Christianity in a nutshell
posted by Infidel753 at 10:51 AM
06 April 2014
About Me
- Name: Infidel753
- Location: Portland, Oregon, United States
Individualist, pro-technology, pro-democracy, anti-religion. I speak only for myself and not for any ideology, movement, or party. It has been my great good fortune to live my whole life free of "spirituality" of any kind. I believe that evidence and reason are the keys to understanding reality; that technology rather than ideology or politics has been the great liberator of humanity; and that in the long run, human intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe.
Previous Posts
- Link round-up for 6 April 2014
- Thought for the day
- Quotes for the day -- funnyman and freedom fighter
- France's nationalist wave
- Link round-up for 30 March 2014
- World Vision and the self-destruction of Christianity
- Quote for the day -- for liberation
- Link round-up for 23 March 2014 (late)
- A note
- A death to celebrate
God doesn't exist
Evolution happened
Global warming is real
Homosexuality is normal
Aging is a curable disease
The election was not stolen
Everything "spiritual" is a lie
US out of UN, UN out of US
Free speech is for everybody
Humans do not have "souls"
Men can't become women
Fetuses are not persons
Words are not violence
Taiwan is a nation
Pluto is a planet
10 Comments:
Yep. That's about right!
I've just started the book , but
am sure it will reinforce my views of that convoluted construct.
Christianity in a nutshell....ya can get the do-it-yourself kit at Hobby Lobby.....$12.95
Thanks for the tip on the book, BB-Idaho.
And yes, Infidel753, that truly explains it in a nutshell.
Whenever core Christian beliefs are stated in straightforward terms, they're revealed as utter madness.
You wrote, “Whenever core Christian beliefs are stated in straightforward terms, they're revealed as utter madness.”
I don’t recognize the Christianity as described as anything like the Christianity that we noncreedal Baptists believed in when I was a teen. But then there are thousands of contradictory Christianities. That’s one reason, I finally came to the conclusion the religion is “utter madness,” especially some versions of it.
Here’s more what we believed, Christianity in a Nutshell:
You selfishly harm each other
Even executed my representative
Because of your religion and nationalism,
Yet I still am benevolent to you
Daniel: The various Christian sects all have various secondary beliefs, but central to just about all of them is the idea that Jesus was the son of God and that his sacrifice was somehow necessary for humans to be "saved" despite their sins. The idea that an omnipotent God couldn't come up with any other way to forgive humanity than this bizarre ritual sacrifice does seem like madness. Humans, who are far from omnipotent, forgive each other all the time without engaging in such odd behavior.
Infidel953,
As a former youth minister, Bible teacher, elder, blah...blah:-), I am very aware of what various sects of the Christian religion teach. Heck, there are about 250 versions of the Baptist denomination alone. And in the Quaker society, there is everyone from extreme right-wing fundamentalists to extreme hard Atheists!
HOWEVER, the "The idea that an omnipotent God couldn't come up with any other way to forgive humanity than this bizarre ritual sacrifice does seem like madness"
was NEVER the view of the central Christian outlook that I, mainly, participated in.
The penal substitution view of Christian doctrine is part of the dominant creedal Christian religion, but is strongly rejected by various other branches.
Look at this analogy: Why can't Israelis and Palestinians just forgive each other?
BECAUSE, both sides continue to violate the other side's worth, views, and so forth.
Why couldn't the Christian god simply forgive? Because how does a god simply forgive if human beings continue to harm, abuse, and kill?
In this analogical way of thinking, God needs to send a representative who will not harm, not abuse, not kill...
It's sort of like saying Martin Luther King Jr. died for America. NOT literally, neither did Jesus, but they were the innocent who stands against the unethical.
Hope that helps you see a different way that some Christians look at the cross. It's nothing that any god needed, but what happens when good faces intolerance, injustice, and slaughter.
The image/metaphor/"myth" (in the literary sense of the word, not meaning delusion) of Jesus' sacrifice is one that all humans need to have a deep realization of--that when humans are selfish, greedy, intolerant, cruel, etc. what is true, good, and innocent will suffer.
Of course, I know that creedal Christianity, especially Calvinism rejects this view, and takes the literal view that everything happens for its god's glory, and that all of us must experience eternal damnation because it brings its god "good pleasure."
This one reason that I quit calling myself a Christian, even when I was still one, because I wasn't ever a creedal Christian, and I ended up spending many hours explaining the Quaker or liberal Baptist view, which was completely opposed to the creedal view.
I agree that the penal substitution, literal ritual sacrifice by an "omnipotent God" is bizarre madness. It makes no sense, and never has, to me.
Well, that's interesting -- though I wonder whether religions that reject penal substitution are accepted as Christian by mainstream Christians (or would be, if the mainstream Christians knew they reject that doctrine). Of course, when I talk about Christians I mean the kind that are numerically dominant in the Western world and are, therefore, the kind we actually have to deal with most of the time.
If a truly omnipotent God wanted to forgive any specific individual and save that individual from going to Hell (despite that person having had "wrong" religious beliefs), he could just do it, Jesus or no Jesus, and regardless of other humans continuing to do bad things. Again, ordinary humans forgive each other all the time. A god who couldn't do so wouldn't be omnipotent.
It's always been clear to self-aware people that human cruelty causes human suffering, and the kind of people who didn't know or care about that 5,000 years ago still don't. If God wanted to make this point more clear to everyone, he ought to have chosen a more effective method of doing so.
I completely agree with your points, and have since I was young.
Thanks for the dialog.:-)
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