Is Christianity nonsense?

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I think that if you look past some of the close-minded and un-Jesus-like people who claim to be his followers, the general principles of loving others and doing good to people are pretty solid and practical advice for a reasonably happy life.

But so far, no one has provided empirical evidence for the existence of Ruveyn, so how can anyone say he exists?

Ruveyn proved his own existence by chatting on the forum lol. It's not like we got posts from "Unnamed Spirit in the sky" and WP users calling it Ruveyn.

The internet gives us the holy words of Ruveyn; all praise Ruveyn!

Jesus was the Prefect Spotless Lamb of Sacrifice. He did not need to -know- sins. He just had to bleed to keep that bloodthirsty monster, God the Father happy. He wants blood.

ruveyn

This is what I find to be the most repulsive aspect of Christianity, I don't care that it doesn't make any sense, what bothers me more than anything is the idea that the only way I can go to heaven is for Jesus to be tortured to death. I will have no part of it, it is evil, plain and simple, I don't care if he actually resurrected and God is real or not, thats not the point. Look at it this way, we don't believe in torture except for the mildest forms like water boarding which I still find to be morally reprehensible and yet its ok to really torture someone, to the point of death, so you can go to heaven? When is it ever okay to torture anyone or any thing? Never, end of story, it is so wrong on so many levels, I could never be happy in heaven knowing that someone "had" to suffer incomprehensibly so that I could be there.

This is what I find to be the most repulsive aspect of Christianity, I don't care that it doesn't make any sense, what bothers me more than anything is the idea that the only way I can go to heaven is for Jesus to be tortured to death. I will have no part of it, it is evil, plain and simple, I don't care if he actually resurrected and God is real or not, thats not the point. Look at it this way, we don't believe in torture except for the mildest forms like water boarding which I still find to be morally reprehensible and yet its ok to really torture someone, to the point of death, so you can go to heaven? When is it ever okay to torture anyone or any thing? Never, end of story, it is so wrong on so many levels, I could never be happy in heaven knowing that someone "had" to suffer incomprehensibly so that I could be there.

Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization. Beneficiary of the Ionian Awakening, it had its citadel at the Library of Alexandria, where 2,000 years ago the best minds of antiquity established the foundations for the systematic study of mathematics, physics, biology, astronomy, literature, geography and medicine. We build on those foundations still. The Library was constructed and supported by the Ptolemys, the Greek kings who inherited the Egyptian portion of the empire of Alexander the Great. From the time of its creation in the third century B.C. until its destruction seven centuries later, it was the brain and heart of the ancient world.

The last scientist who worked in the Library was a mathematician, astronomer, physicist and the head of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy -- an extraordinary range of accomplishments for any individual in any age. Her name was Hypatia. She was born in Alexandria in 370. At a time when women had few options and were treated as property, Hypatia moved freely and unselfconsciously through traditional male domains. By all accounts she was a great beauty. She had many suitors but rejected all offers of marriage. The Alexandria of Hypatia's time -- by then long under Roman rule -- was a city under grave strain. Slavery had sapped classical civilization of its vitality. The growing Christian Church was consolidating its power and attempting to eradicate pagan influence and culture. Hypatia stood at the epicenter of these mighty social forces. Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, despised her because of her close friendship with the Roman governor, and because she was a symbol of learning and science, which were largely identified by the early Church with paganism In great personal danger, she continued to teach and publish, until, in the year 415, on her way to work she was set upon by a fanatical mob of Cyril's parishioners. They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and armed with abalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Her remains were burned, her works obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a saint.

The glory of the Alexandrian Library is a dim memory. Its last remnants were destroyed soon after Hypatia's death. It was as if the entire civilization had undergone some self-inflicted brain surgery, and most of its memories, discoveries, ideas and passions were extinguished irrevocably. The loss was incalculable. In some cases, we know only the tantalizing titles of the works that were destroyed. In most cases, we know neither the titles nor the authors. We do know that of the 123 plays of Sophocles in the Library, only seven survived. One of those seven is Oedipus Rex. Similar numbers apply to the works of Aeschylus and Euripides. It is a little as if the only surviving works of a man named William Shakespeare were Coriolanus and A Winter's Tale, but we had heard that he had written certain other plays, unknown to us but apparently prized in his time, works entitled Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet.

I was merely seeking clarity as to what precisely was confusing you about the Trinity, why you thought it didn't make internal sense, or sense when interacting with the broader world. You could have said "it makes no sense for the Holy Spirit to be inside each of us", for example.

It is confusing, but it doesn't have to be nonsensical. I believe JNathanK's answer fits fairly well with established theology. My Philosophy teacher, who has an MPhil in Theology from Oxford University, gave a similar answer when explaining the issue to our class (she is an atheist, in case you were wondering). Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are all the same God... manifested in different ways.

It's a tricky metaphysical and philosophical conundrum, but it isn't unsolvable, unlike the problem of evil or the Euthyphro dilemma.

Jesus was willing to die in order for humanity to be saved. The Romans didn't crucify him so they could go to heaven, they crucified him because they thought he could start a rebellion. It's not like Christians think that they stab Jesus after they die and are rewarded with eternal bliss.

Your current way of life is propped up by the suffering of others. There's a good chance children made your clothes or your gadgets. If you live in America or west Europe, your country benefited immensely from the slave trade. If you've ever been to Egypt, the pyramids you admired were built by slaves. The only reason America didn't have to drop nukes on Europe was because tens of thousands of Russians were prepared to starve and freeze to death fighting the Nazis. In order for modern medicine to come about, billions had to be killed by disease. Modern agriculture wouldn't exist if not for starvation in the past. I could go on...

Jesus was willing to die in order for humanity to be saved. The Romans didn't crucify him so they could go to heaven, they crucified him because they thought he could start a rebellion. It's not like Christians think that they stab Jesus after they die and are rewarded with eternal bliss.

Your current way of life is propped up by the suffering of others. There's a good chance children made your clothes or your gadgets. If you live in America or west Europe, your country benefited immensely from the slave trade. If you've ever been to Egypt, the pyramids you admired were built by slaves. The only reason America didn't have to drop nukes on Europe was because tens of thousands of Russians were prepared to starve and freeze to death fighting the Nazis. In order for modern medicine to come about, billions had to be killed by disease. Modern agriculture wouldn't exist if not for starvation in the past. I could go on...

Christians (and other religions) need to stop trying to defend their religion on logical terms. Religion isn't logical and if you try to represent it as such you look ridiculous. For crying out loud the bible isn't even internally consistent. Individual books in the bible weren't even authored by the same person throughout in many cases and the document as a whole was subject to an editorial process. If the writings of the authors of the bible were divinely inspired OR were first person accounts of the life of Jesus and the other important characters then how on earth can an editorial process be justified and how on earth can you use the "evidence" found in the bible to support any argument? I abhor religion but if you want to be a Christian then fine. At least have the intellectual honesty to admit that none of it can be rationalised - call it "divine mysteries" if you want but don't present it as a logical argument and expect to be taken seriously or not to be called out on it.

None of the mainline religions of the world can be defended by reason. At least not the way physical science, engineering and technology is supported by reason.
ruveyn

I could have, but that wouldn't be a criticism of the trinity.

"Different persons" and "different manifestations" are not equivalent, and that's a problem. You might try to diminish or avoid this, but I've made the issue explicit. Even then, talk about "manifestation" seems to really be the heresy of modalism:
"In Christianity, Sabellianism, (also known as modalism, modalistic monarchianism, or modal monarchism) is the nontrinitarian belief that the Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son and Holy Spirit are different modes or aspects of one God, as perceived by the believer, rather than three distinct persons in God Himself."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabellianism

After all, "manifestation" seems to be an equivalent term to "mode" or "aspect".

I don't see the trick, I see a confusion, as the doctrine affirms three distinct persons, and one being. The problem being that "Jesus is God" is a valid statement. If Jesus were only *part* of God, then "Jesus is God" would be incorrect. So, the problem is that we have 3 distinct persons, each of whom is fully God, not just a part of God, then the problem emerges that "Jesus is God" and "The Holy Spirit is God" are both valid statements, but transitivity "Jesus is the Holy Spirit" does not hold.