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Is Jesus's "this generation will certainly not pass" valid grounds for scepticism?

steenkh said:
We can sum up that:

God got cross with Adam and Eve because they did something that God knew they would do, and that God didn’t try prevent, and in fact, God got so cross that for thousands of years He punished all the innocent descendants of Adam and Eve. Then He decided to stop being cross, but the only way He could do that was to split off a part of Himself and impregnate a virgin, who fortunately had a very understanding boyfriend who married her anyway, and the Søn then had to be murdered in a gruesome way in order to make God forgive all of humanity. But the Son who was supposed to be called Immanuel, but got called Jesus, was not really dead, but ended up in Heaven where a small fragment of humanity also end up when they die, whereas most of humanity will be tortured for ever and ever in Hell.
By the way this God is the wisest and most kind god imaginable.

I can’t understand why Christians accept this story as True, but clearly would have laughed at it if they heard somebody else believed in something similar.

This thread is about minor contradictions in the belief of Christians, and how they cope with it, but in reality the entire story is so full of holes that it bugs my mind that anybody could ever believe any of it.
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How do we explain, for examples, Francis Collins's (he headed the genome project if you didn't know) belief?
 
steenkh said:
Heaven where a small fragment of humanity also end up when they die
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Um, AIUI they will end up there on Judgement Day, which hasn't happened yet. In the meantime they, like the sinners, remain in their graves. On Judgement Day everyone will rise from their graves and either be sent to hell or stay right where they are, because that's also the day when the Kingdom of Heaven will be established on earth, so they don't need to go anywhere to be there. Or something like that. It's a long time since I read it.
 
Pixel42 said:
Um, AIUI they will end up there on Judgement Day, which hasn't happened yet. In the meantime they, like the sinners, remain in their graves. On Judgement Day everyone will rise from their graves and either be sent to hell or stay right where they are, because that's also the day when the Kingdom of Heaven will be established on earth, so they don't need to go anywhere to be there. Or something like that. It's a long time since I read it.
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This is basically it. The Catholics invented something called Purgatory which is like a halfway house between death and eternal life, but that's not OG.
 
Poem said:
This isn't a problem just for theists though is it? Richard Dawkins has reluctantly admitted that there is no free will within his methodological materialist would view. The implications are seismic if true.
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Why would that become a problem for atheists? Not believing in gods does not mean that we necessarily must have a free will.

As for the seismic implications, I can only say that even if our will is in fact non-existent, there are so many billions of factors that influence our actions that an illusion of free will is a good approximation to predict people’s actions. And yet, we know that certain pheromones can make us start flirting, other pheromones makes us more susceptible to buying stuff in shops, brain damage can make us change personality, and so on. Free will is only useful for some purposes, but not for others.

Those people that think that if they don’t have a free will, they can do whatever they please, will usually find that their surroundings are not falling for it.
 
arthwollipot said:
What is unclear to you? I'll do my best to elaborate.
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My understanding is that this is an issue of focus regarding attaining righteousness . As Paul said in Romans 10:3,4 regarding the Israelites:

Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

So it would appear that the law still holds (at least the moral law rather than the ceremonial?), but nobody will / is capable of keeping it through their own efforts; rather, it is attained through belief in Christ - because if your focus is on Christ, you will be led by him in a moral sense.

Is that correct?
 
Poem said:
How do we explain, for examples, Francis Collins's (he headed the genome project if you didn't know) belief?
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You actually wrote this as a reply to me, but I didn’t reply because Cosmic Yak had already adequately replied.

My reply is the same: why should we explain Francis Collin’s belief?

If you think that it is a problem that very smart people are believers, I can only say that IQ does not seem to have any bearing on religious beliefs, or their absence. The smart people will have to offer their own explanations.

I was recently in a church in Vienna, and a priest there seemed to be local star, because a lot of his works were on display, and there were several of his leaflets to be picked up for free. Most were addressing the existence of God, and I picked one up. As this would be off topic, I’ll not go into detail with his list of proofs for God’s existence (which were all well-known), but it struck me that nothing that I saw was about Christ, or NT, or OT. Clearly, this guy was more philosophical minded, and found his religion through what seemed logical to him, and he probably glossed over the contradictions and logical nonsense in the actual religion.
 
Poem said:
My understanding is that this is an issue of focus regarding attaining righteousness . As Paul said in Romans 10:3,4 regarding the Israelites:

Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

So it would appear that the law still holds (at least the moral law rather than the ceremonial?), but nobody will / is capable of keeping it through their own efforts; rather, it is attained through belief in Christ - because if your focus is on Christ, you will be led by him in a moral sense.

Is that correct?
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Correct by which Christian religion?
 
Manopolus said:
Okay, if I must. So the basic mantra goes that Jesus died for our sins... basically set up as a divine human sacrifice. Okay, so why was that necessary? Is God making the rules, or is He following some unknown set of rules? Why is it necessary?

I don't think I need to explain why murdering people or tricking others into murdering people is bad. Being crucified is bad... that pretty naturally seems to suggest that knowingly causing someone to be crucified is bad.

Well, it's suggested that it was somehow necessary... which doesn't match up with the supposed power of this supposed God who created everything to begin with. That means that we're dealing with an evil God if he demanded an evil act without an appropriate justification that was clearly out of his hands.

And yes, it very much is right in line with the standard human sacrifice model -- to sacrifice other humans to the Gods to appease them so they don't do bad things to us. Jews practiced animal sacrifice in those days, so it's not particularly surprising. That's not anywhere close to an ethical system in my view of things. It's certainly not something anyone would consider today... any group practicing it today would likely be systematically wiped out with no one feeling sorry about it. A typical Christian zealot in today's world would consider it Satanic.

And yet...

That's what your core story is actually about. It very clearly points to a story which is fundamentally an act of human sacrifice committed by God himself on his own son in order to make a contract. Sure, it's sort of backwards, but it clearly points to human sacrifice.

...and on top of that we've got the ritual cannibalism of communion. Sure, it's not actually flesh and blood (unless you're a Catholic who believes it's magically transformed), but it still unquestionably pays homage to cannibalism.

Sorry, but I don't think crucifying people or eating them are things I want to celebrate in a religion. Those things are unequivocally bad. It's admittedly somewhat harmless in the way it's practiced, but that doesn't change the underlying ideas. Yes, early humans got into some rather messed up things (including slavery... and I haven't even got into that part). But we don't condone those sorts of things now (at least... most don't).
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We could have ended up with a Christian religion that held the material world is the result of an evil god, it's interesting that gnostic Christians could provide an answer as to why there is evil in the world and why Jesus was crucified that doesnt invoke a logical paradox.
 
Darat said:
We could have ended up with a Christian religion that held the material world is the result of an evil god, it's interesting that gnostic Christians could provide an answer as to why there is evil in the world and why Jesus was crucified that doesnt invoke a logical paradox.
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Gotta love the gnostics. I'm not all that familiar with them, but they indeed were a bit... different.
 
Darat said:
Unless you follow a calvanistic Christian religion, in which case there is no free will of any kind and whether you go to a heaven or hell was determined before you were even born.
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Interesting. Do the Calvinists also believe in a benevolent god?
 
Poem said:
This isn't a problem just for theists though is it? Richard Dawkins has reluctantly admitted that there is no free will within his methodological materialist would view. The implications are seismic if true.
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Your view of humans and how we react to things seems to be woefully lacking. Whether we have a simplistic or the pop-philosphy form of free-will has been debated by humans since we've recorded such ideas. It's even been argued within the Christian religions' framework for centuries. And whatever we learn people in their daily lives go about their lives the same way.
 
Darat said:
Correct by which Christian religion?
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You have made this point a number of times (which is fine), but if the scientific community also does not have a unified stance on evolution (they don't), then is what you are saying significant?

Stephen Jay Gould declared that Neo-Darwinism was 'effectively dead' way back in 1980. That isn't nothing.

See #476.
 
Darat said:
Unless you follow a calvanistic Christian religion, in which case there is no free will of any kind and whether you go to a heaven or hell was determined before you were even born.
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That is not a accurate reflection of Calvinism. Whilst they do emphasize the sovereignty of God, they remain (in general) compatibilists.

And nobody here, not you nor I, is going to solve that conundrum in a moment. And before you particularize this problem for religion alone (which you are in the habit of doing) - don't - the same issue applies to determinism.
 
Darat said:
Your view of humans and how we react to things seems to be woefully lacking. Whether we have a simplistic or the pop-philosphy form of free-will has been debated by humans since we've recorded such ideas. It's even been argued within the Christian religions' framework for centuries. And whatever we learn people in their daily lives go about their lives the same way.
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Did you actually make a point here?
 
steenkh said:
You actually wrote this as a reply to me, but I didn’t reply because Cosmic Yak had already adequately replied.

My reply is the same: why should we explain Francis Collin’s belief?
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Because your post implied that Christianity is transparently false:

This thread is about minor contradictions in the belief of Christians, and how they cope with it, but in reality the entire story is so full of holes that it bugs my mind that anybody could ever believe any of it.

Francis Collins, John Lennox, Isaac Newton, Georges Lemaitre......

(BTW - I do actually understand your stance, though I would not put it nearly so forcefully).
 
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