"Eternal Torture" and deterrence

Originally posted by divegeester
Just to be clear, God doesn't do that; but some Christians want to claim that he does.

Edit: why they want to claim that is still unclear.

pssssssstt, don't knock him off his soapbox, he's just getting started.

I want to see some full monty ranting and raving.

Maybe we should get sonhouse in here.

Originally posted by Agerg
Let's not get side-tracked here, my point about the finite existence was a response to a response about my earlier claim that your barbaric notion of god likes to kill people, and torture them for all eternity.

As far as I'm concerned, getting right with *your* god would be a huge step backwards in terms of personal development.

You are mistaken. God does not like to kill people, and torture them for all eternity. You must not have ever read this:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

(John 3:16 NKJV)

Originally posted by Agerg
Well firstly it is claimed that this Jesus character walked the earth as a mortal human (imbued with the power to perform magic of course), and was killed and tortured in the same way as other mortal humans. As such, my usage of "people" is valid.

Secondly, why does it matter what his lineage was!??
The issue here is that you seem to find it somehow a good ...[text shortened]... sake of others whilst I on the other hand with slightly more, ahem ... modern ... values do not.

In my belief, Jesus was not only fully human, but fully divine. That is what makes the difference, and what makes His sacrifice on the cross valid, that He was sent by His Father to take on the sins of the world, and to be our Savior, our sacrificial Lamb.

Originally posted by Suzianne
In my belief, Jesus was not only fully human, but fully divine. That is what makes the difference, and what makes His sacrifice on the cross valid, that He was sent by His Father to take on the sins of the world, and to be our Savior, our sacrificial Lamb.

It's difficult to think of crucifixion as being in some way invalid. Death by this method took days and was by exposure, when they were feeling merciful the Romans would break the legs of their victims which caused blood clots that would hasten death. The old story about lungs being crushed was demonstrated to be untrue by a volunteer who was tied to a cross and had no problems (I can find a reference to this if anyone wants to challenge it). In the Gospels Christ dies anomalously quickly.

Originally posted by DeepThought
It's difficult to think of crucifixion as being in some way invalid. Death by this method took days and was by exposure, when they were feeling merciful the Romans would break the legs of their victims which caused blood clots that would hasten death. The old story about lungs being crushed was demonstrated to be untrue by a volunteer who was tied to a ...[text shortened]... rence to this if anyone wants to challenge it). In the Gospels Christ dies anomalously quickly.

That is because Jesus said...

“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.”

(John 10:17-18 NKJV)

Originally posted by DeepThought
It's difficult to think of crucifixion as being in some way invalid. Death by this method took days and was by exposure, when they were feeling merciful the Romans would break the legs of their victims which caused blood clots that would hasten death. The old story about lungs being crushed was demonstrated to be untrue by a volunteer who was tied to a ...[text shortened]... rence to this if anyone wants to challenge it). In the Gospels Christ dies anomalously quickly.

I didn't say His being divine made His "crucifixion" valid, I said it made His sacrifice on the cross valid. After all, what a lot of atheists have a problem with was that it was a 'sacrifice' at all, they claim that while it may have been unfortunate, it was just another human dying at the hands of the Romans. My entire point is that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, without sin, and this is what made His substitutionary death on the cross valid as a sacrificial death for all humanity.

(And about your volunteer, the fact remains that he was 'tied' to the cross, and not nailed to it. The ropes allowed a certain amount of "give", enough to allow breathing without excruciating (sorry) pain. Christ died relatively quickly because God was merciful; Jesus was, after all, His beloved and only begotten Son.)

Originally posted by Suzianne
I didn't say His being divine made His "crucifixion" valid, I said it made His sacrifice on the cross valid. After all, what a lot of atheists have a problem with was that it was a 'sacrifice' at all, they claim that while it may have been unfortunate, it was just another human dying at the hands of the Romans. My entire point is that Jesus Christ was the ...[text shortened]... vely quickly because God was merciful; Jesus was, after all, His beloved and only begotten Son.)

I read somewhere that His heart broke which is why when they pierced
His side blood and water flowed. Maybe someone with medical knowledge
and confirm or deny that, sounds about right though, He died of a broken
heart for us.
Kelly

Originally posted by Suzianne
In my belief, Jesus was not only fully human, but fully divine. That is what makes the difference, and what makes His sacrifice on the cross valid, that He was sent by His Father to take on the sins of the world, and to be our Savior, our sacrificial Lamb.

Jesus was 100% human
and
Jesus was 100% divine.

Presumably he was 200% Jesus?

Originally posted by KellyJay
I read somewhere that His heart broke which is why when they pierced
His side blood and water flowed.

Well it wasn't in the Bible you read it.



Edit: I was tempted to do a tongue-poke smilie. But I resisted.

Originally posted by divegeester
Well it wasn't in the Bible you read it.



Edit: I was tempted to do a tongue-poke smilie. But I resisted.

I think you should have given in to temptation! 😀

Originally posted by wolfgang59
Jesus was 100% human
and
Jesus was 100% divine.

Presumably he was 200% Jesus?

You can presume all you want.

It's the making fun bit that probably isn't such a good idea.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I read somewhere that His heart broke which is why when they pierced
His side blood and water flowed. Maybe someone with medical knowledge
and confirm or deny that, sounds about right though, He died of a broken
heart for us.
Kelly

Heart attack is one of the causes of death associated with crucifixion. Based on my rather limited medical knowledge. There should not be water in the abdominal cavity. Fluid build up in the peritoneal cavity is known as ascites, or archaically dropsy. There are a variety of medical causes including alcoholic liver disease (ALD) and, in agreement with your speculative hypothesis, heart failure (HF). Actually H.F. would be consistent with the relatively quick death. I realise that Christians won't want to consider this, but it is entirely plausible that a prominent figure in that era would be likely to be drinking daily so A.L.D. would be consistent with his social position. Note that I'm not implying drunkenness as even a relatively moderate, but daily, alcohol intake in concert with a marginal diet can do one a mischief. An argument against this is that he was fairly young, early to mid thirties, at the time of his death and his ministry only lasted about three years which is probably too short a time for ALD onset. Also alcohol is not the only cause of liver damage. A medical professional could probably think of some other possible causes but there is no way of knowing without an autopsy so all of the above is speculation.

Originally posted by Suzianne
I didn't say His being divine made His "crucifixion" valid, I said it made His sacrifice on the cross valid. After all, what a lot of atheists have a problem with was that it was a 'sacrifice' at all, they claim that while it may have been unfortunate, it was just another human dying at the hands of the Romans. My entire point is that Jesus Christ was the ...[text shortened]... vely quickly because God was merciful; Jesus was, after all, His beloved and only begotten Son.)

They used specialist legionaries to crucify people. They would be inventive in the way they would do it so people would be crucified in all sorts of positions. This is consistent with the stories of the executions of St. Peter and St. Andrew. The nails contribute because they cause blood loss and potentially blood poisoning, but the basic cause of death was exposure, not some sort of mechanical thing due to the ribs crushing the heart. The test subjects reported no difficulty breathing but rapidly increasing pain.

Edit: In the biblical accounts Christ was crucified with two criminals one of whom mocked him, the other repented of his sins. If cause of death was asphixiation then they wouldn't be able to do that.

Originally posted by DeepThought
They used specialist legionaries to crucify people. They would be inventive in the way they would do it so people would be crucified in all sorts of positions. This is consistent with the stories of the executions of St. Peter and St. Andrew. The nails contribute because they cause blood loss and potentially blood poisoning, but the basic cause of dea ...[text shortened]... repented of his sins. If cause of death was asphixiation then they wouldn't be able to do that.

Yes, I had meant to add that, yes, the Romans did not break his legs. This is what caused extreme pain when trying to breathe, since it was necessary to lift oneself up a little in order to breathe and it was almost impossible with broken legs. Naturally this didn't occur until the Romans came by and wanted to rush things along, this is why the three of them could still speak without a huge effort, their legs were not yet broken. I'm sure the test subjects' legs were not broken either, in addition to not actually being nailed to the cross, and they probably had a nice little built-in ledge to stand on.

As to the actual cause of Jesus' death, I'm sure it was not asphyxiation either (it probably helped things along with the typical crucifixion). As I said, God was merciful in any case and took him relatively quickly (and before His legs could be broken, fulfilling prophecy in Isaiah). Heart failure sounds as likely as anything.

I find the whole idea of "test subjects being subjected to the cross without actually recreating what happened to Jesus" as just being more speculation, it doesn't prove or disprove anything, because they did not have the same experience as Jesus (obviously).

Originally posted by Suzianne
Yes, I had meant to add that, yes, the Romans did not break his legs. This is what caused extreme pain when trying to breathe, since it was necessary to lift oneself up a little in order to breathe and it was almost impossible with broken legs. Naturally this didn't occur until the Romans came by and wanted to rush things along, this is why the three of t ...[text shortened]... prove or disprove anything, because they did not have the same experience as Jesus (obviously).

Bear in mind though that the asphixiation theory was due to a surgeon called Pierre Barbet. According to his Wikipedia page he did some experiments. Unfortunately the link they give on wikipedia is not accessible to me (the remote server told me I didn't have access) so it's difficult to make any kind of assessment. I think I can safely say that his experiments would have been subject to the same limitations that you cite for Frederick Zugibe's experiments. Since the subjects were reporting pain I don't think they were able to stand on anything, but without access to the write up I can't state that categorically. Basically I think that Barbet's ideas are what is called "expert opinion" and expert opinion is notoriously unreliable in medicine.

Asphixiation or not I think it would be natural to struggle against the position one had been put into.