A choice must be made

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

I have always accepted Christianity and the Scriptures without question.

I have many times tried to show others “the way, the truth” but lately I have questions.

According to the Scriptures the way to everlasting life is through Jesus Christ, I had no problem believing this but on reflection both my parents were atheists and that never changed up until their deaths.

My daughter is a proclaimed atheist and is adamant about remaining so.

So, if I continue on my path of “believing” there is not a chance I will ever be reunited with my family members.

How could I enjoy any kind of existence knowing my own flesh and blood were not with me, (that is, if it were at all possible)

In the Bible Revelation 21: describes a city with streets made of pure gold and gates made of pearls.

What do I care for precious stones in an afterlife if it means separation from those I love.

This leads me to think there is a certain lack of kindness and empathy in the “Word”, when a choice such as this must be made.

2

So, if I continue on my path of “believing” there is not a chance I will ever be reunited with my family members.

In my view, getting an afterlife isn’t based on faith.
It’s based on kindness.

3

Everyone gets an afterlife (which starts here). It’s just a matter of if they accept they are loved no matter what and love others likewise, or if they reject that whole thing and choose the alternative. When they proclaim to be atheist, do they even know what they’re rejecting? When they proclaim to be theist, do they even know what they’re accepting? We are only held accountable to what we do with what we know, or if we know we don’t know, the effort we make to find out. And if we never find out, how we decide to live, even if we are uncertain. The one who would accept they are loved no matter what (even though they are uncertain if it is true), and loves others likewise, is more justified than the one who knows (or proclaims) they are loved no matter what, but does not love others likewise. The first is a sheep, the latter is a goat. Unfortunately, in this (my) cultural climate, that is going to hit the ears wrong.

When I say the first is a sheep, I mean, they listen to the Shepherd’s voice, even if they’re not sure the Shepherd even exists.

Whereas the goat ignores the Shepherd’s voice, even though it knows the Shepherd exists.

The first one actually knows love because they live as loved, whereas the second knows nothing of love, regardless anything else they know. That’s why they will hear “I never knew you.”

4

The basic problem I see with your view is that it is based on a fundamentalist literalist interpretation of the Bible. Faith based on history without immediate experience is bound to fail because historical facts can’t be known with certainty as Descartes showed.

You think the Bible points to an ultimate end filled literal gold silver and precious stones. Do you also think the Bible i.e. “The Scripture” is literally inerrant? Have you ever studied other religions and considered how their scriptures may be pointing to the same ultimate reality as Christianity through parallels experiences and symbolism?

Atheism in the West is the last stage of Protestantism that started with Martin Luther. Atheists like Dawkins reject the God of their own impoverished theological imaginations which are strawman versions of the typical fundamentalist doctrine. Can you blame them? Fundamentalist Christianity has most people going to hell. It has no answer to the problem of evil. It has a failure God who created the Devil and a universe that culminates in damnation for most that He has to live with for eternity. Not a happy picture.

5

F.D. … Charitable to every faith but biblical (historically well-attested) Christianity…

See my threads on the problem of evil.

A lot … not all… of prophecy is symbolic/poetic, and figurative/phenomenological language does not count as error, but beauty.

Do any of the errors put an essential doctrine in doubt?

Do you negate as historical anything (to be consistent) less well attested than the events described in the Bible?

6

Historical claims are more or less probable based on the evidence. That’s as true for other religions as well as Christianity and whether a claim is religious or not.

The answer depends on what the essential doctrine is.

The Bible is an anthology written by many authors. Some of the books have multiple authors. The texts often show signs of redaction. Attestation varies with events. For example, story of the slaughter of the innocents ordered by Herod in Bethlehem in Matthew 2:16 is attested in the other gospel, anywhere else in the New Testament or historical records as one might expect of an event in the life of a famous king to whom the construction of the second temple in Jerusalem is attributed.

The wisdom teachings of scripture don’t depend on historical verification. They are always true even if they never literally happened.

7

100% agree, if you meant “whether or not a claim is religious”.

Name just one and point out just one error that puts it in doubt.

I’ma just re-put this last question:

8

You haven’t said what the essential doctrine is.

I have tacitly accepted plenty of claimed historical events that I haven’t investigated because I wasn’t interested. The stories seemed to be peripheral to my existential concern. I have looked deeper into the historicity of Jesus than any other putative historical fact.

9

I mentioned there are symbols in prophecy. Belief in any essential doctrine backed up by historically fulfilled prophecy that contains symbols… do you think it relies on literal inerrancy? If so, please name an error and an essential doctrine it puts in question.

Or are you just reflecting the belief that the prophecy was meant figuratively? In other words, do you think the new heaven and new earth are going to be like the current heaven and earth restored/reconstituted, or do you think the whole thing is just allegorical, or something else? Or are you just asking reason4emotion their position on the matter, without holding one yourself (that is not the impression I get)?

So, then why this…?

Faith is more than mere intellectual assent to facts (following the evidence where it leads). For example, it is one thing to know the right thing to do. It is another thing to do it despite conflicting priorities/distractions, because you have prioritized it above them. Those priorities and distractions demand your attention for reasons other than intellectual ones. Faith remains focused (for example, on the evidence you followed) despite those non-intellectual (fiery arrows, and foxes) distractions. It is a higher (eternal) interest governing all the lower (passing) ones.

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What is the essential doctrine?

11

Pick one:

  1. I’ll take that as a no.
  2. What is the error?
12

The essential doctrine of the Bible is “I am”. It is stated as “I am what I am” in Exodus and “I am the way the truth and the life” in the Gospel of John. The essential doctrine shines through to me but not everybody sees it.

13

The Way (all your strength)

The Truth (all your mind)

The Life (all your heart, soul)

Some notes:

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14

Some notes from the other day:

So if the apparently antithetical properties timeless (unchanging) and temporal (changeable) are contingent, extrinsic properties, what essential, intrinsic property do they NOT negate? That’s why you need to talk about changeless (necessary) (whole) SUBSUMING (being ontologically prior to, but coeternal WITH)… (in a mutually productive way, because love—a choice—is not love without demonstration/creation/expression) …change (contingent/possible) (capacity).

Accidental (extrinsic) features can be taken/pass/change away — heaven and earth (general revelation/appearance) — but the word (logos) — essence — can never be taken/pass/change away.

See the Bertrand Russell quote at about 26ish minutes:

…how did he differ from essentialism… MICHAEL says his own name:

the whole is Aion, within it many aionos (Matthew 28:20)

What is most real is what is in every moment. (Store up your treasures in heaven, and pray for these treasures to be everywhere visible on earth.)

See Dr. Craig’s video about the logos apologists. Reread the Greek part of Eternity in their hearts.

More: https://youtu.be/xjiLZ2BwSjQ?feature=shared

Some graphical notes on screenshots from the vids:

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15

As long as one wrongly concieves of “Faith” as mental assent to certain divine (Biblical, etc.) claims & statements, confusion without end will reign in one’s affairs.

That “Faith” is a foul mistranslation and perhaps even an evil misdirection.

Dig into the Greek, undertaking your own informal etymological bit of archeology, and you will see with inevitability: the actual FAITH of which the Book speaks refers to something akin to chivalrous faith from the middle ages, it’s used in the sense of the “faithful servant” of Shakespearean language, to which the moderns are not at all accustomed any more.

Faith in THAT sense means that you are faithful to God, you never betray God, you serve God with honour and in good faith. It’s got nothing to do with beliefs and mental concepts, which can vary - but the loyalty of the human toward the divine is what must be unshakeable to enable a lasting “bridge” to form. If you are willing to correct this foundational mistake, your loyalty to God will now inspire a measure of respect, and even reverence, in your atheistically-inclined family members, just as undue attachment to “all-important mental assents” correctly inspires their contempt.

With this loyalist understanding of Faith, you will set yourself free from your vexations at once, and perhaps this small episode will inspire you to continue digging in the Greek, and finding far more there than you ever expected to find.

-WL

16

Have you tried reading them and comparing them?
If you have then just how confusing is your cognitive dissonance?
LOL

17

Exactly how?

Is it by faith, or by judgement? The bible says in places that all you need is belief alone, elsewhere good works and deeds; giving up wealth; cutting off ties with family.
In some passages it says god wants everyone to go to heaven; other places only a chosen few. It even goes as far as saying that god made people in order to fill hell.

In ACTS it says that if a man get in to heaven he also gets a family ticket to take his wife and kids. But this is contradicted in Corinthians.

18

LOL.
If you become a Muslim you get 72 Virgins… Or sex slaves…
Maybe you are in the wrong faith, afterall Islam is part three of the Messianic trilogy - how can you ignore it?

THen again I am given to understand that some trnascriptions use the word “whore” or “haw”, So it’s either 72 pros or 72 berries??
WHo knows - who cares?

19

@reason4emotion
Hello, l’m very sad to read this, and it is something quite a few religious people have to confront.

I am Muslim and l can give my religion’s perspective - there may be something useful for you. Muslims believe:

  • God created us just to worship him, so you must do that no matter what
  • If God tells you to sacrifice your firstborn to him, you must do that, which is to say: God is above all terrestrial familial ties
  • All love comes from God, as do all souls. So that is why our Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) taught us not to sever uterine ties, that is, sibling ties, mother-child bonds. He also taught us it is a major sin to disrespect one’s parents. The Qur’an also tells us to respect our parents and to pray for them. In my religion, if we are to disobey our parents, it is to be done for the sake of religion, and even then, it is to be done with the best of manners.

Further, we believe:

  • Allah loves to hear excuses - but l’d infer that the excuses had better be good. I think the level of corruption in the world stands in all our favour, it was hard to know wrong from right, e.g. the theory of evolution being taught as fact, when in fact it was baseless, people arguing passionately that God doesn’t exist, the prophets never existed etc, people with celebrity status making these wrong views seem appealing.

In fact we believe that Allah has held back 99 degrees of compassion, the love we know in this life is just 1 degree, aside from the 99 held back.

  • God can edit timelines, maybe? So maybe he can make it so the sad things you knew to happen in this life e.g. familial estrangement, never occurred.
  • Heaven is by definition a place without sorrow. Nobody leaves heaven and nobody wants to leave it. There are higher and lower levels but each level encapsulates perfection and nobody will want to leave any level. So your sorrow by definition will not exist there.
  • All of our soul are from God, there is no reality but him. So, if you love him you need to do your best to gather the souls of your loved ones together and save them from a fire which has 99 parts, only 1 of which is the flame we know in this world, it’s a fire which probably for most people is endless and l get the impression the people of hell will live in a tiny crevice each all by themselves forever, not even a vast hall. When hell is complete on the day of judgement it will give a cry of such despair. I can’t remember the rest of the teaching but the impression l got was that the sound of that despair was the most awful thing you’d ever hear. So my point is, it’s real and God doesn’t have a problem sending anyone there for eternity, because he’s all that exists anyway. But conversely, you can leverage that to seek out your loved ones and keep them with you, because God loves that we keep family bonds because we are thus respecting his Soul by keeping these fragments within us, together as a family unit.

Actually, l think that’s the reason we aren’t allowed to put curses on people in Islam, no matter what they’ve done. For example, a Palestinian woman whose child was killed by Israeli soldiers cried out “I will never forgive you”, rather than actually curse the perpetrators. The reason is, hellfire is so terrible, and everyone contains a divine light, so to curse someone to hell, is to attempt to force God’s hand by consigning that divine spark to hell forever. Of course it may well happen, and for most people it will end that way, but out of love and respect for God, we are to do out best to keep all these divine sparks (= souls, especially our loved ones, our families) together.

So, strive to keep these divine lights together, out of respect for the divine.

Also beware of predatory demons that invoke feelings of sorrow, and feed off it by oo-ing and awww-ing as you weep, and inciting you to poetic frenzies about how you wanna burn heaven and extinguish hell, if you can’t have God directly or if you can’t have your loved ones. I do fear that, reading what you wrote about not wanting streets of gold and pearly gates. I know the feeling and l agree with it but beware that predatory demons love your sorrow, bit by bit they’ll insert protestantism, revisionism, upgrades, updates to your faith, l think Satan went that way and even when God told him he’s finished for his arrogance, he asked for more time so that he can drag as many of us to hell as he can with him … just for the hell of it. So what l’m saying is, beware of pretty talk!

20

Dan wrote:
“In my view, getting an afterlife isn’t based on faith.
It’s based on kindness.”

I am basing my argument on Jesus said in John 3:16 that God loved the world so much, He gave His only begotten Son so those who believed on Him wouldn’t perish but have everlasting life.

While faith is the primary factor, many Christians believe that good deeds and living righteous life are a natural outcome from this faith. The core belief is that faith is the foundation for eternal life.
When I say “faith” I mean in believing in Jesus.

My argument is not a question of whether or not one believes, my question is why is it necessary to make a choice about all this.

No free entry, people need a pass to get there.

Not much different from life here on earth.

“Nothing is free. Everything has to be paid for. For every profit in one thing, payment in some other thing. For every life, a death". Ted Hughes