5.3: God sacrifices Himself to appease Himself: "barking mad?" (Dawkins meets J. Campbell), 1 of 3

Richard Dawkins refers to the Christian premises behind the belief that Jesus/God sacrificed Himself to appease Himself as "barking mad." This video looks at each of those Christian premises--Divine Anger, the need for sacrifice, the use of a scapegoat--from the perspective of comparative mythology. (Full subtitle: "Richard Dawkins meets Joseph Campbell.")

By Todd Allen Gates, author of "Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer."

This video series is also posted on the Rational Response Squad site, where there's no word/character limitation on the Comments section: see http://www.rationalresponders.com/god_sacrifices_self_to_appease_self_barking...

An overview of whole series:

1 of 7: a brief description of videos 2 through 7.

2 of 7: a description of the Socratic Method.

3 of 7: the ground premises that the skeptic needs to establish with the Christian in order (a) for the Socratic Method to work, and (b) to focus on the issue at hand, which is "Are there valid reasons for me to believe that the Judeo-Christian Bible is the Word of God?"

4 of 7: the skeptic and the Christian read through scriptures and stories from non-Christian religions. Both agree that the following three characteristics are strong clues that a religion was not created by an Omniscient Wisdom, but just made up by people: (1) a cluelessness about the true layout of the universe, (2) senseless prejudices, (3) the borrowing of ideas & stories from pre-existing religions.

5 of 7: the skeptic and the Christian read through the Judeo-Christian Bible, and examine it by the same critical light just held up to non-Christian religions.

Science, Religion, and "truth" vs. "Truth": An explanation of how science and religion are opposites of each other when it comes to how permanent each considers its own knowledge to be--why religion spells its truths with a Capital T, and why science uses the lowercase t. This discussion is a continuation of a topic brought up in Video 5, but as my notes for this tangent issue grew longer and longer, I decided to give this 3-part series a separate title.

5.1 -- 5.4: Further details on the origins of the Judeo-Christian bible--how many of its ideas & stories can be found in religions that pre-date the bible by centuries.

5.1 explains why many of the baffling details within the tale of Noah & the Ark make sense once the story is read as a monotheistic version (in which God is said to be Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Benevolent) of a story that was originally polytheistic (in which the gods were none of the above).

5.2 discusses the pre-Christian religious stories from the Greeks, Romans, and Zoroastrians about unions between gods & mortals, miraculous virgin births, and offspring that were both human and god. It also covers the "Satanic pre-plagiarization" explanations from early Church Fathers Justin Martyr and Tertullian on how the pagans knew about these phenomena centuries before the time of Jesus.

5.3: Richard Dawkins refers to the Christian premises behind the belief that Jesus/God sacrificed Himself to appease Himself as "barking mad." This video looks at each of those premises--Divine Anger, the need for sacrifice, the use of a scapegoat--from the perspective of comparative mythology. A subtitle for this video would be "Richard Dawkins meets Joseph Campbell."

5.4: the evolution of the afterlife. Stage One - the 37 out of 39 Old Testament books that don't mention, or deny, an afterlife. Stage Two - the 2 Old Testament books that say there IS an afterlife. Stage Three - The New Testament, in which the afterlife becomes one of Christianity's main selling points.

6 of 7: a discussion of an abbreviated form of using the Socratic Method with proselytizers.

7 of 7: a discussion of why my approach focuses on skepticism of so-called revealed religions rather than skepticism of a Creator.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Dawkins
• God
• Delusion
• Campbell
• Homer
• Iliad
• Odyssey
• Jesus
• Christ
• Holy
• Bible
• faith
• religion
• sacrifice
• scapegoat
• sin
• atheism
• ToddAllenGates2
• ToddAllenGates
• Todd
• Allen
• Gates
• ToddGates

[ToddAllenGates]

4 of 4:

So yes, Christianity's claims may seem outright insane when looked at fresh. But when we look at their claims from the perspective of comparative mythology, we can see how the roots of these ideas are common throughout history: that Christianity is a re-packaging and bundling of these ancient primitive ideas (albeit resulting in some conflicting doctrines along the way).

[rationalmuscle]

It's really quite simple: God is perfect and whole yet also felt desire to add to his own existence by creating ours, and IN that existence, which God decided to be to perfect to enter (as he could have decided against this, being all-powerful), he decided (again, arbitrarily, as God cannot be confined) to institute sin, law, sacrifice, etc... SO that eventually he could arrange to have his own life taken (sorta) and thus making it okay for Catholics to fondle small wee-wees.

Simple, really.

[chyrd]

@ToddAllenGates pretty scary that now that the theory of evolution has been explained so eloquently, that there are still people out there who just don't get it...

[ToddAllenGates]

2 of 2:

> Dawkins is correct when he states that it is barking mad to believe in a god that created a sin, only to kill himself in order to forgive the sin

I agree it's crazy when you think of it rationally all at once. But most believers don't—especially the "god kills self to appease self" part. Double-think takes over: for the 'sacrifice' aspect, theists tend to think of Christ as just God's "only begotten son."

[ToddAllenGates]

@chyrd

1 of 2:

> so why do some still feel the need for a god? Is it purely indoctrination?

I think it's more than pure indoctrination—part of it is probably that evolution is too complex/counterintuitive (our brains aren't wired well to grasp changes that take millions of years), and the simplistic "god did it" is easier to understand. There's also the comfort & community aspects (and lots more).

[chyrd]

@ToddAllenGates You say something very interesting in the video... "in ancient times" problem is we are no longer in ancient times and know how lighting and thunder work... so why do some still feel the need for a god? Is it purely indoctrination? Dawkins is correct when he states that it is barking mad to believe in a god that created a sin, only to kill himself in order to forgive the sin, and if you don't accept that human sacrifice, you will burn eternally.

[ToddAllenGates]

6 of 6:

. . . and you decide that his disobedience warrants a spanking, but b/c you love him so, you decide to spank a substitute—yourself—and tell him as long as he *believes* that you spanked yourself to make up for his sins, all will be forgiven.

Would you have to spank yourself in order to forgive your child?

[ToddAllenGates]

5 of 6:

If you are a true believer, this is so all ingrained that it probably makes perfect sense to you. But for those outside the Christian tradition . . . well, say you're a parent whose child has broken something you told him not to touch . . .

[ToddAllenGates]

4 of 6:

> God was very aware because he is all knowing that Jesus would be killed for stating that he was the son of God.

But according to Christianity, Jesus IS God too. And being omniscient and omnipotent, this was supposedly the plan all along: create flawed humans, get mad at them for their flaws, come to earth and have Himself killed.

[ToddAllenGates]

3 of 6:

And would your entire explanation be "Don't eat from that tree"—even though there's a talking & treacherous serpent nearby? (And you KNOW about the talking snake because you created him!)

And why even create a tree that could bring untold suffering to billions?

[ToddAllenGates]

2 of 6:

> God loves us & he gave us free will i.e. Eve eating the apple.

The Hebrew tale tells us that Adam & Eve were "adult newborns," not yet knowing right from wrong. If your child was so young that he lacked judgment, would you leave him unattended near something of incredible danger: a tree that could bring untold suffering to billions?

[ToddAllenGates]

@MsDezzyzRayz

1 of 6:

Hi Cherie,

> Eve at the apple. We sinned from the beginning.

So the Hebrew tale tells us. But the Greek tale tells us that the "original sin" was that man stole fire from the gods. Religions throughout the world attempt to explain suffering by making up stories about why the gods are angry at us: the Hebrew tale is just one of many such stories.