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Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

I find it strange that all-powerful Gods have a need or want of slaves, but if slavery is all that Christians and Muslims aspire to after death, I am sure glad I am a Gnostic Christian and see Jesus as not being of the same ilk as Christian and Muslim slave aspirers. Jesus said he came to serve man but I guess that he is not like his father. Thank God for that. posting.php?mode=post&f=8#

In the arena of cultural evolution, the secular and humanist West has decided that Jesus wins the God Wars. Christians have gone along with revering the nice (sort of) God, Jesus, instead of his poor satanic father.

If Muslims do not also go along with that archetypal prophet and savior Jesus, as being more authoritative than Muhammad, they will not survive and the religion will die.

This is inevitable as the world will not allow open religious slavery, --- which is what Muslim and Christian ideologies promote.

No?

Regards
DL

On Muslim slavery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUOSIhg86oc
On archetypal Jesus. https://clyp.it/lqeu3cku
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Re: Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Gnostic Bishop wrote:Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?
You raise an interesting point. First, I rather disagree with it, though not totally. Some of the OT law is focused on blind obedience. But slavery, as we generally analyze and oppose it, is about economic exploitation. Forcing someone to do the work so I don't have to, or can concentrate on more important work. That is clearly not the nature of the obedience demanded by Yahweh.

Second, amid the multiple strains of Yahwism, the ones that focus most on obedience tend to be the ones most opposed to syncretism with the imperial gods of the Middle Eastern empires. It is part of their purity obsession, which has both good and bad sides. If one strain of OT criticism is correct, that Yahwism was the source of a covenant based ethos binding together refugees from the early empires (including bandits like David), then protecting that with an obedience rhetoric might not have been such a terrible thing. (Choose your enemies well, because you will tend to become like them.)
Gnostic Bishop wrote:I find it strange that all-powerful Gods have a need or want of slaves, but if slavery is all that Christians and Muslims aspire to after death, I am sure glad I am a Gnostic Christian and see Jesus as not being of the same ilk as Christian and Muslim slave aspirers.
Well, actually what the OT Yahweh and the NT God demand is justice (most of the traditional verses with the word "righteousness" in English would be better translated as "justice".) And clearly the enforcement is spotty. So maybe the obedience bit is just rhetoric.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:Jesus said he came to serve man but I guess that he is not like his father.
Yes, I think you Gnostics had and maybe have a clearer idea where Jesus was taking people than the imperial church founded by Constantine had. Me, I like the idea of a dialogue.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:In the arena of cultural evolution, the secular and humanist West has decided that Jesus wins the God Wars. Christians have gone along with revering the nice (sort of) God, Jesus, instead of his poor satanic father.
I would say that is accurate enough, except maybe the satanic father part. I rather like the version that says God the Enforcer had to die, to usher in the age of Grace.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:If Muslims do not also go along with that archetypal prophet and savior Jesus, as being more authoritative than Muhammad, they will not survive and the religion will die.
Yes, and the barbarians shall never triumph again, and the imperialist religions can't overcome modern, educated society (like the one who just elected Donald Trump president).
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Re: Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Harry

Just a couple of points.

You said that Yahweh's prime concern was justice. I do not agree.

Just read the first few commandments, which should be indicating justice issues if you were correct, yet they do not.

The first few commandment are Yahweh showing his jealousy of all others and demands that we put him first.

If Yahweh was just, then you might have a point but Yahweh's first act as justice, or judge, was to demand a bribe or sacrifice so that he could change his usual justice of punishing the guilty to punishing the innocent instead of the guilty.

1Peter 1:20 0 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.

You did not seem to like my calling Yahweh satanic.

Using the example of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus above, tell us please, who is more likely to ask for and accept the punishment of the innocent instead of the guilty? Satan or God?

Regards
DL
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Re: Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Harry Marks wrote:[.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:If Muslims do not also go along with that archetypal prophet and savior Jesus, as being more authoritative than Muhammad, they will not survive and the religion will die.
Yes, and the barbarians shall never triumph again, and the imperialist religions can't overcome modern, educated society (like the one who just elected Donald Trump president).
Intelligent Americans????

Have you not notices how far down the rankings the U.S. is?

I see the U.S. government as dumbing down the population. It is a lot easier to lead the stupid than the smart.

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DL
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Re: Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Gnostic Bishop wrote:You said that Yahweh's prime concern was justice. I do not agree.
Just read the first few commandments, which should be indicating justice issues if you were correct, yet they do not.
The first few commandment are Yahweh showing his jealousy of all others and demands that we put him first.
It's hard to tell which sources the various parts of the OT originate with. The first few commandments were added to the (modified) Hammurabic Code which makes up much of the basic law. So they signify something particularly Hebrew. One possibility is that this "jealousy" is from the purity emphasis, and therefore somewhat toxic. But again, the purity was a matter of avoiding some pretty toxic stuff as well. For instance, in addition to the nasty imperial gods brought by the marital diplomacy of the kings, there was the older Moloch worship, heavily featuring child sacrifice.

Monotheism seems to have an absolutist implication that can certainly have its downsides. But if it is taking a position in solidarity with the people, there is clearly also an upside.

The thesis of "The Great Transformation" by Karen Armstrong, drawn from Karl Jaspers' notion of the Axial Age, is that at similar levels of civilization, four great cultures all turned religion and thought about justice, hitherto established by authority, into an individualized version.

If this simply represents a stage of social discourse and consciousness, as I believe, then the change in God's personality reflects a kind of crisis among the Israelites. Before, kings and gods were sources of power, and the people hoped for good behavior from them. After, the hope for good behavior began to be identified with the nature and character of the deity (and the responsibilities of the rulers).
Gnostic Bishop wrote:If Yahweh was just, then you might have a point but Yahweh's first act as justice, or judge, was to demand a bribe or sacrifice so that he could change his usual justice of punishing the guilty to punishing the innocent instead of the guilty.
The sacrifice system seems to have been generally understood as appeasement to God, and that is bad theology and not very good sociology. But it has interesting roots. Originally a sacrifice was a matter of consecrating a meeting, a festival or an agreement with a simple feast. This is not far anthropologically from the potlatch system (named from the practice of the Native Americans of the Pacific NW, but observed in many cultures around the world) of competition by feast provision. The significance of a chief was shown by the food he could mobilize. And the significance of an occasion was shown by the hospitality of a sacrifice.

The love feast of the early Christians may be a practice preserved among the commoners of the villages, holding the ancient meaning of consecration by sharing, despite the swirling power games and imperial taxation.

How did top-down authority by violence get established, and for what purposes? Worth thinking about.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:You did not seem to like my calling Yahweh satanic.
Using the example of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus above, tell us please, who is more likely to ask for and accept the punishment of the innocent instead of the guilty? Satan or God?
No, even though I see the point you are making, I don't think it was introduced for satanic, domination-system purposes, nor does it hold such a meaning for most believers. Let me say I do not believe in substitutiary atonement, even though I regularly worship in Christian churches. But I have spent considerable time thinking about atonement, and I have come to the conclusion that "he took my place" is persuasive for the right kinds of reasons, and expresses a viable theology if it is just tweaked a little.

The purpose of preaching substitutiary atonement is to confront the individual with the responsibility for their crimes. This is much like the first stage of restorative justice, which seeks to have criminals understand what they have done by bringing them into dialogue with the victims or the families.

There is a "whipping boy" aspect to it. But even the whipping boy practice was meant to dramatize the seriousness of the person's crime. In the case of the substitution provided by the whipping boy, or the scapegoat sacrifice, it is forced on the victim. But in the case of atonement, it is voluntarily accepted by the "willing sacrifice." Thus it provides an ennobling example along with the just principle of payment for wrongdoing.

(The problem, of course, is that this is still imposed by some system of justice which is not held accountable. There still needs to be a stern God demanding a sacrifice. This same God then shows a kind of split personality in the medieval version, detesting our sin so much that he cannot just forgive us, but also loving us so much that he provided the sacrifice of Jesus, to make it possible. Your satanic version just focuses on the stern part.)

(For me the whole split relationship just doesn't add up. But I note that the same split occurs in the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac, sometimes taken as a type of Jesus' crucifixion. It features your jealous and terrorizing God demanding that Abraham sacrifice his only son Isaac. Some scholars believe it was told as an explicit rebuff to Moloch-worship.)

So, while your point is well-taken, overall, don't be too cynical about the resistance you get from Christians like me.

I suggested the doctrine should be tweaked a little. You will find that progressive Christians tend to teach a version of atonement which takes Jesus' action in seeking martyrdom as a demonstration of commitment to love. Crossan and Borg, in "The Last Week" go into this is some depth. In this view, often called the "moral influence" theory of atonement, Jesus frees us ("ransoms us") from sin by demonstrating that one can be committed to true values despite the threat of violence. (Resurrection is then a special vindication of that demonstration, as the Hellenistic branch of the early church seemed to believe).

I think Paul had in mind something more like moral influence. He was trying to make sense of a crucified Messiah, and he was trying to set aside legalistic requirements such as circumcision for the Hellenistic converts. Those two strands of his preaching seem to have come together in "grace", the notion that God's action in saving us was not because of any merit on our part but simply expressed God's love for us. (But it wasn't much later that the Book of Hebrews turned it into a transactional explanation.) Jesus' death was on our behalf, he clearly says, and it is the pivotal event, the key to God's saving action, he also states. But he never invokes the requirements of a terrorist God.

Unfortunately, Paul's somewhat Gnostic understanding of salvation (as a transformation into life on the basis of spiritual values) got shifted into an understanding in terms of escape from punishment in the afterlife. The two are thoroughly intertwined in Paul, but the church later put transformation on the back burner and settled for the afterlife.
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Re: Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Harry Marks wrote:[
quote="Gnostic Bishop"]You said that Yahweh's prime concern was justice. I do not agree.
Just read the first few commandments, which should be indicating justice issues if you were correct, yet they do not.
The first few commandment are Yahweh showing his jealousy of all others and demands that we put him first.
It's hard to tell which sources the various parts of the OT originate with. The first few commandments were added to the (modified) Hammurabic Code which makes up much of the basic law. So they signify something particularly Hebrew. One possibility is that this "jealousy" is from the purity emphasis, and therefore somewhat toxic. But again, the purity was a matter of avoiding some pretty toxic stuff as well. For instance, in addition to the nasty imperial gods brought by the marital diplomacy of the kings, there was the older Moloch worship, heavily featuring child sacrifice.
In all city states where resources were scarce, most communities were forced to sacrifice babies. It was that or sacrifice a worker. We are talking many different Gods.
Monotheism seems to have an absolutist implication that can certainly have its downsides. But if it is taking a position in solidarity with the people, there is clearly also an upside.
I agree when the ideology is moral or if the believer does not care if he is following an immoral creed. That solidarity to a moral creed is not the case with Islam and Christianity.

Both Christianity and Islam have basically developed into intolerant, homophobic and misogynous religions. Both religions have grown themselves by the sword instead of good deeds.

Jesus said we would know his people by their works and deeds. That means Jesus would not recognize Christians and Muslims as his people, and neither do I.
The thesis of "The Great Transformation" by Karen Armstrong, drawn from Karl Jaspers' notion of the Axial Age, is that at similar levels of civilization, four great cultures all turned religion and thought about justice, hitherto established by authority, into an individualized version.


As it should be as we all have different ideals for our Gods to live up to.

I am a Gnostic Christian and am all in for our seeing our God as unique.
If this simply represents a stage of social discourse and consciousness, as I believe, then the change in God's personality reflects a kind of crisis among the Israelites. Before, kings and gods were sources of power, and the people hoped for good behavior from them. After, the hope for good behavior began to be identified with the nature and character of the deity (and the responsibilities of the rulers).
Indeed. Politics ruling over religions has mostly always been the case. King first, because he is here and now. God second because he is fiction.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:If Yahweh was just, then you might have a point but Yahweh's first act as justice, or judge, was to demand a bribe or sacrifice so that he could change his usual justice of punishing the guilty to punishing the innocent instead of the guilty.
The sacrifice system seems to have been generally understood as appeasement to God, and that is bad theology and not very good sociology. But it has interesting roots. Originally a sacrifice was a matter of consecrating a meeting, a festival or an agreement with a simple feast. This is not far anthropologically from the potlatch system (named from the practice of the Native Americans of the Pacific NW, but observed in many cultures around the world) of competition by feast provision. The significance of a chief was shown by the food he could mobilize. And the significance of an occasion was shown by the hospitality of a sacrifice.
True, but that is not the type of sacrifice associated with Jesus.

In Jewish traditionally, sin was put onto the scapegoat that was let loose while the second goat was consumed in celebration of people forgiving each other for the small infractions or sin. Hence the celebration of renewed feeling of love in the tribes.
The love feast of the early Christians may be a practice preserved among the commoners of the villages, holding the ancient meaning of consecration by sharing, despite the swirling power games and imperial taxation.

How did top-down authority by violence get established, and for what purposes? Worth thinking about.


To gain the justice that we do not want individuals to seek alone, as they might make mistakes. Man has always craved order and security, better to let an enforcer of law get killed by some culprit than to put ones own life on the line by seeking ones one brand of justice.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:You did not seem to like my calling Yahweh satanic.
Using the example of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus above, tell us please, who is more likely to ask for and accept the punishment of the innocent instead of the guilty? Satan or God?
No, even though I see the point you are making, I don't think it was introduced for satanic, domination-system purposes, nor does it hold such a meaning for most believers. Let me say I do not believe in substitutiary atonement, even though I regularly worship in Christian churches. But I have spent considerable time thinking about atonement, and I have come to the conclusion that "he took my place" is persuasive for the right kinds of reasons, and expresses a viable theology if it is just tweaked a little.
A little???

How would you tweak this truth to make your use of an innocent victim moral?

Having another innocent person suffer for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral.

---------

That line is a part of a longer version that no Christian dares argue against as there is no decent argument against it.

I hope you agree as I include it below.

Human sacrifice is evil and God/Yahweh demanding one and Jesus accepting one is evil. Jesus accepted the premise of his sacrifice being somehow just. This is evil.

Those trying to profit from that evil are evil. Do just a bit of thinking and you will agree.

Imagine you have two children. One of your children does something wrong – say it curses, or throws a temper tantrum, or something like that. In fact, say it does this on a regular basis, and you continually forgive your child, but it never seems to change.

Now suppose one day you’ve had enough, you need to do something different. You still wish to forgive your child, but nothing has worked. Do you go to your second child, your good child, and punish it to atone for the sins of the first?

In fact, if you ever saw a parent on the street punish one of their children for the actions of their other child, how would you react? Would you support their decision, or would you be offended? Because God punished Jesus -- his good child -- for the sins of his other children.

Interestingly, some historical royal families would beat their slaves when their own children did wrong – you should not, after all, ever beat a prince. The question is: what kind of lesson does that teach the child who actually did the harm? Does it teach them to be a better person, to stop doing harm, or does it teach them both that they won't themselves be punished, and also that punishing other people is normal? I know that's not a lesson I would want to teach my children, and I suspect it's not a lesson most Christians would want to teach theirs. So why does God?

For me, that’s at least one significant reason I find Jesus’ atonement of our sin to be morally repugnant – of course, that’s assuming Jesus ever existed; that original sin actually exists; that God actually exists; etc.

Having another innocent person suffer for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral.

Do you agree?

If not, please show how it is morally and legally good to punish the innocent instead of the guilty, bearing in mind that all legal systems think that punishing the guilty is what is justice.
The purpose of preaching substitutiary atonement is to confront the individual with the responsibility for their crimes. This is much like the first stage of restorative justice, which seeks to have criminals understand what they have done by bringing them into dialogue with the victims or the families.

There is a "whipping boy" aspect to it. But even the whipping boy practice was meant to dramatize the seriousness of the person's crime. In the case of the substitution provided by the whipping boy, or the scapegoat sacrifice, it is forced on the victim. But in the case of atonement, it is voluntarily accepted by the "willing sacrifice." Thus it provides an ennobling example along with the just principle of payment for wrongdoing.
I do not see it your way but I do speak of the whipping boy notion in the essay above.

But to what you put. If you are to confront me with one of my crimes/sins, and punish an innocent whipping boy for my mistakes, it is encouraging me to make more mistakes because I was not punished for the first.
(The problem, of course, is that this is still imposed by some system of justice which is not held accountable.


I know of no justice system that knowingly punishes the innocent while recognizing that that was not always the case. Note the old anti-gay laws. I do know of many religions that do punish the innocent without a just cause. Note how Christianity and Islam are still homophobic and misogynous and continue to discriminate against women and gays without a just cause.
There still needs to be a stern God demanding a sacrifice. This same God then shows a kind of split personality in the medieval version, detesting our sin so much that he cannot just forgive us, but also loving us so much that he provided the sacrifice of Jesus, to make it possible. Your satanic version just focuses on the stern part.)
I focus on the idiotic part where a God condemns us for being exactly what he created us to be, and then stupidly having his son murdered to forgive us instead of just forgiving us outright.

I anticipate that you will bring up that good old free will gambit to speak to what I just put so let me go long here.


Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by whipping out their favorite "free will!", or “ it’s all man’s fault”.

That is "God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy."

But this simply avoids God's culpability as the author of Human Nature. Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.

If all sin by nature then, the sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not sin. That being the case, for God to punish us for following the instincts and natures he put in us would be quite wrong.
(For me the whole split relationship just doesn't add up. But I note that the same split occurs in the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac, sometimes taken as a type of Jesus' crucifixion. It features your jealous and terrorizing God demanding that Abraham sacrifice his only son Isaac. Some scholars believe it was told as an explicit rebuff to Moloch-worship.)
True and we may never know what the myth represents.
So, while your point is well-taken, overall, don't be too cynical about the resistance you get from Christians like me.
I amnot but after I argue my points, most Christians say that God can go about saying, do as I say and not as I do, and I see that as a cop out that throws their morality away in favor of a get out of hell free card, even if it is a satanic letting of an innocent man be punished in the immoral Christians stead.
I suggested the doctrine should be tweaked a little. You will find that progressive Christians tend to teach a version of atonement which takes Jesus' action in seeking martyrdom as a demonstration of commitment to love.


A self-serving love that makes Jesus a hero and savior, instead of a magnanimous no-conditional love that just forgives without demanding the theist embrace an immoral and definitely unjust tenet.
Crossan and Borg, in "The Last Week" go into this is some depth. In this view, often called the "moral influence" theory of atonement, Jesus frees us ("ransoms us") from sin by demonstrating that one can be committed to true values despite the threat of violence. (Resurrection is then a special vindication of that demonstration, as the Hellenistic branch of the early church seemed to believe).
Psa 49 7
None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him

You have to ignore a lot more of moral scriptures to follow the immoral substitutionary atonement.


Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

Ezekiel 18:20 (ESV) The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice. [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance
I think Paul had in mind something more like moral influence. He was trying to make sense of a crucified Messiah, and he was trying to set aside legalistic requirements such as circumcision for the Hellenistic converts. Those two strands of his preaching seem to have come together in "grace", the notion that God's action in saving us was not because of any merit on our part but simply expressed God's love for us. (But it wasn't much later that the Book of Hebrews turned it into a transactional explanation.) Jesus' death was on our behalf, he clearly says, and it is the pivotal event, the key to God's saving action, he also states. But he never invokes the requirements of a terrorist God.

Unfortunately, Paul's somewhat Gnostic understanding of salvation (as a transformation into life on the basis of spiritual values) got shifted into an understanding in terms of escape from punishment in the afterlife. The two are thoroughly intertwined in Paul, but the church later put transformation on the back burner and settled for the afterlife.
[/quote]

This is factual I think, as to why the belief evolved to what it is today.

The church of today is an idol worshiper when it should be a God seeker which is what Jesus taught. That is why people in the West are leaving it in droves.

The mainstream religions like Christianity and Islam are garbage, in terms of morals, and moral Westerners are ignoring their tribal instincts which is about the only reason left for people to be a member of a church or mosque.

Regards
DL
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Re: Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Harry Marks wrote:Some of the OT law is focused on blind obedience. But slavery, as we generally analyze and oppose it, is about economic exploitation. Forcing someone to do the work so I don't have to, or can concentrate on more important work. That is clearly not the nature of the obedience demanded by Yahweh.
That dodges the point by being too technical. Gnostic Bishop's thread title can be understood as both Christianity and Islam require a slavish devotion to the same Deity.
slav•ish (slāˈvĭsh)
adj. Of or characteristic of a slave or slavery; servile: Her slavish devotion to her job ruled her life.
Harry Marks wrote:I rather like the version that says God the Enforcer had to die, to usher in the age of Grace.
Interesting point! I didn't realize some Christians see the transformation that dramatically. Seems like the vast majority prefer to use both Gods, employing the God of Grace when they want to appear lovey-dovey and God the Enforcer when they must condemn yucky stuff like homo-sex.

I have several problems with the whole idea of the Judeo-Christian God evolving (or one God dying), perhaps you can clarify this.
  • Yahweh is eternal. His Word is eternal and unchanging.
  • Jesus said he came to fulfill the Law, not to destroy it. He was also the Enforcer - end of Matthew 25 as one example.
  • The Christian God is Triune: Father/Yahweh + Son/Jesus + Holy Ghost manifested as One Godhead.
  • As part of this eternal Godhead, Jesus also required the genocide, war crimes, and harsh punishments described in the Old Testament. As one eternal Deity there cannot be a Divine evolution (or death of one third of a Trinity) progressing from Enforcer to Grace.
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Re: Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Gnostic Bishop wrote:
Harry Marks wrote: in addition to the nasty imperial gods brought by the marital diplomacy of the kings, there was the older Moloch worship, heavily featuring child sacrifice.
In all city states where resources were scarce, most communities were forced to sacrifice babies. It was that or sacrifice a worker. We are talking many different Gods.

I'm not sure. I accept that child sacrifice was probably a result of economic pressure: a drought comes along, some half-crazed shaman says kill a child and the gods will be appeased, and then the next year it rains, so people start believing this. And since it takes economic pressure off, it is reinforced.

However, it may not work like that. The behavior we observe today is that desperate families reduce the food intake of "low status" children, like girls, and then measles or something does the dirty work. For all I know, child sacrifice may have had more to do with enforcing patriarchy by killing something valuable to the wife.
Both Christianity and Islam have basically developed into intolerant, homophobic and misogynous religions. Both religions have grown themselves by the sword instead of good deeds.
And yet there are many branches of Christianity which are not intolerant, homophobic or misogynous. Even some Islam is now more interested in human rights than in traditional family heirarchies and sexual restrictions. It may have been the Enlightenment that brought the change (but Sufi Islam has been around longer), but all that matters to me is that the change is possible and relatively frequent.

Gnostic Bishop wrote:
Originally a sacrifice was a matter of consecrating a meeting, a festival or an agreement with a simple feast.
And the significance of an occasion was shown by the hospitality of a sacrifice.
True, but that is not the type of sacrifice associated with Jesus.

In Jewish traditionally, sin was put onto the scapegoat that was let loose while the second goat was consumed in celebration of people forgiving each other for the small infractions or sin. Hence the celebration of renewed feeling of love in the tribes.
There is some interesting work that has been done by anthropologist René Girard, seeing scapegoating as an example of the general phenomenon of "mimetic" violence. In his view, the voluntary sacrifice by Jesus confronted and overcame the pattern of blaming and victimizing. It feels a little artificial to me, but the idea that Jesus' sacrifice was voluntary is certainly a deeply ingrained part of all atonement theory.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:
How did top-down authority by violence get established, and for what purposes? Worth thinking about.
To gain the justice that we do not want individuals to seek alone, as they might make mistakes. Man has always craved order and security, better to let an enforcer of law get killed by some culprit than to put ones own life on the line by seeking ones one brand of justice.
Yes, I see, although again I am not sure. The idea of a wise old man serving as a judge is big here in Africa where I am living, and that seems to me to be a separate tradition from the "monopoly on violence" that led kings to suppress bandits. The kings were war leaders originally, and I think they were pursuing an exploitative system.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:
I have come to the conclusion that "he took my place" is persuasive for the right kinds of reasons, and expresses a viable theology if it is just tweaked a little.
A little???
How would you tweak this truth to make your use of an innocent victim moral?
Having another innocent person suffer for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral.

Well, again, it was voluntary. The tweaking involves seeing the mechanism as demonstration of self-emptying, rather than as satisfaction of a demand for retribution.
Was Oscar Romero's death not redemptive, in a way? Because his courage led him to continue confronting the power structures, even knowing he might be assassinated, we are given an alternative to "they have the guns." (Of course the alternative was there before, but it becomes more tangible.) Our freedom from those who would intimidate becomes that much more clear and active.
Gnostic Bishop wrote: Human sacrifice is evil and God/Yahweh demanding one and Jesus accepting one is evil. Jesus accepted the premise of his sacrifice being somehow just. This is evil.
Those trying to profit from that evil are evil. Do just a bit of thinking and you will agree.
Well, I agree in practice as well as in theory. That is, with all due respect to Augustine's good intentions, I think the church adopted the "original sin demands an innocent sacrifice" theory to perpetuate its power, in blatant disregard for the horrible implications about God.

I don't think Jesus accepted the idea that there was justice demanding his death. I am not sure he even entertained the notion - there is almost nothing in the Gospels, especially the earlier synoptic Gospels, conveying any notion of substitutiary atonement. There is definitely not any clear statement of it.
Gnostic Bishop wrote: Because God punished Jesus -- his good child -- for the sins of his other children.
Or perhaps not. Paul says some things that can be construed that way, but are far from obvious. Rather the passages from Isaiah that Jesus was probably expecting to live out, such as Ch. 53 with its "he was wounded for our transgressions," also clearly state that this was a perversion of justice. It is interesting that God wills his pain anyway, seeing redemption and light as the result. But this is hardly any kind of declaration that God's justice needed to be satisfied by a sacrifice.
Redemption through acceptance of suffering is a deep idea. It touches aspects of our psyche that scapegoating skims only the surface of. Fr. Richard Rohr says that if you don't let your suffering transform you, then you will afflict others because of it. I think that is really true.
Gnostic Bishop wrote: For me, that’s at least one significant reason I find Jesus’ atonement of our sin to be morally repugnant – of course, that’s assuming Jesus ever existed; that original sin actually exists; that God actually exists; etc.
Original sin is a foolish and repugnant notion. I believe that we have a nature which is mostly selfish, but the idea that this resulted from some choice made by ancestors is pathetic.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:Having another innocent person suffer for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral.
Yes, of course I agree.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:If you are to confront me with one of my crimes/sins, and punish an innocent whipping boy for my mistakes, it is encouraging me to make more mistakes because I was not punished for the first.
Well, it doesn't seem to work like that. There is a dramatic story in the current Atlantic Magazine about a family who brought their slave from the Philippines when they moved to America.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... kly-051917
In this article, the mother chose, while still a youth and in the old country, to have the slave bear the punishment in her place. She was actually considerably sobered by the experience and in later years admitted it was a terrible thing to do.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:I know of no justice system that knowingly punishes the innocent while recognizing that that was not always the case.
Well, there is the old hostage system which was the basis for the touching story of Damon and Pythias. One put himself forward as a hostage so his friend would be allowed to go and do something important before being executed, and when the friend was prevented from returning in the allotted time, the hostage would have been executed. Not as justice, exactly, but as a system considered just.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:Note the old anti-gay laws. I do know of many religions that do punish the innocent without a just cause. Note how Christianity and Islam are still homophobic and misogynous and continue to discriminate against women and gays without a just cause.
Yes, this is a strange distortion resulting from the troublesome notion of sin. I would just point out that other cultures have had punishment for "impurity" of various sorts, and all we can do is guess at the reasons.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:That being the case, for God to punish us for following the instincts and natures he put in us would be quite wrong.
In general, I agree with your reading. I would like to point out, however, that sometimes people need to overcome their nature even though it is very strong. Pedophilia is one such case, and psychopaths are another. (There is also an article in the Atlantic about treatment for children showing psychopathic tendencies, once considered untreatable.)

I think the church's homophobia is tragic and despicable, but I also see a lot of moving beyond that within progressive churches.
Gnostic Bishop wrote: after I argue my points, most Christians say that God can go about saying, do as I say and not as I do, and I see that as a cop out that throws their morality away in favor of a get out of hell free card, even if it is a satanic letting of an innocent man be punished in the immoral Christians stead.
I have seen a version of this, amounting to "God made us so he (always "he") can do anything he wants with us." This goes against everything I believe about God, the purpose of life, and the spiritual truth of Christianity. Maybe I am a Gnostic.
Gnostic Bishop wrote:
I suggested the doctrine should be tweaked a little. You will find that progressive Christians tend to teach a version of atonement which takes Jesus' action in seeking martyrdom as a demonstration of commitment to love.
A self-serving love that makes Jesus a hero and savior, instead of a magnanimous no-conditional love that just forgives without demanding the theist embrace an immoral and definitely unjust tenet.
Self-serving? Not in any understanding of "self" that I am familiar with. Jesus demonstrating a commitment to love is not a claim that he must die for our sins to be forgiven. I don't think Jesus is quoted saying any such thing. A savior? Yes, but every bit of evidence we have points to the idea that he was confronting the idea of a military Messiah with the suffering servant alternative. While it is possible that he believed in substitutiary atonement about himself, it is strikingly absent from the Gospels, to the extent that one wonders how he could possibly have believed in such a mechanism but been unwilling to explain it.
Gnostic Bishop wrote: Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

Ezekiel 18:20 (ESV) The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
My understanding is that both of these are explicit rebukes to an earlier OT passage saying that God would visit the sins of the fathers upon the sons, "even to the seventh generation."
Gnostic Bishop wrote:The church of today is an idol worshiper when it should be a God seeker which is what Jesus taught. That is why people in the West are leaving it in droves.
I don't think I would ever phrase it that strongly, but I can't say you're wrong.
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Re: Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Harry

I think you are more Gnostic than you think. You seem to have a relatively open mind and can think freely.

I see more than one Jesus in scriptures and think that that is what confuses many.

There is the Roman ass kisser that Rome created and the more esoteric mystical Jesus that I like to see speak, through the mouts of the scribes of course.

This link shows the first Jesus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJgvws0ZYUE

These quotes show the Jesus I like.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

I am a brethren to that Jesus just as all Gnostics try to be while seeking our internal spark of God. Not a supernatural God, but our real ideal in terms of being the best possible human.

----------

On child sacrifice.

In reading of the more ancient religious practices of trying to sanctify sex for procreation, while still having Temple Prostitutes who were a well respected part of the economy, which included returning currency to the Kings, who paid the workers with the same coin for their work in the fields, --- that is why we call cash bread, --- served to keep the populations down so as to sacrifice fewer babies.

I dislike most of what religion is about but do give the old ancients credit for that.

---------

On Jesus' sacrifice.

The Jews rejected it out of hand because their messiah was to be a man who rose and led them. Not a messiah that died and never returned.

Regards
DL
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Re: Yahweh. Obey like a slave. Allah. Submit like a slave. Do you see a difference?

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Gnostic Bishop wrote:I think you are more Gnostic than you think. You seem to have a relatively open mind and can think freely. DL
I think being able to think freely is much of what God intends for us (to the extent that the spirit of love can be considered to intend). After all, if you are doing wonderful things for other people but only doing it slavishly, because you think you are commanded to, it will not help much to free those others from futility and self-absorption.

An old parable argues that all the religions are paths up the same mountain, so no matter which road you take, if you get to the top, the view is the same. I think that is pretty accurate, though some versions of religion take you down while claiming it is up.
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