Atheism

You ask good questions, but if you're really interested you can look into Christian apologetics re: free will. There are some interesting answers awaiting you. But the gist of it is that God didn't create flawed beings, he created beings with free will that chose to be flawed.

And Christianity has never said free will is a flawed design, because humans having free will is one of the most important aspects of the religion and is very fundamental to what it means to be a human (a concept that is true both in and outside of Christianity, unless you believe in destiny or something). It is not a flaw to have free will, otherwise God himself would be flawed. In a regular context, it's kind of like you're not flawed for existing, but you're flawed if you do negative things with your existence. I would personally have to be convinced that having free will is a flaw/a negative thing

To quickly answer your first couple questions: death is the punishment for sinning and Jesus is supposed to be perfect and sinless and thus should not die. but instead he died in place of other sinners, kind of like taking the blame for them. And yes, torturing and killing the son of God was indeed a sin, the people who did it were sinful. I don't think anyone has said otherwise. The ones who killed Jesus were not his followers or supporters

Does he also sparkle in sunlight?

No no no no, you have it backwards. They're not trying to remind Jesus of the cross, they're trying to remind themselves just how painful of a death that the alleged Redeemer of man had to go through.

You’re saying my plan for fixing climate change by sacrificing the rich to the fire god is outdated and unlikely to work?

That and it was the way Romans dealt with literally anyone deemed... a nuisance? 😂

You described christianity quite well there

It makes more sense when you know that 2nd temple Judaism had an entire economy built around animal sacrifice for sins, and that the temple central to that is destroyed a few decades after Jesus died as Christianity was starting to take off.

So positioning Jesus's death not as an embarrassing failure to manifest earlier messianic prophecy but as this ultimate sacrifice making the animal sacrifices that could no longer be performed unnecessary was a very convenient belief to attract Jewish converts.

Of course, then Mark 11:16, where Jesus bans anyone from carrying animal sacrifices through the temple in the first place while alive becomes an inconvenient detail, which is probably why it later disappears from Luke and Matthew.

So Christianity probably really was a split from 2nd temple Judaism at the time of Jesus on the point of animal sacrifice, but then following his death the death itself gets reworked back into the paradigm of animal sacrifice by those coming later (i.e. Paul) which then later makes it more attractive to Jews who no longer have a temple after 70 CE when it takes even greater prominence.

The irony of course is that looking at some of the early apocryphal sayings of Jesus on the ridiculousness of sin and salvation as an inherent birthright that shouldn't be given over to another to be lent back out at interest - this development of the crucifixion as an ultimate sacrifice on behalf of humanity was possibly the exact opposite of a historical Jesus's whole point, even if it was favored for survivorship bias given the destruction of the temple.

Those are only rumors. The author hasn't come out with The Bible 2: Redeemer of Souls that's supposed to explain all that.

They're the only author that rivals GRRM for time between books.

You seemed to have wholly misinterpreted the comment you're replying to in your condescending rambling. Kinda crazy that you even mentioned RFID payments somehow in your tangent. You lost the plot big time

No one said "the bible says the cross is a symbol for the religion of Christianity". Not a single verse says that, and no one claimed so. but the cross in the text is important and is symbolic of redemption/love/sacrifice. You don't need the text to say that, it's just a simple literary analysis. That's how symbols work.

Like what are you even saying with your last paragraph there? If you read the Bible, the importance and significance of the event where Jesus died on a cross is kind of hard to miss. It's wild to me that you can make a comment like yours and then pretend you're so wise and intelligent and above other people while you're rambling nonsense about RFID payments. Get a grip, dude.

I will wear a necklace in the image of your cock n balls pinned to a cross so that we may remember how you suffered for our cocks n ballses