You've re-framed an old philosophical problem: Why does (an omnipotent, benevolent) God allow evil? See Theodicy on Wikipedia

Yeah the whole "God is all powerful and all knowing" would mean that he can stop things like children's cancer but he chooses not to.

Religions (all of them) are just a bunch bullshit nonsense. In other news, water is wet.

Jesus "died" so god could forgive the sins against the rules he himself made up. You don't need to be all-powerfull and/or all-knowing to forgive, and for sure is it not needed to sacrifice something living.

He could just have forgiven, generell amnesties are a thing humans do and we are neither gods nor have we any all-something powers.

Also, Elijah didn't need to die and could be saved? Yet Jesus needed to die? Right.

Honestly, though. The mere concept of original sin is enough to say fuck that. Putting something on someone who had no choice in the matter is fucking evil.

And that's before getting into the general shittiness most religions enable/do that ruin lives constantly.

"god" has proven that it is not all powerful. It has never helped anyone. Abrahamic religions are just a different version of all the other mythologies that Humans have made up to explain the unexplainable. And too many individuals use that antiquated & outdated information to harm people and steal their money.

Think about the absurdity of the "all knowing, all seeing" gods. They watch you poop, eat breakfast & masturbate. What a sick stalker. Holy books are just a very old volume of badly written fiction, usually by anonymous authors.

God is just really into child sacrifice. For real, it's a central tenet. Jesus. Abraham. David. Noah. Lot. Job.

"God is more important than your family" is literally a theme throughout.

The entire Christian story is a giant plot hole because it tries to make us root for a hero who is just too powerful. I can buy a character who is all-seeing and all-powerful and in control of everything, but I CANNOT buy that character being purely good. Any character that controls everything and yet bad things happen, is a morally grey character at best. Him being that powerful and yet we're supposed to see him as purely good, just doesn't work.

Not to mention, the Bible depicts him doing a lot of very evil things. No reasonable person can read this character as purely good.

The hero being in control of everything doesn't work because there can be no believable villain. They try to create a villain, a nemesis, to say God isn't behind the bad. They made Satan to be the antagonist, but they try to have it both ways by making God still be all powerful and ultimately plan everything Satan does.

And then they want God's climactic heroic act to be suffering the punishment for mankind's sin in our place but the whole idea is a plot hole because it only works if there is someone demanding mankind be punished for our sins. Who is demanding that? Satan? The story might work better if it were Satan but they want us to believe it is God himself, which renders the sacrifice pointless. Some argue that it wouldn't be just for God to just let people off for their crimes without some form of punishment, but I don't see how punishing himself fixes that.

He's all powerful, but He's just fueled by blood is all.

You see, the blood is the life and that is why God is all powerful, He just needs lots of blood! It's simple.

(It's not even a joke, according to Bible. Paraphrased a little bit)

You need to get more shorter showers.

Whenever someone brings God or any other omnipotent supernatural being into the realm of reality and try to have a semblance of a logical reasoning, everything just falls apart and stops making sense.

It is a common belief among evangelicals that the universe and everything in it was created 6000 years ago. Naturally you can tell them that it can't be right because we've found dinosaur bones hundreds of millions of years old. Common response to that is God buried those fake bones to test your faith. On the surface it makes sense because of course omnipotent being can create anything it wants. However once you dig slightly deeper the entire premise turns into a complete farce. You say to yourself, why not 1000 years instead of 6000? Why not 100 years? Why not five years or even five days? Five minutes? Yes, it's entirely possible for omnipotent being to have created the entire universe five minutes ago put fake memory into everyone and we won't know it. You can basically just make up stuff and that makes just as much sense.

My point is once entertain the existence of God then anything and everything is possible to the point where having an intellectually honest conversation no longer matters. To me this is a mathematical equivalent of dividing by zero. This is why I believe science and religion are diametrically opposing beliefs that cannot be bridged.

George Carlin: "He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!"

God gives little kids leukemia, or at least allows it, which goes to the problem of evil, that if God is all-knowing and all-encompassing and still allows evil to occur, or has a plan that involves evil occurring, then God is not all-good, God is himself part evil. If God is omnipotent, then there is no reason for evil to exist beyond him having cruel fun at our expense. And that's not even getting into the non-human suffering.

Christianity likes the idea that Lucifer disobeyed God and was cast down, but Lucifer IS god, just as much as God is, just as much as we are or the stones and moss in nature are. Lucifer couldn't do anything other than God's plan, because omnipotence.

So the only way the supposedly omnipotent God thought to run the universe requires a large chunk of the souls he created to be cast into hell forever. Why? What the fuck was the point of that? God is petty, spiteful, vindictive, callous and cold. Or not omnipotent. One or the other. You know what? Either way I'm not going to "worship" it.

And then there's the most obvious third answer, that there's no god, which is the only option that makes sense at this level.

None of it ever made sense to me, even when I was a kid. How does torturing Jesus to death remove MY sins? He gets killed, that somehow absolves my sins, and now I'm obligated to worship him, and do whatever some guy in a robe tells me that Jesus wants me to do?

Or God. Or maybe both, because they're kind of the same person, along with Dead Jesus, who is just as bossy as both God and Jesus.

And let's not get into Communion. The first time that was explained to me, I was appalled. Then I was told about Transfiguration, and I was like "You people are out of your fucking minds," but I was only about 8, and nobody was interested in my opinions on religion. Decades later, and my disbelief has only increased.

Non-religious but likes plot analysis.

An important factor here is free will. Without free will, one may easily have a perfect utopia of the kind you think an omnipotent God should be able to achieve. But it would be a meaningless utopia; like a kid playing with toy figurines, just deciding everything we say and do.

God doesn't want that, and thus self-impose a limit on the omnipotence to not interfere with our free will. We are children that need to be taught, rather than marionetted to "save us" from the negative urges of free will.

Here, the (self-)sacrifice of Jesus enters. It is not about God using Jesus to fulfill some perverse quota of pain and suffering that God has decided is due before we are allowed into heaven. It is more about what humanity must experience for the lesson that makes heaven remotely possible as a concept. Only through pain and suffering will we come to understand how our actions affect the world and those around us. Jesus takes (some of) the pain and suffering "in our place" with the aim that the message will resonate with people throughout the ages to teach us about love and understanding, making the concept of a heaven possible despite our nature as (non-brainwashed) beings of free will.

In reality, even after 2000+ years, we still seem pretty far off the mark. Maybe the lesson didn't take the way it was intended; free will is a fickle thing. Or maybe God is playing an even longer game.

I feel like I have to put the disclaimer that, although I am spiritual, I'm not religious. Anyway:

then Jesus dying wasn't the only way.

Correct. I don't think many people, Christian or otherwise, really disagree with you here. I chose to drive 20 minutes to eat ramen today. Was that the only way? Well, only way to what, exactly? To feed myself? No—there are plenty of closer options with which I could've sustained myself, but in my picking the ramen, I now have satisfied that craving which I've had for a few weeks. Even though I won't still taste the ramen two days from now, I'll still be satisfied that I had some today.

In the case that you are trying to make a legitimate criticism of the story rather than the vapid "Christianity is stupid" posts that dominate this platform, I'd prompt you to be much more specific in what you mean by "way." The only way to what? What specifically are you positing was God's goal in allowing the crucifixion of Jesus?

Personally, I take the Bible as almost entirely allegorical. So if you want my subjective take on this post, it's about as good as asking why Superman has to be weak to kryptonite.

Omnipotent ≠ Intelligent

God is supposed to be a father figure, right? And this alleged father says, "I give you complete free will to choose to believe in me or not," right?

The reward for faith and obedience is eternal life in a utopic paradise. The punishment for disbelief is eternal, irreversable torture and pain.

A father who tells his children that he will only give them one chance to learn isn't a good father.

A good father is patient and kind. A good father understands that a child will mess up and need to learn some lessons on their own. A good father would never consider the complete destruction of his child for the sake of his own ego. A good father would be terribly pained by his child's pain and suffering. A good father would do everything in his power to prevent that pain.

The idea that the only way "up" is through required love doesn't sound like love.

Imagine seeing a parent out in the world. Imagine hearing that parent say "If you don't love me the way I want you to love me, then I will kill you" to their child. That would not be a good parent. That would be a petty, abusive, manipulative piece of trash. You would do well to save that child from that parent.

God doesn't exist.

Imagine playing civilization IV and everything is just peaceful, boring isn't it? Gad also have right to have fun and see the nukes fly

Who says it was the only way? Because I think nothing in the Bible says it was the only way, is the way God choose to so for us regular people it is the only way but as we can't comprehend the mind of a God we can't understand the actions either.

God is Father so one way to try to understand the actions is to try to imagine a Father teaching a kid, now imagine said kid has millions of personalities, free will, is violent, envious, luscious and most of the time the kid believes he is more powerful and more intelligent than any parent but also is mortal, weak and afraid of everything, specially himself.

Whenever your thoughts about God become longer than a shit post you've officially put too much thought into it

I think God set it up so we could save ourselves.

ITT: Pizza cutters. All edge nay point.

what many people don’t understand about actions the christian God made is that she had to make decisions that allowed for humans to understand that she sent Jesus to prove there’s a better way to live and that you don’t need to live in shame or subservience. What is the one thing that can’t be faked in our world? Death. That’s why it was a big deal.

He didn't HAVE to do anything to be fair. Biblically it was a gift of love (as messed up as that is).And yeah perhaps there was another way, but that's the way he chose. If he slaughtered a pig, you'd probably be like why didn't he offer his own son? Doesn't really have anything to do with omnipotence. Sacrifice was common in those days with goats etc. So it matches the culture of the day. Also kind of mirrors and reflects on the Abraham story too.

Also biblically God, Jesus and the holy spirit are technically one. Not really sure how that changes anything but is interesting to think about.

Here's the biblical text if youre interested John 3:16 ESV “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

I'm just some guy and dont have all the answers or am looking to battle about it. But I'm happy to chat if we keep it chill. Why is God's omnipotence important to you?

Jesus didn't die to save anyone, he died because the Romans (colluding with corrupt Jewish religious authorities from what I understand, but still mostly due to the Romans) thought he was too dangerous of an element to keep alive. And many prophets and righteous believers have suffered injustice and death at the hands of the powerful. And I'm sure he knew it would end up like this too, which makes his open preaching and "social disruption" (fucking with the money folk at the temple, for instance) even more badass (and many more fitting, positive adjectives I can't think of right now, lol).

Yeah, Roman Catholicism, and any offshoot that follows its tenets, is nonsensical. But Jesus was a "Jew", a monotheist in the vein of Abraham, Moses and Solomon, who didn't come to "change the Law and the prophets but to fulfill it", to embody one that makes IRL change because his faith cannot allow him to do otherwise, to just be inactive. If the world is shit because of our own action and inaction, isn't it time to make the right choices? So he lived that life and walked the walk and talked the talk, so we can still talk about him (his talk and his walk, not his divinity of Roman origin...) two thousand years later, because he was very conscious that, in much the same way that you don't jump off of a roof because you understand gravity and the dangers of falling from high altitude, if he didn't do his best to be okay with the Heavenly Father (of everyone and everything, not an actual anthropomorphic dad, but the Creator on the outside and responsible of spacetime and everything in it; without compare is the Almighty, the Merciful), his soul could fall into Hell. He just, to quote Diogenes, was "singing louder in the choir so everyone else could follow the right tune". Anyways, follow Jesus and you'll be okay with God. For further info, read the Sermon on the Mount. If you wanna deep dive into what happened to actual Abrahamic monotheism after the Romans mutated and exported it, the Qur'an is freely available online (Clear Qur'an is a good translation, so is the Monotheist Qur'an). 👋