Category Theology

Atonement and Jesus

The Atonement is one of those funny things in Christianity. It is the central tenet, the main raison d’etre of the whole shebang. Jesus existed as God incarnate in order to be sacrificed and die in order to pay for our sins, past, present and future.

Only it makes absolutely no sense.

In very simplistic terms, I see it like this:

Guest post: The problem with when you are born

In Jonathan’s post titled, “Inter-Testamental Moral Relativism,” a hypothetical exchange between an atheist and an Xian highlights the morally relativistic nature of a fundamentalist worldview that defends the idea that executing a man for picking up sticks on a Saturday is obligatory at time T, but morally impermissible at T+1. In the exchange, the snarky hypothetical atheist wants to know exactly when T occurred in order to know exactly when people became morally obliged to refrain from executing Sabbath breakers.

First Biblical Contradiction

I haven’t done a post like this for ages. Reading, as I mentioned in a previous post, a book sent to me for review, Franz Kiekeben’s The Truth About God, the author takes a whistle-stop tour through inconsistencies in the Bible (not so much to list them all, as he only mentions a few, but to illustrate the types of defences that Christians typically use). He details the inconsistency which starts the Bible off, namely the six day creation story.

Do the Bible and Qu’ran need commentaries?

Over on a recent thread about the challenges I have met in my claims of Islam, a Catholic commentator asked this question:

I agree with you that Islam has problems. I have a quick question: do you read commentaries and theology books written by Muslims to offset your bias?

To which I said:

Classical theism: God’s characteristics shown as incoherent

The classical theistic components of God, his characteristics of being all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing don’t work very well together. This has been something which I have sought to elucidate over the years, so I thought I would compile a synopsis of where we are at with the idea of OmniGod, and what he has created. These are good arguments, I believe, and I would love to see my readers interact with them, and I would love to see theists of all natures take them to task to see if they stand up. Bookmark this page and return to it, if you will – there’s quite a lot here! I would like to see this as a growing compendium.

Guest Post: God’s Love Should Be Superior To Man’s

This is a guest post by Little Fire who submitted through a friend. An interesting little twist on the idea of God’s love:

WHY?

Why Is God’s Love Conditional? Love is different for everyone because we all put different conditions or expectations on the ones we love — consciously and unconsciously.

Islam vs Christianity: the core differences

I have articulated this many, many times, but never yet as a full blog post, so here goes. What is it that differentiates the two major world religions, and how does this translate across to the behaviour of their adherents?

This is a pretty vital question for understanding the state of affairs with world religions and worldviews, especially in present day context…

The Doctrine of Atonement – Robert Ingersoll

I have elsewhere talked about how the Doctrine of the Atonement is simply nonsensical. Well, here is the eminent thinker Robert Ingersoll on the subject.

According to one of these gospels, and according to the prevalent Christian belief, the Christian religion rests upon the doctrine of the atonement

Slugging out the incoherence of the Trinity

Gah! I posted my Trinity piece with some alterations on John Loftus’ Debunking Christianity where I used to be a more full-time contributor. It was picked up by some Catholic chap who tried to critique it, except that he really didn’t deal with the substantive points.

The Holy Trinity as incoherent #1

The Holy Trinity has had a problematic history, partly evidenced by point of fact that theologians still don’t agree on how it works, and partly seen from its ex post facto evolution, shoehorned into the scant evidence of the biblical texts. From Ignatius of Antioch onwards we see development of the idea in early church thinking, until it is codified at the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century CE. There will be more talk later on what was creedally set out.