Yeah, it was.Turin wrote:Knowing Discombobulated, I'm thinking it's just a thought experiment, not an actual attempt at apologetics.Kanastrous wrote:So, don't look for 'coherence' or 'reality;' look to history and anthropology to see where the idea originated. Trying to tack on a rational explanation afterwards seems like the worst kind of religious apologetics.
Unfortunately, it seems to have backfired. I'll attempt to clean up after myself, because it has garnered quite a few critical responses.As I said to Turin, it wasn't an actual attempt at apologetics or even an attempt to find the origin of an idea; it was more of a thought experiment. If you like you can think of it as a RAR! with "What if the Christian God weren't omnipotent?" and then giving him the benefit of the doubt. Even then, I'm not sure if it works. I don't particularly care if Paul or any of the gospel writers had this idea before; in fact I'm fairly sure they didn't, because if they had they'd realize it doesn't work particularly well and stop writing.You might be approaching it from the wrong angle.
The whole 'Father sends son (himself) to Earth to die for humanity's sins' is rooted in the concept of the scapegoat; the old Leviticus gag where the High Priest would ceremonially transfer the burden of the people's guilt to an animal which was then driven out of the community to symbolize the removal of that guilt (or to 'really' remove it, depending upon the degree of your belief in the idea).
For a new religion growing out of Judaism and looking to attract followers, the scapegoat concept was already widely familiar and therefore a useful recruiting tool.
So, don't look for 'coherence' or 'reality;' look to history and anthropology to see where the idea originated. Trying to tack on a rational explanation afterwards seems like the worst kind of religious apologetics.
But you make an interesting point. I had forgotten about the scapegoat ritual. I'd guess that when Paul came up with his theology of Jesus suffering so that humans don't have to, he had that sort of thing in mind. According to my Googling, the Greeks used to practice a similar ritual, so the idea must have already been ingrained in the cultural consciousness. (If it were just a Jewish Levitical ritual, it wouldn't have helped Christianity spread outside Israel.) If you proposed the idea to someone who'd never heard of Christianity or the scapegoat, they'd probably be completely baffled by the idea.
According to a lot of people, we're actually more sinful today than we were then. Because of the gays and the secular humanists, doncha know.What unredeemed sins? It's not as if humanity today is somehow less "sinful" (according to Biblical standards) than they were thousands of years ago. The only way this works at all is if Jesus was some type of sacrifice that he was supposed to use in place of sending down another Flood or something. He couldn't exterminate humanity again so he sent in a substitute. Still pretty silly either way.
Anyway, your suggestion is the sort of thing I had in mind, except I was thinking more along the lines of sending everyone to hell (which is obviously overkill to anyone with a brain, but whatever). It doesn't matter who suffers, as long as someone does.Not with normal Christian theology, no. I was trying on the possibility of God not being the ultimate authority and not being all-powerful: someone who can't just wave his hand and absolve sins and let people into heaven, because he has to conform to a higher, harsher ideal of justice. But as I said earlier, I don't think even that allows for a justification of God sending himself/his son to die, because no legitimate conception of justice could consider it just for an innocent person to suffer and guilty people to be absolved.The problem with that line of thinking is that it suggests there is something higher than God, who is supposed to be the final authority in everything. Not exactly consistent.
I think even a very powerful being would agree that if you're trying to achieve justice, following the law and being moral (however morality is defined) should be rewarded with joy and pleasure, and breaking the law and being immoral should be punished with unpleasantness. That's a pretty basic conception of justice. (Also, a perfectly benevolent being should also be guided by the principle that if you can increase happiness and decrease suffering at no expense to anyone at all, then you should do it. But if the Biblical God is perfectly benevolent, then I'm the Easter bunny.)Most justice systems also use human standards. Some all powerful being like God is anything but human, so what he considers "justice" would be radically different from what humans consider it. So we have no real way of knowing whether or not people are actually getting what they deserve even with the retarded laws he's passed down due to the sheer amount of inconsistencies and alien thinking behind them.
Yeah, I suppose that's another reason why the idea breaks down. I had been vaguely entertaining the possibility that there could be another higher authority and arbiter of justice, but that doesn't work either. Even though the Bible doesn't necessarily paint God as all-powerful, it doesn't allow for a higher authority than God. After all, every conception of justice requires laws, and as long as we stay within the context of Christianity, the laws we're working with are the Ten Commandments, which have to have been made by God, because the laws are all about him. If they were made by whoever runs the justice system (I picture the justice-system people as the Auditors from Discworld for some reason), those people probably wouldn't give two shits whether God was included, and they certainly wouldn't put him in the very first commandment.I think the larger point you've missed there is that "by canon," the law itself is defined by God. So the idea that God answers to a higher authority is moot. But you knew that.
Which is a long-winded way of saying you're right. In fact, I'm very glad you pointed it out, because I've been trying to have an argument like this one with another atheist, who basically said, "Well, God can't beat iron chariots, so maybe he can't absolve sins by waving his hand. Is he still an asshole for sending himself/his son to die, and for setting up Christianity as we know it?" My last two posts were based on that proposition.
Now I have at least two separate ways to rebut him.
