CelticBear’s Musings

“s burgener” over at Debunking Christianity has a fascinating post entitled:

The incredible “smallness” of Jesus’ sacrifice

He investigates the relativity of the “sacrifice” of God. I’d always heard the argument about just how sure, being scourged and buffeted and crucified is pretty bad! But, in the realm of human suffering, it’s actually very short and minor compared to things like people in Africa and Asia who spend years in the process of starving to death. THAT would be a true sacrifice that would understand the human condition. Or the cancer victim who spends weeks, months, even years in agony and pain. Another example of the human condition. A day of being brutally whipped, dragging a beam, and being nailed to a tree is bad, but minuscule comparatively to what millions of humans go through. What is a day of torture to a being that lives for eternity?

And so the article linked above goes into great thoughtful detail about this concept at length.

Now, the Christian response would likely be it’s not the length or severity of the sacrifice, it’s the fact of the sacrifice itself.
But then that leads to questions of, who is God trying to impress or convince? Himself? He set up the original rules of post-life destinations, he can change them without requiring a sado-masochistic human sacrifice.

One might say, this IS his method of changing the rules. And my reply is bullhockey. Here is a god that supposedly created an infinite, exquisite, awesome, beautiful universe that works on orderly and set rules of thermal-dynamics, physics, biochemistry, and he choses to change his rules about salvation and paradise based on an act of brutality and
blood and murder? Come on. Let’s use the brains god supposedly gave us. The a priori argument is god is all-loving, merciful, all-powerful, and we’re his chosen creation. Now, since god obviously understands logic and reason and the conservation of energy since everything non-religious in the universe runs on orderly methods as observed by the efforts of science, here’s an options that would make more sense:

– When anyone dies he simply opens their…minds(?), hearts(?), to the Truth. Since he’s god, he can do this. And since the Truth is supposed to be perfect and obvious, our post-death minds(?) will surely embrace it and exclaim “Oh god how wrong I was! I’m sorry and I accept you!” and then hey! They get to join god in heaven and none of his creation has to suffer un-loving, unmerciful torment for eternity, and there would be no need to a sado-masochistic act of having to convince himself that sins should be washed clean.

Why is it so hard for people to accept that this story of human sacrifice is a Bronze Age myth, throwback from ancient beliefs in sacrifice based on very extreme and ignorant views of humanity and beliefs in the supernatural?

Well: a very early essay of mine: “Faith or Delusion?“