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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

As the other poster stated, this is a snarky dig at Christian doctrine by someone who has never actually examined Christian teaching within the philosophy of religion. I would strongly recommend reading e.g. Richard Swinburne's Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) for a reasonable depiction of Christian belief in this area. There are atheist critiques of the doctrine of the Atonement, of course (and disagreements between Western and Eastern Christianity concerning it), but one has to actually confront the claims in their fullness instead of posting that disingenuous, one-paragraph copy/paste snark.

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>As the other poster stated, this is a snarky dig at Christian doctrine by someone who has never actually examined Christian teaching within the philosophy of religion.

That's a pretty bold claim from someone who only knows me from a few comments on a website. Just because I can snark about this, doesn't mean I'm unaware of the things you mention. Though since you called be disingenuous, you must have expected that as well.

But on the other hand, my time studying christianity ended a decade ago, and I have no unmet spiritual needs, so I doubt I will be taking another look at them at this time.

If you were familiar with actual literature in philosophy of religion, then why didn’t you cite that instead of a copy/pasta? I think it is quite reasonable to doubt the knowledge of the literature of someone who can’t even cite something.

> I have no unmet spiritual needs

A lot of work in philosophy of religion concerning a particular religion, is done by people who find its particular claims interesting (whether they can be defended or attacked) but who are not in the game for "spiritual" reasons. It’s like saying that linguists would only study languages because they have the need to communicate with its speakers; no, most of them just enjoy studying the language as an abstract.

Well it wasn't copy/pasta, nor was I trying to make some theological point. But given the latter part of your comment, you're very keen on reading many things into what I type here that I've not said. So I'll just let you continue to have both sides of the conversation.

Why should "Christian teaching within the philosophy of religion" be a better measure than "Christian teaching as taught to Christians by churches"? This seems like one of those finger/moon things.

The "snarky dig" is an accurate description of what American fundamentalists / evangelicals believe. If you want to complain about that particular bit of theology, you're complaining to the wrong person.

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