death-cultsplainin’” was never appropriate and is an unwarranted response. That’s all there is to it. There’s nothing more to explain there. I don’t come into a soccer team discussion and say “cultist” to a person who is a fan of one team. Christian or not it’s disrespectful and non contributive. You’re just trying to justify rude behaviour because you’re personally tired of theological discussions.
Do you agree that the original “death-cultsplainin’” comment is unwarranted or do you think their comment was necessary and justified? Like be objective about it. If you think it’s the latter, then we can just agree to disagree on how we engage in online discourse. In any context, I prefer not to call people cultists without explanation and think that’s inappropriate, and you can prefer to think that’s fine, sure. But such comments objectively lead to lower quality conversations and negative vitriol so I choose to say it’s not appropriate and adds nothing to these threads aside from raising negative emotions. You don’t have to be Christian to understand my sentiment. I understand yours fine. I’m just telling you why its not appropriate.
The notion of being guilty by proxy is mind boggling but it would be/is a good tool to control people through fear, which is essentially most creeds business.
The notion is mind boggling because being guilty by proxy is not how it works anyway. If you could find a 100% objectively guiltless man I’d totally concede that guilt by proxy is how it works, but let’s face it, literally everyone on this earth is not perfect or blameless. You don’t need a proxy to be guilty, everyone already is, its not hard to see when you look at the people in the world
If every man after Adam is guilty by proxy, Jesus would’ve been guilty as well as soon as he was born. But Christianity clearly posits the opposite of that
The guilty by proxy argument predicates that every human being, at the moment of conception, is already guilty of an act onto which said human had no participation on. That is being guilty by simply existing.
We’re are not getting into the argument of nobody being exempt of fault, either by action or lack of it.
The “loop hole” used to exempt JC Sandals of the original son was having him being conceived with no human intervention, therefore, sinless. After all, it is argued he was born of a virgin woman, willed into existence into flesh yet not conceived as any other.
What constitutes a fault? Are we to consider fault only actions or lack thereof taken counciously or any outcome that negatively influences another or anything, even if such outcome arises from an unpredicted(able) steming from an action taken with a good purpose?
I don’t have exact answers for this, but if you look at it as if Adam was indicative of all of mankind (which he was), you can see it less like people are condemned when theyre born but more like all people are inherently broken/flawed/sinners. Original sin was just the first example of it. If there were people out in the world who were objectively flawless and sinless I’d take a totally different stance, but mankind being broken and evil is just pretty consistent with history and with the bible
Christianity doesn’t exactly say it’s a grievous error to be born and that you’re condemned for it, it more says that you’re inherently broken but you can still be redeemed
The contrast though is that you don’t “earn” heaven either. Nothing makes a Christian and a non Christian so inherently different from each other that one fundamentally deserves heaven and the other hell. It’s saved by faith, not by works
We can agree to disagree then. You didn’t really explain anything either.
We’re an inherently selfish species from a biological perspective, people aren’t just fundamentally altruistic. If evolution shaped our morals to encourage us to be nice to each other to benefit the whole species, why is it still such a struggle for people to be selfless?
I find it very hard for you to convince me that as a species we are neutral when the very people we put into power and govern over us are narcissists and power hungry people who have little care about every individuals lives that they govern over and are obsessed with self gain.
On an individual level, being altruistic/good natured/selfless is something that has to be fostered and you have to be intentional about. Growing up, we’re taught lessons, in school and in media, etc., on how to be good/how to treat others. We’re taught to do good things and don’t do bad things. Why? Because our nature is to do bad things
If you have to be intentional about being good and not being bad, then that means your default state is being bad. It’s easy to be selfish and only do things that you want and only care about yourself, because that’s our nature as a species.
I don’t agree that we just “are” and that we just “exist”, it just sounds like someone that doesn’t want to face the truth that mankind is not a perfect species. Vague statements like “we can only be as evil as we are good” doesn’t actually mean anything. You just stated a bunch of facts like “death gives life meaning” and “shadow defines light”. Sure. I agree. So what? Nothing that you said really clarified why humans aren’t inherently bad in your eyes. You just said a bunch of generic statements that not even Christians disagree with as if I’m supposed to understand why your position makes sense now
The doylist explanation is that a lot of religions back in the day practiced animal sacrifice to their deities (including judaism, e.g. Noah sacrificing animals after the flood and Abraham sacrificing a ram in place of his son once god was bored of telling Abraham to kill his kid to prove his faith). Jesus getting sacrificed is supposed to be a mirror of this for Christians and an “ultimate” sacrifice. They don’t sacrifice animals to god anymore because jesus just keeps doing the heavy lifting for them.
The crucifix, maybe not the cross. The cross, historically comes from the Latin abriviation for Jesus, PX. Which would then evolve over time to the Roman Cross that looks like a lower case letter t.
The word for cross in Latin refered to an upright pole, a pole with a top beam like the capital letter T and two cross beams like the letter X before this.
It’s perplexing that religions with misogynistic practices are accepted on the premise that the oppressed women are supposedly happy and fulfilled. This assumption overlooks the possibility (certainty) that these women may be content because they have been conditioned to know nothing else, as it has been their norm throughout their lives.
I think if we’re going to categorize people as “good” or “evil”, we should distinguish between their thoughts and actions. Otherwise, we’re playing Thought Police.
In other words, I think a good answer to your question is, “Potentially.” or “Quite possibly, but we will never know for sure, because things played out differently.”
It's a really weird argument. I never even thought about murdering anyone, and never needed a sky wizard to tell me so. Imagine thinking about strangling your neighbour every day if it weren't for that pesky bible.
Ha they switch sides?! Nah they’re just the same people as everyone else on that side, (except the few who truly wouldn’t get one) they’re “my abortion is the exception that proves the rule”
Religion is not inherently sexist. It’s just that most popular religions were born in sexist patriarchal cultures and are, therefore, sexist.
I’m sure there exist non-sexist religions that have female followers who aren’t shooting themselves in the face. However, it’s a sad reality that such religions are so few and so unpopular that I can’t even name one off the top of my head - not counting non-serious religions like pastafarianism.
Look im gennuenly ignorant on this so i whant you to keep that in mind when i ask the following:
Isnt wicca like the whole other extreme? Like afaik they are not really pro equalit between men and women, its more like an all girls club and not really a religion at that? Arent they more like a subculture?
Definitely not. Wicca and Paganism is a collection of ancient religions based around nature, like the sun and moon. It’s generally based in leftist and revolutionary ideals, so it’s naturally attractive as a belief system for marginalized people in the western world. That’s generally why a lot of women are Wiccan or Pagan
Essentially it’s a reconstructional movement, leaving out the less palatable things and that is fine. But the dark bits are there and should be recognized, which is something most pagans won’t do. Pagan religions were bloody and cruel, which was why christianity stamped it out as it dis, mostly because it carried a notion of repent and forgiveness.
No it isn’t. Some white dude invented it in the 1950’s based off of old European practices. It’s just their people passing on their pre-Christian culture, that’s all.
It’s no more a real religion than the Abrahamic ones.
No. Don’t make it so easy for them. Structural sexism occurs in authoritarian systems. It’s one of the tools to keep the privileged in power.
It’s not that the society was just generally sexist (of course they had even more defined gender roles and so), it’s that the sexism was actively thought and embraced by those in power! Thus, fiction like the bible also was actively made sexist, to have further “prove” to keep that power dynamic. It was not written that way because “well, back in the days”. It was written like that to oppress people!
Depends on how you define a religion. In the broader sense I agree but in the legal sense its complicated. Take the religion of Copyism as an example. An actual recognised religion in Sweden. Whose religion centers around the belief that information should be freely avaliable and whose sacred act is copying anything.
Christianity was actually extremely progressive for the time. Women and men were seen as equals spiritually, and had equal political power for a long time. Only when Christianity morphed into Catholicism and was adopted by the Roman Empire that patriarchal political power became the norm. But still, women are seen as equals spiritually, and can be saved just like men.
We can credit most of modern humanist and egalitarian ideals to Christianity, and the folk ways it was practiced and understood (against the top-down hierarchical theology spoused by the Catholic Church).
After all, the enlightenment was a direct descendant of Christianity and so on and so forth.
Edit: I think people don’t really understand how shittily women were treated and seen in the deeper past… like the Classical Greek barely saw women as human beings.
Me saying Christianity was very progressive for the time is not me pulling it out of my ass. Scholars think that, researchers, historians etc.
Because there are over 4000 religions. Also matriarchal cultures exist. While their religions might still be sexist, it wouldn’t be the women who are shooting themselves in the head.
The vast majority of those 4000 are not separate religions but subgroups of christianity, islam, judaisn, hinduism and budhhism. There are a few matriarchal societies but that is not the same as religion.
Religion and culture have a lot of influence on each other, it’s not crazy to assume that some of those matriarchal societies have matriarchal religions.
I’m not saying that matriarchal religions are good. I’m just saying that matriarchal religions exist and women who follow those aren’t shooting themselves in the head. It’s the men who are.
The only good religions are ones where no one has to shoot themselves.
I was just thinking about this and how weird and fucked up it is. Imagine a country where 13% of schools were owned and operated by the Flat Earth Society, and nobody questions it.
Unless they have Jesus there healing the sick just what the hell is the big idea? There must be some reason or history to it. Maybe they built hospitals where none were for the community?
Inherently ultra-authoritarian organization wants an effective way to brainwash and threaten children into joining their cult forever. Government officials ignore constitution as well as all common sense and decency to let them.
That’s the reason and the history in full.
Edit: oops, that’s the reason for catholic SCHOOLS! My bad.
The reason for catholic hospitals is that a super-rich multinational corporation talked government officials into free branding.
Originally, hospitals were pilgrim’s hostels (“domus hospitalis” literally means “guest house”), and extended there service to ill, disabled, old and poor people over the time. All hospital foundations in Europe and America prior to the 19^th century and most prior to the 20^th were founded by organisations with a Christian background, aka Catholic orders, Protestant churches and charities.
There are/were quite a few Catholic orders entirely devoted to hospital work. The address “Sister” for a nurse is a relict from the time when all hospital nurses were nuns.
The idea, that the secular state could be responsible for the health of it’s citizen and invest into hospital building is quite recent.
I mean, it’s not bad if the church actually cares about the old and sick. Where it gets bad if they deny help for not being religious or if they interfere with the doctors. Christianity in its core values is good, but the church often forgets these.
It really isn’t. It just has some values that people who like to see it as good pick to describe as core values but other people pick very hateful ones as its core values from the actual pool of very mixed values it contains.
What are you talking about? There’s plenty of hate throughout. And quite explicit. Unless you’re referring just to the New Testament, and even then I’m not sure that’s accurate.
Damn you’re criticizing it without reading it? Come on. I was an autistic 12yo, so I read it cover to cover 3 times (once to get the just, once to read it thoroughly, and once because after I finished the second run that none of the hate I was taught was actually sanctioned by the deity in human guise. At the core of the quotes from Jesus, he is calling for positivity, sharing and kindness.
The crazier part is that Abraham almost certainly didn’t exist, so people made up a guy who starts hearing voices, tries to kill his kid, and then starts cutting off the tip of their dicks.
The more interesting part of the patriarch period in the Bible is how it is poorly masking the matriarchal tradition underneath though, from Abraham’s wife’s name change (from ‘chief’ to ‘princess’) and being the first gebirah (“great lady”) to the way her son Isaac’s blessing on his sons is the only place the male form of gebirah is found in the Bible, in a blessing that the recipient’s “mother’s sons” bow down to them (pretty odd for a patriarchal blessing).
But the more fun prophet story is the one of the guy who can suddenly talk to God after discovering a burning bush and subsequently creates a double layered tent in which he continues to talk to God and everyone knows that’s happening because a cloud of smoke appears. Not only is the anointing oneself and going into a tent how the Scythians hotboxed cannabis in Herodotus, but as of its discovery in 2020 an 8th century BCE Judahite temple’s holiest of holies is the earliest archeological evidence of cannabis use in a solely religious context.
That second guy I can at least get a bit behind. He certainly seemed to know how to party.
It’s funny how religious zealots are so easy to spot. You know? Because all atheists refer to themselves as “jerking off to my own superiority”
Probably just seeing logical arguments as an attack on their faith. News flash, they are, dumbass.
Just like God isn’t the someone I look to for weather predictions because THATS DUMB, I use science to judge it instead.
I could see pretty easily how someone who prayed for rain on the regular might see that as an attack, it’s just that praying for rain is actually dumb as in you don’t have to think about anything to do it. That doesn’t mean I’m attacking people who do it, I am attacking the idea. But don’t misconstrue this to be hate speech just because I don’t want to believe in fairy tales about when it’s going to rain.
I remember when I told my mother I was an atheist and she asked me “then how do you know right from wrong?”. She is a nice person but religion was so core to her upbringing I suppose she never questioned it
atheism
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.