It’s all a line of BS, not worth fretting over.
There’s no such thing as sin.
How does being executed “save” anyone?
Jesus would have died eventually in any event. Good question—why do people go along with that story?

The supposed resurrection, even if it happened, would be nothing but an anomaly. What is miraculous is that any of us are alive and aware. Every moment of conscious awareness is an earth shattering event, worthy of the utmost awe, wonder and reverence.

You say, "how can normally intelligent people accept this." . But of course they are not "normally intelligent", they are people who have been damaged, perhaps beyond repair, by years of careful indoctrination, repeated so often that they have lost the power to even think about it in the same way they think about other things.

Most of them would not buy a second hand car from a dealer who said. "We will only deliver after have left the country to live abroad for good, and we have never had a complaint." Yet they happily buy. "You will get your reward only after you are dead and gone from the universe for good, and no one ever came back and said we failed."

So let me get this straight. You're bad because you were born human and now you need a superhuman to unbad you so that when you die you're not sent to a terrible place to punish you for being born human? Did I miss anything?

I couldn't keep my living parents from doing stupid shit, so how could I (or any of us) be responsible for shit our possible ancestors are rumored to have done thousands of years ago? And now you're supposed to buy this idea that you can only be redeemed by some other dude that died over 1000 years ago? How do people listen to this and nobody puts the pieces together and laughs?

Guessing you would've gotten nasty looks if you'd started loudly saying, "AMEN. AMEN. YEP. I TRIED TO WARN THAT DUMB ASS, BUT WOULD HE LISTEN? NOOOOOOO! AND NOW I'M ON THE HOOK FOR HIS BAD JUDGEMENT?! WTF, MAN?!"

You are correct. There never was an Adam and the first man's sins have nothing to do with us. If there were a Jesus, his dying was just an excuse for religious zealots to create an entire religion made up to prosecute anyone who doesnt think like they do.

The sins of adam. Always a man fucking women over. Great. Just Great.

(Please change "except" to "accept." )

A good friend who is great with word play, said, (so very rosanne rosannadana):

"what's all this about Jesus saving me from my shins? I like my shins. what have my shins ever done that i should be saved from them,...."

So the original sin was seeking knowledge in defiance of the mythical god. Seems like a really dumb foundation for an entire religion.

[en.wikipedia.org]
Original sin, also called ancestral sin, is a Christian belief in the state of sin in which humanity has existed since the fall of man, stemming from Adam and Eve's rebellion in Eden, namely the sin of disobedience in consuming the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Its a blood feud thing, rather like the mafia. The betrayal by Adam, the convenant a deal made by Abraham with Issac and the sealing of the deal with the messiah.
Instead of thinking "God the father" think "the Godfather"

Jesus didn't die for anyone, he didn't get a say in the matter.

Because they're not normally intelligent people, they're unthinking, unquestioning, stupid people.

My favorite song lyric -- Patti Smith at the start of Gloria.

'Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.'

My only problem with that is I don't think he existed at all -- that's how he skipped out of dying.

I am always amazed that seemingly intelligent, highly educated people still believe in it. If they thought about it for any
length of time, surely they could see it's all hogwash. None of it makes any sense. Indoctrination. Brainwashing.

Great point!

Your last sentence answers you question, "Normally intelligent people".

[en.wikipedia.org]

We all agree that the story of Adam and Eve is a myth. Specifically, it's an allegory. The message is that those who think they have the knowledge of what is good and what is evil are the sinners. Those judgements are reserved for the gods.

It's similar to the Greek story of Pandora's box. The unleashed Furies attacked everyone. No one escaped the results of her original sin.

I always wondered where the story was from. I sort of thought it was Babylonian, but I don't know of any of their myths that are similar. It is so neatly organized that it might have been written by one of the Jewish priests who "discovered" the Torah in the Temple when they returned from Babylon.

Good questions! - I usually adopt an argument of 'impecable logic': according to the Bible, God created humans perfect, implying that they were created with impeccable discernment and an impecable will. So, when Satan, in the guise of a serpent, appeared under the tree of knowledge, Eve would immediately have discerned that this was Satan speaking, trying to tempt her. Supported by her impecable will, she would have resisted temptation and desisted from picking the fruit and sharing it with Adam. The Christians to whom I have presented this line of argument, have all prevaricated but they've never been able to point to any logical holes in my argument.

The concept of subsitutionary atonement would be utterly alien to us were it not for religion continuously resurrecting this primitive idea from its own grave.

There's an old hymn that goes like this:

"There is a fountain filled with blood
fed from Emmanuel's veins
and sinners washed beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains"

These lyrics would be quite ghastly if we weren't culturally acclimated to them. To many of us unbelievers, we've come to see them as such, but most of society thinks nothing of it apparently.

The concept plays on the notion of original sin as well as one's supposed inability to get rid of personal guilt: either way, your transgressions against god leave a stain, and the only effective spot remover is the blood of Jesus ... which in turn is a new and improved version of the blood of lambs and goats sacrificed on the altar at the Temple on behalf of you personally (if you were wealthy enough to pay the priests of offer up your own animals specifically) or otherwise animals periodically offered on behalf of "the people" generally. It is basically Slit Throats and Blood and Guts 2.0, when the world at large has long since discarded that and moved on to less authoritarian and putative notions and at least in theory tries to deal with miscreants in more constructive and effective ways.

I'd rather be alone than sit thru that with a friend. I clicked on this post just to read the comments. Fun read.

Im really proud of your relative, for being able to keep track of some of the convoluted logic a out how xtianity works. It's not easy.

It comes from a time when the sins of the father were passed to the son. Most societies on Earth today have evolved beyond this thinking. But the Buy Bull can not change so it is stuck with it.

The whole idea of inherited guilt is moronic. We're all guilty of offending god because one guy did it once thousands of years ago? The idea is ridiculous. It's a good example of how religion can only function if you suspend all critical thinking and accept its bullshit without questioning it.

Nonsense

It is gibberish. An all knowing God creates a flawed Man in the knowledge that his "only Son" would be nailed to a wooden cross to redeem God's failure to create a good Man.
Even if you accept the absurdity, how the fuck does the 'sacrifice' bit actually work? To what higher power is God having to appeal to have his failings forgiven?

I have a degree in Religious Studies and the convoluted hoops to jump through to get to that rationale are still beyond me! The theology just doesn’t make sense!