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Christopher Hitchens:
“Let’s say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I’ll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth.
Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2,000 years ago, thinks “That’s enough of that. It’s time to intervene,” and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East.
Don’t let’s appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let’s go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can’t be believed by a thinking person.
Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert.
I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can’t take your sins away, because I can’t abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn’t offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There’s no vicarious redemption.
There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It’s just a part of wish-thinking, and I don’t think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you must love. You must love your neighbor as yourself, something you can’t actually do. You’ll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty.
By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That’s to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you’re again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.
And that brings me to the final objection which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we’d be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking.
All this in the round, and I could say more, it’s an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.”
Hi Stuart,
It's nice to here you express your feelings.
Now we have plenty to discuss. I'll get back
to you when I have more time; so hang tight.God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.orgQuote (Stu @ Mar. 11 2011,18:55) Christopher Hitchens: “Let’s say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I’ll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth.
Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2,000 years ago, thinks “That’s enough of that. It’s time to intervene,” and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East.
Don’t let’s appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let’s go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can’t be believed by a thinking person.
Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert.
I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can’t take your sins away, because I can’t abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn’t offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There’s no vicarious redemption.
There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It’s just a part of wish-thinking, and I don’t think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you must love. You must love your neighbor as yourself, something you can’t actually do. You’ll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty.
By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That’s to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you’re again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.
And that brings me to the final objection which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we’d be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking.
All this in the round, and I could say more, it’s an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.”
This is all quoted from Christopher Hitchens and most of it you may agree with and actually I also agree with much of it and so does Islam. You are responsible for your sins but what Christopher doesn't understand is that he also believes in repentance and so do you if not why would you apologize to anyone for any thing?Also there was repentance before 2000 years ago, now the question is do you believe in any type of morality and if you do when you fall away from it do you believe that repentance is needed?
Stu, you do'nt worry about all of thaT.
There is no need to understand everything.
I think you are agnostic.
Could i be right?
Quote (pace e amore @ Mar. 12 2011,19:15) Stu, you do'nt worry about all of thaT. There is no need to understand everything.
I think you are agnostic.
Could i be right?
Do you have no response to Hitchens articulate and well-considered accusation that your religion is immoral?Is that the approach you take? Don't think about it just accept you should do it without question? Are you a concentration camp guard?
We are all either agnostic or insecure.
Stuart
No stu you are wrong. I have thought about it. I hav gone through a stage where i thought long and hard about my religious belief and many things.
It's the way you view god.
Like hell torment is crap belief, is just mans idea of what they think not god, because GOD IS LOVE!! Love stu, and some things we don't understnad…….
What is it that troubles you THE MOST of all?
“I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.”
— Christopher Hitchens (Hitch-22: A Memoir)platitude at its best.
Quote (princess @ Mar. 12 2011,21:17) “I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.”
— Christopher Hitchens (Hitch-22: A Memoir)platitude at its best.
Couldn't you apply this to things that are demonstrably illusions, like the illusion of design that drives creationists to the wrong ideas, or the delusion of believing that homeopathy works?It is a fantasy to claim to know what Jesus actually said. That makes this no platitude.
Stuart
Quote (pace e amore @ Mar. 12 2011,20:25) No stu you are wrong. I have thought about it. I hav gone through a stage where i thought long and hard about my religious belief and many things. It's the way you view god.
Like hell torment is crap belief, is just mans idea of what they think not god, because GOD IS LOVE!! Love stu, and some things we don't understnad…….
What is it that troubles you THE MOST of all?
If you don't understand it then what use is it to you? Perhaps people don't understand how antibiotics work but that does not mean they cannot learn, but you are saying that we cannot learn these things, which is different.You are just saying that the hell concept is crap, actually how do you know? Do you hear voices in your head? What should we call that?
In terms of what troubles me personally, nothing does apart from the ways in which this immoral belief system affects my life negatively. Say you didn't like stem cell research that could save the lives or live quality of others, and it is christians who are mainly against that in the name of their religion, then don't benefit from it yourself but don't stop others. Please tell other christians not to come and knock on my door then refuse to listen to me when I want to tell THEM the Good News of Jesus.
Anyway, the first post here is about the specific objections that Hitchens has, so instead of asking me again, you could address what I quoted of him!
How about vicarious punishment for sin? Can you justify that in ethical terms that people from different religions and none could agree on?
Stuart
STU
You say ….How about vicarious punishment for sin?
I have copy this from site so i have not write this OK but it is teh orthodox view.
………………………………
For many who want to know Our Lord, the God of love, the idea that God the Father required Christ to suffer punishment in order to somehow appease or satisfy His sense of righteousness or justice is an abhorrent idea, keeping many people from accepting the actual love and mercy of God and perverting a correct understanding of the nature of God the Father.
How do we Eastern Orthodox and the early church tradition understand the debt, the exchange, the ransom and to whom it was paid?
Saint Athanasius writes, “For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two things: He put an end to the law of death which barred our way; and He made a new beginning of life for us…”
To whom did He make the sacrifice?“It was by surrendering to death (my emphasis) the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for his human brethren by the offering of the equivalent.”
The Saint teaches that Christ died, not to appease God the Father, but to rescue mankind (you and me) from death! That was “to whom” he sacrificed himself – the existential/ontological reality of death; that “through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all.”
This may seem like small difference, perhaps even a nuance; however it is a difference that is significant, as it correctly represents the nature of God as “the lover of mankind,” rather than a cosmic egotistical despot or a slave to divine legalism, and the work of the cross as a supreme act of sacrificial love by Our Lord, in which the Holy Trinity was acting (and continues to act) in one accord.
Kevin Allenpace e amore
I think this is entirely immoral. Not only does it not explain how sacrificing a human to a god effects any kind of redemption, or why you should ever want to bother with any gods even if they did exist, but it fails to meet the challenge I gave you in that previous post, of explaining in universal terms how it is moral.
I don't need rescuing from anything, and I resent the suggestion that you would tar me with the brush of being “saved” (still no idea what from) by putting a human to death.
It's an abomination of an idea.
Stuart
STU
I think what this is meaning is thus. Jesus crossed over into the SPIRITUAL WORLD which is not like HERE. And because of his sinlessness has saved the dead souls out of their holdng places. And OPENED TEH WAY to everlasting life for all who died from there on. And so what happened was spiritual and the place you can't see.
9Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 10Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? 11Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. 12If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? 13And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. 14And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: 15That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.When a person is dead, do you think they are gone for good? I do'nt because i have hope with jesus. I hope to see them again.
They are too precious a gift to be just lived and forgotten. And for many life was not fair.
Quote (Stu @ Mar. 12 2011,19:44) Quote (pace e amore @ Mar. 12 2011,19:15) Stu, you do'nt worry about all of thaT. There is no need to understand everything.
I think you are agnostic.
Could i be right?
Do you have no response to Hitchens articulate and well-considered accusation that your religion is immoral?Is that the approach you take? Don't think about it just accept you should do it without question? Are you a concentration camp guard?
We are all either agnostic or insecure.
Stuart
Hi Stuart,Agnostic's are insecure! …are you sure you didn't mean insincere instead?
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.orgHi Stuart,
Let's Bobby Jackson owes you $50.oo.
Now Art Jackson (Bobby's brother) comes
over to your house and hands you 50 dollars.Are you going to say…
I cannot accept this, because Bobby owes me the money!
Jesus paid your sin debt! …so you don't have to; do you understand?
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.orgQuote (Ed J @ Mar. 13 2011,11:17) Hi Stuart, Let's Bobby Jackson owes you $50.oo.
Now Art Jackson (Bobby's brother) comes
over to your house and hands you 50 dollars.Are you going to say…
I cannot accept this, because Bobby owes me the money!
Jesus paid your sin debt! …so you don't have to; do you understand?
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org
Do try to read what is posted. Hitchen has already addressed this:I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can’t take your sins away, because I can’t abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn’t offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There’s no vicarious redemption.
Stuart
Quote (Ed J @ Mar. 13 2011,11:08) Quote We are all either agnostic or insecure. Stuart
Hi Stuart,Agnostic's are insecure! …are you sure you didn't mean insincere instead?
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org
Don't confuse living with uncertainty with insecurity.It is those who lie about having absolute knowledge of the existence of their gods who are the insecure ones. Are you happy to admit the fact that you could be wrong about the existence of your Imaginary Friend? If not, why not?
Stuart
Quote (pace e amore @ Mar. 13 2011,10:47) STU I think what this is meaning is thus. Jesus crossed over into the SPIRITUAL WORLD which is not like HERE. And because of his sinlessness has saved the dead souls out of their holdng places. And OPENED TEH WAY to everlasting life for all who died from there on. And so what happened was spiritual and the place you can't see.
9Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 10Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? 11Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. 12If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? 13And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. 14And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: 15That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.When a person is dead, do you think they are gone for good? I do'nt because i have hope with jesus. I hope to see them again.
They are too precious a gift to be just lived and forgotten. And for many life was not fair.
I don't think you have the answer I am looking for, but thanks for trying. You cannot explain to me how vicarious punishment is moral. You haven't even said what it is about human sacrifice that pleases your god to the point that it will grant you redemption, and even if you accept all the assertions of the supernatural that you also claim you cannot understand, you certainly have not justified the actual killing of a human for supernatural reasons. You are only telling just so stories, and your failure makes your religion look crummier by the post.Stuart
Quote (Stu @ Mar. 13 2011,19:38) Quote (Ed J @ Mar. 13 2011,11:08) Quote We are all either agnostic or insecure. Stuart
Hi Stuart,Agnostic's are insecure! …are you sure you didn't mean insincere instead?
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org
Don't confuse living with uncertainty with insecurity.It is those who lie about having absolute knowledge of the existence of their gods who are the insecure ones.
Are you happy to admit the fact that you could be wrong about the existence of your Imaginary Friend? If not, why not?Stuart
Hi Stuart,You have a funny way of admitting that you did mean 'insincere'!
Like I have told you before, your truth is NOTHING but a dichotomy!
You say you are willing to admit there “IS” a possibility God that exists,
but yet you try to convince us that he doesn't. This position isn't insane?I know YHVH exists and I have even offered you the PROOF OF GOD(117),
which I have documented in a free internet book called “HolyCityBibleCode”.
1Thessalonians 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
The book is in PDF format, I can e-mail the book to those requesting; just ask.God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.orgQuote (Stu @ Mar. 13 2011,19:35) Quote (Ed J @ Mar. 13 2011,11:17) Hi Stuart, Let's Bobby Jackson owes you $50.oo.
Now Art Jackson (Bobby's brother) comes
over to your house and hands you 50 dollars.Are you going to say…
I cannot accept this, because Bobby owes me the money!
Jesus paid your sin debt! …so you don't have to; do you understand?
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org
Do try to read what is posted. Hitchen has already addressed this:I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can’t take your sins away, because I can’t abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn’t offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There’s no vicarious redemption.
Stuart
Hi Stuart,He “only” pays the price to those who have been rehabilitated!
I didn't think you would accept my answer, it is NO surprise! You
are a staunch atheist who insincerely calls himself an Agnostic.An “Agnostic” would consider evidence of God's existence,
while an athiest would only try to shoot down all the evidence.
You've proven which camp you belong to, your words are insincere!Witnessing to a worldwide audience in behalf of YHVH!
יהוה האלהים (JEHOVAH GOD) YÄ-hä-vā hä ĔL-ō-Hêêm!
Ed J (Isaiah 49:16 / Isaiah 60:14 / Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.org (Ecl.9:12-16)
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