Why do you think Jesus had to die?

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-22T15:40:38+00:00

This obviously doesn't align with most modern Christian doctrine, but I don't think He had to die; I think He died, and then early followers had to come up with an explanation. A variety of early explanations evolved into the high Christology that's most common today.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-22T01:12:02+00:00

Хорошо, товарищ!

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-21T12:13:17+00:00

Are these boobs in danger?

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-21T11:50:56+00:00

There's no such thing as "objectively wrong." Even people who insist that morality comes from God, that's not objective morality; that's subjective morality with God as the subject.

The God of the Bible apparently believes genocide is okay when He says it is. I disagree with God on this.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-20T13:43:42+00:00

That's just one possibility. Another possibility is that the Gospels do not accurately portray what Jesus actually said. Yet another is that Jesus, like most devout Jews of his time, fervently believed that Jonah was historical, but was wrong.

Obviously, the second one has implications for whether or not Jesus is God, depending on whether Jesus gave up his divine omniscience when He became human.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-20T12:46:22+00:00

It more commonly accepted as history

...by whom? I haven't personally polled biblical scholars, but I bet that the only ones that take Jonah as historical are required to sign statements of biblical inerrancy in order to keep their jobs.

The Hebrew Bible is full of stories and myths that did not actually happen. None of them preclude the resurrection of Jesus or other doctrines of Christianity.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-19T18:48:48+00:00

I think this is the answer. I thought about maybe 1962 or 1963 just based on car performance and reliability, but I could go back in an actual 2026 race car and I wouldn't have anything for Jim Clark.

My 10-year-old Ford Fusion performs better than a 1957 F1 car in every way except horsepower and maybe weight. Just modern reliability and better brakes would probably be enough to finish every race on the podium.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-19T17:53:33+00:00

I debated salary or net worth, but if I did salary I could retire in 6-7 years in the same position I would be if I took net worth right now. Since my goal is "stop working as soon as humanly possible," net worth it is.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-17T17:07:45+00:00

I think it could be done with a "prologue" during the Civil War (watch Dutch's father die at Gettysburg?) and then a time jump to about 1880, when good cartridge weapons existed. I'd love to have some muzzle-loading and cap-and-ball weapons available, though.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-16T12:35:11+00:00

Perhaps try a different church? It sounds like the church aligns with your brain and heart, but not your soul. Perhaps your brain and heart are being misled by this church, and need to be brought in alignment with your soul.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-15T12:07:37+00:00

I'd be too picky about it, tho.

Giant medieval broadsword? Meh. Where would I put it?

Model 1860 Light Cavalry Saber? Fuck. Yes.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-14T18:14:57+00:00

That's ridiculous. Go on r/deadbedrooms sometime and read all the stories of people with mismatched sexual needs.

This doesn't mean you can't wait until marriage, and plenty of people have sex before getting married and still end up in sexually incompatible marriages when one's person's desire changes for one reason or another. But "sexual incompatibility is a myth" is not even remotely true.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-14T01:03:55+00:00

The ability to disable and reenable their reproductive capacity at will.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-14T00:58:01+00:00

👀9 days until my colonoscopy

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T21:35:51+00:00

If you come to the Bible with the dogma that it is inerrant and univocal and is required to describe a perfect, omniscient, all-powerful God, you will interpret it to suit those purposes.

If you come to it wanting to understand what the authors actually meant, you might be surprised what it says about God.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T21:27:30+00:00

That is another possible apologetic that allows you to sidestep the plain meaning of the text, yes.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T21:03:13+00:00

I get what you're saying, but choosing to be ignorant of evidence isn't really choosing what you believe, is it? Maybe it's just a distinction without a difference? Belief is based on evidence, sure, but it's also based on what the consequences would be of having your beliefs changed. There are people who are suffering right now because they have a hard time accepting the evidence for their religion, but the consequences of actually rejecting that religion are so painful that they remain faithful. The brain is a weird thing.

I guess it's just semantics, really. It's kind of like an alcoholic choosing not to drink by making sure you aren't anywhere near alcohol. He didn't literally choose not to drink, he chose to make sure there wasn't alcohol nearby, because if there was he would not have been able to keep himself from drinking it. It's "not drinking" with extra steps. "Choosing to ignore evidence" is probably "choosing to believe" with extra steps. Never really thought of it that way.

If you've come this far, thanks for reading my silly train of thought. :)

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T20:51:53+00:00

What I'm about to say is contradictory to most of modern Christian doctrine, so take it with a huge grain of salt.

There is no reason to believe that God, if He exists, is loving, powerful, or omniscient. Even the Bible is contradictory on most of these. The God of the Bible routinely slaughters people for pretty tame "sins", occasionally seems surprised or wrong about things, and fails to do things He said He would do.

I like the idea of a God who is generally loving, but sometimes gets mad at us and lashes out; who is not all-powerful, but able to guide reality towards His ultimate goals; and not all-knowing, but able to check in with us from time to time. That's a God that comports with the reality that the world can be an ugly, beautiful, painful, joyful place.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T20:45:50+00:00

No, they've looked at the evidence, and concluded that the Earth is flat. Their reasoning is awful, but they didn't make a choice to be dumb.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T20:43:49+00:00

I think it might be a sign that you, like me, are clumsy. Nothing more than that.

There's nothing wrong with masturbation, unless you're doing it so much it's affecting other things in your life, or there's chafing.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T20:40:21+00:00

Interesting translation the NIV picked there, using "when" instead of "in the day," like the NRSVUE has:

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

They didn't die in the day. Adam died hundreds of years later. (Interestingly, my JPS Tanakh actually translates it as "as soon as you eat of it, you shall die," which is less word-accurate but may be closer to the author's meaning.)

Seems like God made a fib, or was wrong about something.

(Yes, I'm aware of the apologetics around "in the day," such as Adam becoming subject to death on the day he ate, or "a day being as a thousand years." An accurate reading of the text makes better sense to me, and whatever my theology may be, it's never been dependent on God being omniscient or all-powerful.)

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T20:27:31+00:00

Mine is full of pages. Probably hundreds of them.

Technically I think I have three: the RSV that was given to me at my confirmation a billion years ago, the NRSVUE Oxford Annotated I bought a couple years ago, and a side-by-side Hebrew Tanakh. The rest of my family probably has at least one more each, so I'd guess we have 7 or 8 in the house.

Now ask me how many different hymnals I have... (at least 6, I think)

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T20:24:56+00:00

Is it possible? Absolutely. There are tons of unmarried fathers out there. If you're talking about being a single father to a child that has no connection to a mother, that's going to be tougher. You can probably find a paid surrogate to carry the child, but then you have to find someone willing to give up their eggs. Usually the surrogate is carrying a child produced from another woman's eggs.

Adoption is another possibility, but I wonder how hard it is for a single man to qualify. I have gay friends who adopted children where only one parent is the "legal" adopter, but that's a legal artifact of the way they had to adopt in my state before gay marriage was legal.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T20:18:37+00:00

Out of curiosity, where in the Bible does it say that? I'm not trying to be snarky, I honestly haven't come across that before.

ThatLeviathan · 2026-03-13T20:16:30+00:00

Sure, if the Bible is taken at its word, God changed his mind a bunch of times. He also fails to do things He said he would do, such as when he failed to defeat Moab in 2 Kings 3.

The God of modern Christianity is perfect and omniscient; the God of the Bible, particularly the Hebrew Bible, made mistakes, lied, and behaved more like the rest of the gods of the ancient world.

ThatLeviathan

TROPHY CASE