Two atheist arguments that cancel each other out

[mgoforth]

In what sense then, was it logical and rational, for God to make His Son, Jesus, die for the sins of every man woman and child of the world, past, present and future?

Where is the fairness and justice of making one man die for the crimes/sins of others?

If God is fair and just, there must be a logic and rational behind that, but I can’t see it.

“Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” 1 Corinthians 1: 20-25

 

[atheistgirl]

Jesus was not punished for the sins mankind has committed, might I ask wherein the injustice lies? Jesus chose to die for our sins.

I don’t understand how some one innocent, dying for the crimes of the guilty, is not an injustice.

In fact I don’t understand how that can even work.

Jesus came to die for our sins, if my understanding is correct. His mission was to bring salvation, and that was to be achieved, as predicted thousands of years earlier, by the torture and killing of an innocent man on the cross, which would make reparation for the sins of all mankind to God and open the door to salvation to us.

If a criminal has committed a crime, he can’t say to the judge, here’s my brother, he’s cool with serving my time, as I’ve got a business I need to run and I’ve got a vacation coming up soon, and the Judge says oh, ok, sure, no problem, just as long as someone does the 12 years I’ve sentenced you to!

Sarah x

 

[mgoforth]

I don’t understand how some one innocent, dying for the crimes of the guilty, is not an injustice.

In fact I don’t understand how that can even work.

Jesus came to die for our sins, if my understanding is correct. His mission was to bring salvation, and that was to be achieved, as predicted thousands of years earlier, by the torture and killing of an innocent man on the cross, which would make reparation for the sins of all mankind to God and open the door to salvation to us.

If a criminal has committed a crime, he can’t say to the judge, here’s my brother, he’s cool with serving my time, as I’ve got a business I need to run and I’ve got a vacation coming up soon, and the Judge says oh, ok, sure, no problem, just as long as someone does the 12 years I’ve sentenced you to!

"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned — To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Romans 5: 12-21

Also, an explanation from C.S. Lewis:
homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_lewisatone.html

I truly hope this is helpful to you Sarah!

 

[atheistgirl]

Also, an explanation from C.S. Lewis:
homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_lewisatone.html

I truly hope this is helpful to you Sarah!

Thanks for the link.

I read it.

Three times now and I’m still missing something.

I don’t see how God needed to die, in order to help man repent, as the link suggests. God, being all powerful, could just help us, couldn’t he?

It seems to be suggesting that God would be unable to help us back on the right road to redemption, by helping us repent of our wicked ways, to surrender, submit and die as the article puts it, unless God Himself experienced this.

Surely an all powerful God would know what it’s like for his creation, he did create us after all, and so be able to help us, without sending His Son to endure such a horrific death?

Sarah x

 

[Qoeleth]

In what sense then, was it logical and rational, for God to make His Son, Jesus, die for the sins of every man woman and child of the world, past, present and future?

Where is the fairness and justice of making one man die for the crimes/sins of others?

If God is fair and just, there must be a logic and rational behind that, but I can’t see it.

Sarah x

Of course, it was not just that Jesus died. It was the greatest injustice in the history of the Universe.

And under the shadow of this Cross, of which was are all guilty, we must remember our guilt, that it was our sins which killed our loving God.

And so, in every human suffering we see, we must remember that we are, somehow responsible for it, because, in a way, Jesus is there too, wherever suffering is.

There is nothing rational or just about our God dying for our sins. This is a mystery too great for our minds, and a sorrow too great for any human heart. Our only response to is let our hearts be broken at the suffering of the Cross in our world today, in the hungry, the poor, the frustrated, the entire tragedy of human existence.

 

[ivebeenshown]

I don’t understand how some one innocent, dying for the crimes of the guilty, is not an injustice.

In fact I don’t understand how that can even work.

Jesus came to die for our sins, if my understanding is correct. His mission was to bring salvation, and that was to be achieved, as predicted thousands of years earlier, by the torture and killing of an innocent man on the cross, which would make reparation for the sins of all mankind to God and open the door to salvation to us.

If a criminal has committed a crime, he can’t say to the judge, here’s my brother, he’s cool with serving my time, as I’ve got a business I need to run and I’ve got a vacation coming up soon, and the Judge says oh, ok, sure, no problem, just as long as someone does the 12 years I’ve sentenced you to!

This is **exactly **what we had just discussed! I will get back to you on this.

 

[ivebeenshown]

I don’t understand how some one innocent, dying for the crimes of the guilty, is not an injustice. In fact I don’t understand how that can even work.

Jesus came to die for our sins, if my understanding is correct.

Yes, Jesus died for our sins – but again, what do you think “died for our sins” means?

His mission was to bring salvation, and that was to be achieved, as predicted thousands of years earlier, by the torture and killing of an innocent man on the cross, which would make reparation for the sins of all mankind to God and open the door to salvation to us.

It is not that God demanded torture and death for our atonement, it is that God demanded loving obedience for the entirety of the mortal human lifespan. That is what Jesus offered to the Father – his loving obedience for his entire mortal life.

If a criminal has committed a crime, he can’t say to the judge, here’s my brother, he’s cool with serving my time, as I’ve got a business I need to run and I’ve got a vacation coming up soon, and the Judge says oh, ok, sure, no problem, just as long as someone does the 12 years I’ve sentenced you to!

“Died for our sins” does not mean “experienced the punishment for our sins in our stead.” If that is your understanding of Catholic doctrine, it is mistaken.

 

[mgoforth]

Surely an all powerful God would know what it’s like for his creation, he did create us after all, and so be able to help us, without sending His Son to endure such a horrific death.

I think it all hinges on the meaning of “all-powerful”…which really means that God can do anything that’s possible. It doesn’t mean that God can create logical contradictions. There’s a question people pose: Can God create a rock so heavy that He can’t lift it? The answer is no…such a thing is nonsensical, it’s essentially nothing. He can create anything, but how can He create something that’s “un-creatable”? God cannot be a contradiction, because He is ultimate Truth. That’s His nature.

So, let me try to take it logically, one step at a time:

1. 
   *]God is all-powerful, but that doesn’t mean He creates contradictions.
   *]For God to know about something that He’s had no experience with is a contradiction.
   *]God only created things that are reflections of His nature.
   *]Therefore, God did not create sin and spiritual death…those are human creations.
   *]Therefore, by #2, God had to experience living as a human, and being tempted to sin, to know about it.
   *]Likewise, God also had to experience death to understand that, because His essential nature is Life.
   *]Once He experienced them, He knew how to defeat them.
   *]His way of conquering death was to submit to death…for everyone who wanted to join Him, all at the same time. He accepted death perfectly, and somehow (there has to be that leap of faith, remember) attached all our sins to His human nature as it died.
   *]When He came back to life, He left all the sins behind…so the sins were dead but He, and we, are brought back to eternal life.
   
   I know that sounds a bit ridiculous, but these are spiritual ideas, and things work differently on a spiritual level than on the material level. I can’t explain how Christ did what He did…the actual spiritual mechanism is a mystery.
   
   There are problems with my logic of course, not because anything I said was false…but because God exists outside of time. He learned about sin and death through the human nature of the Son, but He also knew about it already at the beginning of creation because of the human life that the Son would live in the first century. It’s too hard to fully wrap our heads around, because we’re stuck inside time and can’t see the big picture.
   
   I’ll share a revelation that really blew me away…maybe it will help. I’m sure you know the creation story, how Adam and Eve are in the garden with the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. The trees are just metaphors. The first one represents the free choice that God gave us to trust Him (don’t eat the fruit) or to make our own decisions (eat the fruit, “be like gods ourselves” as the serpent said). But what was the Tree of Life? Why did God take it away?
   

   And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Genesis 3:22

   The Tree of Life was Christ. God already knew that His Son was the “method” that human beings would need to use to gain eternal life. If they had chosen correctly and resisted the serpent’s temptation, it seems clear from the story that they would have been allowed to “eat of the tree of life” - accept Christ through obedience and live forever. But since they rejected Him, God went with Plan B. He withdrew the Son until the first century, and then gave us another chance. Of course, God knew what they would choose all along, because He had already learned about sin and death through the life of Jesus… It makes my head spin, but it’s also so beautiful and makes so much sense that I know it has to be true.

 

[cc42]

atheist girl and thinking sapien

atheistgirl
God certainly could have forgiven us our sins without dying on the cross, as scripture says it was because He so loved the world that He gave His only Son. Not He loved the world afterwards. The point of faith, sin, and redemption is having a realtionship with God. God would be a distant being who doesn’t show concern if He just wiped away our sins with the wave of a hand. Instead He showed He loves us by suffering and being obedient for us. God came to be the perfect human because we can’t do that. Jesus’ suffering was in a sense the ultimate prayer and penance for mankind.

thinkingsapien:

I am not talking about the transcendental argument which is arguing from the truth of logical maxims (is that correct?).

Here is an argument I would use:

All things exist in either a state of potential change or actualized change. But a being in a potential state has to be caused in order to reach an actualized state by something outside of itself in order to reach an actualized state, except if everything is in some potential state all change must ultimately lead back to something already in a fully actualized state. This changeless and fully actualized being we call God.

 

[brumano]

Again, “my problem” is nothing of the sort. If God were not all merciful, all benevolent, or all powerful, that would simply be the reality of it all. And I’d get on just fine. My problem is that God’s devotees endlessly fall over themselves to call every immoral act he commits (or allows) an example of Love, Mercy, or Justice.

You have no idea that you would be getting on just fine without God’s goodness. God doesn’t commit immoral acts since He is the objective good, and I can’t underrstand why it would be a bother to you if we fall all over ourselves at the graces He gives to us,
Everything is an example of one of those three of His chief attributes, but the good news is, is that in the end it is His Mercy that moves the weight of His Justice…

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Here is an argument I would use:

All things exist in either a state of potential change or actualized change. But a being in a potential state has to be caused in order to reach an actualized state by something outside of itself in order to reach an actualized state, except if everything is in some potential state all change must ultimately lead back to something already in a fully actualized state. This changeless and fully actualized being we call God.

Okay, this sounds like a form of the Aristotle/St. Aquinas Unmoved/Prime Movers concept. A problem that I have with this argument is in the last sentence. It seems to jump to naming a terminator for the regression without explaining a path there. It seems to be an incomplete proof.

 

[ivebeenshown]

Okay, this sounds like a form of the Aristotle/St. Aquinas Unmoved/Prime Movers concept. A problem that I have with this argument is in the last sentence. It seems to jump to naming a terminator for the regression without explaining a path there. It seems to be an incomplete proof.

The argument does not attempt to ascribe any other qualities to this terminator (omniscience, personhood, etc.), only establish that when we refer to God, we are referring to that terminator.

Are you saying that there is not enough proof for a terminator at all?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

The argument does not attempt to ascribe any other qualities to this terminator (omniscience, personhood, etc.), only establish that when we refer to God, we are referring to that terminator.

Are you saying that there is not enough proof for a terminator at all?

Actually, there were properties ascribed earlier in the series of messages in which I’ve interacted.

Through reason we can know that God exists in that there is a transcendent creator of the universe who has the attributes of being all powerful, all knowing, and all loving. We can know that because it is metaphysically proven.

If that’s established in two separate proofs, that’s fine. Just trying to see how one works their way there.

Are you saying that there is not enough proof for a terminator at all?

No, I’m not against having a terminator at all. My terminator would be “I don’t know, I can’t infer the state of things prior to a certain distance back.” (Though that is more of a terminator for knowledge and inference).

 

[cc42]

Thinkingsapien:

Yes this argument is the prime mover argument from Aristotle and Aquinas.

There are other arguments that can be used to help arrive at the conclusion that you are looking for but I think that this argument can do the job itself.

If the terminator has to be the cause of all the other things then it has to will it, but in order to will it has to have an intellect. An intellect requires a mind. So the terminator would have to be a conscious mind. This helps us arrive at a theistic God, not just a blind force.

From there we can see that all changes are contingent upon this conscious mind because He is the causer of all the changes. So then we can arrive that the being is omnipotent.

If the being can’t be caused by anything else then it can’t change and can’t be lacking so it must be perfect.

I think that each of these philosophical moves is justified, but if not other arguments can be supplied.

 

[ivebeenshown]

Actually, there were properties ascribed earlier in the series of messages in which I’ve interacted.

If that’s established in two separate proofs, that’s fine. Just trying to see how one works their way there.

I see. I am not very familiar with any proofs of the intelligent/personal nature of the unmoved mover we call God. I think it is overkill to throw every attribute of God at the rational thinker all at once, so I have stuck with the ‘prime mover’.

No, I’m not against having a terminator at all. My terminator would be “I don’t know, I can’t infer the state of things prior to a certain distance back.” (Though that is more of a terminator for knowledge and inference).

You can infer that there must have been some uncaused cause. This terminates not only our ‘distance back of knowledge of states of things’, but the very real chain of cause and effect which exists in reality.

 

[Gaber]

atheist girl …
atheistgirl
God certainly could have forgiven us our sins without dying on the cross, as scripture says it was because He so loved the world that He gave His only Son. Not He loved the world afterwards. The point of faith, sin, and redemption is having a realtionship with God. God would be a distant being who doesn’t show concern if He just wiped away our sins with the wave of a hand. Instead He showed He loves us by suffering and being obedient for us. God came to be the perfect human because we can’t do that. Jesus’ suffering was in a sense the ultimate prayer and penance for mankind.

…

For the sake of a more complete context, what cc42* is advocating is the Roman Catholic view the story of Jesus is literal history and has exactly the significance the Magesterium of the Church ascribes to it.

A more practical view held by many is that while there may have, or probably was a Jesus, that the acient mystery Teaching of transfomation that He, among others, taught in secret (Mark 4:33,34) and which matches symbolically the events in the Gosples, was historicised as the Church gained popularity and political clout during the third century,probably even before. Such mystery teachings being for the very few, and the idea of good and evil (yer fur us er agin’ us) being useful poitically, the Teaching became politicized and made into the history of one Man, as distinct from the transfomative possibility universally inherent in mankind. Ad thus came the age of the Church having such political and military power, even over kingdoms.
*Does that mean that in your view, the catholic church is the answer to the Universe, as in *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?* :)

 

[davidv]

For the sake of a more complete context, what cc42* is advocating is the Roman Catholic view the story of Jesus is literal history and has exactly the significance the Magesterium of the Church ascribes to it.

A more practical view held by many is that while there may have, or probably was a Jesus, that the acient mystery Teaching of transfomation that He, among others, taught in secret (Mark 4:33,34) and which matches symbolically the events in the Gosples, was historicised as the Church gained popularity and political clout during the third century,probably even before. Such mystery teachings being for the very few, and the idea of good and evil (yer fur us er agin’ us) being useful poitically, the Teaching became politicized and made into the history of one Man, as distinct from the transfomative possibility universally inherent in mankind. Ad thus came the age of the Church having such political and military power, even over kingdoms.

*Does that mean that in your view, the catholic church is the answer to the Universe, as in *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?* :)

Why is this more practical view more in line with the truth?

 

[Gaber]

Why is this more practical view more in line with the truth?

Because it frees the Teaching of Jesus from the interpretations posed on Him by the necessities of popularizing what in essence is an esoteric teaching gone public. I won’t inflame people on here by saying what that actually can mean, but in practice it would result in a recogniton of what is at the root of mystical practice, especially contemplation, as a far more common experience than is allowed by the current Christian model.

 

[cc42]

Gaber:

What you are saying implies that nothing in the Gospels or New Testament is historically accurate. I see that as implausible. The Church was established before the New Testament was written and the writings are the output of what she believed about Jesus Christ who was always affirmed as a historical person and both God and man.

 

[davidv]

Because it frees the Teaching of Jesus from the interpretations posed on Him by the necessities of popularizing what in essence is an esoteric teaching gone public. I won’t inflame people on here by saying what that actually can mean, but in practice it would result in a recogniton of what is at the root of mystical practice, especially contemplation, as a far more common experience than is allowed by the current Christian model.

I cannot tell from this response if my question was addressed. As a whole, this response seems like it consists of mostly personal speculation, and I have no clue if it bears any resemblance to reality.