Soulless Christianity

[Quid est Veritas?]

Aha, there is the confusion. I said "neural" - not "neutral" (or at least that is what I meant to say unless I typed wrong). Probably a better word would have been "neurological"? So I assume that we are in agreement on that issue now right?

No, because suffering isn't a neurological state in Christianity as I explained in my above posts regarding Cartesian duality and Old Testament conceptions.
Also, it isn't a state in Neurology either. We have pain yes, but anguish and suffering are not physical states, but psychosocial constructs. As I stated before, the connection with neurotransmitters is tenuous at best and insufficient to definitively connect them to depression. There was a whole series of Meta-analyses done on this topic by Irving Kitsch if your interested.
So equating both heaven and hell as neural states fails on both Christian doctrinal grounds and on current medical understanding.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

As a person with psychological problems, I also know something about the attitudes of psychologists and psychiatrists. I am anti-medication, so my inclination has been to seek psychotherapy. The inclination of the care providers has been to medicate me. So you can't tell me that psychotherapy is the preferred solution LOL - I know what I have experienced as a patient. I agree that people in the psychological trades are trained to respect the patient's religious beliefs and consider them in the diagnosis. Unfortunately, religious beliefs can mask psychological symptoms. I had brief psychotic disorder several years ago, but I did not understand what was wrong with me and my family assumed that my problems were religious rather than psychological. As a result, I did not get any treatment, and I switched briefly from an atheist to a deranged Eastern Orthodox. My priest and others that he gossiped with should have directed me to a psychiatrist, but instead they played along with me. After two years of Christianity, I finally began to realize that something was wrong, and I gradually came back to my senses (but not before I had given away most of my retirement savings and generally made a fool of myself). Thanks to religion, everybody around me was reluctant to interfere, so I only learned afterwards about psychosis when I saw a therapist. So that is the downside of being too considerate of religious people and their beliefs. (Sorry I guess that is a bit of rant LOL)

I have not examined you myself, but perhaps they want to medicate you for a reason. Where I am from, the medical fraternity doesn't jump on medications, especially psychotics, unless it is really indicated.
Sometimes it can take a while to differentiate cultural and religiously appropriate behaviour from Psychotic episodes, religious delusions and manic episodes. The point is that it is not ignored, which you actually have first hand experience of.

 

[cloudyday2]

I have not examined you myself, but perhaps they want to medicate you for a reason. Where I am from, the medical fraternity doesn't jump on medications, especially psychotics, unless it is really indicated.
Sometimes it can take a while to differentiate cultural and religiously appropriate behaviour from Psychotic episodes, religious delusions and manic episodes. The point is that it is not ignored, which you actually have first hand experience of.

It seems to be a knee-jerk reaction from those folks: medicate, medicate, medicate. Almost everybody in the US is taking psych meds today. I'm convinced that 50 years from now, these psych meds will look about as responsible as the patent medicines from 100 years ago where people drank radium for energy and so forth. However, as a devout atheist, I am convinced that medication is the ultimate solution. 50 years from now they will probably have ways to measure brain activity objectively and routinely to properly diagnose problems and properly correct them through medication. We are not there today.

BTW, I am not psychotic anymore, so don't worry about that. I do have depression, but it's not the usual depression. It comes and goes every few days, but it has been a problem all my adult life. Medication has never helped.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Imagine that humans are simply a collection of natural materials with no soul or freewill. It seems to me that Christianity can still be made to work.

(1) We need to assume soul sleep. When our bodies die, we no longer exist until our bodies are recreated along with a new Earth at Christ's return.

(2) Without free will, heaven and hell can be viewed as a way to improve human behavior or as inevitable outcomes of different paths in life.

(3) God can continue to be above the material world. Maybe God is the programmer who wrote a computer simulation of reality or whatever. From our perspective God the progammer is very Godlike.

I don't see any big problems with removing the human soul from the theology, and it brings Christianity into closer harmony with science. Any opinions?

Except that we can't just ignore a central element of Christianity. If we take anything from or add anything to the Christian Theology is warned against in the Bible.

 

[redleghunter]

Imagine that humans are simply a collection of natural materials with no soul or freewill.

Is imagining really in the realm of apologetics?

 

[cloudyday2]

Except that we can't just ignore a central element of Christianity. If we take anything from or add anything to the Christian Theology is warned against in the Bible.

Unfortunately there are many different Christian theologies - each denomination adds or subtracts something from it's parent denomination. Even the Catholic Church has popes that are constantly adding and subtracting.

 

[cloudyday2]

Is imagining really in the realm of apologetics?

Yes, imagining is in the realm of every human endeavor.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Unfortunately there are many different Christian theologies - each denomination adds or subtracts something from it's parent denomination. Even the Catholic Church has popes that are constantly adding and subtracting.

Yes, and they were warned against it.