Crucifying Christianity, Part 2: Incredulous Incarnation

"And God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life," (John 3:16). So the teaching goes that the world was so screwed up after Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge that something had to be done. Now God went ahead and planted a tree with tempting fruit there knowing full-well what would happen, right? Well if you accept the omniscience of God then, yes. If not, that's a separate argument. Hell, even if you don't accept that God knows the future, it doesn't take a god, or a rocket scientist to realize that if you put fruit in a garden, then put humans who don't know anything about right and wrong (knowledge of which, the fruit gave them) next to it and tell them not to eat it and to obey you, it's unlikely they would listen since they lack the capacity to make moral decisions. In fact, you would naturally assume it was God's fault for not originally endowing humans with rational and moral judgment.

I could go on and on about the logical absurdities in the Expulsion from Paradise myth but the point is that in disobeying God, Adam and Eve gave humanity the stain of sin that would carry on to their children and their childrens' children ad infinitum. This doctrine is the answer to the logical question of why must Christians evangelize? If you would not go to hell for not knowing about Jesus and his teachings then it seems logical that if your goal was to save as many humans from eternal torment in hell, the most efficient way is that you do not tell people at all. Ah, but they'd still rot in hell. Even babies. Because of original sin. Well various churches have differing teachings on this but it seems that original sin is with you when you're born because all humans are evil and can only be saved through the grace of God.

So Yahweh used to accept sacrifices throughout the Old Testament as a method of humanity atoning for its sins. God taught the Israelites when it was appropriate to slaughter animals, usually lambs, and burn them on an altar to him. For the first 4000 years of Hebrew history this was acceptable. I am still unclear how exactly Jesus' death was the key to salvation or how the fact that Jesus "died for me and my sins" makes any sense whatsoever. God apparently required more than burnt offerings after all and decided that in order to justly punish humanity he would have to wipe them out for all of their sins and transgressions, including that original sin we committed in ignorance. But rather than do that, if a worthy sacrifice could be found to replace humanity in general, then everyone could be spared utter annihilation. Since the only sacrifice worthy of God was apparently himself, he finally decided to be incarnated in human form and then made sure that things would work out so that he would be humiliated and crucified by the world's superpower, but in an ironic twist, absolve them from any guilt in doing it. Yes, while Pontius Pilate, a brutal Roman governor, fought for Jesus' life the blood lust of the Jewish crowd was too much. The Jews were the ones who cried for his crucifixion, while the Romans reluctantly complied. After Jesus died, the Roman soldiers who carried out the sentence remarked that "Truly this was the son of God."

So by killing God, God was so satisfied that he washed away the debt of past and future sins. So why do we have to bother living good lives? Well, there's another catch that gets you stuck following Christian rules. God will only look the other way on your sins if you follow the teachings of Jesus (and the Church) and believe that he was and is God. So I guess that is a pretty huge sacrifice to make if only a small percentage of the world even cares enough to accept it. Of course is it really a sacrifice at all if you know you're going to raise yourself from the dead in 2 days? Why was Jesus so scared the night before if he knew? I guess he was just afraid of the pain of dying in anguish, thirsty, sunburned and starving over the course of days. Luckily God died within hours of being up there. He didn't have to suffer the worst part of crucifixion, which was the agonizing slow death over days. The question I couldn't quite get is, why didn't god just spare himself the trouble and forgive our sins from the beginning? He knew we were imperfect beings. He made us to be imperfect beings. So why all the unfair judging?

Maybe God also wanted to go down to Earth and dwell amongst his creation so that he could explain in better detail and through example how he wants us to live. Jesus did make a lot of moral teachings that seem to either refine or contradict orthodox Jewish teachings. But then does that not entail a problem again? Why not simply have explained it better the first time. The whole concept of God having to take a mulligan on his first attempt at Revelation through Moses is a little... shall we say, imperfect? Why again does God chose to reveal information critical to the salvation of the entire world only to a select few people in a tiny insignificant corner of the world, which is itself in a tiny insignificant corner of the galaxy, which is itself a tiny insignificant part of the universe. So vast is this universe that it really makes you wonder why an almighty and omnipotent God's interests are so provincial. I'm getting off topic. So God's revelation was lost in translation through the Israelites. Moses and all the prophets just didn't get it right. So God came and told us how he actually meant to write the Torah.

Crucifying Christianity, Part 1: Muddled Monotheism

Do Christians believe in one all powerful god? They say that they do. Such a belief can be found clearly stated in the opening sentence of the Apostles' and Nicene creeds. But then they have the doctrine of the Trinity which states that here are three persons in their one God. What does that mean?

The Trinity is their way of explaining how Jesus can be god too. He's often referred to as the "Son of God" in the New Testament, but if this were literally true then that would entail that God would have created a second god of either lesser or equal power. Christianity is based on Judaism and it attempts to maintain the facade of monotheism. If there are actually two gods, Yahweh and Yahweh's son, Jesus, then Christianity would be polytheistic. This would create problems because Christians would have to still abide by Yahweh's laws that they worship no other gods beside him. So instead they invented a doctrine that says that Jesus was God too. So God didn't really send his literal son. He sent himself down to earth. So Jesus is God. God is God and throw in the Holy Spirit, which sounds pretty much like a euphemism for God, and you have a doctrine which allows for three parts to one all-powerful god.

Not a bad save, except that it doesn't make any real sense. If you ask a theologian they may have some really complicated philosophical explanation that obfuscates the reality that they don't really know how something like that works. A little spin and they call it a "divine mystery." Of course it's God, so humans with their pathetic little brains don't need to understand it. Just humble yourself and accept that you can't understand it. The real reason you can't understand it is that it isn't intelligible. It might as well have been the ruminations of a mad man. At least the Jewish religion is a little bit more coherent. They say one god and they actually mean it. Just one. There are no parts to God.

The interesting thing to note is that out of the four canonical gospels only the latest gospel, John, refers to Jesus as being divine. The other synoptic gospels never mention it. Odd that the three other gospel writers never seemed to feel the need to mention that the person they were writing about claimed to be God. This is a rather important detail to leave out if you're trying to make a record of Jesus' life and teachings, leading scholars to believe Jesus probably never taught that he was God, that in fact this was a later theological development. As well, for historical sake, the title Son of God did not mean the same thing to the ancient Jews of Jesus' day that it means to us today. For a Jewish person in the first century to be called Son of God was simply to call him holy or in a close relationship with god.

The Catholics, have actually stretched the concept of monotheism beyond any sense of modesty by claiming that the Pope actually has the authority to declare that certain dead Christians are in heaven and can be recipients of prayers and perform miracles. They can intercede for the faithful and apparently certain Saints are better at interceding for certain things, hence the concept of patron saints. So now we have a whole pantheon of gods... er... saints to pray to for various worldly things. If you felt you needed a goddess to pray to, well, there's always the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was a human being but has been so elevated in Catholicism to a point where you can pray to her to do basically what you would ask of God. According to Catholic tradition, which is code for really old bullshit that was maintained orally for centuries before it was written down anywhere, she was born without sin, which itself means she was in fact conceived by God too. The immaculate conception does not refer, as I once assumed as a child, to Jesus' immaculate conception but Mary's. Mary was born free from original sin. Besides Adam and Eve, who committed the so called original sin, and Jesus, no other human beings can say that. Mary never died either but was taken up into heaven, body and all. The Feast of the Assumption is a major celebration in Catholicism and it's not even in the Bible.

Crucifying Christianity: Introduction

Christianity makes no sense. I like to think of myself as a reasonably intelligent person, so I am a little embarrassed at how long it took for me to come to such a realization. I am not speaking about the point when I realized that religion itself is ridiculous. It is, and such a realization was a fundamental moment in my intellectual maturation. I am speaking of the comprehension that Christianity specifically is a ludicrous incoherent belief system. It is a point I should have reached much sooner but nevertheless, here I am. Now that I am at this place, I feel a little lonely. There are just so many believers. At 2 Billion professed members, Christianity is the world's largest crazy cult.

When I first heard the beliefs of Scientologists explained to me, I was incredulous, as I think most people today are. I just could not understand how it was that anyone could come to actually believe such nonsense. Yet there are those who do. The answer is most likely that a lot of the information that we are given in life is beyond verification for us. We will never really "know" that what we've been told is actually true. We instead use our rational abilities to discern the likelihood of a claim to be true. Those who are very good at rationality will weigh a truth claim's likelihood of validity according to the proportionality of the evidence for it and make an unemotional decision on whether or not to believe it. Most will not do this. They will often believe a truth claim based on the level of trust they place in the people providing it, how it makes them feel to believe it, and most importantly, how the claim is packaged and presented. We all know how great corporations are at making their products look desirable. Religions are just as good at selling their beliefs to a public that desperately wants to believe in something supernatural.

I feel this way because I used to believe in God and his son, Jesus. I used to read the stories in the Bible with talking snakes and donkeys, parting seas, giant herculean warriors, people who lived to be 900 years old, etc. Why did I believe these stories were historically true and that it made absolute sense to believe that God had perfectly preserved it all right there in one easy-to-read paperback? Because my parents, teachers, priests, and friends all believed it too. They were right about all sorts of things, so why not this too? Plus, believing in God gave me certainty. I knew that there would be life after death, hopefully in heaven and that God had a plan for me and my life. This made me feel good and happy, for the most part.

When I first heard an unemotional academic summary of the beliefs of Christianity, I almost laughed at how ridiculous it sounded. Without all of the brainwashing, constant reinforcement, and slow conditioning that had been done to my reason, I saw it from an outsider's perspective, much as we see Scientology and it seemed just as crazy. Study the beliefs of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism or any others and a Christian naturally concludes that they believe some pretty crazy stuff, yet has been conditioned not to apply that same lens to their own beliefs: not to study them academically.

In the following series of essays I will ask and attempt to answer some basic questions about the beliefs of Christianity. I will not focus on any of the historical arguments against its sacred scriptures or attack the Church as hypocritical or dangerous based on a historical examination of its multitude of sins, nor will I delve into the philosophical arguments against the existence of any god. My purpose is to demonstrate that the very basic beliefs of the religion are ridiculous and that even if we were to accept at face-value the Bible as factually correct, this still leaves us with utter incoherence: enough, hopefully to make us wonder why it is we believe it at all and why it's not still considered a crazy cult.