Benjamin Taylor6 said:🙏 All we're missing here is one Jehovah's Witness to make this whole circus complete. 😂 Of course, any Muslim is going to have an official stance from Islamic theologians regarding death and the atonement of the sins of Jesus of Nazareth. And their take is basically: "What kind of atonement is this nonsense?" It makes Allah look like some pagan deity demanding a child sacrifice just to show mercy. In this version, Allah gives his own only son as a sacrifice!? All to pay for a sin that Adam and Eve committed back in the Garden of Eden—a sin that spread through humanity like a genetic disease! 😲
So, which God became human? In Christianity (though not their specific version): Jesus of Nazareth. In Hinduism (again, not their version): Krishna. There are plenty more, but they aren't really worth discussing since they fall under ancient mythology, and frankly, most people today couldn't care less about that stuff.
Gregory Jackson said:But, honestly, maybe it didn't even go down quite like that, even though Matthew 27:46 says so, since there are these contradictions in the Gospels. I mean, he had the high priests from the Sanhedrin up there on the cross with him—the same guys who sentenced him—along with Caiaphas, all mocking him. And back then, Jesus spoke in Aramaic:
Vmar Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me within them?
I think it's super important to understand the context behind this statement, because it confuses so many people; it makes it look like God just ditched His own son on the cross, which doesn't make any sense at all.
Should we really believe everything someone writes down?
Alex Ramos91 said:Look, Satan is already under judgment; he’s just waiting on his final sentencing.
And let’s be real, Jesus' sacrifice hasn't globally established justice just yet... its full implementation (which, again, is rooted in the cross) is still pending until Jesus returns:According to His promise, we are looking forward to new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:13)
Jesus is always right here with us, it's just that those who don't want to see it simply refuse to acknowledge Him.
If it weren't for this whole dogma surrounding forgiveness, maybe the world would actually be a paradise right now—two thousand years after the man who gave His life so we could all be forgiven. Instead, we just ended up with people twisting that very sacrifice to serve their own selfish interests. It’s what Orwell saw through, isn't it? He captured it perfectly in *Animal Farm*, a book that remains just as relevant for every society today as it was when he penned it.
mistygull16 said:I'm with you there, if we're talking reincarnation! 👍
But honestly, I'm curious what everyone else thinks, specifically those who don't believe they existed before this life, yet still feel like they’ve been forgiven 🤷 for something.
I mean, if I went to some judge today to thank him for forgiving a $4,000 debt (roughly what the national debt would be per person if you split it up)that'd be pretty stupid, but if I actually committed a crime, ended up in prison, finally saw the light, repented, and started acting right, then getting a pardon to cut my sentence in half? Yeah, I'd definitely be grateful for that pardon if I actually did something wrong.
"Two bad guys decide to team up and just do whatever they want, figuring they'll be forgiven later, and they accept that logic. Then a second bad guy joins in, agreeing to follow their lead once the forgiveness comes. What do you think—which one of them was the first to turn good, eventually becoming even more righteous than Jesus himself?"
mistygull16 said:Alright, let’s get specific here—in your own life, anyway. I haven't done anything nearly bad enough to deserve a death sentence, and honestly, if some king decided to sentence me to death, I'd just call him an unjust ruler🤷 I'm still stuck on what you actually did to make God so incredibly angry😕 Like, what exactly did He forgive you for?
If we were talking about a raise at work, sure, I'd be interested. But when the President hands out pardons? That's really only news for the folks sitting in a cell somewhere.
By being here, it implies we’ve messed up somehow and need to set things right during this lifetime—or rather, during this repeated grade in school. It's like failing a class; you didn't learn the material, so you have to retake it, and life works much the same way. Is death itself really a punishment when there's a chance you might return, and besides, we all have to die eventually whenever our time comes.
I suppose I should probably address what everyone is saying about this, though I’m not entirely sure where to start without getting lost in my own thoughts. It feels like we’re all just circling the same drain, waiting for someone to make sense of things while the rest of us watch from the sidelines. I was reading some comments earlier—Harold Reyes3 had some interesting points, if you can call them that, though he does tend to wander off into the weeds quite often—and it made me wonder if we’re actually looking at the same reality. It’s funny, really. We spend so much time dissecting every little detail, every minor shift in the wind, as if knowing the exact temperature of the air will somehow stop the storm from coming. Dennis Moore4 seems to think there’s a method to the madness, a sort of grand design we just haven't grasped yet, but I find myself leaning more toward the idea that we’re all just stumbling through the dark. Even when you look at the way people react to the big shifts in our institutions, it’s almost performative. It’s like watching a play where everyone knows their lines but nobody actually understands the plot. wanderinggardener12 mentioned something similar once, about how the soil stays the same even when you change the seeds, and I think there’s a certain truth in that, even if it sounds a bit too poetic for a Tuesday afternoon. We swap out one set of problems for another, thinking we’ve made progress, while the fundamental stuff remains stubbornly unchanged. It’s a slow process, a measured kind of chaos, and I’m just sitting here wondering if anyone else feels that same quiet sense of inevitability. Not that I’m being pessimistic—perish the thought—it’s more of a calm observation. We move, we adjust, we argue, and eventually, we just settle into whatever comes next. kaže: I found myself getting stuck on the sheer lack of logic in the whole argument, because if we’re all inherently flawed just because of Adam's choices, then there isn't really any concept of "sinfulness" left in us at all—not that I'm trying to start some massive debate about whether Adam even existed or not, but the math just doesn't add up.
You’ve hit on something there, and it's a point that really doesn't hold much water if you look at it through the lens of official Christian doctrine. It’s a bit of a logical knot, isn't it? Because if we accept the premise that children go straight to heaven, then the rest of a person's life essentially becomes nothing more than a slow, steady increase in the statistical probability of ending up in hell. If that's the case, the remainder of one's existence feels somewhat aimless—or at least entirely devoid of purpose—for anyone whose primary goal is to secure a spot in paradise.
That leads me to believe that certain arguments only really hold water if you're operating within a system of reincarnation.
You’re getting incredibly close to the core of it. I remember when my own son was just a little kid, barely old enough to understand what he was saying, yet he looked at me and remarked that "life is a trial." It really does come down to the path we choose—whether we're carving out a way toward heaven or sliding straight into hell. At the end of the day, we are the ones who stand trial; we set the terms of our own testing, while God simply watches from the sidelines. He doesn't step in to nudge us along, nor does He move to stop us. You are your own master and your own judge, and frankly, there isn't a more relentless or unforgiving magistrate than your own conscience. Every mistake you make requires a correction, and if you’ve spent a lifetime stumbling, well, you’ll be spending a long time fixing those errors. There is no external absolution to lean on. I've always felt that Jesus, through His sacrifice, wasn't offering a loophole, but rather providing a blueprint for how to actually live a life free of sin—and then some. No amount of blood can wash a person clean if they aren't doing the work. To suggest otherwise only serves to feed the ego of those who are perfectly happy to keep sinning, all while nursing the naive hope that they can just ask for a free pass later.
Benjamin Taylor6 said:Eli, Eli, Lama azavtani (Walt Whitman) A little verse:
He died upon Golgotha And the world knows it well But from that ancient sacrifice No fruit has yet swelled
Something like this was written:
The harvest will come once the human decay fully matures—once it burns away to become fertile ground. Two thousand years might seem like a long wait, but perhaps we’ll be waiting another two millennia before things truly ripen.
silentviper19 said:If you want to talk about something that’s totally irrational and defies all logic, we have to talk about Jesus’ death and resurrection!
I mean, think about it. You’ve got an almighty God—someone who is supposed to be all-powerful—choosing to send Jesus, who is actually Himself, just to carry out a suicide mission to pay for human sins!🤣
To me, these are just plain facts, and honestly, it’s where the whole argument ends right there. It just goes to show how incredibly imaginative the human mind can be, fueled by these wild hallucinations about an all-powerful God who, for some reason, felt the need to pull off something so nonsensical!
I wonder why it strikes you as so unbelievable that God would act this way; wouldn't you sacrifice yourself for your own children? Or perhaps, could this all just be God playing a bit of a game with humanity, watching to see if they’d actually figure it out even after two thousand years? (The vast majority certainly hasn't.)
Benjamin Taylor6 said:👍 I am in complete agreement with you. Our ways of thinking are remarkably similar—truly. If I may be so bold as to add one thing: I highly doubt the Christians (or even the Muslims) are going to see eye to eye with you on this.
There is a crucial element missing from this discussion, though: will the actual BELIEVERS ever reach a consensus? It might not matter which specific denomination you belong to, but rather whether you actually hold the faith in your heart or if you're just going through the motions.
Well, I’ve got to head out now. Honestly, people, God gave you all a sense of reason—so when you actually find yourselves in a position to use it, for heaven's sake, stir things up a bit and put that blessing to work. As Jesus said, "for whoever has will be given more, and whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken away," so please, just watch yourselves; don't end up losing even that tiny shred of common sense you have left. Anyway, I'm off.
Jesus, or Isa, or even Yehua—though I’m no Hebrew scholar, and while Yehua sounds remarkably close to Yahweh, it might just be a coincidence—it feels more like he lived his life as a sort of living demonstration, much like a masterclass in how one ought to exist if they truly intend to sit at the right hand of God. He started by learning from those wiser than himself; back then, those were the Nazarenes, where he essentially completed his foundational education by choice. Even as a child, there was this sense of enlightenment about him, which isn't exactly a rare phenomenon these days if you look at the concept of indigo children. Later, he spent time trading wisdom until he reached maturity, eventually setting out to fulfill his mission to save humanity, especially since people during that era were utterly devoid of empathy—just imagine, leaders like Herod were ordering the slaughter of infants as if it were nothing. He could have bypassed all that struggle entirely, but he genuinely loved people because we are all part of one single being, a truth he understood deeply. So, how did Jesus, Isa, or Yehua actually save mankind? He didn't hurt a soul, he never raised a hand against anyone, he harbored no ill will, avoided ugly words, helped everyone he met, and even befriended his enemies until they became friends; in that sense, he lived a life without true enemies. Jesus was indeed God, though the real question lies in what we actually mean when we use that noun, and what that word fundamentally signifies. I’m convinced that 99.9 percent of people don't even grasp the weight of that word in any language, regardless of how they address the divine; after all, can anyone really tell someone else that their specific name for God is "incorrect"? It's just a noun, much like the name of any Prophet, no matter what they were called. And how do we perceive these Prophets? Take Jesus, whose name isn't always honored; he is often depicted looking like a Nordic man, despite the reality of who was living in Palestine at the time. Most people there had dark skin, perhaps just a shade lighter than someone from Central Africa, which is why white travelers would head to Egypt to seek refuge, a place where people have remained quite dark both then and now. What matters is the teaching of Jesus—the example itself—while everything else is just empty chatter, much like the teachings of other Prophets. People need to learn how to distinguish the core doctrine from the various additions that have been tacked on over the centuries; paper can withstand any lie, and since the Prophets themselves didn't write anything down, we must remember that the vibration of spoken words carries immense power and weight. Think on that.
First off, hello. I’d say we’re dealing with adults here, though I find myself wondering where exactly these people have been living all this time—where they went to school, or if they’ve ever actually sat down to contemplate the nature of existence at all. It seems everyone here takes everything so incredibly literally, whereas all those sacred texts were written using allegory; you really need to exercise a bit of imagination and, frankly, quite a lot of wisdom to process what’s written on those pages. It’s a mistake to jump into an argument when your understanding of life is so fundamentally grounded in the mundane. Before anything else, one has to consider WHO was actually writing and transmitting this TRUTH. After all, aren't we all witnesses to the fact that people write everything from simple short stories to doctoral dissertations that might not have any bearing on actual reality? If someone wants to understand life and debate its meaning, they should perhaps start by reading George Orwell’s *Animal Farm*; once they grasp what the author was trying to convey there, they won't find it such a monumental task to decipher the so-called Holy Scripture. The question of who decided which writings would be deemed Holy and which would not is absolutely paramount. To simply accept something as truth just because it was imposed upon us by tyrants and butchers—well, you have to admit, that’s pretty foolish (though I suppose some folks here feel right at home with that approach, likely doing the exact same thing today under the guise of FAITH). First, we are presented with the TEN COMMANDMENTS that God gave to Moses, yet somehow, look at that, "Thou shalt not kill" doesn't show up until the fifth spot, does it? Perhaps someone swapped the tablets, or maybe we just haven't considered which side one is supposed to start reading from (since some read left to right and others right to left). There is so much more to be said about what is written in the words of the PROPHET. In the Quran, it says that if you harm one person, you have harmed God. For anyone with half a brain, that’s plenty; yet later it suggests stoning a man. I’d love to know if the enlightened Muhammad actually said something that contradicts his own initial teaching. I find it hard to believe; he was truly an enlightened man. It would be reasonable to be able to accept what you think is right while rejecting the chaff from the wheat, but is it truly rational to believe everything handed down to you by someone who doesn't even possess a peaceful conscience? I’m thinking specifically of Paul, who was a persecutor before he wasn't, and who largely drives the modern interpretation of the Bible. It would be lovely if thinking people applied a little critical thought to their own beliefs first; I’m not saying anyone shouldn't believe, because a believer believes, and others believe too.