insulting religions

[IneedAgoldenNickname]

Hi, I've never posted on this topic before, I tend to hang out in aibu, but don't want to start a bun fight!

So, I am a liberal Christian. I firmly believe that everyone had to right to believe (or not) whatever they want, provided that belief doesn't hurt anyone else.

Earlier today I posted a lighthearted status on Facebook, which had led to me being called mindless, stupid, stuck up, thinking I'm better than everyone else. I've been told God is a c**t (sorry I hate that word so much I won't type it) and that the Bible is only God for loo roll!

I'm just really angry that people think its ok to insult me/my religion like that, when I haven't once preached or insulted others.

Obviously the easy solution would be to delete them off of Facebook, but they are people I get on with other wise.

Don't really know the point of my post, just hoping id feel better writing it down.

DOI - Its ages since I read the 'Out of the Silent Planet' trilogy by C.S.Lewis but IIRC this question was central - only the Earth was 'fallen'. I can't remember whether its worth reading now!

Biblical hermeneutics and exegesis is somewhat difference to discussing the plot of a late 20th century novel, though :)

I try not to ignore the more difficult bits of the bible, though do agree that this is often done, mainly because they are difficult and therefore people don't particularly want to try and defend them, especially when they are not an OT biblical scholar. I don't defend them as such but do try to put them into their cultural setting and explore around the texts, I enjoy doing that. It doesn't mean I believe every word and that we should base our way of being on random OT rules and regs.

Again, the difference for me is Jesus. I think he embodies all God is, and this is who I follow. I'm not merely picking out a few nice sayings from an old book to back up something I would quite like to be real, but following a real person who has impacted my life and millions of others in some astonishing ways.

DadOnIce - I don't think so, though I'm agnostic on that in the sense that I'm open minded.

Grimma People may sacrifice themselves. That is not my point.

My point is that Jesus sacrificed exactly nothing.

Dying in agony on the cross, being separated from God, friends turning against him, mocked by all, while loving so much. I don't think that was nothing, to start with.

Wasn't "nothing" but wasn't actually a "sacrifice".

The central tenet of Christianity is "Jesus died for my sins". Not "Jesus suffered 6 hours on a cross & some humiliation for my sins" - he DIED.

Well - if he's still alive, then, no he didn't. He made a gesture, nothing more.

And how exactly is it a "sacrifice" in any meaningful sense of the word if he was born & lived with the sole intention of having himself put to death like that? It's not like he had no other choice, is it? He's omnipotent, he could have "forgiven" our sins by simply saying "I forgive you" - job done.

"Being separated from God"? When? He is God according to most Christians, or at least an aspect of him.

Jesus apparently existed in Heaven before he was born on Earth - spent 33 years here - then went back. His "humanity" was a guise he put on - he didn't need it to survive & indeed survived the ending of the human body he was using.

And the very idea that someone else could ever atone for something that I had done makes the meaning of the word "atonement" completely irrelevant. As has been pointed out endlessly by better debaters than me - you can pay someone's fine, you can serve someone's prison sentence, you can say sorry on someone's behalf, but you cannot "atone" for their sin/crime. It makes a mockery of the word to suggest that you can.

So, I think the foundation on which Christianity rests is non existent, never mind shaky.

I don't think you're a mad nutter in the corner, Mad. You at least try to make sense of things without just quoting the Bible. You and I will never agree, but we're trying to make sense of each other's viewpoints. Nowt wrong with that :)

:) Indeed.

Many people actually view atonement as being more like a ransom, so paying for someone to be freed - lots of Christians reject the more traditional penal substitutionary atonement theory, whereby Jesus died to satisfy God's wrath, vis a vis animal sacrifice. I waver upon where I stand, but there are a few theories out there, all of which make sense - I think that they all contribute to the hugeness of what Jesus did. You're right, we cannot atone for someone else's wrongdoing, but that doesn't mean God cannot, and loves us so much that he did something about it

Jesus did die, in huge pain and sorrow. The separation from God thing is actually the biggest part of it, possibly. Jesus said 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (sorry for quote ) and it seems that because he took every sin ever upon him, from murder to greed to abuse to wrongful anger, God could not look upon him - God could not look upon sin - this is not me making this up as a nice little way of explaining it, it's a synopsis of teaching from the gospels and Paul's writings. If we're talking about Jesus being God and God's son, and man, we're getting into the Trinity and the mystery of that. I don't have a neat little answer.

I know, I know. It's not something that can be argued. It's messy and can appear foolish and untamed and beautiful. It echoes throughout history and eternity. I wish I had better words...

But thankyou for not assigning me to the corner I do find it stimulating to discuss it, but frustrating that I cannot word it in any way that captures the greatness of what it really is.

MadHairDay, so in effect you're picking the NT as containing the important stuff and believing a lot of what it says pretty much verbatim, and rationalising away the nastier bits of the OT with liberal doses of cultural context and, if necessary, simply not believing it. (Although God's behaviour in the NT could do with some serious looking at too. Eg, His treatment of Mary and Joseph, His exploitation of the Jews and Romans to kill Jesus for His own ends, the terrible treatment of Judas even though he was doing what God needed him to do etc.)

Fair enough.

Nevertheless, my point was one about justifying why I feel comfortable criticising the portrayal of God's character as an immoral, genocidal, narcissistic alien from another dimension while simultaneously not believing in His existence in the slightest.

If you believe this scarily powerful alien from another dimension exists, then either his Biblical portrayal is flat-out wrong (and if you are comfortable disbelieving much of the Bible, why put any faith in what remains) or his Biblical portrayal has elements of truth in it in which case why worship a monster?

Grimma - thanks! I read that book in school, I believe... a long time ago!

MadHairDay - thank you for attempting to answer the question, but that just sounds incredibly woolly to me! And I was only being slightly flippant when I said discussing religion is like discussing Lord of the Rings. I've got no objective evidence for either being true.

That's me, woolly Anglican type

I'm struggling to follow your reasoning MadHair, (hi, by the way, don't think we've talked before). Jesus wasn't accepted as being divine (the son of god) until more than three hundred years after his death at the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople convened by Constantine ( a lifelong pagan, who hedged his bets converting on his deathbed)

Also, terrible though crucifiction undoubtedly was, it was a common punishment of the times, not a cruel and unusual death specifically designed for him. I never got the logic of Jesus dying for all our sins, no more than I understand how Eve supposedly singlehandedly unleashed the original sin that brand new babies are born with.

DadOnIce, I dont know if a "Jesus" type has ever been sent elsewhere in the universe. fwiw, I dont think other places are or have been populated, but I dont know for sure. I sometimes wonder the same questions myself.

Ellie, why are you interested in talking about God?

I think one of the big problems we have as atheists is trying to actually define what is meant by the term "God". The moment we start pointing out that the Biblical God is a somewhat less than pleasant character who condones rape, slavery, genocide, racism etc then we are told "Well, that's not the God I believe in".

There are over 30,000 denominations of Christianity alone all believing something subtly different. There are some literalists who do believe in the OT God absolutely and try to explain away the horrors as "Oh, but those people were sinners and deserved it". And then on the other end of the scale you have the more liberal ones who dismiss 95% of everything the Bible says, OT & NT and have, basically, made up their own definition of God and use very small parts of the Bible to try and demonstrate his existence.

I keep being told that all you need to believe to be a "true" Christian is that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected. But since there's not the tiniest shred of evidence that such a thing ever happened, then the belief boils down entirely to "faith" which equals "I believe because I want to". And we're back to square one.

Amillion Because most of the world believes in God, and many people are using that belief to hurt others. It should be talked about.

And, with all due respect, I'll talk about whatever I want to talk about, thank you. I don't believe in homeopathy either, but I don't mind talking about what bullcrap it is.

Have just spent a few minutes checking (on Christian sites, no less) the issue of whether the concept of Hell (specifically in Christianity) originated with Jesus or not. I have always been under the impression that it did. And I was right. There are vague references in the OT to somewhere called Sheol which is sometimes wrongly translated as Hell. It actually means " grave" and everyone went there, good, bad and indifferent.

"Death" was the great punishment in the OT, not what happened to you once you were dead.

I'm not suggesting other cultures didn't have the concept. I'm only talking about Christianity.

Ellie, I did smile at your post, because you are right, there are lots of differences between what people believe. I always think though that it would be strange if everyone believed the same down to the last letter - somewhat robotic and worrying. I think there are central tenets and then lots of fluff round the outside that people differ on - the creed sums up central beliefs and most denominations go with that, whatever their worship persuasion

I'd disagree on the evidence for Jesus living and dying as well, I believe there is an intellectually robust position for saying that there is enough evidence from varying sources. I know there are lots who say there isn't as well. Good to keep batting it here and there :)

Hello sunflowers :) I'm sorry my reasoning is unclear, it often is to me as well With the divinity of Jesus, I guess it comes down to whether you take the gospel texts and the letters to be documents with historical value (guess what - I do ) - council of Nicea etc may have brought various strands together but there's little doubt early followers had something of this understanding. As for crucifixion, yes, it was a common death, I don't think I'd said that Jesus died in a different way so as to make the death stand out? Just that it was horrific, as it was indeed for many.

I like the atonement theory which is known as Christus Victor, literally Christ beating death, that's another one to throw in the pot. As for the logic of Christ dying for our sins, yes, I think it's pretty hard to get your head around, and yet to countless people makes complete and utter sense - and that includes highly intelligent and learned people. Why is that? There is something more than a reasoned argument.

I don't think it comes down to 'I believe if I want to'. I think if it did I wouldn't bother, too much hassle! There are plenty of times I have wanted to not believe, for a lot of the reasons expounded in this thread - why suffering, don't get it, etc etc. But the truth is that God has worked in me, time and again, and faith has actually grown through the asking of such questions.

When I did my theology degree it was taught from a fairly hardline atheist point of view. Fascinating stuff, it was the first time really I'd come across scholars who said Jesus either never existed, or did but didn't think he was God, or did but led a normal life, etc. It opened my eyes and shook me up, and I've not stopped exploring since. But every time, I come back to the reality I experience, and the wonder of it all. I love it.

Has a Christian hurt you Ellie?

You dont have to answer that question if you dont want to.

I think it's reasonably well established (although not certain) that Jesus the man probably lived. In other words, that there was a man who was a carpenter, grew up & had a small following, said a few things that people remembered and was put to death by the Romans.

It isn't certain though. because there's no direct evidence for this - he's not mentioned in any contemporary documentation, we don't have any eyewitness accounts, he appears nowhere in the enormous Roman record, left no writings of his own etc. etc. The "evidence" such as it is is entirely circumstantial.

What I think there is evidence of is his elevation to god-like status in the hundreds of years after his death. He was ascribed various attributes & characteristics that were well known "sky god" ones - he was not the first to be born of a virgin, laid in a manger, visited by shepherds & wise men who followed a star, visited a temple aged 12, began a ministry aged 30 odd, turned water into wine, healed the sick, proclaimed "Lamb of God", had disciples, died on a cross & was resurrected three days later.

It's a bit of a myth that some atheists spread around that he's a carbon copy of any one god (Mithras is the one usually cited) - he's not. But nothing he did was original. And neither was anything he said. Confucius, of course, came up with the so called "Golden Rule" several hundreds of years earlier - and he wasn't alone. Lots of cultures had that idea pre-Jesus.

I just think that, really, if God incarnated himself on Earth the least we could expect would be originality & some profoundly new and amazing teachings. Which ever way you look at it, Jesus provided neither.

No, Amillion. No Christian has ever hurt me personally.

You and I disagree again, Ellie :)

It depends what you mean by 'contemporary evidence', and whether you value the gospels in terms of historicity. Luke was a historian, John shown to have written his gospel much earlier than has been argued. As for extra-biblical writings, there is of course Josephus, who mentioned Christians, and there is the controversial passage about Jesus' death and resurrection - many scholars discount it and see it as an interpolation but others argue that it is included in the earliest copies of Josephus. Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny - all mention Christians and Tacitus mentions Jesus' death and the 'break out' of the Christians.

As for the sky god thing, I take it you are referring to the Mystery religions and Osiris-Dionysus - you have rightly said that the oft quoted myth around Mithras is just that, a myth. But it is similar with the other mystery religions - a lot of it based around dodgy late nineteenth century theology, and one book written in the late 20th c by some people who wanted to discredit Jesus but had no expertise to their name and have been severely ripped to shreds by most scholars since.

Much of the mystery religions ideas were not reported in any sense until after the first century AD - it seems likely that, as in the case of Mithraism, they picked up some of the ideas of the Christian religion. Also the things that are often compared - the stable, for eg, or the dates of death/resurrection, have been shown to be false interpretations. Actually, the Christian faith is founded in its' Jewish ancestry. Terms such as Lamb of God, born of a virgin etc are firmly rooted in the OT and Christians would have self identified as such.

I do wonder how Christianity would have survived in the form it does if it had, after all, been only one more form of such mystery religion?

Well - I can't really argue the "mystery religions" issue any further. Problem is, it depends whose books you read, I suppose - Expert X says one thing and Expert Y says something else - and I am not enough of an expert (well, not an expert at all!) to know who's right.

So, I'll wave the white flag on that one because.......I dunno

But - I do know something about the historicity of Jesus and I will be delighted to fiercely debate that one with you. But not right this second. I shall be back anon :)