How can someone pay for the crimes of another person by dying? I would like to hear some opinions on this from christians.

Compassionate answer:
"Jailing somebody for life is a better punishment, we should rehabilitate as many as possible"

Cold answer:
"Some people are too dangerous to let loose, death is the only way"

Economic answer:
"We can't afford to jail everyone"

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I was talking about Jesus dying for the sins of mankind. I don't see how anyone, whether sinless, or victim, or not, can pay for the crimes of another person. No one can pay for crimes they didn't commit. Only an unjust person would accept another person to take the punishment for another.

Well I think that's for God to know and you to find out.
I would simply assume the entity in control of entrance to Heaven and thus the ability to forgive sins would have that ability to forgive those who ask for forgiveness.

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But that is not justice. Throughout the Bible god is portrayed as concerned with justice ("...for your God is a just God"). The act of dying does not change the event unless it was made not evil, but that has even more paradoxical implications than my previous question.

That's thinking like an imperfect mortal human though.

The point of then God in the bible telling people to live in a manner upholding justice
and living with a code of law can easily be due to that society advances better with order.

That's at least my interpretation of "God's plan" is that God wants to see humanity prosper.

Still I don't think the life and death of Jesus can be as easily explained away as
"Dying won't change the actions"
Since we're not talking about some random guy dying but rather the actual physical incarnation of God.
So at that point the rules change in ways I doubt anyone could explain.

So like I said before, since the proverbial gatekeeper of heaven is physically manifesting themselves
into a physical human form and suffering and dying, by their divine means, that acts as the means to forgive the sins of the people.

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Your still thinking like a human too. My original question was how could justice be served by suffering another person's punishment. Your answer to me is that if god threw a rock in a well he was actually throwing in a fish: because god only throws fishes into wells. God can't do something unjust, so he didn't do something unjust. It's not an argument, it's an opinion.

Though since God is omnipotent, he could throw a rock in a well and it would also be a fish at the same time..
Particularly since one of the 'devil's temptations to christ' was to change the rocks of the desert
into bread to feed himself...

Again though I think your interpretation of what I said is a bit off base.
Whether by some divine logic or a deal with the devil or some other means
God's physical manifestation dying could easily account for the forgiveness of sins.

But being a 'perfect divine plan' it's impossible to really adequately explain
since it's like a child explaining nuclear physics to a child.

Could an ordinary human suffer and die for another's sins... doubtful
But the idea of it for Jesus is that he was completely not normal.

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"The good warrior knows when to fight, and when to withdraw."
- Sun Tzu

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Hmm, so you're saying for god the normal rules of logic do not apply? I don't understand how you could say that. If logic doesn't apply to god, how could the Bible speak about god as just, compassionate, or good if he doesn't even exist in a state we can understand? Is everything in the Bible an allusion to an abstract world we can't fathom?

I would think that logic stops applying to an entity that can conjure things out of nowhere
and create or destroy on whim without energy or material.

You can look at the ocean or space and know it's huge, but there's no way a person could fully
understand how vast it is just by looking at it. We can explore and get what we need from it
but there's a depth of mystery that people just can't comprehend.

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"The good warrior knows when to fight, and when to withdraw."
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I respect your sense of vastness of the universe and beyond, and the possibilities thereof: I, too, share that sense. But *if* a god existed surely it would not be the anthropomorphic god of christianity.

Znath, I really respect you.

Well, most of these questions are rather...ignorant themselves. They're also short-sighted. If I were to do something like this, I would replace all ten questions with a simple task:
Devise an experiment that follows all rules of the modern scientific method that proves the existence of God.
Now, I myself have never tried to solve this, but I did something similar with the existence of souls. The proposed experiment was so rife with moral issues that it would never be performed (among other things, it involved killing hundreds of newborn or younger infants and using them to make perfectly clean brains in jars).

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If there was a divine power, it wouldn't be like anything portrayed by religions still in existence.

The Gods worshipped by long dead religions wouldnt just disapear if they existed, and if they had power over Earth they would prove it or 'leave signs' that prove their existence, just as the Bible said the Christian God did.

Havent got a problem with religious people, and if religion makes the difference between someone being bad or good then religion is beneficial. However its possible to know right from wrong without being told it by a book. I do voluntary work for a christian charity without having any belief in God whatsoever.

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"What? Men dodging this way for single bullets? What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."- The last words of General John Sedgewick, killed by a sniper in the American civil war

I'm a Christian, though not a Pastor or Reverend. All the same, I'd like to give my point of view on these questions, if I may.

1. Why won't God heal amputees?

Why is this question limited to amputees? Why didn't God heal my family members before they died of cancer? He lets us live out our lives, and if something suddenly doesn't go our way, it's not like we should expect Him to let us call a mulligan or a do-over and fix what happened. The video makes it sound like the only other option is having God fly around the world fixing everyone's problems.

I do have a qualm with one part here, though: "On the one hand, you believe that God answers prayers and performs miracles." Yes, yes I do. God answers all prayers with either "Yes", "No", or "Not at this time", though we have no way of knowing which is which. The video incorrectly assumes that God answers all prayers with "Yes". (For instance, in the movie Bruce Almighty and how thousands of people won the lottery in one day when he clicked "Yes to all" on the Prayer list.)

2. Why are there so many starving people in this world?

Because there are so many people in this world without access to food, perhaps? The video again incorrectly assumes God answers "Yes" to all prayers when it says God is ignoring the prayers of these children. (Then saying that we MUST say that "God wants children to suffer" is kind of a slap in the face to be honest.)

3. Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible?

I'll do the video one better--when the Israelites came out of Egypt and into their promised land of Canaan, it was overflowing with so many people worshipping the false gods of Baal and Asher that God commanded that the Israelites kill every single one of them--man, woman, and child. (The fall of Jericho in Joshua chapter 6 an accentuate this.) God demanded their deaths to keep the Israelites true to God, because if they did not kill all of the people in Canaan (which, in the end, they didn't) the Canaanites would eventually intermingle with and marry the Israelites and draw them away from God and toward Baal and Asher (which is what happened.)

As for the Old Testament verses referenced in the video, things have been different ever since Jesus died for our sins. Back in the time of Exodus, "work" was comprised of anything from picking grain out of the ground to walking more than a couple hundred steps to making food. Things were much more severe back then.

4. Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense?

God is omnipotent. He can do whatever the heck He wants. So in response to the video's four points:

A-Why not? Were you there? No. Was I there? No. If God is omnipotent, why can't he create a world that looks like it's been here forever? Were you expecting a perfect sphere covered in 2/3rds water and 1/3rd land that for some fantastical reason can't trace anything back further than 2000 years?
B-Says who? I thought scientists found things that only could have been deposited in certain areas if amazingly high floodwaters (such as that in the Bible) had taken it there. I can't remember any specifics (and I may be incorrect) but this statement seems lacking.
C-I sure wouldn't want to. Who knows what God did to the fish or Jonah. It was kind of Jonah's punishment for running away anyway.
D-If God is omnipotent, then why can't dust turn to life? (I guess you would have to steadfastly deny Point A to deny Point D.)

I kind of felt like I was repeating myself here; sorry for that.

5. Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible?

I looked up these Bible verses as I can't remember anything about slavery.

Exodus 21:20-21 - If a guy owns a slave and he beats the slave to death, punish him.
Colossians 3:22-24 - Slaves, obey your masters. And this was written by Paul! It would be like my Pastor saying "Forgive thy neighbor" and the video saying "See? God wants you to forgive the sex offender who lives next door!"
Ephesians 6:5 - EXACTLY the same as the one above.
1 Peter 2:18 - EXACTLY the same as the two above except written by Peter instead of Paul.

They're really reaching on this one, I have to say.

6. Why do bad things happen to good people?

This is a repeat of Questions 1 and 2, except replace "bad things" with "amputation/starvation" and "good people" with "adults/children". Why should bad things NOT happen to everyone? I never understand why people play this card; I believe in God, thus I must expect him to make Earth a utopia? Nonsense.

7. Why didn't any of Jesus' miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence?

Because when Jesus fed the 4,000 or the 5,000, the leftover bread spoiled days later.
Because when Jesus turned water into wine, the wedding guests drank the wine.
Because when Jesus healed the blind, or the deaf, or the lepers, the kind of died about 80 years later.

...Seriously?

8. How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?

(What is this video's deal with "You have to create some weird rationalization!"?) Jesus has never appeared to me because I'm about 2013 years late on the action. Jesus is now in heaven, and I'll see him when I die. I can wait.

9. Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood?

This is the one question out of the ten that I do not feel I am equipped to answer, sorry. It all has to do with his covenant and stuff and the video kind of tries to twist it up, but I do not have a good enough reply that I am willing to put myself out there on it.

10. Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians?

The video again assumes that just because people are praying for the couple, this means everything will be perfectly okay. Not only do we all have free will, but we're all sinners, too. We make mistakes in marrying the wrong people, or angering our spouse to the point where marriage no longer seems possible. No one, not even a Christian, is perfect, and it is to the video's folly to suggest that we can be (or that God should make us perfect so that we would never divorce.)

Lul im 17 but w/e gonna pwnsauce dem questions. Just so you know, if you would read the bible and try to understand at least where believers come from, you might have a better arguement than some rage video against christianity, and please do understand that if you believe the bible (what it says not your own interpretation, than you believe god created the world and everything in it, that means life form wise not the sin or any of that, assuming god made the world and everything in it perfect, but when he did this he wanted people to choose to love him, not to jsut be mindless pawns, so he gave us free will. with that free will man was tempted and fell into sin where we have been ever since. god didn't make us sin, just like he didn't make that guy an amputee or a divorcee or a widow or w/e it may be. SIN and the devil made that happen, not god.) and if you're going to say well how can a loving god sit by and watch, well that loving god has his hand over us and for those who follow him he never gives you more than you can handle. bad things happen so good things can come out of them. he gave us free will. the devil will tempt you and attack you to try and pry you from gods arms. if you allow yourself to think that the bad things are gods will and not the devils than you, that my friend is where you have gone wrong. If your sole arguement is god is that god, assuming he exists, makes bad things happen, then you are wrong in believeing that there is only god and nothing more. If you're going to argue to christians that we are wrong becuz god allows bad things, then you're not realizing the devil is there, youre not acknowledging him and therefore you're not even talking about christianity.
1. God didn't make them an amputee, sin did. God allows it to happen so he can work, to show himself through that person's trial. Its like if you've ever seen a motivational speaker, if you see a 120 lb guy whose been skinny his whole life and hes preaching to you to stop eatting and lose weight. you're not inspired youre just pissed cuz some naturally skinny guy is telling you when he has no experience. Now if you see a speaker on losing weight that went from 300 lbs to 150 lbs. you're inspired because you see that hes experienced that and he got through it. If we never had anything go wrong we would never have faith. God wants believers with faith not some hypocritical idiots who curse him everytime they stub their toe.
2. Why are there so many starving people in our world? same answer as #1. When god made the world he gave us plenty food for all. we he gave us free choice, we screwed up in how we dictated the food. And btw theres enough food on the earth to feed everyone 3000 calories a day. Now tell me, are you going to blame god for "starving" people or are you going to blame people for being selfish. God is all that is good, you can't blame him for the sin of greed.
3. Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible? (quotes a few bible verses). God was tired of the sin in the world. the people you talk about definatley weren't "innocent", rape, debauchery, sodemy, stealing, murder were all running rampant in the people he wiped out. He wiped out the people who were most corrupt. He allowed free choice, but he also gave guidelines on how to live. When people disobeyed and disobeyed. He got angry and decided to kill everyone who was corrupt. After he flooded the earth, he promised never to do that again. so he stopped and the only reason i believe all of us are still alive is because god promised not to cleanse the earth of sin anymore until he returns.
4. Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense? If you really actually get into the facts, the bible makes perfect sense, other than the fact that its NOT a science book, and its NOT all supposed to fit into some formula, the majority of the bible has been scientifically proven, you however are too busy being arrogant to open your eyes to the facts. The majority "unproved" such as the miracles jesus did have been written in thousands of eye witness accounts. I mean the bible was written 25-100 years after jesus's death. Keep in mind people back then lived to be wayyyyyyyy older than now. Its not just legend all the eye witness accounts were taken as true because when the bible came out. the people who had actually been there and witnessed jesus's claims and miracles promoted the bible. Legends are written wayyyyy after everyone from that era is long gone so that no one can refute what the writer says, however the bible is written while the people who witnessed were still around to say yes this is true and it happened or no it did not. and guess what, they 100% backed everything the bible said, thats why christianity is still here today, it would've died off as some cult if people didn't know it was true back then.
5. Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible? hes not, he rescues his people out of slavery on multiple accounts... why don't u read the bible for once and you'd know that.
6. Why do bad things happen to good people? same answer as #1. sin does bad not god, god allows it to happen so he can get true believers with faith, not just fake "sunday believers", and so he can work miracles through that.
7. Why didn't any of Jesus' miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence? they did. first off as christians you're sposed to live by faith, not by what you see and hear because those are things of the world, but there is proof that you are apparently missing.....you count the iliad and cesars account of the wars as historical documents and they were written 500+ years after they actually happen. but you don't believe the bible even though it was written 100 years after it happened. The iliad had 6 copied manuscripts ( you need 5 to be considered a historical document of truth and worth). cesars accounts of the wars had like 180 and the bible had 24,000, but yet you claim there is no evidence....even non believers accounts from the time assert that jesus actually performed those miracles.
8. How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you? after he died he appeared to over 500 ppl at once, he came back for a month to be with the people on earth. he told us he would come back at the 2nd coming at the end of the world. there is no promise in the bible yo uwill ever see him, so why push that we need to see him. its called faith because we haven't seen and we believe
9. Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood? so we can become one with him. its freaking symbolism he broke bread and they drank wine. in the bible they didn't actually eat his flesh or drink his blood. read the bible before asking questions like this....
10. Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians? Sin, and alot of the "christians" you talk about are fake. they go to church so they assume they're saved, they don't make any change in how they live but on sundays they get all dressed up and go to church. don't confuse them with true believers.

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"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
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If you actually want people to take you seriously in debates, you may want to consider using punctuation.

You know, in a society without modern medicine and knowledge of science as we have today, people would live longer.

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I'd like to know why (if sin is the cause of everyone's pain and suffering) that I'm perfectly healthy even despite terrible eating habits, lack of exercise, and constantly claim that God is a jerk and that I'd rather go to hell than heaven.

Can you really claim that God doesn't help people because it was sin that brought them to where they are when there are people so tainted by sin it practically defines them yet have nothing wrong with them?

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Complain about my punctuation, and go against people's age. Is that the best you have. Everything else makes sense, and yes people DID live to be older like 900 years+ back then, idc if you believe me or not

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"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
Taylor Swift all day 'err day

Its not necessarily your own sin. Thats like in the midevil ages if everyone got sick and you didn't you were considered a witch. Bad things are a circumstance of someone's sin. (And when i say bad things, i don't mean like your grandpa has a heart attack, god uses those circumstances to work through people's hardship.)Not necessarily your own. It's like with wars, one country wants another country's resources or decides to attack another country for x reason. Soldier A dies in that war, when Soldier A did nothing to provoke that certain country. Its a circumstance. Idk if that was really a good example or not but i hope i made a clear enough point. And the way you're looking at God is if he has a tally in heaven, and everytime you do something wrong he makes a check and everytime you do something right he makes a check. And for all the good checks you have x number of good things that happen and for all the bad checks you have x number of bad things. Gods job isn't to run around the world protecting everyone from bumps and bruises, in the bible he promises to be with you always, he's not promising an easy ride but he is promising an end. And that end is in heaven. (if you accept him as your savior)

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"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
Taylor Swift all day 'err day