So he's God, who died meaninglessly, and brought a new message of everlasting suffering for nonbelievers.
So conveniently he boosted the Jewish faith by allowing, even morally forcing people to believe or be damned.
Damnation for non-belief was introduced by your supposed "prince of peace". It makes perfect sense from the perspective of an infectious dogma. A mutation of an existing, race-centric deity which allowed the faith to cover the globe.
The way you see Jesus' death is different from the way every christian I know see it. We see it as a sacrifice to allow us a way into heaven.
The more valid issue here is that if he was truly omnipotent he wouldn't need some farcical blood sacrifice to forgive everybody's sins, he could just declare them forgiven.
If you read the Disciples accounts and Paul's teaching, you do not get any hints towards the monster you are making Jesus seem like. Why would most of the Disciples also willingly decide to die terrible deaths for a person who only promised suffering? Why would they spread the news? They describe the news of Jesus as a wonderful thing.
I believe that was in reference to the new testament being the first part of the bible to deal extensively with the concept of hell and damnation, and he's inferring from this that the concepts were made up by Jesus and/or the early christians.
This seems flawed to me however, as it seems quite plausible to me that the ideas were already part of the zeitgeist of the time.
Furhermore the term "Gehenna" (one of the words translated as "Hell" in many biblical translations) originally referred literally not to some twisted otherworld but to a specific earthly location which had a reputation for being haunted. Furthermore, its genericized sense of any place of suffering after death is apparently used in Jewish religious writings as well, so - going back to my previous point - the concept of suffering after death for sinners was not necessarily something we got from Jesus.
Also, what do you mean race-centric?
Much of the old testament paints the jewish people (as in the race/ethnicity as well as the religion) as a master race destined to take over the world.
<snip> I wish I was making that up. I'll also stop before I derail the thread on that, since I know that's not representative of Christians as a whole. It's just amusing.
A long time ago, I had an argument with a room full of religious folks once who thought nuclear weapons didn't exist and that they were all part of a global conspiracy. Again, not representative of anything except that group of people.
EDIT ... Not really related but I was just browsing the relevant websites and some claim that nuclear power doesn't even exist.
Christian religious folks? Because I can't see how denying the existence of nuclear weapons could tie into Christianity (I
can, however, see how it could tie into Shinto)
Whereas I like to think that faeries are based on real phenomena,
Sentient phenomena? Or relatively simple natural lights like ignis fatuous or st.erasmus' fire?
EDIT:
Or possibly the result of someone encountering a dragonfly after consuming the right kind of mushroom, cactus, vine, or spoiled bread product.