"Scott believes in superstitions, so he's a flaming subjectivist." x 1K 
And you're a mystic, times infinity, so there!
You do have to admit that the fundemental "premise" of Christianity is pretty far out there,
Which one? One premise is that there's a God. This is a claim that is either true or false, and seen dispassionately, *either* answer is unlikely. There are difficult philosophical problems either way. More difficult, I believe, for the materialist/atheist. (Modern physics has put forward explanations of the origin of the universe which are both untestable - which is bad science - and bizarre to the point of absurdity.)
Another premise is that mankind is "fallen" and capable of evil. I read the newspaper and I find that claim very believeable. Fresh evidence daily, delivered to my door. Another premise is that this evilness offends God. I don't know how "far out there" that is, but I'm glad the opposite is not true. A universe in which the Author got off on random cruelty and other evils would not, I think, be a place where anyone could stay sane very long.
And the last big premise is that God is willing to forgive the evil in exchange for, what amounts to a sacrifice that He made
for us and on our behalf, if we are willing to accept that forgiveness. (That's simplified, but not much.) There is nothing unbelievable about that; I know plenty of parents that chose to help their kids out of trouble, even at personal cost. It's nearly a definition of what love is.
and don't even get started on the blood/body eucharist ritual. What is that all about?
Is this rhetorical? If not, I have to assume you have never sat down and read a theologian from the camp of this religion you seem to have rejected. Let alone the New Testament. Maybe I need to buy you a copy of CS Lewis's work, too.
I'll assume it isn't meant rhetorically and that, at your age,
if you haven't gotten around to reading up on the topic, you don't plan to. So here's my 5 minute sermon. (Note to the Christians - yes, I'm leaving out things here. Not worth dragging in the whole of Old Testament symbology in a quicky sermon for a guy who has likely never read it through anyway.)
Those premises I mentioned, above, matter here. One of them is that God is offended (use whatever word you like: outraged, pissed off, ticked - English theologians are kind and stick with offended) by the evils done by humanity collectively, and people individually. God's standard, after all, is perfection - and humanity doesn't make that grade.
On the one hand, it doesn't seem fair that God should hold a limited species like ours, to a standard like that. Sure, I mean, we
could choose, moment by moment, to be unfailingly unselfish, kind, and fair, but no one ever does it all the time, every time. We screw up and
call it "just being human", and you might argue that God should take that view, too. But look seriously at where that would get you. How would it go if God really
did say "Well, it's *ok with Me* that you robbed Peter/Raped Jane/hated Frank. Go ahead, I don't mind"? We don't expect a decent *person* to condone evil; we wouldn't want it from God, either. If you want to know what it's like when people invent a god of that kind, go read up on thuggies (Kali worship.)
So. God has a standard, and we flunk. This, Christians teach, puts us out of contact with God: separated or "fallen" are the usual terms. (That's what the Garden of Eden story is conveying.) Why "separated"? Because He can't accept what we do without becoming morally imperfect himself. But he loves us and doesn't want to just throw us aside, either. Throwing us aside permanently is worse than a death sentence: we're designed to be eternal creatures, and being eternally cut off from God and at the mercy of our own fallenness... well, that's generally how Hell is defined.
So how to get us to take His standard seriously? How to make us lay off evil? It would help if we thought that rejecting evil was a good idea; if we were at least sorry about and tried to do better. That, for a start. Most people don't seem all that concerned about it, though.
So God needs to make it clear that evil is bad - you'd think it would be obvious, but if you read the papers you see it apparently isn't so obvious to a number of people. He does what every parent I know does, and He lays down consequences to reinforce this point. Little things, like, "if your nation persists in acting in that fashion I'm going to wipe it off the globe", which comes up a few times in the Old Testament. Read Amos: it can be neatly summarized as "If you keep oppressing your own poor, so help Me, you're going to take it in shorts."
But the more dramatic way he explains to us this demand of His, this idea that evil is unacceptable and intolerable, is to explain it in terms of a contract, a legally binding arrangement. He equates evil to a broken law, resulting in a serious fine that must be paid. The fine in this case is death, the most serious punishment we as humans understand. And then
he arranges a way that, symbolically, this death-debt can be paid off. He explained that blood would have to be shed, something would have to die,
but it could be a perfect animal instead of us.
This throws modern folk for a loop. They wonder what God wants blood and death for. But this is a nonsense way of looking at it. If God had some use for blood, he's got a planetful of it, anytime He likes. So why mess with a ritual involving the blood of sheep and rams?
The blood isn't for God, it's for us (or at least for ancient Israel). With our nice neat modern butcher's shops, most of us don't see the process that leads to a McDonald's burger, but in ancient times the process wasn't hidden. People saw animals killed, and knew it for what it was: an intensely visceral and messy experience that brings home what mortality is, what spilled blood really implies.
So the guy dragging his unblemished (perfect) sheep to the temple to be sacrificed as an atonement for his sin, had a *very* clear idea what happened to the sheep - and understood that it was happening to the sheep
instead of to him. The symbolism did not escape the ancient Israelites. They understood it, and they wrote about it. Was it a brutal and visceral and crude way to make the point? Well, yes. And yet it seems to have been barely enough to keep "your sins are intolerable, so knock it off" clear in the minds of people.
Ever wonder why Jesus is referred to as the Lamb of God? The phrase is not a modern invention. Jesus established himself as the replacement for the animal sacrifices. In fact that was not exactly unexpected - John referred to Jesus as the Lamb of God several years before the crucifixation, but Isaiah had pegged the concept centuries before that. John the Baptist paraphrased Isaiah 53.
Given any of that makes sense, when why celebrate that sacrifice with a ritualized eating of the body and blood? Neglecing a lot of deeper symbolisms, I think it's back to the butchers again. It's hard not to recognise that something died for your benefit, when you eat. "Your
death sustains me, and gives me life" is the core idea of eating - and also of Israel's contractual atonement. That the ritual Jesus laid down for a celebration of forgiveness involved eating, just makes simple and tremendous symbolic sense. (You'd also expect washing to show up as a purification rite when dealing with forgiveness, and it does: baptism.)
The odd thing, in fact, is how well the symbolism of the old and new testaments, written thousands of years apart under different cultures, mesh together. So much so, in fact, that it used to be something of a hobby of atheists, to try to prove that some OT writings were actually added
after Jesus's death. (They eventually gave that one up; there is simply too much solid evidence setting the date of the Old Testamant writings to well before Jesus's time; the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, with a complete copy of Isaiah dated into the BC era, was the final burial for that unusually absurd attempt to discredit Christianity.)
It all gets pretty strange when you stand back and look at it. If it were a science fiction movie most wouldn't think the plot reasonable.
Have you noticed that *most of reality* is like that? Read any account of history. How much of it would you be willing to believe if it showed up in fiction? Do people really kill each other to own shiny
rocks? Is it possible that a leader in the last century rounded up about 12 million people and had them gassed, purely because of who their
parents were?
How is it that every particle in the universe simultaneously attracts every other, across distance, invisibly, using a force that cannot be blocked? How likely is it, really, that you form a person by inserting part A into slot B and
squirting? And yet it's all true.
Most of reality is just plain strange and the only reason we accept it is because we're surrounded by it day in and day out. It would seem strange otherwise. Things you don't see every day, continue to seem strange. (Try reading up on quantum physics - it's so odd it sounds like the scientists are kidding.)
So I would not expect information about a being who is not a part of out material universe to be totally, 100% in tune with my day to day expectations. My expectations for how reality "should" work don't even extend to entangled particles, realised virtual pairs at the edges of black holes, and the possibility of Hillary Clinton running for president. I should *expect* to be a little startled about God and his views, too...
