No, the religion does not make sense from the inside. I have NEVER heard any Christian ever explain this coherently, and it seems quite a mystery to them once they fully understand the question. It was a mystery to me when I was a Christian, and is one of the many reasons why I rejected the religion. It simply does not make sense, either inside or when viewed from the outside.
Assuming that there is eternal law by which even God must abide, and almost all Judeo/christian doctrine states this, or at the very least implies this, as it is expressed through the very need for a Messiah/Jesus figure, it must follow that there must be a sacrifice that corresponds with the attempted breaking of said law. The actual accounting of the sacrifice is neither here nor there. This reasoning behind the objections here have been 1) framed as if God were the universal law maker, and/or 2) as if the universal law were itself an agentive being.
This tantamount to saying, and I'll paraphrase Ba'al point more bluntly. 'It didn't make sense to me so it must not be right, and all those other people when they finally come around will see it my way to.
It in no way addresses the completely different set of axioms both groups are using the achieve the internal logic of their arguments. both arguments are very sound given the axioms from whence they spring.
Assuming that there is eternal law by which even God must abide,
and almost all Judeo/christian doctrine states this, or at the very least implies this,
as it is expressed through the very need for a Messiah/Jesus figure, it must follow that there must be a sacrifice that corresponds with the attempted breaking of said law. The actual accounting of the sacrifice is neither here nor there.
This reasoning behind the objections here have been 1) framed as if God were the universal law maker, and/or 2) as if the universal law were itself an agentive being.
If that in itself doesn't suit your fancy just call the axiom crap, the OP although an apperant veiled rhetorical debasing, as illustrated in my previous posts, had points addressing the need for a sacrifice. Those needs were addressed, then all subsuquent responses ended up in the above 'I don't believe it, you must be mistaken'. It is a matter of using the wrong tool for the job when trying to measure an internal theological argument with an external measuring stick, your measurements will never add up.
The abandonment of one ideological paradigm requires a fundamental shift/wholesale adoption of the core precepts of the competing paradigm. To say I was Christian and now I'm not is simply saying, I gave up one set of core precept and adopted another, and by doing so the internal coherency of my previous state of beliefs no longer make sense.
First off, I do not think there is any single understanding of the Christian story. Christian belief and practice as with all major religious belief and practice is not some monolithic system in which everyone believes the same or has the same interpretation. Some understand it literally (historically and factually true), others understand it in allegorical, symbolic, figurative, or mystical terms.
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Let us say that the world is in fact controlled by God, in the exact way he is portrayed in the Bible. I'm not familiar with the differences between the New and Old Testament, so pick your favorite.
It has been said in the thread that God works by rules that humans do not understand. Why do humans believe that the rules other humans say are God's rules really are God's rules? If you had no knowledge of the Christian religion and someone came up and told you about it, why would you believe it?
First off, I do not think there is any single understanding of the Christian story.
The fundamental notion that life can triumph over death and that ultimately good will triumph over evil have appeal in all ages and all times. Religion is ultimately an appeal to hope (emotion) not reason or even experience. You have to admit religion has staying power, there has never been a society or culture without some form of religon. Man is always seeking some higher purpose, some higher meaning, some higher value, to touch the divine here on earth. Man is a meaning seeking creature.
... No man holding a strong belief on one side of a question, or even wishing to hold a belief on one side, can investigate it with such fairness and completeness as if he were really in doubt and unbiassed; so that the existence of a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of this necessary duty. ...
In the two supposed cases which have been considered, it has been judged wrong to believe on insufficient evidence, or to nourish belief by suppressing doubts and avoiding investigation. ...
It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. And if we have supposed ourselves to know all about anything, and to be capable of doing what is fit in regard to it, we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with-if indeed anything can be learnt about it. It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.
This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation. For then we may justly feel that it is common property, and holds good for others as well as for ourselves. Then we may be glad, not that I have learned secrets by which I am safer and stronger, but that we men have got mastery over more of the world; and we shall be strong, not for ourselves, but in the name of Man and his strength. But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one. Not only does it deceive ourselves by giving us a sense of power which we do not really possess, but it is sinful, because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind. That duty is to guard ourselves from such beliefs as from a pestilence, which may shortly master our own body and then spread to the rest of the town. What would be thought of one who, for the sake of a sweet fruit, should deliberately run the risk of bringing a plague upon his family and his neighbours?
And, as in other such cases, it is not the risk only which has to be considered; for a bad action is always bad at the time when it is done, no matter what happens afterwards. Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent. If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves; for then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby. In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth to one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other's mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe things because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? Will he not learn to cry, "Peace," to me, when there is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbours ready to deceive. The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are. So closely are our duties knit together, that whoso shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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Not at all. I have no expectations that everyone will suddenly become rational and only believe what is reasonable to believe.
There is absolutely no reason to assume that.
I have not counted the various doctrines, but many do not regard God as bound by anything. Some even go so far as to say that God is not bound by logic. . . I have heard many Christians say that God required the sacrifice, not that God was bound by some law that was more powerful than God. . . Many Christians believe that God is the universal law maker. Surely you know this.
Nonsense. I did not give up Christianity because my future self, with a different view of the world, would not regard it as making sense. I gave it up because while I was a Christian it did not make any sense. And I did not rest with the version of Christianity with which I was raised; I wanted very much to believe in God, and searched for other Christian denominations for doctrines that would make sense. I was slow to reject Christianity because I desperately wanted it to be true. It was the most important thing in my life, and I devoted a good deal of my time to studying and thinking about it. The long and the short of it is, though, that it never made any sense, and the more I examined it, the more senseless and ridiculous I realized it was. What I have found is, generally speaking, the less people think about their religious beliefs, the fewer problems they have with them. After all, if one does not examine one's beliefs, one is unlikely to discover any problems with them.
God whether or not explicitly stated in doctrine, assuming God as the general principle of a perfect being acting perfectly, is implicitly bound by law, A perfect being acts perfectly and those action are by necessity a law if they must be acted out. So either God created perfection or God abides by the best possibly way to do X. This does not necessarily exclude God from acting in a Machivellian fashion. The notion of perfection, as previously stated, is what people are really quibbling about. This makes god both the possible maker of laws and bound by them. So back to the law of sacrifice, if there is one then it is necessary that it be fulfilled. As to God being bound by logic, this also is a quibble about the nature and function of logic, which has been debated ad nauseum on this forum as well.
Well... Depends in truth.
Likewise when we say God is bound by his Law, we mean that gods Will has produced these laws qua essence, for Him, it is nothing, it is just a small figment of his will, or his aesthetic, so to speak. When we find a contradiction in His law, it does not mean that his Law makes no sense, but rather that we must struggle more and more to find a logical relation, even if such is futile, and failing that, abide by pure faith alone. Law does not imply consistency on behalf of its intended recepients, but is inherently consistent for the Law-maker Himself.
If it argues for objective morality then it's arguing for God
