And who will torture you for eternity? The thing I made who tried to overthrow me. But I knew about that already because I am omniscient and my plan is infallible, so I literally made a creature to try and overthrow me and fail, and then made them ugly and punished them for all of time.
ok but hear me out - if you eat him/me and drink our blood then you will not die after you die but you’ll live. We’re made of bread. Also we are a throuple.
“Abe, Abe. Kill your son.Just kill him man. Do it! Your God demands it, pussy! Do it!”
“Oh myself! You were actually going to do it! Don’t be crazy I was joking!”
I’ve been thinking about that particular event. Leonard Cohen has a song about it as well that put me on this track.
Now, as a historical fact, back in those days, sacrificing ones children was a not uncommon thing to do. The old testament god in several places tells the israelites NOT to put their children to the fire, as the term was. But if you read the texts you find that the israelites weren’t very good at following commands, and one could guess that god knew that.
So he puts his favorite follower through the worst nightmare imaginable, demanding that he sacrifice his beloved son. Put him through the ringer, of doubt, despair, fear, and sorrow, let it sink in what it actually means to sacrifice a child. Then stop him. It’s basically show don’t tell. Put the experience of the evil of that action into his heart, and vaccinate him against such ideas. And while Abraham took that lesson to heart, I’m reasonably certain that Isaac took the lesson even more, and taught it well to all his descendants.
Is it a shit thing to do? In one man’s perspective, yeah. But to set a people on a path away from human sacrifice, I’d say it wasn’t a very high price to pay.
And that’s if you take the story and all literally. If you take it figuratively, as a demonstration of what is the path to goodness, to people in a bronze age culture, I’d say the story carries the message across exceptionally well.
I’m a history teacher, and the first thing you learn is that history must be understood by its own time and standards, not by ours. The story of Isaac is a great example of what in our modern eyes is pure malice, but to its original culture it was a story that had the function of making a culture better.
I always find it amusing that atheism is normally anti-christian first. Then, afterwards I have to amend it to, oh yeah, all religion is fucking stupid.
For me it was universal from the get go. My parents told me there’s a whole lot of religions all around the world and I thought “Well then all of them must be wrong.”
It’s expressed as anti-Christianity because that’s the one that affects my daily life.
All religion is dumb, but I was raised Christian, and it’s still the Christian God I’m shouting at when I hammer my thumb.
…
Because the atheists you see a lot in internet have grown up being brainwashed by Christian bullshit, it builds a special hatred.
Don’t get me wrong I think most other religions are the exact same bullshit, but for Christianity I have deep hatred for
I made myself human in order to sacrifice myself unto myself to appease myself.
More evangelicals should be this loving, they should be sacrificing themselves more often.
