Jesus Sacrificing Himself Makes No Sense (Inspiring Philosophy Response)

Jesus dying on the cross for our sins is one of the weirdest aspects of Christianity. It's central to the religion's narrative, and at a glance it can feel emotionally impactful. But once you actually think about it, it makes no sense. God didn't HAVE TO send his son/himself to die. This was only a requirement because HE dreamed up the mechanics of blood sacrifice out of thin air because he wanted to.

So how do you make sense of this? Most Christians just refer to it as something that had to be done or something inherent to God's nature, which is just ignoring the core problem. However, apologetic YouTuber InspiringPhilosophy actually acknowledges the nature of the problem and tries to untangle it. As I respond to this video, we'll see how impossible it is to make sense of why a perfect, loving God would sacrifice himself to himself to satisfy a requirement he came up with for forgiving sins.

STUFF ABOUT ME AND WHERE TO FIND ME

My mailing address:
PO Box 773024
Eagle River, AK 99577

MUSIC CREDITS

[spitfire]

Protestant Christians: Catholics aren't Christians!
Also Protestants Christians: Uhoh, time to compare the sizes of religions, come here my good Catholic brother in Christ!

[cplus]

Is burying $100, only to dig it up 3 days later, the same as paying someone else $100?

[bariumselenided]

38:34 I love my girlfriend. When I wanna show her that, I do sane things like tell her, buy her a gift, try to spend time with her, stuff like that.

What I *don't* do is build a jigsaw-esque escape room, lock us both in it, set a timebomb, and then use my fingernails to dig the only key out of my abdomen so that as she steps over my disemboweled corpse to escape she can be convinced I love her.

[Ratciclefan]

"Open the door so I can save you"
"From what?"
"From what I will do to you if you don't open that door."

[michaelthorp]

Your diatribe at the end was perfect. It hit home in so many ways. It’s what many of us that have gone through deconversion look back and realize what a toxic relationship we were in, being in a religion.

[silverharloe]

IP says God needed to do something super extreme to show his love, so that's why he required the blood sacrifice of himself. This might hold water if this God didn't spend the first half of the anthology requiring blood sacrifice for forgiveness all the time, but he did. Unblemished goat this, unblemished bull that. Blood blood blood all the time. He didn't invent the need for blood just when he sent Jesus, he was requiring blood for forgiveness all along.
And to be clear, that had to be a conscious choice. There's nothing about the concept of forgiveness that intrinsically requires the blood of a goat - but God requires it because he wants it (the burning of the goat's fat makes a pleasing aroma to him)

[NeedSomeNuance]

Flipped the other way: “if the central message of atheism is so absurd, why hasn’t it quickly died out yet” 🙄 you don’t hear atheists ask this because we’re not stupid enough to talk like that

[asunder]

If hell is suffering for all eternity, 9 hours on the cross seems a bit under the pay scale. Why didn't he say ...why have I forsaken myself.

[Szadek]

So, god is like one of firefighters that set buildings on fire so they have someone to save? Except worse, because he will throw you back inside if you don't praise him enough to save him from the fires he started.

[ScottJPowers]

I've noticed that apologists or christians in general never answer the question. they replace it with something else and answer that.

[KellyDVance]

His description of God proving love by hurting himself just reminds me of the scene in Mr. Wrong where Bill Pullman's character breaks his own finger to prove his love for the female lead. Like, she didn't ask for it and actively told him not to.
No human was asking God to do it, he just did it anyway, as if it weren't something that he chose to do for no reason.

[corycory]

People all around the world say, " bless you" after you sneeze. This started because people thought part of your soul escaped with a sneeze. It doesn't make any sense and millions still say it ...

[bryck]

Moses seems to be as fictional as God. The biblical scholars, who generally _want_ to believe found a lot of evidence indicating that Moses was a fictional character.

[soyevquirsefron]

To combine two of Zod’s metaphors, “my boyfriend loves me so much he went to the zoo and killed a penguin for me, because he loves penguins so that shows he loves me more! And it doesn’t matter what he says he’d do to me if I didn’t love him, because I do love him so it’s not going to happen!”

[pesilaratnayake]

I always find it so jarring when people say things like "but for us who are being saved." Like, so many Christians say that some people who claim to be Christians aren't _true_ Christians because they don't believe the same or they don't act the same. Do they think that those people don't genuinely think they have a relationship with God; that they haven't felt his presence in much the same way? It reminds me of the passage:
Jesus said, “Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:23)
It always sounded to me like they believed themselves to be followers of Christ, but were mistaken. How can people be so confident that they aren't in the same boat? It's one of the problems I had with even trying to get into Christianity. How do I know I won't be led astray by following the wrong church?

[BScott]

I feel like the most honest, even humble to an extent answer you're going to get from a Christian goes something like this: "You're right. It seems absurd. It is absurd. I can't reconcile it. But I have FAITH that this will someday make sense. I have FAITH that god is not a monster." What I appreciate with this response is it doesn't hide behind the 'hardened heart' nonsense invoked at the beginning of the video. That our unbelief is due to some character flaw on our part, e.g. "we simply don't want to believe." No, it's ridiculous on it's own merits. Unfortunately, 95% of Christians will try strenuously to excuse, rationalize or otherwise justify it. And that's when you discover the giant intellectual structure they've built up over centuries is a house of cards.

[Tenpete]

Zod, why didn't you acknowledge my ultimate act of Love for you in this video! I threw my Mint 1958 Gibson Les Paul Cherry Burst guitar into a wood chipper and then reassembled it with Stripes chewing gum and cocaine. I wasn't even going to mention it because that's not classy. I will accept your absolute submission, loyalty, and devotion. If you don't comply then I will have literally no choice but to give you the Prometheus treatment. Sorry, Champ. That's just the way Love goes sometimes. It isn't always rational, but dammit, aren't you lucky?

[facundocesa]

Wait... So God COULDN'T convince us with just words, so he needed all the drama... Which ALSO didn't work because we find it a stumbling block and a folly... 🤨

[nati]

"Humanity needs a shock and can't be convinced by words"
- A person who keeps using words about a book with words that have people talking about words about a person who did a shocking thing

[dceezy]

just finding this page, & I'm loving how calmly this guy rips apart these arguments.