The Atonement makes zero sense because Jesus' "suffering" was merely an inconvenience

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

> I think the logic and math of the Trinity is quite simple.

> I have trouble understanding the hypostatic union as clear or simple.

-_-

Leave it to a believer to immediately contradict himself.

- Doc

[Rivendale]

> I think the logic and math of the Trinity is quite simple.

> I have trouble understanding the hypostatic union as clear or simple.

-_-

Leave it to a believer to immediately contradict himself.

- Doc

[huckelberry]

> I think the logic and math of the Trinity is quite simple.

> I have trouble understanding the hypostatic union as clear or simple.

-_-

Leave it to a believer to immediately contradict himself.

- Doc

I have hardly contradicted myself, what are you considering? These are two different ideas about two different things.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

> I think the logic and math of the Trinity is quite simple.

> I have trouble understanding the hypostatic union as clear or simple.

-_-

Leave it to a believer to immediately contradict himself.

- Doc

I have hardly contradicted myself, what are you considering? These are two different ideas about two different things.

I don’t know how to explain your own words to you so they make sense to you.

- Doc

[Dr Exiled]

The appeal to the inability to understand the atonement is where I start to smell a con by the clergy. It never worked on me in sunday school as a child and left me frustrated. It's like the magician hamming it up for the camera, shrouding his tricks in mystery, when all along they are just tricks.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The need for a proxy atonement makes as much sense as this does:



It’s superstitious, venal, and abdicates personal responsibility for one’s actions. It also further alienates a person’s attachment to this life by shifting their focus beyond death and to an imaginary reward. We didn’t need a god to incarnate himself and then set himself up for execution so that people can believe in his sacrifice in order to go to heaven after this life is over. That’s awful. It’s nonsensical. You were always good enough to find peace and balance in this life, because this is all you got.

- Doc

[huckelberry]

I have hardly contradicted myself, what are you considering? These are two different ideas about two different things.

I don’t know how to explain your own words to you so they make sense to you.

- Doc

that's just bizarre.

[Physics Guy]

The equations of electrodynamics are simple, but those of gravity are hard. That’s not a contradiction, because those are two completely different sets of equations. Yes, they’re both part of physics, but distinguishing different aspects of a tricky subject is being precise, not self-contradictory.

The “hypostatic union” is not the same as the Trinity. The HU is an idea about the sense in which Jesus could have been both human and God, whatever God might be like. The Trinity is an idea about what God might be like, regardless of who or what Jesus of Nazareth might have been.

I’m not sure either of them is a clear idea, but they’re different topics. Finding one clear, and the other not, is no contradiction.

[Physics Guy]

I don’t think it’s obvious that we only get this life. We don’t know that. How could we? Any experience we might have would be part of this life, no matter how other-worldly it might seem.

This life might be just our gestation; the universe might be a womb, and death birth. Or, even if the universe serves some grand eternal purpose for its creator, we might just be ephemeral accidents that were cute at the time but hardly worth keeping forever, like all the selfies you take on vacation. Or there could be no purpose that we could recognize as such, and ditto creator. All the options are open and I can’t imagine how anyone thinks they can really tell which is real. If it’s a movie then we are inside it. Han Solo can’t have a beer with George Lucas.

I do agree, though, that the usual Christian explanation of the Atonement makes no sense. And even if we can’t infer anything about an afterlife from this world, I think we should be able to infer, from that inability to infer, that our beliefs about afterlife cannot be so important.

To hear some formulations of evangelical Christianity, you’d have to say that God screwed up big time in making the world, because what God really wanted was just a little blank room for each of us with a big red button on one wall labeled “Jesus”, that each of us could decide at some point to push. The world is so much not like that, that I have to conclude that God must not actually have been aiming at that after all. Even if eternity is more important, it must have taken a lot of work to make this place. I figure we must be supposed to take this place seriously.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The equations of electrodynamics are simple, but those of gravity are hard. That’s not a contradiction, because those are two completely different sets of equations. Yes, they’re both part of physics, but distinguishing different aspects of a tricky subject is being precise, not self-contradictory.

The “hypostatic union” is not the same as the Trinity. The HU is an idea about the sense in which Jesus could have been both human and God, whatever God might be like. The Trinity is an idea about what God might be like, regardless of who or what Jesus of Nazareth might have been.

I’m not sure either of them is a clear idea, but they’re different topics. Finding one clear, and the other not, is no contradiction.

Lol.

> The Trinity totally makes sense! Because the math works!

> The Duality is totally mysterious! Because I don’t understand the math!

C’mon, man.

> God’s nature, I get it!

> Christ’s nature, wow so weird! So unknowable!

It’s just larping nonsense trying to make sense of scripture that begets confusion, hence tHe TrInItY and hYpOsTaTiC uNiOn. It’s technobabble to create world building.

- Doc