DanielLC comments on Mere Messiahs - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 December 2007 12:49AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (83)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: p4wnc6 14 November 2011 04:12:39AM 3 points [-]

So, you misunderstand the story, and the post corrected that. Shouldn't that get it voted up?

I believe the poster misunderstands the story and that the Dawkins quote is relevant to that point. The Christ myth depicts Christ as being God-incarnate suffering in human-format, and therefore suffering in precisely the same way that humans would suffer. I do not agree that it is intended to depict Christ's atonement as categorically more painful nor incomprehensibly painful. This is why these theological debates are fruitless. Since this is all interpretation of myth, I'm not sure there is enough objective evidence here to conclusively favor either interpretation.

Specifically, the incomprehensibility of the suffering was invoked to argue that Christ, in the myth, is more heroic than John Perry is in our understanding of human suffering. I think Dawkins' quote aptly argues against that interpretation. Even if Christ suffered incomprehensibly (I disagree that the myth asserts that he did), his knowledge of surviving the suffering and obtaining what he selfishly wanted (the salvation of mankind) makes him less of a hero than John Perry in my opinion. And many here seem to share that opinion.

If someone wishes to believe that the crucifixion myth matters because of Christ's incomprehensible suffering, that's fine. I disagree that that is a well-supported interpretation of the myth, and even if it were, God himself is the logical cause of his own suffering. He had to prefer to obtain human salvation through the act of suffering in order to arrange the universe such that that was what he required himself to do. Not heroic. In fact, once an entity is omnipotent, attributing heroism at all becomes a tricky matter.

Comment author: DanielLC 14 November 2011 04:26:49AM 0 points [-]

I looked up the Atonement on Wikipedia. I can't seem to tell if he's universally believed to have suffered more than just the crucifixion itself. It doesn't seem to mention it on the main part, but it also doesn't mention it on what Mormons believe differently.