The Christ Myth Theory

[T.G.G. Moogly]

It would seem to me that young earth creationism would more likely associate itself with gospel literalism, a historical protagonist in Mark who lived and died as written. Just because I do not ascribe to mythicism does not mean I am a historicist about the gospel protagonist.

The canonical gospels are obviously fictional accounts. I think it was Doherty who used the phrase "having confessional interests" to describe most persons and scholars who took the gospels historically.

For me the most interesting question is what was on the mind of the writer who penned Mark when he penned Mark as the work seems to have arrived from nowhere. And I use the word "writer" instead of author because I do not believe the writer of Mark was the author, nor someone who had a personal relationship with the gospel protagonist.

Are there any works which associate Mark with literature of the day? That would be an interesting read and might relate to the topic of Moral Influence. Fiction would seem to set right between myth and historicity, much the same as literature today.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

It's tough. The best I can do with the gospels is that Mark highlights the enraged crowd, corrupt religious elite, an indifferent to justice / crowd placating Pilate (breaking Roman law - releasing Barabbas, a known killer of Romans, and having the crowd decide Jesus's fate) bringing about the unjust death of Jesus, and Jesus allowing his death to make this hidden evil conspicuous: my version of the classic Moral Influence interpretation of the cross by Abelard. And this is what happens. The Roman soldier says "truly this is God's son." In Luke the soldier says "truly this was an innocent mam." That's what I make of it as a literary theme. It's the same as Socrates death in the Phaedo though extremely augmented because Jesus is the specially favored son of God. If this theme is right, a mythical Jesus executed by demons in outer space doesn't really work because while I can identify with the corrupt and fallible humanity in those men responsible for Jesus' death and see it in myself, not so much Carrier's sky demons. But your right, mythicism could be right. It's tough.

Yes indeed -- your analogy with Socrates is spot on. That was a well known theme before Plato and has been a favourite ever since, among Jewish storytellers and others--- the idea of a righteous man being too good for this world and a blind and ignorant and wicked mob killing that righteous man, sometimes a woman, who is "too good" for this world. It's the old, old story.

It's the same story if Jesus was a personification of the Jewish people. They were hated and destroyed by Rome, but a "new Israel" rose again from their death experience. That's also the story of the Old Testament over and over -- Israel being punished or destroyed, whether for their sins or simply because they are righteous, and a "new Israel" emerging to replace them.

As for the theology, coming up with some "meaning" for that death -- different interpreters came up with different theories, from atonement to ransom or whatever.

I don't think we have any secure evidence for a heavenly crucifixion. The Ascension of Isaiah was used by Carrier and before him Doherty but I've tried to dig into the more recent scholarship on that text, and it's mostly in Italian, some French, and it looks like both Doherty and Carrier got that one wrong. The Ascension of Isaiah never had a crucifixion in the firmament at all.

Not that a heavenly crucifixion is automatically ruled out as an impossibility. Some gnostics in late antiquity and later some early "heretics" in early middle ages in Europe had teachings about heavenly crucifixions. But I don't see the evidence for it in Christian origins.

Neil Said

" Yes indeed -- your analogy with Socrates is spot on. That was a well known theme before Plato and has been a favourite ever since, among Jewish storytellers and others--- the idea of a righteous man being too good for this world and a blind and ignorant and wicked mob killing that righteous man, sometimes a woman, who is "too good" for this world. It's the old, old story... It's the same story if Jesus was a personification of the Jewish people. They were hated and destroyed by Rome, but a "new Israel" rose again from their death experience. That's also the story of the Old Testament over and over -- Israel being punished or destroyed, whether for their sins or simply because they are righteous, and a "new Israel" emerging to replace them."

Another aspect could be literary repentance imagery working at both an individual level and a group level. So at an individual level we can have the repentant soldier claiming Jesus was innocent in Luke, and at a group level we can have the repentant nations come to realize how terribly they acted toward the Jews. Marshall Roth offers one way of reading Isaiah 53 with this theme. For instance, he says:

The 53rd chapter of Isaiah is a beautiful, poetic song, one of the four “Servant Songs” in which the prophet describes the climactic period of world history when the Messiah will arrive and the Jewish people assume the role as the spiritual leaders of humanity... Isaiah 53 is a prophecy foretelling how the world will react when they witness Israel's salvation in the Messianic era. The verses are presented from the perspective of world leaders, who contrast their former scornful attitude toward the Jews with their new realization of Israel's grandeur. After realizing how unfairly they treated the Jewish people, they will be shocked and speechless. See: https://aish.com/isaiah_53_the_suffering_servant/

 

[neilgodfrey]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

I think the point was that Jesus died so he could come back. The death wasn't supposed to be the end, it was sort of a transition point, and lacked importance. The return was the big billing for the Messiah.

But there was no return, for obvious reasons. So, his death now needed to actually accomplish something... and then that seemed to transition even more in suggesting that he was always god, before birth.

It reminds me of religious Y2k'ers that thought the End Was Nigh... and a church billboard on 1/2/2000 reading "Jesus blessed us with another millennium." Religion often seems to be more about explaining why something hasn't happened, like the King the Little Prince meets.

Interestingly, Markus Vinzent demonstrates that until late in the second century Christian writings didn't place much emphasis on Christ's resurrection and return. What was front and center as the saving act of Jesus was his death. Paul's letters were "(re?)discovered" by Marcion in the middle of the second century and really only had an impact on "orthodox" teachings from the last decades of that century.

-- Vinzent, Markus. Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity: And the Making of the New Testament. Ashgate, c2011.

 

[dbz]

[A]ll the Pauline letters are in fact skillful falsifications from the second century.

—Hermann Detering [7]

Some scholars such as Hermann Detering and Robert M. Price

following the previous scholarship of the Dutch Radical School

have argued that the Pauline epistles are from a later date than usually assumed.[8] Willem Christiaan van Manen

of the Dutch Radical School saw various issues in the Pauline epistles. Van Manen claimed that they could not have been written earlier than the 2nd century. He argued that the canonical Pauline works de-emphasized the Gnostic aspects of early Christianity.[9]

The Pauline epistles which make up the bulk of the NT have no historical attestation prior to Marcion. . . . Prior to Marcion, most of the other forms of Christianity had been largely Jewish with Platonic influences. Marcion's Paulinism mixed with Jewish Christianity formed a syncretic amalgam, a synthesis of the absorption of two differing streams.

—Bart Willruth[10]

 

[1Heidegger1!]

It would seem to me that young earth creationism would more likely associate itself with gospel literalism, a historical protagonist in Mark who lived and died as written. Just because I do not ascribe to mythicism does not mean I am a historicist about the gospel protagonist.

The canonical gospels are obviously fictional accounts. I think it was Doherty who used the phrase "having confessional interests" to describe most persons and scholars who took the gospels historically.

For me the most interesting question is what was on the mind of the writer who penned Mark when he penned Mark as the work seems to have arrived from nowhere. And I use the word "writer" instead of author because I do not believe the writer of Mark was the author, nor someone who had a personal relationship with the gospel protagonist.

Are there any works which associate Mark with literature of the day? That would be an interesting read and might relate to the topic of Moral Influence. Fiction would seem to set right between myth and historicity, much the same as literature today.

If there was a Jesus, I don't think there is any reason to suppose Mark knew him or was working from eyewitness reports of him. Mark seems to be mostly rewriting the Hebrew Scriptures and other Greek sources like Homer. Dr. Robert M. Price had an influential article on this originally published in the Encyclopedia of Midrash by Neusner and Avery-Peck (eds), which was later posted online for free by Price here: http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_midrash1.htm . I asked Avery Peck once whether he thought Price's article stands up today, and he agreed with most of Price's examples of imitation and said that The Jewish Annotated New Testament takes the conversation forward in a fruitful manner. Price's mythicist conclusion has been challenged by some like Ehrman and McGrath on the grounds that some of the new stories were poor matches for the originals, and some examples are common ancient life and so do not require a literary antecedent, like Crossan trying to account for the empty tomb in a literary manner.

My 2 cents is that if there was a Jesus he is forever lost behind the way he is presented by the NT writers. For reasons I gave above and in the link I provided here https://secularfrontier.infidels.or...ast-about-mythicism-atonement-and-gnosticism/ , I think transformation is a major theme, the way we are transformed when the cross of Christ makes conspicuous the enraged crowd, corrupt religious elite and indifferent to justice Pilate who are also present in us as a catalyst for our repentance. I think Neil is right there is a societal connection, and as I said above the nations come to see how they mistreated Israel and this inspires repentance.

The repentant Roman soldiers in Mark and Luke seem to suggest this way of interpreting, and make sense in the context of an expected coming judgment. But this is all literary framing so it would take a sophisticated line of argument to find history here. It's historical fiction. On the other hand, if we read this interpretation of the cross back into Paul, it would seem there was probably some historical Jesus in there somewhere.

 

[Jarhyn]

It would seem to me that young earth creationism would more likely associate itself with gospel literalism, a historical protagonist in Mark who lived and died as written. Just because I do not ascribe to mythicism does not mean I am a historicist about the gospel protagonist.

The canonical gospels are obviously fictional accounts. I think it was Doherty who used the phrase "having confessional interests" to describe most persons and scholars who took the gospels historically.

For me the most interesting question is what was on the mind of the writer who penned Mark when he penned Mark as the work seems to have arrived from nowhere. And I use the word "writer" instead of author because I do not believe the writer of Mark was the author, nor someone who had a personal relationship with the gospel protagonist.

Are there any works which associate Mark with literature of the day? That would be an interesting read and might relate to the topic of Moral Influence. Fiction would seem to set right between myth and historicity, much the same as literature today.

If there was a Jesus, I don't think there is any reason to suppose Mark knew him or was working from eyewitness reports of him. Mark seems to be mostly rewriting the Hebrew Scriptures and other Greek sources like Homer. Dr. Robert M. Price had an influential article on this originally published in the Encyclopedia of Midrash by Neusner and Avery-Peck (eds), which was later posted online for free by Price here: http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_midrash1.htm . I asked Avery Peck once whether he thought Price's article stands up today, and he agreed with most of Price's examples of imitation and said that The Jewish Annotated New Testament takes the conversation forward in a fruitful manner. Price's mythicist conclusion has been challenged by some like Ehrman and McGrath on the grounds that some of the new stories were poor matches for the originals, and some examples are common ancient life and so do not require a literary antecedent, like Crossan trying to account for the empty tomb in a literary manner.

My 2 cents is that if there was a Jesus he is forever lost behind the way he is presented by the NT writers. For reasons I gave above and in the link I provided here https://secularfrontier.infidels.or...ast-about-mythicism-atonement-and-gnosticism/ , I think transformation is a major theme, the way we are transformed when the cross of Christ makes conspicuous the enraged crowd, corrupt religious elite and indifferent to justice Pilate who are also present in us as a catalyst for our repentance. I think Neil is right there is a societal connection, and as I said above the nations come to see how they mistreated Israel and this inspires repentance.

The repentant Roman soldiers in Mark and Luke seem to suggest this way of interpreting, and make sense in the context of an expected coming judgment. But this is all literary framing so it would take a sophisticated line of argument to find history here. It's historical fiction. On the other hand, if we read this interpretation of the cross back into Paul, it would seem there was probably some historical Jesus in there somewhere.

I expect some aspects of him are not lost, or are simply aspects of the writers themselves.

The story does not need to be true to contain truth, and this is the seminal work of some author somewhere at some point, the opus of someone who thought long and hard about some things, was clearly aware of the whole apocalyptic street preacher named Jesus stereotype, he came to some fairly serviceable answers, and didn't have the time or audience or educational technology to show his work on any of it.

The gnostic nature of early Christianity explains a lot of the form of the language used in some of the gospels, though, particularly John. There are a lot of threads of Jewish mysticism, of Kabbalah, in a lot of it.

From the dogmas of such traditions, there is a relationship between being a deity and coming into understanding of the shapes of certain truths about the universe, and I expect this is what the author originally meant in much of the language, especially seeing as how the whole thing sprung up from a tradition of Jewish mysticism. This is especially obvious from the fact that literacy among anyone in that day and age was rare and often such skills were retained and taught out of communities of mystics.

There was almost certainly a heavy intersection between Jewish converts from earlier mysticism to the new cult.

If any of the understanding of these earlier forms of mysticism have survived into modern traditions, the language used in much of it has a lot of interpretations the church would find heretical.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

I think the point was that Jesus died so he could come back. The death wasn't supposed to be the end, it was sort of a transition point, and lacked importance. The return was the big billing for the Messiah.

But there was no return, for obvious reasons. So, his death now needed to actually accomplish something... and then that seemed to transition even more in suggesting that he was always god, before birth.

It reminds me of religious Y2k'ers that thought the End Was Nigh... and a church billboard on 1/2/2000 reading "Jesus blessed us with another millennium." Religion often seems to be more about explaining why something hasn't happened, like the King the Little Prince meets.

Interestingly, Markus Vinzent demonstrates that until late in the second century Christian writings didn't place much emphasis on Christ's resurrection and return. What was front and center as the saving act of Jesus was his death. Paul's letters were "(re?)discovered" by Marcion in the middle of the second century and really only had an impact on "orthodox" teachings from the last decades of that century.

-- Vinzent, Markus. Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity: And the Making of the New Testament. Ashgate, c2011.

It all coincides with the writings. It is less important to know what someone has written as it is to know why they have written it or why they changed what was written.

 

[Jarhyn]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

I think the point was that Jesus died so he could come back. The death wasn't supposed to be the end, it was sort of a transition point, and lacked importance. The return was the big billing for the Messiah.

But there was no return, for obvious reasons. So, his death now needed to actually accomplish something... and then that seemed to transition even more in suggesting that he was always god, before birth.

It reminds me of religious Y2k'ers that thought the End Was Nigh... and a church billboard on 1/2/2000 reading "Jesus blessed us with another millennium." Religion often seems to be more about explaining why something hasn't happened, like the King the Little Prince meets.

Interestingly, Markus Vinzent demonstrates that until late in the second century Christian writings didn't place much emphasis on Christ's resurrection and return. What was front and center as the saving act of Jesus was his death. Paul's letters were "(re?)discovered" by Marcion in the middle of the second century and really only had an impact on "orthodox" teachings from the last decades of that century.

-- Vinzent, Markus. Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity: And the Making of the New Testament. Ashgate, c2011.

It all coincides with the writings. It is less important to know what someone has written as it is to know why they have written it or why they changed what was written.

Arguably, it is the inverse, if one can accept "complete fiction" of the work: there is only the text.

Not even the cultural context is important after a while, though largely the nature and structure of beliefs common in Jewish mysticism is an oft-overlooked aspect of that context in interpreting it in a contemporary way.

Also, it should be noted that the authors/writers/whatever clearly were not on the side of the orthodoxy of the time, implying more reason for supporting the more mystical traditions of Jewish faith.

 

[dbz]

Jarhyn said: "There was almost certainly a heavy intersection between Jewish converts from earlier mysticism to the new cult."

Jarhyn said: "[T]he nature and structure of beliefs common in Jewish mysticism is an oft-overlooked aspect of that context in interpreting it in a contemporary way."

• Video lecture #18 Middle and Neo-Platonism by Arthur F. Holmes (2015) per “A History of Philosophy”. YouTube. Wheaton College, Illinois.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

I think the point was that Jesus died so he could come back. The death wasn't supposed to be the end, it was sort of a transition point, and lacked importance. The return was the big billing for the Messiah.

But there was no return, for obvious reasons. So, his death now needed to actually accomplish something... and then that seemed to transition even more in suggesting that he was always god, before birth.

It reminds me of religious Y2k'ers that thought the End Was Nigh... and a church billboard on 1/2/2000 reading "Jesus blessed us with another millennium." Religion often seems to be more about explaining why something hasn't happened, like the King the Little Prince meets.

Interestingly, Markus Vinzent demonstrates that until late in the second century Christian writings didn't place much emphasis on Christ's resurrection and return. What was front and center as the saving act of Jesus was his death. Paul's letters were "(re?)discovered" by Marcion in the middle of the second century and really only had an impact on "orthodox" teachings from the last decades of that century.

-- Vinzent, Markus. Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity: And the Making of the New Testament. Ashgate, c2011.

It all coincides with the writings. It is less important to know what someone has written as it is to know why they have written it or why they changed what was written.

Arguably, it is the inverse, if one can accept "complete fiction" of the work: there is only the text.

The issue here is that it is neglecting the most important part of religious writings. They have an agenda! So the "why" is crucially important.

 

[Jarhyn]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

I think the point was that Jesus died so he could come back. The death wasn't supposed to be the end, it was sort of a transition point, and lacked importance. The return was the big billing for the Messiah.

But there was no return, for obvious reasons. So, his death now needed to actually accomplish something... and then that seemed to transition even more in suggesting that he was always god, before birth.

It reminds me of religious Y2k'ers that thought the End Was Nigh... and a church billboard on 1/2/2000 reading "Jesus blessed us with another millennium." Religion often seems to be more about explaining why something hasn't happened, like the King the Little Prince meets.

Interestingly, Markus Vinzent demonstrates that until late in the second century Christian writings didn't place much emphasis on Christ's resurrection and return. What was front and center as the saving act of Jesus was his death. Paul's letters were "(re?)discovered" by Marcion in the middle of the second century and really only had an impact on "orthodox" teachings from the last decades of that century.

-- Vinzent, Markus. Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity: And the Making of the New Testament. Ashgate, c2011.

It all coincides with the writings. It is less important to know what someone has written as it is to know why they have written it or why they changed what was written.

Arguably, it is the inverse, if one can accept "complete fiction" of the work: there is only the text.

The issue here is that it is neglecting the most important part of religious writings. They have an agenda! So the "why" is crucially important.

Except it didn't originate specifically as a religious writing. It originated as a story argued to be fiction.

If the agenda is not written in the text or derivable from it, it does not exist in the text, full stop.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

They certainly must have thought God was a bit of an idiot. He did such a poor job in creating humans, the supposed pinnacle of His creation, that he had to wipe them out with a flood and start over again. And the Jews, the supposed apple of God's eye, faced repeated persecution with The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile, Seleucid Empire, under the imperial Roman thumb, etc. And, as you say, suffering and death that was so obviously not the result of a competent creator. Regarding the idea of an idiot creator God that we later see in Gnosticism, one source says:

Plato used the term in the dialog Timaeus, an exposition of cosmology in which the Demiurge is the agent who takes the preexisting materials of chaos, arranges them according to the models of eternal forms, and produces all the physical things of the world, including human bodies. The Demiurge is sometimes thought of as the Platonic personification of active reason. The term was later adopted by some of the Gnostics, who, in their dualistic worldview, saw the Demiurge as one of the forces of evil, who was responsible for the creation of the despised material world and was wholly alien to the supreme God of goodness.

 

[Jarhyn]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

They certainly must have thought God was a bit of an idiot. He did such a poor job in creating humans, the supposed pinnacle of His creation, that he had to wipe them out with a flood and start over again. And the Jews, the supposed apple of God's eye, faced repeated persecution with The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile, Seleucid Empire, under the imperial Roman thumb, etc. And, as you say, suffering and death that was so obviously not the result of a competent creator. Regarding the idea of an idiot creator God that we later see in Gnosticism, one source says:

Plato used the term in the dialog Timaeus, an exposition of cosmology in which the Demiurge is the agent who takes the preexisting materials of chaos, arranges them according to the models of eternal forms, and produces all the physical things of the world, including human bodies. The Demiurge is sometimes thought of as the Platonic personification of active reason. The term was later adopted by some of the Gnostics, who, in their dualistic worldview, saw the Demiurge as one of the forces of evil, who was responsible for the creation of the despised material world and was wholly alien to the supreme God of goodness.

Except that if one is going to look at the fundamental source of that concept, the original unity, the demiurge is a part of that, a creation of that.

The material world instantiates us and gives us a chance to exist.

At any rate, you might enjoy the "Is Atheism Unappealing" thread. It's touching on these concepts heavily.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

They certainly must have thought God was a bit of an idiot. He did such a poor job in creating humans, the supposed pinnacle of His creation, that he had to wipe them out with a flood and start over again. And the Jews, the supposed apple of God's eye, faced repeated persecution with The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile, Seleucid Empire, under the imperial Roman thumb, etc. And, as you say, suffering and death that was so obviously not the result of a competent creator. Regarding the idea of an idiot creator God that we later see in Gnosticism, one source says:

Plato used the term in the dialog Timaeus, an exposition of cosmology in which the Demiurge is the agent who takes the preexisting materials of chaos, arranges them according to the models of eternal forms, and produces all the physical things of the world, including human bodies. The Demiurge is sometimes thought of as the Platonic personification of active reason. The term was later adopted by some of the Gnostics, who, in their dualistic worldview, saw the Demiurge as one of the forces of evil, who was responsible for the creation of the despised material world and was wholly alien to the supreme God of goodness.

Except that if one is going to look at the fundamental source of that concept, the original unity, the demiurge is a part of that, a creation of that.

The material world instantiates us and gives us a chance to exist.

At any rate, you might enjoy the "Is Atheism Unappealing" thread. It's touching on these concepts heavily.

I don't think anyone if complaining that they exist, but rather how. If there were an all loving and powerful deity responsible for life, there wouldn't be three year old children dying of cancer. That's not love. If God(s) exists, he may be indifferent, insane, idiotic, impotent, evil, but not all powerful and loving.

 

[Jarhyn]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

They certainly must have thought God was a bit of an idiot. He did such a poor job in creating humans, the supposed pinnacle of His creation, that he had to wipe them out with a flood and start over again. And the Jews, the supposed apple of God's eye, faced repeated persecution with The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile, Seleucid Empire, under the imperial Roman thumb, etc. And, as you say, suffering and death that was so obviously not the result of a competent creator. Regarding the idea of an idiot creator God that we later see in Gnosticism, one source says:

Plato used the term in the dialog Timaeus, an exposition of cosmology in which the Demiurge is the agent who takes the preexisting materials of chaos, arranges them according to the models of eternal forms, and produces all the physical things of the world, including human bodies. The Demiurge is sometimes thought of as the Platonic personification of active reason. The term was later adopted by some of the Gnostics, who, in their dualistic worldview, saw the Demiurge as one of the forces of evil, who was responsible for the creation of the despised material world and was wholly alien to the supreme God of goodness.

Except that if one is going to look at the fundamental source of that concept, the original unity, the demiurge is a part of that, a creation of that.

The material world instantiates us and gives us a chance to exist.

At any rate, you might enjoy the "Is Atheism Unappealing" thread. It's touching on these concepts heavily.

I don't think anyone if complaining that they exist, but rather how. If there were an all loving and powerful deity responsible for life, there wouldn't be three year old children dying of cancer. That's not love. If God(s) exists, he may be indifferent, insane, idiotic, impotent, evil, but not all powerful and loving.

I would argue that a god can be insane, idiotic, incompetent, on occasion a bit evil, "all powerful*", and loving all at the same time.

Not that such is necessary of our universe, but all of the above describe me with relation to something I have created and which some human in the future will create a much more problematic version of.

The problem is that "all powerful" comes with a lot of caveats, at least for me.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

They certainly must have thought God was a bit of an idiot. He did such a poor job in creating humans, the supposed pinnacle of His creation, that he had to wipe them out with a flood and start over again. And the Jews, the supposed apple of God's eye, faced repeated persecution with The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile, Seleucid Empire, under the imperial Roman thumb, etc. And, as you say, suffering and death that was so obviously not the result of a competent creator. Regarding the idea of an idiot creator God that we later see in Gnosticism, one source says:

Plato used the term in the dialog Timaeus, an exposition of cosmology in which the Demiurge is the agent who takes the preexisting materials of chaos, arranges them according to the models of eternal forms, and produces all the physical things of the world, including human bodies. The Demiurge is sometimes thought of as the Platonic personification of active reason. The term was later adopted by some of the Gnostics, who, in their dualistic worldview, saw the Demiurge as one of the forces of evil, who was responsible for the creation of the despised material world and was wholly alien to the supreme God of goodness.

Except that if one is going to look at the fundamental source of that concept, the original unity, the demiurge is a part of that, a creation of that.

The material world instantiates us and gives us a chance to exist.

At any rate, you might enjoy the "Is Atheism Unappealing" thread. It's touching on these concepts heavily.

I don't think anyone if complaining that they exist, but rather how. If there were an all loving and powerful deity responsible for life, there wouldn't be three year old children dying of cancer. That's not love. If God(s) exists, he may be indifferent, insane, idiotic, impotent, evil, but not all powerful and loving.

I would argue that a god can be insane, idiotic, incompetent, on occasion a bit evil, "all powerful*", and loving all at the same time.

Not that such is necessary of our universe, but all of the above describe me with relation to something I have created and which some human in the future will create a much more problematic version of.

The problem is that "all powerful" comes with a lot of caveats, at least for me.

I think if you ascribe a wide range of dispositions to God (insane, idiotic, incompetent, on occasion a bit evil, "all powerful*", and loving all at the same time) the weight of some of the traditional skeptical challenges like theodicy may lose a bit of their bite. I think Protagoras was right that in the end we just don't know, but pragmatically life is an atheistic one. The God hypothesis is not needed. I could run into difficulties and obscurities investigating Quantum Gravity, but the natural next move isn't to suppose an invisible leprechaun is responsible.

 

[Jarhyn]

I have for some time now interpreted the cross as something different, and the whole story in an apocryphal or downright heretical way: Jesus died not for our sins, but for God's original sin in making a world with suffering, ignorance, and death in it, delivered by those who suffered ignorance among death long enough to hate God for creating the universe and who were happy to find a convenient victim to take the rap for it.

He died that so we might forgive each other.

At least in the story.

They certainly must have thought God was a bit of an idiot. He did such a poor job in creating humans, the supposed pinnacle of His creation, that he had to wipe them out with a flood and start over again. And the Jews, the supposed apple of God's eye, faced repeated persecution with The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile, Seleucid Empire, under the imperial Roman thumb, etc. And, as you say, suffering and death that was so obviously not the result of a competent creator. Regarding the idea of an idiot creator God that we later see in Gnosticism, one source says:

Plato used the term in the dialog Timaeus, an exposition of cosmology in which the Demiurge is the agent who takes the preexisting materials of chaos, arranges them according to the models of eternal forms, and produces all the physical things of the world, including human bodies. The Demiurge is sometimes thought of as the Platonic personification of active reason. The term was later adopted by some of the Gnostics, who, in their dualistic worldview, saw the Demiurge as one of the forces of evil, who was responsible for the creation of the despised material world and was wholly alien to the supreme God of goodness.

Except that if one is going to look at the fundamental source of that concept, the original unity, the demiurge is a part of that, a creation of that.

The material world instantiates us and gives us a chance to exist.

At any rate, you might enjoy the "Is Atheism Unappealing" thread. It's touching on these concepts heavily.

I don't think anyone if complaining that they exist, but rather how. If there were an all loving and powerful deity responsible for life, there wouldn't be three year old children dying of cancer. That's not love. If God(s) exists, he may be indifferent, insane, idiotic, impotent, evil, but not all powerful and loving.

I would argue that a god can be insane, idiotic, incompetent, on occasion a bit evil, "all powerful*", and loving all at the same time.

Not that such is necessary of our universe, but all of the above describe me with relation to something I have created and which some human in the future will create a much more problematic version of.

The problem is that "all powerful" comes with a lot of caveats, at least for me.

I think if you ascribe a wide range of dispositions to God (insane, idiotic, incompetent, on occasion a bit evil, "all powerful*", and loving all at the same time) the weight of some of the traditional skeptical challenges like theodicy may lose a bit of their bite. I think Protagoras was right that in the end we just don't know, but pragmatically life is an atheistic one. The God hypothesis is not needed. I could run into difficulties and obscurities investigating Quantum Gravity, but the natural next move isn't to suppose an invisible leprechaun is responsible.

Indeed. Always it should be assumed that there is nothing more, until something more is found with careful observation!

I am more asking these questions because regardless of whether there is a god for us, there will be a "god" of some of the things humans create and that "god" will be human, so in asking what god we wish for ourselves we answer a more important question empathetically speaking of what responsibility this might imply that we have in doing so.

Edit: I am using this as a way of coming at the questions of ethics regarding technology from a little less selfish human-centric direction.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he? I'm tired of the Conservative Christian stance that God is to thank for everything good, but never to blame for anything bad. I suggest any God should be held up to the same moral and legal standards as we hold ourselves up to. For things like cancer and earthquakes, could God have done better? Is he legally guilty of depraved indifference murder?

In United States law, depraved-heart murder, also known as depraved-indifference murder, is a type of murder where an individual acts with a "depraved indifference" to human life and where such act results in a death, despite that individual not explicitly intending to kill. In a depraved-heart murder, defendants commit an act even though they know their act runs an unusually high risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to a person. If the risk of death or bodily harm is great enough, ignoring it demonstrates a "depraved indifference" to human life and the resulting death is considered to have been committed with malice aforethought. In some states, depraved-heart killings constitute second-degree murder, while in others, the act would be charged with "wanton murder," varying degrees of manslaughter, or third-degree murder.

If no death results, such an act would generally constitute reckless endangerment (sometimes known as "culpable negligence") and possibly other crimes, such as assault. (wiki)

As Spiderman says, with great power comes great responsibility.

 

[dbz]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

 

[1Heidegger1!]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

That's exactly right. It's time for humanity to leave the nest. Any real God would want us to grow up and make our own way, not waste our lives telling god how great he is. If a healthy human father would want us to leave the house and have our own lives, so should a heavenly one. There was a time when gods were needed, but this time has gone.