That’s a big word…in philosophy it’s reserved for things you can prove.
What is a proof?
Is it only something that is logically derived from some premise? But how do you prove the truth of the premises? Being self evident is certainly no proof for truth.
And have you not heard of Goedel’s incompleteness theorem which says that even in a system that is logically consistent you cannot prove all FACTS in that system. Take a simple example: Prove the truth or otherwise of this statement: I am a liar.
How do you prove that Alexander the Great once existed and that he indeed great as claimed?
How does the judge in court proved that it was the front car that reversed and hit the car at the rear?
How do you prove that black hole exists? Or that there will not be some theory another day that shows all that we think we know today is all wrong.
So what is a FACT, philosophically speaking that is?
The Bible says that people go to Heaven by the grace of God, apart from good works. People can’t earn their way into heaven, and therefore, Christianity isn’t based on a punishment/reward system.
By the way, just because Jesus was sinless and therefore didn’t die because of his own sin doesn’t mean that he is immune to all forms of sin. The point is that he wasn’t responsible for his own death (because he kept God’s commandments) but he was killed by people who were sinners. He died because of sin, but not because of his own sin.
So then we simply cross-apply all arguments to faith itself. It makes it much easier to believe in something, if you get eternal bliss by doing so. And it makes it much harder to disreguard something, if it says that you will go to hell forever if you do. Wheather you like it or not, there is no escaping a system of punishement/reward, in a religion that has heaven and hell.
Yes, but that does not automatically means that you are sent to hell as punishment.
Look at it this way: If there is light and there is darkness, and you choose to remain in darkness, can you blame anyone if you stumble, fall and walk in circles in the dark?
If you are drowning and I offered you a hand which you reject did I then condemn you to drown or did you condemn yourself?
Also imagine Heaven and Hell are two destinations, clearly marked, at a fork junction, and you took the Hell road. Again is going to Hell a punishment or merely a logical outcome of your stubborness? For all you need to do to take the Heaven road is to believe in Jesus Christ, but for your stubborness, you refused. Have you not judged yourself precisely by taking the Hell road.
The judgment is this, not whether you did good deeds or not, but whether you believe Jesus Christ or not, and whether you rejected his grace and mercy or not.
well nehi
i was raised christian and i am now so far distanced from it that it is completely absurd
what i was taught was simple
believe that christ died for your sins and that is your ticket to the most beautiful neighborhood in the universe for all eternity
that line of crap led me to my theory that satan wrote the holey buy-bull
so that people would think there is no need to seek enlightenment
of course there is no satan
thats just “god” when “he” is drunk
personally i hate the christian approach to life
the whole “i am right and that is all” attitude
of course islam and judaism like to do that as well
i think the past is a lie
all true religious thought only occurs in the “now”
not in the past or the future
all information from “god” comes from within and no where else.
I think there is a difference in believing someone for what he or she did, or in the acts themselves, rather than the actor, and merely believing someone. The latter is a larger thing. The ticket to heaven is to believe in Christ.
This is an interesting point. Immediately the question is how do you know it is? and even if so, are all the past a lie, eg your birth date and your parents? Or only some past are lies, just as some things you read or hear in the media are lies? And then the issue returns back to the question, how do you know a lie, or a truth for that matter?
But why the internal notion of such an absurd, intangible and unintelligible concept as “god” itself? Why not something founded in something evidentially more certain and discernible?
chanbengchin
what is your definition of heaven? what is your definition of christ?
while we are at it what is your definition of beleive?
for me its simple
christ = the buddha nature
heaven= the state you are in when you become self realized
belief= a personal absolute truth
hell= the state you are in when you are spiritually lost
god=the transcendent energy that binds all things
so the “ticket to heaven” (in my view) is to become self aware.
as for “the past is a lie”
i say that because it doesnt need to be proven, just learned from
i dont remember being born, so i cant tell you my recollection.
the person i assume is my mother has her take on the story and so does my so called father and i’m sure the hospital staff does too.
i use my naval as proof in the now.
history books are not written by the people who lived it.
its written by people who researched other peoples books.
not even jesus wrote a book on his own life.
all we have are the interpretations written by his friends long after his death. (at least thats what i read)
as for the past being true, prove it.
you can show me books and photos and witnesses and quotes but what will that actually prove?
if you want to close your mind to the present and worship a kind hearted jew that was executed 2000 years ago, be my guest.
but openning yourself up to this moment is a doorway to eternity.
love and respect
kasey
p.s.
even you use “quotes” when you type the word “god”
[/quote]
Heaven is not a question of definition.
Just as you believe what you believe, you can define whatever you want to define.
The issue rather is the question: what is heaven?
And for that you need to ask those who knows what is heaven.
But who can claimed to know what is heaven?
And I think there can only be two categories of evidence acceptable:The first is someone who have been to heaven and have come to earth to tell us about it
and the second is someone who been revealed heaven by the one who have been or is in heaven.The second category albeit is not as strong as the former but nonetheless acceptable under certain conditions, such as the hearsay witness can be reasonable judged not a liar, and his witness corroborated by other witnesses of similar quality too.
For the first category of witness I know of only one person in the whole history of mankind who have claimed to have come from heaven, namely Jesus Christ. While Jesus was on earth, it was recorded that he said:
Jesus also gave some glimpse of what heaven is later on, in the revelations of the end times to the apostle John, namely in the context of promises/encouragement to those “who overcomes”:
We certainly cannot understand completely what heaven is even with these revelations. It is all metaphorial, like “Father’s house”, or “temple of my God” or “throne”.
But somehow the imagery do find an accord in my spirit, or like someone reaching out and touching my heart and quenched its deepest longing. Particularly for me is the image of being given a new name. It is as if I can finally realised who am I, my identity, and true self, the one I was made to be, for all my life, for all eternity. It is a name indeed “known only to me”.
Now the learned apostle Paul have this to say about the kind of beings we will be transformed into in heaven:
Now isnt that a glorious hope!
So you can know something to be true of the past, even if you have no “recollections” or other forms of direct evidence of these past events.
But there is a problem here: How can you take the navel as valid evidence of being born? For you may have learnt of this correlation in the past, perhaps from direct observations, or someone’s tale, but since it is past it cannot be true.
So therefore you cannot know whether you were actually born as a human baby, even with a navel. You could well be an alien baby. But then that was the past and a lie and perhaps unknowable too.
What I am saying here is that to know the truth in the present you need to depend on past truths or else it is an impossibility.
Or unless you are saying only the past that you directly experienced and can remember are true. All else are lies. And you do not even entertain the possibility that they may be true. But if you can know the past, surely others can too. And can you not know of the past truths from the witness of others and their witness of other witnesses?
all im saying is the past cant be proven so lets pay attention to right now.
in the gospel of thomas jesus said
the kingdom of heaven is here now for the taking but men refuse to see
from the zen teachings of jesus