Ah, Megadude, it's now obvious that you're a Fundy pretending to argue from the JW viewpoint. You have serious 'issues', my man.
Point of order: when you reply to a specific poster it's a Good Thing to preface your reply with his or her name.
: It's easy to see you get very emotional and upset when someone posts that they respect what Christ did, that they believe in him.
Oh, not at all! My irritation with your post was your thoroughly braindead, unsupported declaration that I am as cowardly as you admit you are. Do re-read my response for details. I highly resent being put into the "Cowardly Fundy" category.
I don't care one whit what you believe about the ransom doctrine.
As for being emotional about the "ransom" doctrine -- not hardly. I long ago thoroughly debunked the JW version of it and now consider it purely a myth. Why would anyone get upset about Santa Clause or the ransom or any other myth? You can read my debunking essay "God's Justice -- Sin, Imperfection, and the Ransom Sacrifice" here: http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/index2.htm .
: Although you have run into your share of brain-dead, Jesus-believing born-againer fruitcakes,
Do tell.
: as well as JWs, that doesn't necessarily make the people here who believe in Christ a fundy. You're way offbase there,
It doesn't in general, but everything you write proves you're a typical born-again, braindead Fundy. If you're not, prove it by telling us what your religious affiliation is. Oh, and preface your admission with "May God strike me dead if everything I say is not the absolute truth."
: and your response is emotional rather than logical. When you start off a post calling names instead of your logic, the info you have to share get lost in your emotional reaction.
This response is absolutely stereotypically Fundy. My reply to you contained a lighthearted bit of 'namecalling' based on your lying characterization of me, but no emotionalism. It contained plenty of logic, which does not disappear merely because you refuse to address the issues I brought up. Your response is typical of Fundy responses because you so easily get sidetracked by minor issues and use that to justify ignoring the main issues. You should understand that I'm just playing with you, and showing others how completely lacking in real arguments Fundies are.
: You recommend reading "Jesus the Magician." Thanks for the recommendation. You're right. You should listen to both sides of the story. I would like to see you start another thread of what you learned from this book.
Not interested. You go ahead and read the book, and if you have issues with it, bring them up. It's a dead issue with me.
: You said: "Jesus had no choice. He was given his assignment by God. If he refused, God would have declared him a rebel and killed him. Simple as that."
That's derived from the JW viewpoint, which you've implicitly stuck to until later in this post. That's why I didn't comment on the Trinitarian view. But that view creates even more difficulty:
: If he was God (Trinity view), then he got nothing extra that I can tell for his efforts. He goes back to heaven and he is fully God again. If he was God, then he made the decision to undergo sacrificing himself. He didn't take any order.
That's right. The entire exercise is pointless. God (is this the Father, the Holy Spirit, or the Son, or all three acting together?) decides that the Son part of him will somehow take on the body of a man, which will live a few short years and then die in a painful way. So this part of God feels some pain, does a few things that last for the blink of an eye in the eternity of God's existence, and at the end, nothing is changed. Big deal.
Then we have the ludicrous notion that one part of God, the Son, begs all of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) to "let this cup pass from me". Then all of God doesn't answer the one part, and the "cup" doesn't pass, and the one part is killed. So we have God's internal parts arguing among themselves as to whether the one part should die or not. Then in some magical way the dead part comes back to life in another form and is part of all of God again. Whew! Some logic, that!
As for pain, what is physical pain? It's simply a particular firing of nerves that the brain interprets as unpleasant. Does God feel pain? Did this particular physical manifestation of God feel pain? I have no idea, but I have no doubt that if God is the creator of pain, he could easily deal with any amount of pain. God is not a weenie like you are. So again there's no big deal.
: If he was not God, but the son of God (JW view), I still don't see what bump in status he got for his trouble. He was already "second in command."
As I said above (which you've conveniently forgotten), he got away with his life, since if he disobeyed God, God would have killed him. As for a bump in status, you already know the JW doctrine and I'm not going to repeat it.
: Please start another thread on what you learned from Jesus the Magician. Maybe you could give a brief overview of the best arguments that show Jesus is a myth. If it's as good as you say it is, then I need to read it.
I'll let you decide what you want to do. I'm not that interested.
AlanF
