(December 6, 2016 at 11:28 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: So Catholic Church doctrine Dante's Inferno is based on Dante's Inferno Catholic doctrine, now? It doesn't even pretend to be scripture, it's literally a fantasy.

Fixed that for you.

The answer, in the corrected version, is yes.

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(December 6, 2016 at 10:29 am)Mathilda Wrote: How does this work then? I mean physically. After all, we are physical beings, therefore to interact with us there have to be physical mechanisms. [1]

Some being that you call a god would need to scan every the state of every atom in the body. This information would need to saved to some sort of hard storage to be recalled at a later date. Where is this information stored?  Why haven't physicists or medical scientists ever recorded any of this information being scanned at death? How is the scanning being achieved? Say someone dies from a neurodegenerative disease, do they get resurrected in the same mentally impaired state at the point of death? What's stopping someone who died from cancer being resurrected and dying again? [2]

And are the same atoms retrieved from around the world and reassembled? Or is one carbon atom as good another? In which case are the resurrected humans just copies? Or if the original atoms were re-used, what happens if it's already a part of someone else still alive? [3]

And more importantly, are all your answers to the questions I have asked in the Bible or did you just make them up because you want to believe in the fantasy? [4]

1) The resurrection is of the body. Your body will be physically restored and reunited with your soul, but without any corruption. Those who have risen in god's friendship will be "divinized" (sorry, I can't think of a better word) in both their body and their soul. What does that mean or what will that be like? We're not really sure, but I'll take a swing at what I think it might be like.

Our own way of being human can be thought of as a "participation" in "being-itself" (which we call Christians god). We don't exist by our own power alone. Instead, we exist in-cooperation-with the power of "being-itself". We are "being" human through a participation with the power of "being-itself".

From that point of view, the "divinization" of the resurrected faithful is the additional inverse participation: i.e. the "divine-being" acts through a participation with the human-being, in addition to the human being's natural participation in the divine-being. The resurrection is an eternal divinely-human-being.

2) The resurrection will heal and restore every lacking in the unity of the human-being, simultaneously both body and soul. Everyone will be raised to the version of themselves that is "most-full".

3) All good questions for which there is freedom of thought. I don't know where I stand about them. 

4) I have tried to include in my answers my own understanding about what Jesus and the Apostles taught just as I have received those teachings 1) in the Bible, 2) in the 2000 year reflection on Christ's teachings and its lived experience by the apostolic community he started (which is called Church Tradition) and 3) in that same apostolic community's daily teaching and way of life (i.e. today's Catholic Church). I believe my explanations represent Catholic teaching (and therefore, Christ's teaching), but if they do not I would be happy to know where and how so I can correct my error.

(December 6, 2016 at 12:03 pm)Ignorant Wrote: 1) The resurrection is of the body. Your body will be physically restored and reunited with your soul, but without any corruption. Those who have risen in god's friendship will be "divinized" (sorry, I can't think of a better word) in both their body and their soul. What does that mean or what will that be like? We're not really sure, but I'll take a swing at what I think it might be like.

Our own way of being human can be thought of as a "participation" in "being-itself" (which we call Christians god). We don't exist by our own power alone. Instead, we exist in-cooperation-with the power of "being-itself". We are "being" human through a participation with the power of "being-itself".

From that point of view, the "divinization" of the resurrected faithful is the additional inverse participation: i.e. the "divine-being" acts through a participation with the human-being, in addition to the human being's natural participation in the divine-being. The resurrection is an eternal divinely-human-being.

2) The resurrection will heal and restore every lacking in the unity of the human-being, simultaneously both body and soul. Everyone will be raised to the version of themselves that is "most-full".

3) All good questions for which there is freedom of thought. I don't know where I stand about them. 

4) I have tried to include in my answers my own understanding about what Jesus and the Apostles taught just as I have received those teachings 1) in the Bible, 2) in the 2000 year reflection on Christ's teachings and its lived experience by the apostolic community he started (which is called Church Tradition) and 3) in that same apostolic community's daily teaching and way of life (i.e. today's Catholic Church). I believe my explanations represent Catholic teaching (and therefore, Christ's teaching), but if they do not I would be happy to know where and how so I can correct my error.

I don't think I've ever heard the claim before that both body and soul will live eternally.  Tell me, where do you get this and why would you want it?  I recently broke both elbows racing my daughter and I can tell you I don't want physical elbows in Heaven.  Why would I even need them if God, himself, is spirit?  You're saying that people are still going to have stinky buttholes in heaven?  Will the men have foreskins?  If yes, what about the Jews who cut theirs off as a covenant to God before Jesus?  Surely some of those will be in Heaven.  Would that mean their covenant has ended?  If no, how does that work for the uncircumcised?  Will God hire a doctor?  Will there be scaring like there is with earthly circumcision?  And what happens to the parts of the body that made up the foreskin?  That bit just stays rotting in the ground?  With there be Catholic graveyards full of coffins containing nothing but foreskins?

This belief really brings up a whole lot more questions than it answers.  And it's not based on, literally, anything I have ever heard or read anywhere before.

(December 6, 2016 at 11:43 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: That's a very loose use of the word 'theory'.

Theories are put together and based on what we do know and our understanding of it. I didn't mean that it was just some random idea pulled out of nowhere. It is consistent with whatever understanding we have about the afterlife.

But never tested, because they can't be.

(December 6, 2016 at 11:39 am)Tonus Wrote: Would the afterlife be noticeably different from the current one? [1] Do you think that our afterlives will be anything at all like our current ones? [2] Is heaven a place that feels like a real world or city? [3] Is hell a place that feels like a cavern dug into the earth or a lake that is on fire? [4] If my afterlife is an echo of my current life, then I'd spend eternity being pretty carefree and happy.  Does that mean I'd be in heaven in spite of my atheism? [5] Or in something akin to the suburbs of hell, where life really isn't that bad because they keep the undesireables out? [6]

I don't know how to answer your question without understanding the actual circumstances of the afterlife.  This was something that I never saw answered as a theist, and that I've never seen answered since. [7]

But there are sinful actions which may not be the cause of torment to others, or which require us to stretch the meaning of 'torment.'  A person who directs porn videos for a living and is a friendly and caring person his whole life... what happens to him? [8]

Is Dante's Inferno considered canon by the Church? [9] The Bible is either vague on the concept of hell (if you interpret it all as metaphor) or quite clear on the concept (if you interpret it literally).  Jesus' own teaching tended to be all-or-nothing. [10]

Your descriptions make me think that some parts of hell aren't quite, uh... hellish.  I know that Jesus spoke of some being called "least" in heaven, which means that heaven might also be fragmented along such lines.  So maybe heaven and hell are on a single plane of existence where there are slums at one end leading towards nicer housing until you get to a decent suburban area where it rains just a bit too often, and then there's a big gate separating them from a nice neighborhood where you can keep your doors unlocked, leading up to the classy rich neighborhood that's just a short walk from God's office (whose schedule is always clear because no one complains). [11]

I mean, if the worst slum in hell gets cable TV then maybe eternity isn't so bad, unless all it shows are re-runs of The Apprentice. [12]

1) Yes. Your body will be incorrupt, and you will know almost everything. Marriage, however, won't be a thing apparently.

2) Yes. You will have a body that can hear, see, feel, taste, smell and everything. There will be trees. Animals. Pretty much like this one.

3) Not sure what it would "feel" like. All I know is that it will be satisfaction itself. Since full human satisfaction includes multiple levels (e.g. nutrition, relationships, society, etc.), I expect there to be analogous things as well. Will there be cities? Maybe just one. Will it be anything like our cities? Sure, but only what is good about them. 

4) I have no idea. There will probably be fire (?), or at least heat, the intensity of which would correspond to the shittiness of your life.

5) I have no idea what it will be like for you or if you will be in heaven or hell. If you live a good but truly atheistic life, then that is exactly what you can expect at the resurrection. In other words, you might expect a mediocre eternity spent with the knowledge that you could have had a divine eternity.

6) Maybe, but you would also know for eternity that you could be living with much much more in eternity than a mere "repeat" of your carefree and happy life.

7) I don't know which question you are talking about.

8) I have no idea what happens to him. What I do know is that nothing about pornography leads to human flourishing. It manipulates, uses, traumatizes and dehumanizes the people involved, and it distorts and reduces one of the most beautiful of human actions which means love, unity, and fruitfulness to one that simply means self-pleasure. How aware he is of that reality, and how much that activity forms his central reason-for-living will factor into how well he has lived his life. 

9) No it is not canon, but the Divine Comedy is a good poetic image of the graded nature which are probably present in hell and in heaven. I brought it up that purpose, not to propose that Dante's descriptions of the torments of hell should be accepted. He captured the Catholic understanding of eternal justice, in that the pagan philosophers who sought truth and goodness honestly were not blessed, but they were not tormented like some of the popes and other poor souls in Dante's story. Dante, perhaps better than any poet, expressed poetically the Catholic understanding of hell even if his details don't do the same.

10) Yes, it is all or nothing in the sense that, either you will live a divinely eternal life, or you won't. Either way, you will KNOW that the divine life was possible, but your life chose otherwise.

11) That's one way to look at it, but I'd say heaven and hell are not on the same continuum. The separation is more drastic/transcendent.

12) If Jesus is Heaven spilling over into this world, then the Apprentice is DEFINITELY hell spilling over as well. Cheers!

(December 6, 2016 at 11:43 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: No, it is not Church doctrine. We know very little about what the afterlife is actually like,

(emphasis mine)

LOL... Try - nothing. All you have is some assertions and hand-waving explanations, with not a shred of evidence and no way to demonstrate, or test any of it. I have a "theory", that in the afterlife Jesus is going to have gay sex with everyone - even women. There - I know precisely as much about the afterlife as your church does. And it didn't take me 2000 years to make it up have this revelation.

(December 6, 2016 at 11:43 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: so we cannot say officially. Theologians have their theories, and Dante's Inferno is a well accepted one.

That's not a "theory" - that's what in the scientific terminology is classified as a "cool story".

(December 6, 2016 at 1:06 pm)Stimbo Wrote: But never tested, because they can't be.

That is correct. 

Though I also can't "test" a lot of other things that I believe to be true. Such as the fact that my husband loves me.

Can test that he exists.

(December 6, 2016 at 1:26 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(December 6, 2016 at 1:06 pm)Stimbo Wrote: But never tested, because they can't be.

That is correct.

Though I also can't "test" a lot of other things that I believe to be true. Such as the fact that my husband loves me.

Indeed, which is why it's vital not to conflate the two categories - things we believe are true and can be tested for validity, and things we believe to be true because that's all there is to go on.

(December 6, 2016 at 1:26 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(December 6, 2016 at 1:06 pm)Stimbo Wrote: But never tested, because they can't be.

That is correct. 

Though I also can't "test" a lot of other things that I believe to be true. Such as the fact that my husband loves me.

Is that analogy supposed to be compelling, cuz, like, it's not.