Reconciling Advanced God with Primitive Religion

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envirozentinel
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02 May 2016, 1:29 pm

I have thought deeply about all aspects of religion as long as I remember having grown up in a fundamentalist church and have to come to the conclusion that it is impossible to try and reconcile an advanced creator who developed an advanced and mathematically sound universe of unimaginable complexity, with the man made idea of a god who demands the sacrifice of blood for sins - whether this blood be from animal or human sacrifice, or that of Jesus. It just doesn't add up and I'm inclined to believe humans, who hail from a primitive background and have had a few thousand years to develop compared with the approximately 600 million years since life began evolving, needed to assuage their feelings of guilt by introducing the notion of sacrifice.

I'd appreciate some thoughts and feedback on this idea. Attending church as a child I recall the minister intoning how "the sacrifice of blood is necessary for forgiveness of sin" but no source was given.

Consider the primitive backgrounds of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and their bloodthirsty histories.

An advanced Creator who has been around for billions of years wouldn't need anything from us. Try reconciling that with the Old Testament and a being who insisted on circumcision of the chosen people and on what types of fibre should be worn. It just doesn't seem to make sense!


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BaalChatzaf
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02 May 2016, 6:46 pm

envirozentinel wrote:
I have thought deeply about all aspects of religion as long as I remember having grown up in a fundamentalist church and have to come to the conclusion that it is impossible to try and reconcile an advanced creator who developed an advanced and mathematically sound universe of unimaginable complexity, with the man made idea of a god who demands the sacrifice of blood for sins - whether this blood be from animal or human sacrifice, or that of Jesus. It just doesn't add up and I'm inclined to believe humans, who hail from a primitive background and have had a few thousand years to develop compared with the approximately 600 million years since life began evolving, needed to assuage their feelings of guilt by introducing the notion of sacrifice.

I'd appreciate some thoughts and feedback on this idea. Attending church as a child I recall the minister intoning how "the sacrifice of blood is necessary for forgiveness of sin" but no source was given.

Consider the primitive backgrounds of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and their bloodthirsty histories.

An advanced Creator who has been around for billions of years wouldn't need anything from us. Try reconciling that with the Old Testament and a being who insisted on circumcision of the chosen people and on what types of fibre should be worn. It just doesn't seem to make sense!


Circumcised males have a lower rate of cancer of the glans penis. Also those who are circumcised are spared the curse of smegma, the yellow cheese from hell.


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envirozentinel
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03 May 2016, 3:32 am

Thanks for your response; I do have to agree with you on that point. Circumcision is usually done as a newborn for health reasons - as it was in my case and most others in my time. (that is, not religious reasons). I think doing it for health reasons in the OT was a good thing, but there are of course many other things in that book which don't make as much sense.


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03 May 2016, 7:35 am

There are many religions in the West Indies which are a hybrid of Christianity and African religions.

These beliefs reconcile each other quite well.



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03 May 2016, 8:15 am

envirozentinel wrote:
It just doesn't add up and I'm inclined to believe humans, who hail from a primitive background and have had a few thousand years to develop compared with the approximately 600 million years since life began evolving, needed to assuage their feelings of guilt by introducing the notion of sacrifice.


A few things. Life is actually closer to 3.5 billion years old, a little less than 600 million years ago is when more advanced and diverse forms of life began appearing at the onset of the Cambrian Period. Life is a spectrum through time. Humans and all our ancestors have been evolving for approximately 3.5 billion years if all life today is descended for the oldest recorded fossils discovered. I don't understand what this means: needed to assuage their feelings of guilt by introducing the notion of sacrifice.



envirozentinel
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03 May 2016, 9:32 am

Hi Feyokien, what I'm referring to is that our ancestors felt they needed to make some sort of sacrifice to appease their god: be it their child, a fair virgin or a lamb, and that most of the Abrahamic religions are based on the idea of sacrifice, no different really from the Canaanite and Philistine sacrifices to Moloch, Baal or Dagon. Where did this idea of appeasing an angry deity originate?


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Feyokien
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03 May 2016, 11:28 am

Nature is often cruel.



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04 May 2016, 8:37 pm

Why even bother trying to reconcile it? Just accept it for the ancient myth it is and move on.