I enjoy reading your jousting with Christians. You are definitely a child of the post-Enlightenment rationalistic thinkers and seem to place a premium on the ability to formulate propositions in a linear, analyzable, rational, discursive manner, and that by using a scientific method of understanding reality, you have your sights set on reducing mystery to its radical, rational elements in a universal, valid form to verify the processes of prediction and control. Fair enough?
I tend to see that there are basically two different kinds of language—metaphysical (which appears to be the world in which you live and move and have your being) and liturgical. Metaphysical is the language of science, historicity, law, etc. It tends to be an ordered way of looking at reality to be able to make intelligible and coherent statements about being.
On the other hand, liturgical language is one of images, intuitions, insights, icons, beliefs, visions, poetry, prayers, metaphors, and parables that excite and spark the imagination of the beholder and illumine Real Mystery. Revelation comes from the world of liturgical language, and in a very real sense metaphysics and revelation are mutually exclusive.
In the pursuit of finding the truth of a poem, I would not ask of it metaphysical questions. Likewise, in the pursuit of the truth of a scientific experiment, I would not be asking of it questions ground in a liturgical outlook.
Given that prolegomena, I in all my hubris, wanted to touch on the points that you raise.
1) Sure death sucks, but why single out this one? Because this is one Jesus could have avoided. Yes, Jesus was fully divine and fully human. The kind of suffering that was experienced is not the point. In and through it, Jesus continued to act on his most basic core principle—love. His responses are not spewing hatred, and calumny, and “it isn’t fair,” but in and through it all, loving..
2) What about that whole hell thing? Yeah? What about it? You say billions going to hell. Seriously? Is that the action of a loving God?
3) Jesus didn’t even die. Well of course he died. What do you think the resurrection is? A resuscitated corpse? I don’t believe that. Nor do I believe most of the atonement theories out there.
4) Taking on the sin vs. removal of sin aren’t symmetric. I’m not sure what you are going with this. It is the Church that talks more about original sin, not Jesus. I’m not clear what you are driving at about “believing” being a necessity to access the solution. If you look at the parable of the sheep and goats in the latter part of Matthew 25, the sheep inherited the kingdom because of the good things they did. None of them got there because of some belief.
5) The reason behind the sacrifice—mankind’s original sin—makes no sense. I agree. Nor do I think that that is the reason for the sacrifice.
6) Jesus made a sacrifice—big deal. Well, it really is a big deal. But a lot of your verbiage in this paragraph is remarkable and right on target. I really don’t have much quibble with it. We single out Jesus because yes, even though his motives were pure, he acts in such a loving way, even when the nails are being pounded in, that almost none of us would respond the way he did. He is a pattern, an example for us to imitate—that is, if we are trying to develop in a better way than we quite often do, making love the root and core of our being as well.
7) What is left for God to forgive? That’s a good question. You seem bound and determined to use some version of the atonement theory. If I try to use your reasoning here, then your point makes sense. What would there be left to forgive for all that is past? Hopefully there lies a future for many of us, and for Christians at least, inevitably, unless we watch and pray, we again will fall prey to the guilt and power of sin. Even if a Christian were to repent, accept justification, and continue in sanctification, at the very best, there will still be seeds of sin in that Christian’s heart that are much like a tinder box always ready in a moment’s notice to explode. And if it does, the Christian would still need forgiveness. But . . . forgiving sins is not God’s main focus.
8) The Jesus story isn’t even remarkable within mythology. You probably have a point here. I’m probably not as well read as you. But the remarkable thing to me is that Jesus was fully human (in addition to being fully divine) and Prometheus is just a myth.
9) The Bible itself rejects God’s savage “justice.” Very good point with respect to the Prodigal Son. I’m impressed with how well read you are of the Scriptures. I don’t fundamentally disagree with your point here, except to say that rather than somehow God demanding justice in order to be satisfied, I think that this is something that Jesus took on instead, on his own.
10) The entire story is incoherent. I agree. With the way you tell it, it is incoherent. I think that a lot of the issue is as I suggested at the beginning. You are trying to overlay onto the liturgical language of the Scriptures an empirical, rational, discursive, descriptive, linear, noetic way of grasping reality, and that is not the language nor the thought process of the Bible. As a great critical thinker of the 20th century, Bernard Lonergan once wrote, “ . . . the world of pure science and of metaphysics is somehow very different from the world of poetry and common sense.”