A Response to

I read part of your page, the part concerning the trinity. To me, that doctrine is just about the most absurd concept ever foisted on a credulous public!! It says that God exists in 3 "persons" ......each is no older or powerful or knowledgeable than the other two. If so, how can a "son" be as old as his father? Also, if they are all equal, why was the "son" the fall guy , having to be murdered to placate the other two? Why didn't the "father" come to earth to die? I suspect the doctrine was invented to attempt to preserve the monotheism of the Hebrews. Would you tell me to what religion you belong?

My guess is that you need to read the whole page (sorry, I know it's a 21k file) to get the hang of the fact that I find most organised religions distasteful if not downright dangerous. I do not belong to any of the recognised factions. Having said that, you'll also understand that I believe that there are many other people for whom various of the different religions do state the truth; and I can see the truth in bits of most of them, too.

As to the Trinity, I think it is possible to take it too simplistically. It's not, to my mind, being foisted on people -- it's an attempt to explain a difficult idea in terms that can be visualised easily. Even what I wrote about the Trinity on my page is just one view of the diamond (sic). If I try to explain what I mean in another place, the view will have changed. For instance: I am human, a person and an adult -- three things, yet one. The human is one of a long line of humans, the person is writing this to you because he's interested, the adult has the experience which led to this way of thinking. Those three things are one "Dan Everard".

If you get to grips with what is behind the rather simple image which can be brought to mind by Father, Son and Holy Spirit then the crucifixion takes on a different meaning.

Murdering the Son is not what happened; the Son got himself into the position where he would be sacrificed to atone for what was going wrong, and to make it possible for redemption to be achieved by people afterwards. The way he did this was by spending the last bit of his life teaching people his truth, and the authorities didn't like it.

So the disaster that mankind was inviting upon itself was taken on by the human form of God to clean the slate. The death of the Son was not the end of the Son, the resurrection demonstrates this, but the Son took the punishment on behalf of man. The words from the cross, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?", illustrate just how awful it was -- getting crucified was no fun, but it alone was not the punishment; the punishment was to go through it with absolutely no support from the Father or Spirit who were both part of him, and therefore with him at all other times. Because he did this there is never any need for any other man to do the same again. God is within all of us at all times, all we have to do is recognise this -- it's apt to make us actually think about how we act.

Even if you do not believe the resurrection actually happened, this is still true. An aspect of God took the wickedness of the world away from it by sacrificing himself to atone for it, it did not change the world, it made it possible for the world to change. . . That sacrifice is worthwhile if man also learns from the teaching that the Son gave.

It's not worth getting hung up on fathers being older than sons and all that, it's an image not a literal description. The Son wasn't murdered to placate the other two, he was killed in human form to create circumstances in which the evils of the world could be defeated. To some extent is has worked, and it is still working . . the world is evolving in a better direction because of it than it might have without.

Maybe the F,S & HS image made it possible for a monotheistic religion (the Christian sect of Judaism) to be palatable to the polytheistic Greek and Roman potential converts?? Check out my views on how Saul/Paul behaved. Nonetheless, it is still a good image to describe what's going on.

Christianity is not the only way to get to the truth, but at least it's all in the one place though the years have added some baggage to it. Beware politics, though, when looking at sects . . and that's one of my own problems with organised religions. If you have a problem with one religion, take a close look at others, their metaphors may speak more truely to you. But do always look for the truth that lies within and behind them.