sort of people who preach God\u2019s wrath<\/a> would have us believe that God tortured his son (self) to death in order to save a small fraction of humanity from the torturous fires which God created and condemned the bulk of humanity to endure. Torture for everyone \u2013 either vicarious or personalized. Tell us again about how “God is Love.”<\/p>\nThe next answer that I usually hear is that God had to kill someone<\/em> because there is no remission of sins without the shedding of blood. Think about this for a second. Either God made up this ridiculous and arbitrary rule, in which case he can repeal and replace it with \u201cI’ll forgive whomever I damn well please,\u201d or else God is bound by some absurd cosmic law higher than Himself, in which case, how can He be called Almighty? The usual escape route here is to say that God is bound by His own character, which requires perfect justice, but have you ever met someone who would call it justice to inflict corporal or capital punishment on anyone other than the guilty party? I would like to suggest to Christians that they try to get substitutionary death penalties put on the law books, just to see how mainstream society reacts when we try to take their ideas about “justice” seriously. Oh, we will also need a few born-again volunteers. A blissful afterlife awaits, and you can give a convicted murderer a second chance!<\/p>\nProbably the most bizarrely metaphysical answer I often get is that by dying and resurrecting, Jesus somehow blazed a path for mortal souls to ascend to heaven. Seriously, guys? God can do anything logically possible, but he needs a beta-tester when it comes to relocating souls off the mortal plane? And let\u2019s not even get into the question of whether disembodied minds are a logically coherent idea, that is a whole post unto itself. (Turns out they aren’t.)<\/p>\n
No doubt there are many other reasons that have been given by Christians to support the notion that an all-powerful and perfectly loving being somehow lacks the power to simply forgive<\/em> his beloved creations without killing an innocent person first. If you know of any interesting ones, please leave them in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right around this time of year, every year, I inevitably get into it with a few of my Christian friends…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,20,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-counter-apologetics","category-friday-reads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/m.quickmeme.com\/img\/40\/40bc52c63e783f51daa09b68580a790087c78b70f3c559c7c6b2503108a6dc98.jpg\")
Right around this time of year, every year, I inevitably get into it with a few of my Christian friends about why Jesus has to die in the first place. For an idea so central to Christian soteriology, I\u2019m always surprised to find that there is not a single consistent answer to this question. Some of the most common answers are (1) So as to appease God\u2019s wrath against sin, (2) So as to level the scales of cosmic justice, (3) So as to build a metaphysical stairway to heaven for mortal souls as the \u201cfirst fruits of the general resurrection.\u201d There are many other responses, of course. Go ask someone you know who believes in this sort of thing. Then ask another. Keep going, you\u2019ll get a fascinating and bizarre array of responses. Probably the weirdest one that recurs is that it was necessary as a demonstration of God\u2019s Love\u2122 which is to say (somewhat more crudely) that it was a sort of divine public relations stunt. Who doesn’t love a compelling martyrology, right? Not sure whether that one is worth serious consideration, but I\u2019d like to cast some doubt on the other three common replies.<\/p>\n