This web site shows that Christian's paradigm is the less plausible historically. It concluded:
- 90% chance Christianity began with a mythical Christ.
- 9% he was only a man who his followers claimed had resurrected.
That makes a prior probability of 1% that Jesus was God (the highest I can go).
To reach a quasi certitude, we are turning here to scientific & philosophical arguments.
In no way, this page pretends to be exhaustive on the matter. It is not also the main purpose of this study.
Reminder: Christianity says Jesus was
- God & Savior of Mankind
- A Miraculous Prophet
- Crucified under Pilate & Founder of Christianity
- One of the figure behind the ministry in Galilee.
Most of the historical arguments develop on this web site concern the two or three last points.
Although, it did once in a while argue against the first point 'God & Savior of Mankind'. For example:
-
Everything in Christianity can be found elsewhere.
See tab - The Dependency on the Old Testament.
The New Testament needs the O.T. to make sense.- Jesus was intimately familiar with the O.T. and strongly believed in it.
- The majority of what he said and did is linked to the O.T.. He often quoted it directly.
Looking closer, besides history, Christianity contains a lot of dogmas and beliefs that can be investigated by science & philosophy.
All of them create an edifice that looks very much like an unstable castle of cards:
- Existence of a Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent God.
- Existence of an afterlife where heaven and hell exist.
- Existence of a judge that will decide your fate there.
- Jesus Death is a blood sacrifice freeing Humans from sins.
- The veracity of the Old Testament.
- The moral & ethics teached by the Bible is divine.
- God has created all life.
- You can travel through heavens that lie just above your head.
- There will be a judgement day.
- Resurrection of the flesh.
- You can eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus.
- Pooring water on your head is a necessary step for salvation.
- Sins and the original sin exist.
- Prayer works.
- Demons exist.
- ...
All these beliefs are linked together and depend on each other.
Remove several of them and the edifice collapses entirely.
But here, none of them stands!
To judge some Christian claims, we may use these kind of rules:
- "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity".
the Occam's razor
- "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
Hitchens's razor
- “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
C. Sagan
| Anti-Science | Bible's Message | Jesus Message | Jesus Theology | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Many Good Reasons | Irrelevant | Horrible Law |
Immoral & Cruel |
Nothing New |
Absurd | Believe or Be Damned |
A Time of Sacrifice |
A Blood Sacrifice | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Bible is not the word of God
"The Bible does not contain a single sentence that could not
have been written by a man or woman living in the first century." Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation
The Message of the Old Testament
The disapointing Message of Jesus
Jesus' Theology
The Silliness of the Story
Reason & Science vs. Religion
No Afterlife
Science disproves the separation or "duality" of soul and body, of spirit and matter.
The rise of the role of the brain (Wikipedia) and its understanding
allows us to explain most of human's thoughts & behaviors.
...with the painfull consequence that the chance for an afterlife is extremely low.
The Weakness of Counter-Arguments
See the New Atheists:
R. Dawkins, S. Harris, C. Hitchens, D. Dennett, V. Stenger, Ayaan Hirsi Ali...
Irrelevant
"Academic biblical scholarship has clearly succeeded in showing that the ancient civilization
that produced the Bible held beliefs about the origin, nature, and purpose of the world and humanity
that are fundamentally opposed to the views of modern society.
The Bible is thus largely irrelevant to the needs and concerns of contemporary human beings."
An Ordinary book lacking any essential understanding
"Why doesn't the Bible say anything about electricity, or about DNA, or about the actual age and size of the universe?
What about a cure for cancer? When we fully understand the biology of cancer,
this understanding will be easily summarized in a few pages of text.
Why aren't these pages, or anything remotely like them, found in the Bible?
Good, pious people are dying horribly from cancer at this very moment, and many of them are children.
The Bible is a very big book. God had room to instruct us in great detail about how to keep slaves and sacrifice a wide variety of animals [to himself!].
To one who stands outside the Christian faith, it is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience."
Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation
Our moral progress is independant of the Bible or despite it.
Superfluous, Obscur, Ambiguous and Illogical
In Sense and Goodness Without God, Richard Carrier described
what he found in the Bible.
"In general, no divinely inspired text would be so long and rambling and hard to understand.
Wise men speak clearly, brillantly, their ability at communication is measured by their succes at making themselves readily understood.
The Bible spans over a thousand pages of tiny, multi-columned text,
and yet says nowhere near as much, certainly nothing as well, as the Tao Te Ching does in a mere eighty-one stanzas.
The Bible is full of the superfluous
I asked myself:
would any wise, compassionate being even allow this book to be attributed to him, much less be its author? Certainly not.
How could Lao Tzu, a mere mortal, who never claimed any superior powers or status,
write better, more thoroughly, more concisely, about so much more, than the Inspired Prophets of God?
...
The Bible is plagued with a general obscurity and ambiguity, and illogicality,
which I had already noted as a child, and though I did understand more and saw it as less confused than I once had,
the improvement was minimal and not encouraging.
It still taught a morality that is unlivable, and above all contained hardly a hint of humor
or any mature acceptance of sexuality or anything distinctly and naturally human.
...
Though called a wise father, there is not a single example in the Old Testament of God sitting down and kindly teaching anyone...
"The Bible is good, the problem comes from the people who interpret and use it"
A common popular belief In the discussion forum of the Cercle Zététique
(the link is now broken as the forum doesn't exist anymore although this page
Jésus: info ou intox? is still there),
a member called Phif reminded us an idea
commonly accepted by a majority of people today:
"I would say that there is a huge number of wisdom teachings in the Bible.
It's far from being an accumulation of idiocies! When you forget about the mystic part,
there is still a philosophy that praises essential values for the cohesion of a society and men:
love, generosity, non-violence, altruism, etc..."
So, for Phif, there is no stupidity in the Bible,
but just some people who didn't understand it and wrongly interpreted it:
"The stupidity resides more in my opinion in its interpretation and in what man is doing with it.
All the horrors committed in the name of the Catholic religion have not been done in the name of the Bible,
but its interpretation (i.e. the religion)!"
Phif even extends this problem of textual interpretation to all religions:
"We should not criticize the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah but more how it is used."
Phif was answering my message 'Is our biblical idolatry justified?
that was giving plenty of examples where the Bible itself is terrible.
Weirdly, he totally ignored it, as he didn't support his claims by giving any evidence either.
So, let's scientifically investigate this belief:
What would happen to the world if we follow the philosophy of the Bible?
The text below is taken from the video
Preamble: The humility of the Bible. The Law of the Lord is perfect:
"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever."
Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:24-25
"The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.
The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the LORD are firm, and all of them are righteous." Psalm 19:7-9
1 - Wedding & Virginity
In 2008 in Lille (France), a muslim asked for the cancellation of his wedding because his bride was not a virgin during the wedding night.
A complex point to rule juridically by the French law:
2008 French mistaken virginity case.
Finally, French justice took side for the bride Virgin bride not 'essential' to marriage, French court rules - CBC.
"If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying,
“I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,”
then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin.
...
If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found,
she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.
She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house.
You must purge the evil from among you."
Deuteronomy 22:13-21
2 - Adultery
There is no law against adultery in nearly all developped countries (or these laws are not applied).
"If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then
they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman:
so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.
If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you." Deuteronomy 22:22-24
"If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—
both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death."
Leviticus 20:10
3 - Homosexuality
There is no law against homosexuality in any developped country.
We have even progressed a lot lately on the matter:
"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman,
both of them have committed an abomination:
they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."
Leviticus 20:13
"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination”"
Leviticus 18:22
Or even cross dressing:
"The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man,
neither shall a man put on a woman's garment:
for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.
Deuteronomy 22:5
Notice that previor to Christianity and Islam, practices and rituals for same-sex unions were recognized in Ancient Greece and Rome,
ancient Mesopotamia and a little bit everywhere else.
They became outlawed and crimes punishable by death in 342 AD by the Christian emperors Constantius II and Constans.
4 - Working the Sunday
Under special conditions, most developped countries
can authorize some companies to ask some of their employees to work the Sunday.
Any intrusion is only liable of a fine. Of course, anyone is free to work personally this day if he wants to.
"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God.
On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant,
nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns."
Exodus 20:8-10
"Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD:
whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death." Exodus 31:15
5 - Believing in other Gods
All developped countries guarantee full freedom in the matter of religious belief.
"Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing,
unto thy gates, even that man or that woman,
...
and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.
At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death;
but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.
...
The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people.
So thou shalt put the evil away from among you."
Deuteronomy 17:5-7
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
Exodus 20:3
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend,
Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee,
which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
...
Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him,
neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death,
and afterwards the hand of all the people.
And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die;
...
because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you."
Deuteronomy 13:6-11
"Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly,
and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.
And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof,
and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the LORD thy God:
and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again."
Deuteronomy 13:15-16
6 - Curse your parents
No law against it in any developped country.
"For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death:
he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him."
Leviticus 20:9
7 - Disobedient Children
French law doesn't say anything about it.
"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father,
or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city,
and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city,
This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die:
so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."
Deuteronomy 21:18-21
8 - To sin by your hand, foot or eye
The concept of 'sin' doesn't exist in French law.
"Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee,
cut them off, and cast them from thee:
it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee
: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire."
Matthew 18:8-9
9 - Equality Man-Woman
French law enforces equality.
"Let your women keep silence in the churches:
for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home:
for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.."
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression."
1 Timothy 2:11-14
10 - Slavery
Forbidden in any country.
"Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have,
shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you,
of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land:
and they shall be your possession.
And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession;
they shall be your bondmen for ever.
Leviticus 25:44-46
"And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand;
he shall be surely punished.
Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money."
Exodus 21:20-21
"Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again;
Not purloining, but shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things."
Titus 2:9-10
The Bible fully supports slavery and has been used in many cases to defend it:
11 - Blasphemy
No law against it.
"And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death,
and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger,
as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death."
Leviticus 24:16
The Bible clearly commands us to:
Any religion based on such book has no place in our societies.
"I looked in horror at the demonic monster being portrayed here.
He was worthy of universal condemnation, not workship. He who thinks he can do whatever he wants because he can
is as loathsome and untrustworthy as any psychopath.
It was bad enough that this God's idea of the "best" in man is a willingness to murder one's own child in demand.
It is inconceivable that any kind being would ever test Abraham's loyalty that way.
To the contrary, from any compassionate point of view, Abraham failed this test:
he was willing to kill for faith, setting morality aside for God.
A decent being would reward instead the man who responded to such a request with
"Go to hell! Only a demon would ask such a thing, and no compassionate man would do it".
But the Bible message is exactly the opposite. How frightening.
It was no surprise, then, to find that this same cruel god
Indeed, genocide
(Deuteronomy 2:31-34, 7:1-2, 20:10-15, and Joshua, e.g. 10:33)
and facism (Deuteronomy 22:23-24, Leviticus 20:13, 24:13-16, Numbers 15:32-6)
were the very law and standard practice of God, right next to the Ten Commandments.
Instead of condemning slavery, God condones it (Leviticus 25:44, cf Deuteronomy 5:13-14, 21:10-13).
And so on. All fairly repugnant. I could go on at length about the many horrible passages
that praise the immoral, the cruel, as the height of righteous
goodness. It does no good to try in desperation to make excuses for it.
A good and wise man's message would not need such excuses.
It follows that the Bible was written neither by the wise nor the good.
And the New Testament was only marginally better, though it too had its inexcusable features..."
Richard Carrier Sense and Goodness Without God
Apocalypse Now
"They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the LORD, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land.
Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:
And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. ... Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished." Isaiah 13:5-15
"Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God:
they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up."
Hosea 13:16
"And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.
And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword. And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. ... And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host... And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." Numbers 31:7-18
It is always a surprise for me to see how much Christians ignore all that (or is it hypocrisy?).
For example, in the summer of 2022, I visited a church in Brittany (France) with my sister who is a devout Christian.
Inside, there was an exhibit of signs telling the main conducts we should have in front of God.
My sister complained how silly was the one saying 'To Fear God'.
"Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness.
Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord." Joshua 24:14
10 directives given by Jesus to gain Salvation
Many sayings of Jesus concern a highly mystical place called the 'Kingdom of God',
including how to get there.
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,
and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
Luke 10:27 2 - Don't commit adultery, murder, stealing, lies, and honor father and mother
"Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother."
Luke 18:20 3 - Sell everything
"Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven"
Luke 18:22 "So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple."
Luke 14:33
4 - Follow Jesus
"and come, follow me."
Luke 18:22 "Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple."
Luke 14:27
5 - Hate father, mother, children, brothers, sisters and even your own life
"
If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father
and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26 6 - Eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man
"
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood,
you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. ... he who eats me will live because of me. ... he who eats this bread will live for ever." Jean 6:53-58 7 - Become like little children
"Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. "
Matthew 18:3 8 - Be Born Again "
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
... Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ... Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born anew.' The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit." John 3-8 (Notice that we know very well where the wind comes from and where it goes...) 9 - Follow the 613 laws of the Old Testament (most of them are completely dumb like hundred of them that concern animal sacrifice)
"
Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets;
I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.
For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:17-20 (Pharisees were among those who were follwing the 'Law' the most carefully) 10 - Believe in Jesus
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16
So, you need to:
A Mediocre Ethic
Christians like to claim that Jesus have preached a doctrine of peace and love.
However, principles of kindness (that are somewhat different than Cynism) are far from representing the majority of the content of the New Testament.
In reality, Christian commentators often ascribe to Jesus doctrines which are absent from the gospels.
Although it is one of the commonplaces of present-day moralists that his teaching has promoted happy family life,
this view is hard to reconcile with the texts where he encourages people to break up their families
for religious reasons (Luke 14:26).
Equally striking is the gospel disparagement of married life (Matthew 19:10-12).
Paul's views on this subject are well known (1 Corinthians 7).
And in Revelation 14:4 we are told that the men who will be saved are
"they which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins." If we read the Gospels in order to discover what standard of goodness they advocate,
we find that they contain less ethical teaching than is commonly supposed.
In Mark, there is practically none and the entire message of the Epistles is
"Have Faith and Believe and you will be saved."
The word 'faith' is mentioned 45 times in the Epistle to the Romans
and 23 times in 6 pages of Galatians.
It gets even worse during the final judgment
"
Then he will say to those on his left,
Matthew 25:41.'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels...'" This doctrine of eternal punishment had been utterly rejected by
Epictetus, Seneca and others.
The inferiority of Christianity here is admitted with characteristic candour in the Encyclopaedia Biblica.
On this ground, many Christians, even apologists became heretics themselves.
For Origen (185-254), it was because
of his compassionate belief that all souls would eventually be redeemed.
Inexcusable Features
"And the New Testament was only marginally better [than the old], though it too had its inexcusable features:
Worse, its entire message is not "be good and go to heaven", itself a naive and childish concern
(the good are good because they care, not because they want a reward), but "believe or be damned"
(Mark 16:16, Matthew 10:33, Luke 12:9, John 3:18), a fundamentally wicked doctrine.
The good judge others by their character, not their beliefs, and punish deeds, not thoughts, and punish only to teach,
not to torture. But none of this moral truth was in the Bible,
and the New Testament had none of the humanistic wisdom of the Tao Te Ching which speak to all ages,
but instead drones on about subjection to kings and acceptance of slavery,
while having no knowledge of the needs of a democratic society, the benefits of science, or the proper uses of technology.
It even promotes superstition over science, with all its talk about demonic possession and faith healing
and speaking in tongues, and assertions that believers will be immune to poison (Mark 16:17-18)."
Richard Carrier Sense and Goodness Without God
It's all a question of faith...
“You unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied,
“how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.” Mark 9:19
A Time of Sacrifice
The New Testament writers direct us to understand our Lord’s death in sacrificial categories.
Sacrifice was a popular Jewish belief of:
Wikipedia Passover Sacrifice
List of references for Jesus Died Once For All
The image of God as requiring the suffering and death of Jesus to effect reconciliation with humankind is immoral.
"If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them? Who's God trying to impress?
Presumably himself, since He is judge and jury as well as execution victim."
R. Dawkins
How does the sacrifice itself function?
For close to 2,000 years, Christians have accepted that Jesus sacrificial death on Calvary
was a redeeming act which conferred salvation on the believer.
The surprising fact is that nowhere in all the biblical writings is this question addressed.
No writer of the Old or New Testaments makes an effort to explain it.
Hebrews 9:22 states:
"Under the law almost everything is purified with blood,
and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" [RSV]. A few verses earlier, the author concludes (through a somewhat deficient argument) that
to ratify a covenant with God, a death must occur involving the shedding of blood.
However, no explanation accompanies these statements.
The Evolution of Sacrifice
In Israelite religion, communion with God, especially in the matter of
At some early time, the sacrifice of animals seems to have grown out of and supplanted the sacrifice of humans.
The legend of Abraham and Isaac in which God demands the sacrifice of Abraham's son,
then relents and instructs him to offer the lamb instead, is regarded as a mythical story
symbolizing the changeover in the dimly remembered past from human to animal sacrifice.
That human sacrifice survived in at least isolated cases in Israelite history
is indicated by the traditions recorded in Judges 11:30-40 and 2 Kings 16:3 and 21:6.
Such practices had their roots in those among the Canaanites,
from which the Israelite population is now regarded as having been largely derived
(See Norman K.Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible: A Socio-Literay Introduction, p.215-16).
Biblical and other records show that during the first half of the first millennium BCE,
the Phoenicians (related to the Canaanites) living on the Mediterranean coast of Syria in cities like Sidon and Tyre
still occasionally sacrificed children to their gods, and the Carthaginians (of Phoenician stock) continued to do so in Roman times.
A Primitive Concept
It would not have occurred to the ancient mind that there was anything reprehensible
about a god who required the blood sacrifice of animals to effect purification or expiate sin
because it would have been looked upon as part of the natural workings of the universe,
which probably even the god had no power to change.
This may be why neither the Old Testament nor the New makes any attempt
to explain how the sacrifice of Jesus brought about the expiation of sin.
It may have been regarded as one of God's mysteries.
The practice of blood sacrifice, even of animals, is a primitive concept
which no one in the 20th or 21st centuries would regard with anything but aversion,
yet the principle itself still lies at the heart of the Christian religion
and is still vigorously defended in that context.
Earl Doherty The Jesus Puzzle
A Blood Sacrifice
We talk about and contemplate the experiences which Jesus, according to the Gospels, underwent,
and we react in horror. Lee Strobel (a famous american apologist) characterized it this way in The Case For Christ:
"a topic of unimaginable brutality: a beating so barbarous that it shocks the conscience, and a form of capital punishment so depraved that it stands as wretched testimony to man's inhumanity to man." In Challenging the Verdict, Earl Doherty answered
Lee Strobel this way:
"Throughout the Roman empire, many thousands underwent those barbarous beatings
and that very depraved form of capital punishment.
In other times and places, cruelties of equal barbarism have been practiced
All of it is indeed a wretched testimony that is terrible to contemplate,
and especially terrible that it applies to ourselves.
But when we apply it in the Gospels and within the context of Christian faith,
I suggest that this concept speaks not of eternal truths
but of times and modes of thinking which were on a far more primitive level than our own.
Blood sacrifice goes back into prehistoric times, as a means of placating and entreating the gods,
and to perpetuate the idea that God needs such a thing in order to forgive our sins
is to condemn the concept of Deity to a degree of enlightenment much inferior to the one we have reached ourselves.
To perpetuate it is to condemn our society and our own minds to a continued enslavement to those primitive times and ideas.
There must surely be a better way, and a better philosophy by which to conduct our lives and on which to base our hopes.
Mr. Strobel, I ask you to change your image, your contrast.
I would ask you to envision yourself not in your comfortable home,
but standing in the streets of Jerusalem and on the hillside of Calvary, and watching those horrific events unfold.
And then I would ask you to ask yourself: are these the workings of a God?" Earl Doherty Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ"  |
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"It ain't those parts of the Bible that
Mark TwainI can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." "There is one notable thing about our Christianity:
bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is
- in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree -
it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible,
with its prodigious crime - the invention of Hell.
Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is,
neither the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place.
Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt."
Mark Twain
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Some Links
Books:
Web Sites:
Videos:
"Religion is an area where we tolerate dogma completely uncritically...
Sam Harris The End of Faith
Most religion have merely canonized a few products of ancient ignorance and derangement and passed them down to us as through they were primordial truths. This leaves billions of us believing what no sane person could believe on his own."
Ricky Gervais & Bertrand Russel
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God's sudden incarnation in a man who would have revealed himself solely to a handful of fishermen for 12 month!
