this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
857 points (96.5% liked)
Atheism
1537 readers
2 users here now
- Be respectful to other members Treat others with kindness and courtesy, even if you disagree with their opinions.
- Stay on topic Keep your discussions relevant to the purpose of the forum. Avoid going off-topic or derailing conversations.
- No spamming Avoid posting irrelevant or unnecessary content, advertisements, or links to unrelated websites.
- Use proper language and tone Choose your words carefully when commenting or replying to others. Avoid using profanity or engaging in offensive language and personal attacks.
- Do not share personal information Protect your privacy by refraining from sharing personal details such as addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses on the forum.
- Report any issues If you come across any inappropriate behavior or content, report it to the forum moderators or administrators.
- Have fun and contribute positively Participate actively and add value to the discussions. Engage in meaningful and constructive conversations with fellow members.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well… cuz if u would ever read bible, u would know the cross is a symbol of redemption for mankind. Same goes for Jesus hanging on it, it’s a scene of what Christian’s believe to be the ultimate act of love, sacrificing urslef for another. I think it makes perfect sense to pick cross as a religion symbol.
The whole redemption thing itself doesn't even make sense unless you buy into inherited guilt and into sacrificing another to absolve yourself from guilt which are both rather outdated concepts in our modern morality.
You’re saying my plan for fixing climate change by sacrificing the rich to the fire god is outdated and unlikely to work?
idk it’s still definitely worth trying
Hehe fire... Fire! FIRE! 🔥🔥
If you sacrifice enough of them it should work.
I mean, it could still work. Whether it was because of the fire god or eliminating the problematic people, we will never truly know.
WTF I'm suddenly feeling very religious
That and it was the way Romans dealt with literally anyone deemed... a nuisance? 😂
It makes more sense when you know that 2nd temple Judaism had an entire economy built around animal sacrifice for sins, and that the temple central to that is destroyed a few decades after Jesus died as Christianity was starting to take off.
So positioning Jesus's death not as an embarrassing failure to manifest earlier messianic prophecy but as this ultimate sacrifice making the animal sacrifices that could no longer be performed unnecessary was a very convenient belief to attract Jewish converts.
Of course, then Mark 11:16, where Jesus bans anyone from carrying animal sacrifices through the temple in the first place while alive becomes an inconvenient detail, which is probably why it later disappears from Luke and Matthew.
So Christianity probably really was a split from 2nd temple Judaism at the time of Jesus on the point of animal sacrifice, but then following his death the death itself gets reworked back into the paradigm of animal sacrifice by those coming later (i.e. Paul) which then later makes it more attractive to Jews who no longer have a temple after 70 CE when it takes even greater prominence.
The irony of course is that looking at some of the early apocryphal sayings of Jesus on the ridiculousness of sin and salvation as an inherent birthright that shouldn't be given over to another to be lent back out at interest - this development of the crucifixion as an ultimate sacrifice on behalf of humanity was possibly the exact opposite of a historical Jesus's whole point, even if it was favored for survivorship bias given the destruction of the temple.
You described christianity quite well there
TBF I don't think Jesus had a chance to read the Bible.
So the symbol only makes sense if you're deep in the lore
Those are only rumors. The author hasn't come out with The Bible 2: Redeemer of Souls that's supposed to explain all that.
They're the only author that rivals GRRM for time between books.
Ah yes, a slow, torturous death makes it all better.
Religion likes suffering. Gotta suffer to make it into elysium. Gotta make sure everyone else suffers, too, even if they don’t believe.
bruh
"Read the Bible" mmmhmm...
Where exactly does it say that the cross is the thing that should be the symbol for the religion?
That doesn't happen until around the 3rd century, 200 years after most of the new treatment was written.
Fun fact: initially the cross was a symbol made on the forehead or with the hand. So if you were looking for Revelation prophecy fulfillment, maybe the buying and selling of salvation under the sign of the cross on forehead and in hand should be the thing people are worried about, and not RFID payments.
Just like how Christians worry about blaspheming the Holy Spirit as a supposedly unforgivable sin while conveniently overlooking Paul's swearing he's telling the truth on the Holy Spirit in Romans 8 (a chapter entirely absent in Marcion's version of the letter).
It's always wild to me when believers act like they actually know anything about the book while clearly not knowing much about it at all, as opposed to at least having the wisdom to know what they don't know.
You seemed to have wholly misinterpreted the comment you're replying to in your condescending rambling. Kinda crazy that you even mentioned RFID payments somehow in your tangent. You lost the plot big time
No one said "the bible says the cross is a symbol for the religion of Christianity". Not a single verse says that, and no one claimed so. but the cross in the text is important and is symbolic of redemption/love/sacrifice. You don't need the text to say that, it's just a simple literary analysis. That's how symbols work.
Like what are you even saying with your last paragraph there? If you read the Bible, the importance and significance of the event where Jesus died on a cross is kind of hard to miss. It's wild to me that you can make a comment like yours and then pretend you're so wise and intelligent and above other people while you're rambling nonsense about RFID payments. Get a grip, dude.
Not really. There's one line in the Synoptics about "unless you carry the cross as I do" and a few mentions of the cross in the Epistles, but it didn't have nearly the significance it later takes on in the religion.
The gospels certainly cover the crucifixion with the passion narrative, but at the time it was more about dealing with the embarrassment of the cross than its glorification - the Messiah was supposed to be a war leader who led the Jews in a final battle of liberation and instead their guy was crucified.
So the narrative is mostly around trying to address how really this embarrassing event was fulfilling prophecy and addressing why he didn't just magic himself off of it (eventually developing the narrative to the point that in John he effectively does just that spiritually, leading to later beliefs like docetism - that he was a phantom without corporeal form and didn't suffer at all on the cross, popular around the time the focus on the cross was starting).
Again, you can see that in the earliest of the Epistles the cross is referred to as "the offense of the cross" (Gal 5:11), and at this early point the significance is clearly still developing as Paul sees the cross as symbolically crucifying the world to him in Gal 6:14 (Paul's undisputed letters have 2-5x the personal reference of the non-Pauline Epistles, much like the writing of vulnerable narcissists).
The Christology around the significance of the cross simply isn't where you think it is when the NT is being composed to support your view of it as symbolically hard to miss. In the text itself, it's actually quite easy to miss, which was why it took two centuries to become a thing.
What a well formulated response. You're right about everything you've said in regards to what the text literally says, but you've still missed the point.
I was speaking hyperbole, the bible is massive and definitely lends itself to missing the significance of certain events, especially if you blitz through it. But Jesus dying is still a significant event of the book, without it the whole book itself loses its narrative cohesion and collapses on itself. And handwaving mentions of the cross/Jesus dying on the cross away as "a few mentions of it in the epistles" (which is 21/27 books in the NT btw) is exactly what you're doing, downplaying the significance of the event. The epistles arent random side stories in the bible, they're one of the most applicable and relevant portions of the whole text
Jesus coming and dying is alluded to before it happens, prophesied, then recounted and written about multiple times throughout the whole text. It is indeed a significant event. You don't need the text to focus literally on the cross itself for it to be a symbol of the event that occurred. Which is what I've already said prior. "the cross as a symbol is directly supported in the text" is exactly what I already said is not being discussed. You seem to be arguing points that no one is arguing.
Look, you read the Bible, you study the text, and you realize Jesus death which happened on a cross is a big deal, the cross then is merely a symbol of that event. It's that simple. The cross is not a symbol of itself, which is what your analysis seems to imply. The cross being a symbol is not some conspiracy about gaslighting people on what the bible says about the cross. It's just an easy way to represent what is one of the most significant events of the bible in addition to the direct references to it
The delusion manifest.
No thanks. I'd rather pin my cock n balls to a cross before I read that dumpster fire
I will wear a necklace in the image of your cock n balls pinned to a cross so that we may remember how you suffered for our cocks n ballses