O That the Atheist....

[Tinker Grey]

Alcohol is banned in the Kingdom of heaven.

How do you know?

But it will not be needed to experience joy and bliss, nor shall there be the associated sickness that often comes to those who get drunk.

How does one get drunk if alcohol is banned?

Oh, "banned" implies that it exists. Strange.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Nyet. No aliens, no Zecharia Sitchin theory; no reptilians...
Watchers, as in those who came down from heaven 200 strong, the B'nai Elohim, or sons of God in Genesis 6 and Book of Enoch.
A Watcher also appears in the book of Daniel, but that one is in Yahweh's service.

I don't share your reception of the Enochian literature, or your interpretation of Genesis 6.

So you may as well be talking about lizard people; it is certainly equally silly from a Christian point of view.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

Alcohol is banned in the Kingdom of heaven. But it will not be needed to experience joy and bliss, nor shall there be the associated sickness that often comes to those who get drunk.

What do you think the kingdom of heaven is?

Because in God's kingdom not only is alcohol not banned, it is commanded: "While they were eating, He took bread, said a blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, 'Take it, this My body.' Then He took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it. He said to them, 'This is My blood of the covenant, which shall be shed for many.'" (Mark 14:22-23)

For here, where Christ is Lord and King, we receive His own flesh and blood given in, with, and under the elements of bread and wine.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

Why not dismantle Hell then?

According to historic, orthodox Christian teaching, in a matter of speaking He did. We call it the Harrowing of Hell.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Larniavc]

According to historic, orthodox Christian teaching, in a matter of speaking He did. We call it the Harrowing of Hell.

-CryptoLutheran

That's a new one for me. Which Bible verse is that?

 

[essentialsaltes]

Alcohol is banned in the Kingdom of heaven.

Just like prison. I'll be heading up the pruno concession.

 

[stevil]

But, what shall you do in the end,

I'll lie down and rot. I won't be conscious. I won't exist.

if you discover it is all true after all?

The chances of this is next to nill. There is no evidence to suggest the Christian afterlife is anything other than imaginative.

That you are indeed a sinner,

Doubling down on what I hate about Christianity will not win me over.

and in need of a Saviour,

I do not need a saviour. I'm an adult, I find my own path through life. I am not a damsel in distress.

and that Jesus Christ did in fact die to atone for your sin,

No-one can atone for my mistakes other than me. I cannot just pass on my own responsibilities and accountabilities to anyone else.
Also, if Jesus Christ was human, he was destined to die, just like all of us. There is nothing special about death, we all do it. We don't die to atone for other people's mistakes. Just nonsense.

and you knew this obviously from reading on this forum, yet refused to believe and rejected so great a salvation?

I know the Christians have their scripture and their various interpretations and beliefs, I can't make much sense of it though. It certainly doesn't match reality.

Forgiving ourselves is fine,

It's the only type of forgiveness that counts.

but forgiving others is better,

When you forgive others, it does not impact them. They don't need your sanctimonious forgiveness. All forgivness of others gives is relief to the person forgiving from their own hatred and anger towards that person.

and the forgiveness that comes from God alone is the forgiveness that is best,

Only, it doesn't exist. When a person believes that God has forgiven them, really they have just forgiven themselves.
They do not get visited by God, they do not get spoken to by God, they just imagine themselves being forgiven.

for this forgiveness must be received if we are to be saved, and inherit eternal life.

Total nonsense.

 

[stevevw]

Those odds are not as high as the chance that it’s your version of the Christian god being THE creator god of all things. That’s mindblowingly more unlikely than it all coming together absent such divine effort.

But if you take it back a few steps from any specific religious belief or god to just a 'Mind' behind what we observe then the odds change in favour of Mind being an intregal part of how the universe, life and reality came to be.

 

[stevil]

But if you take it back a few steps from any specific religious belief or god to just a 'Mind' behind what we observe then the odds change in favour of Mind being an intregal part of how the universe, life and reality came to be.

How do you have a mind before you have energy, matter, space and time?

 

[weekEd]

Defining what a Christian is is way more elusive than should be

 

[ViaCrucis]

That's a new one for me. Which Bible verse is that?

It requires a bit of unpacking. First of all, "hell" doesn't mean "the bad place where people get tortured for eternity", but rather the biblical concept of She'ol or (translated into Greek) Hades--the place of the dead. It's rooted in an idea of a common pit or grave, a place of the dead. Later Jewish ideas, reflected in the New Testament, differentiate the kinds of experience the dead have depending on whether they are wicked or righteous. The experience of the wicked is called Gehenna, with the metaphors of "outer darkness" "fire" "gnashing of teeth" etc; on the other hand there's Gan-Eden (the Garden of Eden), translated into Greek as paradeisos ("paradise"), a borrowing from a Persian word for a garden.

With that in mind, there are several passages in the New Testament which infer that, when Jesus died, He went to the place of the dead. In 2 Peter there's a reference to Christ going to the place of the dead and preaching to the spirits there (without further explanation). St. Paul in one of his letters talks about Christ descending, which has been historically interpreted as Christ's descent into hell/Hades. In the Apocalypse of St. John, in the vision John has of Jesus, Jesus says that He, because He rose from the dead, has the "keys" of Hades--a symbol of His victory over Hades/death. In the Gospels Jesus speaks of the "sign of Jonah" and how the Messiah would be "in the belly of the earth" even as Jonah was in the belly of the fish.

Outside of the New Testament it's more explicit. There is a very famous sermon delivered by St. John Chrysostom (4th century) which he gave on Easter, in which he speaks of Christ's conquest of hell, such as "it [hell] took earth and received heaven, and so it was embittered". In the Apostles' Creed, read weekly in Catholic and traditional Protestant church services, there is the phrase, "He descended into hell"--the original Latin reads "descendit ad inferos", literally "He descended into the lower regions".

The traditional icon, or holy image, of the resurrection used in the Eastern Orthodox is known as the Icon of the Anastasis (anastais is Greek for resurrection), where Christ is depicted in the underworld, with the devil and death depicted bound and crushed under the fallen gates of hell--Christ stands upon the doors, having destroyed the power of hell, death, and the devil--He is depicted lifting up Adam (sometimes both Adam and Eve together) out from their sarcophogi, indicating that He has destroyed the very power of death over all humanity, He is often shown surrounded on His left and right with biblical figures such as Abraham, King David, and John the Baptist--having liberated them from the power of death/hell.

It's a pretty big and major feature in the Christian tradition, and is received and celebrated across multiple historic Christian traditions/denominations in both the Christian East and the Christian West.

However, in modern times, it doesn't receive much attention in contemporary, more modernistic Protestant circles.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Palmfever]

O that the Atheist would quit questioning God, and stop seeking every imaginable excuse to deny Him!

O that the Atheist who has even a miniscule belief that there might be a somewhat intelligent force behind the operations of the Cosmos, hence being somewhat of a Deist, would open their heart to see such utter complexities as the Universe, on down to the smallest known particle, all show plainly the wisdom and knowledge of an intelligent Creator.

O that the Atheist, the Deist, the Unitarian, the Agnostic, all realize there is a Holy Spirit, being part of the Godhead of Father, Son, and Spirit - and that the Holy Spirit is sent into the world to convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment: That the absolute Holiness of God demands the absolute justice of God, because of the absolute love of God, who gave His Son Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for your sin, of which the wages of sin are death!

Question if you may, disbelieve if you will, but none of your surmisings will change the course of God's sovereign will, Who will perform His will despite all your unbelief and questioning. Do not debate with the LORD, for you shall lose!

Thou art a sinner, for you were born in sin, and the only way to be free from the power and the penalty of sin, is to believe upon Jesus Christ, confess your sins to Him, and repent: turn from your sins. For even if you have lived a good moral life by the worlds standards, you are still a sinner, and your denial and unbelief themselves are sin!

O that the Atheist, the Deist, the Unitarian, the Agnostic, come to know the love of God, who is reaching out this time that you might be saved! Get a KJV Bible and begin to read it, and pray mightily for wisdom to receive its truth, that the living Word, who is Jesus Christ our Saviour may awaken your hearts to salvation, that ye die not in your sins and burn in hell: for that is the lot and portion of all unbelievers, and those who embrace sin over the Saviour!

Turn now, for the door is NOW open, and Christ awaits to envelop you with His love, and fill you with His Spirit; for His blood shed on the cross has the power to cleanse you from your sins, and the gift of eternal life shall then be yours. Until you come to Jesus and take Him as the Saviour of your soul, you are pitifully lost, and beneath the dreadful wrath of a Holy God, who is Righteous, and demands Justice, for in unbelief you condemn yourself.
Pray God then, O unbeliever, that He have mercy, and grant you repentance unto life, and saving faith, that ye may believe unto eternal life.
Amen.

Romans, 1:18
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
In Christ

 

[stevevw]

How do you have a mind before you have energy, matter, space and time?

I don't know but what is energy, matter, space and time. Fundementally they don't seem to be anything tangible. Fundementally there is no matter but vibtrating energy and it seems at least in our minds time transcends this world.

If there is going to be anything before energy, matter, space and time its not going to be these things but something transcendent of the material mechanisms.

Mind seems to be a reasonable candidate as its central to everything we see and do. Science seperated the observer out of the equation as to what makes fundemnetal reality. But I don't think this is possible.

When we do put the observer back in Mind becomes central. The universe is Mind, is consciousness as it is the observer who is creating that reality.

 

[stevil]

If there is going to be anything before energy, matter, space and time its not going to be these things but something transcendent of the material mechanisms.

Mind seems to be a reasonable candidate as its central to everything we see and do. Science seperated the observer out of the equation as to what makes fundemnetal reality. But I don't think this is possible.

When we do put the observer back in Mind becomes central. The universe is Mind, is consciousness as it is the observer who is creating that reality.

As far as I understand it the conscious mind is an emergent property of the workings of a physical brain.
Even if you had a mind made of nothing, floating in the nothing, what would it think?
It would have no concept of time or things even. There would be no time and so no sequence of events or thinking would be possible. Basically, you wouldn't be able to think things through.
This mind wouldn't have any idea of the concept of light, or colour or shape, or temperature, or time. It wouldn't have any idea of the concept of objects, or movement, or life. It wouldn't have any idea about solid, liquid or gas. No concept of mass, inertia, acceleration, gravity, atoms, before vs now vs after.

How would you explain any of these things to a mind that has never seen, never heard, never tasted, never smelt, never felt?
This mind could not learn, because it cannot observer or experience. Given that there is no time, it cannot FIRST learn and THEN apply its new knowledge.
You wouldn't even be able to explain to it, the concept of cause and effect.

The idea of a mind without a physical brain is absurd. The idea of a mind with knowledge without existence and time is insanely absurd.

 

[Hans Blaster]

As far as I understand it the conscious mind is an emergent property of the workings of a physical brain.
Even if you had a mind made of nothing, floating in the nothing, what would it think?
It would have no concept of time or things even. There would be no time and so no sequence of events or thinking would be possible. Basically, you wouldn't be able to think things through.
This mind would have any idea of the concept of light, or colour or shape, or temperature, or time. It wouldn't have any idea of the concept of objects, or movement, or life. It wouldn't have any idea about solid, liquid or gas. No concept of mass, inertia, acceleration, gravity, atoms, before vs now vs after.

How would you explain any of these things to a mind that has never seen, never heard, never tasted, never smelt, never felt?
This mind could not learn, because it cannot observer or experience. Given that there is no time, it cannot FIRST learn and THEN apply its new knowledge.
You wouldn't even be able to explain to it, the concept of cause and effect.

The idea of a mind without a physical brain is absurd. The idea of a mind with knowledge without existence and time is insanely absurd.

Congratulations on your acquisition of a never ending argument. Your interlocutor will not disappoint in providing your with an endless series of responses, no matter how thorough you think your reply was. Best of luck.

 

[stevil]

Congratulations on your acquisition of a never ending argument. Your interlocutor will not disappoint in providing your with an endless series of responses, no matter how thorough you think your reply was. Best of luck.

LOL.

 

[stevevw]

As far as I understand it the conscious mind is an emergent property of the workings of a physical brain.

I am not sure this is the case. I mean they have mapped a lot of the brains ativity correlating to some conscious states but they certainly hav't explained how such experiences can come from what amounts to wires and electrical signals. Its like saying potentially we could wire up a robot to have consciousness.

This is one of the Hard Problems for trying to explain what is basically a 'qualitative experience' with 'quantitative measures'. The two don't even go together in the first place to be using a quantified mechanical explaining. It's like using algerbra to explain joy. So its really a category problem for material science to explain consciousness.

Even if you had a mind made of nothing, floating in the nothing, what would it think?
It would have no concept of time or things even. There would be no time and so no sequence of events or thinking would be possible. Basically, you wouldn't be able to think things through.

I don't think a Mind is made of nothing in the sense of 'nothingness' in a material terms. Even material conceptions of nothing are not particles or matter but wavy energy that is fundemental. I am not sure what consciousness is, what form it takes as a field or energy source and is not yet understood.

Some say it will take a paradigm shift in thinking to even pose the right theory which some are doing now with various ideas like Panpsychism and similar ideas.

This mind wouldn't have any idea of the concept of light, or colour or shape, or temperature, or time. It wouldn't have any idea of the concept of objects, or movement, or life. It wouldn't have any idea about solid, liquid or gas. No concept of mass, inertia, acceleration, gravity, atoms, before vs now vs after.

If particles, colours (light waves), shapes, temperature or time are just a surface view or reflection perhaps of something more fundemental then it is mind that is creating the concepts of time, objects and colours ect. We know that perception can be warped, we know we can percieve things which are not real. So perhaps this is a glimpse or better still glitch in the matrix of the object world we create.

We have this constant intuition that things don't appear as them seem and that there is something going on that really matters beyond the material world. Perhaps our perceptions of the world are deigned to help us navigate the surface the objective world in a practical sense. There are more than one level of reality going on at the same time.

But fundementally all roads seem to lead back to us and I mean our Minds and conscious experience of the world. Two people can have different experiences about the same thing and each are just as real as each other. Wheeler, Wigner and Stapp formulated theories along these lines where consciousness and Mind were fundemental to reality.

Nobel Prize winner, John Archibald Wheeler, noted that “we live in a participatory universe”: physics gives rise to observer-participancy, which results in information, which gives rise to physics.
This agrees with Niels Bohr‘s suggestion to his students, at the end of a life-time of thinking about our quantum reality, that Man is inside the equation, simply by being there. Man is “entangled” in this “participatory universe”.

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medium.com

Henry Stapp has for 60 years been a leader, perhaps the leader, in exploring the role of mind (psyche, consciousness, experience) in the ontology of quantum mechanics. Henry's contention is that the very structure of quantum mechanics implies a central and irreducible role for mind: an experiential aspect of nature distinct from that of the physical matter and energy described by the dynamical equations of physics.

[1904.10528] Putting Mind Back into Nature: A Tribute to Henry P. Stapp

arxiv.org

There has to be a place for the subject in the equation of what is going on as we can never seperate ourselves from what is going on and how we measure things. So every interaction has some entanglement with between objective reality (space and time) and Mind and consciousness. What that entangle is or how it exactly influences things is still yet to be dicovered.

But we get glimpses of it with intuition, and research into the mind and cognition especially in psychology where we are finding that humans are not just passive rmeat robots subject to outside material forces but have agency and control in the world and able to shape and change reality.

How would you explain any of these things to a mind that has never seen, never heard, never tasted, never smelt, never felt?
This mind could not learn, because it cannot observer or experience. Given that there is no time, it cannot FIRST learn and THEN apply its new knowledge.
You wouldn't even be able to explain to it, the concept of cause and effect.

Thats the point we cannot explain Mind and consciousness through the material way your just describing because its something that precedes it. Like you said 'we wouldn't even be able to explain things' in that way about consciousness or mind being fundemental.

It may be that the universal consciousness that permeates everything has always been there. Its the substrate for which objective reality come about. But it takes a conscious being to experience that connection with that universal consciousness. I remember reading about Thomas Edison I think when asked where he got his ideas from for inventions. He say they just come to me somewhere out there in the universe.

It seems fundementally our universe comes down to information, math and not actual matter which points to Mind being fundemental. We also see this universal consciousness in how humans can be attuned to each other even over long distances. How many relate to ideas that transcend this world as something just as real as a solid object. Just not measured in the same way.

Material science says this is an illusion or even delusion. BUt our history of experiences tell us different tthat these experience are insights into a deeper level of reality at work that can actually change the material world.

The idea of a mind without a physical brain is absurd.

Not really, we already know that experiences like of colours, of awe and pain are real but cannot be explained by the physical brain. So already we have a category mismatch in explanations that the physical theories are not even in the same paradigm to account for conscious experiences.

This points to something beyond the physical brain. An epi-phenomena is grossly inadequate to explain such powerful, rich and real experiences some secondary effect from a mechanical process.

The idea of a mind with knowledge without existence and time is insanely absurd.

No its actually a reasonable and well supported idea that solves a lot of problems that material science cannot overcome. When you think about it knowledge and information are beyond time and space. You can't measure knowledge in any physical way. Yet it is so powerful and able to change reality. That knowledge has always been there and we are just dicovering it.

Like how what we thought was reality 100 years even 50 or 20 years ago has changed with new knowledge. That knowledge keeps updating our reality. We may have much more to dicover and who knows what reality will look like in another 100 years from now. Our idea of reality may be completely different and what we thought was reality now was just a surface view.

I like what Wheeler said about the observer participating in the unvieling of reality and the universe. The universe is now looking back on itself through conscious humans and observing itself into existence. That not only create the present but also can create the past. By updating our knowledge we are continually changing the past as we know it, as we believe reality to be.

What we thought reality for the beginning of our universe even 20 years ago is changing as we speak with the JWST. So who knows how we will think about space and time and what is fundemental in the future.

 

[stevil]

No its actually a reasonable and well supported idea that solves a lot of problems that material science cannot overcome.

It's incredibly intellectually lazy. It solves nothing to just pre-suppose an intelligent mind that just knows everything before anything ever existed.
It is an idea full of holes the size of the observable universe.

The explanation "God did it" explains nothing. What it does though, it gives a lazy person the excuse not to look for answers, to not discover, through thought and experimentation what can be discovered, what can be inferred, what can be predicted and tested.

If we stopped at "god did it" we never would have discovered how volcanoes work, why they erupt, not because god is angry or displeased.
We would never have discovered why the moon always faces the earth despite the astronomical odds of its rotation being in sync with its orbit. We would never have discovered why stars shine despite the impossible barriers that ought to prevent atoms merging but which quantum tunnelling provides a loop hole.
We would never have understood why creatures are so well suited to their environments.
We would never have created CERN to discover the smallest of smalls, or the JWT to look at the biggest of bigs.

I am very thankful that there are lots of people that do not take "god did it" as the answer and instead seek to kick the tyres of the universe and argue and quibble and inspect and examine and criticise and verify.

 

[stevevw]

It's incredibly intellectually lazy. It solves nothing to just pre-suppose an intelligent mind that just knows everything before anything ever existed.
It is an idea full of holes the size of the observable universe.

You obviously didn't do your research and check out those articles I linked. That is just the tip of the ice-berge of good theories and arguements for Mind and Consciousness being fundemental.

Even mainstream science alludes to this in interpretations of Quantum physics. Many of the pioneers of QM mentioned that at the very bottom of reality is the Mind and even that electrons have a rudimentary mindlike quality.

The Mind has crept into most sciences now and material conceptions don't do just in explaining the power of self, 0f our sense of locus of control and aagency in the world that can actually change reality.

The explanation "God did it" explains nothing. What it does though, it gives a lazy person the excuse not to look for answers, to not discover, through thought and experimentation what can be discovered, what can be inferred, what can be predicted and tested.

If we stopped at "god did it" we never would have discovered how volcanoes work, why they erupt, not because god is angry or displeased.
We would never have discovered why the moon always faces the earth despite the astronomical odds of its rotation being in sync with its orbit. We would never have discovered why stars shine despite the impossible barriers that ought to prevent atoms merging but which quantum tunnelling provides a loop hole.
We would never have understood why creatures are so well suited to their environments.
We would never have created CERN to discover the smallest of smalls, or the JWT to look at the biggest of bigs.

I am very thankful that there are lots of people that do not take "god did it" as the answer and instead seek to kick the tyres of the universe and argue and quibble and inspect and examine and criticise and verify.

Well you've wasted your breath because no where did I mention God or any gods but a well argued and supported case for Mind and consciousness being fundemental.

Thats why I specifically said we don't have to use God or any gods to support some sort of Mind behind what we see, what was there before any material thing was there.

It makes sense logically. If we rewind back to whatever was the very first something, the void or field we must come back to something beyond time, space, all the aspects that make objective reality including fields and forces.

What else could explain this pre material existence but something beyond the material. Thats unless you want to say that the 'something' was always there. But thats just the same as the 'God of the gaps'.

It makes more sense that the void or darkness was nothing but knowledge and information potential. Something set that in motion and this brought about that information and knowledge into existence. We still do that today. It is the knowledge and information, the concepts that we put into reality to create our world. Otherwise they are just rocks and and resources in the ground.

And look what we have achieved in changing the landscape of planet earth. maybe to the point of self destruction. You can't get more real effect than that. That a creature that is suppose to be subject to evolutionary forces actually took control of its own eveolution and all other living creatures and destroyed them and their environments.

 

[Larniavc]

It requires a bit of unpacking. First of all, "hell" doesn't mean "the bad place where people get tortured for eternity", but rather the biblical concept of She'ol or (translated into Greek) Hades--the place of the dead. It's rooted in an idea of a common pit or grave, a place of the dead.

Not the Lake of Fire where all the liars, dogs and wizards go?