"Another" one? I must have missed the others.
I gotta ask ya! When did you start posting stuff from a heretic? LOL!!!! Here you go:
Robert D. Brinsmead - Councillor Tweed Shire Council - Duranbah Road, Duranbah 2487 N.S.W, Australia June 28, 1995
: [excerpt]: "I don't believe in the god of a never ending hell..."
And here: Verdict (1998 & Beyond)
1. The Status Of Jesus Re-Examined
2. The Scandal Of Joshua Ben Adam- Part 1
3. The Scandal Of Joshua Ben Adam- Part 2
4. No Discrimination
5. No Atonement
6. No God Above
7. No Home
EXCERPTS From #6 above[snips]:
* Aside from the one evil of not being human (forgiving, caring, compassionate, giving, etc.) there is no sin. ~
* God Can Be a Dangerous Idea
Any vision of God which is other than the supremely human God is an appalling danger to humanity. The idea of God as a non-human, vertical, authority is the most destructive weapon ever let loose on the earth. Where atheism has destroyed its millions, theism has destroyed its tens of millions. In God's name the worst tyrannies and inhumanities are legitimized by becoming sacralized.
Let the idea of God being a vertical authority above us be accepted, let the idea that this relationship takes precedence over human relationships be accepted, then the door is wide open for every human atrocity, tyranny, deprivation of liberty and destruction of human rights. This is how a sensitive human being like Saul of Tarsus got caught up dragging Christians in chains before the authorities. He put devotion to his God before human obligations. In the same way good men got involved in torturing people in the Inquisition or carrying out Pogroms against the Jews. For sure they were human enough to hurt as they kicked against the goads of their own human consciousness, but the higher authority called God made them do these inhuman things.~
* God is absolutely the most destructive idea let loose on this planet. This idea has caused more war, bloodshed, misunderstandings, strife, tyranny and terror than anything else. Nothing has held people in so much darkness, bondage or blocked human progress so much as the idea of God.
Christians have thought the world was in darkness through want of the Christian God. So they have gone out to convert the world to the God of original sin, hell and blood atonement. A God of blood savagery and total vindictive revenge, dressed up in garments of love and mercy, produced a totalitarian system which has survived the collapse of every other totalitarian system. Why? Because it sacralized its rule and kept people captive with the idea of God.
Anyone who can't see that the idea of God is dangerous, bloody dangerous, hasn't read any history and doesn't realize the appalling amount of crimes against humanity done in his name. And it has not stopped. The world today is a powder keg because there is an idea of God between the ears of millions of people that's more dangerous than all the explosives you could muster in this world.
That many want to dress this idea of God up in a benevolent guise makes no difference. It may be worse because, in the guise of 'God is Love', the idea becomes more seductively dangerous to human freedom and existence. It is safer to believe in no God at all than to believe in this God above, that is, in this God of the vertical dimension.
Of course, we are dumb fools if we fail to acknowledge the source of all this inhumanity done in God's name. It is because God is made to be an authoritarian, non-human reality. This always works to take away our freedom, destroy the possibility of loving others and turns us into the image and likeness of beasts.
Joshua ben Adam laid the ax at the roots of the vertical order with a new doctrine which put a supremely human God on the human level of freedom and love. His image and likeness is not seen anywhere else.
If God is not an authoritarian figure above the human horizontal line, then nothing else is above that line to demand from us blind obedience, submission and loss of human freedom. There is no Bible, Creed, hierarchy or religious laws that can exercise an authoritarian rule over us. Whatever is human may stand on the line of equality with us, but every other icon must be placed beneath our feet. (Psalms 8:3-6)~
**** EXERPTS from #5 above [snips]:
* Real evil, according to Joshua, has nothing to do with the religious icons whether they be foods, rituals, garments, days, places or anything else. Evil has to do with the way we treat people, nothing more and nothing less. The living God has given us a living icon or image of himself and its people. Nothing else matters!~
*Sin belongs to the vocabulary of religion. Religion is pre-occupied with sin, and so are all religious people. ~
*Joshua told this story in answer to a question about finding eternal life. The story tells us that religious affiliations, practices and belief systems don't really count. The only thing which matters is doing the human thing.~
. Hell
According to this recycled pagan myth, pay-back justice had barely begun with all the temporal misery, suffering, and death of this world. The full penalty of the human fall, whose guilt rests upon everybody, is said to be damnation in Hell. In Christian orthodoxy, Hell is a place of never ending punishment, of unspeakable, never ending torments.
With Hell, God's pay-back justice takes on infinite proportions. Sin is said to be an offense against an infinite majesty meriting infinite punishment. So God spends eternity getting even, paying people back for offending him.
Enough said, because the Christian doctrine of Hell is an absolute disgrace. The church has to be charged with polluting the earth with religious sadism and pornography. No human mind should never be made to entertain such sickening inhuman images whose portrayal has caused many to faint, go mad, live in terror, obey religious strictures out of fear, or turn away from believing in God altogether. Millions have become atheists rather than believe in fables so insulting to all sense of human decency.
Thankfully, not all Christians have believed or have continued to believe in this kind of Christian orthodoxy. An awaked human consciousness leads more and more churchmen and theologians to re-interpret Hell in a more humane way or to abandon the idea completely. It is after all an old pagan myth which has been used in the Christian religion to take pay-back justice to an infinite degree of infinite nonsense.
3. The Atonement
In Christian theology the Cross and Hell are the two sides or the two stages of one reality. The Apostles Creed says that Christ descended into Hell. He took upon himself God's wrath against sin, the infinite sufferings of Hell, in order to save us from that punishment. Out of love God is said to have provided this bloody sacrifice of his own son to make an atonement (pay-back, compensation, payment) for human sins. Christ too was said to be one with the Father in becoming the bloody victim of atonement. The transaction is said to be substitutionary. Christ, the innocent one, was treated as we deserved that we, the guilty ones, might be treated as he deserves. God rolled on him the sins of the world and punished him as if he were every sinner.
If it be asked why was this atonement necessary, the answer is that God could not forgive sin unless he satisfied his law or his principle of retributive justice. Anselm said that reparations or an adequate compensation had to be made to God's outraged honor due to man's sin.
The real reason God offers the bloody sacrifice of his son and Christ offers himself as the victim, therefore, is not to save people but it is to justify the divine administration, to satisfy God's justice, to honor and glorify God, etc. Charles Hodge, the Calvinist Systematic theologian, goes even further. Since God is the unmoved mover who cannot be influenced by anything outside of himself, says Hodge, when he loves or is merciful toward us he is only being loving and merciful to himself. So the bottom line of atonement is that Christ did not at primarily die for people at all like Joshua ben Adam did, but he died for the principle of law and pay-back justice.
If God cannot forgive us unless Christ pays our debt, than he does not really forgive at all. If a debt has been paid, then there is nothing to forgive. Atonement and forgiveness, therefore, are mutually exclusive.
*It is said that Christ's human nature was sustained by his divine nature to endure an infinite punishment making a sufficient atonement for 'the sins of the world'. The one mitigating feature of this Hangman's theology is the statements saying that God loved us and gave his son to pay our penalty. Its a good thing most people never get to read the statements of the theologians which could easily destroy allusions about God's love being altruistic. Many who still live with a legalistic world-view or in a universe which has pay-back justice at its heart, do find support and comfort in God's offering up his son as an atonement. Thankfully they have never been exposed to "good" divines such as Augustus Strong (Systematic Theology) who says that justice rather than love is the most primary attribute of God.
Summary
The Fall, Hell and the Atonement by blood sacrifice are the outline structure of the Christian religion whether Catholic or Protestant.
Each of these three elements is a recycled pagan myth.
Each has pay-back justice at its heart.
Together the parts form one structure. The Fall is the beginning of the story. The story has a Hell of an end. In the middle is Atonement by means of a blood sacrifice. From beginning to end it is a Chamber of Horrors. It is totally incompatible with the life and teaching of Joshua ben Adam.
As we have seen ben Adam totally demolished the world-view of his day. He removed pay-back justice from his vision for a new human society. There was no pay-back justice in his vision of God. His teaching was like new wine, which he said, must not be placed into the old wineskins. But that is exactly what happened. The church put the new wine of amazing generosity and love into the old wineskins of pagan myths and pay-back justice.
***** Currently available Verdict Essays by Robert Brinsmead:
The Status Of Jesus Re-Examined
The Scandal Of Joshua Ben Adam- Part 1
The Scandal Of Joshua Ben Adam- Part 2
No Discrimination
No Atonement
No God Above
No Home
No Barriers
****** How's that grab ya? LOL!!!!!!!!