Thanks for your thoughts Bob. Mystical experiences have a tendency to push people toward pantheism/panentheism. From my un-sagely vantage point, it seems that the universe being divine, as a hypothesis, is not needed to explain any phenomena within the universe. Is it just the experience of oneness that motivates this attitude/position? It seems subtle because if one has such an experience, and attempts to describe it, the description is a secondary cultural construct, not the experience itself. Which is why we get apparently different descriptions from different traditions around the world, about experiences that could be very similar.
If God is everywhere, where is heaven?
If Satan still communicates with God, where is hell?
Do we only exist in God after we die? Do you think God is only in the âafterlifeâ?
Do you think Satan is only in the âafterlifeâ? Is earth in the afterlife? Job 1:7, etc etc etc.
True, but sin must be a possibility in order for free will to be a possibility.
Letâs assume itâs just part of nature unless we are properly informed otherwise. If you were God, where would you draw the line on extinguishing pain without imposing yourself on people who reject you, and without triggering the âYouâre a helicopter Godâ or âYou play favoritesâ objections (among others, some already mentioned and ignored⌠scan my other reply for the word âovercomingâ)?
Thatâs an interesting way to look at it. Another interesting way to look at it is that they had access to all the fruit which is in alignment with their biology, and choosing that better fruit would be in alignment with him. Thatâs assuming thatâs even how he presented the first moral choice. But if we look around us, we know there had to have been a first. Thereâs a first to everything that begins and hasnât always been. Wholeness is ontologically prior to privation like eternity is ontologically prior to the temporal.
The thing is if you fully commit yourself to the idea and treat it as a fact that God loves us and Jesus died for us, you can justify a worldview consistent with that until the end of time. But isnât it simpler to look around and just say, âGod probably doesnât careâ? From an evidentialist, realist perspective, whatâs wrong with that?
I have seen too many examples of that care, and when you call something imperfect, you argue for the perfect. You canât have imperfect without perfect. Itâs like you know without knowing you know.
I know that I know.
If a person really wants to know, he asks the knower. But if he does not want to know, he turns to the believer in order to get justifications for his own lies. What prevents you from asking the Demon. Where is Hell and where is Heaven? Paradise is in God. That is, every soul that has departed to God goes to paradise. No Christian will refute this. But Hell is life in the body, on our planet. Only here there is a body and there are feelings - the place where torment is possible at all. Hence the question. Do you need an excuse for Jewish shit, or do you need the truth?
âŚyou should just stop talking now.
Heaven is in the divine unity.
The concept of hell originated from a combination of ancient cultural, religious, and linguistic traditions. In the earliest parts of the Hebrew Bible (around the 8th century B.C.), the afterlife was described as Sheolâa shadowy, neutral pit where all the dead resided, rather than a place of torment or reward. This concept evolved under the influence of other ancient civilisations and during the Hellenistic period (after the 4th century B.C.), when Greek ideas of the afterlife, such as Hades and Tartarus, began shaping Jewish and later Christian thought.
Greek religious and philosophical traditions had well-developed notions of underworld punishment (Tartarus) and reward, which filtered into Jewish apocalyptic literature and, subsequently, Christian doctrine. The Christian concept of eternal, conscious punishment for the wicked as âhellâ was more fully articulated by early Christian theologians like Augustine, who drew on both scriptural traditions and Greek philosophical ideas.
Etymologically, the English word âhellâ comes from Old English and Germanic languages, where it meant a concealed or covered place and was used for the underworld of the dead in pagan traditions. Norse mythology featured Hell as both the underworld and its ruling goddess.
So, importantly, the biblical Sheol signified the grave, not punishment. Greek and Roman traditions introduced explicit afterlife punishments (Tartarus).
Later Jewish thought on hell evolved in the Hellenistic period, subsequently influencing Christian doctrine, which further developed the idea with the help of figures like Augustine and creative works such as Danteâs Divine Comedy.
I like CS Lewisâs take on purgatory:
âOur souls demand Purgatory, donât they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, âIt is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into joyâ? Should we not reply, âWith submission, sir, and if there is no objection, Iâd rather be cleansed first.â âIt may hurt, you know.â âEven so, sir.ââ
There is only one question that directly pertains to the OP: Is it right to regard God as infinitely important/valuable?
One would be unlikely to attribute an event to supernatural intervention unless it made sense to do so. For example, there are very specific Messianic prophecies. Their fulfillment is evidence that a supernatural being not subject to time would & did demonstrate, and is demonstrating their eternal qualities in the temporal⌠and will continue to do so. Some of those prophecies have yet to be fulfilled.
Some have actually done the math on the probability of those prophecies being fulfilled without supernatural intervention.
Some people prefer to give deductive arguments from natural theology before giving abductive arguments (historical evidence) for the resurrection. But if you wonât accept the possibility that there is something personal responsible for the natural universe, youâre not going to accept the arguments from natural theology anymore than you would accept the arguments for the resurrection.
Saying natural explanations are usually more probable, and ruling out the possibility of a supernatural explanation just due to the improbability of the supernatural event in a no-God world⌠begs the question⌠assumes naturalism âŚmakes naturalism unfalsifiable. If God exists, it makes a supernatural event more probable than if he doesnât.
That is going way off topic. That was not the point of my questions. If the one to whom my questions were addressed did not see the point behind them, they can ask for clarification.
I explained to you that infinity is a bluff. What is not clear here? Existence is fundamentally finite.
As for God, he is a scum, a scoundrel and a cannibal who feeds on human souls. God is a murderer, he kills people to get a soul. Why respect this bastard and sadist?
Naturalism should be falsifiable. I would love it if someone falsified it in a way that is undeniable rather than a testimony one can be skeptical of. It would be on every news channel and scientists would be on it like flies on roadkill. So far no such luck.
For example millions of people say the Holy Spirit lets them talk in other languages and gives some the ability to heal. Of all the people who say this, imagine if even one of them, or a small group, had proof the Holy Spirit was what was doing it. We would all become Christian tomorrow.
Itâs not like Christians donât have an incentive to show these things.
I am open to stories and testimonies but thatâs basically how I look at it.
There is nothing supernatural or unnatural. A miracle is the unwillingness to understand. Magic is the comprehension of essence (core, substance, fundamental nature) through understanding meaning. You do not want to know what meaning is and what essence (core, substance) is. Therefore, you understand nothing about magic.
So the probability an infinite God exists is 0%?
If you could provide a proof for this it would be a really big deal.
Study the meaning of human words, and you will begin to understand many things.
Holiness is a posthumous assessment of a personâs activities in the field of religious worship.
The spirit is the force that determines essence, granting the right to be, to exist.
Christians are people who have been reduced to the state of animals by faith.
You have the law & the prophets. You have Cold Case Christianity. If you wonât believe them, then even if you witnessed a resurrection yourself, you wouldnât believe.
I would be exactly like Doubting Thomas. Let me touch you, then I may believe. If what Paul writes is true and 500 witnessed him, then I may believe. Christians see this as a character flaw. They do not understand why the world at large doesnât take the religion as seriously as they do.
âI have seen too many examples of that careâ
Counting the nine million children who die every year before they reach the age of five?
By the way thank you for the book recommendation. I read William Lane Craig and John Lennox when I was questioning my faith. I really hoped Craig could bulldoze the hallucinations argument, but it just wasnât that satisfying. People like Craig say they have a personal experience of the Holy Spirit and thatâs why they believe. I thought I had that too, for years, but eventually I just came to think I was only calling it that because of my culture. After Iâd been to a lot of major denominational churches I eventually found myself meeting with Gnostics. They say they donât worship Jesus, they worship the spirit of Christ, which can come upon anyone in any religion. That made more sense to me than the âweâve got the Holy Spirit of truth and everyone else doesnâtâ attitude.
And yet Jesus showed Thomas his wounds.
I think that as long as we are doubting because we actually highly value the truth and donât want to believe in an idol, weâre going to be shown the way we need to be shown. But there are some who it wouldnât matter what you showed them because theyâre going to see/frame what theyâre going to see/frame.
These things have been on my mind lately:
