In Reply to: Re: Serious Defect in Jesus' Moral Character posted by CB on June 15, 2007 at 10:52:18:
That's a curious view point. You seem to be saying that people can just make up their own Jesus to suit their particular beliefs. I'm not so concerned with the distinction you make between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of Faith.
The point I've been trying to make, perhaps clumsily, is that we should not derive our morals from the Bible. Jesus himself did not do that, but derived his ethics by explicitly departing from them (man not made for sabbath; two greatest commandments; etc.) And talk about family values! Didn't he teach you had to abandon your family to follow him?
My distaste for Biblical ethics is focused on the central doctrine of Christianity: the atonement for original sin. This is at the heart of the New Testament and is as morally obnoxious as the story of Abraham and his willingness to kill his son for God. Imagine the traumatic effect on Issac knowing his father came within inches of murdering him. In any other context Abraham would be found guilty of attempted murder and child abuse.
The idea of original sin comes from the Adam and Eve myth (the term was coined by Augustine, an expert sinner). What kind of ethical philosophy condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor? The Christian focus is overwhelmingly on sin, sin and more sin. What a nasty little preoccupation to have dominating your life.
New Testament theology adds a new injustice, and a sado-masochistic viciousness on par with the Old Testament. It goes something like this, based on Paul's writings: God incarnated himself as a man, Jesus, in order that he should be tortured and executed in atonement for the hereditary sin of Adam. Paul was steeped in the old Jewish theological principle that without blood there is no atonement. Progressive ethicists today find it hard to defend an kind of retributive theory of punishment,(this is what I was getting at in my posts to Don and Farmer, who completely missed the point) let alone the scapegoat theory -- executing an innocent to pay for the sins of the guilty.
On top of that, Adam, the supposed perpetrator of the original sin, never existed in the first place (an awkward fact, excusably unknown to Paul but presumably known to an omniscient God), which fundamentally undermines the premise of the whole tortuously nasty theory.
Oh, but of course, the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn't it? So, in order to impress himself, Jesus had himself tortured and executed, in vicarious punishment for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent individual? Nasty business is Christianity.