Christ’s two part atonement is so beyond the sacrifice made by John Perry that you’d have to start referring to humanly incomprehensible numbers in order to fairly compare them.
Or to put this in terms that Eliezer is likely to at least recognize:
When confronted with the dilemma, Christians claim God chose to torture one man rather than inflict 3^^^3 dust specks on 3^^^3 people. Except that God let the man choose, and the man chose to suffer himself rather than let others go on suffering.
This is of course a deeply silly story once you actually begin to analyze it—just as the dust speck problem is deeply silly. It’s just that one story came as part of a religious tradition that Eliezer rejects, and one story was made up by Eliezer. They’re equally ridiculous because they’re equivalent (or very, very close to being so), but one is seen as absurd and one as proof of our hard-nosed rationalism.
Eliezer never claimed that the dust specs in question actually happened. That would be silly! The bible does. He merely devised a thought experiment to get a point across. He might have used jesus’s alleged suffering instead, but it would have been a lot less clear, and people would get all hung up on the religiosity instead of the point. He also never claimed that there was any fundamental difference.
Or to put this in terms that Eliezer is likely to at least recognize:
When confronted with the dilemma, Christians claim God chose to torture one man rather than inflict 3^^^3 dust specks on 3^^^3 people. Except that God let the man choose, and the man chose to suffer himself rather than let others go on suffering.
This is of course a deeply silly story once you actually begin to analyze it—just as the dust speck problem is deeply silly. It’s just that one story came as part of a religious tradition that Eliezer rejects, and one story was made up by Eliezer. They’re equally ridiculous because they’re equivalent (or very, very close to being so), but one is seen as absurd and one as proof of our hard-nosed rationalism.
Eliezer never claimed that the dust specs in question actually happened. That would be silly! The bible does. He merely devised a thought experiment to get a point across. He might have used jesus’s alleged suffering instead, but it would have been a lot less clear, and people would get all hung up on the religiosity instead of the point. He also never claimed that there was any fundamental difference.