Dogmatic Disemblings

AN ATHEIST SAID: "How do you expect Jesus to save you in the real world if he couldn't even save himself"? There eists no religious or philosophical viewpoint from which this question is intelligent. From the Christian perspective, Jesus never had any intention of "saving himself" from a tortorous death; his entire purpose was to sacrifice himself for the salvation of others, "others" meaning only those who worshiped him as their Lord and Savior. The Son of God, paying for the sins of all true believers of all times and places. Salvaion a a price, the price being the surrrender of personal ideologocal and intellectual freedom. Spiritual, intelletual blackmail, in a sense. And of course from the non religious perspective, the critical, historical, scientific perspective, Jesus died not for anyone's salvation, but as a concession to Judaic perfidy, insecurity, and jealousy, and Roman military and political power. A miscarriage of justice bringing about the ceremonial murder of a good man, or at lesst a reasonably harmless one, a man who only preached good moral values and a soon to come apocalypse which never came, and has not yet come...The Christian said: "What if God exists? You non believers are going to be f****d if he does. Again, nonsensical. If God exists, God might not be a Christian god, but rather, a god of of another, more true religion, maybe a religion practiced on a planet with truly intelligent life, in some galaxy far, far away. And if the one true god of the universe is the Christian God ruling over the entire universe, and all lifeforms within? Then we might wish to hope that intelligent creatures on other planets throughout the universe are devout Christians, and that the six billion non Christians on Earth convert to the Christian faith, before its too late. Space travelers from Earth, spreading the gospel throughout the cosmos,"witnessing" to alien beings. Or maybe they, witnessing to us...Bertrand Russell said: "Nobody can sit at the bed side of a dying child and believe in God." Russell wrote the seminal essay "Why I Mm Not a Christian", and the seminal essay "Why I am not a Communist". The Christian God, according to the Christian biblical scripture, clearly not only accepts human suffering and rarely does anything to ameliorate it, but himself doles out a great quantity of it. The behavior of God in the Bible at best must be described as "harsh", and at worst,diabolical, maniacal, psychopathic, tempestuous,murderous,villianous. Petty too. He demands to be worshipped ilke an insecure child craves to be loved. Thomas Paine, who among other things essentially invented the American revolution, thus said in his pamphlet "The Age of Reason" that the "Word of God" seems more like the word of ad emon or monster. Christian believers usually justify god's seemingly insanely violent behavior by claiming that the Bible was written as allegory, not literal fact, which seemingly defeats the entire purpose of the little library of sixty six quirkish books;to reveal the truth, the Holy Word of God. Truth, whatever it is, is reality, not symbolism, not allegory, for the universe and the human species are quite real, whether or not God is.