Amen to all of that!
God, she has a devilish sense of humour, perhaps?
What about both options?
These positions will have be made time and time again.
That’s a good point and is probably the false dichotomy that fortigurn alluded to earlier. Anyway, I hope that he comes back and adresses this stuff. It would be interesting to see if there is any convincing arguments to be made against these simple points. I’d say they were pretty deadly to the faith position but who knows, maybe there “is” a way to worm out from under them.
Millions of gods’ followers (any god will do in this context) have been asking for such direct intervention for eons, since the advent of religion, and so far there’s been a deafening silence as the only response.
We’ll keep hanging in there, bob, on that request of yours, but don’t hold your breath.
[quote=“Fortigurn”]
… but standard reference sources say things like ‘human beings do not have souls’ (EBD), ‘Human life is never to be conceived of in terms of an independent immortality’ (NDT), ‘Far from referring simply to one aspect of a person, “soul” refers to the whole person.’ (EDB), and 'The soul is simply that area in which decisions are made concerning life and death, salvation and destruction (NIDNTT)…[/quote]
A question Fortigurn, does this concept of the soul as part and parcel of the person negate the possibility of an afterlife, or not?
[quote=“bob”]Many sensible people who have read the English version of the New Testament with all it’s references to eternal this, everlasting that and come away with anything the idea that we would all be judged, and either punished or rewarded depending upon whether or not we are uneducated and/or delusional enough to believe the bullshit presented therein. You could argue that the “original” (whatever the hell that would be given that it was written so many years after the fact) didn’t imply that then you are stuck with the question of why
god
would allow such a version to confuse people for so many years. You are aware I take it that a good deal of confusion on the issue existed, exists, and will no doubt continue to exist in the future? And you do believe that the Bible was directed by
god
in some way I take it.[/quote]
It’s clear you didn’t read what I quoted. What you don’t understand is that personal Bible reading outside the influence of Catholic dogma correlated positively with rejection of the doctrine of the immortal soul. From the early medieval era to the late Middle Ages, literacy was so low that virtually no one was reading the Bible; they derived their belief in the immortal soul not from the Bible, but from being told to believe it by their local priest.
During this time, many of those who were actually reading the Bible could see it didn’t teach the immortal soul,[2] [3] [4] much to the frustration of the clergy and other church officials interested in maintaining the Church’s official position. Medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas acknowledged freely that everything known about the mind and the body at the time indicated that consciousness was a property of the body rather than an immortal soul, such that it was impossible to argue that the immortal soul constituted the eternal consciousness of the self; theologians of this persuasion usually held that the immortal soul was a substance inserted into the body by God at a point in time subsequent to birth, though acknowledging this was not found anywhere in the Bible. Later medieval and early modern theologians and philosophers also acknowledged it was impossible to support the doctrine either from the Bible or from philosophy.
During the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, when English Bible translations proliferated, we find exactly the opposite of what you claim. The more English Bibles were translated, the more Christians came to believe that the doctrine of the immortal soul was not found in the Bible, despite the traditional English word ‘soul’ being used in the translation.[5] Not only was it observed that the soul was not referred to as immortal anywhere in the Bible in any translation at all, English or otherwise (even in English translations the number of verses referring to ‘souls’ eating, sleeping, and dying, demonstrated that the ‘soul’ referred to was not an immortal part of human beings, but referred to the entire person), Catholic theologians involved in the Counter-Reformation freely acknowledged that the doctrine wasn’t found in the Bible, and claimed that those Reformers who still clung to this doctrine were being inconsistent, since they were holding the belief simply on the basis of the authority of the Church, not on the basis of Biblical teaching (Sola Scriptura being the Reformation warcry).
[quote]This bit seems to indicate that there “is” some eternal reward afterall, but only for the good Christians? Where does the soul reside in the interim, does it like go in a big freezer and exist in a state of suspened animation, or does it like appear, sort of like “poof” magico when
god
decides to bring you all back to Jeruselum after murdering all the rich people or what exactly?[/quote]
I suggest you read what I quoted. The ‘soul’ does not exist ‘in the interim’, so it doesn’t ‘reside’ anywhere. As the quotations make clear, resurrection is the only hope for those who have died.
Well even if my faith in a future resurrection is misplaced, I’m not particularly fussed about the idea of being annihilated at death. It doesn’t seen depressing to me, just natural. I don’t remember being disturbed by my non-existence prior to my conception, and I’m sure I’ll be equally undisturbed after my death.
Your arguments on this topic demonstrate the same lack of evidence, lack of logical coherence, and lack of knowledge of the subject as Fundamentalist Christian arguments about evolution, arguments like ‘OMBBQ, evolution does not explain the origin of life, I HAVE JUST DISPROVED EVOLUTION!’. For this reason alone there is no point in trying to reason with you because you either don’t understand the answers or else simply reject them because they contradict what you’ve already chosen to believe. I can’t reason someone out of an argument they didn’t reason themselves into.
It completely negates the idea of the person continuing to survive after death, such that they are conscious although being, and necessitates the complete resuscitation of the body; resurrection (which you can call ‘afterlife’ if you like, though I think a more accurate description is ‘restoration to life’). You’re either alive (you have a functioning body), or you’re not alive (your body has died). You can’t be conscious if your body is dead, and you can’t have an ‘afterlife’ while your body is dead.
[1] Mortalism was preserved by early Christians such as Arnobius, and among Syrian Christians such as Aphrahat, Ephrem, Narsai, and Jacob of Sarug. Syrian Christianity inherited it from earlier Jewish teaching. It was was retained through the late medieval era and early Middle Ages by Jewish commentators such as Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1167), Maimonides (1135-1204), and Joseph Albo (1380-1444). Christian Syrian mystic Isaac of Nineveh (d.700), also held a mortalist position.
[2] 'Till the end of the sixth century and beyond, Christians in Nisibis and Constantinople, Syria and Arabia adduced Leviticus 17:11 which states that “The soul of the whole flesh is the blood” to argue that the soul after death sank into non-existence, that it lost its sensibility and stayed inert in the grave together with the body.’, Samellas, ‘Death in the eastern Mediterranean (50-600 A.D.): the Christianization of the East: An Interpretation’, Studien Und Text Zu Antike Und Christentum, pp. 55-56 (2002).
[3] ‘Still others argued for the outright death of the soul, which, they claimed, was mortal and perished with the body, and which would be recreated together with the body only on the day of resurrection.’, Constas, ‘”To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”: The Middle State of Souls in Patristic and Byzantine Literature’, in Talbot (ed.), ‘Dunbarton Oaks Papers’, No. 55, p. 94 (2001).
[4] ‘Thnetopsychism [‘soul death’] continued to challenge the patience and ingenuity of church officials, as evidenced by writers such as John the Deacon, Niketas Stethatos, Philip Monotropos (Dioptra, pp. 210, 220), and Michael Glykas, all of whom are keenly interested in the survival of consciousness and memory among the souls of the departed saints. John the Deacon, for example, attacks those who “dare to say that praying to the saints is like shouting in the ears of the deaf, as if they had drunk from the mythical waters of Oblivion” (line 174).’, Gavin, ‘The Sleep of the Soul in the Early Syriac Church’, Journal of the American Oriental Society (40.111), 1920.
[5] Such as John Wycliffe (1320-1384), Michael Sattler (1490-1527), the Anabaptists (1527-1700), William Tyndale (1494-1536), Camillo Rentao (1540), Matyas Devai (1500-1545), Michael Servetus (1511-1553), Laelius Socinus (d. 1562), Faustus Socinus (1563), the Polish Brethren (1565), Dirk Philips (1504-1568), Gregory Paul (1568), the later Socinians (1570-1800), John Frith (1573), George Schomann (1574), Simon Budny (1576), the Sussex Baptists (17th century), Edward Wightman (d. 1612), Samuel Gardner (1627), Samuel Przpkowski (1628), George Wither (1636), Joachim Stegman (1637), Richard Overton (1624), John Biddle (1654), Matthew Caffyn (1655), Samuel Richardson (1658), John Milton (1608-1674), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1670), Thomas Browne (1605-1682), Henry Layton (1622-1705), William Coward (1702), John Locke (1632-1704), Isaac Newton (1643-1727), Pietro Giannone (1676-1748), William Kenrick (1751), Edmund Law (1755), Samuel Bourn (1759), Richard Price (1723-1791), Peter Peckard (1718-1797), Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), Francis Blackburne (1765), the Millerites (1833), Edward White (1846), Thomas Thayer (1855), François Gaussen (d.1863), Christadelphians (1865), Henry Constable (1873), Louis Burnier (d. 1878), the Conditionalist Association (1878), Cameron Mann (1888), Miles Grant (1895), and George Stokes (1897).
So you’re saying in the case of your “future ressurection” or alternate reality, you’d likely just be apathetic?
That’s impressive fortigurn. You managed to sound scholarly while simultaneously ignoring what are in fact extremely simple ideas. There is no question that a simple reading of the Bible can quite naturally lead people to believe that at the time of death their consciousness departs their body and heads either to heaven or hell. If it didn’t seem to be saying that there would not have been such a long history of it being quite a common belief right up until now. I just read the New Testament. It certainly gave me the impression that I woud be headed either to heaven or hell after death. Lets be mature about this and not quibble over whether or not there are loads of references to hell, eternal torment, unquenchable fire and all the rest of it. My question is: Why, if the Bible was written with God’s guidance, did it seem to be very clearly referring to heaven and hell as places we would all be headed (thereby implying an eternal soul) if that wasn’t God’s message? Just answer that.
(and yes I am aware that a more sophisticated understanding of the Bible can lead to another interpretation, but no I am not convinced that except where that understanding is based on the original text, it isn’t just an after the fact set of rationalizations made neccesary by the fact that hell is such an immoral, sadistic concept and therefore one better not associated with a loving god)
I don’t hold to the idea that the determinant of the reality of any religion is in the hands of the philosophers, the intellectual theoreticians, or the theologists. I think rather that it lies mostly in the hands of the masses, the lay folk, the vast numbers of those on the margins of the religion, and even in the perceptions of outsiders.
That is why you should never trust an intellectual.
I am not an intellectual, BTW, so you can all trust me on that. 
No, I’m quite enthusiastic about the idea of a resurrection. I’m just not going to cry my eyes out if it doesn’t happen (obviously), and conversely the idea of annihilation doesn’t really fuss me. I’m a small bag of temporarily animated chemicals, only marginally different from the dirt on which I walk and to which I will return one day. On the broader cosmic scale of things, I don’t even register. I quite like the idea of living forever, but the idea of no longer existing at some point isn’t terrifying to me.
No, I addressed your claims specifically. You made specific truth claims which were testable. You failed to provide any evidence for them whatsoever (naturally), and I demonstrated that the facts were the opposite of what you claimed. Your hand waving assertion of Christians coming to a belief in the immortal soul by reading the Bible in English were massively flawed, not only because you had no idea that the overwhelming majority of Christians during most of the Christian era couldn’t even read in any language, not only because during this time they didn’t come to a belief in the immortal soul by reading the Bible at all, but also because it is demonstrable that when they did start reading the Bible for themselves in their own languages (especially in English), there was a massive increase in the number of people who rejected the doctrine of the immortal soul. You didn’t address any of these facts, because you simply didn’t know any of these facts. You were just making stuff up as you went along.
This isn’t a matter of theology, it’s a matter of history. You made specific, testable, historical claims. You provided no evidence for them at all (of course), and I pointed out that the evidence points in a completely different direction. It’s simple all right.
Quite apart from your determination to avoid presenting evidence for your claims, you’re committing several fallacies here.
-
False dichotomy: X happened, therefore it happened because of reason Y, no other explanation is possible; failure to account for evidence contrary to the claim, and failure to account for the fact that alternative explanations are substantiated with evidence
-
Unrepresentative sample: when I read X it led me to belief Y, so it’s natural to assume that everyone else would have the same experience; completely meaningless sample size of one, no proper statistical methodology
-
Non sequitur: claiming ‘X, therefore Y’, when in fact Y does not proceed logically from X
-
Unsubstantiated claim: ‘There is no question that a simple reading of the Bible can quite naturally lead people to believe that at the time of death their consciousness departs their body and heads either to heaven or hell’; mere rhetoric, completely free from any substantiating evidence
You’re just making things up. There isn’t a single passage in the entire Bible which says any bit of anyone goes to heaven when they die. This is verifiable.
Oh, you mean ‘Let’s not actually investigate the evidence, let’s just assume that X is the case, because X just happens to conveniently support my argument’? No thanks.
It didn’t. Read the copious references I quoted and you’ll see they say plainly that people came along with beliefs they already held, and then read them back into the Bible, which never said them in the first place. Wow, that wasn’t difficult at all.
Nor do I. Isn’t it great to agree for a change? 
In Heaven our souls will be united with new incorruptible bodies - 1 Corinthians 15
It took like two seconds to find that.
Thanks, that’s very interesting.
Well said. Are you sure many religious people subscribe to this line of thought? 
It’s news to me. Don’t get me wrong, I like it. It sounds almost like you may as well be religious as be an atheist.
Though obviously resurrection makes sense this way, eh. Now you’ve got me scanning the bible again. Oh dear
There is absolutely NO question that the Bible with all it’s references to eternal this, everlasting that, firey torments, eternities in heaven and all the rest of it has contributed to a good many people believing in heaven and hell, and by extension an eternal soul. We don’t need a philosophy lecture to prove it, and we scarcely need a history lesson. The fact that you STILL have to explain that not all christians believe it is almost proof enough. The Anglican church abandoned the notion of hell in 1940. Big deal. The miracle there is that it took them that long to figure out that is what God intended, if in fact you even believe it is what he intended. The Bible is so filled with contradictions you can use it to argue any position. I just read it and the impression I came away with is that everyone would be judged and sent one of two places.
“But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.” (Rom. 2:5)
“And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.” (Rev. 20:12)
I am assuming that the first quote is referring to everyone since someone with a repentant heart actually would be Christian, but who knows? (Who EVER knows what the hell Christianity is on about?)
If there isn’t some continuim of consciousness (or at least some kind of continuim of “being”)what difference would it make where “you” went? It wouldn’t be you, and if it “was” you it’d be your “soul” as people generally conceive of it. The English version of the Bible is filled with references to heaven and hell, with no implied continuim of consciousness such referances are meaningless. That is likely why people think one is assumed? What’s your take on that professor?
The quotes I gave weren’t intended to be great examples of scholarship either but examples of what a good many people still think.
Anyway, regardless of how you end up interpreting the Bible after all these centuries, my point is this…
It makes no sense that a loving, all powerfull god ( a fairly standard accepted definition I think although the Bible actually describes something A LOT different) would allow such a confusing doctrine to have existed and fucked people up for as long as it has.
Do you agree with that? To remain even remotely logical you must. I know you are very intelligent, and it doesn’t seem like you are crazy. In fact I enjoy your posts immensely. However your arguments in this thread are neverthelss designed to show that my essentially indisputable position is essentially wrong. (If it was wrong we wouldn’t be having THIS conversation.) On the basis of that I concluded you must be lying.
Here’s some crap I lifted off the internet as an example of what Christian people think.
pleaseconvinceme.com/index/W … t_the_Soul
Matthew 10:28
"And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
“But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read that which was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
Were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob alive at the time of this statement? No. So how can they be described as living? Only if they are actually immortal souls that were alive after death (and prior to their physical resurrection in the future). If they are immortal souls, immaterial beings, then the passage begins to make sense.
Matthew 17:1-3
And six days later Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and brought them up to a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him.
In this scene from the scripture, Jesus is talking to Elijah and Moses. They obviously died long before Jesus was born, so how could this scene be true unless they exist truly as immortal souls, and not simply as physical bodies? Here once again we have another example of disembodied life after death, something that is ONLY possible if we exist as living immortal souls.
Luke 16:19-31
“Now there was a certain rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, gaily living in splendor every day. And a certain poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores, and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man’s table; besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores. Now it came about that the poor man died and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue; for I am in agony in this flame.’ But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. ‘And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, in order that those who wish to come over from here to you may not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, Father, that you send him to my father’s house - for I have five brothers - that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them,’ But he said, 'No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent! But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.’”
In this passage, the dead are repeatedly described as performing actions that are characteristic of the living. But that’s not all! God tells the rich man that it is at least hypothetically possible that the dead could “go” to the living. Once again, the dead are not dead. How can this be? It can only be possible if the physically dead are still immaterially alive. That’s why as Christians, we recognize and believe that what we are living souls who are immortal by nature.
Here’s a video of a guy who wrote a book about his 23 minutes in Hell. He sounds very knowledgable about the Bible and he speaks well. He’s a conservative guy with a nice looking wife, and they don’t watch dark movies . . . so there’s no reason in his mind why he might have had a nightmare.
Anyway, after a Sunday night prayer session back in November of 1998, they went home and went to bed. He didn’t have a near-death experience, but he woke up at 3:00 and his wife found him distraught at 3:23 convinced that he’d seen Hell in a vision.
His discription of Hell begins at the 10:40 mark.
I just think he had a terrible dream. Maybe he’d been reading Revelations or some other scary part of the Bible earlier in the evening, but I don’t doubt that he sincerely believes what he is saying.
Anyway, I think Hell is a “real place” for a lot (40-60%?) of Christians, and I think Heaven is a “real place” for the vast majority (90+%?).
ETA- I’m not sure if a person’s vision is more credible if it happens now (and you can get it straight from the person’s mouth), or if it happened thousands of years ago in a time when miracles and talking with God were apparently more common. Is it possible that if this man had lived thousands of years ago, he would have been considered a prophet, and his story might have made it into the Bible?
Also, at the 22:22 mark of the video, he mentions that when he was a surfer, a fellow surfer got his leg bitten off. There were about 30 tiger sharks in the water, and he knelt down on his board to keep his legs out of the water. But a shark came along, bit his board in two, and dragged him under. Afterwards the shark let him go; he noticed that there were no marks at all on his leg, and he called it a miracle of God. So, does this make his story of Hell more or less credible to you? It seems that this shark attack might be something you could check. Shark attacks that result in loss of limbs are rare enough in Florida, so it should have been reported. If you find that there is a newspaper report that backs up his story, does that make his story more believable than some other big fish story from the distant past?
No, no, didn’t you get the memo? Back in the middle ages people started reading the Bible for themselves and realized there was no mention of soul or hell etc.
The Christian side of my family most certainly believe both are real places. And I’m going to Hell, apparently. 
Sorry to hear about that. :neutral:
Just wondering if your future in Hell is the reason for choosing “antarctic” as part of your current name.
[quote=“zender”]Sorry to hear about that. :neutral:
Just wondering if your future in Hell is the reason for choosing “antarctic” as part of your current name.[/quote]
Yeah, well, it’s better than ‘snowball’. 
================================
Just did a quick search for belief in heaven and hell.
[quote]Since 1997, belief in heaven has ranged between 72% and 83%. According to Gallup’s most recent May 2004 Values and Beliefs poll*, 81% of Americans currently say they believe in heaven, 10% are unsure, and 8% do not believe. As expected, regular churchgoers are more likely than others to say they believe: Virtually all (98%) of those who attend church weekly do so versus 89% who attend “nearly weekly” and 64% of those who say they attend church seldom or never.
…
From 1997 to 2004, belief in hell has ranged between 56% and 71%. The 2004 data reveal that 70% of Americans overall believe in hell, while 12% are not sure and 17% do not believe in hell. Again, the percentage is much higher among regular churchgoers: 92% of those who attend weekly believe in hell, as do 74% of those who attend nearly weekly and just half (50%) of those who attend church seldom or never.[/quote]
http://www.gallup.com/poll/11770/eternal-destinations-americans-believe-heaven-hell.aspx
No, I’m quite enthusiastic about the idea of a resurrection. I’m just not going to cry my eyes out if it doesn’t happen (obviously), and conversely the idea of annihilation doesn’t really fuss me. I’m a small bag of temporarily animated chemicals, only marginally different from the dirt on which I walk and to which I will return one day. On the broader cosmic scale of things, I don’t even register. I quite like the idea of living forever, but the idea of no longer existing at some point isn’t terrifying to me.
[/quote]
Well said. At the end of the day we’re all just puddles of protein. It’s what you do with your life and consequently leave behind that’s more likely to last. Maybe that’s why for thousands of years mankind has been so obsessed with legacy.
I’m thinking a similar thing. He mentions being unable to move and seeing demon-like figures: common symptoms of sleep paralysis. May well be influenced by his readings of scriptural descriptions of hell.
Yes, I think it’s quite common. The logic goes something like this: if I’m wrong, I haven’t lost anything; at best, I’ll have left behind some favourable impression of my existence. I will die just the same as any atheist. It’ll be a disappointment, but since I’ll be dead and no soul will exist to be disappointed, that’s no big deal.