View Full Version : There is no life after death (and no hell)
Laser Eyes
Jun19-03, 07:59 AM
This issue came up in the letter to Dr Laura thread and rather than letting that thread deviate from its topic I thought I would deal with the issue here.
I made a comment where I said:
There is no eternal suffering and there is no hell. That is a fiction created by Satan's empire of false religion to control and intimidate people. When you die that is the end of your life, period.
Phobos then said:
Can you elaborate? Where is this viewpoint from? Doesn't seem to match the common Judeo-Christian or even Islamic beliefs.
Various scriptures in the Bible tell us that our life ends when we die. It is a complete and final end. There is no life after death. There is no immortal soul. And there is no eternal suffering or hell. I know this is not what Judaism or most so-called Christian churches teach but it is what the Bible says. Most supposedly Christian churches just do not teach what the Bible says. They create their own doctrines and over time these doctrines become entrenched teachings.
Let us look first of all at what God told Adam. After commanding Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God said: "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Note the consequence of disobedience. Adam would die. God did not say: "If you disobey me your physical body will die but you have an immortal soul that will go on living forever and you will suffer eternal punishment".
Let's move forward now to after Adam has eaten the forbidden fruit. God pronounces sentence on Adam and Eve and finishes with the statment: "For dust you are, and to dust you shall return." Here is a statement from God clearly explaining what death means. Adam would simply cease to exist. There is no mention of an immortal soul or eternal punishment in a fiery place of torment.
Some scriptures expressly deal with the condition of the dead and indicate that far from being a place of suffering, the common grave of mankind is a place of inactivity:
"For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished; nevermore will they have a share in anything done under the sun." - Ecclesiastes 9:5-6
"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going." - Ecclesiastes 9:10
Another scripture equates the condition of dead humans with dead animals. In life man is superior to animals but in death we are all alike: "For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; ... as one dies, so dies the other ... All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust." - Ecclesiastes 3:19-20
Jesus described death like being asleep. When Jesus learned of Lazarus' death he travelled with his disciples to Lazarus' grave intending to resurrect him. On the way Jesus said to his disciples: "Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up." If Lazarus had already passed on to a life in heaven it would hardly have been kind of Jesus to resurrect him back to an imperfect life on earth.
Let us consider one more argument based on logic and common sense, not scripture. Assume for the sake of this argument that God is indeed the loving God that he tells us he is. Even we imperfect humans would not do what some churches accuse God of doing. I'm reminded of many western movies I've seen where the cowboy's horse goes lame and rather than let the horse die of thirst in the desert the cowboy shoots the horse to spare it the torture of a painful death. Even the worst kind of evil gunslinger in these movies will not walk away and let his horse suffer. Yet most supposedly Christian churches teach (and many people swallow) a story about what would have to be the cruelest act that God could do - create a place of eternal torment and suffering, a place where God would put anyone who rejected him, and this God would look forever on this place and watch humans endure pain and agony. That is not the God of the Bible and it is not the God of this universe.
Interesting. I certainly don't recall any mention of an afterlife in my reading of the Bible so far (granted, I'm only up to Joshua so far). I'm interested to see the debate on this topic.
IIRC (and this was the subject of a past topic of mine), the Jewish belief system does not include a Hell...just distance/closeness to God in the afterlife.
Yet most supposedly Christian churches teach (and many people swallow) a story about what would have to be the cruelest act that God could do - create a place of eternal torment and suffering, a place where God would put anyone who rejected him, and this God would look forever on this place and watch humans endure pain and agony. That is not the God of the Bible and it is not the God of this universe.
This is one of the first things, if not THE first thing, I questioned about religion when I was a child. It did not seem right (and still doesn't) that anything done within a mere 70 year lifetime could deserve such a horrible eternal punishment. The distance/closeness fate I mentioned above seems to make more sense.
Iacchus32
Jun21-03, 03:51 PM
From the thread, Hell (http://www.physicsforums.com/editpost.php?s=&action=editpost&postid=19825) ...
Originally posted by Iacchus32
Originally posted by megashawn
If god does truly care, then there is not a heaven or hell, merely afterlife. For any decent person would never inflict life long suffering upon another decent being. If god is not atleast this good, I'll have no part. The thing of it is is that you have to seperate people according to what they believe, otherwise there would be nothing but constant antagonism in the afterlife, in which case it's necessary for hell to exist if only for this reason. Whereas everyone comes into what's called their "ruling love" (that which they love most), which is what guides them and detemines their state of existence in the afterlife.
While it's for this reason that both heaven and hell are very diversified (more than you can imagine), in order to accommodate the myriad of distinctions to be made here. So in this respect everybody finds their own bliss, even for those who are in hell who, as I understand (although rather sado-masochistic in nature), wouldn't have it any other way. This is the only way you can make "everybody" happy.
Excerpt from Emanuel Swedenborg's (http://www.swedenborg.com/), Heaven and Hell ...
Man after death is his own love or his own will.
This has been proved to me by manifold experience. The entire heaven is divided into societies according to differences of good of love; and every spirit who is taken up into heaven and becomes an angel is taken to the society where his love is; and when he arives there he is, as it were, at home, and in the house where he was born; this the angel perceives, and is affiliated with those there that are like himself. When he goes away to another place he feels constantly a kind of resistance, and a longing to return to his like, thus to his ruling love. Thus are affiliations brought about in heaven; and in a like manner in hell, where all are affiliated in accordance with loves that are the opposite of heavenly loves.This is a very good book by the way, and it's highly recommended..
Fliption
Jun21-03, 09:56 PM
Originally posted by Laser Eyes
Various scriptures in the Bible tell us that our life ends when we die. It is a complete and final end. There is no life after death. There is no immortal soul. And there is no eternal suffering or hell. I know this is not what Judaism or most so-called Christian churches teach but it is what the Bible says. Most supposedly Christian churches just do not teach what the Bible says. They create their own doctrines and over time these doctrines become entrenched teachings.
All of your quotes are from the old testament which is before Jesus allowed man an option to eternal death. I don't think any of them can be used the way you are using them. They must be read into context. There are countless passages in in the new testament which speak of eternal life.
As for the common sense piece of your thread.... I can certainly relate. But you're going to judge god based on what a human considers good? This is flawed logic.
Messiah
Jun21-03, 11:07 PM
You were obviously DEAD before you were conceived in the womb.
You are (presumably) ALIVE now.
Life after death......c'mon, get real....
Iacchus32
Jun22-03, 01:47 AM
Originally posted by Messiah
You were obviously DEAD before you were conceived in the womb.
You are (presumably) ALIVE now.
Life after death......c'mon, get real.... And yet "I" did not exist, in order to "Die to the Lie" ... that there is no afterlife.
Messiah
Jun22-03, 08:41 AM
Originally posted by Iacchus32
And yet "I" did not exist, in order to "Die to the Lie" ... that there is no afterlife.
Do you REALLY believe you were 'created' at conception?
Why?
Every particle of your body existed prior to your birth.
Why would you - the entity wearing the 'mud' - be any different?
Iacchus32
Jun22-03, 10:20 AM
Originally posted by Messiah
Do you REALLY believe you were 'created' at conception?
Why?
Every particle of your body existed prior to your birth.
Why would you - the entity wearing the 'mud' - be any different? All I know is I wasn't conscious until after I was born. And yet there's something about consciousness that suggests I've always been here and, that I'm not supposed to die. Do you know why? Because my soul is conscious and, that consciousness -- i.e., "via the moment" -- is tied to Eternity.
Messiah
Jun23-03, 09:50 AM
Originally posted by Iacchus32
All I know is I wasn't conscious until after I was born. And yet there's something about consciousness that suggests I've always been here and, that I'm not supposed to die. Do you know why? Because my soul is conscious and, that consciousness -- i.e., "via the moment" -- is tied to Eternity.
Consciousness (like body odor) is a state of being. It comes and goes and is highly dependent on the condition of your body. When you are unconscious (don't smell), it doesn't mean you have ceased to exist.
Think of death as changing clothes. You wouldn't wear the same sox for eighty years. Without death, there would be no evolution and we would all be micro-organisms chasing each other for breakfast.
Eternity is a two way street. Forward and backward.
Existence is eternal. Change is eternal. Life - a state of being - comes and goes.
Iacchus32
Jun23-03, 10:35 AM
Originally posted by Messiah
Consciousness (like body odor) is a state of being. It comes and goes and is highly dependent on the condition of your body. When you are unconscious (don't smell), it doesn't mean you have ceased to exist.And yet people are conscious even when they sleep -- "in their dreams."
Think of death as changing clothes. You wouldn't wear the same sox for eighty years. Without death, there would be no evolution and we would all be micro-organisms chasing each other for breakfast.Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ... but the "soul" lives on.
Eternity is a two way street. Forward and backward.Eternity is Ever-Present.
Existence is eternal. Change is eternal. Life - a state of being - comes and goes. On a temporal earthly plane that is.
Messiah
Jun23-03, 01:49 PM
Originally posted by Iacchus32
And yet people are conscious even when they sleep -- "in their dreams."
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ... but the "soul" lives on.
Eternity is Ever-Present.
On a temporal earthly plane that is.
Yes, I guess that means Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa are still around...somewhere....
Laser Eyes
Jun24-03, 03:54 AM
All of your quotes are from the old testament which is before Jesus allowed man an option to eternal death. I don't think any of them can be used the way you are using them. They must be read into context. There are countless passages in in the new testament which speak of eternal life.There is no difference between the old testament and the new testament on fundamental things like the nature of our existence. Basic things like what happens to us when we die do not change between the old and the new testament. The whole Bible was written by God and is consistent throughout. There are indeed many passages in both the old and the new testament that speak of everlasting life but that raises further questions. What kind of everlasting life is it talking about and how do we get it?
The everlasting life that God intended for Adam and Eve was an everlasting life on earth, not in the spiritual realm. Remember what God told Adam and Eve to do: "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it". God gave them satisfying work to perform here on earth in their home. They were given everlasting life by design. It was God's gift to them. If they remained faithful they would never die. But they lost their perfect condition when they sinned and cut off from God's energy their bodies slowly deteriorated and they died. In the meantime they were able to pass on an imperfect existence to their offspring.
The everlasting life that is spoken of throughout the Bible that we can gain is an everlasting life here on earth as physical beings. God's plan was for the earth to be populated and that plan has not changed, merely the means for bringing it about. Consider Psalms 37:29 - "The righteous shall inherit the land, And dwell in it forever." and Psalms 37:11 - "The meek shall inherit the earth, And shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." This is our hope for our own future and the future of mankind, an everlasting life here in an earthly paradise. You can see this design reflected in our conduct. Throughout history people have been obsessed with finding "the elixir of immortality". Why? Because God made us with an inbuilt desire to want to continue living forever. But note that this desire is usually expressed in terms of wanting to continue living as a physical human. You don't hear people talking about how they would love to be angels and live in heaven, usually it's expressed as a desire to keep living here on earth. (There actually will be a small number of people that will become spirit beings but I don't want to unnecessarily complicate things by going into that here.)
Everything that I have said so far is consistent with the view that death is a state of non-existence, we return to the dust from which we were made. Adam not only lost everlasting life for himself, he lost it for all of us too. God needed a way to reverse the effect of Adam's failure and that's where Jesus comes in. Jesus came to earth and lived a perfect life, he never sinned, he showed perfect obedience to God's law and he died. His death is something of great value. Just as one man lost everlasting life for all, so too the death of one perfect man can recover it for all: "For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." - 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 Here again is further proof that there is no life after death. The hope of resurrection is a theme throughout the Bible. The meaning of resurrection is to bring the dead back to life. If we lived on after we died then why do we need a resurrection? It is only because when we die we cease to exist in the way I have explained that we need to be resurrected.
Jesus did not teach that everlasting life was something that we enjoyed automatically or that we had an immortal soul that lived on after we died. He taught that everlasting life was something that had to be earnt and that there were requirements to be fulfilled: "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. He that exercises faith in me, even though he dies, will come to life'" - John 11:25
As for the common sense piece of your thread.... I can certainly relate. But you're going to judge god based on what a human considers good? This is flawed logic.It's not so unrealistic as all that. Remember that we were made in God's image. Man has reasoning power, he has attributes like those of God such as love and a sense of justice. We can certainly form a view on the justice of punishing someone forever for the errors of this short life.
megashawn
Jun24-03, 03:47 PM
I had always understood that (according to christian beliefs) when a person died, he/she remained in the grave until judgement day. At this time, he was either cast into hell, or welcomed to heaven. I've heard countless storys of heaven being paved with gold (seems like bad traction surface to me).
It seems that everything you say negates the point in going to church, believing in a god. What purpose is it to spend your life worshipping a god that is just going to watch you fade away? People go to church because they are afraid to die, and this #1 fear that we must all face is what churches prey on. If churches preached what you claim, people would not come, as it does not remove one's fear of death anymore so then atheism.
So, according to your beliefs/claims we will never meet our loved ones in heaven, or get chased around hell by the devil and his pitchfork?
What is your reason again?
I read a really disturbing letter in my newspaper today.
It said something in the effect of:
" Mr. X urges Christians to move towards a tolerant society. But Christianity is not about tolerance. Rather, true christians believe that truth is contained in the bible, that things like tolerance are worldly things. This does not mean that we should not love God, but appreciate the bible as truth without manipulation and avoid such worldly elements. "
I'll see if I can find the quote...
maximus
Jun24-03, 08:56 PM
Originally posted by Iacchus32
On a temporal earthly plane that is.
sounds a little crack-pottish to me. what other plane is there than the "temporal earthly plane".
Iacchus32
Jun25-03, 01:21 AM
Originally posted by maximus
sounds a little crack-pottish to me. what other plane is there than the "temporal earthly plane". If this is all there is, then what do we even need morals for? Why should we give a crap, if there were no "long-lasting" repercussions?
If in fact there were a "sense of purpose" in life, then where does it come from? There must be more to it than this "fleeting existence?"
This is actually a good point, and probably should be explored in depth. You know, why should we be concerned about our actions, if there is no accountability for them? Then hey, you can pretty much do as you damn well please, and when you're dead you're dead, and who gives a crap?
Because you give a crap. Your moral conscience, engrained by society and partially genes care. Because your life today directly suffers. Because it's up to you to give meaning to your own life so you matter to yourself, and is satisfied.
A feeling of purpose does not mean there is in fact a purpose, outside of what you give or others give.
If life goes on after death, and what we do can negatively influence it, why do we live at all? Why don't we just shoot ourselves here and move on?
Because we believe that our life here is worth living outside of whatever happens afterwards, that's why. Because the point of morality and doing what you feel is right has in fact nothing to do with a reward at the end of it.
In fact, that is supposedly true even if you do believe in God and an afterlife. Unless if you infer the whole goodness and rewards etc process is an exercise in personal hypocrisy...
Hence I support what Laser Eyes is saying.
Could the Law of Conservation of Energy influence this discussion in any way?
Iacchus32
Jun25-03, 07:49 PM
Originally posted by FZ+
Because you give a crap. Your moral conscience, engrained by society and partially genes care. Because your life today directly suffers. Because it's up to you to give meaning to your own life so you matter to yourself, and is satisfied.
A feeling of purpose does not mean there is in fact a purpose, outside of what you give or others give.
If life goes on after death, and what we do can negatively influence it, why do we live at all? Why don't we just shoot ourselves here and move on?
Because we believe that our life here is worth living outside of whatever happens afterwards, that's why. Because the point of morality and doing what you feel is right has in fact nothing to do with a reward at the end of it.
In fact, that is supposedly true even if you do believe in God and an afterlife. Unless if you infer the whole goodness and rewards etc process is an exercise in personal hypocrisy...
Hence I support what Laser Eyes is saying. Nice try! But hey there's no need to get all sentimental about it, because when you're dead you're dead, and it will be as if you were never here ... i.e., so long as you "remain dead." [;)]
Iacchus32
Jun25-03, 07:53 PM
Originally posted by Kagmi
Could the Law of Conservation of Energy influence this discussion in any way? Am not sure what you mean?
Hey, did Einstein actually say that about imagination and knowledge? Better not let anybody else know about that around here! [;)]
maximus
Jun25-03, 10:09 PM
Originally posted by Iacchus32
If this is all there is, then what do we even need morals for? Why should we give a crap, if there were no "long-lasting" repercussions?
we don't necesarily need to give a crap.
If in fact there were a "sense of purpose" in life, then where does it come from? There must be more to it than this "fleeting existence?"
the sence of purpose is what drives us to be succesful. evolution supports success (obviously). if we have a sence of moral and goodness in this society of humans we do better. now, you must understand me: morals are important in this society. they have no consiquence in the universe beyond humans. can you deny that this makes sence?
You know, why should we be concerned about our actions, if there is no accountability for them? Then hey, you can pretty much do as you damn well please, and when you're dead you're dead, and who gives a crap?
are you being sarcastic? becuase you've pretty much got it. nothing really matters. people who have gone through their whole life not breaking a single law, and always being moral and good will die just the same as a man who has not. the difference is that our society does not accept the man who does not obey, and therefore he does less well in life. leaving his "rebel" gene to be canceled by the evolutionary process. goodness is an illusion.
Iacchus32
Jun26-03, 02:32 AM
Originally posted by maximus
we don't necesarily need to give a crap.If we don't give a crap then why are we here?
the sence of purpose is what drives us to be succesful. evolution supports success (obviously). if we have a sence of moral and goodness in this society of humans we do better. now, you must understand me: morals are important in this society. they have no consiquence in the universe beyond humans. can you deny that this makes sence?Hmm ... It sounds like everybody pretty much agrees that we need a sense of morality in order to co-exist. But what does that mean, if it's only arbitrary? Nature creates a sense of purpose, but only temporarily, before it cancels itself out? But where does this "energy field" that we associate with our consciousness go when we die? It just fizzles out right?
are you being sarcastic? becuase you've pretty much got it. nothing really matters. people who have gone through their whole life not breaking a single law, and always being moral and good will die just the same as a man who has not. the difference is that our society does not accept the man who does not obey, and therefore he does less well in life. leaving his "rebel" gene to be canceled by the evolutionary process. goodness is an illusion. Hey don't mind me, I was never here! [;)]
Guybrush Threepwood
Jun26-03, 04:00 AM
Originally posted by Iacchus32
If this is all there is, then what do we even need morals for? Why should we give a crap, if there were no "long-lasting" repercussions?
you need moral because it makes your life pleasant. Suppose you don't give a crap and start kicking everyone's a**. How long do you think you can do that? In a short time some people wil start kicking your a** and you couldn't do anything to stop them.
If you want a civilised society you've got to have rules, that stops people to behave like animals. Laws and moral evolved with the evolution of human society and without them we probably woudn't pass the tribal organization.
If you choose to folow them for fear of hell, God, lack of "life after death" or some other reason, that doesn't prove some divine purpose. IMO.
I'm sorry to say, but until now I have heard this kind of "why should we care for others if there's no eternal punishment..."argument only from religious people.[:(]
lasereyes i'm very interested on your take on john 3:16-21.
the difference is that our society does not accept the man who does not obey, and therefore he does less well in life. leaving his "rebel" gene to be canceled by the evolutionary process. goodness is an illusion.i dont know which newspaper your reading, but the "rebels" are winning. we're not gaining morals, were losing them. not that any of this has anything to do with the discussion... okay im done.
Iacchus32
Jun26-03, 06:11 AM
Originally posted by Guybrush Threepwood
you need moral because it makes your life pleasant. Suppose you don't give a crap and start kicking everyone's a**. How long do you think you can do that? In a short time some people wil start kicking your a** and you couldn't do anything to stop them.Yes, but everybody would begin to do it to everybody else, until there was nobody left to do it to, and then what?
If you want a civilised society you've got to have rules, that stops people to behave like animals. Laws and moral evolved with the evolution of human society and without them we probably woudn't pass the tribal organization.But what makes us any better than the animals in the first place?
If you choose to folow them for fear of hell, God, lack of "life after death" or some other reason, that doesn't prove some divine purpose. IMO.Or, if you follow them because it "seems right," then that proves you're "sincere." And therein lies the reward perhaps? [;)]
I'm sorry to say, but until now I have heard this kind of "why should we care for others if there's no eternal punishment..."argument only from religious people.[:(] An arbitrary post from an arbitrary person, in response to which for all intents and purposes is but a "fleeting illusion."
Actually it's kind of nice to know that people believe in the need for morals, that means there's still hope. [;)]
P.S. If there were a heaven and a hell, we need not look at it in terms of punishment versus reward (as one cannot "insinuate" oneself into heaven), but rather as a "means to an end." In which case we can still observe its cause and effect, so long as we don't "contrive" to be the effect of the cause which is sincere. Does that make any sense?
Guybrush Threepwood
Jun26-03, 06:55 AM
Yes, but everybody would begin to do it to everybody else, until there was nobody left to do it to, and then what?
then there would probably be no more posts on any forum in this world. That was my point either. The lack of morality and rules of behaviour from a group of people would lead to the extinction of that particular group. Therefore we need morals to assure the continuity of our civilization. All I said is that there is no reason for "eternal punishment" to promote them.
Or, if you follow them because it "seems right," then that proves you're "sincere." And therein lies the reward perhaps?
If you follow them it means you choose to interact in a peaceful way with other people. And maybe make a friend or two along the way...
An arbitrary post from an arbitrary person...
Is this your way of saying that you like me?[t)]
In which case we can still observe its cause and effect, so long as we don't "contrive" to be the effect of the cause which is sincere.
I'm afraid you lost me with this.... can you make it a bit clearer
Laser Eyes
Jun26-03, 07:13 AM
I had always understood that (according to christian beliefs) when a person died, he/she remained in the grave until judgement day. At this time, he was either cast into hell, or welcomed to heaven.I wouldn't put too much faith in what the empire of Christendom says. Many beliefs taught by the mainstream Christian churches are not based on the Bible and are contradicted by the Bible. You can always test what people tell you by asking them to prove it to you. God does not ask for blind faith. The God of this universe is a reasonable God and he shows respect for the intellectual ability he gave us. If someone tells you that what they say is from the Bible then ask them to show you scriptural proof.
At judgment day those who have died have the hope of a resurrection. The Bible says there will be a resurrection and it will not be limited to those who have lived righteous lives: "I have hope in God, which they themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust." - Acts 24:15 As I explained above it will be a resurrection to an earth that has been transformed into a paradise, not this corrupt and screwed up world.
So, according to your beliefs/claims we will never meet our loved ones in heaven, or get chased around hell by the devil and his pitchfork?You won't meet them in heaven but you can meet them on earth. What a happy occasion that will be. To see your dead husband or wife or son or daughter again. To tell them the things you wanted to but never got around to. To see the love of your life again and know that you will never lose them again. The time of resurrection will be a most joyous time
maximus
Jun26-03, 11:24 AM
Originally posted by Iacchus32
Yes, but everybody would begin to do it to everybody else, until there was nobody left to do it to, and then what?
i don't quite know what you mean. do you mean that if everyone abandoned their morals, our society would kick the sh** out of itself? basically yes. but that doesn't happen becuase our biological evolution and the evolution of our society have drilled that gene out of us, for the most part.
But what makes us any better than the animals in the first place?
nothing makes us better than them. we are one! we control them because we've has more successful evolutions that have produced us. an intelligent, moral people. without morals society couldn't hold out. and without society we'de be back on square one, righting the sabertooth tigers. (joking!)
Or, if you follow them because it "seems right," then that proves you're "sincere." And therein lies the reward perhaps? [;)]
on the contrary, its very insicere! most people only obey the law because they realize the consiquences to theirselves, not others.
Actually it's kind of nice to know that people believe in the need for morals, that means there's still hope. [;)]
morals in society, yes. morals in the universe? no. it's a cold, impersonal world out there.
crystalbreeze32
Feb21-04, 07:25 PM
Birmingham dead man claims to be a spirit
------------------------------------------------------
This a strange one. A guy called Michael Pennington claims to be a spirit and having died in 1971 he is now involved in a global quest to unite all those in the spirit world. If that wasnt bad enought he involves alien spirits and all sorts of plots. This person touches on religion quite a lot and claims many Christians are narrow minded by accepting God but then blanking out all possibility of spirits and aliens. He points to actual things in the Bible that back up some of what he says.
Its actually well written and believable and it has quite a following. Page after page of writings and messages the longest forum thread I have ever seen for certain. This mans writings delve into every aspect of the supernatural, paranormal and religion and its happening live too.
Its at
http://www.birminghamuk.com/forum
Id love to know what other peoples thoughts are on ghosts and alien collaboration and other dimensions of spiritualism.
There is no third-person evidence for what happens to us (our soul, being, consciousness, spirit, whatever) after our death. It is immaterial what the Bible says on this, the Bible is not certain evidence of anything.
However all people who claim to know to know something about it, Gnostics, mystics, Buddhists, Tao-ists, etc., claim that we do not simply cease to exist on our phsyical death, the usual conclusion is that our 'self' ceases to exist but that we are more than our 'self'.
It seems then that what evidence there is, albeit that it's unprovable, suggests we do not simply evaporate on the death of our bodies. These same people assert that we (all) can know this, given the right appraoch to knowing.
Until there is some third-person evidence there is therefore no justification for assuming that we cease to exist completely when we die. It is just an arbitrary opinion.
As for morality, it may be that morality is relative and that there is no 'right' behaviour. However many people claim to know (as opposed to believe) the truth about reality and these people, however insane they may be, invariably choose the same moral standards and lifestyles as each other. This is quite a coincidence.
Until we can prove them wrong we have no idea whether morality is relative or entailed by the nature of our true selves. We don't know these things.
As for Bible's words on death it is worth reading the Gospel of Mary, which in many people's opinion gives a far more sophisticated and true version of Jesus's teaching than were given by the disciples. It is only a fragment but it is very obviously more Gnostic (and Buddhist) in its flavour and suggests pretty much the same as Buddhists and other non-dual doctrines do about death.
The Gospel of Mary suggests that the disciples, and thus the Church misunderstood Jesus's message on these issues, with unfortunate consequences. All IMVHO of course.
Originally posted by Canute
As for Bible's words on death it is worth reading the Gospel of Mary, which in many people's opinion gives a far more sophisticated and true version of Jesus's teaching than were given by the disciples. It is only a fragment but it is very obviously more Gnostic (and Buddhist) in its flavour and suggests pretty much the same as Buddhists and other non-dual doctrines do about death.
Thank you Canute, for the information. I read the Gospel of Mary on-line and must say it, for lack of a better word and no offence intended whatsoever, "redeemed" the image of Jesus in my mind. As a former covent school girl, I have always regarded him as a man who knew all about love but a bit dumbing-down in his teaching, "Certainly we are capable of understanding something deeper." would be my reaction every time after reading the Bible. The Gospel of Mary adds considerable sophistication to his teaching and depth to his character. I can believe now a man knowing what he knew as described in the Gospel would go about preaching the way he did and a tremendous sense of respect, warmth and gratitude is kindled in my heart. It is very unfortunate indeed that his teaching should not have been understood to the fullest extent. But that perhaps was inevitable given the historical context, the short span of time he stayed with the disciples and their aptitude. Buddha on the other hand had had nearly 6 decades (?) to expound his teaching to a large congregation of relatively accomplished monks and thinkers and therefore was better understood. Thank you again.
Polly
You might like to look at the Gospel of Thomas as well, another Gnostic version of events. Thanks for the thanks. Like you I found it an eye opener. IMO Mary's views should have been used to found the Church, not the dumbed down version of Peter et al.
As it is Mary's Gospel served as foundation for a number of Gnostic sects. However these were eventually harried out of existence by the church as being heretical, and we got stuck with a naive Sunday school interpretation of Jesus's words.
Good point about how much longer the Buddha taught than Jesus.
radagast
Mar18-04, 03:20 PM
Originally posted by Canute
However all people who claim to know to know something about it, Gnostics, mystics, Buddhists, Tao-ists, etc., claim that we do not simply cease to exist on our phsyical death, the usual conclusion is that our 'self' ceases to exist but that we are more than our 'self'.
[/B]
Depends on the Buddhists. Some don't believe in anything after death. [Buddhism w/o Beliefs - Stephen Batchelor]
To do Mr Batchelor justice, I paste below what I perceive to be the main thrust of his argument given in an interview in the USA on 18 April, 2000
Bammes: What, then, is essential to Buddhism as you explain it in Buddhism Without Beliefs, and what is cultural baggage that need not be included?
Batchelor: I think there is a danger in the very [term] "essential." Buddhism is in many ways an anti-essentialist tradition; in other words, it is very suspicious in much of its thinking of the idea that anything can be reduced to any sort of core or essence. I think it's more useful to look at this question in terms of what we can recognize as cultural rather than, let's say, Dharmic features.
I think here we have to go back to recognize that the Buddha himself, in 5th Century BC India, was, of course, speaking to a particular culture at a particular time, and it seems that he, necessarily was a product of that culture. He took on board, for example, the idea of reincarnation and so forth, without really questioning it. He never actually had to stand up in front of an audience and persuade people that there are many lifetimes from which you pass through from force of karma.
Bammes: This was the context . . .
Batchelor: This was the context of his time. It's very difficult for us to put ourselves back into another epoch so remote in time from our own. I think it's much the same as if, for example, someone were teaching today and simply spoke about the sense of the universe as having arisen from the Big Bang and the universe as being an expanding thing and so forth and so on. No one would actually stand up and say, "Wait a minute, I don't think that's true."
Bammes: Or the idea that humans evolved . . .
Batchelor: Or the idea that humans evolved from other forms of life. We simply take that for granted. Now it could be that in 500 years' time we could have a very different view of things. But that is the world that we collectively assent to, much in the same way that a view of life as consisting of many different rebirths and so on was the collective consensus in India at the time of the Buddha. Now the question, of course, and this is a very debatable one, is to what extent is that idea true and to what extent is it simply a feature of that world view. I dont have really any interest in declaring that rebirth is true or false. I cannot, from my own experience or from my own reflection, decide one way or the other. I have a hunch that it's probably a cultural idea.
Bammes: But your view is essentially an agnostic one, as opposed to an atheist, again using terms that listeners are going to understand, an agnostic view, saying, "I don't know and I don't need to know."
Batchelor: Yeah. I would actually describe my position as agnostic, but perhaps to be more exact, I would describe it as a deep agnosticism. In other words, I think one can take the Western notion of agnosticism one step further through the Buddhist tradition and recognize at the very heart of Buddhist practice lies an ongoing inquiry, and any kind of inquiry or questioning requires an openness to the fact that there is something about our lives, who we are, what the world is, that we do not know. Buddhism pursues that kind of inquiry and not-knowing through its various contemplative disciplines. The practice of awareness, of Vipassana, of Zen and so on are all ways of, as it were, penetrating into the very depths of our experience, and that, I think, always requires an openness to the fact that perhaps reality is not pin-down-able in neat, clear-cut assertions or beliefs, but there is something fundamentally mysterious about it, and it's in that sense, I think, that we can move from a superficial agnosticism in which, as you said, it's simply a statement of "I don't know and I'm actually not terribly interested," into taking the principle of agnosticism, of not knowing, as a kind of principle of spiritual and meditative inquiry.
So I would suspend judgement about many of the metaphysical beliefs of Buddhism, but at the same time, I would seek to elevate the critical thread that runs through Buddhist tradition to a somewhat higher level than it is often presented in the traditional schools. I think Buddhism has within itself its own tradition of skepticism, its own tradition of inquiry, that have many strong resonances with the kind of inquiry we would associate with Western philosophy and science.
What do I think? I think Mr. Batchelor is very misguided and removed from true buddhist teachings. He should have titled his book "An Agnostic Atheist's Uninformed View on Buddhism", but then that probably won't sell as well as "Buddhism without Beliefs".
Mr Batchelor should not be allowed near a microphone or a typewriter. He obviously knows as much about Buddhism as I do about flying a spaceship, and quite possibly less.
radagast
Mar19-04, 08:56 AM
Canute,
Yes, you have made the point before about myself, despite the prospect that I hope to be ordained within a year. I get the feeling you believe you have a corner on all Buddhist concepts, and those that disagree with you are not True Buddhists. Or was that Scotsman...
Your beliefs may harmonize strongly with certain schools of Buddhism, but it is highly parochial to assume that other schools, such as Zen, share these concepts or "are not True Buddhists" because they don't.
Originally posted by radagast Canute,
Yes, you have made the point before about myself, despite the prospect that I hope to be ordained within a year. I get the feeling you believe you have a corner on all Buddhist concepts, and those that disagree with you are not True Buddhists. Or was that Scotsman..
Are you agreeing with Batchelor rather than the Buddha?
Your beliefs may harmonize strongly with certain schools of Buddhism, but it is highly parochial to assume that other schools, such as Zen, share these concepts or "are not True Buddhists" because they don't. [/B]
[/quote]
I'm not interested in 'schools' and I'm not a Buddhist. However I know the Sutras and the world well enough to dismiss the sort of nonsense Batchelor talks in the quoted interview.
If you want to support what he says you'll have to be specific.
mhernan
Mar22-04, 02:00 AM
Originally posted by Laser Eyes
.
Let us look first of all at what God told Adam. After commanding Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God said: "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Note the consequence of disobedience. Adam would die. God did not say: "If you disobey me your physical body will die but you have an immortal soul that will go on living forever and you will suffer eternal punishment".
Let's move forward now to after Adam has eaten the forbidden fruit. God pronounces sentence on Adam and Eve and finishes with the statment: "For dust you are, and to dust you shall return." Here is a statement from God clearly explaining what death means. Adam would simply cease to exist. There is no mention of an immortal soul or eternal punishment in a fiery place of torment.
Let us look again at the bible and maintain a posture that the bible speaks the literal truth. Of course there is gross patterns of editing, but the truth does shine through.
I cannot read genesis to infer that god forbade Adam not eat the forbidden fruit a pure test of obedience. There was much more. Remember, the fruit was more than "tasting good". When the serpent confronted Eve who stated that god said they, Eve and Adam, would surely die on the day they ate the fruit. The serpent then told Eve that god knew they wouldn't die and that eating the fruit their eyes would open and they would know what is good and evil and hence become as god.
When god caught Adam and Eve and said all the things he is quoted as saying he ultimately clothed them in skins and sent them from the garden. Remember also that Adam and Eve were broughht to the garden, not to kick back and dig the good life, they were brought there to "tend" the garden. Once the couple ate the fruit and "became like god", as god himslef recognized, they were wortheless as "slaves", the position for which they were created in the first place. [God said , "let US make man in our image". Here, god is recognizing others equal to his status and he is talking to them gathered there at the time of the statement. Later in the bible god rants and raves about not ""taking another god before me", or else they die.] God just got someone else to work the garden. Also, remember that god was thankful, relieved is mroe like it, that Edam and Eve didn't eat from the tree of everlasting life. God couldn't have this.
Ask around. Is there any reason why mankind should be denied a quick access to knowledge of "good and evil"? You bet there is. If Laser Eyes and Mhernan knew of good and evil from the simple activity of digesting some substance, then where does that leave god who seems bent on maintaining control of the masses with his monotonous repeitition of the stupidest kind of moral limitations imaginable. If god has no ears that listen, and listen obediently, to his stiffling oratory, then the people are free. It is a reasonable to tell a young person, child etc, not to do drugs beacause they will "kill you". There is the obedience motivation by the parent, but it isn't obedience for obedience sake. The prohibition from using drugs is for the benefit of the child's health, though somewhat crudely and grossly presented..
I have a friend whjo told me that when she firsts smoked a joint that she spoke "This stuff shouldn't be illegal." The words are prophetic, because a policeman witnessing one smoking a joint will very likely kidnap them off the street and charge them with a crime. The moral of the story here is that my friend, whos's eyes were opened and became like god, saw correctly that she was good and that the policeman was evil.[!:)] [!:)]
ProtractedSilence
Apr8-04, 12:42 PM
Gen 1:16-17 “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."”
Gen 3:4-5 "The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! 5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Gen 3:22a “Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil;”
Before Adam ate the fruit, he was warned not to do something by God. Then Eve was persuaded, and Adam agreed with the alternate reality proposed by the serpent that if he ate the fruit he would be like God; knowing good from evil. After the event, we see two things: 1) God agrees that now they know good from evil. 2) They are not dead. What does this mean?
This passage is not talking about physical death, it is talking about spiritual death, i.e. separation from God. Why are they separated from God? They are separated because instead of choosing to use God as a reference for good and evil, the chose to “be like God, knowing good from evil.” What does being like God mean? It means choosing right and wrong for ourselves instead of relying on God’s standard or good and evil. The problem with this is that people weren’t designed to be able to do this, so that left our own, what we choose as good and evil violate God’s moral character, and he cannot relate to us because He is perfection and cannot accept our defects without compromising Himself.
The Bible talks all about life after death. It is everywhere. Here are some examples:
John 3:13-17 (Jesus speaking) “No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. 14 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
Luke 23: 42-43 “And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" 43 And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."
Gen 1:26-27 "Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
God did not create people to be servants. What does the all-powerful creator of everything need from us? Absolutely nothing. He made us to be rulers in this world, to have importance from being in charge and taking care of each other and the world. This is not the role of a servant.
ProtractedSilence in response to the following:
Here is the message that has just been posted:
mhernan posted that:
Gen 1:16-17 “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."”
Gen 3:4-5 "The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! 5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Gen 3:22a “Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil;”
Protracted Silence says:
Before Adam ate the fruit, he was warned not to do something by God. Then Eve was persuaded, and Adam agreed with the alternate reality proposed by the serpent that if he ate the fruit he would be like God; knowing good from evil. After the event, we see two things: 1) God agrees that now they know good from evil. 2) They are not dead.What does this mean?
ProtractedSilence continues:
This passage is not talking about physical death, it is talking about spiritual death, i.e. separation from God.
Mhernan replies thus
This passage does not distinguish between spiritual and physical death. This bifurcation belongs to ProtractedSilence alone. Clearly, Adam and Eve were using the “physical death”, dying, and meaning as we understand the word today. When I say, ”My grandmother died.” no one asks me if it was a spiritual or physical death. The death as presented by ProtractedSilence is modern dogma unsupported by Gospel.
ProtractedSilence continues:
Why are they separated from God? They are separated because instead of choosing to use God as a reference for good and evil, the chose to “be like God, knowing good from evil.”
Mhernan replies thus:
You are missing the point here.
Adam and Eve are completely ignorant of the subject matter of “good and evil”, remember?. My childhood dog was a smart puppy, but he knew nothing of “good and evil” either, at least not as I understood the subject. My short-lived goldfish were even further down the ladder of such silliness. Yet, ignorance is punished as a severe moral lapse? They didn’t know what a choice was.
ProtractedSilence continues:
What does being like God mean. It means choosing right and wrong for ourselves instead of relying on God’s standard of good and evil.
mhernan replies thus:
Is not this not what all our social interactions are supposed to produce? If one of us makes an error in choice the result can be extreme. Adam and Eve hadn’t a clue to what ProtractedSilence says is their “relying on God’s standard of good and evil”.
At least the bible is quoted properly, but ProtractedSilence’s input to the conversation is purely a personal opinion that I am sure jibs with the religious agenda of many Christians.
ProtractedSilence continues:
The problem with this is that people weren’t designed to be able to do this, so that left [on] our own, what we choose as good and evil violate God’s moral character, and he cannot relate to us because He is perfection and cannot accept our defects without compromising Himself.
mhernan replies thus:
I see nothing in the Bible that talks specifically of the design standards of human beings. However, in Gen 2-15 it says: ”And Jehovah God proceeded to take man and settle him in the garden of E’den to cultivate it and to take care of it.” We may rationally infer that God’s plans for the future of Adam and Eve were tending the garden of E’den.
So when “left on our own” violates God’s character! And he is unable to deal with those who show defects of “disobedience” and he is "all powerful"! In the confrontation with Adam and Eve where God discovers the ‘fruitful lunch’, God certainly does not appear as “morally compromised”. After scolding everybody concerned, he dressed Adam and Eve and sent them out of E’den “to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken”(Gen. 3:23).
God provided long garments of skin for Adam and his wife and to clothe them.” (Gen. 3:20)It seems God’s disenchantment has substantially subsided by this time.
Again, the input ProtractedSilence (yours) here is designed to corrupt the clear meaning of the words in the bible, whatever your conscious agenda may be. The phrase, “from which he had been taken” infers, not a God induced birth, but a selection of a pair of humans from a larger herd.
ProtractedSilence continues:
The Bible talks all about life after death. It is everywhere. Here are some examples:
John 3:13-17 (Jesus speaking) “No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. 14 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. 16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
mhernan replies thus:
It seems you have pointed to another essence of Christianity, not discussed in polite circles. Your selected passages do not discuss humans going “into heaven” as only those descended from heaven may ascend to heaven. The acceptance of Jesus as you’ve described only says that humans shall “have eternal life”, not a ticket to heavenly paradise.
Another mal-quoted Christian dogma, for many is the reference that God gave up something special by providing Jesus’ presence on earth, as if Jesus were gone forever from God’s relationship. It is offered as indicating that God gave something spiritually and personally dear to himself. But this cannot be the case as Jesus is reputed to have survived the “crucifixion” with extraordinary ease. And is not “going to Heaven” what its all about for most Christians? The question is, “What did Jesus or God give up for which we benefit?
ProtractedSilence continues:
Luke 23: 42-43 “And he was saying, "Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!" 43 And He said to him, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."
mhernan replies thus:
I suppose one might equate paradise and Heaven, yet two words are used, both signifying a grand place in the totality of it all, but not necessarily the same grand place.
ProtractedSilence continues:
Gen 1:26-27 "Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
God did not create people to be servants. What does the all-powerful creator of everything need from us? Absolutely nothing. He made us to be rulers in this world, to have importance from being in charge and taking care of each other and the world. This is not the role of a servant.
mhernan replies thus:
First, at the time the statement, “let us make man in our image . . .” describes a being talking to other beings of a similar stature. God, we conclude is one of many God’s. Certainly, Jehovah’s obsession with his flock taking up with other God’s and discarding Him, Jehovah, was more than anger stemming from a fractured ego.
God doesn’t need servants as he is all-powerful? Well, why then did God go trudging through the garden looking for Adam and Eve, and even call out “where are you?”. It is interesting that you deny God’s need of any of man’s services as he is all powerful, yet is unable to deal with a simple act of disobedience because of moral conflict. God made imperfect human beings and he punishes the humans for their imperfection, for God’s incompetence.
In Deuteronomy 3:3, Moses is quoting Jehovah as “Accordingly Jehovah our God gave into our hand also Og the King of Ba’shan and all his people, and we kept striking him until he had no survivor remaining. 3:4 and we went capturing all his cities at that particular time. There proved to be no town that we did not take from them, sixty cities, all the region of Ar’gob, the Kingdom of Og in Ba’shan. 3:5 All these were cities fortified with a high wall, doors and bar, aside from many rural towns.3:6 However, we devoted them to destruction, just as we had done to Si’hon the King of Hesh’bon, in devoting every city to destruction, men, women and little children. 3:7 And all the domestic animals and the spoil of the cities we took as plunder for ourselves.
Is this the spiritual entity that you present to us as a standard of morality?
ProtractedSilence
Apr9-04, 02:26 AM
I thought this was an opinion forum? Am I alone in my viewpoint among Christiniaty? No. Are there Christinians who will desagree with me? Most likely. Are there people who disagree with you? Yes, I am one., I’m sure there are more. Does that fact that any person agrees or disagrees with me impact the validity of my statements, not all.
If I really want to pull out all the stops, which among the two of us is an expert on the God of the Bible? I’m guessing its not you. I don’t think I’m an expert, but I have studied the Bible a lot, as well as other religions, and other philosophies. I have weighed and measured them, and I have chosen Christianity as the one that I want to pursue with my life, because it is the most consistent, and best supported of all of them. I have a relationship with the personal, all-powerful God of the universe, and you, whom I’m guessing has none of these qualifications, is going to scold my scholarship because it disagrees with some Christians and I might dare to express things in my own words so that they are concise?
The passage distinguishes spiritual death and physical death for itself. The wording is “in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” The Hebrew word for day here refers to a literal, 24 hour, day. So if God was telling the truth that they would die, they ate the fruit, but they did not perish after 24 hours, then it certainly didn’t mean physical death. But what did happen is that they were separated from God. They use to talk with Him and walk with Him in the garden, but they were cast out to never have that kind of relationship again (in their lifetime).
God says, “the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil.” This is coupled with the earlier, “in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” So on the day they eat of the fruit, they will suffer death. Does this mean that this terrible fruit causes the knowledge of good and evil? No. But when Adam and Eve choose to reject God’s wisdom, and eat the fruit despite his warning, they have chosen to determine good and bad for themselves. It is the action of choosing against God that institutes evil. They had always followed God’s wisdom before, so they didn’t know evil. But one day they decided to reject God’s say in their lives, and decide that what the serpent told them sounded better. Then they knew evil, because they chose against God.
I don’t understand this section of your comment:
“I see nothing in the Bible that talks specifically of the design standards of human beings. However, in Gen 2-15 it says: ”And Jehovah God proceeded to take man and settle him in the garden of E’den to cultivate it and to take care of it.” We may rationally infer that God’s plans for the future of Adam and Eve were tending the garden of E’den.
So when “left on our own” violates God’s character! And he is unable to deal with those who show defects of “disobedience” and he is "all powerful"! In the confrontation with Adam and Eve where God discovers the ‘fruitful lunch’, God certainly does not appear as “morally compromised”. After scolding everybody concerned, he dressed Adam and Eve and sent them out of E’den “to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken”(Gen. 3:23).
God provided long garments of skin for Adam and his wife and to clothe them.” (Gen. 3:20)It seems God’s disenchantment has substantially subsided by this time.
Again, the input ProtractedSilence (yours) here is designed to corrupt the clear meaning of the words in the bible, whatever your conscious agenda may be. The phrase, “from which he had been taken” infers, not a God induced birth, but a selection of a pair of humans from a larger herd.”
Will you please try rephrasing? Thanks
I think God gave them clothes because the ones they had made for themselves were pitiful. No one had taught them how to sew, and they used vines and fig leaves (about the size of a half dollar or smaller each) to try and make underwear. Adam and Eve were so embarrassed by them they were hiding behind a bush.
About the passage in John 3; You may want to look at the phrasing one more time, “No one has ascended (past tense) into heaven, but He who descended (past tense) from heaven: the Son of Man.” What is this saying? Nobody has gone there yet, except Jesus, who came from their already.
What are humans expecting out of this deal? The New Heavens and the New Earth. Check out Revelations 20 for what it will be like. God is going to remake the world, make a new Jerusalem, and God is going to live their among all the people who chose to believe in Him. It will be heaven on earth, because God will be living among us (formerly only happened in heaven). We will live eternally there, because that is how humans were intended to be from the start – only sidetracked by the fall of man.
What did Jesus give up? Well, quite a few things. He gave up 1) His powers as a supreme being, 2) He took on the fallen form of a humans and had to suffer here on earth like we do, including the death of his father Joseph 3) He gave up his right to be worshipped as God, because when He was killed almost everyone there was actively hating Him. 4) He took on extreme physical punishment and torture. 5) He suffered the sins of the world. Only an infinite being can suffer for the infinite past, present, and future sins of all humans. He took on the full brunt of Gods wrath. 6) It says in 2 Cor 5:21 “He made Him knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” So Jesus knew sin personally for the first time. 7) For jesus to be sin, God had to sever their connection that had existed since before creation. They had always been with each other, but when Jesus was suffering the worst thing possible in the world, he was also alone for the first time, unable to depend on God. This is why Jesus cries out in Matthew 27:46 “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” Interestingly, aside from describing his spiritual state, this is also a quote from Psalm 22:1. All of the Jews there would have recognized this immediately because these were their popular songs. In this Psalm of David, he describes being crucified; a practice which would not be invented for a few hundred years after David’s writing! All of the people standing there probably would have started to think, “huh, that’s crazy, that Psalm sure looks a lot like what’s happening here.”
Since when does the “image’ of something mean it is equal with the thing itself. Is my photograph of the Atlantic ocean the same as standing on the beach? The photograph represents the ocean, but it is not the same as the ocean, or of the same stature as the ocean. I think properly the deconstruction of this verse would be that: The other cultures surrounding the Israelites would eventually become obsessed with making idols of the God’s they worshipped. Yet the Israelites were prohibited of making idols of God. But God says when he creates people that He is making them in His own image. People were intended to be the representation, i.e. idol of God on earth. The way we are and interact was supposed to be representative of God. But we chose to stray from that path and instead we see only glimpses of God’s character in people.
Why did God call out “where are you?” It certainly wasn’t because he didn’t know where they were. He had just finished creating all the world and everything in it. But he did want to give Adam a chance to come and repent for what he had done. He could choose to face up to God for the wrong he had committed. God is a relational being, and the Bible is a record of His character and relationship with humans.
Why does God condone killing? It certainly wasn’t what he had intended for people, but because of the fallen nature of the world he will use destruction to accomplish his plans. God knows peoples hearts, and if he knows they will never accept Him, then if they die today compared to dying in 50 years doesn’t matter if they won’t ever choose Him. The point of our lives here is so that we each can come to have the opportunity to accept God into our hearts. It is a free choice, but God wants the relationship. If we choose against it, then we face an eternity (humans are eternal beings) without God. This eternity will also be devoid of what is good. So it will be an eternity without friendship, without joy, without love, but filled with pain sorrow, disappointment, etc. Basically, take all the crappy things from your life, and that is what hell will be like forever. But you will also know that you chose against God for certain.
God says, “the man has become like one of Us, wing good and evil.” This is coupled with the earlier, “in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” So on the day they eat of the fruit, they will suffer death. Does this mean that this terrible fruit causes the knowledge of good and evil? No. But when Adam and Eve choose to reject God’s wisdom, and eat the fruit despite his warning, they have chosen to determine good and bad for themselves. It is the action of choosing against God that institutes evil. They had always followed God’s wisdom before, so they didn’t know evil. But one day they decided to reject God’s say in their lives, and decide that what the serpent told them sounded better. Then they knew evil, because they chose against God.
Yes, it does mean that the fruit, that wasn’t terrible, it was particularly tasty. Take a scholarly look at Gen. 3:22, and Jehovah god went on to say: “Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil, and now in order that he may not put his hand out and actually take fruit also from the tree of life and eat and live to time indefinite,- “ Unless there is some scholarly interpretation that corrupts these words, I have to concluded that indeed it was the fruit that gave Adam and Eve godliness.
QUOTE=ProtractedSilence
I think God gave them clothes because the ones they had made for themselves were pitiful. No one had taught them how to sew, and they used vines and fig leaves (about the size of a half dollar or smaller each) to try and make underwear. Adam and Eve were so embarrassed by them they were hiding behind a bush.
QUOTE=mhernan] in response:
I see you’ve taken God’s side and condemned Adam and Eve with a smug sense of condescension..
About the passage in John 3; You may want to look at the phrasing one more time, “No one has ascended (past tense) into heaven, but He who descended (past tense) from heaven: the Son of Man.” What is this saying? Nobody has gone there yet, except Jesus, who came from their already.
What are humans expecting out of this deal? The New Heavens and the New Earth. Check out Revelations 20 for what it will be like. God is going to remake the world, make a new Jerusalem, and God is going to live their among all the people who chose to believe in Him. It will be heaven on earth, because God will be living among us (formerly only happened in heaven). We will live eternally there, because that is how humans were intended to be from the start – only sidetracked by the fall of man.
What did Jesus give up? Well, quite a few things. He gave up 1) His powers as a supreme being, 2) He took on the fallen form of a humans and had to suffer here on earth like we do, including the death of his father Joseph 3) He gave up his right to be worshipped as God, because when He was killed almost everyone there was actively hating Him. 4) He took on extreme physical punishment and torture. 5) He suffered the sins of the world. Only an infinite being can suffer for the infinite past, present, and future sins of all humans. He took on the full brunt of Gods wrath. 6) It says in 2 Cor 5:21 “He made Him knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” So Jesus knew sin personally for the first time. 7) For Jesus to be sin, God had to sever their connection that had existed since before creation. They had always been with each other, but when Jesus was suffering the worst thing possible in the world, he was also alone for the first time, unable to depend on God. This is why Jesus cries out in Matthew 27:46 “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?”
in response:
The item of most interest in the above is your reference to Jesus’ statement Matthew 27:46 “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” Why didn’t you quote the other books and what Jesus was supposed to have said? They are all different. In any event we are so far apart on this issue there cannot be closure.
I read the story of the crucifixion as a propaganda scam. Pilate in all four books judges Jesus innocent of any criminal activity, then abruptly changes his mind. Other than in John, there were no witnesses to the actual crucifixion, and friends of Jesus were watching from “afar’. Joseph of Aramaeus a rich and “secret’ supporter of Jesus probably bribed Pile to carry out a sham killing. The event took place in or near, Joseph’s garden and new unused tomb. Jesus was drugged in three of the stories just before “dying”.
Since when does the “image’ of something mean it is equal with the thing itself. Is my photograph of the Atlantic ocean the same as standing on the beach? The photograph represents the ocean, but it is not the same as the ocean, or of the same stature as the ocean. I think properly the deconstruction of this verse would be that: The other cultures surrounding the Israelites would eventually become obsessed with making idols of the God’s they worshipped. Yet the Israelites were prohibited of making idols of God. But God says when he creates people that He is making them in His own image. People were intended to be the representation, i.e. idol of God on earth. The way we are and interact was supposed to be representative of God. But we chose to stray from that path and instead we see only glimpses of God’s character in people.
The ideas in the passage above aren’t yours. You adopted them. All the references to what God wants us to be or not to be is pure propaganda control freak crap Yes, we were made in the physical likeness of God. And from the history of God we have developed some of his peculiarities, one of which is the endless and repetitious engaging in warfare of the most hideous and brutal kind imaginable. And this is the entity in which you choose to spend eternity? You can have my seat on the space ship in the sky.
A “holier than thou” attitude leaks through your writings and arguments. You should really do something about that.
Why did God call out “where are you?” It certainly wasn’t because he didn’t know where they were. He had just finished creating all the world and everything in it. But he did want to give Adam a chance to come and repent for what he had done. He could choose to face up to God for the wrong he had committed. God is a relational being, and the Bible is a record of His character and relationship with humans.
Why does God condone killing? It certainly wasn’t what he had intended for people, but because of the fallen nature of the world he will use destruction to accomplish his plans. God knows peoples hearts, and if he knows they will never accept Him, then if they die today compared to dying in 50 years doesn’t matter if they won’t ever choose Him. The point of our lives here is so that we each can come to have the opportunity to accept God into our hearts. It is a free choice, but God wants the relationship. If we choose against it, then we face an eternity (humans are eternal beings) without God. This eternity will also be devoid of what is good. So it will be an eternity without friendship, without joy, without love, but filled with pain sorrow, disappointment, etc. Basically, take all the crappy things from your life, and that is what hell will be like forever. But you will also know that you chose against God for certain.
in response.
Actually, my life is rich and fulfilled and I do not have to wait for some space alien to come down from up there and make me whole. I really can do this by myself.
It is a striking moment in paradox and ambiguity when you are forced to defend the violence and brutality of your chosen God. of which you seem so fond. I think that you are terrified of going against such speculated and awesome terror. You would have made the perfect obedient German SS doing the nasty for the Nazi’s.
Morality from a book written, edited, rewritten and reedited dozens of times from who knows how many editors, will there ever be an end to such drab stupidity? Everybody having a finger in the writing of the bible has been dead for thousands of years. The book is a childish fairy tale that has not attracted all that many people when you count h number of Christians, most of which who go to church and have someone else tell them about their spiritual future. Enjoy your stay with the devil, ProtractedSilence. You sure picked a winner. I hope didn’t pay a lot of money for your scholarly endeavors. :cool: :cool:
olde drunk
Apr9-04, 09:30 AM
guys, c'mon. the old texts were written in a dead language (aramaic) which can't even be acurately translated today. over the centuries, they have been translated into greek, latin, arabic, etc etc BY HUMANS for POLITICAL purposes.
now any church elder would be honestly motivated, but there would be a bias to slant and translation, rewite toward his particular discipline. this happened over and over again. we are NOT reading the word of any god. we are reading what someone wrote down of what someone else said, that was later translated and, yes, corrupted!
all with good intentions. unfortunately, we have reached a point in our human evolution where we don't need to follow the old text, literally. they are words of wisdom to be used however we find them useful in daily life.
it is time to grow up and think for ourselves. if we got the guts to try. being 100% responsible for my reality and my future is a scary idea that i embrace with enthusiasm.
some might think that i blaspheme(sp), who cares? i am not affraid of my god. whoever or whatever s/he/it is. i've been walking and talking this idea for over 30 years and no lightening bolt. now, don't say 'yet'. that's part of the immature foolishness of olde time religion.
peace,
I can't follow this argument in the details but it feels like the Biblical metaphor of the tree of knowledge and the appearance of right and wrong is being taken too literally.
Lau Tsu wrote "Because right and wrong appeared the way was injured". This seems more accurate. Right and wrong are human inventions, invented the moment we started eating from the tree. That is, human beings created the (traditional western concept of) right and wrong. As Hamlet said "There's nought good or bad but man doth make it so".
I'd suggest that the eating if the fruit from the tree of knowledge was not a one off event in the past, and that the metaphor is warning for the present as well, a teaching rather than a story.
"Sin as such does not exist". Jesus -Gospel of Thomas.
ProtractedSilence
Apr9-04, 10:10 AM
Almost none of the Bible was written in Aramaic. The old testament was written in Hebrew, and we have both people who speak it today, as well as theological "dissertations" about it from 2000 or more years ago as to the meaning - so we knw what it meant to the culture then.
The New Testament was written in Greek, the language of the Roman empire. Jesus spoke both languages (Aramaic and Greek), so some of his quotes are translated from aramaic into Greek at the time of writing.
The NT that you see in a modern bible, NASB, NRSV, NIV, etc. are taken from manuscripts dating from as earlier as 120 A.D. to 300 A.D. written in Greek and translated once into English. There are more than 1000 complete manuscripts from this time period that are compared and checked against one another to make sure of accuracy.
The O.T. is taken from texts written in Hebrew from 980 A.D. But since the finding of the Dead Seas Scrolls (1959 I believe), the 980 A.D. texts were checked and compared with the 175-200 B.C. text portions found there. They were found to be 95% identical, and the other 5% was from spelling changes and slips of the pen that made no difference to the connotation of the verses (spelling changes of place names etc, not spelling changes of verbs mostly).
The honest truth is that what each of us believes doesn't really have bearing on changing what the truth is. We don't get to just make up God's that bend to our will. Quite the contrary, the all-powerful and merciful creator God of the universe came first, and we do not alter his reality. Why would God lightning bolt you? He is trying to give you as many opportunities as possible to know Him.....but if you do not ask for His forgiveness (take the first step, ask God to show Himself to you with honesty...he will answer) then you will get to the end of your life and know for certain that you lived for a lie, and that you have nothing...and that it is too late to ask for forgiveness.
ProtractedSilence
Apr9-04, 10:14 AM
I do not accept Gospels other than what are in a modern Bible (NASB, NRSV, NIV, etc) for the same reason they were orignally discluded. They were not written by people who had seen Christ resurrected, and this is shown by the way they are self-inconsisten as well as inconsistent with the other Gospels and non-biblical historical records, as well as not fitting the OT prophecy about Christ.
I do not accept Gospels other than what are in a modern Bible (NASB, NRSV, NIV, etc) for the same reason they were orignally discluded. They were not written by people who had seen Christ resurrected, and this is shown by the way they are self-inconsisten as well as inconsistent with the other Gospels and non-biblical historical records, as well as not fitting the OT prophecy about Christ.
I think this is a mistake, although I know I can't prove it. I'm not sure either if seeing Christ resurrected is a necessary qualification for telling the truth. It seems a rather arbitrary way of deciding whose story to believe.
Most modern scholars, a number of the disciples at the time, and many would say Jesus himself saw Mary as the person who understood his teachings best.
There's more to the story of Mary then meets the eye, and the authenticity of the records of her later teachings are no more doubtful than for other writings of the time. Although she gives a more Gnostic interpretation of Jesus's words than Peter's this does not help us decide whether his or her understanding was the better one. Gnostic records or interpretations of those teachings were weeded out as the Church developed, and in the process Mary was demoted to reformed prostitute. Her teachings, on which a number of early Gnostic sects were founded, were declared heretical, as eventually was Gnosticism of any kind. However all this does not help us decide whether the Gnostic teachings of Jesus should be ignored, or whether the Gnostic records and interpretation of Jesus's teachings are wrong.
Of course it's hard to know exactly what really happened and what is true about all these things, and I certainly can't prove anything. However the Gnostic interpretation of Jesus's teachings makes him a far greater teacher than he is in Peter's interpretation, on which the Church was later built. As he is presented in the Gospels of Mary and Thomas what he taught is what Chuang Tsu, the Buddha and other great teachers taught, not a belief in a metaphysically implausible anthropomorphic God outside of oneself.
You may not agree with this, but I think it's worth looking into this before completely making your mind up. What Jesus says in Thomas and Mary does not contradict what Jesus says in the Bible, it's just deeper, it's what lies behind what he says in the Bible, the technical reasons for why the stuff about morality and love is true.
This is only my opinion and I am well aware of that. All I'm saying is that it's worth considering. The non-Biblical Gospels do not contradict the Biblical ones and there doesn't seem to be any reason to ignore them. (There's loads of stuff online).
ProtractedSilence
Apr10-04, 02:17 PM
Canute,
I should look into the Gospel of Mary more, haven't read anything about it. As far as I am aware, my earlier comments are ture about why specific Gospels were chosen to be put in the cannon. Another reason some were excluded was because their authenticity could not be determined.
I don't think that Mary understood Jesus better than the disciples. He was living and teaching to them, and they are the ones he took along on His ministry. He specifically commisioned them to go and testify about what they had been taught by Him:
John 15:26,27 "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, 27 and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning."
I can see the argument being made that Mary was with Jesus from the beginning, but he is speaking this to the disciples. Additionally, the disciples have not been with Him from the beginning of his life, although they have been with Him from the beginning of His ministry.
The ideas of Jesus are more revolutionary and mind-expanding in the Bible than they are in the Gospel of Thomas. I don't know about the Gospel of Mary. Be careful not to try your hardest to find scripture of Jesus that makes Him sound "eastern," if in fact what we do have does not portray Him that way at all. In my mind "eastern" philosophy has a lot of problems on its own, primarily that if everything is part of the same oneness or God, then this means that bad is part of God as well. Thus there is no inherent preference for good over bad, and evil is not wrong. It is as good to murder babies as to take in orphans, because it all part of the same system.
Canute,
I don't think that Mary understood Jesus better than the disciples. He was living and teaching to them, and they are the ones he took along on His ministry. He specifically commisioned them to go and testify about what they had been taught by Him:
From my reading of Mary I don't agree. For the first time Jesus made some sense to me when I read it. Here's some links in case.
http://members.tripod.com/~Ramon_K_Jusino/magdalene.html
http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm
http://www.thenazareneway.com/the_gospel_of_mary_magdalene.htm
John 15:26,27 "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, 27 and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning."
It has been conjectured that Mary may be responsible for the Gospel of John. (I wouldn't have a clue, but the argument put forward made sense).
The ideas of Jesus are more revolutionary and mind-expanding in the Bible than they are in the Gospel of Thomas.
Afarid I completely disagree.
I don't know about the Gospel of Mary. Be careful not to try your hardest to find scripture of Jesus that makes Him sound "eastern," if in fact what we do have does not portray Him that way at all.
What he says in Thomas and Mary has a strong 'non-dual' flavour. I'm not reading anything extra into it (I hope).
In my mind "eastern" philosophy has a lot of problems on its own, primarily that if everything is part of the same oneness or God, then this means that bad is part of God as well. Thus there is no inherent preference for good over bad, and evil is not wrong. It is as good to murder babies as to take in orphans, because it all part of the same system.
This is a serious misunderstanding of Buddhism, Taoism etc. Sin has a relative existence, but not an absolute one. Just think for a moment, when did a Buddhist last murder a baby rather than take in an orphan?
In Thomas Jesus says "sin as such does not exist". This is consistent with 'eastern' teachings. However it is a mistake to think that this contradicts his Biblical teachings. In Thomas he gets more 'cosmological' in his approach and things get more subtle.
I suspect the reason that Jesus's gnostic teachings were dumped was because they are easy to misunderstand, as are eastern teachings on the same subject, as your (rather offensive) baby murdering example illustrates.
ProtractedSilence
Apr10-04, 03:15 PM
What I was trying to illustrate with baby-murdering is that Buddhism (and Hinduism, Taoism) are self inconsistent. They say on one hand, everything is part of the oneness, because there is good there must be bad to balance it out, and that you should stop seeing bad and good and just realize that everything is. The implication of this is that doing bad and doing good is exactly the same. In fact all actions are neutral if they are all part of God.
However, on the other hand those faiths hold out a moral code that says you should act in certain ways. A moral code of any kind contradicts the foundation of those faiths in their deference to everything being God. I know that most Buddhists don't murder babies with a knife, etc, but by their religion, murdering babies should be just as acceptable as helping orphans because it is all part of God.
No for a real example of what Buddhism IS like, I will describe Buddhism in Cambodia. I haven't been yet (Aug. 12!), but several of my roommates have. In Cambodia, being a Buddhist monk is the easiest thing you can do. You get free food, free education, and you don't have to work. For half of each day the monks go out and beg for food to feed themselves. They tend to go to the poorest people and get them to give up the little they have. These people are susceptible because their lives are so bad. They think that a hope at a better reincarnation is the only thing they have going for them, since they sit starving and dying of AIDS in this life.
A few years ago in Phnom Penh (the capital), there was a section of the city occupied by squatters. The government decided that they wanted to use the land and so they told the squatters to leave. But they didn't have any place to go, since they were already living illegally on the property. So one night a fire mysteriously broke out among the shacks and it soon consumed the homes and all of the possessions of 500 families. Government trucks showed up in the middle of the night and loaded all of the people up and took them out to a rural field and dropped them off, giving each family a tarp and a bag of rice. Now there was not even the possibility of them working, because they were so far from any city. They did the best they could setting up homes and trying to feed themselves. My friends visited them one day trying to provide relief supplies (food and first aid), when they saw a Buddhist monk going from hut to hut begging for food. Well-fed, he was taking from people who had absolutely nothing. Many of the men of these families were obviously dying from AIDS and had open sores, especially on their faces and lips. My friends were very angry that a monk would do this to people - killing them by taking their food. They started to take photographs of him so that hopefully they could do something about it (either in Cambodia or U.S.). When the monk saw the camera, he ran away quickly - he knew his exploitation of these people was wrong.
This is the state of Buddhism at least in Cambodia. It is murdering children - through hunger, and hopefully people will start to care that there is right in wrong in the world soon.
What I was trying to illustrate with baby-murdering is that Buddhism (and Hinduism, Taoism) are self inconsistent. They say on one hand, everything is part of the oneness, because there is good there must be bad to balance it out, and that you should stop seeing bad and good and just realize that everything is. The implication of this is that doing bad and doing good is exactly the same. In fact all actions are neutral if they are all part of God.
You are not alone in thinking this. It is not a simple issue. Good and bad both exist and do not exist in Buddhism,and ultimate reality is undifferentiatied, as you say. However this does not mean that Buddhists do not behave according to what is right and what is wrong. They just have a different way of looking at it, they would say a deeper or more 'cosmological' way.
The problem is that on the surface Buddhists appear to make contradictory assertions about right and wrong. However they are not contradictory as far as Buddhists are concerned. For Buddhists it is simply in the nature of reality that there are two aspect to the truth of such questions, depending on how you look at it.
This is hard to explain. However if you check you'll see that Buddhists have the highest regard for Jesus and his teachings, and some say he was an enlightened being, so that should reassure you a bit.
However, on the other hand those faiths hold out a moral code that says you should act in certain ways. A moral code of any kind contradicts the foundation of those faiths in their deference to everything being God.
There is another way of looking at it. Buddhism is the practice of the Middle Way. It has a 'non-dual' epistemology. By that I mean that Buddhist thinking is different to 'normal' thinking. The best analogy I can find is that it is like quantum mechanics. If you ask a physicist whether a fundamental entity is a particle or a wave the answer is yes and no, it depends how you look at it.
For a Buddhist the world itself is like this. It has two aspects, appearance and reality, just as Plato said. Whether there is such a thing as right and wrong depends on how you look at it. Ultimately no, but here and now very definitely. It's worth looking into the Buddhist idea of 'right living' and 'right thinking' if you're in any doubt that they have moral precepts.
I know that most Buddhists don't murder babies with a knife, etc, but by their religion, murdering babies should be just as acceptable as helping orphans because it is all part of God.
Yep, it does look like that. Many people would agree with you. However it's a misunderstanding. Some people think that it's nihilistic for similar reasons. Unfortunately trying to understand Buddhist teachings without practicing meditation is like trying to understand sex from a book without ever having had it. You can figure some of it out, but only just so much.
I'm not commenting on your story because if you are going to base your opinion of Buddhism on opinionated second hand stories ike that then you're not worth talking to about it. I had you down as more honest than that.
Do you really know enough about Buddhism to have made up your mind about it? Buddhists behave much like Christians, so how can their underlying beliefs seriously contradict those of Christians?
olde drunk
Apr10-04, 07:04 PM
how can anyone believe that they are bad? why would god create a bad person? who thought up this idea of 'original sin'?
that sounds like one of the biggest parts of christian dogma, created to control the faithful.
Silence, if you think you are bad by nature, how can you do good?
within the temporal world we need values of good and bad to maintain organization within society. in the timeless infinity, all just is. part of the expansion of all that is, growing and expanding through experience.
canute, from what little i've read the Essenes were very eastern in their society. this would indicate that christ did have an eastern bias in his teachings. isn't that where he spent his missing years?
peace,
canute, from what little i've read the Essenes were very eastern in their society. this would indicate that christ did have an eastern bias in his teachings. isn't that where he spent his missing years?
peace,
Interesting thought. What was the Essene doctrine?
Scott Sieger
Apr11-04, 08:12 AM
Protracted Silence, I admit I smiled a knowing smile when I read your story about an example Buddhism in Cambodia.
The knowing smile being a reaction to yet another example of how all religious ideologies are corruptable by vested interests.
This I am sure you already know.
I have had experience of so called buddhist monk sponsored and funded by his impoverished family who spends his spare time reading porn and surfing the internet for Cyber sex. He also is accused of abusing his younger sisters....You say yes another example of a corrupt religion.
But no this is not another example of a corrupt religion but more that of a corrupt person or a person who has failed in his attempts to see right, think right and act right....
With regard to Buddhism not many can claim to have even got close to what the Buddha was trying to teach. The same could be said for the Christ and other phrophets etc.
For to achieve the religious ideal is no mean feat....
This is why I hold the belief or position that the only good religion is the one you create for yourself......it is then up to you and only you whether you succeed of fail.
olde drunk
Apr11-04, 12:25 PM
Interesting thought. What was the Essene doctrine?
i read about this back in the late 60's or early 70's. don't remeber source. but the essenes wrote the dead sea scrolls according to my memory and they are much more eastern than orthodox christianity.
as i said before, we will all believe what we want or need to believe at a particular moment for our own growth. there really are no 'wrong' beliefs.
if i follow a doctrine religiously (lol) when it proves to have unanswered questions,i will see a better way sooner. it is the casual believer that seldom advances. that may not be his focus in this life. he maybe more intent on learning to love family, unconditionally. or how to manage relationships and not care about the big picture. that's for another time and place.
biggest problem with christianity is that the major tenet is that you must believe in christ to gain heaven. i often think of the remote peasant leading a very happy, productive and honest life. he can't read and has no particular belief. somehow, someway christ is supposed to be made known to him. if he doesn't accept he is damned for eternity. Why??
peace
olde drunk
Apr11-04, 12:27 PM
Scott:
all that can be said is, AMEN!
einsteinian77
Apr11-04, 01:25 PM
Revelation to John "I was once dead but now I'm alive forever and ever, I hold the keys to both death and HADES". Thats only one among many references to which the bible mentions hell. You also mention that the bible has no mentioning of immortal souls, again in Revelation to John he talks about his vision of decapitated souls.
olde drunk
Apr11-04, 06:18 PM
Interesting thought. What was the Essene doctrine?
long ago memories are poor. went to
http://www.essene.com/GospelOfPeace/
the gospel of peace reads like eastern and american indian, mother earth and father creator. god is within us all, we are one with god, etc
these are the scroll translations of what jesus said. sound better than the accepted books.
have fun, peace,
ProtractedSilence
Apr12-04, 04:11 PM
Canute,
I still have not read your links about Gospel of Mary. I have put it off temporarily because of pressing matters, but I have not forgotten and will look into it.
I will take your word for Buddhism being deeper than my understanding and it being a complicated issue. I appreciate your attempts to explain it to me and would like to hear more on the subject so that I can understand as much as possible.
Why do Buddhists think Jesus deserves high regard or enlightened? I am curious. It does not comfort me at all however; Jesus only deserves to be acknowledged as the son of God and the ruler of the universe. Check out Jesus' response to someone calling Him teacher:
Luke 18:18,19 "A ruler questioned Him, saying, "Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 19 And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone."
I'm not basing my opinion on Buddhism only on this story, I base it on my understanding by reading about it. But the story does reside in my consciousness. It is a factual account, and it is not just about one monk doing this, but a whole country of them. It was a daily occurrence to see monks taking from the poor, except when the poor are in need of food or medicine, the monks do not help them. Cambodians are angry about Buddhism and calling for a new religion in that country. These are first hand accounts of my friends, and they carry just as much weight as your "experience" of Buddhism to explain it to me. Regardless, I will be there in August to see for myself.
From the Christian viewpoint I would say that people do things like this, all people including Christians, because they are sinful and can't help but to be selfish and to hurt others. But if I try to explain this monk stealing from the poor with Buddhist teaching, how does it play out? What happens when you are a representative of someone looking for enlightenment but act opposite to the eightfold path? Where is the explanation for people's wrong actions? All life may be suffering, but how do you explain the people who impose suffering?
I also disagree with Buddhism because it posits the solution to problems as ultimate suicide. Life is suffering, and if you don’t work to improve your spiritual standing you will come back again and suffer more. The only solution is to attempt to be enlightened so you will stop being reborn and no longer have consciousness as you enter into nirvana. I don’t want to be eternally dead. I want to be eternally alive with the living God.
The Bible says that people are sinful and separating from God because of our individual choices to rebel against God, and also original sin. God create men perfect, but our free will led us away from Him.
Genesis 1:26-28,31 “Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." […] 31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
Genesis 2:16,17 “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."”
Genesis 3:6 “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”
King David realized his sinfulness very well:
Psalm 14:1-3 “The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."
They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds;
There is no one who does good.
2
The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men
To see if there are any who understand,
Who seek after God.
3
They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt;
There is no one who does good, not even one.”
Psalm 51:3-6 “3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak
and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.”
Jesus also speaks of our innate sinfulness; see the Luke passage above, and this below:
John 3:19 “"This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.”
Now to answer your question more fully olde drunk: Man was created with characteristics like God. These characteristics were altered by Adam’s choice, but they were not erased. The good that people do is from their Godly character, but there is no person that can do only good; it is impossible for man.
Romans 3:24 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
Entering a relationship with Christ changes this dynamic however, because we are released from sin and he is working through us (we still continue to sin, but it is a choice to do it, instead of an unalterable reaction 1 John 1:8 “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.”):
Phil 2:12-16 “So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. 14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing; 15 so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, 16 holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.”
Romans 6:10-14 “For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
Scott,
As you have pointed out, and I hope I have shown through this post, I am fully aware that people are often bad representatives of the people they say they are following. However, I would argue that Buddhism does not have consistent idea to show why good things should be done when good and evil are a part of everything = a part of God. Why is God bad? Why should I follow a bad God?
As to your comment about making your own religion. I think you should think about whether your thoughts or ideas about God would affect the character of God. I may have the wrong conception of God in some ways now, and my ideas about what he is like may change over time, but all of this is a shift in my mind, and not God changing.
Seek out what the truth is and don’t settle for a contraption of your mind. If you set the bar for your “religion” so low that you automatically succeed, what’s the point? I can make up my own religion and the only tenet would be: You must eat something every day. I would almost guarantee that I would be able to do this every day and be confident right now of my success. But what does it matter? Is God really pleased that I eat every day? In fact, don’t most humans do this anyway without making a solemn vow?
I think the really compelling thing about Christianity is you CAN have this surety about your relationship with God, and in the same time it is not a trivial matter. To know you have succeeded in your relationship and that you will be with God for eternity all you must do is: 1) Think about your life so far and admit that at least some time, you have made mistakes, and probably have hurt other people at some time. 2) Realize that as you continue in life, you are still always going to make mistakes and hurt people no matter how hard you try. 3) Ask God to be the leader of your life, and to apply the payment for these mistakes that Jesus already made by His death to your life.
If you do this in honesty, you are saved, and you have succeeded. God has a lot more to offer than this, but if you do this only, you are saved, will be with God in eternity, and God will give a part of himself, the Holy Spirit, to live inside of you for the rest of this life. There are many other promises that God makes to those who choose this as well, but this is already getting too long. I will list some of them in a later message if anyone has the desire.
long ago memories are poor. went to
http://www.essene.com/GospelOfPeace/
the gospel of peace reads like eastern and american indian, mother earth and father creator. god is within us all, we are one with god, etc
these are the scroll translations of what jesus said. sound better than the accepted books.
have fun, peace,
Thanks for the link. I should have checked out the Essenes before. I agree with you that the Essene teachings make more sense of Jesus than the official writings, if that's what you meant. Nearly all the good stuff on Jesus seems to have been left out of the Bible!
Canute,
Why do Buddhists think Jesus deserves high regard or enlightened? I am curious. It does not comfort me at all however; Jesus only deserves to be acknowledged as the son of God and the ruler of the universe.
The teachings of Jesus are consistent with those of the Buddha, and those found in the Gnostic gospels are the same underneath the details.
"A university student while visiting Gasan asked him: "Have you ever read the Christian Bible?" "No read it to me," said Gasan. The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: "And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. . . . Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." Gasan said: "Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man."
The student continued reading: "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened." Gasan remarked: "That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood."
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Luke 18:18,19 "A ruler questioned Him, saying, "Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 19 And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone."
Not sure why you've quoted this but elsewhere Jesus also says "Sin as such does not exist" (Thomas Gospel). On this point Jesus, Gnosticism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc all seem to agree.
I'm not basing my opinion on Buddhism only on this story, I base it on my understanding by reading about it. But the story does reside in my consciousness. It is a factual account, and it is not just about one monk doing this, but a whole country of them. (snip) ...What happens when you are a representative of someone looking for enlightenment but act opposite to the eightfold path? Where is the explanation for people's wrong actions? All life may be suffering, but how do you explain the people who impose suffering?
I don't know enough about this to comment really. I find it odd. If it's true then I would say the best way to look at it is that Cambodia is giving up Buddhism with the monks leading the way.
I also disagree with Buddhism because it posits the solution to problems as ultimate suicide.
Another misunderstanding I'm afraid, but a common one. Buddhism is not nihilistic. Every Buddhist whoever became enlightened has been happy with the truth and nobody on record has ever complained. Buddhism is characterised by Buddhists as the serious pursuit of happiness, not suicide.
Life is suffering, and if you don’t work to improve your spiritual standing you will come back again and suffer more. The only solution is to attempt to be enlightened so you will stop being reborn and no longer have consciousness as you enter into nirvana. I don’t want to be eternally dead. I want to be eternally alive with the living God.
'Suffering' does not necessarily mean pain and anguish. It just means that for living beings all things are unsatisfactory, transient, ultimately unfullfulling. Buddhist are after something permanent. In your terms you might say they seek to become one with God, although this more like the God of Spinoza than of the Bible.
As you have pointed out, and I hope I have shown through this post, I am fully aware that people are often bad representatives of the people they say they are following. However, I would argue that Buddhism does not have consistent idea to show why good things should be done when good and evil are a part of everything = a part of God. Why is God bad? Why should I follow a bad God?
This is a misunderstanding. Buddhist moral precepts are more stringent and more closely practiced than those of most doctrines. It is not easy to disentagle Buddhist morality if you're used to basing your morality on some external yardstick like God. But in Buddhism the yardstick is internal. Spinoza arrived at the same view. His God was also not good or bad, for he realised that something that is absolute cannot have intrinsic attributes, only relative ones.
I think the really compelling thing about Christianity is you CAN have this surety about your relationship with God,
Ok - but in Christianity this relationship is based on belief. In Buddhism beliefs are discouraged. (Not arguing for it but just noting the differences).
olde drunk
Apr13-04, 08:22 AM
Gee, do you think they had an agenda?
i particularly liked where jesus says to live life and not read scriptures. the scriptures are dead; they were written by dead people.
why would they leave out such information??
peace,
Ok - but in Christianity this relationship is based on belief. In Buddhism beliefs are discouraged. (Not arguing for it but just noting the differences).
But I will =)
Well, the Buddha explicitly told his followers not to believe his teachings, but to try and realise them themselves. Kinda like a challenge to prove or disprove (although, not quite).
The interesting point is that everybody has the potential/ability to realise the truth, ppl just need to go about it the right way to be able to do so.
The ONLY thing that faith is required on, is the ultimate goal of Buddhism - nibbana... ie, that by doing such and such, it will be gained. Note also, that that goal is achievable in this lifetime itself...(and has been achieved by many ppl since Buddhism appeared)
ProtractedSilence
Apr13-04, 12:29 PM
I already mentioned that I do not accept Apocrypha or Gnostic texts. THey have obvious inaccuracies and were not verifiable in terms of authorship. There is no place in the "official" Bible that says "sin does not exist"
Buddhists may be pursuing happiness as you say, but what they look to for their ultimate goal is the recombination with everything, where consciousness ceses to exist. I say this is what the athiests say happens when you die...your atoms recombine with the universe and you cease to exist as a person. Since Buddhists hope for this state, and work towards it, I call it suicide.
I disagree with your comment about absolutes and relatives. Only an absolutes can have intrinsic values. As a non-absolute being, everything I seek to define myself by is by my relationship or comparison to it. My only hope is to compare myself to an absolute with intrinsic attributes, so that I really know where I am in the cosmos.
to olde drunk: Where does Jesus say to not read the scripture? I'd like to see it. The Bible says that the law is dead, and to live by the spirit, but also to study the Apostles teaching.
olde drunk
Apr13-04, 01:01 PM
to olde drunk: Where does Jesus say to not read the scripture? I'd like to see it. The Bible says that the law is dead, and to live by the spirit, but also to study the Apostles teaching.
http://www.essene.com/GospelOfPeace/
about half way through the gospel of peace, in fact i believe he said it several times.
very serious question: who will you believe - the official bible -- or --- alternate sources that have no reason to claim they are special.
peace,
ProtractedSilence
Apr13-04, 04:11 PM
o.k. I will be very plain. There are good reasons why the books that were chosen to be in the Bible were. Here is a webpage describing them:
http://www.xenos.org/essays/canon.htm
The other Gospels do not fit these criteria.
I can write a Gospel that makes Jesus say whatever I want Him to, but that doesn't make it God's word.
olde drunk
Apr13-04, 05:00 PM
o.k. I will be very plain. There are good reasons why the books that were chosen to be in the Bible were. Here is a webpage describing them:
http://www.xenos.org/essays/canon.htm
The other Gospels do not fit these criteria.
I can write a Gospel that makes Jesus say whatever I want Him to, but that doesn't make it God's word.
you miss the point. even the different sects can't agree on which book has the real words of christ.
better to accept no authority except yourself.
in time we will probably find that the christ used in these books is a compilation of 2-3-or 4 different holy men.
who can say?
peace,
Buddhists may be pursuing happiness as you say, but what they look to for their ultimate goal is the recombination with everything, where consciousness ceses to exist. I say this is what the athiests say happens when you die...your atoms recombine with the universe and you cease to exist as a person. Since Buddhists hope for this state, and work towards it, I call it suicide.
Buddhists seek to see and understand things as they truly are. The ultimate goal is not recombination with everything, but release from rebirth. They're two different things.
What you're referring to sounds much more like Hinduism (i think... correct me if I'm wrong)
better to accept no authority except yourself.
Interesting point...
Cos I stand by the idea that whatever truth exists, only one can realise it for himself/herself. ie... You can't prove anything to anybody but yourself.
Moonbear
Apr13-04, 11:48 PM
I'm joining this discussion late in the game, and the posts are all so lengthy with so many differing points being made. I admit that I haven't read all of them thoroughly, so I may be redundant or addressing something already discussed and refuted. I found the following comment interesting:
God says, “the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil.” This is coupled with the earlier, “in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” So on the day they eat of the fruit, they will suffer death. Does this mean that this terrible fruit causes the knowledge of good and evil? No. But when Adam and Eve choose to reject God’s wisdom, and eat the fruit despite his warning, they have chosen to determine good and bad for themselves. It is the action of choosing against God that institutes evil. They had always followed God’s wisdom before, so they didn’t know evil. But one day they decided to reject God’s say in their lives, and decide that what the serpent told them sounded better. Then they knew evil, because they chose against God.
If eating from the tree of knowledge gave Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil, and disobedience of God's will was evil, then doesn't their choice to eat from the tree indicate they already knew the difference between good and evil? Doesn't this also indicate they chose evil prior to eating the fruit and not that the fruit of the tree gave them this knowledge? It's all very contradictory.
I'm also enjoying the debate regarding whether or not there is a such thing as eternal life, the role of morals, etc. I never gave so many of these topics all that much thought, but it puts it in a different perspective for me than previously. If one thinks of everything from the perspective of genetics rather than the body or soul, this all becomes easily explained (not that I know if it's the right explanation or one that anyone is going to jump up and believe along with me, but it makes sense to me anyway). Our body dies, dust to dust and all that, but biologically, the most important thing is that we reproduce (and based on all that "begatting", that's important in the Bible too), and that's so we can pass on our genes. Our genes continue to live on in the next generation...eternal life if you will. So, what about morals? Think of them as rules for passing on your genes to the next generation. Through social behaviors that lead to cooperation, we have a greater success of raising our own offspring to reproductive age so they can in turn have offspring of their own. If instead we all throw morals out the window and do whatever we want, kill each other left and right, we're not going to survive long as a species, and the risk to any one individual increases as well...the more fights you get into, the more likely you are to lose a fight and get wiped out of the gene pool.
From this perspective, there actually is a great deal of wisdom contained in the Bible. I don't personally believe it is the writing of some divine being, but more likely written by leaders of civilization and/or based on observations of the natural world...at least the Old Testament. It has plenty of biases of old cultures, but also sets up rules for a long, healthy life in a time when the specific laws in the Bible were necessary for that. Most of the rules help set up a cooperative civilization. Others are health codes. All the discussion of clean and unclean animals, for example, are based on animals notorious for spreading disease in the days before modern medicine and refrigeration, and making it taboo to handle them would do much for improving food safety. No matter the source of the writing, much as other laws of ancient civilizations have been passed down through generations to be included in the foundation of modern legal codes, there are plenty of things within the Bible that still make sense, and shouldn't be dismissed just because we disagree over who wrote them down. On the other hand, there are things in the Bible that are just plain outdated. Even if you wish to assume these things were indeed the word of God, we have no reason to believe he meant for these rules to be passed on and adhered to forever...they may have just been relevant for that particular time and no longer have importance because we know things now we didn't know then (whether by scientific progress or through God's revelation...again, whatever you prefer, the point is the same).
ProtractedSilence
Apr14-04, 12:20 AM
Moonbear,
As to your first comment, maybe I wasn't clear enough before? What you suggest is exactly what I was trying to show, it was the choice that brought out evil, not the fruit; here is the wording of the relevant passages:
Gen 2:17 "but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." (God speaking)
Gen 3:5 "For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Satan speaking)
Gen 3:22a "Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil;"
In the day they ate from the tree they would die, and in the day they ate from the tree they would know good from evil. The evil was to reject God's truth. They finalized the choice by biting into the fruit that God had commanded them not to.
I think there are three problems with trying to explain morals from genetics (using the evolutionary viewpoint here). 1) After we are dead personally, it really doesn't matter what the human race does to us...we no longer exist or care. 2) If we are just chemical reactions and genes being passed on, brought on by the random collision of molecules....then it doesn't matter if humans exist or not. There can be no good or bad actions, just actions. If they further man...who cares? The universe does not care in the slightest. If man is snuffed out, there is similarly little consequence. 3) It is very hard to argue that some actions like killing are not beneficial to the species if you compare with animal examples. Alpha male lions kill the cubs of other males in their pride so that they can spread their own genes instead. Wolves eat their wn young in times of hardship. Elephant seals fight to the death over mates. Why isn't it ok for me to kill as many people as I can to protect my own genes being passed on, as well as rape many women to further my genes?
I don't think the Bible is outdated if you look at the plan that is woven throughout it to redeem men to God. God promises Eve that through her seed he will reconcile humanity to himself. God promises Abraham that he will make a nation from his descendents, and bless the whole world through his seed. God promises David that he will establish an eternal king from one of his descendents.
What is this redemption of all people supposed to look like? The OT prophet Jeremiah was given a picture:
Jer 31:31-34 "Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. 33 "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 "They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
Jesus is the person that fulfills all of these promises, by the fact that he lived a perfect life, and that he died to pay for all of our sins that God has a right to judge (as the creator of everything).
What outdated passages were you thinking of? I think many of them are outdated, not because culture has changed, but because the agreement between man and God (the covenant) has changed from one based in following laws, to the one God talks about in Jeremiah.
ProtractedSilence
Apr14-04, 12:24 AM
to son,
I am not exactly clear, but as far as I understand Buddhism seeks a release from rebirth (as you have said) because all life is suffering, and whatever happens when you are enlightened must be better than suffering (with little description of what that is, because Buddha didn't know). Hinduism believes in Moksha, which is recombination with everything. But the two are entangled with each other, as Hinduism swallowed Buddhism back up and incorporated it.
ProtractedSilence
Apr14-04, 12:39 AM
There are absolute truths. How do I know there are? Because if I declare there are no absolute truths, I have made an absolute truth claim myself. Are these truths knowable? They have to be, otherwise again I could not make the claim that they are not (because I would know an absolute truth).
There are objective truths. No matter what people say, you can tell because they define their lives by them. I can say to someone, "I don't believe in gravity," but this does not make gravity cease to exist. If I walk off the edge of a cliff, I will fall. I can do experiments in the lab to prove there is gravity.
God is like this. Whatever the truth about God is, it does not depend on our conception of it. We may not have the right idea about Him, but his existence (r lack there of) is a fact that does not depend on our conception.
The God of the Bible is a God of facts and proofs. He choose to validate His deity by authentication with predictive prophecy:
Isaiah 41:21,22 “Is 41:21,22 "Present your case," the LORD says. "Bring forward your strong arguments," The King of Jacob says. 22 Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place; As for the former events, declare what they were, That we may consider them, and know their outcome; Or announce to us what is coming.
Isaiah 43:9 “All the nations have gathered together In order that the peoples may be assembled. Who among them can declare this And proclaim to us the former things? Let them present their witnesses that they may be justified, Or let them hear and say, "It is true."”
He wants people to use their minds and see if it makes sense for Him to exist.
to son,
I am not exactly clear, but as far as I understand Buddhism seeks a release from rebirth (as you have said) because all life is suffering, and whatever happens when you are enlightened must be better than suffering (with little description of what that is, because Buddha didn't know). Hinduism believes in Moksha, which is recombination with everything. But the two are entangled with each other, as Hinduism swallowed Buddhism back up and incorporated it.
It's the bit on the recombination with everything that's probably the fundamental difference between Buddhism and Hinduism. The reason is; it suggests there being a permanent soul - Buddhism denies the existence of any permanent, unchanging entity.
I feel that most of the problems with understanding the Buddhist view comes from the difficulty of dropping our usual notions of 'exist' and 'not-exist'. When Buddhists talk of 'annihilation' of self it is not quite the same as saying that consciousness ceases to exist.
For instance in the Threefold Lotus Sutra the Buddha talks of three forms of consciousness, one that exists, one that does not exist, and one that neither exists nor not-exists. My guess is that 'Buddha-nature' belongs in the last category.
He also says that the Buddha (any person who has achieved Buddhahood) is eternal (or timeless, or both).
IMHO (!!) it is understanding this apparently self-contradictory 'non-dual' view of reality that is the key to making sense of Buddhism (and the Gnostic gospels). Unfortunately while its possible to talk about the epistemology of Buddhism and make some sense of this it is only through direct experience (of Being in a non-dual state) that the pieces can finally fall into place.
On the likely fundamental necessity of understanding Being before understanding anything much Garth Kemmerling writes -
"Writing allegorically in "The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics," Heidegger notes that although metaphysics is undeniably the root of all human knowledge, we may yet wonder from what soil it springs. Since the study of beings qua beings can only be rooted in the ground of Being itself, there is a sense in which we must overcome metaphysics in order to appreciate its basis. Looking at beings of particular sorts—especially through the distorted lens of representational thinking—blocks every effort at profound understanding. We cannot grasp Being by looking at beings. "
olde drunk
Apr14-04, 06:17 AM
There are absolute truths. How do I know there are? Because if I declare there are no absolute truths, I have made an absolute truth claim myself. Are these truths knowable? They have to be, otherwise again I could not make the claim that they are not (because I would know an absolute truth).
There are objective truths. No matter what people say, you can tell because they define their lives by them. I can say to someone, "I don't believe in gravity," but this does not make gravity cease to exist. If I walk off the edge of a cliff, I will fall. I can do experiments in the lab to prove there is gravity.
God is like this. Whatever the truth about God is, it does not depend on our conception of it. We may not have the right idea about Him, but his existence (r lack there of) is a fact that does not depend on our conception.
The God of the Bible is a God of facts and proofs. He choose to validate His deity by authentication with predictive prophecy:
Isaiah 41:21,22 “Is 41:21,22 "Present your case," the LORD says. "Bring forward your strong arguments," The King of Jacob says. 22 Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place; As for the former events, declare what they were, That we may consider them, and know their outcome; Or announce to us what is coming.
Isaiah 43:9 “All the nations have gathered together In order that the peoples may be assembled. Who among them can declare this And proclaim to us the former things? Let them present their witnesses that they may be justified, Or let them hear and say, "It is true."”
He wants people to use their minds and see if it makes sense for Him to exist.
the only truth there is, is "THERE AIN'T NO TRUTH" !!!
you can quote me on that. you can only experience truth. if it must be experienced it is subjective. once subjective, it can not be absolute.
my understanding of buddhism is being one with god, recognizing the god within.
why care how you get out of a world of suffering, as long as you get out?
this reality is as much heaven as any other dimension. all the wise men of history have been trying to get that simple message to us. why must we complicate it with laws, rituals and dogma?
if we love ourselves, god and our fellow man all else falls into place. we don't need no stinking formal process. how can you harm another if you truly love him???
peace.
peace,
Scott Sieger
Apr14-04, 07:06 AM
The question that begs an answer is:
Do buddhist's want to be eternally dead or eternally alive?
Now you may say that death and life are not considered in this context as in the normal common use of these two words.
But the fact is The Buddha Died,,,he no longer exists as alive or living in the flesh...surely to attain the eternal or timelessness in the flesh would be an even greater challenge.....
the only truth there is, is "THERE AIN'T NO TRUTH" !!!
you can quote me on that. you can only experience truth. if it must be experienced it is subjective. once subjective, it can not be absolute.
my understanding of buddhism is being one with god, recognizing the god within.
why care how you get out of a world of suffering, as long as you get out?
if we love ourselves, god and our fellow man all else falls into place. we don't need no stinking formal process. how can you harm another if you truly love him???
This whole Universe and everything else that's not part of it... are subject to certain rules; Truths, which do not change. I can't prove this to you. You can't disprove it to me. Full stop. (so much for a discussion :confused: )
And..
No.. that's definitely not what Buddhism is about; "being one with god". Mainly, we do not believe there is a "God" (ie eternal creator of Universe)... there are gods (devas), but they too are subject to death and rebirth.
To get out of suffering, you have to understand its nature to some degree. It's like, "know thine enemy" (or however it goes). You can't simply try to escape it (suffereing) if you don't know WHAT you're trying to escape from. Kinda like, trying to find youor way out of a forest blindfolded.
On the loving ourselves... I personally don't think that that's such a good thing. It leeds to selfishness and desire => bad (some ppl will argue that these are good virtues, But i will disagree).
Son
The question that begs an answer is:
Do buddhist's want to be eternally dead or eternally alive?
Now you may say that death and life are not considered in this context as in the normal common use of these two words.
But the fact is The Buddha Died,,,he no longer exists as alive or living in the flesh...surely to attain the eternal or timelessness in the flesh would be an even greater challenge.....
Buddhism is neither nihilistic or eternalistic.
An interesting point, one of the "forbidden questions" (ie the Buddha did not answer as it was irrelevant) is what happens to a Buddha (note, "a") after death (parinibbana)
cowboy_mortician
Apr14-04, 07:19 AM
Well the way i see it the origional poster was very correct in the fact that when we die, thats it. Were dead and councious of nothing. And the idea of hell is explained in the bible as being seperated from God, God would never torment and cause anyone suffering. If you look in the later books of the bible, it talk about where jesus comes down and judges us and ressurects us, thats one showing of the "Afterlife", secondly in revelations it talks about 144,0000 ascening to heaven to rule with jesus and god. So if your going by the "bible" it does talk about the afterlife.
Scott Sieger
Apr14-04, 07:31 AM
existence is suffering with the occassional pleasure...no matter what form you take or become....Life or nirvana as you call it can only be the balance of suffering and pleasure.
One with out the other is a state of Hell.....to end suffering is to end any reason to exist at all ( in any form or state)
Float around in some nebulous catatonic non existant state for eternity is tantamount being in a state of perpetual nightmare.
existence is suffering with the occassional pleasure...no matter what form you take or become....Life or nirvana as you call it can only be the balance of suffering and pleasure.
One with out the other is a state of Hell.....to end suffering is to end any reason to exist at all ( in any form or state)
Float around in some nebulous catatonic non existant state for eternity is tantamount being in a state of perpetual nightmare.
THere are plenty of references in Buddhist texts concerning Nibbana (nirvana)... It is undescribable. You simply can't use words to explain it to someone else... And there is a parable attached that the Buddha used to express this point... it goes something like...
One day the turtle left the pond to spend a few hours on the shore. When he returned to the water, he told the fish of his experiences on dry land, but the fish would not believe him. The fish could not accept that dry land existed because it was totally unlike the reality with which he was familiar. How could there be a place where creatures walked about rather than swam, breathed air and not water, and so on?
(http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~dsantina/tree/part1.txt)
Nibbana is similar. You can't explain it to others the way it truly is, even if you've experienced it yourself. The following extract was written by Walpola Rahula:
"It is incorrect to say that Nirvana is negative or positive. THe ideas of negative and positive are relative, and are within the realm of duality. These terms cannot be applied to Nirvana, Absolute Truth, which is beyond duality and relativity."
It is also often described as "Unconditioned", "Extinction", "The cessation of Continuity and becoming"...
Again, a lot of this boils down to the idea of existence and self. The Buddhist point of view maintains that the illusion of self is actually a combination of these things called the Five Aggregates. It is this illusion that results in volitional activities, the generation of karma, and hence, rebirth.
olde drunk
Apr14-04, 08:39 AM
sorry for my misunderstanding of buddhism. i do feel however that they have a better handle on how we should live than the western religions.
the 'laws' of nature are only a truth when you are dealing with the physical. within QM and other dimensions they are not absolute. ergo, all truths are relative.
there is no suffering. we get what we choose; including our birth enviornment, if you accept reincarnation and freewill. we create a challenge and experience life based on the awareness to be gained.
obviously, our physical body does not continue. it is here for a few years against 8 billion years of the physical universe. our spirit, soul, consciousness or whatever you wish to call it, is as infinite as the universe.
i suspect that 144,000 reaching heaven is as funny as meeting 67 virgins if i die for a cause. who cares about virgins? i want to meet an experienced woman that can teach me something.
when you distill all the words and directions of the wise men - love yourself and others. you first must love self in order to be able to love others.
being nihilistic is not an abomination. just because a cult elder wants to deny himself, why should I? if i choose to fast, abstain, it is my choice and that's being nihilistic. i would only do it if it brought me enjoyment.
egotism is not love. being kind to yourself and accepting self, is self love. even the egotist will enjoy the consequences of his belief.
if it ain't fun, don't do it! love yourself.
peace,
ProtractedSilence
Apr14-04, 09:13 AM
Several items:
olde drunk: you have missed the point of my first argument. When you say "the only truth is, "there ain't no truth" " --- you have made a truth claim that either refutes your statement, or is meaningless because of it. How do you know this is the one tru truth?
On love: The Bible says that we all do love ourselves, but we should be loving others at the same level of love we give to ourselves:
Eph 5:28-30 "28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,
30 because we are members of His body. "
The other issue is that sometimes the actions we take to love ourselves and others are misdirected. This is why you see people who will say, “I beat my wife because I love her, and I want her to act right.” Or something along those lines. We need to have a guide about what healthy expressions of love are like. The example we are given is the sacrifice Christ made for us of His life, that we should be sacrificing for others:
Ephesians 5:1,2 “1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children;
2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”
From a couple of pages back: I disagree with your conclusion from the webpage about canonicity. How does it make you come to the conclusion all the sects disagree? It shows me that the texts themselves, as well as the people at the time of writing, agreed on which texts were inspired by God. It was not a later choice to pick and choose and leave out undesirable comments.
Finally, the 144,000 question is very easy. If you follow the chronology of events at Christ’s return,
First: Things get really bad in the world, lots of pain, suffering and death.
Second: A world leader arises that builds unity among everyone and people are talking about peace and safety, then this leader puts himself up in the temple at Jerusalem to be worshipped as a false God.
Third: Some people are swayed by this, but Jesus comes out of the sky and there is the rapture or taking up of all Christians on Earth to him.
Fourth: During the tribulation, because of the rapture….many people accept Christ. But because of the situation, many are persecuted and killed by this world leader. Christ returns after 7 years and calls up 144,000 people. This number of people is either one of two things; 1) The number of Christians left alive after 7 years. 2) The number of faithful Jew in the world at that time. It is not that only 144,000 get to go to rule with Jesus in heaven, but that 144,000 are called up together at the end.
olde drunk
Apr14-04, 09:50 AM
why?
that's too much to worry about and pay attention to. i rather accept that i create my own reality and enjoy the consequences of my beliefs and actions. see, within my system of belief, there is no right or wrong. i do not need a savior or say special prayers or do certain things, to gain heaven.
this is as much heaven as any other reality. once i learn to love and enjoy all that is here i shall experience a heavenly high. after that i'll move on to other dimensions and other experiences. maybe there is a QM heaven filled with older experienced women??
as a poker player, i don't like the odds of me being 1 out of 144,000. hell there had to be at least 1 billion souls during the existence of this world. within my game my odds are 50-50. either i am right and i experince the greater reality as i explained. or it is different and i will be disappointed that i didn't get it exactly right.
as a betting man, i prefer to see life as a game. a game to be enjoyed and played, RESPECTFULLY. what's really neat is that i make up the rules as i go along. i got no one to blame when things go wrong, except myself. the beauty is, by accepting that i created the unwanted experience, i also have the power to change it. i don't ask 'why me'? i created my problem, therefore i can create the solution.
i do send out many requests for assistance to the universal energy. over the past 30-40 year of practicing this idea, i am amazed at how often this works. in fact, the more i do it, the easier it gets and the more frequently it happens.
i like the idea of imitating god. we are of a fashion; we co-create this reality. trust me, god has a sense of humor. if you tell him to go fly a kite, he will smile. he is with us 24/7. if we doubt his unconditional love, then we have problems. i have no doubts that he enjoys my little excursions into the unknown. it is a blast!
the truth thingy is a problem, so let's leave it at 'everything is relative'. i don't think s/he/it (god) with infinite wisdom wanted to put limitations on anything, including truth.
yeah we do have truths about the way this physical world operates. unfortunately, as time and science progress we keep changing them. perhaps, in time, we will suspend our belief in gravity and actually levitate. if we only knew how to harness our personal electromagnetic energy. hmmm, maybe the zen masters know how already.
ProtractedSilence, enjoy yourself, have fun. even if we do go round more than once.
peace,
ProtractedSilence
Apr14-04, 03:15 PM
olde drunk,
I'm not sure you read anything I write carefully, but I do appreciate your jovial attitude.
I tried living as you say, making up my own right and wrong. But the problem was...I made it up - - and it didn't mean anything
Every single person has the opportunity to enter a relationship with God through Christ. It is not a game of odds at all. The 144,000 is just a prediction about the future that at the end of the world, there will be 144,000 people who are left alive and turn to God. Everyone else alive at the time rejects Him. I don't know how many billions of people there will be in heaven, but probably quite a few.
Your right about God being humorous and filled with enconditional love. It is out of His love that he provided a way for us to talk to Him, even though we don't deserve it. It is out of His humor that we have humor. I think it is a greta gesture on GOd's part not to force anything on us, but to give us the choice, "Do you want a relationship with Me or not? If you do, ask for forgivceness."
why?
that's too much to worry about and pay attention to. i rather accept that i create my own reality and enjoy the consequences of my beliefs and actions. see, within my system of belief, there is no right or wrong. i do not need a savior or say special prayers or do certain things, to gain heaven.
this is as much heaven as any other reality. once i learn to love and enjoy all that is here i shall experience a heavenly high. after that i'll move on to other dimensions and other experiences. maybe there is a QM heaven filled with older experienced women??
as a betting man, i prefer to see life as a game. a game to be enjoyed and played, RESPECTFULLY. what's really neat is that i make up the rules as i go along. i got no one to blame when things go wrong, except myself. the beauty is, by accepting that i created the unwanted experience, i also have the power to change it. i don't ask 'why me'? i created my problem, therefore i can create the solution.
i do send out many requests for assistance to the universal energy. over the past 30-40 year of practicing this idea, i am amazed at how often this works. in fact, the more i do it, the easier it gets and the more frequently it happens.
Sorry, But I'm gonna drag in Buddhism again...
This time, I'll start with a historical spin. If we consider other ppl's religious activities, and philosphical ideas during the Buddha's time... we see that there was a range of schools of thoughts back then.
Some saw life as ending completely after death, and sought full enjoyment during their lifetime. What my hassle with this is, it basically also allows for immoral actions without proper consequences to be practiced. ie, You can go on a mass-murdering spree in say, Australia, and the most they can give is life in jail... but is a life-term worth dozens of lives...? (The trouble arguing this is, ppl have different views on the meaning, value of life etc..)
Others sought their salvation in an all-powerful being.
Others still saw life as an eternal, non-ending cycle.
What I'm getting at, is there is a certain "danger" so to speak, in acting without proper thought. It boils down though to, always trying to perform moral actions no matter what school of thought you stick with.
One of my biggest problems is... belief verses truth. It's really easy to believe in something, and convincing yourself that you're right. However, I think, in this particular case of logic (I'm sure there are many other examples apart from logical reasoning), there are many cases where logic turns it upside down.
Take for example, as someone said in another post, eternity is double-sided; if we allow for an eternity to follow now, then surely, there must've been an eternity before now. I don't know about you, for me, the former I can easily grasp, but the latter is mind-boggling. Although logic was used here to suggest a double-sided eternity, logic sure doesn't allow for no beginning.
So, I ask all of you this; What if you yourself had the potential to discover the truth yourself; whatever "fate" lies ahead. Would you make the effort to discover it? I'll repeat myself (From another post); I think that whatever truth exists, one can only realise it oneself - nobody can realise it for another.
</Edit>I personally think that i'd much easier believe in a truth if i could see it myself. </End edit>
Then, what if each and every one of you had the power to govern how your life shall twist and turn. Would you grasp that power with both hands?
Son
mhernan
Apr15-04, 09:23 AM
Sorry, But I'm gonna drag in Buddhism again...
This time, I'll start with a historical spin. If we consider other ppl's religious activities, and philosphical ideas during the Buddha's time... we see that there was a range of schools of thoughts back then.
Some saw life as ending completely after death, and sought full enjoyment during their lifetime. What my hassle with this is, it basically also allows for immoral actions without proper consequences to be practiced. ie, You can go on a mass-murdering spree in say, Australia, and the most they can give is life in jail... but is a life-term worth dozens of lives...? (The trouble arguing this is, ppl have different views on the meaning, value of life etc..)
Others sought their salvation in an all-powerful being.
Others still saw life as an eternal, non-ending cycle.
What I'm getting at, is there is a certain "danger" so to speak, in acting without proper thought. It boils down though to, always trying to perform moral actions no matter what school of thought you stick with.
One of my biggest problems is... belief verses truth. It's really easy to believe in something, and convincing yourself that you're right. However, I think, in this particular case of logic (I'm sure there are many other examples apart from logical reasoning), there are many cases where logic turns it upside down.
Take for example, as someone said in another post, eternity is double-sided; if we allow for an eternity to follow now, then surely, there must've been an eternity before now. I don't know about you, for me, the former I can easily grasp, but the latter is mind-boggling. Although logic was used here to suggest a double-sided eternity, logic sure doesn't allow for no beginning.
So, I ask all of you this; What if you yourself had the potential to discover the truth yourself; whatever "fate" lies ahead. Would you make the effort to discover it? I'll repeat myself (From another post); I think that whatever truth exists, one can only realise it oneself - nobody can realise it for another.
</Edit>I personally think that i'd much easier believe in a truth if i could see it myself. </End edit>
Then, what if each and every one of you had the power to govern how your life shall twist and turn. Would you grasp that power with both hands?
Son
mhernan to the above[B/]
[B] I have to side with the old drunk.
I think he has been peeking in my window and has copied my own ranting and ravings. One does not need a "moral principle" to do good, that is, at a very minimum, not hurting another person, or not being cruel to animals. Someone had to start the morality ball game going at some time so there isn't really a standard, though some will argue. Some Budda men/women practice Buddism to get off the life cycle and to get on with spiritual growth in other dimensions. To me this is silly and arbitrary. As screwed up as thing seem to be life is the onl show in town. AT least there is something to do. We are fortunate tha Mother Nature included time in her creation, otherwise eveything would have happened all at once. I don't want to go to heaven, especially one governed by that idiot maniac described in Deuteronomy, for instance. Where in the old testment from Genesis to Deuteronomy has jehovah done any decent or kind act to any person? He screams, hollers, threatens death, violence and destruction to those straying from his arbitraryily defined path. I think Jehovah was just one of a few thosand space bugs that colonized earth, did a little genetic manipulation and dcreated race of slaves in "gods image'". At least this theory is rational.
I know what fate lies ahead. I don't predict the last days of this body alive, which seems like such a useless enteprise, but the horizon is not that far off, ever. How many good "Christians" want to smother those that compalin about Congressional mandated flag allegience pledging? Hell, anyone can pledge the allegience to the flag anyway they choose and to get political about the matter is not only silly it is socially dangerous. Just don't force anyone to do the politcally mandated facist crap. How many good Christains want to smother people who ingest chemicals that are on the hate list? How many millions of felons are there out there whose lives were trashed when caught up in the drug war insanity? This is the environment our children and grandchildren are growing up in, remember. Anger siommers and turns to violance if provoked.
The postings by ProtractedSilence are naive enough, though apparently they work for him, or her, but rue the day when that smug godly law becmes written in the penal codes. What do mean when? The religious laws are the ones corrupting this country and planet. Prostituion, screwing for money is evil, but hooking in to a rich dude for a ride is cool? Gambling in Nevada and the Res all nicely regulated where the money goes to a few well greased palms is cool , but betting on the Raiders with a friend in New York is a RICO violation, that's organized crime for those not into federal acronyms. You have a .05 blood alcohol and you have committed a crime if driving a car. What ever happened to proving the driver was out of it by the facts, not the legislative mandated arrogance of setting a number? A sexually active 15 year old woman has sex (again) with her boyfriensd on his 18th birthday and he automatically becomes a felon, so wise is it not?
People who spend all their precious moments living in some mental state of having "found god" are crippled and need help. I reefer you to some appropriate oragnic materials for unraveling the stress that kills so many millions of persons walking the tight rope of social and governmemental rigidity. 'Don't' is a four letter word, with apostrophe added. 'Do' is love and expression and creating one's own soul and happiness. "And who would deny a man those things that take from the path but a bit of the lonliness?" (quoth Ho Chi Minh, known by the Vietnamese people of his time as the "George Washington" of their country. But then France wanted Vietnam back after WWII, it was theirs wasn't it?
It isn't anyone business but the person, the human being who enjoys the inalienable right to do with her body as she/he sees fit. A person who is unable to care for his owh safety or the safety of others, needs PROTECTION not a kick in the balls.
olde drunk
Apr15-04, 10:20 AM
olde drunk,
I'm not sure you read anything I write carefully, but I do appreciate your jovial attitude.
I tried living as you say, making up my own right and wrong. But the problem was...I made it up - - and it didn't mean anything
"
it will mean EVERYTHING when you stop buying the idea that you are unworthy. we are all worthy of god's love; not his wrath. you talked of loving parents, how could a perfect loving parent ever 'damn' one of his creations??
i repeat, life is fun - enjoy it! this is NOT a life or death struggle.
my god loves me even when i screw-up. he knows i'm exploring and stretching the envelope. i often tell my god to **** off! just to know that it is OK and i will not be hit by lightening. it's fun playing with god in his sand box; he even lets me make up some of the games and rules. he ain't kicked me outta da box either.
peace & love,
olde drunk
Apr15-04, 10:23 AM
why don't ja tell us how you REALLYREALLY feel.
i love it. have a drink on me. or a ho if you prefer. lol
peace & love,
ProtractedSilence
Apr15-04, 12:19 PM
mhernan: See post #54 at this link: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5198&page=4
Christianity is not about rules, and certainly not about making the government run by rules. The things you cite are hypocritical and deplorable, I agree completely. However, these situations are not where someone is truly sacrificing their life for someone else, they are situations where people try to bend the rules as much as possible to take from others. That is not what Christ talked about. That is not what Jehovah talked about.
I think it is loving of God to give us free will to choose, and design us to be the stewards of the world. I think it is loving that God is just, so he wants to punish things that are wrong. If he wasn't a parent that punished a bad behavior, he would raise spoiled children. I think it is loving that God had a plan from before he created us about how he would reconcile our choice to walk away from Him, and that it didn't involve anything we did, but what he was going to do on the cross. I could go on an on.
You are right though about moral standards. If you don't have God, there is no moral standard. Everything goes because everything is relative. When your neighbor comes and breaks into your house, knocks you unconscious with a bat and rapes your wife and children, its all okay because he is the stronger person. Too bad for you.
- Why do you get up in the morning? I tried living like that, but it is a terrible way to live. It doesn't seem right or fair in your soul. And when you examine the facts, you will see that it isn't the truth, and that’s why it doesn't sit right, and that God is trying to help out you and your life, but you have been pushing Him away all this time.
olde drunk: You are right about God being the kind of person who forgives us when we mess up. He provided a way for us to be completely forgiven for everything, we only have to ask for it. But until that step is made to ask forgiveness, we are living and will be judged completely by our own actions and choices. When you come to face God he will ask you if you are perfect, and the standard will not be your own definition of perfection, but God’s moral character. You fall short, we all fall short. We are all selfish, angry, bitter, and revengeful people. If not currently, at some time in the past – and this destroys perfection.
So the choice is clear; accept the method God has chosen for you to be forgiven and escape God’s punishment for unrighteousness, or face his judgment on your own actions. If you are really a betting man as you mentioned before, I can’t see how you like the odds on your current choice.
mhernan
Apr15-04, 01:19 PM
why don't ja tell us how you REALLYREALLY feel.
i love it. have a drink on me. or a ho if you prefer. lol
peace & love,
[B] mhernan Really, really, responds thus:
Life u
is a gas, but the devils breww will not pas my lips agains, well not anywhere near the volumes in the distant pass. I don't stress and I do what I please which is criticising everything that I abhor such as the attitudes of people who have the answer tucked nicely away in their psyches. I am only interested eniough to do smething if the attitude I see is wide spread and dangerous, from my perspective. There are two many 'attitudes' to hate, and besides who lets cockroaches piss them off? Not I. All the godly people can do their thing to their hearts content and so can I. The attitudes claim authority form god, I claim the same, but in my case I am god, so I don't have any reference problems to deal with. I have no interpretations of to analyze and explain and apply to my own interests. I am my own interest. I know I tick a lot of people off, but that's life, that's freedom of speech and that is god's way, just ask me. and I'll tell you.
Peace, love, harmony, riches and fulfilment and at least one wonderment per day until eternity, which, whatever eternity is, is a long, long, a very long way away.
I don't have any ego problems abiout my elevated status, as I haven't w
elevated myself, I am who I am. and you get what you see. I don't have to prove anything to anyone about my moral worth before feeling justified in laying it akk out there for all to see. If one wansts to argue, so be it. If opne wants to agree so be it. If one wants to ignore me as foolishness in corporate, so be it. As the one time leading town sot, though not on your esteenmed level I am sure, I have no reputation to protect.
Like the old drunk you are, so be it.
I do have a certian pleasure sticking it to the smug and proudly obediently religious, though they rarely catch the cynicism. If they do catch the wry digs I am sure they turn me in to someone in Washnington D.C that monitors the disrespectful like you and I, though you seem much more restrained than but then I'm god. You're not from D.C are you? I don't usually go around looking for elevated spiritual entitiies to "hang with" as there is nothing more boring and sleep inducing that having a conversaion with an equal, an equal in outlook that is.
After a long lifetime of being the smartest guy in the room, more often than not, I find it necessary to emphacise and manifest that fact and lo and behold, when I do this, my relief invariably shows up, hel stands up and says, "Oh yeah?" and then I can relax and enjoy the pedestrian existence and life with the "common folk", while my mental superior, whom I cleverly (its childishly simple to goad someone into action by openly claiming superiority) get to stand up and challenge my apparent rude and snobbish egotism, and then take over the serious responsibility of being the "smartest one in the room." In this same vein it is easy to get nazis to stand up in a crowd and eagerly identify themselves. When you get a feeling that a junk yard dog is ragging on you, you got the clue, as in Gerald McCaffery, for an obvious if not lowly instance. So what to do? Take names, they're just targets, political targets, of course. Do what you can, when you can do it, or maybe, just a tad more than you're personally confortable with; exceed what is expected of you as a limitation. Hell, In hell, practice may not make perfect, but improvement is all one really needs, especially if its fun..
Sadly, I know hundreds, if not thoudsands of people who are skyscrapers ahead of me, but they don't know it, and would embarrssingly deny the fact out of a pure expected sense of modesty, which has no place in my book of life. The sadness is in the social culturation that repays restraint, obedience, robotic repetition, you know the drill, instead of expression, of letting it all hang out, know what I mean? Mediocrity is more comfortable and less threatening to the weak, which are the more numerous, and surprisingly they quench the fire that would enrich their pitiful lives beyong their wildest imagination, which they have little, if any, of.
So I put a brick on the the throttle, and as sung so energetically by the Black Crows:
"I took all I need, I don't need no more,
I take what I want till I want some more,
You can't stop or I will pass you,
when your down you wont find me laughin,
just one question I will ask you,
it might sound like a disaster,
but can you make this thing go faster?"
Or setting the poetry aside,philosophically: "would you please get the eff out of my way?, thank you."
or as the sage said not so many years ago, "being a Hippy is just a state of mind."
So day you is bro, aisle tak d ho f doan min me barren er f wil, jesa lilwil. :cool:
mhernan
Apr15-04, 01:58 PM
mhernan: See post #54 at this link: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5198&page=4
[QUOTE=ProtractedSilence]
Christianity is not about rules, and certainly not about making the government run by rules. The things you cite are hypocritical and deplorable, I agree completely. However, these situations are not where someone is truly sacrificing their life for someone else, they are situations where people try to bend the rules as much as possible to take from others. That is not what Christ talked about. That is not what Jehovah talked about.
So the choice is clear; accept the method God has chosen for you to be forgiven and escape God’s punishment for unrighteousness, or face his judgment on your own actions. If you are really a betting man as you mentioned before, I can’t see how you like the odds on your current choice.
ProtractedSilence, you reek of sincerity, and a first hand knowledge of the ebig man. Check it out, Christian, god, jehovah loving that you are. Deuteronomy 2:34 Mopses speaking, "And we went capturing all his cities at that particlular time and devoting every city to destruction, men women and little children. We left no survivor.
I want god to punish me because then he will have to identify himself and then I will have him where I want him, in my clutches, squeezing the puke out of him.
Such wicked people, that your god has to sweep out of the way.
You don't read all the bible do you? You say god, Jehovah has chosen something for me? When I meet your god, your jehovah, I am going to strain the murdering brutal butcher through a wood chipper. Loving you say? Do what he says or he will slay you. This is love? That sir, or madam, is vile sinful and atrocious conduct that all the Hitlers in the world have enmulated since whenever your god started his entrenched madness. You talk about my "Odds" as if we were in some kind of sporting event. You lost me Protracted Silence. Your attitude has to be one of the most seriously distorted
undertsndings of love, beauty and goodnes I have ever seen. If you are so blind, and deaf, not to pass me by, but not to read all the bible, all the truth, all the horror and insanity that exceeds the worst of any human activity. LIke I say, your god Jehovah gets in my ay and I will squash him like a cochroach. Do you get the message?
Most of what you do say isn't biblical, it is something else, sopmething made up, a novel, a fairy tale.
I cannot believe or seriously consider for an instant that you think your naive slothful acceptance of vile murdeing poison will get me to come over to your side. Your writing is robotic. There is no originality, just fervent acceptance. You project laziness, ignorance and mental incompetence. Virtually everything you state has been stated by simeone else who got to you and essentially murdered your soul. Yoy are a memorizer., a capture and laimed sheep. You live with the devil, not the serpent of Genesis, but that which is truly evil, from your perspective, but you think you have got it and that god gave it to you. You are all too eager to pronounce your iobedience just in case he might be listening, yeah, right. The creator of th euniverse is listening to ProtractedSilence repeat, repeat, repeat . . .
. You are a frightened little boy that will never feel the love of a woman that truly warms to you, the man, the person. You aren't a man, a person. You fear to think for yourself, to experience love for yourself, to dig it when it rains and dig it even more when it pours. You and I can never be friends, We will never share intimate understandings, a joke, a sense of commarderie, a beer on quiet Sunday morning. Do you get the drill?. You aren't interesting ProtractedSilence, you are one pitiful boring dude.
This isn't made up. This is what I read from you, this is what you show me. :mad:
olde drunk
Apr15-04, 02:16 PM
WHOA! slow down big hoss!
i do remember my epiphany back in the late 60's or so. it was great! PS is living in a state of grace. he found god and that is good!
within an laissez-faire attitude he must be allowed to follow through on his findings. meeting with other ideas on these forums is a way to temper and/or change what is found.
god does not judge, why or how can we??? beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
peace & love,
ProtractedSilence
Apr15-04, 03:10 PM
mhernan,
What has made you angry? Tell me more specifically what you are angry with in my posts certainly....but what has made you angry in the past? I know that the situations in life both the seemingly impromptu and the maliciously planned (often by Christians unfortunately) can be terrible.
As to the specific passage you cite, I will do some more reading on it and answer your concerns.
olde drunk,
I would prefer if you did want to convince me of being wrong than of accepting my words as coming from an experiential state. I do not act because I’m having this wonderful experience, I act because I am in the pursuit of truth. If Christianity was not the truth, I would want to know, so that I could stop doing it and find out what the real truth is.
mhernan
Apr16-04, 02:22 AM
mhernan,
What has made you angry? Tell me more specifically what you are angry with in my posts certainly....but what has made you angry in the past? I know that the situations in life both the seemingly impromptu and the maliciously planned (often by Christians unfortunately) can be terrible.
As to the specific passage you cite, I will do some more reading on it and answer your concerns.
mhernan responds
And I have no concerns. I am reporting a fact quoted ion the bioble. You aren't the professor here and I the student. It is the other way around. But is interesting that you instinvtively take to defending your god. My god doesn't need defending, explaining, justifyiing or decribing.
I am not angry with your posts. I am merely pointing out your defects. You talk of god this and god that as if it applied to me and all the heathen New Zealand Maoris, and Soth American headhunters, and you are so far off the mark, it is pitiful. I am not angry with the past and bear no human being a grudge, which doesn't prevent me from telling it like I see it.
Life doesn't make me angry, PS, life makes me high, do ya get it?
Take the crucifixion. Pontius Pilate declares Jesus innocent in all four gospels, MMLJ. Now Jesus, Joseph of Armtheus and Pilate are smart fellows all, to be sure. So irate is the crowd that should Pilate cut Jesus loose the crowd will eventually get him, unless . . . tunless hey think he is already dead!. So, the scam, probably sweetened by Jospeph's bribe to Pilate, went on and all believed Jesus croaked. The event was carried out in Joseph's garden, probably Gesthemane. The new tomb, remember? Therefore, Jesus' life was spared by Pilate. Jesus didn't die for us PS, he LIVED for us. I will let the olde drunk slur his own words.
What do you have to do more reading on? Read Deuteronomy all the way through. I just related one instance.
olde drunk,
I would prefer if you did want to convince me of being wrong than of accepting my words as coming from an experiential state. I do not act because I’m having this wonderful experience, I act because I am in the pursuit of truth. If Christianity was not the truth, I would want to know, so that I could stop doing it and find out what the real truth is.
olde drunk
Apr16-04, 09:34 AM
olde drunk,
I would prefer if you did want to convince me of being wrong than of accepting my words as coming from an experiential state. I do not act because I’m having this wonderful experience, I act because I am in the pursuit of truth. If Christianity was not the truth, I would want to know, so that I could stop doing it and find out what the real truth is.
the whole point is that no one, not even christ, can convince you of what is true. only you can know your truth.
if you need miracles, just look at what you do everyday. without trying, you bring life and consciousness to a mass of atoms and molecules. that is creation! why does anyone need to walk on water before you will listen and accept his words over someone else.
i, personally, do not want to have you doubt yourself. i offer that you are using external authority to justify your beliefs. i ask that you examine your beliefs and find your truth, from or through your experience.
regarless of who said what, i believe that when you meditate and look within, not to an outside agency, you will find your truth. it is these personal truths that become beliefs that coalesce into an experienced reality. i've got 60+ years experiences to fall back on and refine my beliefs. they are correct only at this moment. i will change any of them as soon as i find that one is limiting or bringing undersired results.
a brief example. anti-war protesters so often fail because they are focusing on war and it's implications. this adds energy to war. if however, we focus on peace, we then direct our energy toward peace. this is a subtle shift, but that has been my experience.
being christian, moslem, whatever is a lable. it is what you believe that manipulates our day to day experience. it is nice to read words of great men. i am often amazed at how Ghandi was able to be so spiritual in a modern age. do you see how his 'belief' in himself and justice was made manifest. that is the energy of the universe being focused through him, because he believed so strongly.
i must stretch my understandings and beliefs or there is no progress. i offer this opinion for you to accept or reject. i say again, the offical bible and dead sea scrolls and koran and talmud are all hearsay. (amazing how close that word is to heresy.) they provide wonderful information, but life gives us our truth.
the longer i live the more i am convinced that the universal energy, while electro-magnetic in nature, is really LOVE! john lennon where are you?
peace & love,
ProtractedSilence
Apr16-04, 10:27 AM
mhernan,
I find it hard to take your words at face value. I realize that online communication is tricky, but your earlier rants do not logically fit with life making you high, and that you aren't angry.
So I would ask again, why do Christians make you angry? Why do you lob epithets at both myself and olde drunk and really everyone....since you calim to be better and smarter than everyone else, and to be able to judge their rightness or wrongness. Why does a better and smarter person need to grind the "lesser" people into the dirt? How is that fair or right?
Read posts #105 and #106 on http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=188281#post188281
I do not think that Maori's or anyone else is necessarily going to hell. But if they get the opportunity to hear about Jesus and reject Him, then that is what is going to happen to them.
olde drunk: There are truths, they can be proven. You may deny the truth, but that does not make your denial reality. Does the mouse and keyboard in front of me exist? Yes, it does. I can feel it, weigh it, take it apart, burn it and count the molecules. I can photograph and see it. I can measure it. All things may not be that clear cut, but there are truths to be found. The keyboard and mouse do not cease to exist because I stop thinking they are there, nor do a matched set appear if I dream them up. Reality is not modified by me, I must conform to reality or suffer the consequences of being misguided.
olde drunk
Apr16-04, 10:40 AM
mhernan,
olde drunk: There are truths, they can be proven. You may deny the truth, but that does not make your denial reality. Does the mouse and keyboard in front of me exist? Yes, it does. I can feel it, weigh it, take it apart, burn it and count the molecules. I can photograph and see it. I can measure it. All things may not be that clear cut, but there are truths to be found. The keyboard and mouse do not cease to exist because I stop thinking they are there, nor do a matched set appear if I dream them up. Reality is not modified by me, I must conform to reality or suffer the consequences of being misguided.
please grasshopper, look within. the physical world is valid and real, BUT it is a representation - projection of that which is within.
love and peace,
Dayle Record
Apr16-04, 11:02 AM
There is no death, at the very least there is potential, or quiescence. Life, motion, connection, interaction don't cease. I know the big guns, sometimes glue some hapless atom to a surface somewhere near absolute zero, but nevertheless the potential always exists. There is always energy in the situation simply because the whole thing is moving along. I think that a form of death could come if an entity became tired of singularity, and released its bounds into the energies at large, but their gain is not a loss of life; and neither is the joining outward. We harbor common concepts, share some sort of common wavelength, it is an effect of nature, though we experience it personally. I think we are much more individually isolated than other animals that live here, and much less sophisticated in our abilities to share and communicate. Squid emote, changing their entire surface patterns to match the other in conversation, and then change again and again, in the course of an interaction. We may just be the most intelligent of species, but we rigidly insists on energetic isolation, so questions of life and death are poignant, in this twilight of doubt.
ProtractedSilence
Apr16-04, 12:22 PM
death happens when your physical body dies. Does consciousness die as well? Christianity says no....that people are eternal beings, but that if they don't choose for God, they will face eternity without God and the attributes he brings to the world. It will be an eternity of isolation, desperation, bitterness and malice.
mhernan:
Why am I reading before I asnwer you? Because the context of statements matter a lot. Not just the sentences around the one you want, but the chapter, book, and other writings by the same person. So I want to review the context before I answer. I may go look up some of the key words in that passage in Hebrew to see what each of them means the other times they are translated in the OT.
Have a good weekend all
olde drunk
Apr16-04, 01:34 PM
don't go looking up anything, think for yourself. now, you proved to yourself that a keyboard and mouse exist. no one told you they were there. (later we will discuss that they aren't really, truely).
FEEL your eternal soul. sense your creative power and determine if you want to be isolated, alone, bitter and desparate. i am alone but i am not bitter, desparate or driven to malice.
the dichotomy is that we are alone, together. god can not save you from being alone. only you can reach out and share your world with others. it is a matter of what you want to believe.
only fear of being alone, bitter, desparate has you believing in a devine, biblical god. do not focus on your fears other than to hold them up and realize that we are in a safe universe and we each have the power to undo our fears. fear of losing heaven is the trump card of religion.
like i said, i like to play poker. the odds of all those references that are approved for your use, being the true word of god are close to zero (infinity to 1). they have been passed down by humans, who you yourself say, are flawed. if they are flawed, how did they act 'perfectly'.
i say again. man is not flawed, he was not born with the original sin of his ancestors. we are all in the process of becoming. please experience truth, don't read it.
actually, you can not prove that i exist. i may be a figment of your subconscious, trying to push you toward another reality. if you're scared, then i might be your subconscious evil twin. i might even be a reincarnated apolstle.
what mhernan was trying to say is that we are all our own personal god. relax, accept and enjoy.
love & peace,
Mudvaynelethaldosage
Jun10-04, 05:54 AM
"This is one of the first things, if not THE first thing, I questioned about religion when I was a child. It did not seem right (and still doesn't) that anything done within a mere 70 year lifetime could deserve such a horrible eternal punishment. The distance/closeness fate I mentioned above seems to make more sense." 1st reply to topic is quoted here.
"I certainly can't accept that there is a loving and just god that
would allow someone to suffer for eternity. Justice implies a
proportionality between crime and punishment, no finite crime
balances against an infinite punishment" someone quoted here from a different thread, possibly laser eyes.
My first doubt of the bible was when I was a child. I had the childrens edition of the bible. It was on the topic of Adam and Eve being created and nudism. It said that Adam and Eve were created nude. They weren't ashamed under the circumstances, they covered themselves with leaves though. It did also state that nudity is a sin in almost any case. This was all said in simpler terms, for children to understand.
What is wrong with nudism? I wear clothes, not because I'm ashamed by my body, but because of the cops, clothing provides protection, and clothing is useful when you're cold. I think the whole reason people started wearing clothing was for protection against their environment. They weren't ashamed of their body. I don't exactly understand why people try to cover their bodies up.
EMANUELI
Jun10-04, 11:21 AM
It might happen that what you beleave and what you don't beleave is not an issue any more. The issue is Where we come from,Who we are, and where are we going to be.Do you want to judge the existence of the creater of the universe? Go back to the history! Well, The history is the BIBLE!!! It is the fact that there is no one remember how he or she was at the time of his creation! If that is the fact then the reality is No one know where he or she will be after his death. What happen hear is just beleave from what you have learn in your life time and no one can stop what a creater of the urniverse has decided of what to do. I myself beleave the creator of the urniverse is GOD who made me, you, and everything in this world/earth etc. JUDGE YOUR OWN SOUL.
Mudvaynelethaldosage
Jun10-04, 12:20 PM
I had always understood that (according to christian beliefs) when a person died, he/she remained in the grave until judgement day. At this time, he was either cast into hell, or welcomed to heaven. I've heard countless storys of heaven being paved with gold (seems like bad traction surface to me).
It seems that everything you say negates the point in going to church, believing in a god. What purpose is it to spend your life worshipping a god that is just going to watch you fade away? People go to church because they are afraid to die, and this #1 fear that we must all face is what churches prey on. If churches preached what you claim, people would not come, as it does not remove one's fear of death anymore so then atheism.
So, according to your beliefs/claims we will never meet our loved ones in heaven, or get chased around hell by the devil and his pitchfork?
Why the hell would heaven be paved with gold? I bet if coal went for 300$ per ounce, heaven would be made of coal according to those same sources.
Do you actually believe you will meet deceased people in heaven or get chased by the devil with a pitchfork in hell? If you really do, I think you need to go ask your mother about the tooth fairy. She has something to tell you that will probably shatter your hope and introduce you to life.
dschouten
Jun22-04, 03:01 PM
"This is one of the first things, if not THE first thing, I questioned about religion when I was a child. It did not seem right (and still doesn't) that anything done within a mere 70 year lifetime could deserve such a horrible eternal punishment. The distance/closeness fate I mentioned above seems to make more sense." 1st reply to topic is quoted here.
"I certainly can't accept that there is a loving and just god that
would allow someone to suffer for eternity. Justice implies a
proportionality between crime and punishment, no finite crime
balances against an infinite punishment" someone quoted here from a different thread, possibly laser eyes.
Fine, don't accept 'it'. Your acceptance (or lack thereof) doesn't change anything one jot or tittle.
Actually, I shouldn't be so quick to dismiss. Because yours is a (valid) question. Perhaps you should consult your Bible, specifically the New Testament Gospels for a reasonable response. You can take it from there (I'll leave the conclusions up to you).
My first doubt of the bible was when I was a child. I had the childrens edition of the bible. It was on the topic of Adam and Eve being created and nudism. It said that Adam and Eve were created nude. They weren't ashamed under the circumstances, they covered themselves with leaves though. It did also state that nudity is a sin in almost any case. This was all said in simpler terms, for children to understand.
What is wrong with nudism? I wear clothes, not because I'm ashamed by my body, but because of the cops, clothing provides protection, and clothing is useful when you're cold. I think the whole reason people started wearing clothing was for protection against their environment. They weren't ashamed of their body. I don't exactly understand why people try to cover their bodies up.
This is why watered-down versions of Christianity and its doctrines are so dangerous - any half-baked skeptic can tear them to bits (and I am not inferring that you are a half-baked skeptic).
By the way, Adam and Eve did not cover themselves with leaves until after the point they became ashamed. Prior to being corrupted by sin (that is, ignoring their Creator) they had no cause for shame because they had no knowledge of evil. Without evil, or for sake of a better word (nouns fail me) 'badness', shame doesn't really have any bearing. How can you be ashamed, unless you feel/think/act wrongly? Perhaps it is not nudity that is shameful, but the lusts it provokes?
Gokul43201
Jun22-04, 06:45 PM
"I certainly can't accept that there is a loving and just god that
would allow someone to suffer for eternity. Justice implies a
proportionality between crime and punishment, no finite crime
balances against an infinite punishment"
This may be a little off-topic but according to Hinduism, you do time in Hell depending on the number and enormity of your sins. There's actually many different Gods, and two of them are responsible for keeping accounts of all your deeds.
Not trying to sell anything here...I'm agnostic, or something like that.
olde drunk
Jun23-04, 09:45 AM
this thread is about life after death and hell.
now, logically, explain why you do or don't believe in an after life (heaven or hell).
for me, when i looked at what an omni- everything would do, i was able to cut through the propaganda of religions. i am not saying that there is no value in the bible or other texts. i am saying, however, that they are no more the word of god than my comments here. we are all children of whaever god we follow and s/he/it is a part of us. someone may have an enlightened idea to pass on, but they are no more holy or special than the rest of us.
bottom line, heaven and hell are childish concepts. they defy logic on so many fronts that to believe in them is irrational. the only reason that i have found for belief in these ideas is - fear. fear that some of what was said might be true.
if you examine the issue without fear, logic, etc will lead you to a better understanding.
love&peace,
olde drunk
dschouten
Jun23-04, 11:19 AM
this thread is about life after death and hell.
now, logically, explain why you do or don't believe in an after life (heaven or hell).
for me, when i looked at what an omni- everything would do, i was able to cut through the propaganda of religions.
Kudos to you, old chap, for you are most certainly approaching the level of this omni-everything. You have sidestepped the apologetics of a millinia of intellectuals so swiftly, so nimbly! Almost deity-like (almost).
i am not saying that there is no value in the bible or other texts. i am saying, however, that they are no more the word of god than my comments here. we are all children of whaever god we follow and s/he/it is a part of us. someone may have an enlightened idea to pass on, but they are no more holy or special than the rest of us.
If the Bible is indeed on the same plane as your comments in some obscure forum saved on some obscure web-server in the middle of some place in who-knows-where, then the Bible has no value. So what you are really saying is this: "i am very much saying that there is no value in the bible or other texts..."
bottom line, heaven and hell are childish concepts. they defy logic on so many fronts that to believe in them is irrational. the only reason that i have found for belief in these ideas is - fear. fear that some of what was said might be true.
No "omni-everything" should bend the knee to the logic He (or she/it in your overly politically-correct wording) created. If He created Hell, then He created Hell, and "there ain't much you can do about it". Argue it away. Go ahead. Have fun with that. Doesn't really matter.
I realize that forums such as these are meant to foster discussion on topics like the existence of heaven and hell and I apologize for throwing a wet blanket on the fire of these arguments by saying that the arguments are useless. But perhaps this interjection will spawn a whole new subset of discussions... :smile:
Scott Sieger
Jun23-04, 08:04 PM
"When it comes to belief it is anyones game" all we have is one belief versus another, but at all times it is still just a belief. If one chooses to live a life of fear then believe as you wish. The same applies for those that wish to live with out fear and yes you guessed it they also believe as they wish.
Life after death is essentially unknown, now if you want to believe in a certain type of God and his certain types of creations then go for it but please remember it is only a belief.
And as often said belief is not worth Jack sh*t when it comes down to the truth.
Ole drunk has at least identified a potential for delusion and this is admirable, better is it not to say "I don't know and await to find out" than to say "I don't know and then go into a frenzy of speculations designed to placate the fear of not knowing."
olde drunk
Jun24-04, 09:11 AM
Scott:
thank you. i am not saying that my way, or your way, or anyone's way is the best way.
from what i have observed and seen, everyone's way is the best way for them. if you want to accept the myths of heaven or hell, so be it. as an intelligent adult, i would like to understand why. i can not find a legitimate reason, other than the propaganda of the ages.
when a wise man sez 'unless you believe in me.......' it is taken and made into a foundation for a religion. i prefer to believe that he was saying, 'unless you believe in what i say...........'. BIG difference.
most wise and learned men do not insist that you accept their teachings on faith. they know that you must listen, think and act in accordance with their guidance. AND, if you're lucky you will see what they have seen or know. truth can not be taught, learned or accepted. truth can only be experienced.
my truths are mine and yours, your's. they may coincide but they will never be the same. we are each seeking value fulfillment in our own unique, individual way. through communication and discussion we, just, might be able to help each other.
i still ask, why or how can you believe in heaven and hell?? yes, i do dismiss the scribes of yore. to me, they were misguided, well intentioned translators and/or transcribers. we do not have the real words of any acient, historical figure. plus, the written word lacks so much, as far as conveyong the full meaning of any quote.
seeing and listening to a politician we can fall into a charismatic trap or understand what he meant. the printed text of that speech, rarely conveys the full message.
oh, to hear jesus, buddha, mohamed, ghandi - live!
love&peace,
olde drunk
Scott Sieger
Jun24-04, 08:33 PM
truth can not be taught, learned or accepted. truth can only be experienced.
'Ole Drunk, This I find a pearl of great wisdom. The truth can only be experienced. hmmmmmm.......
dave19903652
Jul9-04, 06:03 PM
I notice that the book of revelations has been forgotten about in this debate which basically is all about heaven and hell and life after death. Read it yourself before making judgement please.
dave19903652
Jul9-04, 06:07 PM
"oh, to hear jesus, buddha, mohamed, ghandi - live!"
There's a thing called astral projection that you should try if you want a live reception from the masters. But with the attitude you have about them at the moment success rate maybe near to zero.
olde drunk
Jul12-04, 12:39 PM
I notice that the book of revelations has been forgotten about in this debate which basically is all about heaven and hell and life after death. Read it yourself before making judgement please.
to me, this is but one man's anticipated probable future reality. i do not accept traditional beliefs in heaven, hell, god or salvation.
i expect a better future reality than armageddon. besides, that probable reality may not take place for billions of years. OR, it may have taken place millions of years ago.
love&peace,
olde drunk
Scott Sieger
Jul12-04, 09:01 PM
It could be argued that the "revelations" refer to a "metaphysical" armageddon and not a "physical" armageddon. In other words, a state of insanity.
dave19903652
Jul13-04, 11:57 AM
The revelations could not have happened millions of years ago as it was written in future tense after the death of Jesus. It could in fact be in play already only stretched out over a long time. Satan may have been let out now as people have only started to question religion a few hundred years ago. Just a thought.
I suppose it could quite easily be like that. After all the bible quite often speaks in 'code' - in a way only the people of the rime, the pure base christians would understand. Now some people, hard core protestants and jehovah witnesses for example take the bible completely literally.
Guardian01
Jul13-04, 08:45 PM
There are many 'versions' of "the bible." Which one are you referring to and the 'author.'
Scott Sieger
Jul13-04, 09:22 PM
"there is no life or Death but merely existence"
Some one once said.
If there is no life or death but mere existence then this opens the door to thinking along the lines of different states of being with out a fixed criteria of life or death.
So rather than the question of life and death maybe it should just be a question of existence.
Or perhaps not to question at all? If the existance of god is so questionable then why not realize that the "truths" of religion are just as questionable sense religion is based on god/gods.
olde drunk
Jul17-04, 11:43 AM
we should question everything! all truth is relative, including our beliefs.
love&peace,
olde drunk
Scott Sieger
Jul17-04, 10:45 PM
and we should also question why we are questioning.
Satan may have been let out now as people have only started to question religion a few hundred years ago. Just a thought.people have been questioning religion as long as there has been religion. That is why religion keeps changing.
Jesus was born a Jew, remember? He questioned his religion.
I often wonder why people wonder.
Scott Sieger
Jul21-04, 07:58 PM
Life after death?
"Prove to me you exist living and then we can worry about what happens after we live."
I fiind it somewhat amusing that from what I have seen argued we have trouble proving we exist in the first instance so as far as I can tell if this is not provable then why are we bothering with something even more abstract, that being existence after existense which as yet can not be proved as existence......ouch!....my brain hurts! :rofl:
Whether we do or whether we don't
there's someone here to say we won't
But yet we must as chatting are we
unless we are not meant to be
If you are there and I am here
then neither has as much to fear
as one who is not here at all
and he is sitting in the next hall
Jim Beam
Jul22-04, 10:25 AM
If I ask you to perform an experiment determining whether or not pigs can fly, what what you do? Take some pigs and throw them off a mountain? What if you had to perform the experiment within a closed in room and only a rat, some cheese, and a large maze. Obviously you would learn nothing about pigs from rats and cheese, and the analogy holds true for the existence of God or an afterlife. If such a being exists, then by very definiton he is not bound by space and time, or he wouldnt be God. if something is not bound by space or time, then nothing bound by space and time can have any effect. Formulas, DNA, etc can be used to adequately describe the existence of natural things, but when the laws of physics break down(i.e., heaven) physical laws are no longer adequate enough to explain what will occur. such as 2+2 = 4, and 4 divided by 2 = 2, nothing can be added to equal god, or god would not be god, because if things can add up, then they can be divided. If something can be divided then it is no more than the sum of its parts, and therefore is finite. Bottom line, if God is God, then he is infinite and not bound by space time.
Infinity, obviously derives its defintion from what is infinite to space-time,
I think ur right Jim God is infinite and we cannot get to know him completely. The question was really about life after death. Now i know most of us will never go to schools if we get to know we won't get a job after that. i mean what is the point doing things with no actual profits. u won't eat if u derive ur energy from sun. So why are we alive? Obviously for something that is not known exactly. this is what prevents us from knowing absolute truth. do u not agree that heaven and hell r reward and punishment for our good and bad deeds, respectively? this is all like law and crimes. when u abide by the laws the profit is a smooth life. if u dont then ur road is bumpy and there is fuzz behind you.
As for me, I believe in God. But I am not a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist. God is the term I apply to the physics that operate outside the sphere of our own closed universe...the science of the multiverse...the bubbles, so to speak.
I believe the first few paragraphs of Genesis a highly advanced scientific context, dealing with the creation of the universe. However, the old language and metaphors disguise this very well and seem to render it no more than a fictitious oddity of religion - The Creation.
The rest of the bible, almost in its entirety, I would dismiss as fantasy.
I believe that there was a man named Jesus, and that he did many good things. I don't think he performed any "miracles" per-se, though. That would be unscientific and even unrelated to the nature of the God I believe in.
My God is not a force personified. It is not an old man with a beard. It's not even anything that I can, want, or feel the need to pray to. There is no point in praying to Newton's laws of gravitation; similarly there is no point in praying to God.
Like I said, I apply the term "God" to the physics beyond our closed universe...the region between the multiverse's closed bubbles where "omnipotence, omnipresence" and "timelessness" are all de-facto standards of that region of "space".
So I guess I believe in "The Force". No matter how cliched that sounds. What I believe is in no way (save for a few adjectives describing the "entity") related to the Bible whatsoever.
Believing in God is not about being a good person, doing well to your fellow mankind or having faith in the Bible and all it represents...that's the job of Religion...something I have no time for and also dismiss as a sorry interference in the progress of mankind.
Believing in God believes in the order, the science and the physics of that which determines the actuality of the multiverse and it's dynamics.
My view about the miracles in the bible is harsh...its just the same as Santa Clause, or the Easter Bunny, etc...It's something for children.
Religion can be a good thing for some people. It can provide comfort to people and give others hope. Others can interpret them differently.
No. I don't believe there is life after death.
I noticed that the definition of God is closed…so I will post it here.
This branch of Physics is that to which I apply the name God.
Quite possibly this is the same flavor of God Einstein and Hawking believe in. It's not an entity, not a man, not a religion, not a faith, not a being. It's just the name given to the most powerful branch of physics.
The branch of physics known as "God" meets all the defining criteria. Timeless.
Coupling Timelessness with the entire matrix of extra dimensions renders this science also Omnipresent by definition.
Coupling Timelessness with Omnipresence by definition must yield Omniscience in a mechanical universe (the only petty and ridiculous thing that anyone can count as 'evidence' against the universe being 100% mechanical is that we're arrogantly frightened enough to think we have un provable and probably nonexistent free will)
Noting that this branch of physics now wields the virtues of Timelessness, Omnipresence and Omniscience to it's armory of characteristics and also that since this science governs the motion of the Membranes, and thus the Strings, it means that "God" DIRECTLY AFFECTS our own universe.
Coupling this affective force with the above 3 characteristics yields, by definition Omnipotence.
This is my definition of "God". No man in white robe in the afterlife with angels telling people to build ships and not to have sex. God, as a science by the numbers, is what I subscribe to.
This is where the ultimately devastating (or unifying) irony in the whole argument lays:
Science is God == God is Science.
As for me, I believe in God. But not in the way you probably think. God is the term I apply to the physics that operate outside the sphere of our own closed universe...the science of the multiverse...the bubbles, so to speak.
I believe the first few paragraphs of Genesis a highly advanced scientific context, dealing with the creation of the universe. However, the old language and metaphors disguise this very well and seem to render it no more than a fictitious oddity of religion - The Creation.
The rest of the bible, almost in its entirety, I would dismiss as fantasy.
I believe that there was a man named Jesus, and that he did many good things. I don't think he performed any "miracles" per-se, though. That would be unscientific and even unrelated to the nature of the God I believe in.
My God is not a force personified. It is not an old man with a beard. It's not even anything that I can, want, or feel the need to pray to. There is no point in praying to Newton's laws of gravitation; similarly there is no point in praying to God.
Like I said, I apply the term "God" to the physics beyond our closed universe...the region between the multiverse's closed bubbles where "omnipotence, omnipresence" and "timelessness" are all de-facto standards of that region of "space".
So I guess I believe in "The Force". No matter how cliched that sounds. What I believe is in no way (save for a few adjectives describing the "entity") related to the Bible whatsoever.
Believing in God is not about being a good person, doing well to your fellow mankind or having faith in the Bible and all it represents...that's the job of Religion...something I have no time for and also dismiss as a sorry interference in the progress of mankind.
Believing in God believes in the order, the science and the physics of that which determines the actuality of the multiverse and it's dynamics.
I thank you for your time.
radagast
Sep3-04, 11:57 AM
If I ask you to perform an experiment determining whether or not pigs can fly, what what you do? Take some pigs and throw them off a mountain? What if you had to perform the experiment within a closed in room and only a rat, some cheese, and a large maze. Obviously you would learn nothing about pigs from rats and cheese, and the analogy holds true for the existence of God or an afterlife. If such a being exists, then by very definiton he is not bound by space and time, or he wouldnt be God. if something is not bound by space or time, then nothing bound by space and time can have any effect. Formulas, DNA, etc can be used to adequately describe the existence of natural things, but when the laws of physics break down(i.e., heaven) physical laws are no longer adequate enough to explain what will occur. such as 2+2 = 4, and 4 divided by 2 = 2, nothing can be added to equal god, or god would not be god, because if things can add up, then they can be divided. If something can be divided then it is no more than the sum of its parts, and therefore is finite. Bottom line, if God is God, then he is infinite and not bound by space time.
Infinity, obviously derives its defintion from what is infinite to space-time,
Jim,
You seem to have gone extremely far out of your way to demonstrate your belief that God is infinite, not graspable by the human mind and not testable or disprovable. Given many of the other more well thought out definitions I've heard about him (i.e. the more typical JudeoChristian god), would agree, this isn't a claim I consider unusual.
However, it brings up an interesting question. Just stating what you have brings the question of why anyone would assume he exists, and after that, why any of the many, many other things presented in the bible would also be associated.
If it's based on actions God takes in our universe, that would, by definition be defined as ourside the normal laws of nature and physics, then the pig is indeed inside the room with our rat, cheese, and maze.
If not then the actions taken by such god would have to be hidden from all but one person at a time, i.e. subjective. Since the vast majority of Christian folk I've talked to don't get explicit and detailed communications, such as Joan of Arc did, then how can one attribute the vast details of Christianity and the bible, onto this infinite god? i.e. why would that attribution be a more rational position than such an attributed god, creation, and supernatural system in place (heaven, hell, etc).
We all know that physical causes and processes of many types occur in our universe. We see thousands of examples every day. Examples that are obviously caused by a supernatural entity are not common. While it may be simpler to attribute aspects of creation, et. al. to a supernatural entity rather than some physical process we haven't uncovered yet, we've seen that physical processes exist, we've not seen that a diety exists.
Glenn
It is a fact that there can be no life after death. This is because the soul (if it exists) cannot possibly have a brain. If it has a brain then what about other body parts like heart, lungs etc. And if life actually existed then won't it be a joke to think that little babies who die grown up in hell or heaven. What will they study in heaven? Are there schools in heaven just like earth?? That is impossible.
The question now is the question of origin. What is the origin; not of the universe but of all things including God (if he/she/it exists).
http://www.web_templates.blogspot.com
radagast
Sep9-04, 10:50 AM
It is a fact that there can be no life after death. This is because the soul (if it exists) cannot possibly have a brain. If it has a brain then what about other body parts like heart, lungs etc. ... That is impossible.
Invalid logic train. You imply that a brain, lungs, heart, etc are necessary for life. I've never seen one tree with any of those, yet many of them I've seen are alive by most definitions.
You can always redefine life to exclude the afterlife, but it's poor debating technique to use it to try to prove the afterlife doesn't exist. The same could be said about applying purpose and needs of the afterlife to try and disprove any afterlife.
While I may not believe in an afterlife, I am a strong believer in proper debate.
yanniru
Sep13-04, 10:41 AM
My first post here. Last year I wrote a paper for the Quantum Mind2003 conference about non-local consciousness that has some relevance to this discussion. http://www.dhushara.com/pdf/ruquist.pdf
In it I suggest that consciousness may exist in dark matter, especially if a major constituent of dark matter is some very light in mass particle (or particles) like the axion. The paper is a review paper of the published evidence for non-local consciousness and the theories published on the internet that could explain it. Heaven is not mentioned. But the extrapolation is straight forward.
Very light in mass particles, particles that are on the order of one millionth the mass of an electron, form a superfluid at room and even solar surface temperatures. Superfluids and superconductors are known to exist at very low temperatures close to absolute zero. Some semi-conductors are "super" at much higher temperatures, but no where near room temperature. But physical theory predicts any fluid whose particle wave functions sufficiently overlap will be "super". In physics they are called Bose-Einstein condensdates. So a fluid of particles like axions, whose wave functions are global in extent, would have the properties of a superfluid or a superconductor, even at solar surface temperatures. They exist in a state of complete quantum coherence. They do not experience friction. They can move about freely, but interestingly, it turns out that from theory that most axions were created in the Big Bang and they are essentially motionless. That is why they are considered to be the main component of Cold Dark Matter. They are called Cosmic Axions. Solar axions are also constantly produced in the sun and radiate away. It seems that they also contribute to the superfluid. In short, Dark Matter may be a supernatural medium, a amusing coincidence of religious and physics terminology.
Without friction, the medium would correspond to some concepts of heaven as a state of bliss where one neither needs to eat or sleep, although I question the bliss part. My guess is that you can only experience after death what you have already experienced in life. For some that may be like hell. Anyway that is what my religion teaches.
What I suggest in that paper is that your dreams and perhaps even your thinking may exist in the medium of Dark Matter, which BTW pervades the entire galaxy. If so, your consciousness could leave your body both before and perhaps at death. There is evidence that it can happen before death, which I take to be evidence of the supernatural.
So in this case the medium is the message. By the way, what we see is less than 1% of what exists. Dark matter, which we cannot see, is over 99% of the mass universe- room for many rooms. Even so, there now is twice as much (mass-equivatent) Dark Energy than Dark Matter. But at the time of the Big Bang, the amount of Dark Energy was a tiny fraction of the Dark Matter. Also, Dark Energy is needed to make the universe flat in the Euclidean sense, so that plane geometry works. But the price we eventually have to pay is the the universe will blow away, and perhaps even blow up a few billion years from now. Now that's religion...and all based on physics.
Entropy
Sep13-04, 02:37 PM
All I can tell you people is that there is no support for an after life in the Bible. There is only ressurection.
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