The Old Testament tells of how the Israelites needed to have periodical sacrifices to atone for sin. They had to do this over & over. Jesus Christ came as the perfect sacrifice, to die once and for all. It was a profoundly symbolic act, one that generations to come can call upon. So no repeated sacrifices are needed.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only beloved son- that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life
If you look at it from a child's view, which is the simplified version of things I never really bothered to Google about, God sacrificed his son Jesus to pay for the world's sins. So, God gave the ultimate sacrifice to save mankind-giving his son. There's nothing equal to a father's love to their child, and if God has sacrificed his child, his only child in fact, you know shit just got real. As I was told over and over as a child, God loves us enough to do that sacrifice, and Jesus understood his father's plan. God made his child human, from birth by Jesus' mom the Virgin Mary, up to the point that he was crucified on the cross. Jesus actually had the choice to walk away and not participate to his father's plan, but he didn't. He went along because he understood everything, and why it should be done.
It might sound silly to a secular person, but basically, because God had already made the rules, a sacrifice was still required in atonement for sins. So Jesus, the ultimate and perfect sacrifice, gave His life so that our debt is paid
But why was a human sacrifice needed? Why couldn't Yahweh just forgive humans? Why did he even create humans that can sin? The Bible frequently mentions our lack of free will, so that isn't a very good reason for why we can sin.
There's a reason Christ is called the Lamb of God. That is, it wasn't a human sacrifice. I think that God does give us free will. It's like having a child, sometimes you stamp your feet and stop them from eating rat poison & other times you just let them find out how bad vinegar tastes.
Human sacrifice may have been a poor way of putting it yet, but it doesn't answer why he needed someone, who is actually himself(?), to die to forgive humans.
And even if he did, then why did Jesus only suffer for three days? How is three days equivalent to billions of eternities worth of pain?
Where exactly do you find mention of the lack of free will in the Bible?
Your "three days equivalence" comes from the perfect nature of the sacrifice, and out of His Godhood.
God is perfectly self-consistent (ie. unchanging), thus, once the rules were made (or rather, the rules have always existed, at least as we are capable of conceiving them as temporal creatures) they cannot be changed.
@sir_spiderman Calvanists believe that people are saved (i.e. Go to heaven) through "grace" alone. It's predeterminist. That is, even though we have free will (every Christian pretty much says we have free will, it's mentioned several times in the Bible) god's grace alone will save us. Catholics, the Christians I associate with, say we need god's grace and good actions. So we have free will, we make good choices, we believe in Christ, and so we're saved. That being said, Catholics don't have a list of people going to hell, either. We're not allowed to say "oh, you're sinning in this way so you're going to hell" or even "you don't believe in christ, you're going to hell."
Also, think of this from God's perspective. Could he have made a bunch of beings without free will? Sure--Jewish mysticism says that angels are beings without free will. There's actually a story that goes that god made the angels first. They had no free will and were therefore "perfect" by god's standards. But god got bored of them because if you make something that has no choice but to love you, is it really love that was earned? So, god made the humans who had the choice to love Him. After this part of the story, the whole Lucifer bit comes in where he got jealousy etc. Etc, but the illustration is good to think about why god gave us free will. BTW, these are really good, solid questions and thanks for asking them. Even if it is from a "I'm curious as to how Christians would answer this" that is just as valid as any other approach
Okay one more. Another very beautiful part about the Crucifixion is how God came down to the level of his creation and experienced everything we did. He suffered the greatest form of execution for us just to know us better because He loves us that much. It's another way to look at it, but yea
Well, crucifixion isn't the most painful form of torture, but I'll let you have that one. The Bible frequently makes claim to Yahweh knowing everything and having a plan for everything. The very existence of an omniscient being contradicts free will and said being having a plan destroys any version of it. You cannot willing choose to do something if another being knew what you were going to choose. That's like saying a book character can choose to go either left or right. He cannot choose. Someone else has already written down exactly what he will do. If Yahweh is omniscient and has a plan, then we are merely book characters going along through an already written life.
Well, Yahweh is omnipotent, so yea, he could have made beings without free will. Just look in the above paragraph.
Also nobody has answered why Yahweh needed to kill himself, the Jesus thing is rather odd, to forgive people. Why not just forgive them without demanding the death of his son who is also himself.
@jimcrichton I wouldn't describe Yahweh as self-consistent. More like paradoxical and contradictory. The very existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being being impossible in multiple ways aside, Yahweh frequently murders or demands the murder of people while both saying murder is sinful and that he is without sin.
The most obvious statement is the following:
Genesis 1:31 Yahweh saw that his creation was perfect.
Genesis 6:5-6 Yahweh saw that his creation was imperfect.
This is another pretty obvious one:
Genesis 4:4-5 God prefers Abel's offering and has no regard for Cain's.
2nd Corinthians 19:7, AC 10:34, RO 2:11 All of these say that Yahweh is impartial and has no preferences.
Contradictions in the Bible are plentiful. Even a simple critical read of Genesis 1 will bring dozens of contradictions, but if you want a faster method, then just google it.
It has to do with Jewish tradition. In the Bible, the Jewish people had to offer sacrifies for specific occasions (sin offering, grief offerings, etc.). That's what God commanded them. To end this tradition, He sent the perfect sacrifice to be the sin sacrifice for all sins ever. I doubt you want to go this far, but Dominican Priests (most often found at Catholic Newman Centers) are the best in apologetics. I know you'd have an interesting conversation with one. In addition, this type of stuff is not very well articulated over text, just because it takes way more than a paragraph or two to answer all your questions. And again, they are really good questions and I thank you for asking them. Let me know if ya want me to go into detail as to how free will can coexist with an omnipotent being
Btw God did not NEED to sacrifice Himself for us. He chose to. Maybe as a display of love. Just like how God COULD suspend gravity at any time, but choses not to. God can do anything, but only chooses to do certain things. Why, human beings do not know. We do not pretend to know why God does some things and not others. That's why we trust that He has a plan and that whatever it is it is good.
So why not just burn animals? Why kill someone? Yahweh DOES have a history of killing innocents, see the flood, the killing of the first borns, et cetera, so it kinda makes sense, but not in an omnibenevolent standpoint.
And that one statement is why I dislike Christianity. "He has a plan." It's such a cop out answer. Innocents die? A Church burns down? Unanswered prayers? The murder and rape of a child? God has a plan, so don't worry.
Don't worry about ways medicine can help people. God has a plan.
Don't obtain scientific knowledge. God has a plan.
It essentially says, "I don't know why, but I'm too scared to answer. God must have done it for some reason, but I don't know. Discovering why things work is so terrifying that I feel more comfortable sitting in my cave and thanking those brave enough to leave Christianity."
I mean, I can't speak for other Christian traditions, but modern day Catholicism is very interested in how the world works, scientifically and otherwise. I myself and a devout Catholic and a Medical Doctor, and in no way do those things conflict for me. I'm actually thinking about joining an order of Sisters (nuns) who are doctors also. When we think of God's plan, it isn't usually, oh, all those people were killed, but it's okay because God has a plan. It is usually, god has a plan for my life, he made me to do something that only I can do, I want to find out what it is. Or, in broader terms, that god wants as many people to be in his kingdom as possible, and he has a plan to do that (this is the lesser used one in Catholicism.)
In terms of Free Will, Catholics (again, not Calvinists) think it's compatible with an omniscient God.
Pretend you can see the future. You look at someone ordering some food and see that they are going to order a cheeseburger. Just because you looked into the future and saw what was going to happen, does that mean that person didn't choose?God doesn't write out what every person is going to do, He just happens to live beyond space and time and therefore knows what we're going to do. That is what omniscient means, after all: all-knowing
...Yahweh is pretty adamant about the Earth being flat and the stars being bits of paint on the firmament which stop the massive ocean in space from flooding onto Earth. Also it's not free will, it's the illusion of free will. Free will doesn't really exist as all our choices are the result of natural instincts, past experiences, and current stimuli.
The Catholic idea of medicine is to pray. If Catholicism likes knowledge so much, then why did it kill anyone who gave true information but contradicted the Bible?
Yahweh has a plan. We agree on that. Yahweh has a perfect plan. We can agree on that as well. Would you not agree that a perfect plan takes all variables into account? If Yahweh has a plan, which he does, then he takes into consideration every action that everything, including people, will have. That makes these actions a part of his plan meaning that every single decision you will make is already predetermined.
A human is nothing but a rock that has tricked itself into thinking it is alive. The idea that we are otherwise is known as Species Bias which means the notion that humans are better than other things, particularly other life, because of an arbitrary reason. We can predict exactly how a rock will react when you hit it with a certain amount of force if you know the conditions of the rock and we can predict exactly how a human will react when given certain stimuli in the very same way, if a bit more complicated.
I used to believe that free will didn't exist due to cause and effect but in a scientific sense known as determinism. I no longer believe it due to the random nature of quantum mechanics. Over a small scale such as a few hundred thousand years the randomness doesn't mean much, but over millions or billions of years it can have large effects that simply cannot be accounted for.
That's why I look down on theistic people. They vehemently refuse to change their beliefs even when given evidence to the contrary. I vehemently believed in determinism due to cause and effect, but I changed my beliefs when I was given evidence to the contrary.
Wait, what? That's the Christian Scientists. They say prayer is the only form of healing. Again, I'm a doctor and a catholic, and the Church applauds that. As I say, American Protestantism has ruined my faith. The official teaching of the Catholic Church is that evolution is real. A catholic priest came up with the Big Bang theory and was applauded for it. Again, can't speak for American evangelical denoms, but there is not one aspect of science that the Church takes issue with. We even explain miracles with science and See no issue it in
Also in Christianity, anything perfect is a part of God. Therefore, if God has a plan, it's perfect bc it's His. He knows all, and most importantly, he is all loving. God IS Love. I get what you're saying, but I think we have different ideas of plans here, and that's the issue. God doesn't say "okay, and then Matt does this, and I'm going to make him do it bc it's part of my plan." He says, "oh, so Matt is apparently going to do this (I didn't make him do it, I can just tell the future) so in response, I'll send this bird here" bad example, but it illustrates my point
And to reiterate, Calvanists are predeterminists. Catholics and many non-Calvanists are not. Our actions weren't scripted by God, but rather, worked around, especially if we did something where God is not, I.e. Sin (you kill someone, for example.)
Btw it's good to converse. Thx for being respectful and for thinking these things through w me. It's always interesting to know the other side, even if we don't agree.
Also know that my responses, like me, are flawed. I want to become a sister (nun) someday but I'm still learning
No, the Church teaches micro-evolution. They don't believe we are all descended from ape ancestors and only believe in the small changes such as a change in beak size. Georges Lemaitre may have discovered the Big Bang, but he still believed that Yahweh caused it which is just faulty thinking as we don't know what caused it. The idea that something is good just because someone does it is, to invoke Godwin's law, what caused the Holocaust and many other disasters. If Yahweh knows what someone is going to do, then that person is merely following the script; he can't do anything else. He may think he could do something else, but ultimately he WILL do the thing.
It is rather difficult to talk in messages like this, do you have some other way we can talk, preferably in real time? Discord would work if you have it. Many of our points are being glossed over in favor of other topics.
We didn't descend from apes tho? Like, we are apes? So how could we--
I really don't feel qualified to represent the catholic voice in this argument (I've only been a Catholic for a year) but I'd like to point you again to a Dominican or Jesuit priest (or any priest, if you can't find one of the two) if your interest persists. You can also google some of these questions, but I think it's important to keep in mind that I don't think I'm going to convince you of God's existence and you aren't going to "disprove" Him for me. Not that you were trying to, I can't know your intentions. I could set up a kik account though if you'd rather communicate w me
Also we believe in large scale evolution. We are not Bible Literalists. I can even pull up the Catchechism passages if you like*
*i speak for the Church, i.e., the Vatican, not always its followers. As you can believe, not every single one of Catholicism's registered 1.2 billion followers adheres to everything the Vatican says to
Perhaps I misheard about Catholics, but the point that science disproves with much of the very book it is founded on says a lot to me. I admit to not knowing much about the details of Cathoclism, so perhaps you can explain more properly what they believe? If you had Kik it would be nice, yea. I'm ---------, so just search for that if you wish to continue talking.
I'm Catholic, been one ever since I was baptized as a baby. But I can't really answer the deep stuff, I only know like the bare basics, I guess my classmates can answer that though. They're the most active at church,going to Bible studies and active choir singers,unlike me who only attends church if my parents make me. But I take the church seriously, trying to live life as a good person as much as possible, and that's good enough for me.
American faith, if there even is any, is completely different from how other cultures take religion on, especially ones in religious-dominant countries. Some take religion very seriously. Like, more than a third of my classmates results on the National Career Assessment Exam got recommendations for religious vocations like being a nun, a priest, a pastor etc. I'm in tenth grade,and I'm still astonished on how seriously they take the church.
Yeah, wow, to be only 14 or 15 years old and to be taking the faith that seriously is astonishing. Good for them, and good for you, good for all of us, for sticking by something even when it gets tough. America has become a more secular nation than I think people realize. At least, I live on the West Coast so I see it more here
It's called getting your head out of your ass and actually trying to understand and respect a different culture. Try seeing the world without those grey-colored lenses of yours and maybe Religion is not as bad as you think. (My classmates and I aren't religious nuts nor did our parents raise us to be that way. All of us are in the STEM (secular) curriculum, and think scientifically because we are taught in that fashion ever since we started highschool. We take on religion and science separately, and none of us stray too far from the other. In fact, the only people I know that are atheistic are the people I meet on the internet. Everyone I know in person is religious,my classmates most of all.We have Catholics, A Muslim, Baptists, Evangelicals, Mormons, etc. And nobody gets shit about their religion because all of us respect that aspect of our lives. Science and Religion may not go together hand in hand, but that doesn't mean conflict will always erupt whenever the two are mentioned.)
It's not culture. It's child abuse. Theistic religions always lead into violence and were founded on violence. Religion is on the decline today because they can no longer use the threat of violence to keep everything under their control. If your scientific studies never stray from religion then you are a pretty bad scientist as nearly every field of science disproves theistic religions. Science and religion aren't at war, that I agree. It's like Mike Tyson vs a preschooler who thinks he's the shit with religion being the child. It's not even a question of who is going to win.
Religion is terrible. It makes educated and uneducated do and say stupid things. It makes good people drown their kids and bomb buildings. It denies basic rights from innocent people and then tries to shame said people into killing themselves if they don't do it for them. But it does do one thing. It lets people stop caring. Why should they fear death if a magic man in the sky likes them? It lets them due evil things and blame the devil. It lets them deprive men and women of their lives and turns them into sheep to let anyone do as they wish as long as they wear a robe and say they speak for said magic man. Religion will stop us from using basic hygiene, using medicine, and convert us back to the stone age. Science takes us to the moon, religion flies us into buildings.
It's sad that you think like that, not like I can do anything to change it. You have your views and you have mine. I hope you'll relax a bit and maybe, hopefully, improve your views on religion at one point. Good day to you sir.
Noone is sinless but thats okay
You dont have to be
So go and enjoy life
because we aren't sinless so Jesus suffered for us
If you look at it from a child's view, which is the simplified version of things I never really bothered to Google about, God sacrificed his son Jesus to pay for the world's sins. So, God gave the ultimate sacrifice to save mankind-giving his son. There's nothing equal to a father's love to their child, and if God has sacrificed his child, his only child in fact, you know shit just got real. As I was told over and over as a child, God loves us enough to do that sacrifice, and Jesus understood his father's plan. God made his child human, from birth by Jesus' mom the Virgin Mary, up to the point that he was crucified on the cross. Jesus actually had the choice to walk away and not participate to his father's plan, but he didn't. He went along because he understood everything, and why it should be done.
And even if he did, then why did Jesus only suffer for three days? How is three days equivalent to billions of eternities worth of pain?
Your "three days equivalence" comes from the perfect nature of the sacrifice, and out of His Godhood.
God is perfectly self-consistent (ie. unchanging), thus, once the rules were made (or rather, the rules have always existed, at least as we are capable of conceiving them as temporal creatures) they cannot be changed.
Well, Yahweh is omnipotent, so yea, he could have made beings without free will. Just look in the above paragraph.
Also nobody has answered why Yahweh needed to kill himself, the Jesus thing is rather odd, to forgive people. Why not just forgive them without demanding the death of his son who is also himself.
The most obvious statement is the following:
Genesis 1:31 Yahweh saw that his creation was perfect.
Genesis 6:5-6 Yahweh saw that his creation was imperfect.
This is another pretty obvious one:
Genesis 4:4-5 God prefers Abel's offering and has no regard for Cain's.
2nd Corinthians 19:7, AC 10:34, RO 2:11 All of these say that Yahweh is impartial and has no preferences.
Contradictions in the Bible are plentiful. Even a simple critical read of Genesis 1 will bring dozens of contradictions, but if you want a faster method, then just google it.
And that one statement is why I dislike Christianity. "He has a plan." It's such a cop out answer. Innocents die? A Church burns down? Unanswered prayers? The murder and rape of a child? God has a plan, so don't worry.
Don't worry about ways medicine can help people. God has a plan.
Don't obtain scientific knowledge. God has a plan.
It essentially says, "I don't know why, but I'm too scared to answer. God must have done it for some reason, but I don't know. Discovering why things work is so terrifying that I feel more comfortable sitting in my cave and thanking those brave enough to leave Christianity."
In terms of Free Will, Catholics (again, not Calvinists) think it's compatible with an omniscient God.
The Catholic idea of medicine is to pray. If Catholicism likes knowledge so much, then why did it kill anyone who gave true information but contradicted the Bible?
A human is nothing but a rock that has tricked itself into thinking it is alive. The idea that we are otherwise is known as Species Bias which means the notion that humans are better than other things, particularly other life, because of an arbitrary reason. We can predict exactly how a rock will react when you hit it with a certain amount of force if you know the conditions of the rock and we can predict exactly how a human will react when given certain stimuli in the very same way, if a bit more complicated.
That's why I look down on theistic people. They vehemently refuse to change their beliefs even when given evidence to the contrary. I vehemently believed in determinism due to cause and effect, but I changed my beliefs when I was given evidence to the contrary.
Also know that my responses, like me, are flawed. I want to become a sister (nun) someday but I'm still learning
It is rather difficult to talk in messages like this, do you have some other way we can talk, preferably in real time? Discord would work if you have it. Many of our points are being glossed over in favor of other topics.
I really don't feel qualified to represent the catholic voice in this argument (I've only been a Catholic for a year) but I'd like to point you again to a Dominican or Jesuit priest (or any priest, if you can't find one of the two) if your interest persists. You can also google some of these questions, but I think it's important to keep in mind that I don't think I'm going to convince you of God's existence and you aren't going to "disprove" Him for me. Not that you were trying to, I can't know your intentions. I could set up a kik account though if you'd rather communicate w me
*i speak for the Church, i.e., the Vatican, not always its followers. As you can believe, not every single one of Catholicism's registered 1.2 billion followers adheres to everything the Vatican says to
Oh wow. A Christian knows Christians. How surprising. It's not like you are almost certainly Christian due to your geographical location and because people around you are Christian. https://www.geopolitica.ru/sites/default/files/5-world-map-religions.png
let me guess you are a westboro baptist church member?
hell
I am a Christian but I have a sense of humor
unlike you