Agreed. For me, it's hard to reconcile the notion of a loving, personal God ... who demands a blood sacrifice. If God's all powerful, why couldn't he have simply declared mankind 'forgiven'? Why was the Crucifixion necessary?

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." Richard Dawkins

I agree. This is one reason why I am agnostic.

Haven't seen the movie but, yeah, whoever conjured up the whole concept was a real sadistic bastard

Yeah puts it in a whole new light doesn't it.

Odd, people don't seem to have as much problem with people doing horrible things to people. But if God's son chooses to offer himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world (God didn't make him do it), God is a bastard for not forgiving people who choose to make the same errors over and over again. I've been an agnostic for many years now. Part of the reason is, that given what people do to each other in God's name, and opposed to God's name, I can't understand why, if there is a God, he doesn't rain fire on the planet and start fresh.

Everything Jesus endured was because of His love for us. The whipping was to buy back our health, by His stripes (the whipping) we are healed. sin needs a sacrifice and God loved us enough to provide it for us. Before the foundation of the earth He knew what He was going to have to do, still He choose to do it. The wages of sin is death (the cost of sin is death) and Christ paid that price...it was all accounted for before He created us. And Jesus says No one can take my life, but I lay it down. Would you die for your children? I would.

An intelligent, smart, well aware, well informed, knowledgeable person with a scientific mind has his own concept of God which is totally different from what is written in old books. We are in the 21th century. People mind should be attuned with progresses and new discoveries otherwise we will have a static and back warded mind.

God didn't crucify Jesus. Men did.

I don't belive much in religion, but it was humans who killed Jesus (who also was a Jesus).

No he was sent here to off set the Original sin that Adam & Eve commited and he Jesus in this case had to go throw that horrible punishment so people like me could make it into Heaven. I'd say by your question you hate religion, peace out.

since the first man Adam who was Perfect lost the opportunity for his future offspring to live eternally and never taste sin and die, It took Jesus who was Perfect to buy back what Adam lost and that is why He underwent the humiliation and the agonising death and to be spat upon and despised by His own people .It is reffered to in the bible as the RANSOM SACRIFICE because Jesus BOUGHT back what ADAM lost

I can think of plenty of reasons why God is cruel other than that one, but I guess that still works.

I dont see it as cruel... God is Just... That is a better word for it. You couldn't possibly see things from the necessary position that He must have to in order to get anything done. That's thankfully why He is God. Rules and laws must be upheld and kept in line with their own reasons and expectations otherwise we would all be thrown into lawlessness and anarchy. Which might be a hell of a lot of fun for about 15 minutes but then what?

That is NOT FAIR. You're asking as if you KNOW that's what God did. It's the CHRISTIAN's understanding of God which he openly declares and insists on. It is NOT the teaching of Jesus the Christ. It is NOT the understanding Muslims get from the HQ which says God being Oft Forgiving and Merciful forgave Adam and Eve their error. Thus the question of inherited sin does not arise and neither does the need for the crucifixion of Jesus. In any case the HQ rejects as inappropriate the idea of God having a son as He is totally without beginning, without end and without any needs.

Sorry, but I cannot agree with you. That whole thing about him existing I just can't agree with.

I watched Passion of Christ and it was gruesome to watch the beating that the Savior took for us. What you failed to realize that God's plan was to DESTROY mankind because of our sins the only way to redeem us that we would have a chance to see the kingdom was for Jesus to be crucified. I Thank God for allowing His Son to stand in the gap for me and u. Jesus took a beating out of this world but think how great the sins of the world was. Be careful how you speak about the Almighty God. No matter what you think of Him He is God. He doesn't have to explain the things he does. U should be thankful he loved u that much. Much Love to U and GOD BLESS U

well, God didnt MAKE Jesus go through that. Jesus CHOSE to. He looked at the goal in the long run. it is better to sacrifice one than millions. Jesus was an example, that it is possible to give without sin if you have God...its just highly improbable. lol. and since it is highly improbable, he had Jesus help us out a little. think of it this way. we've all done stuff we're not proud of and we are still going to do things we're not proud of, so our blood has "poisons" in it, "poisons" that we cant make go away. so what do we do? we have a "blood transfusion"! lol with Jesus' blood. he had to give up his life, his pure blood, so that we could be filled with it. he had to choose to give it too us. he had to prove that he really really loved us (God's big on the proving thing lol). "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." john 15:13. but if we dont except this blood transfusion, those poisons wont get flushed out. but we have to stay connected to or reconnect to it to get clean blood. i know this is kind of off topic, but i wanted to address another matter... a lot of times people dont like/understand God bc they dont want to or try to understand him. its just like meeting a new person. people can always twist around someones words to make the nicest person seem to be like Hitler. and people can always choose to not like someone for no reason. and someone can take things people say offensively because they do not fully understand exactly where the person is coming from or what exactly they are meaning. to understand someone, you have to spend time with them, get to know them. just like god. how better to get to know someone than reading their diary? well the bible is like God's "diary". it has his deepest darkest secrets. lol. OR people can hate God bc of bible belt christians (no offense) but jesus talked about loving people and not condemning them more than anything else. It is Gods job to decide our fate, and no one else can decide. We are all human, everyone makes mistakes, EVEN CHRISTIANS. I am not perfect in any way. But i love God and he knows my heart. even i have had other christians telling me i am going to hell for this or that. But it doesnt bother me, bc no man (in the humanity sence, lol) can determine my fate.