What is uniquely Christian?

[chaoschristian]

It's interesting that whenever you ask a Christian to explain how sins are erased by suffering and torture, he simply repeats that they are, and we should be thankful for it.

Actually, I think the Bible makes it pretty clear that if the sacrifice of Jesus hadn't happened, then God would make humanity suffer for its sins for all eternity.

Don't ask me to proof text that, I think it's more of a consequence of one particular way of interpreting the text.

So, the how is in that God took all of His rage at the sins of humanity out on himself, thus sparing humanity from that rage.

Will this make Christianity make anymore sense? Will it make it any more palatable? Most likely not.

[The Guid]

Personally, I'd be wondering why the hell someone has to suffer immensely when the being in question is all fucking powerful.

It follows the idea that sins have to be paid for in some way or other. Its a presupposition that one can refute, but it is central to Christianity.

You don't actually get what 'all-powerful' implies, nay, requires to be applied, do you?

Of course I do. But quite frankly, I go to Church because I want to worship - I don't see why I have to rationalise any of that. I don't see why there is a need to analyse Christianity in detail. Sure, it doesn't make sense when you look deeply into it assuming the Bible is the be all and end all of all things Christian but why should I give a crap? If you search for a reliogion that stands up to all the logical tests you won't find one.

[SirNitram]

Of course I do. But quite frankly, I go to Church because I want to worship - I don't see why I have to rationalise any of that. I don't see why there is a need to analyse Christianity in detail. Sure, it doesn't make sense when you look deeply into it assuming the Bible is the be all and end all of all things Christian but why should I give a crap? If you search for a reliogion that stands up to all the logical tests you won't find one.

I don't give a damn if or why you go to Church. If you don't think any of it is logical, don't try to justify it when it's a logical question being asked. There's lots of Christians who have not decided to try and advance some reason for any of this.

[CaptJodan]

Will this make Christianity make anymore sense? Will it make it any more palatable? Most likely not.

Truer words never spoken.

I think that's a fundemental aspect of Christianity that Christians have to remember. More often than not we hear, especailly in more modern day Christians, the immense love that God has for us all. That God is some kind of great guy that you wouldn't want to be without. Somehow, and maybe it's just cause it's not popular anymore, people have forgotten a lot of truths of God. Most notably that he's a cruel God, and a God that ISN'T all powerful, that he can't do a simple task that we are all asked to do in our daily lives by society...to control our rage. God gets angry about as often as a 2 year old throwing a tantrum.

I think Christians have forgotten about that little tidbit.

[Battlehymn Republic]

And that's why Søren Kierkegaard was the best damn theologian ever.

That still begs the question of why would an omnipotent being need to do so in the first place. If he's really all powerful, he should be able to just handwave it away without needing to jump through so many convoluted hoops.

Ah, that's the crux of it all. If religion was truly straightforward, why aren't we all in paradise already with the deity right there pampering us and everything is nice and static but transcendentally pleasurable?

Why anything?

You've never actually read Roman/Greek mythology, have you? It's got all three in huge dollops.. Gods making themselves humans, Gods suffering tremendous pain, Gods dying for various things, including sins.

Er... you've never actually read the rest of my post, have you?

[General Zod]

Ah, that's the crux of it all. If religion was truly straightforward, why aren't we all in paradise already with the deity right there pampering us and everything is nice and static but transcendentally pleasurable?

Why anything??

Did you even read my post before spouting this bit of sophistry? I'm failing to see how this even bothers addressing my point.

[Darth Wong]

If religion was truly straightforward ...

That's the funny thing about religion; it makes no sense at all, and when people point out that it makes no sense whatsoever, they are informed that it's supposed to be that way.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Yeah, that's pretty much my point.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Ah, that's the crux of it all. If religion was truly straightforward, why aren't we all in paradise already with the deity right there pampering us and everything is nice and static but transcendentally pleasurable?

Why anything??

Did you even read my post before spouting this bit of sophistry? I'm failing to see how this even bothers addressing my point.

Why did the question mark become duplicated in my last sentence?

I can't really address your point. There's no answer I can give you. I was just trying to point out that certain things in religion are just the way they are; if omnipotent deities used their omnipotence to their full extent all the time, religion would be completely straightforward.

Yes, you made a valid point in pointing out an error in logic.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, that's pretty much my point.

But it's a ridiculous point; it's like a student who gets an F on a math test and says "no, but you don't understand; those answers were supposed to be wrong!" If you can show that something makes no sense, that means it has utterly failed as an intellectual concept, and is quite literally nonsense.

In short, the religious apologist line is that you must have faith in nonsense because it's nonsensical.

[GuppyShark]

I wonder where this perception that God is all-powerful and infallible came from - the source material has Him proven wrong and incapable of controlling the actions of his people on near every page.

I guess people just exaggerated and it went from there.

It sort of takes the fun out of deflating the claims when you can just flip to a random page in the book and prove it wrong.

[Jew]

I like how this thread changed from being a thread about Christianity to a thread arguing whether Christianity is logical and self-consistent.

Getting back to the original topic, what about the idea of biblical inerrancy? Did any other religion at the time of Christ have sacred scriptures that they viewed as without error in any respect? I don't know what the Jews thought of their scriptures, so I don't know whether they considered them inerrant or not. In any case, the idea of Christian scriptures being without error in all matters comes straight from 2 Timothy 3:16. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

Other religions had holy books. Did they believe those books to be inerrant in the Christian sense?

[Molyneux]

I like how this thread changed from being a thread about Christianity to a thread arguing whether Christianity is logical and self-consistent.

Getting back to the original topic, what about the idea of biblical inerrancy? Did any other religion at the time of Christ have sacred scriptures that they viewed as without error in any respect? I don't know what the Jews thought of their scriptures, so I don't know whether they considered them inerrant or not. In any case, the idea of Christian scriptures being without error in all matters comes straight from 2 Timothy 3:16. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

Other religions had holy books. Did they believe those books to be inerrant in the Christian sense?

At that point, the Jews did consider the Torah to be inerrant; that's not a vew that most Jews hold today, however.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Yeah, that's pretty much my point.

But it's a ridiculous point; it's like a student who gets an F on a math test and says "no, but you don't understand; those answers were supposed to be wrong!" If you can show that something makes no sense, that means it has utterly failed as an intellectual concept, and is quite literally nonsense.

In short, the religious apologist line is that you must have faith in nonsense because it's nonsensical.

I didn't mention that you had to have faith because it is nonsensical; my whole point is that religion just is, nonsensical or not. While they're certainly valid, the question General Zod asked earlier seem rather pointless. Yes, that would be more straightforward. But religion usually isn't, whether you believe in it or not. I'm not trying to prove anything, except that asking such questions are ultimately pointless.

If you can't have faith in that, I'm not arguing that you should at this point.

[chaoschristian]

In any case, the idea of Christian scriptures being without error in all matters comes straight from 2 Timothy 3:16. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

How do you get 'inerrant' out of that, instead of 'infallible'?

Regardless, it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to argue for Christianity from a logical/rational/scientific standpoint. One, it's bad logic because all of your presumptions will be tautologies. Two, faith and belief are irrational concepts. Three you will violate the ground rules of science since most of what you argue will not be verifiable and disprovable.

Yet, so what? Is it completely inconceivable that a person could hold and maintain two apparently diametrically opposed viewpoints in harmony? What about the power of the dialectic? Isn't that at the heart of Einstein's quote?

[General Zod]

I didn't mention that you had to have faith because it is nonsensical; my whole point is that religion just is, nonsensical or not. While they're certainly valid, the question General Zod asked earlier seem rather pointless. Yes, that would be more straightforward. But religion usually isn't, whether you believe in it or not. I'm not trying to prove anything, except that asking such questions are ultimately pointless.

If you can't have faith in that, I'm not arguing that you should at this point.

If you'd actually bothered to read the entire exchange, than just attack my post like a mindless apologist, you'd realised I was addressing Guid's point of why an omnipotent god would need to jump through all those hoops.

It was simply pointing out how foolish it is for someone who's supposed to be all powerful to have to come up with something so inanely convoluted when they could feasibly do it with a handwave. If a system can't be straight forward or make sense, then it's worthless as a way of explaining how things work. (Which, afaik, religion tries to do, but fails at rather badly).

[General Zod]

I didn't mention that you had to have faith because it is nonsensical; my whole point is that religion just is, nonsensical or not. While they're certainly valid, the question General Zod asked earlier seem rather pointless. Yes, that would be more straightforward. But religion usually isn't, whether you believe in it or not. I'm not trying to prove anything, except that asking such questions are ultimately pointless.

If you can't have faith in that, I'm not arguing that you should at this point.

If you'd actually bothered to read the entire exchange, than just attack my post like a mindless apologist, you'd realised I was addressing Guid's point of why an omnipotent god would need to jump through all those hoops.

It was simply pointing out how foolish it is for someone who's supposed to be all powerful to have to come up with something so inanely convoluted when they could feasibly do it with a handwave. If a system can't be straight forward or make sense, then it's worthless as a way of explaining how things work. (Which, afaik, religion tries to do, but fails at rather badly).

Ghetto Edit: Paying more careful attention to your posts, it seems you just contradicted yourself. Either I made a valid point as you claimed earlier or it was pointless. Which is it? I don't really appreciate backpedalers.

[wolveraptor]

Other religions had holy books. Did they believe those books to be inerrant in the Christian sense?

The Koran was word-for-word given to Muhammed by the arcangel Gabriel; it's considered inerrant by fanatical muslims.
It seems that fierce adherence to the writings of a religion rather than the meanings of it is a feature of monotheistic religions, the kind that people actually take seriously.

[Battlehymn Republic]

It was simply pointing out how foolish it is for someone who's supposed to be all powerful to have to come up with something so inanely convoluted when they could feasibly do it with a handwave. If a system can't be straight forward or make sense, then it's worthless as a way of explaining how things work. (Which, afaik, religion tries to do, but fails at rather badly).

Ghetto Edit: Paying more careful attention to your posts, it seems you just contradicted yourself. Either I made a valid point as you claimed earlier or it was pointless. Which is it? I don't really appreciate backpedalers.[/quote]

I never meant to be attacking; I've been conceding since the last post.

Yes, you're certainly valid in questioning why religion has omnipotent entities doing long-drawn actions just to fix things they could change with a handwave.

My only question to that question is whether it's really relevant. It depends on how you view religion. If religions were truly straightfoward, well, they would just be. Who knows how hypothetical omnipotent entities operate? Who knows how it all works? In one sense, yes, you can certainly use your question against apologetics who believe their religion is correct because of the action occurred; on the other sense, it's a bit meaningless, isn't it? Why does anything happen in one way and not another?

Also, I'm in no way trying to be an apologist. I'm trying not to get flamed.

[Darth Wong]

In short, the religious apologist line is that you must have faith in nonsense because it's nonsensical.

I didn't mention that you had to have faith because it is nonsensical; my whole point is that religion just is, nonsensical or not.

Two points:

1) I was describing the "religious apologist" argument, not necessarily your personal beliefs. Try to read more carefully in future.

2) Stating that religion exists (ie- "just is") is a fucking tautology, and as such, it is just as useless as any other worthless tautology. If you have absolutely nothing constructive to add to this discussion, remove yourself from it now.

If you have some kind of explanation for how "religion just is" can possibly be relevant or useful to a discussion of what (if anything) makes Christianity either unique or worthwhile, explain it now. Otherwise you're just wasting my fucking bandwidth. If people could answer every demand for descriptive details and justifications of an idea with "it just is", we would never accomplish any goddamned thing in this world.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Wilco. Conceded. Touché.

[Darth Wong]

Well, now that this tangent has hopefully been put to bed, is it agreed that the only really "unique" Christian ideology is the notion of salvation through Christ, which is in fact merely the logical extreme of human and animal sacrifice rituals and beliefs, particularly those which value a "pure" sacrifice?

[Battlehymn Republic]

Well, I'm still looking for an example of a supreme god dying for humanity for something wrong that humanity did. And ostensibly, the supreme god is in an innocent form.

Say what you want about Jehovah, but Jesus in the New Testament doesn't seem to have done many bad things, other than beating up the moneylenders.

[Darth Wong]

Well, I'm still looking for an example of a supreme god dying for humanity for something wrong that humanity did.

"Supreme", "pure", "pretty pure", "pretty good", and "not diseased" are all just points on the same spectrum. If that's your idea of a unique or original idea, you need help. And all animal and human sacrifice religions atone for the sins or inadequacies of man by sacrificing others to the gods on his behalf. This has all been mentioned previously; did you not read it?

[chaoschristian]

DW wrote:

what (if anything) makes Christianity either unique or worthwhile

Considering the title of the thread and its original purpose was to explore the unique elements of Christianity, I must ask if you are equating 'unique' and 'worthwhile' or if you are adding a dimension to the thread discussion.

Regarding

is it agreed that the only really "unique" Christian ideology is the notion of salvation through Christ, which is in fact merely the logical extreme of human and animal sacrifice rituals and beliefs, particularly those which value a "pure" sacrifice?

I would unpack 'salvation of Christ' a bit to explain that this is indeed a one-time thing that negated the need for future sacrifices and - think this is the correct word - sanctified all past sacrifices. That the sacrifice of Christ is perceived as an event that touches on all points in the timeline of creation (past, present, future) and fundementally alters creation once and for all. This would help distringuish it from Mithraism that I've come understand would be close, but different in that it calls for continued sacrifices. It is upon this understanding that the Christian theology of 'through faith alone' follows, althoug I admit that that part is not unique to Christianity.