Random destinies

[rusmeister]

Like I said, it all comes back to what you accept or designate as authority for you. If you use the Bible without reference to an external authority, (which is,uh, a document, subject to interpretation by somebody; there are a multitude of interpretations - which is why you have all of the "disagreement" on Christianity) then YOU, de facto, become the authority.
The thing that makes the MOST traditional churches different - as far as I can tell now, only the Orthodox and Catholic Churches really qualify here - is that the Scripture is something that was collected and canonized by the Church - the people that decided that the Gospel of Mark was kosher and the gospel of Judas was bogus. You are therefore acknowledging that the Church of the 3rd and 4th centuries was competent to do this. if it was competent then, what happened to that Church over time? Where is it now?

I'm not saying they were competent to do so. However, since most christian sects base their assumptions about god on those approved texts, I feel able to do so also. (For what its worth, I've also read the "gnostic gospels," the "lost" books of the bible.)

If you refer to my response to F+F above, you'll see the part about sources of doctrine - and while the Bible has the most honored place among them, it is not the only source. Again, you're coming from a Sola Scriptura basis when you assume that you can read the texts and simply come up with your own interpretation. We simply don't live long enough to attain the wisdom and knowledge accumulated by the Church. The trouble is in finding that Church.

The differences are not internal. They are external. The basis of the Church is Apostolic Succession Two churches have serious claims to have maintained Apostolic Succession. Without this there is no lasting verifiable institution, and the concept of the Church becomes meaningless. Other Christians read the Bible and come up with their own interpretations, based on their own experience and knowledge, much as you propose doing. But as you admit, all of that cacophony cannot be the Truth. As to the ones that really do maintain historical continuity, you will come up against the question, is one really the legitimate successor, and if so, which one?

It certainly explains how you could experience the craziness you have and how Christianity could still be viable as THE Truth.

Hahaha, but all that cacophony is the truth. At least to the people who believe it. They act and react exactly as though it were true. So to them it is, and it might as well be.

Well, my point, which I think fairly obvious, is that you don't believe that cacophony to be the truth. That, or you really are saying that there is no truth, in which case we can't even have a conversation.

Still want to get back to your Job post. But the Orthodox way is to ask what the Church teaches about it, rather than rely exclusively on my own understandings of it.

Take your time. (But what happens if your understanding of it differs from what the Church teaches? Why is the church more competent than you to interpret it?)

That's easy. I think I answered that above. I recognize the limitations of my intellect and my knowledge. I have found an authority that knows better than me. I don't check my reason at the door, but I recognize that there are a great many things I could not possibly have had time to learn. The Church is 2,000 years old and has thousands of saints, martyrs and thinkers who have contributed to the vast storehouse of wisdom that is the Church (not that it is an exclusively human institution - but there is a human factor in that divine institution). I am not even 50 and will not likely live to be 100. A chief Christian virtue that the world generally despises is humility. Our pride, to be first, be the best, know the most, doesn't want to submit to an authority greater than the self.

[Avatar]

If you refer to my response to F+F above, you'll see the part about sources of doctrine - and while the Bible has the most honored place among them, it is not the only source. Again, you're coming from a Sola Scriptura basis when you assume that you can read the texts and simply come up with your own interpretation. We simply don't live long enough to attain the wisdom and knowledge accumulated by the Church. The trouble is in finding that Church.

The original church leaders did exactly that though...read the texts and came up with their own interpretations. Anyway, it seems a perfectly reasonable method of doing so to me. And surely anything which begins with the premise that you can't figure it out for yourself is sorta missing the point...Anybody should be able to determine the validity based on what they're given, since its supposed to be true for everybody...

--A

[rusmeister]

If you refer to my response to F+F above, you'll see the part about sources of doctrine - and while the Bible has the most honored place among them, it is not the only source. Again, you're coming from a Sola Scriptura basis when you assume that you can read the texts and simply come up with your own interpretation. We simply don't live long enough to attain the wisdom and knowledge accumulated by the Church. The trouble is in finding that Church.

The original church leaders did exactly that though...read the texts and came up with their own interpretations. Anyway, it seems a perfectly reasonable method of doing so to me. And surely anything which begins with the premise that you can't figure it out for yourself is sorta missing the point...Anybody should be able to determine the validity based on what they're given, since its supposed to be true for everybody...

--A

--A

That sounds like it ought to be true, but when you begin to dig into the history, theology, etc, it becomes almost hopelessly complicated really fast, and the average person does not know much, if any, detail of the history of the Christian Church, especially prior to the Reformation.

And on the early Church leaders - close, but no cigar. The Ecumenical Councils did indeed decide things, but it wasn't by any individual interpretation. It was by consensus, with the guiding principle that nothing could contradict dogma that had always been accepted in Scripture and other Tradition (such as Christ being the Son of God, for example).

The simple version for everybody WAS good enough - that God became a Man and died and rose again so that all might have eternal life - until heresiarchs came along and began interpreting Scripture on their own. This necessitated dogma to combat the heresies (personal opinions).

[Avatar]

*shakes head*

I'm still not getting what you're saying here...what makes your and my interpretation any less valid? If, as christianity suggests, the bible is the basis for what we know about god/Jesus/whatever, then it's reasonable to assume that we ought to use it to determine our opinions thereof.

--A

[aliantha]

Again, you're coming from a Sola Scriptura basis when you assume that you can read the texts and simply come up with your own interpretation. We simply don't live long enough to attain the wisdom and knowledge accumulated by the Church.

See, Rus, you call it "wisdom and knowledge", while others call it "spin". You mentioned yourself that the Nicene Creed was created by committee -- your word is "consensus", but the subtext, to me, is "compromise". Granted these were all learned church elders, considering the matter prayerfully, etc., but I can't imagine there wasn't some brokering going on.

The Christian Church is, and has been, very much a political entity all along. Av mentioned the gnostic gospels, which the church fathers deliberately excluded from the Bible because they didn't fit with the doctrine that those church fathers wanted to promulgate.

As far as I can see, the only way to get a true picture of what Christianity should be is to read the Bible yourself. Forget the revelations and the scholarship and all that other stuff. Just read what Jesus said. The man said we should love each other as we love ourselves. He said we should throw the moneychangers out of the temple. And so on. All the rest of it -- the temples, the liturgy and the incense, the holy days (lifted, by and large, from pagan holidays, btw) -- those are all human constructs. That's the stuff about the church that I object to. I have no problem with what Jesus himself said. But the farther away you get from the original revelation -- the more layers of interpretation you wrap around it -- the more that revelation is subject to being subverted.

I recently read "The Fresco" by Sheri S. Tepper. She does a nice job of showing how a prophet's words can be turned around and misinterpreted by so-called learned men, who then create a religion with a bunch of rules and strictures that would make the prophet laugh out loud. I can't help but think she was parodying the Christian Church.

You say you haven't turned off your brain with regard to the Church's teachings, and I'm glad to hear that. And I'm glad to hear that you've found a truth that works for you. But -- but! -- there are lots of roads to the truth. Yours is not the only one. That's all I'm saying. You may be right. Obviously, you passionately believe you are right. I wish, tho, that you could bend a little -- just enough to acknowledge that there's a chance that Fist and Av and I are right, too.

[Avatar]

Good post Ali.

--A

[rusmeister]

Again, you're coming from a Sola Scriptura basis when you assume that you can read the texts and simply come up with your own interpretation. We simply don't live long enough to attain the wisdom and knowledge accumulated by the Church.

See, Rus, you call it "wisdom and knowledge", while others call it "spin". You mentioned yourself that the Nicene Creed was created by committee -- your word is "consensus", but the subtext, to me, is "compromise". Granted these were all learned church elders, considering the matter prayerfully, etc., but I can't imagine there wasn't some brokering going on.

The Christian Church is, and has been, very much a political entity all along. Av mentioned the gnostic gospels, which the church fathers deliberately excluded from the Bible because they didn't fit with the doctrine that those church fathers wanted to promulgate.

As far as I can see, the only way to get a true picture of what Christianity should be is to read the Bible yourself. Forget the revelations and the scholarship and all that other stuff. Just read what Jesus said. The man said we should love each other as we love ourselves. He said we should throw the moneychangers out of the temple. And so on. All the rest of it -- the temples, the liturgy and the incense, the holy days (lifted, by and large, from pagan holidays, btw) -- those are all human constructs. That's the stuff about the church that I object to. I have no problem with what Jesus himself said. But the farther away you get from the original revelation -- the more layers of interpretation you wrap around it -- the more that revelation is subject to being subverted.

I recently read "The Fresco" by Sheri S. Tepper. She does a nice job of showing how a prophet's words can be turned around and misinterpreted by so-called learned men, who then create a religion with a bunch of rules and strictures that would make the prophet laugh out loud. I can't help but think she was parodying the Christian Church.

You say you haven't turned off your brain with regard to the Church's teachings, and I'm glad to hear that. And I'm glad to hear that you've found a truth that works for you. But -- but! -- there are lots of roads to the truth. Yours is not the only one. That's all I'm saying. You may be right. Obviously, you passionately believe you are right. I wish, tho, that you could bend a little -- just enough to acknowledge that there's a chance that Fist and Av and I are right, too.

It may become necessary to bow out, because your dogma is as firm as mine; the only difference, perhaps, being that you do not seem to realize that dogma can be non-Christian and even non-religious and still be dogma(=doctrine=teaching). Believing that there are multiple roads to the Truth is just as dogmatic as believing in only one. We can only discuss things from a point that we agree on - the springboard from which we begin.

Maybe it is a waste of time to respond further - I hope not! - but hoping to achieve understanding...

I have to ask what "spin" is. It carries an assumption of falsehood. From where I sit I see little evidence of knowledge of Church history, but plenty of assumption. It appears that you have judged without examining specific evidence that I have offered. Thus, saying 'spin' here doesn't mean anything. Same thing goes for "compromise". Another assumption. I know of an awful lot of Church history that disproves your assumptions. A good link (I think I offered it to F+F, have yet to see that anyone has at least given it a whirl) here: www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/englis ... ware_1.htm

When you speak about the Church you must start from its history - its beginning. Today people claim the Church is everywhere, or it is here, or it is nowhere. To talk about a concrete identifiable thing one must be able to trace it historically from its beginning, identify what exactly remained the Church through the events that confused the waters, so to speak, over time.

In all talk of just "reading the Bible for yourself, you are starting from the wrong end - it's like an electrician trying to find which cable leads to a power source by starting at the point the tangled mess of cables end, rather than working forward from the source.

Since you must first find the thing that put the Bible together before you can even talk about reading the Bible for yourself - if you do not accept the organization that approved the Bible, where is the logic in accepting its product? Christianity starts from AD33, and that's where you have to trace it from. For the first 300 years Christians went without a Bible, and most had only fragments of OT Scripture and Epistles.

A general problem of personal interpretation is taking Scripture out of not only its immediate context, but out of the context of Scriptural message as a whole. When you say, "Just read what Jesus said and ignore the rest", you are evidently unaware that one of the most important things that He said was that He came, not to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. He taught in the temple as a rabbi, and fully supported worship there, for example. The Christian Tradition does not cancel out those things. It fulfills them. Thus your sentiment that we only need to pick and choose some of the 'nice' things Jesus said is uninformed by the history and purpose of those things you off-handedly reject. There is serious history and purpose behind those things, and they depend on knowing the context which gives rise to their practice.

the more layers of interpretation you wrap around it

Very true. I am suggesting that it is modern versions of Christianity, that, having broken from the original Church and making the individual the ultimate arbiter of what Christianity is have invented the layers of interpretation that contradict each other and ARE human invention. Your complaints are just (fair) against the cables not connected to the Source, and no doubt "The Fresco" may be on target on some points (but there are probably some that are based on ignorance of history and purpose).

Anyway, as I have said from the beginning, others have spoken far better than I can. That's why I recommend Ware's history, Chesterton's Everlasting Man, etc. If you were to respond to what they have to say I would feel challenged. As it is, I feel that I am seeing the same old tired arguments that don't have any real foundation. To make me feel that my foundation was really under attack you would have to know what it is. Just going in circles when it seems I know your philosophical base (ie, where you are coming from) but you don't really seem to know mine (where I am actually coming from) is fruitless.

I hope I haven't misunderstood you - something that is so easy on the 'net, and offense is easy, too. Please forgive any offense - it is not intended!

[Avatar]

Spin doesn't imply falsehood, merely...presentation. Something is spun when the presentation thereof is crafted to appeal to your audience/demographic/whatever.

--A

[rusmeister]

Spin doesn't imply falsehood, merely...presentation. Something is spun when the presentation thereof is crafted to appeal to your audience/demographic/whatever.

--A

Well then it is not merely presentation. You yourself say "crafted", "to appeal", which implies untruth for the sake of some kind of gain.
Again, those judgements are based on VERY little - mostly assumption with no backing. The history that Ware covers, on the contrary, has enormous textual backing. The Councils were more than adequately documented (primary sources) www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/councils-and-creeds , and they support Ware's statements, not assumptions of spin. And again, it will be a lot easier to talk if you respond to Ware and Chesterton www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/everlasting_man.html . I'm not making this stuff up.
orthodoxwiki.org/Ecumenical_Council

It was only natural that the bishops, who, as Cyprian emphasized, share in the one episcopate,
should meet together in a council to discuss their common problems. Orthodoxy has always
attached great importance to the place of councils in the life of the Church. It believes that the
council is the chief organ whereby God has chosen to guide His people, and it regards the Catholic
Church as essentially a conciliar Church. (Indeed, in Russian the same adjective soborny has
the double sense of “catholic” and “conciliar,” while the corresponding noun, sobor, means both
“church” and “council”). In the Church there is neither dictatorship nor individualism, but harmony
and unanimity; men remain free but not isolated, for they are united in love, in faith, and in
sacramental communion. In a council, this idea of harmony and free unanimity can be seen
worked out in practice. In a true council no single member arbitrarily imposes his will upon the
rest, but each consults with the others, and in this way they all freely achieve a “common mind.”
A council is a living embodiment of the essential nature of the Church.

[Avatar]

But we're diverging quite far from the point, aren't we?

--A

[aliantha]

We are, aren't we? Sorry... And Rus, don't worry, no offense taken.

You're right that we're coming at it from different angles, and I suspect we will have to agree to disagree. I've actually investigated several religions over the course of my 50 years on the planet (Catholicism, various flavors of Protestantism (in fact, I was baptized Episcopalian as an adult), Unitarian, Baha'i). I have not read Chesterton, but I have read CS Lewis. And I'm still a Pagan! However, I admit that I had not previously clicked your link. I just did, and I promise to read the info there this afternoon (or at least make a start on it -- its's pretty long...). I've got some personal interest in the conversion of the Slavs (my maternal grandparents were Czech), so I will definitely read that part with interest, and thanks for pointing me toward it.

[rusmeister]

Thanks, Ali. I appreciate the concession.
I just came onto this site last year or thereabouts, and quickly found attitudes that were seriously hostile towards Christianity, towards a Christianity that I myself had rejected, and a lack of depth of knowledge of the faith in history (which, imo, makes all the difference.)

I've just learned a lot myself in the past 5 years and it is so obvious to me now how things developed and why we got exposed to...what we got exposed to.

Don't worry - I'm not expecting any quick conversons from paganism!

[aliantha]

And I meant to add that I haven't meant any offense to you, either.

[Zarathustra]

Malik, I don't want to go in circles with you, so I'll say in short that if Christianity is not true, it ought to be exposed as a fraud.

". . . exposed as a fraud." That's exactly what I'm trying to do!

As for running in circles, do you not think it is significant to point out--in purely psychological terms (ignoring theology and philosophy)--that you are openly willingly to call the suffering of this entire existence, an existence which as far as we know comprises all that we have, as "(by comparison) unimportant"?? It's not merely the suffering and death here which you are downplaying, but you are also downplaying it precisely due to the fact that it partakes in fundamental aspects of this universe as a whole: its finitude and its entropic decay. This is a universe 15 billion years old, and billions of light years large. You truly have a powerful imagination if you can imagine something that makes this place unimportant, by comparison. That's not sarcasm or veiled insult. That's sheer awe at the audacity and breadth of your ability to conceive something so much greater than this existence (which we are just now starting to scrape its surface) that your conception makes it seem relatively unimportant, in your mind.

That psychological fact is what I'm trying to get you, and anyone else reading, to grasp for a second. To step out of the debate and witness the very real stakes that are being actively engaged by all of us. I'm willing to say that hell and heaven are unimportant. You're willing to say that this entire universe is unimportant. The only difference between our respective attitudes is that what I think is important is the reality in which we all have our being, and what you think is important is a hypothetical reality which none of us knows, none of us can verify, and which we only know about by reading books by other people.

The thing none of you can offer an answer for is our desire that life go on, that death is ultimately a wrong for our beings, regardless of the justifications offered. In the face of death, all of the justifications turn out to be so much sophistry. So yes, there is beauty in life. But that it will all come to nothing is what is intolerable.

If we are "going in circles," as you say, it is only because you keep making statements like the above, oblivious of the responses. None of us can answer you? Half a dozen people here have answered you! Our desire for life to go on isn't mysterious or indicative of eternity. It is a natural psychological response to the finite nature of life. We couldn't value life without grieving when it ends. This grief isn't a recognition that death is wrong. We can value something without thinking that its termination is an evil. For instance, think how bizarre it would sound to say that it is a wrong that the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant come to an end. I value this story. But I don't value it so much that I think it is a wrong for the story to end. I certainly don't think it is "intolerable," as you say of death. On the contrary, I think it would be unrealistic and naive to expect that a story keep going indefinitely, for no other purpose than continuation. Is it not possible for life to jump the shark?

Sure, life isn't a story. But I think the expectation that it continue indefinitely, simply for the sake of continuation, is just as unrealistic. What is it about nothingness which is so abhorrent to you? We all come from nothingness. It wasn't abhorrent prior to our being, so it shouldn't be abhorrent after our being. They are the same nothingness.

You are expressing an attitude, not a theological or philosophical position. You speak of death as "intolerable." And again, this is the psychological truth I'd like to highlight. Indeed, you are highlighting it yourself, because you think that this emotional response you are having towards death--intolerance--is indicative of an entire realm we only know as a hypothesis, and you're willing to discount our known reality on the basis of your intolerance to accept it in its own terms. You even think that because we (those who disagree with you) haven't yet given you a reason to put away your personal intolerance, that we have somehow not answered you and have certainly failed in this debate.

Thus, you place both the criteria for deciding what's real, and the criteria for determining when a point has been made in this debate, entirely in the hands of your emotional capacity to deal with the unattractive truth of this world.

We HAVE been answering you. The answer is that just because you can't accept the world the way it is, this is no evidence that there is another world which is better. You can quote whatever works of fiction you like. The judgments of other fictional characters who also seem unable or unwilling to accept this world (in favor of fictional worlds--god, the layers of irony there are rich!), has no bearing on this discussion, except to further expose your psychological response to facts of this being. And that response is denial. "But that it will all come to nothing is what is intolerable."

Yes, you can find company in this attitude, even in works of fiction. But that can only provide comfort, not answers.

I'd rather spend eternity in hell than accept anything from a god who could do this to Job.

This is entirely reasonable. But suppose it was you that had completely misunderstood the significance of what was done to Job, and that, like a child witnessing a surgeon cutting into a body, wrongly assumed harm where the true result was help? Your preference would turn out to be mistaken, which is indeed the case.

You end this with "which is indeed the case." But an analogy isn't proof of anything, certainly nothing which could be stated with "which is indeed the case." The analogy isn't even accurate, because there was nothing wrong with Job that needed to be corrected with such drastic measures. Certainly not spiritual surgery. It was entirely capricious, with no other point than the idea that god can do whatever the f*ck he wants, and we are petty and childish to complain about it. Indeed, this story works so well to cow millions of people that some of them will even find their way into forums like this to justify and rationalize behavior that we would arrest parents for doing to their own children. But when you're a "loving" god, such intentional suffering by a heavenly father is entirely justifiable in the minds of people who psychologically are unwilling to accept suffering and death under any other guise except as originating from a "loving" god. That's freakin ironic. Your position is: suffering and death are so bad--"intolerable"--that they can't possibly be the final truths of this world. But those things which are so bad ("intolerable") are (to quote you) "unimportant by comparison" when you compare them to the hypothetical afterlife.

Again, you have a double standard. This is the second one I've mentioned in this thread. (The first one is still unanswered by you. Go back and look if you want.) This time, the double standard is that something can be intolerable if it happens all on its own, but suddenly becomes acceptable if it is done to us by a "loving" god.

We don't need god to water board us into being better people. We don't need god to put us on the rack and tighten the tension in order to make us pure. The Job story isn't surgery; it's not even torture. It's just capricious suffering caused by a "loving" god. How is the idea that the universe contains inexplicable, unaccountable suffering any worse? Indeed, I think it is infinitely better.

[Cagliostro]

I think my life has jumped the shark.

I think for myself, using the story analogy, I want a nicely tied up ending. Covenant books have more of an ending than, say, your average Nick Hornby book. That's why I want an afterlife. I WANT ANSWERS, DAMMIT!

[Zarathustra]

Cag (and Rus, and others) I WANT AN AFTERLIFE TOO! I'm not putting down this psychological need. Who wants to die? I'm in agreement with Rus that there is something very, very undesirable about death and suffering. I'm just different in how I respond to undesirable things. It's purely attitude and personality, so much more so than theological position.

Indeed, I want a technological solution to death. I can at least conceive of that without turning the entire universe into a secondary world in which things happen that we can (comparatively) ignore.

But barring a technological solution, I'd LOVE for heaven to be real. I'm just unwilling to lend my beliefs to my desires.

[Fist and Faith]

I don't want an afterlife. Hey, enough's enough, eh? Not that it's been terrible, but eternity is a bit much.


Anyway, rus, I haven't been able to check out your links yet, so I haven't had much to say lately. We can go back and forth, repeating ourselves, but maybe not? I'll maybe comment or ask questions when I read that stuff.

[rusmeister]

Cag (and Rus, and others) I WANT AN AFTERLIFE TOO! I'm not putting down this psychological need. Who wants to die? I'm in agreement with Rus that there is something very, very undesirable about death and suffering. I'm just different in how I respond to undesirable things. It's purely attitude and personality, so much more so than theological position.

Indeed, I want a technological solution to death. I can at least conceive of that without turning the entire universe into a secondary world in which things happen that we can (comparatively) ignore.

But barring a technological solution, I'd LOVE for heaven to be real. I'm just unwilling to lend my beliefs to my desires.

This is understandable, and in general I agree with that last.

Perhaps we might at least be able to agree that people's lives can (and are, on the whole, likely to) reach the point of Hamlet's question - "To be, or not to be?", and as long as life is 'peachy', this question won't (generally speaking) come up. It is particularly when something becomes intolerable, something that strips away all of the artificial meanings that we create for ourselves that the question is likely to arise.

If your desire to not live is strong enough to want your life to end, then your conflicting desires will rule you - you will lend your beliefs to your desires unless you already believe something else that is strong enough to rein in your desires.

Put another way, what is worth dying for, and why? What drove the early Christians to choose martyrdom rather than apostasy, and more germane, what drove intelligent atheists, agnostics and pagans of the Roman Empire watching those Christians being fed to lions or whatever themselves stand up, by the thousands (in an era before satellite television), and willingly go the same route? (Why I keep asking if you have read "The Everlasting Man"...)

I just feel that I am seeing an assumption that this desire is necessarily for something that is not real.

F+F said:

Anyway, rus, I haven't been able to check out your links yet, so I haven't had much to say lately. We can go back and forth, repeating ourselves, but maybe not? Very Happy I'll maybe comment or ask questions when I read that stuff.

Fair enough!

[rusmeister]

Malik, I don't want to go in circles with you, so I'll say in short that if Christianity is not true, it ought to be exposed as a fraud.

". . . exposed as a fraud." That's exactly what I'm trying to do!

As for running in circles, do you not think it is significant to point out--in purely psychological terms (ignoring theology and philosophy)--that you are openly willingly to call the suffering of this entire existence, an existence which as far as we know comprises all that we have, as "(by comparison) unimportant"?? It's not merely the suffering and death here which you are downplaying, but you are also downplaying it precisely due to the fact that it partakes in fundamental aspects of this universe as a whole: its finitude and its entropic decay. This is a universe 15 billion years old, and billions of light years large. You truly have a powerful imagination if you can imagine something that makes this place unimportant, by comparison. That's not sarcasm or veiled insult. That's sheer awe at the audacity and breadth of your ability to conceive something so much greater than this existence (which we are just now starting to scrape its surface) that your conception makes it seem relatively unimportant, in your mind.

That psychological fact is what I'm trying to get you, and anyone else reading, to grasp for a second. To step out of the debate and witness the very real stakes that are being actively engaged by all of us. I'm willing to say that hell and heaven are unimportant. You're willing to say that this entire universe is unimportant. The only difference between our respective attitudes is that what I think is important is the reality in which we all have our being, and what you think is important is a hypothetical reality which none of us knows, none of us can verify, and which we only know about by reading books by other people.

The thing none of you can offer an answer for is our desire that life go on, that death is ultimately a wrong for our beings, regardless of the justifications offered. In the face of death, all of the justifications turn out to be so much sophistry. So yes, there is beauty in life. But that it will all come to nothing is what is intolerable.

If we are "going in circles," as you say, it is only because you keep making statements like the above, oblivious of the responses. None of us can answer you? Half a dozen people here have answered you! Our desire for life to go on isn't mysterious or indicative of eternity. It is a natural psychological response to the finite nature of life. We couldn't value life without grieving when it ends. This grief isn't a recognition that death is wrong. We can value something without thinking that its termination is an evil. For instance, think how bizarre it would sound to say that it is a wrong that the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant come to an end. I value this story. But I don't value it so much that I think it is a wrong for the story to end. I certainly don't think it is "intolerable," as you say of death. On the contrary, I think it would be unrealistic and naive to expect that a story keep going indefinitely, for no other purpose than continuation. Is it not possible for life to jump the shark?

Sure, life isn't a story. But I think the expectation that it continue indefinitely, simply for the sake of continuation, is just as unrealistic. What is it about nothingness which is so abhorrent to you? We all come from nothingness. It wasn't abhorrent prior to our being, so it shouldn't be abhorrent after our being. They are the same nothingness.

You are expressing an attitude, not a theological or philosophical position. You speak of death as "intolerable." And again, this is the psychological truth I'd like to highlight. Indeed, you are highlighting it yourself, because you think that this emotional response you are having towards death--intolerance--is indicative of an entire realm we only know as a hypothesis, and you're willing to discount our known reality on the basis of your intolerance to accept it in its own terms. You even think that because we (those who disagree with you) haven't yet given you a reason to put away your personal intolerance, that we have somehow not answered you and have certainly failed in this debate.

Thus, you place both the criteria for deciding what's real, and the criteria for determining when a point has been made in this debate, entirely in the hands of your emotional capacity to deal with the unattractive truth of this world.

We HAVE been answering you. The answer is that just because you can't accept the world the way it is, this is no evidence that there is another world which is better. You can quote whatever works of fiction you like. The judgments of other fictional characters who also seem unable or unwilling to accept this world (in favor of fictional worlds--god, the layers of irony there are rich!), has no bearing on this discussion, except to further expose your psychological response to facts of this being. And that response is denial. "But that it will all come to nothing is what is intolerable."

Yes, you can find company in this attitude, even in works of fiction. But that can only provide comfort, not answers.

I'd rather spend eternity in hell than accept anything from a god who could do this to Job.

This is entirely reasonable. But suppose it was you that had completely misunderstood the significance of what was done to Job, and that, like a child witnessing a surgeon cutting into a body, wrongly assumed harm where the true result was help? Your preference would turn out to be mistaken, which is indeed the case.

You end this with "which is indeed the case." But an analogy isn't proof of anything, certainly nothing which could be stated with "which is indeed the case." The analogy isn't even accurate, because there was nothing wrong with Job that needed to be corrected with such drastic measures. Certainly not spiritual surgery. It was entirely capricious, with no other point than the idea that god can do whatever the f*ck he wants, and we are petty and childish to complain about it. Indeed, this story works so well to cow millions of people that some of them will even find their way into forums like this to justify and rationalize behavior that we would arrest parents for doing to their own children. But when you're a "loving" god, such intentional suffering by a heavenly father is entirely justifiable in the minds of people who psychologically are unwilling to accept suffering and death under any other guise except as originating from a "loving" god. That's freakin ironic. Your position is: suffering and death are so bad--"intolerable"--that they can't possibly be the final truths of this world. But those things which are so bad ("intolerable") are (to quote you) "unimportant by comparison" when you compare them to the hypothetical afterlife.

Again, you have a double standard. This is the second one I've mentioned in this thread. (The first one is still unanswered by you. Go back and look if you want.) This time, the double standard is that something can be intolerable if it happens all on its own, but suddenly becomes acceptable if it is done to us by a "loving" god.

We don't need god to water board us into being better people. We don't need god to put us on the rack and tighten the tension in order to make us pure. The Job story isn't surgery; it's not even torture. It's just capricious suffering caused by a "loving" god. How is the idea that the universe contains inexplicable, unaccountable suffering any worse? Indeed, I think it is infinitely better.

What I see again and again are misunderstandings of my position, and I think that my presentation of sides of the paradoxes of Christianity (as opposed to contradictions) may be partly at fault. In each case, I express one side, you object and point to the opposite, and I want to say, "Yes, and Christianity says THAT, too..."

There are some things, though, where I would ask that you pay closer attention to what I do say. Starting with my earlier statement of "by comparison, unimportant." It is precisely, and ONLY, by comparison that this life could be held as unimportant - and that only relatively. So compared with what? Compared with eternity and Infinity. In comparison with this, your 15 billion years really is like nothing, for our practical purposes. No trillion, quadrillion, means anything next to that. But to beings that can look at such minutae, they could still see/assign meaning to it. So the Christian stance is paradoxical. Life is VERY important - and yet this life is nothing next to eternity. But this "nothing" has a tremendous impact on eternity.

In short, Christianity is in agreement with you on

the very real stakes that are being actively engaged by all of us.

We differ in that you think heaven and hell to be unimportant, to be something separate from this universe - it is far more true to say that this universe will, in a sense (paradox alert!) become heaven or hell for all, in an eternal sense - that there will be a resurrection of the damned as well as the saved (please do not understand those terms in the Protestant fundamentalist sense you have likely encountered them in!). Lewis wrote a fictional story (a dream) called "The Great Divorce" - I think it gets across a much more accurate picture of heaven and hell that the modern mind can grasp.
I do agree that faith is experiential. I would say that the contradiction is in insisting on that, but then using scientific age-of-reason approaches to deny even the potential validity of faith. As to reading books, I'm trying to save myself years of posting responses to you.

Not familiar with the expression "jump the shark". But when you talk about finishing TC, you smuggle in the idea that you will still be around to appreciate the story. I'm talking about the end of all things, including your ability to appreciate TC. When no one is left to appreciate it, then do not beauty and truth pass utterly from the earth? Was that not the objection of the people of the Land?

That's what the answers offered do not address. They all assume that there will be some consciousness, somewhere, that will be able to continue appreciating it. Even in the ST:TNG episode where Picard gets a flute and memory box from a perished civilization, he and the rest of our heroes are around to appreciate it. What about the final end of all things? To whom does anything mean anything then? This is simply the death of the individual in macroture (is that the word?)

If we believe that something is good, then we must believe that its complete eradication is not a good - and that is the essence of what 'evil' means (I suspect many apply a purely religious meaning to that word and therefore avoid it, like the word 'sin' - but we must use a word that describes the opposite of good.).

You clearly believe that life is good, and that is good. But you therefore must believe that its complete and ultimate eradication would be an evil.

the expectation that it continue indefinitely, simply for the sake of continuation,

I certainly never held or expressed that expectation.

It wasn't abhorrent prior to our being, so it shouldn't be abhorrent after our being. They are the same nothingness.

It is our state of being, that which enables us to meet and converse, that can and should find that final end of all things abhorrent.

The reason I'm even speaking about 'final end' vis-a-vis individual end is because as long as you yourself are not that individual, you can go on talking about "meaning" and "admiring beauty", etc. - you are avoiding thinking about the final end of you. That's my objection to your answers.
I don't know if they are clear and correctly understood or not, but there it is.

This time, the double standard is that something can be intolerable if it happens all on its own, but suddenly becomes acceptable if it is done to us by a "loving" god.

*Sigh* Again, "it is intolerable" is taken from your position, "the loving God" is taken from my position - What is intolerable in your world view becomes tolerable not merely because it is "done by a loving God", but because of what that loving God does - resurrects, 'restarts our programs', so to speak, saves all the good ones, deletes all the bugs. That is what can make it tolerable.

Malik, if you don't want to take the trouble to learn what I really believe - the most ancient, authentic, and continuously taught and practiced form of Christianity - which on the one hand is very simple - it's contained in the Nicene Creed, and on the other hand is so deep and complex that I can't possibly get across to you the reasoning, which you are as yet unaware of, that resolves the contradictions you seem to see in faith, then 10, 20, or even 50 posts can't get it across - and if your experience resists the idea of faith, then 2,000 posts will not suffice.

Still, one last time, here is an extensive expose, should you ever decide to find out: www.oca.org/OCorthfaith.asp?SID=2

[Vain]

Here's a thought - and one that's a whole lot less well thought out than much of what you guys have said.

Why not live your life as if there WAS an after life. If there is one then great. If there isn't one then it won't really matter. What will matter is that you lived your life as if it had purpose and meaning and there was hope and a grand design to it all.