In dogmatic Christianity's doctrine of atonement one perceives the crucifixion of Jesus as a phenomenon necessary to appease a God who is angry with the people for their sins. Through receiving this bloody sacrifice the Lord shows mercy and forgives every single terrestrial human being his sins if only he, in penance and repentance, will defer to this sacrifice and blindly believe that Christ, as a "sacrificial lamb", with his blood has liberated him from the punishment that was to consist of the eternal torment of Hell.
      Imagine the superstition and heathendom in the form of "Christianity" that has enveloped a large part of mankind in spiritual fogs! No one can be blamed for this. Mankind has not been mature enough for a higher insight into what is the real cause of their fate. But this superstition cannot go on existing in a religion that has love as its foundation. Gradually, as the terrestrial human being becomes more and more humane or loving towards his neighbours, the more and more difficult will it be for him to understand that the Godhead, in order to forgive a terrestrial human being's sins and deliver him from punishment, must at any rate have one other being punished, and, at that, a being who was innocent and had lived an absolutely model life.
      The view that all the guilty should escape punishment regardless of how evil and ungodly they have been if only they at the last moment accept that an innocent man takes upon himself the suffering and the punishment seems to many people today to be nothing but sadism.
      It is not so remarkable that the intellectual and humane human being should find it difficult to understand that such a psyche should be worthy of a godhead. In situations where the punishment of the guilty is cancelled if only someone who is innocent takes it upon himself, the punishment has lost its purpose, namely to teach the cheat or criminal in a realistic way about his sin or offence and indoctrinate him with fear as a warning against a repetition.
      When the punishment strikes the innocent it is no improvement of the individual for whom the punishment is intended, but merely the carrying out of the punishment on an individual. It would then be punishment for punishment's sake and the desire to see a being suffer that are the causes of Providence's desire for punishment. It is, however, not normal judicial practice among human beings that an innocent can simply take upon himself the guilty person's punishment so that the sentence can be carried out while the guilty one goes free. Are earthly judges then more just the heavenly one?
      Is there not something wrong in such a view of the Godhead's psyche? Such superstition cannot continue filling the churches and inspiring people. The humane and loving human being cannot accept a view of the Godhead of which the logical meaning is that God must be a sadist, a monster or an abnormal and sick being.