Reddit reviews I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

>And what solid evidence is there for such claims outside the assertions of religious authorities who saw those groups as their enemies and thus had a vested interest in spreading slander and propaganda about their enemies/competitors?

Okay, how about archaeological evidence. I'm not even a real Bible scholar and it took me less than 5 minutes to find the following regarding ancient child sacrifice to molech and successor deities thereof:

French-led excavations at Carthage began in 1921, and from 1923 reported finds of a large quantity of urns containing a mixture of animal and children's bones. René Dussaud identified a 4th-century BC stela found in Carthage as depicting a child sacrifice. A temple at Amman (1400–1250 BC) excavated and reported upon by J.B. Hennessy in 1966, shows the possibility of bestial and human sacrifice by fire.

Human remains resulting from child sacrifice are certainly not "propaganda."

>rather I was simply pointing out how the remainder of those types of passages in a supposed "holy book" that billions of people today consider to be infallible universal truth and thus the basis of morality, in fact doesn't measure up against any truly objective moral standards; that is morality which falls outside the scope of ONE historical group's narrow sectarian assertions.

Consider reading I See Satan Fall Like Lightning by Rene Girard, which examines the history of religious myth from a psychological perspective.

Girard finds a common thread across almost all such myths, which is (oversimplified) the scapegoating and killing of innocent victims as a stabilizing societal force. Girard then draws the remarkable conclusion that, unique among all religious narratives, are the themes foundational to the Bible (and the Gospels specifically), which is that God fully takes the side of the innocent victim and redeems him. Girard makes a strong case that the introduction of this new meta-narrative -- which begins as early as Genesis and culminates in the story of Jesus -- led to concern for victims becoming the absolute value in all societies molded or affected by the spread of Christianity. It fundamentally changed the attitude toward the oppressed by society writ large, at a subconscious or barely-conscious, and unprecedented, level. Point being, be careful what you seek to do away with before you fully understand the social functions it performs that you take for granted.

There's more I could say on this (e.g., I could ask how you even hold to the existence of "truly objective moral standards" without acknowledging the existence of an eternal Source of moral truth against which the morality of human behavior can be measured). But what I've written above is sufficient for now, I think.

>OK, well does the analogy in the OP make sense to you? If it doesn't make sense to you, but Christianity does then you have some explaining to do in order to establish that Christianity makes sense.

The weight of human history suggests that there is something about vicarious violence (that is sacrifice) which creates a sense of resolution in a wronged person. You could say that this impulse has not value and ought to be rejected but to say it is absurd is like saying a sneeze is absurd. There is a reason people throughout history have required something like a sacrifice before they will feel better just like there is a reason people sneeze. It is just that our society has a better understanding of how our bodies work than we do about about our mind, spirit and soul work.

I was highly influenced by Rene Girard and his anthropology on the subject of sacrifice.

That's a very good question.

The best response I have seen to it is in the work of cultural anthropologist René Girard. The book to read is I See Satan Fall Like Lightening or maybe Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.

If I remember correctly, the Passion story, in Girard's view, is an attempt to break a cycle of imitative violence in human affairs. Imitative violence is also the logic of sacrifice (as we see it in the Old Testament and other cultures that practice sacrifice). Sacrifice is a way of ritually cleansing the community of its violent tendencies, and needs to be repeated periodically.

The sacrifice of Jesus then, is God siding with the people who have been sacrificed, rather than with the sacrificing community, in an attempt to break the logic of blood sacrifice and scapegoating.

I'm sure I'm not doing the argument full justice, but those are the really broad lines. I would read one of those books I mentioned at the beginning of the post to get the full story.

There is only one true God. To imagine God as an invention of humanity is foolish. The many pagan and eastern gods certainly are. Only Christ exudes divinity.

Any student of comparative mythology/religion with an ounce of honesty can see the uniqueness of Christ and Judaism.

If you truly care about these matters and aren't blindly defending your right to a pagan lifestyle, check this book out;

https://www.amazon.com/See-Satan-Fall-Like-Lightning/dp/1570753199/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520123144&sr=8-1&keywords=rene+girard