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May 31, 2015 at 4:11 pm (This post was last modified: May 31, 2015 at 4:13 pm by JuliaL.)
(May 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:
(May 31, 2015 at 1:07 am)JuliaL Wrote: As one who knows where my immortal indestructible soul will spend eternity (or at least has a couple of options;)
Where did it go last night between ~11PM and 7AM this morning?
How would I know about last night? I was referring (as you know) to what happens after you die.
It would help to establish your authority regarding what happens to consciousness when it goes away.
As it stands, you don't know what happens to your 'soul' during sleep. I have no reason to believe you have any better idea of what happens when consciousness goes away after death. Anybody can, and many do, claim such knowledge but they are mistaken, deluded or lying. You also.
(May 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:
(May 31, 2015 at 1:07 am)JuliaL Wrote: What are you planning to do after counting all the grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth for the 300th time and have eternity left to busy yourself?
1 Corinthians 2:9
“No eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him”
So, it's a mystery even according to your revelatory documentation.
I imagine you are trusting in the 'mercy of God' again that it will be something eternally lovely. Your quotation doesn't say that. Given the bipolar psychotic Abrahamic God, you should be careful where you place your confidence. He's got a history. I know you belong to a group that believes you're in for the good stuff. But He pulled the rug out from under the Hebrews more than once. Why do you think He won't again?
(May 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:
(May 31, 2015 at 1:07 am)JuliaL Wrote: Whatever happened to Limbo (the place, not the dance) and is it currently filling with gastrulae and blastulae? If not, where are all the unbaptised embryos going?
The existence of Limbo was a theological speculation about the fate of unbaptized children. The short answer is: we trust to the mercy of God. If you want a longer answer from the Vatican website, Google the following:
Thanks, but no thanks. Catholic clerics have centuries of piling unsupported crap on piles of unsupported crap on unsupported holy writ to con the masses into supporting them. Limbo is just another bad try at wallpapering over the holes in the story. Certainly any worthy God would condemn the sophistry. Trust to the mercy of God? I expect I have a better chance of surviving judgement than the Vatican lawyers. Let's not talk pedophile priests here, it's been done to death. Let's talk about cultural imperialism of the inquisition. Auto da fe anyone?
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?
May 31, 2015 at 4:13 pm (This post was last modified: May 31, 2015 at 4:23 pm by Randy Carson.)
(May 31, 2015 at 3:30 pm)pocaracas Wrote: RC... Roman Catholic... Also, remote control... Curious... I'm still waiting for your musings on what I wrote over a week ago...
My apologies...what post # specifically?
(May 31, 2015 at 4:11 pm)JuliaL Wrote:
(May 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: How would I know about last night? I was referring (as you know) to what happens after you die.
It would help to establish your authority regarding what happens to consciousness when it goes away.
As it stands, you don't know what happens to your 'soul' during sleep. I have no reason to believe you have any better idea of what happens when consciousness goes away after death. Anybody can, and many do, claim such knowledge but they are mistaken, deluded or lying. You also.
God has spent a fair amount of time informing us of what happens after death.
Not so much about what happens while you are asleep.
It's the former that you should be most concerned with. So, yeah.
Quote:
(May 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: 1 Corinthians 2:9
“No eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him”
So, it's a mystery even according to your revelatory documentation.
The purpose of the phrasing is to say that what an infinite God has prepared for us is BEYOND what we can comprehend.
Quote:I imagine you are trusting in the 'mercy of God' again that it will be something eternally lovely. Your quotation doesn't say that. Given the bipolar psychotic Abrahamic God, you should be careful where you place your confidence. He's got a history. I know you belong to a group that believes you're in for the good stuff. But He pulled the rug out from under the Hebrews more than once. Why do you think He won't again?
Well, I suppose that if I were a cynic, I might consider that possible. So, I can either ignore God now, and guarantee my eternal damnation or believe what God has said about the afterlife and deal with any potential "rug tugs" later.
Either way, that has to be better than simply bee-lining straight into hell.
Quote:
(May 31, 2015 at 12:32 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: The existence of Limbo was a theological speculation about the fate of unbaptized children. The short answer is: we trust to the mercy of God. If you want a longer answer from the Vatican website, Google the following:
Thanks, but no thanks. Catholic clerics have centuries of piling unsupported crap on piles of unsupported crap on unsupported holy writ to con the masses into supporting them.
Show me some of that. Or are you merely asserting it to be true? If there is soooo much evidence, you ought to be able to demonstrate this to me easily enough.
Quote:Limbo is just another bad try at wallpapering over the holes in the story. Certainly any worthy God would condemn the sophistry. Trust to the mercy of God? I expect I have a better chance of surviving judgement than the Vatican lawyers. Let's not talk pedophile priests here, it's been done to death. Let's talk about cultural imperialism of the inquisition.
Let's talk about the facts of all three of those examples. Or would you really just rather cling to your ignorance so that you don't have to deal with the implications of the truth?
(May 30, 2015 at 3:39 am)Salacious B. Crumb Wrote: I can concede to that is what the catholic faith accepts, but that doesn’t make it very logical. Do you realize that the catholic faith contradicts the bible in multiple ways (and the bible contradicts itself)?
This is incorrect. I will be happy to address each and every instance you wish to discuss.
What were Jesus's last words on the cross?
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'-Isaac Asimov-
(May 31, 2015 at 3:30 pm)pocaracas Wrote: RC... Roman Catholic... Also, remote control... Curious... I'm still waiting for your musings on what I wrote over a week ago...
My apologies...what post # specifically?
Short memory, I see...
(May 18, 2015 at 5:24 am)pocaracas Wrote: It has always been my impression that the heads of the church are fully aware that they run the institution without any "outside" help... that is... no god intervenes. How else can we explain those nice things that happened a few centuries ago, like the Avignon Papacy, the crusades... and Galileo?
Since I'm going to delve into history, how about we consider the very real possibility of fabrication of the concept of Jesus? PErhaps as an amalgamation of other pre-existing deities and some other real people. I'm not even going into other gods (egyptians, greek or romans, or assyrians) who were claimed to be born of virgins, died and resurrected and other tri-parted heads of pantheons.... I'm going into my favorite simple and evidenced Teacher of Righteousness:
Quote:Michael O. Wise posits that the Teacher of Righteousness was the "first messiah", a figure predating Jesus by roughly 100 years.[9] This figure - who Wise believes was named Judah - rose to prominence during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, and had been a priest and confidant to the king. However, he became dissatisfied with the religious sects in Jerusalem, and in reaction, founded a "crisis cult". While amassing a following, the Teacher (and his followers) claimed he was the fulfillment of various Biblical prophecies, with an emphasis on those found in Isaiah. The Teacher was eventually killed by the religious leadership in Jerusalem, and his followers hailed him as messianic figure who had been exalted to the presence of God's throne. They then anticipated that the Teacher would return to judge the wicked and lead the righteous into a golden age, and that it would take place within the next forty years. Wise explains that dating of manuscript copies among the Dead Sea Scrolls shows that the Teacher's postmortem following drastically increased in size over several years, but that when the predicted return and golden age failed to materialize, his following dissipated rapidly.
The story does sound familiar, does it not? The troubling bit is that it pre-dates Jesus by over 100 years. It could have been revived some time before the Council of Nicaea and found its way into some text that would later be considered a gospel.
According to Bart Ehrman, prior to this council, there were several flavors of christianity, gnostics, trinitarians, non-trinitarians, orthodox, etc, etc.... After the council, there were catholics and orthodox... all others were persecuted. As a persecuted minority, some fled away from the Turkey/Israel/Syria area, further south, into north Africa and the arabian peninsula. There, a few centuries later, a tribal leader, knowledgeable about Moses and with this authority figure on his back, rose up and conquered other tribes. About 70 years after this guy's death, the caliphate he allegedly initiated was too big and its leaders instituted a caliphate-wide religion with schools dedicated to teaching the principles of this religion... and a book: the qur'an.
It seems unlikely that this tribal leader had direct contact with an angel who told him to conquer all the neighbors and spread the message of "believe in me, or else...", so it stands to reason that the Qur'an popped up after the flash conquest took place, as the guy gained some acclaim as a military genius, or something.... and his descendents took advantage of that awe people gained for the man and added some extra bits to the tale.
Thus Islam was born.
Taking hints from Judaism (prophet figure in Moses) and from roman-catholicism (implementation of a state-wide religion).
So, my point is catholics are responsible for islam. Thanks a lot!! -.-'
Shall we go further back in history? What, no christ figure back then? awww... you poor fellow...
You had Moses and Abraham.... the though part is that there was a world before them... Did I mention the Assyrians? How about the Egyptians? And the chinese?
There were civilizations... great civilizations... prior to Abraham. There were religions. There were polytheist religions, shamanism, animism...
The complexity of religions seems to have evolved with time.... climaxing in the single god that takes care of everything... and does nothing - the creator god whose plan you cannot mess with, that set everything in motion prior to the big bang and whatever you do now, won't cause any change in that motion.... the deist god.
And all (perhaps except the very first - animism?) are man-made concepts that build upon the previous.
Why believe?
To me, the requirement of belief in the existence of a god only signals that the religious institution lacks a solid base... hence, it lacks credibility.
TL,DR?
0- HAHA, the US has no cool churches!
1- church leaders must know that god is frightfully absent from this world.
2- Jesus as an amalgamation of other fictional or real figures.
3- Thanks a lot for Islam, catholics! Fuck you!
4- Religions evolve... it's almost like they're man-made concepts.
5- the requirement of belief removes all credibility to any religious institution.
(May 31, 2015 at 4:11 pm)JuliaL Wrote: It would help to establish your authority regarding what happens to consciousness when it goes away.
God has spent a fair amount of time informing us of what happens after death.
Written as one who has bitten on the whole revelatory package.
God:
Could be imaginary.
Could be lying.
Could be a social construct whose sole effect in this reality is to manipulate minds and scam resources for an indolent class of clerics.
Reading your unquestioning acceptance of Catholic tradition, I'd say 3. is pretty effective.
(May 31, 2015 at 4:13 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:
(May 31, 2015 at 4:11 pm)JuliaL Wrote: So, it's a mystery even according to your revelatory documentation.
The purpose of the phrasing is to say that what an infinite God has prepared for us is BEYOND what we can comprehend.
Exactly, BEYOND only specifies incomprehensibility not utility. I don't think you understand the concept of ineffibility or infinity. Tell me again why God can't lie?
(May 31, 2015 at 4:13 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:
(May 31, 2015 at 4:11 pm)JuliaL Wrote: But He pulled the rug out from under the Hebrews more than once.
Well, I suppose that if I were a cynic, I might consider that possible. So, I can either ignore God now, and guarantee my eternal damnation or believe what God has said about the afterlife and deal with any potential "rug tugs" later.
Either way, that has to be better than simply bee-lining straight into hell.
Again, you don't understand. Your omni-god can do ANYTHING including lying, double dealing, bait and switch....ANYTHING. Bee-lining straight into hell only applies if hell actually exists.
(May 31, 2015 at 4:13 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:
(May 31, 2015 at 4:11 pm)JuliaL Wrote: Thanks, but no thanks. Catholic clerics have centuries of piling unsupported crap on piles of unsupported crap on unsupported holy writ to con the masses into supporting them.
Show me some of that. Or are you merely asserting it to be true? If there is soooo much evidence, you ought to be able to demonstrate this to me easily enough.
Nope, not gonna bite. I'd provide some simple and obvious inacuracies of the bible and you'd go into Bill Clinton mode and start laying out jots and tittles of Greek semantics worked out by monks in the twelfth century. Brain washing WORKS. Ask the North Koreans.
(May 31, 2015 at 4:13 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:
(May 31, 2015 at 4:11 pm)JuliaL Wrote: Limbo is just another bad try at wallpapering over the holes in the story. Certainly any worthy God would condemn the sophistry. Trust to the mercy of God? I expect I have a better chance of surviving judgement than the Vatican lawyers. Let's not talk pedophile priests here, it's been done to death. Let's talk about cultural imperialism of the inquisition.
Let's talk about the facts of all three of those examples. Or would you really just rather cling to your ignorance so that you don't have to deal with the implications of the truth?
First, define truth.
No, let me...
Truth is a property of propositions. A proposition is true in direct proportion to the degree that proposition accurately predicts future events.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?
Even when confronted with contradictions, somehow it remains "true"... Maybe, this is one of the reasons the catholic church didn't like science for a long time. Those pesky facts always get in the way.
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'-Isaac Asimov-
