Forums → WEPR → The Religion Debate Thread

you got the blood sacrifice part down but I think your description of the Christ a little bit off. He only demands sacrifice because "the wages of sin is death".

And how would the sacrifice help with that?

In order for a sacrifice to be acceptable, God demanded a perfect specimen.

Why is that?

Yes God exists and I can say with confidence why some of you do not want to believe in God

Really? Why is that? also, how do you know he exists?

Why is it that God needed to carry out anything to keep a promise that He made in the first place? He's God. Surely He creates the laws He follows, if He says something, it's done? Why is it that He needed to sacrifice His human aspect to allow anything?

And how would the sacrifice help with that?

Why is that?

Like God makes the rules and follows it Himself (authority) but He's not gonna take away our free will in order to enforce it (power).

It serves as a replacement. Instead of the guilty having to die, a replacement can.

I think the biggest significance to that rule is that when Jesus took our place, we would also take His place. Because He lived a perfect life, He would be blameless and righteous in the sight of God. When we take His place, we are blameless and righteous.

What has that got to do with the ability to forgive?

How about He just accept the flaws of His creations and forgive them like a normal person? I'd expect that, as an Almighty Being, He would be able to manage something as simple as that, especially considering it's entirely His fault anyway. (Capitalized purely for the purpose of mocking convention.)

Which would make hell either completely pointless or completely unjustifiable if it wasn't already both of those things.

@lozerfac3

God is a just God. He demands that the wages of sin be paid for.

This is really well put. It's concise and clear. When we think about justice for wrongdoing, we think about making some sort of recompense--that is, the just thing to do when having failed some moral duty is to somehow makeup for it. In this case, humanity has sinned against God and so we must make some kind of compensation. I'm totally with you.

But once I take a step back, I get hung up again. Here's why. When one demands some sacrifice--whether it's an apology, some kind of compensation (e.g. money), or quite literally a sacrifice--the implication is that fulfilling that demand is possible. If you insult me and I demand an apology, there's an implication that you're actually able to apologize. If you're dead or unable to communicate, my demand doesn't really make sense. If I'm demanding you pay me some ridiculous amount of money--like a trillion dollars--then my demand is, again, nonsensical.

This leads me to the following thought:
A just sacrifice is one that the agent is able to make.

Note, this isn't a definition or analysis of 'just sacrifice'. What I have in mind is merely a necessary condition. If you prefer the logic form:
If X is a just sacrifice for S, then it must be possible for S to sacrifice X.

That's all the argument I can really give for the above principle right now. I feel like it's pretty intuitive; but I may be missing something. At any rate, I bet you can guess where this is going by now.

God is demanding that a sacrifice be made to atone for our sin. But he also demands that a morally perfect human be sacrificed. Since original sin would have metaphysically tainted humans, even a sacrificial baby wouldn't have worked. Instead, God must make a corporeal version of himself that is untainted in the relevant sense in order for this sacrifice to work.

Thus, God's demand is unjust. He's demanding something--namely a morally perfect sacrifice--that no human would be able to make. That's precisely why he had to intervene in order to fulfill the sacrifice. This is a pretty clear violation of (what I take to be) an obvious condition on what is a just demand.

And, as the others have pointed out, God could have simply forgiven mankind. Why, for example, was the murder of everyone and everything on the planet--save for Noah and his immediate family--not sacrifice enough? And why can't an omnipotent, all-loving being simply forgive humanity without having to go through all this? It just seems needlessly complicated.

This is yet another bit of evidence that, for me, points to the Bible being just another book of mythological tales. Think about the parallels between Abraham being commanded to kill his first born son (Isaac) and then Mary's first born child being sacrificed. You can even see early forms of literary foreshadowing and the development of motifs with the Cain and Abel story. Cain, of course, is the first actually-born human (since Adam and Eve weren't technically born) and his pride and overall 'impurity' led him to kill his own brother.

I'm also curious as to why God forgiving humanity's original sin in the absence of a human sacrifice would affect our free will in any way. The end result is forgiveness either way, so how does a human sacrifice preserve free will while a standard forgiveness doesn't?

We have talked about this argument before. God is a just God. He demands that the wages of sin be paid for.

How so?

To your sacrifice argument: I'm glad you brought up the example about the demand for a trillion dollars. If someone owes you a trillion dollars then it's right to demand a trillion dollars from them whether that someone can pay it off or not.

The wages of sin is death. Just like the word love has many meanings, the word death has different meanings too. And just like the various meanings of love, the different meanings of death share a theme. With love, you might say it's being selfless. Death has the theme of absence. "Bobby died last Friday." Bobby is not physically absent but rather mentally/spiritually absent from everyone on Earth. "We are dead in our sin" Ephesians 2:1. In this case, we are dead in the sense that we are absent from God. I believe that this kind of death has the same meaning as the "the wages of sin is death" death. Not only did Jesus literally die on the cross, but he also died in sin and so was absent from God (thus his line "why have you forsaken me?&quot.

With this definition, then, the wages of sin is absence from God. You won't expect any blessings from God if you are a sinner and if you die, you will be absent from heaven. In other words, you will go to hell. As one who accepts Christ as Lord and Savior, those wages were properly paid for when Jesus bore the full wrath of God.

And, as the others have pointed out, God could have simply forgiven mankind. Why, for example, was the murder of everyone and everything on the planet--save for Noah and his immediate family--not sacrifice enough? And why can't an omnipotent, all-loving being simply forgive humanity without having to go through all this? It just seems needlessly complicated.

If someone owes you a trillion dollars then it's right to demand a trillion dollars from them whether that someone can pay it off or not.

With this definition, then, the wages of sin is absence from God. You won't expect any blessings from God if you are a sinner and if you die, you will be absent from heaven. In other words, you will go to hell.

That would mean that nobody can be redeemed from their sin. Only with the sacrifice of Christ can anyone be redeemed from death (death in sin) because He lived a perfect life.

If I have such a debtor, it stands to reason that some agreement exists between us. If they have no way of upholding that agreement, then I've just wasted a trillion dollars. To hold the other party to that would be exploitative.

False dichotomy. I am not in heaven and I am not in hell. Therefore, heaven and hell are not jointly exhaustive.

Think about a country's laws. Someone might not agree with them, but they are still responsible for breaking them. You still have to pay the $200 fine for throwing a can on the freeway.

If you are dead to sin and then you die physically, then you go to hell.

Which is an equally bad analogy, because that kind of fine is supposed to be something people are actually able to pay and is for an action people can easily avoid doing. A trillion dollar fine for the same offence would be ridiculously unreasonable, as would a $200 fine for something virtually unavoidable, like exceeding a speed limit of 1m/h.

I'll get back to you on the hell part. I'm reading up on it right now because I'm also struggling with the concept of an eternal punishment for a finite crime.

The fact of the matter is that the judge is not judging the person based on who he is, but rather what that person has done.

I feel like my example of a trillion dollar fine might have muddied the waters, as my original point might have been lost. Just to be clear, here is the point I was making with those analogies:

God's demand of a sacrifice is unjust because no human could have met the demand.

Set aside the fact that this is a human sacrifice, so the person discharging this debt would have to submit to dying. My point here is that no human--no matter how good or kind--could have sacrificed themselves to meet this demand. This is an unjust demand.

Perhaps my earlier principle was too broad/vague, regarding when a demand is unjust. (I'm actually too lazy to go back and and look at it.) But here, we have a situation in which a human (or humanity) made some transgression against God. Punishment (which can easily be construed as a sacrifice, in the broad sense) would certainly be understandable. But the demand here was something that no human or group of humans--by their very nature--would be able to meet.

This is all very convoluted, since the transgression (i.e. the first disobeying of God) is actually the reason why no human can make up for that transgression. At the risk of making another confusing analogy, suppose I stole your bike. You got mad and demanded that I give you your bike back. I feel bad and really want to reconcile our relationship. So, I go to your house to give you back your back. You slam the door in my face, shouting "I don't want anything to do with a no-good bike thief!" You've put me in a position wherein I can't meet your demands. The act of stealing your bike made me a 'no good bike thief' and so, I'm not good enough to return your bike.

The analogy here, of course, extends to all humans. We all are tainted with original sin and so are metaphysically incapable of fulfilling God's demand. This is something he fully recognises and yet, in his infinite wisdom, just kind of sits there twaddling about. Until, that is, he hatches a brilliant plan to sacrifice a corporeal version of himself to meet his own demand.

It's at this point where I would continue this line to hit just how idiotic and silly God's idea is. But the point here is that God's demand for a morally perfect sacrifice is unjust. If we're going to make sense of this, then that's the point to engage with. The analogies are not arguments by analogy--they're simply attempts to help explain the situation. So, either something is wrong with my characterisation of a 'just demand' or something is wrong with applying that characterisation to God's demand of humans. I don't see any other way around it.

In your situation we do not know the consequences of not being able to complete the 12 Herculean tasks, but we do know that it is against the law and therefore it would have negative consequences in the eyes of the judge.

I think you would agree that a judge is just when he wants the best consequences for everyone and judges accordingly.

I believe that all laws (including the first 3 of the 10 commandments) created by God are just because positive consequences come after following them, and negative consequences come after disobeying them.

The analogy here, of course, extends to all humans. We all are tainted with original sin and so are metaphysically incapable of fulfilling God's demand. This is something he fully recognises and yet, in his infinite wisdom, just kind of sits there twaddling about.

God could have simply forgiven mankind. Why, for example, was the murder of everyone and everything on the planet--save for Noah and his immediate family--not sacrifice enough? And why can't an omnipotent, all-loving being simply forgive humanity without having to go through all this? It just seems needlessly complicated.

No; that's what we would expect if the judge's rulings had reasonable basis, but we don't know that either.

A problem you can point out here is that who's to say that the consequences of the "crime" don't only affect the judge and that the judge is only trying to protect himself and not a greater good.

What should be clear is that it's unreasonable to have a law that is impossible to follow.

I guess you might say that it is natural to feel envy or natural to feel angry and it would be unjust to place a law against emotions. But we are talking about a theoretically perfect judge. We don't have those laws in place on Earth because it would be unjust. You simply can't judge someone's emotions. But God can because He is all-knowing and He knows where those emotions lead.

Not if he's insane, misinformed, or really bad at his job.

Anything involving hell cannot have the best consequences for everyone. It just can't.

Are you ... sure you want to go with that?
What negative consequences are there for making a likeness of any living thing? Of not ritually slaughtering firstborn animals? Of eating fat, leavened bread, lobster, or pork? Of working on the Sabbath? Of wearing wool and linen together, or getting a tattoo, or shaving?

Metaphysically incapable, but not technically incapable. Like technically someone can live their whole life never breaking God's law.

Oh, okay. So I think we're talking about 2 different things here. I agree that someone can live their whole lives without breaking God's law. Like, it's at least possible.
But I'm talking about the original sin that taints humanity. This is the thing (as I understand it) that broke our relationship with God such that no one who died before Jesus's sacrifice went to heaven. As I understand it, people who died before this ultimately sacrifice simply weren't in the market for redemption. Jesus fixed all that.

What you're talking about--post-Jesus sin--can be rectified by repenting (either in confession to a priest, through penance, or to God). What I'm talking about is original sin that has made humans unable to reach heaven because of a disconnection to God--one that was breached when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.

I've since Googled this and I'm even more confused than ever. Like, literally every different website I went to had a different story about why Jesus was necessary and what happened to those who died before Jesus's time on Earth.

I still think there's something wrong here with God's demand of a sacrifice. But now I've confused myself to the point where I'm kind of frustrated. Buuuuut, I'm now more interested in something Fish said:

Are you ... sure you want to go with that?
What negative consequences are there for making a likeness of any living thing?

To which you responded:

Some of those laws are for good hygiene, respect and attitude in a time when it was against the culture, and atonement. Consequently the negative consequences would be disease, division, and more that I wouldn't be able to anticipate. But I believe that God would be able to anticipate those consequences and I trust in that.

I'm wondering whether you want to go down a consequentialist framework here. I don't mean to suggest that these things can't be understood in terms of negative consequences. Let's set all that aside. Here's my worry: when you start thinking about consequences, I think consequentialism qua ethical theory. And I'm not sure that a divine command theorist can be a consequentialist.

I could totally be wrong here, since DCT is more about the grounding of moral principles, whereas consequentialism (hereafter: C) is a theory--and explanation--of moral thinking. In other words, DCT explains where morality comes from. C just explains why certain acts are right or wrong.

But it seems like DCT has an answer to the theory question that's incompatible with C; it's something like 'because God said so'. That's a bit simplistic. But I would liken it to a deontological theory--one that's focused on our moral duties--over anything that talks about consequences. Do you have any thoughts on that, or am I just rambling?