The theological baggage of Christianity

The theological baggage of Christianity

The story is a near east creation story. Its intended to explain where we come from, why snakes dont have legs, why human childbirth is so painful, why we know right from wrong. God tells them they will die if they eat the fruit, the serpent says that they wont die, they eat the fruit, they dont die, God finds them and punishes Adam with working the land and eating bread, Woman with painful childbirth and being controlled by men, and the serpent with having no legs, eating dust, and not getting along with people. Then to protect the other magical tree and letting Adam and Eve become fully like the gods (apparently Godhood is simply knowing right from wrong and immortality) he kicks them out and makes a magical fire sword to protect the place.

Theres no other theological significance or anything. All the extra eisegesis comes later. The original tale is a creation story in line with Native American stories, "How the Bear Lost its Tail". All cultures have these.

And while it does give rise to the whole fall of man thing, and later the whole Son of God/God sacrifices Himself to Himself to create a loophole in his own system. Because religions keep their baggage. In Genesis being a god is knowing right from wrong and living forever. For fear of them becoming gods they were kicked out etc. Then theres the weird immoral idea that the sins of the father are the sins of the children, hence why Adam and Eves sin of doing something (which they by definition didnt know was wrong) is passed to all humanity. And because sacrificing animals to forgive sins, what better sacrifice could there be but the sacrifice of a Demigod? Hebrews 9 says almost exactly this. The religion ends up with God sacrificing Himself to Himself (as later Trinitarianism took over and Jesus was said to be one with the father). So each step tends to leave baggage and make it all weirder.

So because of this story with magical trees and talking snakes, mankind is doomed, so to solve this God gives himself a body and kills it. Because only Gods own blood had enough magic to allow all-powerful God to create a loophole in his own system. So now, if you accept the story, preferably without questioning it, you can avoid Gods first horrible everybody falls short system, and just through Gods sacrifice of His blood to Himself, skip that system. So Mahatma Gandhi is burning in hell, because he was Hindu, but Jeffery Dahmer should like his odds because he accepted Jesus and was baptized shortly before his cellmate beat him to death. -- This system is pockmarked with bizarre theological history and crafted towards propagation rather than anything approaching a coherent way of running the universe.

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The origins of Christianity by culture or divine edict

The origins of Christianity by culture or divine edict

The Bible depicts that hemisphere earth, with a strong metal-like dome covering the world. Because thats what everybody in the middle east thought. It was a circle, but also pretty much flat save for some mountains. You really could build a tower to reach the sky. You really could be drowned by the cosmic ocean if the windows in the vault of heaven were opened, and God spent the entire 2nd day of creation building the damn thing, and a goodly part of the 4th adding little stars into the dome. And upon the end of the world, those stars will rain down to the Earth like snowflakes. Look, at the core, they believed pretty much exactly what their neighbors believed. It was largely a flat Earth with everything revolving around it. They sacrificed goats to appease others and then to appease the gods. And got into the habit of blood sacrifice to God. The Pagans came around with their children of gods stories, all over the place gods were having children with mortals and doing extraordinary things. And in this exact region we first find a little religion called Christianity where God has a child with a woman who is sacrificed to forgive the sins of the people. I mean, if a goat is good how much better must be the son of God (It even makes this exact argument in Hebrews 9). Later to reconcile the polytheistic aspects the trinity was invented (early Christian work was largely Arian with Jesus as a separate but high creation of God, the Messiah, Gods warrior). So in the end we have a religion wherein God takes human form through virgin birth (a highly prized quality in Paganism judging from how many stories involve it, even though the Jewish myth of messiah only asked for a young girl) and then God sacrifices God to God to give God permission to God to be less angry at Gods creation because their ancestors ate magical fruit from a magical tree on the advice of a talking reptile. This religion, doesnt make sense as an actual way to run the universe. It simply doesnt. Its absurd and why does God need his own God blood to do something? And yadda yadda yadda. But, it does make absolutely perfect sense as what culture would invent. This is *EXACTLY* what that culture would have invented as a religion. And were pretty sure thats exactly where most religions come from, as sure as the Vikings made a religion wherein good vikings dying in the act of being good vikings would go to an afterlife of a bar in the sky wherein theyd drink booze with the gods, or that cultures on volcanic islands invent fire gods who are mercurial in nature and quick to anger.

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