[snips]

"keith" <keithj43@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:ba696799.0206180553.1d84514b@posting.google.com...

> "CM" <CM@CM.not.really> wrote in message
news:<fWAP8.2207$Fv1.268544@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...

> > A real sado-masochistic extravaganza.
> > But it didn't really make any difference.

> It wasn't sadistic or masochistic in any way; it was self-sacrificial,
> like when the firefighters in NYC put themselves in harms way to save
> the lives of people in the WTC. And it made *all* the difference.

When a fireman risks his life and limb, there is a point to doing it - to save lives. The potential suffering at least has a purpose; the "victim"

accepts the suffering as a possible consequence of the actions, but deems that a penalty worth risking to achieve the desire goal. Further, there's nobody inflicting that suffering; nobody is tying the fireman down and saying "Lemme get the blowtorch, I'm gonna cook me some fireman." Neither masochism nor sadism is involved.

The whole Jesus-on-a-stick bit, though, is _purely_ about sadism and masochism. Let's ponder the event itself a moment before looking at the potential for sadism or masochism in it.

First, what was the event? It was requiring someone to suffer and die.

What was the supposed goal of the event? To "save" us. Now we have two issues to cope with. First, what are we supposedly being saved _from_, and second, how is this suffering supposed to help?

The answer to the first is God. God's the one who set the rules, created the punishments, set the stage for all future events; without him, there would be no hell, no condemnation, no need for being saved in the first place. Further, it's _his_ judgement that determines whether you're saved or you roast, so again, without him, there's nothing to be saved _from_.

The "saving" is being saved _from God_.

Now, how is this suffering supposed to help? Let's ponder God a moment. Is God some sort of pathetic worthless weakling, or is he supposedly a supreme creator, capable of bringing entire universes into being? The latter, isn't it? We also know that he has the power to decide whether or not to give humanity another chance - if he didn't, then the whole event would have been completely pointless even if we did buy into the religion.

So here's God, who created the universe, created the rules, has the power to change things, to give people a second chance... but he's absolutely incapable of making such a weighty decision unless and until some poor sap gets nailed to a tree and dies a slow and agonizing death.

That's a pretty serious limit on God's powers there. Such a serious limit that, when you compare it to what he's supposed to have done, to have created, you have to conclude that either he _did_ in fact have the power to make such a decision even without someone nailed to a tree, or that he in fact didn't do those other things he's usually claimed to have done.

Thus, we have to conclude that either God is some two-bit nobody and we should really be looking for the _real_ power involved, the entity that really did do the creating, the setting of rules, etc, or we have to conclude that God required this sacrifice for reasons other than his inability to act without such a sacrifice.

That leaves us with a problem, though. As I see it, there are basically only two reasons for such an event to occur, assuming God's power isn't limited so that it _had_ to occur in order for him to act. The first is as a lesson - "See? This is what it takes to make things work." The second is sheer sadism.

Now as to the first, what would you think if a child's parents slowly tortured and killed it? Or worse, required someone else to do the dirty work? You'd probably think they were sick, twisted, needing at least medical attention and probably jail time. You probably wouldn't look at them and conclude "Hey, what a *great* lesson for humanity - that torture and death make us all better, give us all another chance!" So why would we draw such a conclusion about God's role in this event?

So we're left with nothing but sheer sadism. There's no _point_ to such an event; God could have made the choice without it. There's no particular message of goodness from God's actions in it, so there's no positive lesson to be learned from his side of things. It's simply sheer, unadulterated sadism.

Now what about J.C.'s role? Well, we can assume he wasn't a complete nitwit, so he could have figured this out for himself. So he knew the whole event was completely pointless, carried no message, no meaning, and had as its sole purpose the pointless torture and killing of someone - him. Yet he went along with it. Unlike the fireman who risks pain and death, but does so for a reason, Jesus knew there was absolutely no point whatsoever to the whole proceedings - but he went along with it anyway. Thus we can conclude that he, for whatever reason, had a thing for pointless personal suffering - to wit, masochism.

And last but not least is the issue of results. "And it made *all* the difference" you say. I ask what difference?

Presumably, we're "saved" - or at least, given a chance to be "saved". As I noted before, though, we're being saved from God. And what sort of "saving"

do we get out of it? Are we saved from the ravages of poverty, starvation, pain, anguish, disease, age, death, dismemberment, loss of loved ones, any of the thousand miseries that are part and parcel of being human?

No. We still suffer, we still die. What we're "saved" from is locked away behind the veil of death; after we die, _then_, supposedly, we reap the reward - we're saved from damnation, granted a place in heaven. Isn't it conveninent that the only way to find out if this "saving" happened *at all* is to die? It means there never has to be a *single* positive thing *ever* actually done where anyone can ever find out about it.

Imagine trying to sell someone on that idea. "Hi. Elect me for president.

No, you won't see tax reform, or disaster relief, or education, or medical services... no, you won't see anything good. So why elect me? Well, ya know, all the good things are invisible - and you only get them after you die. But that's okay, elect me anyway, since I promise you _will_ get all sorts of wonderful things... when you're dead. No, nothing now, sorry, you're on your own, if your life sucks, well, don't come crying to me about it - that's _man's_ problem to deal with, not mine. But go ahead and die, and see all the wonderful things you'll get!"

So what, really, have we got? We have a God who is either so pathetic, so powerless, he is physcially incapable of saying "What the heck, I'll give 'em another shot" unless someone suffers and dies - in which case, let's go find a deity who isn't such a pathetic pantywaist. Or we have a God who wants pointless suffering and death, in which case, why would any sane person have any respect for him? And having managed to wrap one's mind around the glaring stupidities of the whole issue, one is still left with "suffer, get old, get sick, die, not my problem" and the supposed rewards, if any, only come after death. "If any" being the key phrase, since there's absolutely no way to find out - short of dying - if there _are_ any such rewards. Given a God who is either that pathetic or that sadistic, one wonders just how much faith one can place in empty assurances of all the good things to happen later.

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