Over the years, many well-meaning Christians have tried to convince me to give Christianity “another chance.” All such people have walked away frustrated with me. I don’t reject religious beliefs because I’m stubborn (but it probably looks like it). Rather, I reject such stories because I insist on credible evidence, especially fantastic stories about ghosts. I also insist that stories should have internal consistency. I insist on a tight underlying logic before I’m willing to believe extraordinary claims.
What is illogical about Christianity? The following story is not meant to offend, but rather to illustrate some traditional Christian beliefs in an unfamiliar way. I offer it to all of those people who have tried to convert me over the years. Imagine that you heard the following Assimulated Press story on the radio. What would you think?
Today, we are reporting on a bizarre story. Until last month, an old man had been living with his numerous children in his sprawling mansion, which included a vast garden. Last month, he kicked all of his children out of his garden. Since then he has been threatening to slowly burn some of his children in a big pit in his basement—the ones at risk are those who have misbehaved or otherwise upset him.
One week ago, this unusual man committed suicide by nailing himself to a tree on a small hill in his backyard.
Since he died, some of his friends have written a book of 66 sub-books describing the old man in megalomaniac terms. Many passages of this book are vague and self-contradictory. For instance, in these letters, he is described as having insisted that he committed suicide to “save” his children from being burned by him. Image by minutesalone at Flickr (creative commons). According to the stories, the old man was purportedly trying to save his children from himself.
Police contacted the children’s mother recently, and she claimed that the old man was the true father even though she had never actually had sex with him. Neighbors have been complaining that she often spoke of her husband as her “son.”
The most amazing thing, though, is that after this purported “sacrifice” of killing himself on the tree in the backyard, some of the 66 books indicate that his children are still at risk of being burned in the basement. Some people are questioning whether the suicide was necessary at all.
Nonetheless, the old man is currently being called a hero by many in his community for having “atoned” for the moral deficiencies of his children by committing suicide, so that he would burn fewer of them.
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See also, the four other “Assimulated Press” stories at Dangerous Intersection. Here, here, here and here.
Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.
Here is how I view what will happen at the end of the church age, i.e. when the gentile peoples of the world will have reached the limit of God's grace established by God's own "timetable."
A viable Christian witness from the gentile people will lessen and lessen as the world is dominated more and more by a culture of "Anti-Christ" with a false prophet declaring that Jesus Christ seriously deluded the masses. Now, of course, this denial of a need for the atonement has resonated with many groups of people through many ages of history and in many differing cultures.
Towards the end of the present physical "age" there will be a marked change in prominent worldviews of human animals.
Some people call this the parousia or the Second Coming of Christ. I hold that this First return is also the rapture where the world will finally have a supernatural event to have to deal with. It will likely happen three and a half years into the final week of years before Christ unmistakably returns to bring human history (this present age) to an end.
One way or another, but very suddenly, both the existing Gentile Christian and Jewish Christian witness will no longer be present or able to hold back the onslaught of evil that has been kept at bay by those who truly hold to the full gospel message. The importance of freely accepting God's offer of atonement through the shed blood of Jesus, the Only begotten Son of God, will have reached its watershed level.
The witness for Jesus Christ for the next three and a half years will come from Jewish believers that finally awaken as they finally realize what God's plan has been for all these years.
This will happen when every language group and culture has had the opportunity to hear, experience and respond to the clearly presented gospel.
Many cultures by this point will have lost their initial love for Christ (and the atonement) and will have so hardened their hearts against "God" in general, but the "Christian God" more specifically that they will see no harm in relegating the religious beliefs of Christians to myths and metaphors.
The huge vacuum created by the lack of Christian values in society will send the world into a nearly world wide Islamic Caliphate. It is a worldview of this nature that the last three and half years and the final prophecies of Scripture relate.
Here now is how God will show his omnipotence to the world, The Jewish people from around the world, not just in Israel, will look upon whom they crucified and will have their eyes and understanding opened.
This is basically because God needed to change his "chosen" people into his "blinded" people because God will do what God will do.
Let's go back to the events of the Crucifixion of Jesus.
The Jewish crowd that cried for the crucifixion of Jesus also called out this strange request. "Let his blood be upon us and our children." Matt 27:25
Anti-Semites have used this as a self proclaimed confession of guilt on behalf of the entire Jewish world. This is not wholly the case.
When Jewish people regularly declared guilt on behalf of the entire nation, but they did so in ways that also relied upon the atonement for sin that was present in the shed blood of the sacrificial animal.
The blood of Jesus that was cried out for by the Jerusalem crowd in Matthew 27:25 did not bring the Jews eternal condemnation, but was instead the divine means of their eternal redemption and the forgiveness of sins, even for the sin of killing the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Jewish leaders knew that the blood shed in a sacrificial offering was how atonement for sin was made. If Jesus was the Son of God, confessing their need for atonement is how it would be appropriated.
So God both chose the Jewish people to provide the means for the incarnation of God in human form, and God also chose to blind their understanding, but just the same, God permitted the love of Christ to cover the sins of the Jewish people.
This was done so that the "un-chosen" Gentile people would have the favor of God and opportunity to consider what they believe about Jesus.
During the last three and a half years it is the Jewish people that openly convert to Jesus that will have their blindness removed and their hearts bonded to their Messiah that they crucified the first time around.
You probably know the rest of the storyline.
So what happens to those who do not freely accept Jesus as the Christ, whose shed blood makes atonement for sin a reality? The Bible has the very unpleasant phrase in it, "Depart from me. I never knew you."
People are known by Christ by confessing Christ to other people. If we confess Jesus before men, Jesus will confess us before God, that is the bottom line.
God will "save" whom God will "save," but the key is that the shed blood of a sacrificial lamb is required one way or the other.
If a person doubts that they need a sacrificial lamb of one sort or another, they had better be perfect in their ways and have the correct answers when they meet their maker and not simply a list of excuses of their own making.
The Jews have always known that they needed atonement for their sins, those that do not believe they are accountable to anyone but themselves would not likely believe in any need for atonement for sin.
So who gets saved? Those who desire to have their sins and the sins of their children covered, but also those who believe that Love covers a multitude of sins. In the after life salvation belongs to God, but while here in a physical living body it belongs to those who confess Jesus as Lord and Savior.
After all, in the end, the process even though imperfect along the way can result in the an outcome that was the desired result all along the way.
Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. "Being Saved" is to do it while still in a physical breathing body. After that the entire matter is under God's control. No one is guaranteed a way to appropriate the atonement after they physically die, as they are not likely to have a change of heart at that time.
One's attitude towards their individual need for the atonement of sin determines the first words one will hear in the afterlife.
Atheists or agnostics that find no value in the illogic of the atonement have their fate in their hands while alive, but should probably ask themselves everyday whether they can be certain of anything.
While alive hell is definitely a mental state it is also a real place in the spiritual realm. Jesus went there after his crucifixion and led captives out who looked upon Jesus as God's remedy for sin
The Jewish people have longed for a way to have atonment re-established through the shed blood of animals, soon they will realize that the atonement they have been longing for has been there all along.
Hell is both a psychological reality to the living, but also a real fate or destiny in the spiritual realm.
The longing for something that never becomes a reality is certainly one form of a "hell" that could be of our own making. Also, never realizing that what you were longing for has always been there is also a different form of "hell."
You will be remembered by God, by the rest of humanity and by the angels by this. Did you seek ways to banish others to hell, or did you seek a joint destiny with others that released those captive to either one of these types of "hell?"
Sow an act…reap a habit; Sow a habit…reap a character; Sow a character…reap a destiny."
Karl writes:—"Hell is both a psychological reality to the living, but also a real fate or destiny in the spiritual realm."
And that's where all this loses me completely. First you have to establish that "spirit" has any kind of reality outside cognition and mentation (which requires "meat" to even exist) and secondly you have to convince me of the logic of such a construct.
Hell was a gradually-refined motif that benefited priesthoods, but the "furniture" of which is as varied as the cultures that adopted it.
Do all living things have spirit, as suggested by some "primitive" cultures? Christianity says no, but the question is, why not? Because it says so in a document that is only as valid as its beneficiaries claim it is, not because there is any empirical evidence for it.
I wonder where, exactly, you garnered all of this information about the end times. Are these your own personal deductions based on Biblical prophecies or a conglomeration of different messages and ideals read or told to you by others?
Forgive me if our views differ, but I think that the story is a bit more profound than that and not so closed in the sense of being interpreted in such a literal and dogmatic manner. The universe and whatever "plan" is in motion is much grander than we can fathom and the Bible may be a good signal as to a lot of the truths of at least the human psychological condition.
But, still, there is a lot that we are missing, I'm sure of it.
To follow your logic, because "spirit" does not have to take on flesh and bone, you consider it unreal.
The only stuff that is real to you has to be part of a "material" component of the world. A view of life that is only based upon "flesh and bone" although seemingly scientific is also limiting.
Throughout the history of science, how many things were assumed to not exist because we didn't have a physical means of observing them?
Some people claim to have the means to "observe" the eneregy associated with the spirit of man. Either way, you certainly have the right to believe whatever you would like concerning the immaterial world.
Would you also say that because we can never know the full final digit in "PI" or "e" that they don't exit to your "physical" satisfaction?
There are far more people in this world that do believe in matters of the spirit, as opposed to just the physical nature of our existence.
The logic of denying something exists because you can't put in in your measureing box is outright closed minded thinking.
Thinking outside the box has always been rather important in my view of problem solving.
Karl, we have the means to observe "spirit"—everytime we witness an act of selfless generosity or an inspired performance of music or read a brilliant novel or watch a group of scientists open a previously unknown vista. And when we respond with cheers and elation and wonder at that, we are experiencing "spirit". It's as real as this conversation.
But it only happens when there is a brain and a mind to support it. This notion that spirit is somehow parasitic or, at best, symbiotic as if it has a separate existence from the flesh is just us trying to explain ourselves to ourselves, and overdoing it. I believe in spirit—but it's part of the whole package. When we die, it dies.
And for the life of me I can't understand why that isn't enough for some people. The entire construct of an "afterlife" is, to my mind, nothing but people terrified of oblivion.
Great post (finally). You've exposed what I see as a very important and often neglected point- the unheralded limitations of science and the fixed hubris of fundamental materialism. The "reality" of the spiritual dimension cannot be measured in a test tube or quantified into observable units, but to completely deny it's existence seems dim-witted and tragically restrictive. The realm of spirit has been beautifully described by countless scientists of the mind such as Blake, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Jesus of Nazareth, Timothy Leary, Rumi, Terence McKenna, etc, etc. It is revealed in poetry, and in the thousands of years of directly felt and documented ecstatic visions, altered states of consciousness, and mystical revelations. To just casually dismiss this vast arena of human experience and history (usually by those who lack the raw courage to personally experiment with their own minds, or too lazy to "review the data") indicates pure ignorance or inflexible cognition.
But I have to ask, how do you KNOW that "hell is…a real fate or destiny" ?
The summary of events I presented is what I have come to conclude best combines and fairly represents both historical and present real world events along with potential future scenarios. There are of course, several varying interpretations of the scriptures that I have studied concerning the three major faiths of Judism, Christianity and Islam.
Usually people pit these three end time scenarios against one another and claim that that they all can't possibly be correct.
The Jewish view is that a Messiah will indeed come to set the record both straight and clear once and for all. The Jewish Messiah is viewed as both a religious and a political ruler, but also a supernatural spiritual leader without a rival when he arrives.
The Christian view of end times is that the second coming of Jesus will also be the Jewish Messiah and they will finally recognize him as such. How ever the world goes through a final tribulation to give all the opportunity to freely bend the knee before they will all have no option when he asserts his omnipotence. There will be supernatural witness after supernatural witness during a three and a half year time frame before the final battle of Armageddon.
The Islamic end times view is that their Messiah, BTW who they also believe will be "Jesus," will return to take final authority from the ninth Imam that they believe will have already united the political world under an Islamic Caliphate. They believe salvation is only possible through "submission" to God. Their people though are hopelessly divided as to how to get people to submit to God when what they really are forced to submit to is a list of human biased laws
Put the three together and they mesh very well.
Jesus, will reign, but the ninth Imam who believes he is on the side of Jesus, when he is nothing more than a strong armed dictator will also bend the knee to Jesus in the end.
For my part, you seem to mischaracterize scientists and so-called materialists. We don't dismiss the sublime, nor do we diminish awe and wonder. All the things that "spirit" infuses in the list of things you cite are as appreciated by myself and others who reject the noncorporeal "reality" that religion is bound up with.
We run into a problem, actually, when "believers" insist that all those things are real in the same way as the material universe. And they do so through, for one example, the insistence on miracle as evidence of this noncorporeal "divine" reality. The conflict emerges when the spiritual is shoved into the areas where we have material explanations.
I, for one, am reasonably content to grant people their method of coping with life. But when you try to tell me that what I know is all wrong because it doesn't contain this fey element you call spiritualism—and that when I explain to you what spiritualism means to me you then tell me I have it all wrong—and when I defend my view and it is taken as an assault on spiritualism—and when we get down to a rather ridiculous contest between what you can demonstrate and what I can demonstrate—
It may be apocryphal, but I think not—Einstein was asked if he could give a scientific explanation for a rose and he responded (I'm paraphrasing) "Of course, but why? Would it add anything to its beauty?"
Mark, My comments were intended to target some but not all scientists and materialists (I was specifically going after the rigid, dogmatic and fixed variety). Based on your reply, I would not put you into this catergory. Just to clarify, what I wrote was not in response to any of your viewpoints or posts at all.
I agree with what you say about the problem of "believers" (of which I am not one) confusing matter with spirit.
I like your Einstein quote; here's one from Aleister Crowley from his book 'Magick': "In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth, and the Paths, of Spirits and Conjurations, of Gods, Spheres, Planes and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things, certain results follow; the student is most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophical validity to any of them."
What I know of the reality of hell is only what the mind can grasp from the writings of so many religious points of view.
I do not know if it is indeed a place of captive torture in the sense of physical pain, and if it is only reserved for those who directly and endlessly refuse to submit to God's authority.
I have met many people who claim they will not want to simply sit around on clouds and "play harps" in heaven for that matter. That would be "hell" to them.
What's the point in asking if hell is a real "place" when what we really need to ask is what level of consciousness and volition will people continue to have once they die.
Most religions believe that to one degree there is more to "existence" than just the physical world. What ever "state of existence" or "non-existence" you find yourself in an afterlife, it is up to you to make it something you could either like or dislike by how you have lived your life here and now.
I am however fairly sure that if a person's will is simply to cease to exist spiritually as their bodies have ceased to exist physically that God would willingly grant this request to those that so desire. It will be an admission of God's authority, and it will be a final resolution to the free will versus predestination quandry.
Otherwise an offer of eternal life either with or without God presence doesn't seem to be the only two options from scripture. The Bible does make references to the second death, both in the Old and New Testaments.
Karl writes:—"What’s the point in asking if hell is a real “place” when what we really need to ask is what level of consciousness and volition will people continue to have once they die."
Most religions already acknowledge flaws in our human existence. This would simply be one more to add to the list.
Call it a sad state of human optimism if you must.
I'd rather be optimistic about both the present and the future, as the past has already revealed itself.
Call it the grandest illusion ever dreamt up by the schemes of religious leaders.
Having some degree of hope about the human condition, as well as some meaning for living outside of oneself, as well as some degree of moral accountability to that meaning for living makes more sense than non-sense.
As I stated earlier, people will still believe what they want to believe, and in the end, God or anyone else for that matter will not and can not make you believe what you do not want to believe.
If you want nothing in an afterlife, eventually that is what you will have.
This physical life is real, but it is not all there is to existence or reality.
In fact, how do any of us know anything? We assume that this reality in which we are bound, this "physical" existence is "real." But what is real is only what the mind perceives to be reality. None can really know the truth of any subject because human cognition is limited.
Scientists attempt to study the basic framework of the universe in which we live. But it is very much like a computer attempting to riddle out the program of its existence, without ever realizing that there exists a framework outside of its program.
Perhaps all of our minds are programmed into this reality, and perhaps spirituality is another frame that exists simultaneously with our own, but one that we have yet to grasp fully.
And I don't mean spirituality as it exists as a result of human cognition. Perhaps there is another source that our own brains mimic and respond to that is indeed supernatural (because we have yet to understand the natural cause or implications).
But, as I have said before, we can only strive to know subjective reality. Humans attempt to riddle out "the truth" but none of us really knows what it is. It probably simply comes down to what you believe, but ultimately anyone can provide their own subjective "proofs" to what they BELIEVE a specific study or ideal is meant to represent.
You might say, "well science should be the deciding factor," but it is the interpretations of the results that needs scrutinizing. Just because one feels they have measured all physical phenomena does not mean they can therefore say that anything outside of that measurement cannot possibly exist.
I know this with the same certainty that any self-professed christian "knows" there is hellfire and salvation.
That's facile, though.
I know this because I accept the evidence I have seen that when the brain dies, nothing of the personality survives. Because we know that changes in the physical brain can cause profound changes in personality, which makes it clear that the "I" with which we face the world is dependent on the meat and when the meat ceases to sustain it, that "I" goes away into nothing. Because everything I've seen concerning neuroscience tells me that we are ephemeral. We get our sixty, seventy, eighty years, and that's it.
The difference between ourselves and a computer program is our ability to recognize things outside and counterintuitive to our natural existence. There is nothing in our "programming" that predisposes us to perceive the quantum structure of the universe or to go beyond that to the possibility of thirteen dimensions, folded up into four. We have built these models based on our ability to question phenomena in such a way that it goes beyond our framework. It is that framework which makes it very difficult and which causes some people to reject such discoveries and models out of hand.
I don't believe you are a postmodern deconstructionist, so I'll take your "how can we know anything" line as more related to Hume than Derrida. Certainly what we know is inevitably filtered through our senses, but the mind behind those senses has been amazing in its capacity to make that information make sense even when the information comes through in fragments or fuzzily. We've built cooperative mechanisms to use each other as checks to construct our explanations and it has given us amazing results.
I will never say that "I know" in the same way that a dedicated, marrow-deep, committed religionist uses the term, because knowledge is always being added to, doublechecked, reinterpreted. As it should be. I think one of the highest moral conditions a human can aspire to is the willingness and ability to change one's mind when presented with new information.
Ah, but there's the thing. New information.
I don't believe in heaven and hell because the foundations upon which those ideas are built have nothing new to offer and are part of a paradigm that, for me, has long since been shown wanting.
So when you ask me how do I know there is nothing after death, I will say that based on what I understand, and conditional upon new information, I am ninety to ninety-five percent certain that when we die, that's it. What I am one hundred percent certain about, though, is that the model that suggests there is a heaven and hell is wrong. Worse, useless.
"I know this with the same certainty that any self-professed christian “knows” there is hellfire and salvation."
ANY self-professed Christian? I'm sure of the fact that the various denominations disagree quite vehemently on the view of hellfire and condemnation so what certain knowledge do you speak of?
"So when you ask me how do I know there is nothing after death, I will say that based on what I understand, and conditional upon new information, I am ninety to ninety-five percent certain that when we die, that’s it. What I am one hundred percent certain about, though, is that the model that suggests there is a heaven and hell is wrong. Worse, useless."
Perhaps the evidence that you use is useful for our physical universe and understanding it. Our brains are very much like computers. Certainly we have evolved the capacity to question the frame of the universe in which we live, but the very fact that we are but vessels of meat bound to the laws of that universe implies that we cannot understand what is outside of it.
What I mean to say is that there is still no certain understanding of the phenomena of the "spiritual realm" but there is a strong correlation to human perception of the supernatural and religious ideology.
"There is nothing in our “programming” that predisposes us to perceive the quantum structure of the universe or to go beyond that to the possibility of thirteen dimensions, folded up into four."
There isn't? But the human mind is programmed to question its existence, thus the dawning of a religious function…
"I don’t believe in heaven and hell because the foundations upon which those ideas are built have nothing new to offer and are part of a paradigm that, for me, has long since been shown wanting."
Well, which exact ideas are you talking about? The Christian ideal that says YOU are going to Hell because you do not agree with them? Or the overall psychological position that exists in the human mind to try and riddle out an ultimate end to our existence and a purpose to life? Simply because you feel that the current model with which you disagree is outdated or irrelevant does not make the overall ideal not true.
What is a more useful model by which we should acquaint ourselves?
I have every confidence that when new clear reality based information is presented to most rational people they will decide in an appropriate way what to do with that knowledge.
If your 90 to 95 percent certainty is based upon clear reality based information about non-existence after death, then please tell me what is the 5 to 10 percent about which you are not so certain?
Is it that you hold out the possibility of some degree of bias in the way you interpret existing information, or is it that you can never be sure there will never be further different or new observations of some manner or another?
There has always been a class of Jewish Society that doubted the existence of an after life, they were called the Sadducees in the days of Jesus. They were the materialist of the Jewish world. They believed that this material life was all there was/is to living.
The entire controversy over these leaders was that since there is no way to not know about such things directly while "alive" that these leaders have created antagonism from those who would hold to such beliefs.
It would be like saying, I want to be in charge of leading a group of people that I wish to change into believing what I believe about something that is really unknowable for certain. The Sadducees were disliked by the masses because they had positions of authority but taught contrary to what the majority of the people actually believed.
I'm sure the Sadducees reasoned, 90 to 95 percent of humanity has it wrong because they have a reality based upon a claim of lack of evidence concerning the unknowable.
In this regard, many people today would have been in good company with the Jewish Sadducees.
Basing a high certainty about something that is not fully knowable in this life is perhaps only reliable while you are in this life.
Thinking Man writes:—"“I know this with the same certainty that any self-professed christian “knows” there is hellfire and salvation.”
ANY self-professed Christian? I’m sure of the fact that the various denominations disagree quite vehemently on the view of hellfire and condemnation so what certain knowledge do you speak of?"
Irony doesn't always translate. Given my stated 90 to 95% certainty claim, this ought to have been a bit more obvious.
The fire and brimstone model fails my test of superior moral intelligence, which states that a god capable of creating an intelligent species that is able to construct a morality superior to such a model would itself not therefore create a hell. But if that is the case, the the flip side is also unlikely.
Our brains are actually not very much like computers, for one simple fact—computers, as sophisticated as they have become and may yet become, operate still on a binary algorithm. On Off, or, more appropriately to our discussion, Yes No. Brains have Yes No, but also allow for Maybe, If, and Both—conditions imitated by "fuzzy" logic but not duplicated. Which allows us the capacity for intuition computers lack and I think it's structural.
Which is what allows us to think outside the so-called box—which is what noncorporeal conceptions are, manifestly. And as such, they occupy a category of thinking and can therefore be compared to other models.
What an afterlife is, basically, is information that survives its medium. There has to be a medium. Ideas have no physical substance, true, but they do not exist without a physical platform that can receive and decode them.
I think the universe is intrinsically weirder than we have yet imagined—but I also think it is not incomprehensible nor is it in any way outside the realm of the perceivable. Which makes it amendable to physical examination and material processes. I don't think for a minute that materialism has the kind of limits suggested here by you or Karl. I think, rather, that looking at it from the standpoint of something being inevitably "outside" the perceivable universe limits your capacity to imagine just how weird, strange, and marvelous matter can be.
Karl writes:—"If your 90 to 95 percent certainty is based upon clear reality based information about non-existence after death, then please tell me what is the 5 to 10 percent about which you are not so certain?"
There isn't any five to ten percent of which I am not so certain. That's the five to ten percent hedge factor built into any statement I might make that allows for the possibility of new information that will change my position. IN other words, I'm quite satisfied with the 90 to 95% of which I am certain. There's nothing there that gives me pause in the way you suggest. But I would be a hypocrite and a fool to suggest that nothing new could come along to change my mind.
Back to Thinking Man:—"Well, which exact ideas are you talking about? The Christian ideal that says YOU are going to Hell because you do not agree with them? Or the overall psychological position that exists in the human mind to try and riddle out an ultimate end to our existence and a purpose to life? Simply because you feel that the current model with which you disagree is outdated or irrelevant does not make the overall ideal not true."
The first, yes. The second, maybe. I don't actually believe in a telec universe. "Purpose"? "Ultimate end?" Stepping back and looking at the whole thing, the hundreds of billions of galaxies sprawled across 45 billion light years, the question has no meaning. Life here is a bubble of physical process that is probably going on in billions of places with manifestly different results. Purpose? The way in which the term is used in these debates suggests some ultimate universal notion, which would necessarily include all those other bubbles, and that just doesn't scan. We make our own purpose and I'm fine with that. So the whole idea that our behavior here for sixty to hundred years is meaningful in some cosmic score card is laughable.
But the ideal—that people should not treat each other as means, that we should have respect, that the possibility of being more at the end than at the beginning of your life—does not, to my mind, require a creator for that to be valid.
Thanks for clarifying that you have only a token 5 to ten percent hedge that is your chosen wager concerning an "unknowable" piece of information.
If there is an afterlife, and if you have the volitional ability or the freedom to take action upon whatever new information is presented you, I hope you can make the conscious choice that you might think would be required at that time.
This is why most non-Sadducees routinely pray God have mercy upon our souls.
The non-Sadducees of any religious faith are constantly aware of a judgement concerning their lives that they had lived while upon the earth, despite whatever differing interpretations they had concerning an afterlife.
There is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgement. This is pretty much found in every form of religion that I am aware of.
The most comfortable of the outcomes is of course that God would just leave them alone to cease to exist.
That does appear to be one of the options of some religions, but it still doesn't mean there will not be a God directed judgement however one way or the other before God provides the clemency the "non-existence."
"Token" five to ten percent? Usually you bitch that atheist materialists like me seem not to have any leeway (which is pretty much just speculation on your part). How much would satisfy you that I have an open mind? What percentage of uncertainty would you estimate is suitable to avoid a charge of arrogant certitude? And while we're on the subject, what's your hedge? Seems to me you possess a near 100% certainty in your assertions that (a) there is a god and (b) he/she/it actually cares one way or the other what we do with our sixty-plus years. What percentage do you grant to the possibility that you could change your mind about it?
Before you answer, this is a kind of trick question, because the whole point of faith, as I understand it, is to accept something unequivocally. By that "token" you leave yourself no wiggle room at all.
Which since you have a history of telling people like me that we maintain a similar "faith" in our secularism and science must mean that my five to ten percent makes me an apostate to my own creed.
Which is silly, since the creed you have often compared to a religion based on a different but roughly the same condition of faith includes the precept that one must always be ready to change one's mind in light of new information. Which makes it not a faith. In fact, it sort of underlines why, to me, faith, while useful in certain ways, is pretty much useless when trying to understand the universe and its workings.
"Seems to me you possess a near 100% certainty in your assertions that (a) there is a god and (b) he/she/it actually cares one way or the other what we do with our sixty-plus years. What percentage do you grant to the possibility that you could change your mind about it?"
I have asked this of Karl and other godbots numerous times. This is basically the end of the line. He will not ever answer you with a percentage, at least that is what I predict with 95 percent certainty.
Karl is afraid to read/consider my comments, for some reason.
Mark writes:"The fire and brimstone model fails my test of superior moral intelligence, which states that a god capable of creating an intelligent species that is able to construct a morality superior to such a model would itself not therefore create a hell. But if that is the case, the the flip side is also unlikely."
Hell, as understood by many Christian theologists and philosophical theorists, is actually only eternal existence in the absence of God. No grace, no Love, no mercy, only death. Eternal suffering and pain. But, it is not as though someone is "sent" there for some specific grievance. Hell, as I understand it, is completely self-induced.
Though, as I've mentioned, not everyone believes in Hell. And many feel it is only a state of mind.
As for whether or not that state of mind persists for eternity after the physical death of the body, it is very difficult to correlate evidence with any assertion of this manner. I admit it. Science cannot tell us what happens after death, except that it is "nothing."
But I feel perhaps that it is the experiences that one builds in the psyche that incorporate their existence, and before they die, a person's view of their overall life is "judged" by some internal process. If one has developed a model by which they feel they have led a morally wise and good life, then before death the mind perceives that it will attain heaven. And, the brain, being a complex network of feedback loops and neural cross firing, interprets the ending moments as eternity. So, essentially, that "inner voice" essentially judges for whether or not we will attain a psychological placement in a Hell or Heaven of their own making…for "eternity" (which, really, is only just this very moment. Humans think spatially and temporally because it helps us to organize our universe but what we fail to realize is that eternity really is "now" and past present and future are all artificial constructs).
That, I think, is the real subject that perhaps we should study.
I, for one, am still of the belief that there still exists some realm of supernatural outside of the human cognitive spectrum. I do not know why I believe this. Perhaps it is due to my evolutionary "byproduct" that provides a dualistic view to reality.
Mark, I don't necessarily believe that there is some universal, cosmic end-game that humans are the main factor in. But the very fact that humanity exists with the capacity to reason out the universe is hardly meaningless. We absolutely make our own purpose, and perhaps that is the true meaning of the existence of life, the "purpose" of the universe. But where human's capacity to deduce and understand fundamental tenets of human values and universal truths conjoin, then that is where the (metaphysical, metaphorical, symbolic) "God" exists…?
"But the ideal—that people should not treat each other as means, that we should have respect, that the possibility of being more at the end than at the beginning of your life—does not, to my mind, require a creator for that to be valid."
You are absolutely right, which is still why I feel that the notion is more a psychological one rather than anything else. I will admit, however, that it is difficult for me to break with my tradition of believing in a creator God. I still have not come to a definitive conclusion as to what, how or why God is, but I do feel that there is some answer yet unknown. It is a belief with little grounding in truth, yes. It is a belief based on faith, surely.
But where you have faith that the universe is God-less, I have faith that it is God-filled. I leave myself still with a margin of uncertainty, all humans do. To claim that faith truly is 100% certainty is simply not factual (even though the definition clearly states that). What I mean to say is that MOST people claim to have faith in something but really all that means is that they are unsure.
"Our brains are actually not very much like computers, for one simple fact—computers, as sophisticated as they have become and may yet become, operate still on a binary algorithm. On Off, or, more appropriately to our discussion, Yes No. Brains have Yes No, but also allow for Maybe, If, and Both—conditions imitated by “fuzzy” logic but not duplicated. Which allows us the capacity for intuition computers lack and I think it’s structural."
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To TheThinkingMan,
Here is how I view what will happen at the end of the church age, i.e. when the gentile peoples of the world will have reached the limit of God's grace established by God's own "timetable."
A viable Christian witness from the gentile people will lessen and lessen as the world is dominated more and more by a culture of "Anti-Christ" with a false prophet declaring that Jesus Christ seriously deluded the masses. Now, of course, this denial of a need for the atonement has resonated with many groups of people through many ages of history and in many differing cultures.
Towards the end of the present physical "age" there will be a marked change in prominent worldviews of human animals.
Some people call this the parousia or the Second Coming of Christ. I hold that this First return is also the rapture where the world will finally have a supernatural event to have to deal with. It will likely happen three and a half years into the final week of years before Christ unmistakably returns to bring human history (this present age) to an end.
One way or another, but very suddenly, both the existing Gentile Christian and Jewish Christian witness will no longer be present or able to hold back the onslaught of evil that has been kept at bay by those who truly hold to the full gospel message. The importance of freely accepting God's offer of atonement through the shed blood of Jesus, the Only begotten Son of God, will have reached its watershed level.
The witness for Jesus Christ for the next three and a half years will come from Jewish believers that finally awaken as they finally realize what God's plan has been for all these years.
This will happen when every language group and culture has had the opportunity to hear, experience and respond to the clearly presented gospel.
Many cultures by this point will have lost their initial love for Christ (and the atonement) and will have so hardened their hearts against "God" in general, but the "Christian God" more specifically that they will see no harm in relegating the religious beliefs of Christians to myths and metaphors.
The huge vacuum created by the lack of Christian values in society will send the world into a nearly world wide Islamic Caliphate. It is a worldview of this nature that the last three and half years and the final prophecies of Scripture relate.
Here now is how God will show his omnipotence to the world, The Jewish people from around the world, not just in Israel, will look upon whom they crucified and will have their eyes and understanding opened.
This is basically because God needed to change his "chosen" people into his "blinded" people because God will do what God will do.
Let's go back to the events of the Crucifixion of Jesus.
The Jewish crowd that cried for the crucifixion of Jesus also called out this strange request. "Let his blood be upon us and our children." Matt 27:25
Anti-Semites have used this as a self proclaimed confession of guilt on behalf of the entire Jewish world. This is not wholly the case.
When Jewish people regularly declared guilt on behalf of the entire nation, but they did so in ways that also relied upon the atonement for sin that was present in the shed blood of the sacrificial animal.
The blood of Jesus that was cried out for by the Jerusalem crowd in Matthew 27:25 did not bring the Jews eternal condemnation, but was instead the divine means of their eternal redemption and the forgiveness of sins, even for the sin of killing the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Jewish leaders knew that the blood shed in a sacrificial offering was how atonement for sin was made. If Jesus was the Son of God, confessing their need for atonement is how it would be appropriated.
So God both chose the Jewish people to provide the means for the incarnation of God in human form, and God also chose to blind their understanding, but just the same, God permitted the love of Christ to cover the sins of the Jewish people.
This was done so that the "un-chosen" Gentile people would have the favor of God and opportunity to consider what they believe about Jesus.
During the last three and a half years it is the Jewish people that openly convert to Jesus that will have their blindness removed and their hearts bonded to their Messiah that they crucified the first time around.
You probably know the rest of the storyline.
So what happens to those who do not freely accept Jesus as the Christ, whose shed blood makes atonement for sin a reality? The Bible has the very unpleasant phrase in it, "Depart from me. I never knew you."
People are known by Christ by confessing Christ to other people. If we confess Jesus before men, Jesus will confess us before God, that is the bottom line.
God will "save" whom God will "save," but the key is that the shed blood of a sacrificial lamb is required one way or the other.
If a person doubts that they need a sacrificial lamb of one sort or another, they had better be perfect in their ways and have the correct answers when they meet their maker and not simply a list of excuses of their own making.
The Jews have always known that they needed atonement for their sins, those that do not believe they are accountable to anyone but themselves would not likely believe in any need for atonement for sin.
So who gets saved? Those who desire to have their sins and the sins of their children covered, but also those who believe that Love covers a multitude of sins. In the after life salvation belongs to God, but while here in a physical living body it belongs to those who confess Jesus as Lord and Savior.
After all, in the end, the process even though imperfect along the way can result in the an outcome that was the desired result all along the way.
Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. "Being Saved" is to do it while still in a physical breathing body. After that the entire matter is under God's control. No one is guaranteed a way to appropriate the atonement after they physically die, as they are not likely to have a change of heart at that time.
One's attitude towards their individual need for the atonement of sin determines the first words one will hear in the afterlife.
Atheists or agnostics that find no value in the illogic of the atonement have their fate in their hands while alive, but should probably ask themselves everyday whether they can be certain of anything.
Hope that answers your question.
While alive hell is definitely a mental state it is also a real place in the spiritual realm. Jesus went there after his crucifixion and led captives out who looked upon Jesus as God's remedy for sin
The Jewish people have longed for a way to have atonment re-established through the shed blood of animals, soon they will realize that the atonement they have been longing for has been there all along.
Hell is both a psychological reality to the living, but also a real fate or destiny in the spiritual realm.
The longing for something that never becomes a reality is certainly one form of a "hell" that could be of our own making. Also, never realizing that what you were longing for has always been there is also a different form of "hell."
You will be remembered by God, by the rest of humanity and by the angels by this. Did you seek ways to banish others to hell, or did you seek a joint destiny with others that released those captive to either one of these types of "hell?"
Sow an act…reap a habit; Sow a habit…reap a character; Sow a character…reap a destiny."
— George Dana Boardman
Karl writes:—"Hell is both a psychological reality to the living, but also a real fate or destiny in the spiritual realm."
And that's where all this loses me completely. First you have to establish that "spirit" has any kind of reality outside cognition and mentation (which requires "meat" to even exist) and secondly you have to convince me of the logic of such a construct.
Hell was a gradually-refined motif that benefited priesthoods, but the "furniture" of which is as varied as the cultures that adopted it.
Do all living things have spirit, as suggested by some "primitive" cultures? Christianity says no, but the question is, why not? Because it says so in a document that is only as valid as its beneficiaries claim it is, not because there is any empirical evidence for it.
I wonder where, exactly, you garnered all of this information about the end times. Are these your own personal deductions based on Biblical prophecies or a conglomeration of different messages and ideals read or told to you by others?
Forgive me if our views differ, but I think that the story is a bit more profound than that and not so closed in the sense of being interpreted in such a literal and dogmatic manner. The universe and whatever "plan" is in motion is much grander than we can fathom and the Bible may be a good signal as to a lot of the truths of at least the human psychological condition.
But, still, there is a lot that we are missing, I'm sure of it.
To follow your logic, because "spirit" does not have to take on flesh and bone, you consider it unreal.
The only stuff that is real to you has to be part of a "material" component of the world. A view of life that is only based upon "flesh and bone" although seemingly scientific is also limiting.
Throughout the history of science, how many things were assumed to not exist because we didn't have a physical means of observing them?
Some people claim to have the means to "observe" the eneregy associated with the spirit of man. Either way, you certainly have the right to believe whatever you would like concerning the immaterial world.
Would you also say that because we can never know the full final digit in "PI" or "e" that they don't exit to your "physical" satisfaction?
There are far more people in this world that do believe in matters of the spirit, as opposed to just the physical nature of our existence.
The logic of denying something exists because you can't put in in your measureing box is outright closed minded thinking.
Thinking outside the box has always been rather important in my view of problem solving.
Karl, we have the means to observe "spirit"—everytime we witness an act of selfless generosity or an inspired performance of music or read a brilliant novel or watch a group of scientists open a previously unknown vista. And when we respond with cheers and elation and wonder at that, we are experiencing "spirit". It's as real as this conversation.
But it only happens when there is a brain and a mind to support it. This notion that spirit is somehow parasitic or, at best, symbiotic as if it has a separate existence from the flesh is just us trying to explain ourselves to ourselves, and overdoing it. I believe in spirit—but it's part of the whole package. When we die, it dies.
And for the life of me I can't understand why that isn't enough for some people. The entire construct of an "afterlife" is, to my mind, nothing but people terrified of oblivion.
Karl,
Great post (finally). You've exposed what I see as a very important and often neglected point- the unheralded limitations of science and the fixed hubris of fundamental materialism. The "reality" of the spiritual dimension cannot be measured in a test tube or quantified into observable units, but to completely deny it's existence seems dim-witted and tragically restrictive. The realm of spirit has been beautifully described by countless scientists of the mind such as Blake, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Jesus of Nazareth, Timothy Leary, Rumi, Terence McKenna, etc, etc. It is revealed in poetry, and in the thousands of years of directly felt and documented ecstatic visions, altered states of consciousness, and mystical revelations. To just casually dismiss this vast arena of human experience and history (usually by those who lack the raw courage to personally experiment with their own minds, or too lazy to "review the data") indicates pure ignorance or inflexible cognition.
But I have to ask, how do you KNOW that "hell is…a real fate or destiny" ?
The summary of events I presented is what I have come to conclude best combines and fairly represents both historical and present real world events along with potential future scenarios. There are of course, several varying interpretations of the scriptures that I have studied concerning the three major faiths of Judism, Christianity and Islam.
Usually people pit these three end time scenarios against one another and claim that that they all can't possibly be correct.
The Jewish view is that a Messiah will indeed come to set the record both straight and clear once and for all. The Jewish Messiah is viewed as both a religious and a political ruler, but also a supernatural spiritual leader without a rival when he arrives.
The Christian view of end times is that the second coming of Jesus will also be the Jewish Messiah and they will finally recognize him as such. How ever the world goes through a final tribulation to give all the opportunity to freely bend the knee before they will all have no option when he asserts his omnipotence. There will be supernatural witness after supernatural witness during a three and a half year time frame before the final battle of Armageddon.
The Islamic end times view is that their Messiah, BTW who they also believe will be "Jesus," will return to take final authority from the ninth Imam that they believe will have already united the political world under an Islamic Caliphate. They believe salvation is only possible through "submission" to God. Their people though are hopelessly divided as to how to get people to submit to God when what they really are forced to submit to is a list of human biased laws
Put the three together and they mesh very well.
Jesus, will reign, but the ninth Imam who believes he is on the side of Jesus, when he is nothing more than a strong armed dictator will also bend the knee to Jesus in the end.
Mike M.
For my part, you seem to mischaracterize scientists and so-called materialists. We don't dismiss the sublime, nor do we diminish awe and wonder. All the things that "spirit" infuses in the list of things you cite are as appreciated by myself and others who reject the noncorporeal "reality" that religion is bound up with.
We run into a problem, actually, when "believers" insist that all those things are real in the same way as the material universe. And they do so through, for one example, the insistence on miracle as evidence of this noncorporeal "divine" reality. The conflict emerges when the spiritual is shoved into the areas where we have material explanations.
I, for one, am reasonably content to grant people their method of coping with life. But when you try to tell me that what I know is all wrong because it doesn't contain this fey element you call spiritualism—and that when I explain to you what spiritualism means to me you then tell me I have it all wrong—and when I defend my view and it is taken as an assault on spiritualism—and when we get down to a rather ridiculous contest between what you can demonstrate and what I can demonstrate—
It may be apocryphal, but I think not—Einstein was asked if he could give a scientific explanation for a rose and he responded (I'm paraphrasing) "Of course, but why? Would it add anything to its beauty?"
Mark, My comments were intended to target some but not all scientists and materialists (I was specifically going after the rigid, dogmatic and fixed variety). Based on your reply, I would not put you into this catergory. Just to clarify, what I wrote was not in response to any of your viewpoints or posts at all.
I agree with what you say about the problem of "believers" (of which I am not one) confusing matter with spirit.
I like your Einstein quote; here's one from Aleister Crowley from his book 'Magick': "In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth, and the Paths, of Spirits and Conjurations, of Gods, Spheres, Planes and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things, certain results follow; the student is most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophical validity to any of them."
Mike M.: Here is a post you will probably enjoy: http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/05/07/to-de…
What I know of the reality of hell is only what the mind can grasp from the writings of so many religious points of view.
I do not know if it is indeed a place of captive torture in the sense of physical pain, and if it is only reserved for those who directly and endlessly refuse to submit to God's authority.
I have met many people who claim they will not want to simply sit around on clouds and "play harps" in heaven for that matter. That would be "hell" to them.
What's the point in asking if hell is a real "place" when what we really need to ask is what level of consciousness and volition will people continue to have once they die.
Most religions believe that to one degree there is more to "existence" than just the physical world. What ever "state of existence" or "non-existence" you find yourself in an afterlife, it is up to you to make it something you could either like or dislike by how you have lived your life here and now.
I am however fairly sure that if a person's will is simply to cease to exist spiritually as their bodies have ceased to exist physically that God would willingly grant this request to those that so desire. It will be an admission of God's authority, and it will be a final resolution to the free will versus predestination quandry.
Otherwise an offer of eternal life either with or without God presence doesn't seem to be the only two options from scripture. The Bible does make references to the second death, both in the Old and New Testaments.
Karl writes:—"What’s the point in asking if hell is a real “place” when what we really need to ask is what level of consciousness and volition will people continue to have once they die."
None. All wishful thinking.
Call it a flaw in human existence.
Most religions already acknowledge flaws in our human existence. This would simply be one more to add to the list.
Call it a sad state of human optimism if you must.
I'd rather be optimistic about both the present and the future, as the past has already revealed itself.
Call it the grandest illusion ever dreamt up by the schemes of religious leaders.
Having some degree of hope about the human condition, as well as some meaning for living outside of oneself, as well as some degree of moral accountability to that meaning for living makes more sense than non-sense.
As I stated earlier, people will still believe what they want to believe, and in the end, God or anyone else for that matter will not and can not make you believe what you do not want to believe.
If you want nothing in an afterlife, eventually that is what you will have.
This physical life is real, but it is not all there is to existence or reality.
http://mcdonaldroad.org/bible/study/second-d.htm
Mark write: "None. All wishful thinking."
And how do you KNOW this?
In fact, how do any of us know anything? We assume that this reality in which we are bound, this "physical" existence is "real." But what is real is only what the mind perceives to be reality. None can really know the truth of any subject because human cognition is limited.
Scientists attempt to study the basic framework of the universe in which we live. But it is very much like a computer attempting to riddle out the program of its existence, without ever realizing that there exists a framework outside of its program.
Perhaps all of our minds are programmed into this reality, and perhaps spirituality is another frame that exists simultaneously with our own, but one that we have yet to grasp fully.
And I don't mean spirituality as it exists as a result of human cognition. Perhaps there is another source that our own brains mimic and respond to that is indeed supernatural (because we have yet to understand the natural cause or implications).
But, as I have said before, we can only strive to know subjective reality. Humans attempt to riddle out "the truth" but none of us really knows what it is. It probably simply comes down to what you believe, but ultimately anyone can provide their own subjective "proofs" to what they BELIEVE a specific study or ideal is meant to represent.
You might say, "well science should be the deciding factor," but it is the interpretations of the results that needs scrutinizing. Just because one feels they have measured all physical phenomena does not mean they can therefore say that anything outside of that measurement cannot possibly exist.
It just hasn't been measured yet.
The Thinking Man,
I know this with the same certainty that any self-professed christian "knows" there is hellfire and salvation.
That's facile, though.
I know this because I accept the evidence I have seen that when the brain dies, nothing of the personality survives. Because we know that changes in the physical brain can cause profound changes in personality, which makes it clear that the "I" with which we face the world is dependent on the meat and when the meat ceases to sustain it, that "I" goes away into nothing. Because everything I've seen concerning neuroscience tells me that we are ephemeral. We get our sixty, seventy, eighty years, and that's it.
The difference between ourselves and a computer program is our ability to recognize things outside and counterintuitive to our natural existence. There is nothing in our "programming" that predisposes us to perceive the quantum structure of the universe or to go beyond that to the possibility of thirteen dimensions, folded up into four. We have built these models based on our ability to question phenomena in such a way that it goes beyond our framework. It is that framework which makes it very difficult and which causes some people to reject such discoveries and models out of hand.
I don't believe you are a postmodern deconstructionist, so I'll take your "how can we know anything" line as more related to Hume than Derrida. Certainly what we know is inevitably filtered through our senses, but the mind behind those senses has been amazing in its capacity to make that information make sense even when the information comes through in fragments or fuzzily. We've built cooperative mechanisms to use each other as checks to construct our explanations and it has given us amazing results.
I will never say that "I know" in the same way that a dedicated, marrow-deep, committed religionist uses the term, because knowledge is always being added to, doublechecked, reinterpreted. As it should be. I think one of the highest moral conditions a human can aspire to is the willingness and ability to change one's mind when presented with new information.
Ah, but there's the thing. New information.
I don't believe in heaven and hell because the foundations upon which those ideas are built have nothing new to offer and are part of a paradigm that, for me, has long since been shown wanting.
So when you ask me how do I know there is nothing after death, I will say that based on what I understand, and conditional upon new information, I am ninety to ninety-five percent certain that when we die, that's it. What I am one hundred percent certain about, though, is that the model that suggests there is a heaven and hell is wrong. Worse, useless.
2 little Zen stories:
Student to Master – "What happens to us after death?" Master to Student – "I don't know."
Student to Master – "What do you mean 'you don't know', you're a Zen Master?!"
Master to Student – "Yes, but I'm not a DEAD Zen Master."
#2: Student to Master – "Where do you go when you die?"
Master to Student – "I don't plan on going anywhere."
"I know this with the same certainty that any self-professed christian “knows” there is hellfire and salvation."
ANY self-professed Christian? I'm sure of the fact that the various denominations disagree quite vehemently on the view of hellfire and condemnation so what certain knowledge do you speak of?
"So when you ask me how do I know there is nothing after death, I will say that based on what I understand, and conditional upon new information, I am ninety to ninety-five percent certain that when we die, that’s it. What I am one hundred percent certain about, though, is that the model that suggests there is a heaven and hell is wrong. Worse, useless."
Perhaps the evidence that you use is useful for our physical universe and understanding it. Our brains are very much like computers. Certainly we have evolved the capacity to question the frame of the universe in which we live, but the very fact that we are but vessels of meat bound to the laws of that universe implies that we cannot understand what is outside of it.
What I mean to say is that there is still no certain understanding of the phenomena of the "spiritual realm" but there is a strong correlation to human perception of the supernatural and religious ideology.
"There is nothing in our “programming” that predisposes us to perceive the quantum structure of the universe or to go beyond that to the possibility of thirteen dimensions, folded up into four."
There isn't? But the human mind is programmed to question its existence, thus the dawning of a religious function…
"I don’t believe in heaven and hell because the foundations upon which those ideas are built have nothing new to offer and are part of a paradigm that, for me, has long since been shown wanting."
Well, which exact ideas are you talking about? The Christian ideal that says YOU are going to Hell because you do not agree with them? Or the overall psychological position that exists in the human mind to try and riddle out an ultimate end to our existence and a purpose to life? Simply because you feel that the current model with which you disagree is outdated or irrelevant does not make the overall ideal not true.
What is a more useful model by which we should acquaint ourselves?
Mark,
I have every confidence that when new clear reality based information is presented to most rational people they will decide in an appropriate way what to do with that knowledge.
If your 90 to 95 percent certainty is based upon clear reality based information about non-existence after death, then please tell me what is the 5 to 10 percent about which you are not so certain?
Is it that you hold out the possibility of some degree of bias in the way you interpret existing information, or is it that you can never be sure there will never be further different or new observations of some manner or another?
There has always been a class of Jewish Society that doubted the existence of an after life, they were called the Sadducees in the days of Jesus. They were the materialist of the Jewish world. They believed that this material life was all there was/is to living.
The entire controversy over these leaders was that since there is no way to not know about such things directly while "alive" that these leaders have created antagonism from those who would hold to such beliefs.
It would be like saying, I want to be in charge of leading a group of people that I wish to change into believing what I believe about something that is really unknowable for certain. The Sadducees were disliked by the masses because they had positions of authority but taught contrary to what the majority of the people actually believed.
I'm sure the Sadducees reasoned, 90 to 95 percent of humanity has it wrong because they have a reality based upon a claim of lack of evidence concerning the unknowable.
In this regard, many people today would have been in good company with the Jewish Sadducees.
Basing a high certainty about something that is not fully knowable in this life is perhaps only reliable while you are in this life.
Thinking Man writes:—"“I know this with the same certainty that any self-professed christian “knows” there is hellfire and salvation.”
ANY self-professed Christian? I’m sure of the fact that the various denominations disagree quite vehemently on the view of hellfire and condemnation so what certain knowledge do you speak of?"
Irony doesn't always translate. Given my stated 90 to 95% certainty claim, this ought to have been a bit more obvious.
The fire and brimstone model fails my test of superior moral intelligence, which states that a god capable of creating an intelligent species that is able to construct a morality superior to such a model would itself not therefore create a hell. But if that is the case, the the flip side is also unlikely.
Our brains are actually not very much like computers, for one simple fact—computers, as sophisticated as they have become and may yet become, operate still on a binary algorithm. On Off, or, more appropriately to our discussion, Yes No. Brains have Yes No, but also allow for Maybe, If, and Both—conditions imitated by "fuzzy" logic but not duplicated. Which allows us the capacity for intuition computers lack and I think it's structural.
Which is what allows us to think outside the so-called box—which is what noncorporeal conceptions are, manifestly. And as such, they occupy a category of thinking and can therefore be compared to other models.
What an afterlife is, basically, is information that survives its medium. There has to be a medium. Ideas have no physical substance, true, but they do not exist without a physical platform that can receive and decode them.
I think the universe is intrinsically weirder than we have yet imagined—but I also think it is not incomprehensible nor is it in any way outside the realm of the perceivable. Which makes it amendable to physical examination and material processes. I don't think for a minute that materialism has the kind of limits suggested here by you or Karl. I think, rather, that looking at it from the standpoint of something being inevitably "outside" the perceivable universe limits your capacity to imagine just how weird, strange, and marvelous matter can be.
Karl writes:—"If your 90 to 95 percent certainty is based upon clear reality based information about non-existence after death, then please tell me what is the 5 to 10 percent about which you are not so certain?"
There isn't any five to ten percent of which I am not so certain. That's the five to ten percent hedge factor built into any statement I might make that allows for the possibility of new information that will change my position. IN other words, I'm quite satisfied with the 90 to 95% of which I am certain. There's nothing there that gives me pause in the way you suggest. But I would be a hypocrite and a fool to suggest that nothing new could come along to change my mind.
Back to Thinking Man:—"Well, which exact ideas are you talking about? The Christian ideal that says YOU are going to Hell because you do not agree with them? Or the overall psychological position that exists in the human mind to try and riddle out an ultimate end to our existence and a purpose to life? Simply because you feel that the current model with which you disagree is outdated or irrelevant does not make the overall ideal not true."
The first, yes. The second, maybe. I don't actually believe in a telec universe. "Purpose"? "Ultimate end?" Stepping back and looking at the whole thing, the hundreds of billions of galaxies sprawled across 45 billion light years, the question has no meaning. Life here is a bubble of physical process that is probably going on in billions of places with manifestly different results. Purpose? The way in which the term is used in these debates suggests some ultimate universal notion, which would necessarily include all those other bubbles, and that just doesn't scan. We make our own purpose and I'm fine with that. So the whole idea that our behavior here for sixty to hundred years is meaningful in some cosmic score card is laughable.
But the ideal—that people should not treat each other as means, that we should have respect, that the possibility of being more at the end than at the beginning of your life—does not, to my mind, require a creator for that to be valid.
Mark,
Thanks for clarifying that you have only a token 5 to ten percent hedge that is your chosen wager concerning an "unknowable" piece of information.
If there is an afterlife, and if you have the volitional ability or the freedom to take action upon whatever new information is presented you, I hope you can make the conscious choice that you might think would be required at that time.
This is why most non-Sadducees routinely pray God have mercy upon our souls.
The non-Sadducees of any religious faith are constantly aware of a judgement concerning their lives that they had lived while upon the earth, despite whatever differing interpretations they had concerning an afterlife.
There is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgement. This is pretty much found in every form of religion that I am aware of.
The most comfortable of the outcomes is of course that God would just leave them alone to cease to exist.
That does appear to be one of the options of some religions, but it still doesn't mean there will not be a God directed judgement however one way or the other before God provides the clemency the "non-existence."
"Token" five to ten percent? Usually you bitch that atheist materialists like me seem not to have any leeway (which is pretty much just speculation on your part). How much would satisfy you that I have an open mind? What percentage of uncertainty would you estimate is suitable to avoid a charge of arrogant certitude? And while we're on the subject, what's your hedge? Seems to me you possess a near 100% certainty in your assertions that (a) there is a god and (b) he/she/it actually cares one way or the other what we do with our sixty-plus years. What percentage do you grant to the possibility that you could change your mind about it?
Before you answer, this is a kind of trick question, because the whole point of faith, as I understand it, is to accept something unequivocally. By that "token" you leave yourself no wiggle room at all.
Which since you have a history of telling people like me that we maintain a similar "faith" in our secularism and science must mean that my five to ten percent makes me an apostate to my own creed.
Which is silly, since the creed you have often compared to a religion based on a different but roughly the same condition of faith includes the precept that one must always be ready to change one's mind in light of new information. Which makes it not a faith. In fact, it sort of underlines why, to me, faith, while useful in certain ways, is pretty much useless when trying to understand the universe and its workings.
"Seems to me you possess a near 100% certainty in your assertions that (a) there is a god and (b) he/she/it actually cares one way or the other what we do with our sixty-plus years. What percentage do you grant to the possibility that you could change your mind about it?"
I have asked this of Karl and other godbots numerous times. This is basically the end of the line. He will not ever answer you with a percentage, at least that is what I predict with 95 percent certainty.
Karl is afraid to read/consider my comments, for some reason.
Karl is afraid of math.
Mark writes:"The fire and brimstone model fails my test of superior moral intelligence, which states that a god capable of creating an intelligent species that is able to construct a morality superior to such a model would itself not therefore create a hell. But if that is the case, the the flip side is also unlikely."
Hell, as understood by many Christian theologists and philosophical theorists, is actually only eternal existence in the absence of God. No grace, no Love, no mercy, only death. Eternal suffering and pain. But, it is not as though someone is "sent" there for some specific grievance. Hell, as I understand it, is completely self-induced.
Though, as I've mentioned, not everyone believes in Hell. And many feel it is only a state of mind.
As for whether or not that state of mind persists for eternity after the physical death of the body, it is very difficult to correlate evidence with any assertion of this manner. I admit it. Science cannot tell us what happens after death, except that it is "nothing."
But I feel perhaps that it is the experiences that one builds in the psyche that incorporate their existence, and before they die, a person's view of their overall life is "judged" by some internal process. If one has developed a model by which they feel they have led a morally wise and good life, then before death the mind perceives that it will attain heaven. And, the brain, being a complex network of feedback loops and neural cross firing, interprets the ending moments as eternity. So, essentially, that "inner voice" essentially judges for whether or not we will attain a psychological placement in a Hell or Heaven of their own making…for "eternity" (which, really, is only just this very moment. Humans think spatially and temporally because it helps us to organize our universe but what we fail to realize is that eternity really is "now" and past present and future are all artificial constructs).
That, I think, is the real subject that perhaps we should study.
I, for one, am still of the belief that there still exists some realm of supernatural outside of the human cognitive spectrum. I do not know why I believe this. Perhaps it is due to my evolutionary "byproduct" that provides a dualistic view to reality.
Mark, I don't necessarily believe that there is some universal, cosmic end-game that humans are the main factor in. But the very fact that humanity exists with the capacity to reason out the universe is hardly meaningless. We absolutely make our own purpose, and perhaps that is the true meaning of the existence of life, the "purpose" of the universe. But where human's capacity to deduce and understand fundamental tenets of human values and universal truths conjoin, then that is where the (metaphysical, metaphorical, symbolic) "God" exists…?
"But the ideal—that people should not treat each other as means, that we should have respect, that the possibility of being more at the end than at the beginning of your life—does not, to my mind, require a creator for that to be valid."
You are absolutely right, which is still why I feel that the notion is more a psychological one rather than anything else. I will admit, however, that it is difficult for me to break with my tradition of believing in a creator God. I still have not come to a definitive conclusion as to what, how or why God is, but I do feel that there is some answer yet unknown. It is a belief with little grounding in truth, yes. It is a belief based on faith, surely.
But where you have faith that the universe is God-less, I have faith that it is God-filled. I leave myself still with a margin of uncertainty, all humans do. To claim that faith truly is 100% certainty is simply not factual (even though the definition clearly states that). What I mean to say is that MOST people claim to have faith in something but really all that means is that they are unsure.
"Our brains are actually not very much like computers, for one simple fact—computers, as sophisticated as they have become and may yet become, operate still on a binary algorithm. On Off, or, more appropriately to our discussion, Yes No. Brains have Yes No, but also allow for Maybe, If, and Both—conditions imitated by “fuzzy” logic but not duplicated. Which allows us the capacity for intuition computers lack and I think it’s structural."
Please:
http://www.physorg.com/news79289076.html
Computers are programmed with all of those "higher" decision functions as well.
At the very basic level of human internal neural processes, the "yes no" function still applies.
It is not until one reaches a higher internal process that the other functions become available.
Our brains are simply the world's most advanced computers, and computers are mirror images of decision processes inherent in humans.