John 3:61

[_AlmaBound]

Well I certainly hope you're never as dumb as I am, lol.

As to the rest of it, that was a well-reasoned and thought out response, and I appreciate it.

[_AlmaBound]

abstract concepts

What I really want to know is not along these lines.

I'm really interested in understanding if you, personally, have ever done anything that you thought was unforgiveable, or worthy of punishment?

Looking at some sort of "atonement" as a clinical, abstract concept is far different than from a personal point of view.

[_harmony]

The atonement of Jesus Christ is NOT a human sacrifice.

Christ was commanded of the Father to show a sign unto the Jews.

Matthew 12:39-40
39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:
40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

The atonement did not occur on the cross. The death and resurrection of Christ was the sign given to prove to the world that THE ATONEMENT had been accomplished. The Jews tortured Christ attempting to kill him but they could never kill him. He willfully laid down his life to complete the commandment and perform the sign that God himself had atoned for the sins of the world to give eternal life to all those who become the children of God by faith in the name of Jesus Christ becoming subject to him casting all other considerations of this world aside for it.

How did this happen? I think I agree with Nightlion... or at least, I think I agree with most of what he said there (I have a headache, so not sure I'm getting it all...)

[_CaliforniaKid]

What I really want to know is not along these lines.

I'm really interested in understanding if you, personally, have ever done anything that you thought was unforgiveable, or worthy of punishment?

Looking at some sort of "atonement" as a clinical, abstract concept is far different than from a personal point of view.

From a practical, game-theoretical point of view, "forgiveness" would be a restoration of broken trust. It only makes sense to forgive someone if you see indications that they have changed and will not break your trust again. An "unforgiveable" offense would be one that's so depraved or habitual that the victim doesn't believe it's possible for the offender to reform, or so deceptive that the victim has no way of knowing whether any future reformation of the offender is sincere or merely feigned. I don't think I've ever done anything that bad.

I've certainly done things "worthy of punishment," in the sense that my behavior was deviant and needed to be corrected. But nothing worth serious punishment, I think. I've never merited jailtime or anything.

[_AlmaBound]

Understood. Thanks Chris.

[_RockSlider]

From a practical, game-theoretical point of view, "forgiveness" would be a restoration of broken trust. It only makes sense to forgive someone if you see indications that they have changed and will not break your trust again. An "unforgiveable" offense would be one that's so depraved or habitual that the victim doesn't believe it's possible for the offender to reform, or so deceptive that the victim has no way of knowing whether any future reformation of the offender is sincere or merely feigned. I don't think I've ever done anything that bad.

I've certainly done things "worthy of punishment," in the sense that my behavior was deviant and needed to be corrected. But nothing worth serious punishment, I think. I've never merited jailtime or anything.

I believe that the consequences of our actions (good/bad/indifferent) also play into this big time. Its Mormon doctrine (BRM's final talk, Hunter's NDE talk etc.) that each of us must also enter the garden and face up to our own Gethsemane. This on top of the natural consequences of our actions.

Hell, we pay a stiff price, atonement or no for our misdeeds.

I've been with a couple of very close family in the hours leading up to their passing … I don't know how to put this into words, but I believe part of the struggle in passing is dealing with the hard ones we may have left.

Stupid or not … I've sometimes wondered how its human to put a terminal animal down, and yet somehow inhumane to do a Kevorkian. I think it deals with this personal Gethsemane thing.

The thought of Jesus somehow relieving all of this to the true believer is a real nice thought, but I've not personally witnessed it yet, in anyone that has "endured to the end" that is.

Kind of a nasty joke and pisses me off sometimes when I think hard about it.

Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?

[_Alfredo]

Wait a second here. This is not what's going on. Christ did suffer so we do not have to but that is ancillary to what the purpose of the atonement is all for. The purpose behind it is to enable God to change us to a higher state of existence. At this higher level we are capable of an existence in the kingdom of God. Not just joining a church. Yeah you get forgiven and have the remission of sins. But he could do that and does that for whom he will without applying the power of the redemption and working sanctification upon a soul to give them a NEW CREATION. That is the conception as the children of God. It is apples to oranges between sins and being made in a new image where God will take away our old heart and give us a new one capable of being filled with the Love of God.

Do you guys even acknowledge this fact? Understand it you do not.

Sure. I can acknowledge that a person must be free of sin-stuff before they can be given a "new creation". The moral calculus still doesn't make sense but whatever. What I still don't understand, for a few reasons, is why the sin-stuff must necessarily be transferred in a way which requires the torture of a Jesus...

Could it be possible that God rather enjoy bloodshed than just poof our sins away after we've subjected ourselves to him?

I don't see why temporary torture is considered significant to Jesus in any sense compared to eternity in the Celestial Kingdom. The isolated element of suffering is for what? So that he could exist in a state where that temporary sacrifice would never matter, but with the added benefit of tricking us silly, emotional humans into praising him for the ultimate sacrifice???

It sure was very kind of Jesus to spend that one infinitely insignificant moment being tortured to fulfill a plan which was divinely predetermined to never fail. I always thought the fawning over "sacrifice" was just ridiculous because it doesn't fit the human concept of sacrifice at all, when viewed from an eternal perspective. What did Jesus actually sacrifice if he's still going to be freaking Jesus for the rest of eternity?

[_Alfredo]

I'm not sure if I've missed some doctrine which explains this, but I think I'm on to something.

There must be other areas of emotional "over-flow" which members might feel great about, but just make no sense. These would be additional and clear pieces of evidence of the capacity for emotion to manipulate us even when it feels right.

[_Nightlion]

What did Jesus actually sacrifice if he's still going to be freaking Jesus for the rest of eternity?

A wax image of you ought to be commissioned with a placard hung around your neck quoting this line. Encased that in glass and housed it in the hall of eternal infamy for visitors to walk past and wag their heads in incomprehensible awe that God would allow someone such agency.

What did he sacrifice in order to sanctify his creation and elevate to a true kinship with God, impossible any other way?

He allowed the defiling filth of just such agency to come upon him from billions and billions of souls more foul than you. God, who better than any other being in the universe savors perfection and comprehends it fully took upon himself the anguish of all imperfection to master his own creation unto a perfect whole all in all. This perfection will exist regardless of how you choose to react to its mechanism. He did not do it for you. He did it to uphold all things. It's what God does. It was written that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. His creation not you. It did not say, for God so loved Alfredo. Right. Infinite beings comprehend the whole of it. We fixate upon ourselves. We need to get over that. Stop it.

It is not about you, Never was. You are incidentally along for the ride of God adding glory upon glory to his own name. Would you rather remain where God found you? A non-sentient bit of non-independent light and truth? Completing a circuit, a medium?

At the same time he is willing to heal you of a crippled intellect. You only lack another act of creation that is offered IF you will lay down YOUR life of this world's advantages to begin a life of learned oneness with God. Follow his example. Lay it down in faith to be taken up to a higher level. God never misses a chance to create something out of nothing, nothing at all. As Moses said, for this now I know that man is nothing, which thing I had never supposed.

[_Nightlion]

The abstract concepts of revenge, honor, and justice were imperfect pre-modern ways of conceptualizing the need to punish and restrain offenders. They were conceptual "shortcuts", if you will, that enabled people with no understanding of game theory to successfully negotiate various kinds of social "games".

Today, we understand enough about game theory that we no longer need those shortcuts, and we can also see that each of them had a range of weaknesses and unintended side effects that might have been avoided by a more sophisticated conceptual framework.

lol If you were playing with a full deck and brought out some kind of sane logic against the real deal we might consider you have a concept of what is at stake. You have no perspective to critique God. Not in the least. First off you dismiss his reality. How does that translate into some sort of competent critique? The critique of a phantom is logical, erudite, sophisticated?

All the books written contain squat about the reality of God. God can only be known and engaged by encountering him. Tilting at the God windmills of peoples minds by casting spells of higher criticism of a gotten up composition to tweak and retweak how they think about about God is meaningless and absurd.

Does it give you a buzz? Are you made drunken in the madness of taking down God?