He sacrificed himself to go through the pain and agony of being put on the cross. He sacrificed his entire life living to spread the knowledge of God to us and not living his life for him. He sacrificed the humiliation he went through.

I'm going through pain and agony reading your posts...do that make me Jesus? ....

LoL, you think you're funny or somethin? Join the comedy club. Pain and agony is having nails drove through your hands, having a crown made of cactus forcibly put on your head. Pain and agony is be left up on a cross supported by nothing but the nails drove through your hands. Pain and agony is being up there in the direct sun dieing from starvation and dehydration.

perhaps Jesus propheized about your posts and rather be nailed to a cross instead of going through the pain and agony of reading them ...but either way there are far more painful ways to die then being nailed to a cross ....because Jesus sufferred some pain doesn't constitue as being a sacrifice especially since he didn't die from the experience

What would be more painful then that?

being eatan alive by fire ants ...being burned at the stake ...to name a few

None of that compares to being crucified. Yes may be more immediate pain. But it's pain would only last a day or two. Being crucified could have lasted close to a week. So still no comparison.

So now we have someone who rejects that the religion is 'faith-based' and claims to actually "know" all truths.

This is precisely why these religions are extremely dangerous. Just look at how easily people can convince themselves that they possess divine knowledge.

And just think of all the poor priests, preachers, rabbis, and clergy throughout the world who all disagree with each other (proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that they cannot possibly all hold the "True Divine Knowledge" since they can't even come to agreement with each other).

But look at how lucky we are!

We have a self-appointed Paper Pope who has been ordained with divine knowledge by God himself.

Aren't we lucky!



I can maintain some respect for people who claim to have unwavering "faith" but once they cross over the line to proclaiming divine arrogance I think it's time to just wave goodbye and wish them well.

Some people are apparently more interested in 'becoming' this mythological Jesus than in worshiping him.

Trying to make out that the crucifixion was extremely painful serves no purpose. Where in the Bible anywhere does it suggest that sins can be atoned via pain?

Pain is not the wages of sin. Pain has nothing at all to do with atoning sin.

Moreover, the very idea of Jesus being a Sacrificial lamb is ludicrous.

To whom would be be sacrificed?

Men, weren't sacrificing Jesus to God.

God most certainly wasn't sacrificing Jesus to man.

Within the context of this mythology this only leave two possibility left.

Either God was sacrificing his Son to Satan, which means that Satan was an extreme threat to God and that God had no choice but to appease Satan. Most Christians reject that idea, and so do I. They simply don't want to give Satan that much power over God.

Or God was sacrificing Jesus to appease himself, which is even sicker yet.

The bottom line is that it makes not sense at all that a God would "sacrifice" his son when no such sacrifice is truly required to "save" mankind. If God can't "save" his own creation without sacrificing his "Only Begotten Son" then clearly God is not all-powerful, nor all-wise, because he could not think of a better solution to his problem.

The only way out of this entirely absurd situation is to simply realize that Jesus was not the Son of the God of the Old Testament and most certainly wasn't a sacrificial lamb of any kind.

Once Jesus is recognized to simply have been a mortal man who was teaching pantheism everything suddenly makes Perfect Sense.

All you need to to is recognize that the whole thing is nothing more than bad rumors that got out of control. That's all there is to it.

That solves everything completely.

No need to continually make excuses for a lame fable.

Sins can't be diminished with pain. We have to earn forgiveness and to do this sacrificing something was how we achieved forgiveness and repenting of the sin. Before Jesus was crucified people sacrificed their biggest sheep, their largest rams, and so on. Jesus sacrificed his own life for us all, the son of God gave himself up so we can be forgiven for our sins. Now we don't have to sacrifice anything, just believe that Jesus was the only begotten son of God and follow his teachings. And Jesus will forgive us when we stumble at time to time.

God tells us "Ask and ye shall receive". So if you ask for the knowledge of so and so, you will gain the knowledge of so and so. ALL knowledge comes from God. You seek God, you will find him. You seek the answers to your questions you will find them.

Sacrificing animals is no sacrifice at all.



It's impossible to "Believe" in something that you don't believe in. You can't just decide to believe in something when you can see that it's a farce. To pretend that you can't see that it's a farce would be a lie in and of itself.

Moreover, there's no such thing as "Stumbling" when it comes to sin. You either CHOOSE to sin, or you CHOOSE not to. You can't sin by accident because that wouldn't qualify as having made a CHOICE.

So to speak about sin as 'stumbling' is an oxymoron.

Sin necessarily has to be a CHOICE and can only be a CHOICE by definition, because sin is disobedience, and you can't disobey by accident. You either sin on purpose, or you don't sin at all. There can be no 'stumbling'.

We already know with absolute certainty that this cannot possibly be true with respect to any one religion. The reason we know this is because of the many diverse religions throughout the world.

You'd need to be an absolute fool to believe that all of the religious and spiritual people who follow non-Christian religions aren't seeking God.

Yet, you claim that God reveals to you that Jesus is the "Only Begotten Son" of God.

But clearly God does not "reveal" this to other spiritual and religious people.

So it clearly cannot be true.

In fact, if we are going to assume that God will indeed reveal truth to those who genuinely seek God, then we can be absolutely assured that Christianity cannot possibly be true because it is an EXCLUSIVE religion. It excludes the beliefs of many spiritual and religious people who obviously seek God.

Therefore your claims here do not coincide with your claims that people must believe that Jesus is the Only Begotten Son of God.

Your religious views simply aren't compatible with reality.

In fact, the very thing that you claim above (that God will reveal himself to anyone who seek God), actually supports the notion than any real truths necessarily must be universal in all religions.

Therefore if we just take the common theme of all religions and reject their cultural arrogance and bigoted differences, then what's left must necessarily be the truth.

And that would leave Jesus as having been the "only begotten son of God" high and dry with no commonality in all other world religions at all. Thus proving that these kinds of specific cultural claims are not from God at all.

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Sacrificing animals is no sacrifice at all.
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If it's your best cow you sacrificed, it is a sacrifice. Because you and your family could have eat'n that cow, but you gave it up to God for payments of your sin. Thus sacrificing the cow to show you are truly sorry for your sin and truly seek forgiveness.

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Moreover, there's no such thing as "Stumbling" when it comes to sin. You either CHOOSE to sin, or you CHOOSE not to. You can't sin by accident because that wouldn't qualify as having made a CHOICE.
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Sure there is such a thing as "stumbling". I'll use me for instance in this example. I DON'T curse or use foul words. But one day i might be pushed to the limit to where a curse word slips out. This would be stumbling. You just get up brush the dust off and move on.

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It's impossible to "Believe" in something that you don't believe in. You can't just decide to believe in something when you can see that it's a farce. To pretend that you can't see that it's a farce would be a lie in and of itself.
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No it's not impossible to believe in something that you don't believe in. Believing or not believing in something is derived from a choice, and opinion. Those choices are usually held by past experiences. So if your future experiences go down a different road then your past experiences, of course you would then change you belief *opinion.*

But this flies in the face of what you personally have consistently preached, and that is that God provides us with everything we need. Therefore this family clearly does not need this cow if you want your religious views to be consistent. And therefore it would not be a sacrifice for them to destroy the cow in the name of God.



Well, if a person is so weak that they are unable to control own temper then it's understandable why so desperately need to believe in a baby-sitting God.

I never think in terms of such weak people. I'm more interested in what might apply to people more like myself. So all you're telling me here is that I need to be a weak person in order for you religion to make any sense to me.



Only an air-head would believe something without good reason.

And you're right, as we gain more knowledge in life we do indeed refine what we believe. This is precisely what I've done, and continue to do.

I was taught as a child by my parents and church that the Bible is the word of God. At that time I "believed" it simply because I had what I felt to be a "good reason" to believe it. That "good reason" was because my parents and other seemingly intelligent people told me that it was the word of God.

However, it didn't take me long to realize that this collection of stories themselves do not make sense and are grossly inconsistent. So I asked my parents, and the clergy of my church if they honestly knew that this book was indeed the "Word of God". Pressing them with a sincere heart I soon uncovered the ]b]real truth and the real truth is that, under pressure to tell the truth, they all confessed that they merely have faith, and not one of them could honestly vouch for the truth of these stories.

So in short, they had all lied to me, by misrepresenting their true level of knowledge.

In fact, when pressed to be as sincere and as honest as possible, they all confessed that even they have difficulty maintaining faith that these stories genuinely have anything to do with any real God.

I believe that any sincere person will indeed confess that they do not know whether the Bible is true or not. In fact, I would personally not have any respect for any mortal man who claims otherwise.

There truly is no good reason to believe that the Bible has anything to do with any genuine "god". On the contrary, there are a myriad of really profound reasons why no one should believe it.

it's funny how Christians believe that Jesus is the only one that had pain and agony while he was being crucified...they perhaps visualize that other people that was crucified somehow didn't have any pain and agony or their pain and agony was less than that of Jesus ...

but there is no getting around the fact that according to the bible Jesus was seen walking around three day later and how many of those that was crucified can make such a claim or recover from their pain and agony that quick to be taking walks around the land.. and this is why Jesus's pain and agony during his crufixion wasn't any type of sacrifice ....because others have suffered the same and perhaps more..

I agree ...which is why someone can only "believe" because they do not at that point in time in fact "know"

a belief is an unproved or unprovable thought ...and one can believe without a reason to believe....but unfortunely delusion could be the reason ...especially if belief is claimed to be truth without any proof that it is beyond the mind and/or faith

But Jesus did nothing worth being crucified. He didn't steal anything, he didn't kill anyone, he didn't do anything of such. All Jesus did was spread the word of God and was crucified for doing as such.

Cowboy..if you believe that Jesus's mission was to sacrifice himself...then logic dictates that he would have to find a way to be guilty of something in order to place himself into a sacrificial position ...which means he had to find a way to break the law and make himself a criminal ...

so now the question becomes what was the name of the crime that Rome used to crucify Jesus under ...and then if can be debated whether if he was guilty of that crime or not ...