Questioning the Crucifixion

[QED]

I hope it will be possible to have a sensible debate about what will no doubt be a very emotive issue here -- an issue that I genuinely don't understand and one that fills me with curiosity: Why it is that the execution of Jesus is supposed to be such a 'big deal'? After all, people were being strung-up all over the place for their beliefs, crimes or even just for sadistic pleasure. Whole rivers of blood have flown out of unjustified human agony before and after the this one particular event. But the crucifixion of Christ is meant to stand out -- because of what?

Sure he was the son of god (or one third of the trinity if that makes a difference) but he was also supposed to be supernatural, with the ability to perform miracles such as returning to life (I'm thinking PlayStation character here). So in what way was his 'death' a set-back for god, in what way was it a loss to anyone?

Had the Romans actually killed an irreplaceable (or mortal) son of God, then there would have been a genuine sacrifice but as he arose afterwards there doesn't seem to be any net loss hence I'm puzzled by the enormous impact it seems to have on the followers of Christianity. When a mortal loses a son that surely is a tragic and irreplaceable loss (and there are no shortages of these unfortunate events in history) yet none that I can think of have made anything like the same sort of impact. Is it rational then that the Crucifixion should have such an impact or should it, if anything, be regarded as somewhat less consequential given the apparent lack of harm it did to those concerned?

[McCulloch]

One of my favorite passages.

Me too.

The debate rules state No unconstructive one-liners posts are allowed in debates. Please only post if you have something to add to the debate.

[youngborean]

Hey Tilia,

That was a great point and verse to bring up. The sacrifice in his death is also implied with his resurrection. Paul already believed in his resurrection when he wrote that verse. My statement should be modified a bit. Approaching the question from a logical perspective, the death of Jesus alone means nothing without understanding that he resurrected from the grave. The verse says that he claims to know nothing but Christ and him Crucified. That is to say we know Christ (including the ressurection and Paul would have known the resurrected Christ according to acts) and him crucified (the story of his unselfish sacrifice). The verse does not imply the crucifixion, but all elements of Christ. It was the necessary sacrifice for our sins but it is his ressurection that allows men to be resurrected. Looking at his death alone is not the complete story of the gospel. He was also raised from the dead which completely does away with the consequence of sin, death. Neither are complete without the other.


1Cr 15:12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
1Cr 15:13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
1Cr 15:14 And if Christ be not risen, then [is] our preaching vain, and your faith [is] also vain.
1Cr 15:15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
1Cr 15:16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
1Cr 15:17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith [is] vain; ye are yet in your sins.
1Cr 15:18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
1Cr 15:19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
1Cr 15:20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, [and] become the firstfruits of them that slept.
1Cr 15:21 For since by man [came] death, by man [came] also the resurrection of the dead.
1Cr 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
1Cr 15:23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.

[harvey1]

Hey QED,

After all, people were being strung-up all over the place for their beliefs, crimes or even just for sadistic pleasure. Whole rivers of blood have flown out of unjustified human agony before and after the this one particular event. But the crucifixion of Christ is meant to stand out -- because of what?

God is perfect, and the world is separated from God by being imperfect. That is, God did not make the world with evil. The problem of evil is a result of an unavoidable issue that God was forced to allow evil to exist in order to accomplish God's higher will for the world (i.e., the Omega state). As a point of recourse to the PoE, God set in motion a transformation process that can lead the world to the Omega state through this transforming process. Namely, natural evolution would be the means by which God would transform the world from a PoE world to an Omega state world.

Through the process of evolution, God is extremely restricted in the intervention of the natural world, however God still has omnipotent power to make the divine presence known at God's choosing. However, in general, as the world naturally evolves, God continues to set the boundary conditions in how the natural principles guiding the world are allowed to operate. This process happens mainly at critical points where rapid changes act as "fluctuations" to the system in question, and the former principles that governed the operation of the "system" break down and are no longer applicable to determining the boundary conditions. God must set new boundary conditions at these critical points.

At those moments, God acts to break the symmetry (according to God's will) and thereby force the system into new boundary conditions that furthers God's will. The crucifixion of Jesus was such a moment in time.

The Roman Empire had recently extended itself to much of Alexander's empire (who had died suddenly and his generals could not keep the conquered territories intact), and so Rome was on the verge of determining much of what was to be the structure of the Western world for at least 2000 years (hopefully more...). And, as a result, God had to evaluate what new structure was necessary to guide the world's literal future.

I believe it was God's intention that a man from Nazareth would be the critical component to the new structure for the world. Unfortunately, in order to make this kind of impact, he would have to die. In other words, the only way to change the world was for his life to be a sacrifice to accomplish God's will in the world. If Jesus had not had died, God's will for the world could not be accomplished. If God's will is not accomplished, then the future of humanity would be very grim.

Since Jesus followed the will of God in becoming a sacrifice for humanity, God was able to set new boundary conditions for the world. Those new boundary conditions have allowed God's ultimate will to move forward for the world, and hence Jesus became the key cornerstone of God's salvation effort for humanity.

So, yes, there are many innocents who die. Many of whom do so for family members, country, and even God. But, there is only one man who accepted a totally meaningless death (from the perspective of his enemies) after having full knowledge that he was the key cornerstone to God's plan for the world and having no enmity for those who hated, spited on, beat, and killed him.

Sure he was the son of god (or one third of the trinity if that makes a difference) but he was also supposed to be supernatural, with the ability to perform miracles such as returning to life (I'm thinking PlayStation character here). So in what way was his 'death' a set-back for god, in what way was it a loss to anyone?

His death was a loss of a life in whom God was well pleased. But, his death wasn't a loss in the sense that through his death the world has been fundamentally changed. Had he not have come and died, the world would have evolved significantly different and our society would not have had the philosophy of the Nazarene to influence the ages. I shutter to think of the dark, atheistic world that perhaps would have destroyed itself already (like an atheistic North Korea on a global scale...brrrhhh... chilling).

Had the Romans actually killed an irreplaceable (or mortal) son of God, then there would have been a genuine sacrifice but as he arose afterwards there doesn't seem to be any net loss hence I'm puzzled by the enormous impact it seems to have on the followers of Christianity. When a mortal loses a son that surely is a tragic and irreplaceable loss (and there are no shortages of these unfortunate events in history) yet none that I can think of have made anything like the same sort of impact. Is it rational then that the Crucifixion should have such an impact or should it, if anything, be regarded as somewhat less consequential given the apparent lack of harm it did to those concerned?

My guess is that had Jesus not come, then the world would look far different and a much darker world--perhaps already burning from its ashes.

[bernee51]

God is perfect, and the world is separated from God by being imperfect.

If you say so...other may disagree.

The problem of evil is a result of an unavoidable issue that God was forced to allow evil to exist in order to accomplish God's higher will for the world

God was forced by himself to let evil exist. Yep I can see that. Sounds like onanism

BTW harv, is your version of god 'virtuous'?

The Roman Empire had recently extended itself to much of Alexander's empire ... God had to evaluate what new structure was necessary to guide the world's literal future.

Not according to Gibbon

I shutter to think of the dark, atheistic world that perhaps would have destroyed itself already (like an atheistic North Korea on a global scale...brrrhhh... chilling).

I presume you mean shudder, but perhaps shutter is more apropos of your closed opinions.

There were other religions that would have filled the gap. Some still extant. Mankind will always find a way to identify with 'the sacred'. The 'perennial philosophy' is just that.

My guess is that had Jesus not come, then the world would look far different....

yeah - just think, probably no Inquisition, Crusades, witch burnings, religious wars.

Islam may never have arisen...

Have you read Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, where he hypothesises how might human history be different if 14th-century Europe was utterly wiped out by plague, and Islamic and Buddhist societies emerged as the world's dominant religious and political forces?

[QED]

God is perfect, and the world is separated from God by being imperfect.

I'm more inclined to go along with the Buddhists (seriously) and view the world as being perfect always. Perfection sounds like a utopian vision constructed in the mind of man who can imagine a life free of all the things that ails him. But this is a blatantly anthropocentric way of looking at things and also belies the origin of your thinking IMHO.

That is, God did not make the world with evil. The problem of evil is a result of an unavoidable issue that God was forced to allow evil to exist in order to accomplish God's higher will for the world (i.e., the Omega state). As a point of recourse to the PoE, God set in motion a transformation process that can lead the world to the Omega state through this transforming process. Namely, natural evolution would be the means by which God would transform the world from a PoE world to an Omega state world.

Here you seem to fall for more Victorian thinking -- the idea that evolution equals progress. You know that evolution merely leads to configurations that are adept at persistence in a given environment. This means that the next big step for life on Earth could be that everything larger than a flea is wiped out by a super-bug. I suppose you could always rationalize this as being part of getting from Alpha to Omega, but then why bother when you can always fall back on good old divine intervention and say that God would step in to prevent it.

At those moments, God acts to break the symmetry (according to God's will) and thereby force the system into new boundary conditions that furthers God's will. The crucifixion of Jesus was such a moment in time.

In hindsight we can always construct a story like this as an explanation for why things happened the way they did. But it only adds to our ever growing collection of 'untestables' as we can never go back in time and change things to see if it would have made a difference.

Does it never bother you that so many of your arguments are choc-full of this sort of worthless material? Worthless because no test is available to validate the hypothesis. And before you retaliate in your preferred style, can you really accuse me of resorting to the same degree in this style of argument? You have tried in vain to show that there is something missing in the materialistic view of causality and you criticize the concept of a multiverse, yet this was only offered as an example of the principle leading to an anthropic solution to what is undoubtedly a riddle shared by everyone.

Evidently we can go on forever with arguments centred around the apparent duality between the natural and supernatural and while you jab away at me by attempting to redefine 'natural' as being all that which is a result of God's will, it does not address the issue which is that I believe you are mistaken to see the world as being a deliberate act of creation with man playing the lead role in a cosmic play staged for the pleasure of its creator. Nothing about this scenario seem the faintest bit plausible to me and smacks of being the typical product of hubris.

The Roman Empire had recently extended itself to much of Alexander's empire (who had died suddenly and his generals could not keep the conquered territories intact), and so Rome was on the verge of determining much of what was to be the structure of the Western world for at least 2000 years (hopefully more...). And, as a result, God had to evaluate what new structure was necessary to guide the world's literal future.

And you forgot to mention how Constantine, when nascent Christianity was struggling to be heard above its competitors, had a vision of a cross as he prepared for battle which prompted him to fly the Christian 'colors' into victory. Please give me some credit for not being a total sap when it comes to falling for this sort of retrospective rationalization.

So, yes, there are many innocents who die. Many of whom do so for family members, country, and even God. But, there is only one man who accepted a totally meaningless death (from the perspective of his enemies) after having full knowledge that he was the key cornerstone to God's plan for the world and having no enmity for those who hated, spited on, beat, and killed him.

Remember, I'm looking for something really significant to explain why this was such a stand-out event... are you saying that it was because he showed no enmity for his tormentors? It might have made people think a bit, but even they had probably seen the occasional nutter who went to his death grinning from ear to ear.

His death was a loss of a life in whom God was well pleased. But, his death wasn't a loss in the sense that through his death the world has been fundamentally changed. Had he not have come and died, the world would have evolved significantly different and our society would not have had the philosophy of the Nazarene to influence the ages. I shutter to think of the dark, atheistic world that perhaps would have destroyed itself already (like an atheistic North Korea on a global scale...brrrhhh... chilling).

Well I'm not satisfied by the circular argument that it was significant because it changed the World. I want to know why it changed the World. And your appeal to consequences is always utterly redundant -- especially when the consequences are far from being predictable. You should know that trade and economics have shaped the world far more than any other forces so the only globalization that we really need to fear is something that comes in a fast-food wrapper.

My guess is that had Jesus not come, then the world would look far different and a much darker world--perhaps already burning from its ashes.

OK, you acknowledge it's a guess. But I still haven't had an explanation as to why the story had the impact it did.

[harvey1]

God was forced by himself to let evil exist. Yep I can see that. Sounds like onanism BTW harv, is your version of god 'virtuous'?

As I mentioned to Spetey, the Alpha and Omega states are logically prior to our world. So, getting a route between A and B means that certain undesirable routes exist necessarily, and it certainly isn't God's fault that they do. God is doing what needs to be done to save the world while still conforming to the requirements of a necessary condition that has automatically been placed on the divine plan.

Not according to Gibbon

God has an elevated perspective of history. God is not stuck in any one century.

I presume you mean shudder

Yes.

perhaps shutter is more apropos of your closed opinions.

Hey, at least I provide arguments to back up what I believe. I have yet to see an argument to support your atheism. The closest you ever came was saying rather you were agnostic (and then backed off later on that). Nasty is, nasty gets.

yeah - just think, probably no Inquisition, Crusades, witch burnings, religious wars.

So, give me a non-European history where terrible things were not done. The important point is that democracy and liberty eventually came to the forefront where Protestant Christianity developed.

Have you read Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, where he hypothesises how might human history be different if 14th-century Europe was utterly wiped out by plague, and Islamic and Buddhist societies emerged as the world's dominant religious and political forces?

No, what does he say? My guess is that no Newton, no Liebniz, no Euler, no Maxwell, no Einstein, etc. On second thought, the world would probably not be in ashes from nukes, without these great minds how could that possibly be the case?

[bernee51]

... and it certainly isn't God's fault that they do. God is doing what needs to be done to save the world while still conforming to the requirements of a necessary condition that has automatically been placed on the divine plan.

If you say so Harv, if you say so.

Not according to Gibbon

God has an elevated perspective of history.

Should I quote QED here?

edited: I should have said the Happy Humanist - "...What possible absurdity can be pointed out, that cannot be overcome with, "God is all-powerful so he can do that,"..."

I have yet to see an argument to support your atheism.

I have no need to support my atheism.

Do you want me to provide evidence of the non-existence of something?

The closest you ever came was saying rather you were agnostic

What I consistently have said Harvey is that for every possible definition of god that has been seriously presented - I am atheist. As for any possible definition of god - I am agnostic. Not because of the god but the infinite possibilities of definition.

The important point is that democracy and liberty eventually came to the forefront where Protestant Christianity developed.

As usual you like to slip in at least one obvious fallacy...this is a classic Coincidental Correlation (post hoc ergo propter hoc)

Have you read Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, where he hypothesises how might human history be different if 14th-century Europe was utterly wiped out by plague, and Islamic and Buddhist societies emerged as the world's dominant religious and political forces?

No, what does he say?

I won't spoil it for you.

My guess is that no Newton, no Liebniz, no Euler, no Maxwell, no Einstein, etc. ?

No Columbus.

[harvey1]

But this is a blatantly anthropocentric way of looking at things and also belies the origin of your thinking IMHO.

How do you define perfection? Is the space shuttle perfect? Is a tsunami killing a few hundred thousand people on a blue sky morning on the beaches of Asia a perfect world? I don't think so. My concept of perfection is not whatever is the case, it is an ideal and therefore it must be a mental concept since an ideal is a thought of what could be.

Here you seem to fall for more Victorian thinking -- the idea that evolution equals progress. You know that evolution merely leads to configurations that are adept at persistence in a given environment.

Evolution leads to a trend of complexity. Complexity leads to a trend of advancement.

I suppose you could always rationalize this as being part of getting from Alpha to Omega, but then why bother when you can always fall back on good old divine intervention and say that God would step in to prevent it.

You're not looking out at nature when you make these statements. You're looking out at some landfill. The natural world is beautiful and as intelligence develops in the galaxies it will become even more complex and more beautiful. So, even if I didn't believe in God (which how could I not given the vast beauty of nature?), I would still believe that the universe is such that life will evolve more and more sophistication for whatever time the universe has left.

In hindsight we can always construct a story like this as an explanation for why things happened the way they did. But it only adds to our ever growing collection of 'untestables' as we can never go back in time and change things to see if it would have made a difference.

That's true of any historical theory. One tries to piece together why one event was significant over another, and contemplate what would have happened had that event not happened (e.g., the destruction of the Spanish Armada). This is based on subjective interpretation. But, I presumed in your question that you were asking for my interpretation of Christ's death, and how that death was different from the perspective of the world as it is today.

Does it never bother you that so many of your arguments are choc-full of this sort of worthless material? Worthless because no test is available to validate the hypothesis. And before you retaliate in your preferred style, can you really accuse me of resorting to the same degree in this style of argument?

Yes, absolutely. We are both providing a worldview based on the way the world must be in order to account for what we see. I think my arguments are more substantiated since I don't hold to a materialist view that largely contradicts science (e.g., teleportation and entanglement within quantum mechanics), and doesn't rely on some vastly complicated functioning multiverse that has no cause behind it. I deduce my arguments from simple foundations and then naturally deduce what must be the case if those simple presumptions are the case.

In the case of Jesus' death, I think it is rather obvious that it was his death that was of significance, more than his preaching, since his death gave impetus for his disciples to go out of Galilee and preach the Jewish message of a coming kingdom of God, and the divine nature of Jesus after they experienced the resurrection. Without this event, I would think that quite naturally the world would have been vastly different.

Since I believe that God is influencing the direction of the natural world, I see no reason for a cut-off between physical things (e.g., physical constants) and the natural world that is our society. I think the same kind of influencing happens, and it happens at critical points during phase transitions. Am I off base in saying that Jesus' time was a phase transition for religion in Asia Minor? I don't think I am. There were good reasons why the religions at that time were reaching a critical point, and I think it makes sense that Asia Minor underwent a phase transition with Christianity eventually winning out--mainly due to the personal nature of a personal Savior who had suffered and died for their sins. Just like I believe that God directed the universe to form, I also believe God directed Christianity to form. The argument supporting this isn't at this late point in history since anyone could say anything and no one could say any differently. Rather, it is early on in the universe where we can obviously see the hand of God, and we can come to an easy conclusion that without this hand acting in the world, it would lead to absurdity (e.g., your multiverse being beyond a simple cellular automata simulation).

You have tried in vain to show that there is something missing in the materialistic view of causality.

I haven't tried in vain. I have demonstrated it, and so far I haven't seen a valid argument to show that it is wrong. QED, just saying something isn't a valid argument is not the same as showing it isn't a valid argument. You forgot the "showing it isn't a valid argument" part.

and you criticize the concept of a multiverse, yet this was only offered as an example of the principle leading to an anthropic solution to what is undoubtedly a riddle shared by everyone.

We all share a puzzle, but that doesn't mean we're free to believe whatever we want. We have to provide reasonable solutions. Your solutions aren't at all reasonable. And, to this day, you haven't even really addressed why my arguments are not reasonable regarding the satisfaction relation requiring some kind of awareness.

Evidently we can go on forever with arguments centred around the apparent duality between the natural and supernatural and while you jab away at me by attempting to redefine 'natural' as being all that which is a result of God's will, it does not address the issue which is that I believe you are mistaken to see the world as being a deliberate act of creation with man playing the lead role in a cosmic play staged for the pleasure of its creator. Nothing about this scenario seem the faintest bit plausible to me and smacks of being the typical product of hubris.

Well, again, as long as you think it is acceptable to believe something without giving reasons for those beliefs (e.g., sophisticated behavior of an uncaused multiverse which cellular automata are nowhere close in simulating, material causation, laws in science are only regulative laws, etc.), then we're going to have this problem. It is mostly me here who is busy giving reasons for my views here. It seems the atheists for the most part are uninclined to give reasons for their views. It's extraordinary frustrating to see these kind of complaints about my views when I have given good reasons for every step in my thinking process, but I haven't been given the same courtesy in return.

And you forgot to mention how Constantine, when nascent Christianity was struggling to be heard above its competitors, had a vision of a cross as he prepared for battle which prompted him to fly the Christian 'colors' into victory. Please give me some credit for not being a total sap when it comes to falling for this sort of retrospective rationalization.

That's missing the point. The history of Christianity points to a point in miraculous where an unknown man of history, Jesus of Nazareth, taught a few followers whose teachings, death, their resurrection experience, changed the world without going to war. The wars that did come were not solely for spreading Christianity. In the case of the Crusades, remember Europe was attacked and almost didn't survive those attacks. In the case of later missionaries, there was gold on the minds of many of these Europeans.

Remember, I'm looking for something really significant to explain why this was such a stand-out event... are you saying that it was because he showed no enmity for his tormentors? It might have made people think a bit, but even they had probably seen the occasional nutter who went to his death grinning from ear to ear.

There are a number of perspectives of significance with regard to Jesus' death. I gave you the one perspective which doesn't get into the religious beliefs of the meaning of Jesus' blood, but instead I focused on the significance of his death in terms of the critical point that religion in that area would mean for the Roman Empire-originating world. If you want to talk purely religion, we can do that, but then you have to understand the whole aspects of the Christian faith in order to make sense of Christ's blood. I can guarantee you that it is not something that you will have patience for in understanding. You'll just chalk it up to superstition without going through a full understanding of why it all makes sense as a whole.

Well I'm not satisfied by the circular argument that it was significant because it changed the World. I want to know why it changed the World.

It was a personal religion that repressed people identified with and gave their lives significant meaning.

And your appeal to consequences is always utterly redundant -- especially when the consequences are far from being predictable. You should know that trade and economics have shaped the world far more than any other forces so the only globalization that we really need to fear is something that comes in a fast-food wrapper.

I don't think that. I think everything extends from one's philosophy, including concepts of globalization and military expansion. I think Christian philosophy implemented the concept of liberty and equality of all human beings. Ultimately, I believe it is the message of God, just like the laws of the universe were set by God to bring about life.

OK, you acknowledge it's a guess. But I still haven't had an explanation as to why the story had the impact it did.

Probably a wrong guess as I got to think about it. I forgot that science probably wouldn't have arisen without Christian love for Greek philosophy, and therefore there may not have arisen science. In that case, my guess is that the world would be dark and primitive.

[trencacloscas]

God has an elevated perspective of history.

Sure, seventeen centuries of killing, torturing, molesting and destroying Pagans, Jews, atheists, Heretics and everyone that don't agree with his Word to establish His perfect "religion of love". That's pretty elevated, indeed.

Mark Twain was right. If this God exists, he's a malign thug, no doubts about it.

I think Christian philosophy implemented the concept of liberty and equality of all human beings.

And this is the most outrageous statement I ever read in this forum coming from the monsters that came up with the doctrine of Eternal Damnation, threw mankind to the Dark Ages, implemented Inquisition and destroyed all possible human rights with their "religion of love".

[harvey1]

Sure, seventeen centuries of killing, torturing, molesting and destroying Pagans, Jews, atheists, Heretics and everyone that don't agree with his Word to establish His perfect "religion of love". That's pretty elevated, indeed.

Hey, the atheists killed more people in the last century than the Christians killed in two millenia. And, that's with atheists being a minority of the populace. Imagine if they had been a majority...

Mark Twain was right. If this God exists, he's a malign thug, no doubts about it.

Why is it God's fault that the world is such that it has evil inherent in it?

And this is the most outrageous statement I ever read in this forum coming from the monsters that came up with the doctrine of Eternal Damnation, threw mankind to the Dark Ages, implemented Inquisition and destroyed all possible human rights with their "religion of love".

Are you accusing me of being a monster? Is that what you're saying here?