The Doctrine Of Hell

[Guest end3]

looks like a black hole in a blanket, hard to recognize the cat, even in my Spirit world

[Grandpa Harley]

I can't help you having crappy technology...

[Guest end3]

Computer at work.

[SWIM]

Computer at work.

 

 

Your company must be proud of how you spend their time...

 

hehe

[sojourner]

PS Antlerman

 

I wanted to say one more thing to you, you said this:

 

When I hear it from other people who have an agenda to convert, then I hear someone with ulterior motives who judges me as lost and in darkness. I hardly consider myself lost. I am always seeking to embrace a higher existence, and if I need to dump a language system that is broken for me, the real question should be what is it in the end am I serving? Is it what you call God?

 

I just want to make sure you know that I dont see you lost and in darkness. That is why you dont feel it from me.

 

The only way I could use darkness for you would be the same way I would use it for me, and it would apply to both of us imo is that there are things I dont know, those are dark to me for now........but we all are learning so much.......gaining light and then putting that light into practice leading us to becoming the light and even for someone else.

 

Ive had so many people become lights in my life, like beauiful stars in my blackest nights!

 

sojourner

[Kratos]

Antlerman,

 

Thank you for sharing your testimony and I definately can relate what can happen when you take these things to men who have denominational traditons to defend. Though we came to different conclusions, our experiences seem somewhat similar. Many have tried to get me to chalk this up to stress or temporary insanity, but it does not work for me. I think if it were these things, the effects would not still be in my life almost 25 years later.

 

Unlike the atheist, I still believe that one day we will know the truth about such things. And if they are right and death is it, I guess I will not be aware to be disappointed. LOL

 

Kratos

[Grandpa Harley]

Falling back on a form of Pascal's wager...

[sojourner]

I had never heard of pascals wager so I went and read about it a few days ago

 

now that sounds to me like a 'just in case Im wrong' clause

 

the thing is speaking for myself, I sincerely believe what I believe, there is no 'just in case'

 

If Im wrong Im wrong

 

but I will say this, if God truly is some vengeful hateful eternal tormenting God (which I absolutely believe He is NOT) but lets just say I was wrong about Him, Id rather make my bed in Hell then serve and love a mean and nasty vengeful God like that.

 

sojourner

[Kuroikaze]

I had never heard of pascals wager so I went and read about it a few days ago

 

now that sounds to me like a 'just in case Im wrong' clause

 

the thing is speaking for myself, I sincerely believe what I believe, there is no 'just in case'

 

If Im wrong Im wrong

 

but I will say this, if God truly is some vengeful hateful eternal tormenting God (which I absolutely believe He is NOT) but lets just say I was wrong about Him, Id rather make my bed in Hell then serve and love a mean and nasty vengeful God like that.

 

sojourner

 

Right...the problem with Pascal's wager is that many christians use as an argument to convince people who don't believe. In this case it is entirely useless. Even worse, I very much doubt that if there is a god he would be impressed by me pretending to believe in him "just in case." If he were impressed by such nonsense, I wouldn't want to worship him anyway.

 

 

On your last sentence, I agree completely...which is why could never worship the bible god.

[crazy-tiger]

Antlerman,

 

Thank you for sharing your testimony and I definately can relate what can happen when you take these things to men who have denominational traditons to defend. Though we came to different conclusions, our experiences seem somewhat similar. Many have tried to get me to chalk this up to stress or temporary insanity, but it does not work for me. I think if it were these things, the effects would not still be in my life almost 25 years later.

Strange... Quite some time ago, I had some experiences that you could call spiritual. I was floating, feeling blissful, hearing a voice that I couldn't make out but managed to convey the message that things would be ok. This kept happening while I was suffering some of the worst experiences of my life, things no child should ever experience.

 

People since then have insisted it was God talking to me, helping me through the nightmare...

 

Those experiences of bliss, floating, knowing it'll be ok have stayed with me ever since, something that effects me to this day, over 24 years later.

 

 

 

Since then, it's been proven to be stress... an amount my mind just couldn't handle and cracked under the strain, leading to blackouts with the resulting feelings and almost heard voices of people telling me I'll be ok.

 

So tell me... if experiences caused by stress can effect me over 24 years later (and try reading up on the effects Vietnam Vets suffer from resulting from stress well over 30 years ago sometime) what makes you so sure it couldn't affect you?

 

It sounds very much like your mind snapped under the strain and constructed a new way of coping by shifting the strain onto another entity, one that MUST be loving or it'd demand some payment for the work it's doing for you. That is most likely why you keep insisting your loving God exists, even when the evidence shows otherwise...

[Kratos]

Antlerman,

 

Thank you for sharing your testimony and I definately can relate what can happen when you take these things to men who have denominational traditons to defend. Though we came to different conclusions, our experiences seem somewhat similar. Many have tried to get me to chalk this up to stress or temporary insanity, but it does not work for me. I think if it were these things, the effects would not still be in my life almost 25 years later.

Strange... Quite some time ago, I had some experiences that you could call spiritual. I was floating, feeling blissful, hearing a voice that I couldn't make out but managed to convey the message that things would be ok. This kept happening while I was suffering some of the worst experiences of my life, things no child should ever experience.

 

People since then have insisted it was God talking to me, helping me through the nightmare...

 

Those experiences of bliss, floating, knowing it'll be ok have stayed with me ever since, something that effects me to this day, over 24 years later.

 

 

 

Since then, it's been proven to be stress... an amount my mind just couldn't handle and cracked under the strain, leading to blackouts with the resulting feelings and almost heard voices of people telling me I'll be ok.

 

So tell me... if experiences caused by stress can effect me over 24 years later (and try reading up on the effects Vietnam Vets suffer from resulting from stress well over 30 years ago sometime) what makes you so sure it couldn't affect you?

 

It sounds very much like your mind snapped under the strain and constructed a new way of coping by shifting the strain onto another entity, one that MUST be loving or it'd demand some payment for the work it's doing for you. That is most likely why you keep insisting your loving God exists, even when the evidence shows otherwise...

 

Crazy-Tiger,

 

I believe that there is a big difference between faith and knowledge. I sometimes illustrate this by asking a crowd "How many believe that this pulpit is here? If you do, then raise your hand." Almost universally almost every hand will raise. Then I tell them that this is not true. They do not believe that the pulpit is here, they know it is because they can see it with their own eyes. The Bible says that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Faith or belief becomes knowledge when what is hoped for becomes physical and knowable. Until that time, it remains faith or belief.

 

I say that to say this. I believe that Jesus came into my room and spoke to me and filled me whith His Spirit and called me to the ministry. This is a statement of my faith. No, I do not know that He did because I have no physical proof that He did. But, I believe that He did.

 

Is it possible for a person to believe something and later find that they were wrong? Certainly. hallucinations and mirages are a part of life in this human flesh. But I do not believe that this is what happened. You really do not know that God did not come to you and comfort you as a child because you have no physical evidence either. But you believe that it was stress paying tricks on your mind. Your belief and mine have equal validity as they are both not knowledge as they cannot be proven with physical evidence.

 

Kratos

[dr_funkenstein]

I believe that there is a big difference between faith and knowledge. I sometimes illustrate this by asking a crowd "How many believe that this pulpit is here? If you do, then raise your hand." Almost universally almost every hand will raise. Then I tell them that this is not true. They do not believe that the pulpit is here, they know it is because they can see it with their own eyes. The Bible says that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Faith or belief becomes knowledge when what is hoped for becomes physical and knowable. Until that time, it remains faith or belief.

 

Kratos:

 

Let's talk about the words "know", "believe" and "faith".

 

When you ask your congregation whether they "believe" the pulpit is there and they all put up their hands, they are correctly using the word "believe". To believe simply means to grand validity to a proposition.

 

Sometimes we believe in a proposition because we have good evidence for believing in it. In the pulpit case, this is what is occurring. People have learned to trust the evidence given by their eyes, and so this form of belief is called "knowledge". That is to say that I claim to "know" that the proposition is true based on my standard of acceptable evidence.

 

Sometimes we believe in a proposition even though we do not have good evidence for believing in it. If it were not so, science would have never made any advances at all! No hypothesis about the world would have ever come about if not for people imagining new propositions and having a hunch that they might be right.

 

If we believe in a proposition, but we don't yet have good evidence for it, that's what we call "faith". Faith is belief without evidence. If we have faith in a proposition, then we can seek out evidence for it and once we find sufficient evidence to satisfy our own standard, we can claim "knowledge" that the proposition is true.

 

So we all form beliefs about the world. Sometimes they are based on evidence, in which case we call them "knowledge". Sometimes they are not based on evidence, in which case we call them "faith".

 

A sane, rational person knows when they believe in something without evidence, and correctly labels it as faith. But when a person continues believing in something even when the evidence goes to the contrary, this is called a delusion.

 

And when the delusion becomes self-protecting by causing the person to redefine the very meaning of the word faith to equate it to a form of evidence itself... well only a memeplex as insipid as religion is capable of such evil.

 

And until you can grasp what I've just said, you cannot claim to be a free thinking individual.

[Antlerman]

I had never heard of pascals wager so I went and read about it a few days ago

 

now that sounds to me like a 'just in case Im wrong' clause

There's many things wrong with Pascal's wager. The most glaring being that for someone to believe, "just in case" is an act of complete insincerity. It's smacks of "faith" being a grotesquely selfish thing, and not the embracing of something that has personal meaning. Plus any God that would reward such insincerity has no depth of character, and would himself be greedy and selfish not really caring if that person truely believed, so long has He got his praises.

 

Secondly, Pascal's wager makes the assumption there's only one god to choose from. Apply Pascal's wager to Pascal himself. If he's wrong about Allah and Allah really exists, he has everything to loose. So really Pascal would need to believe in thousands of gods all, in order to cover his bets.

 

Thridly, saying if he believed and and was wrong, then he'd lost nothing is a false statement. If he lived insincerely, he lost *everything*. His whole life would have been spent living insincerely and he would have never lived with a heart of integrety.

 

but I will say this, if God truly is some vengeful hateful eternal tormenting God (which I absolutely believe He is NOT) but lets just say I was wrong about Him, Id rather make my bed in Hell then serve and love a mean and nasty vengeful God like that.

 

sojourner

Wow, I can't tell you how many times I heard members on this site say those exact words! It's amazing how many Christians act like all that stuff doesn't matter to them. I think that says something very telling about the sincerity of their faith. It sounds like they may be willing to not see it so they can be spared from wrath. In other words, their faith is based on selfish reasons. Their faith is insincere.

 

Hey, here's an interesting thought. What if the real God put all those horrible stories about genocide, commandments to rape and enslave women, torturing trillions of human beings in endless flames of hell, while only spare a few special ones who obey the rules just right, etc... as a way to identify those He doesn't want in heaven. In other words, those that defend all that crap and say they believe in God are NOT the kind of people He wants! He only wants those who are true enough in their hearts to recognize it's abhorrent behavior and would reject even God for that. That way he would get only people of real integrity, and take all the others who would worship a monster to just to save their sorry asses and not let them in. It's just a great big reverse-psychology test for salvation.

 

It's late and my brain is fried. But I think I may throuw this at some eager young zealot for Jesus next time one comes this way talking to us, and not with us. Stick around here, and I'm sure you'll see a few of those little lights for jesus exposing the depth of their hearts. Been more than can count... It's usually those 'on fire' ones who are the most clueless.

[Mythra]

Dr. Funkenstein, YOU ROCK

[dr_funkenstein]

Dr. Funkenstein, YOU ROCK

Thanks man!

[Mythra]

It's late and my brain is fried.

 

Nah man - this is the only time I can keep up with your ass. When you're firing on all cylinders I might as well be reading chinese.

 

Hey - this Pascal's Wager thing - I know we kick it around here a lot - but even within christendom there is a huge problem.

 

Pick any denomination, any church - your pick.

 

I'll give you six others who condemn that one to hell.

 

So now - not only do you have to make sure Islam or Hindu or a hundred others aren't right -

 

You gotta try and do the eenie-meenie-minie-moe with all the Jesus sects.

 

Might as well just go to vegas and bet the house on boxcars.

[Antlerman]

But you believe that it was stress paying tricks on your mind. Your belief and mine have equal validity as they are both not knowledge as they cannot be proven with physical evidence.

 

Kratos

I know you were addressing this to Crazy Tiger, but I want to tie this into some thoughts I have. I was going to mention that I think whoever saying that these things a "tricks of the mind" are saying words that sound almost a little too minimizing of what it is. It's not like seeing mirages, or ghosts or something like that. I would say though they are manifestation of the person's deepest desires (or fears, depending) in a form that they need at that time.

 

Is it a real manifestation? Yes. Is the form that it takes literal? Most likely it's not, but rather taking on the imagery of cultural symbols to represent themselves through to the mind in a way it can process them. In other words, the heart cracked open and let out its deepest feelings, and the mind put faces to these in the manifestations of familiar symbols. To the Hindu, a Blue Krishna might appear, to the Jew, Moses might appear, to the Christian, Jesus, or maybe the Virgin Mary. What are these? Tricks of the mind? That's way too dismissive. It's much more than just that. Much more.

 

Who came to you? Jesus? Sure, that's the form you saw. Was this vision about Jesus, or was it something for you? What was it you took from it? A change in you? A direction for you? A purpose? A new strength, a new hope, a new chance, a new life? All things that that experience gave to you. I'm sure the answer is yes to most of those. The point is it was for you.

 

My experience happened 30 years ago, and I carry it with me everyday I live. It transformed me. I see the world through different eyes. But I've come to understand this as more about the power of life inside the human heart. The weight of the world was so crushing to me, that that life was going to be extinguished if it didn't break free to save me. It was me. It was what was in my heart. A will to live. A desire to love. A fear of hopelessness. It burst for forcefully and manifests itself in ways unfamiliar to my senses. It was the power of life, in the will to live that saved a darkening mind from killing it in me.

 

But here's the problem with the symbol. When those symbols then become the focus of the experience - you then miss the point of the experience! The experience was about you to help you. If you instead focus on the sign, you miss what the sign is pointing to. The minute we de-emphasize the importance of the symbol and move away from defending to ourselves the vision as a true appearance of a true being, then we begin to recognize what it's about.

 

I left Christianity because it takes symbols and makes them facts, and those are then weakened by now being able to be scrutinized rationally. And once that happens, they become powerless symbols. God and Jesus are symbols of a human faith.

[Fweethawt]

It's late and my brain is fried.

Nah man - this is the only time I can keep up with your ass. When you're firing on all cylinders I might as well be reading chinese.

It would have been funnier if he said, "It's fried and my brain is late."

 

Then you'd have been like, WTF?!?!?

[Antlerman]

It's late and my brain is fried.

Nah man - this is the only time I can keep up with your ass. When you're firing on all cylinders I might as well be reading chinese.

It would have been funnier if he said, "It's fried and my brain is late."

 

Then you'd have been like, WTF?!?!?

It did originally, but I ran a spell checker on it and it told me I was a moron. So I caught it before it posted. What the hell am I still doing up?

[Kratos]

Dr. Funk,

 

You sound like a lot of Christians I know. Stating that until I see things your way, I will continue to not be free. LOL

 

I went to dictionary.com and copied the first definition for belief:

 

be·lief /bɪˈlif/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[bi-leef] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun 1. something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.

2. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.

3. confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.

4. a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.

 

Battling over semantics seldom accomplishes anything as language is often different to different people. I was speaking to a Christian audience who usually equate belief to faith. I still think that belief is only needed until proof transforms it to knowledge.

 

But, not to get bogged down on semantics, I was agreeing with Crazy-Tiger that both of us have a belief about what happened to us and neither knows for sure. I think you would agree with that regardless of what definitions we use for faith and belief.

 

Kratos

[mwc]

But, not to get bogged down on semantics, I was agreeing with Crazy-Tiger that both of us have a belief about what happened to us and neither knows for sure. I think you would agree with that regardless of what definitions we use for faith and belief.

 

It sounds to me like everyone one of you fall right into this category:

Hallucinations are false or distorted sensory experiences that appear to be real perceptions. These sensory impressions are generated by the mind rather than by any external stimuli, and may be seen, heard, felt, and even smelled or tasted.

 

Description

 

A hallucination occurs when environmental, emotional, or physical factors such as stress, medication, extreme fatigue, or mental illness cause the mechanism within the brain that helps to distinguish conscious perceptions from internal, memory-based perceptions to misfire. As a result, hallucinations occur during periods of consciousness. They can appear in the form of visions, voices or sounds, tactile feelings (known as haptic hallucinations), smells, or tastes.

 

Patients suffering from dementia and psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia frequently experience hallucinations. Hallucinations can also occur in patients who are not mentally ill as a result of stress overload or exhaustion, or may be intentionally induced through the use of drugs, meditation, or sensory deprivation. A 1996 report, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, noted that 37% of 4,972 people surveyed experienced hypnagogic hallucinations (hallucinations that occur as a person is falling to sleep). Hypnopomic hallucinations (hallucinations that occur just upon waking) were reported by 12% of the sample.

And on and on...from here.

 

As far as the terms faith and belief...we've had a short discussion on this before and I remember going back to the Greek on this. Faith really should be defined more as "conviction of truth." So it does matter how the word is used if you're using it to with others. Faith is simply what you are convinced is true no matter what the evidence (if any) has to say about that subject. When reading the gospels a person is often asked something like "Do you believe you can be healed?" and then when it's done something like "Your faith has made this possible." The words that are used work out to (in the first case) "Do you [honestly think] that you can be healed?" and then "Your [ability to be persuaded without evidence] has made this possible."

 

So when the people raise their hands that they believe there is a pulpit they are correct. They honestly think there is a pulpit. Just because it is based on the evidence of their eyesight makes no difference at all. For all they know you could be a magician and that pulpit could be a prop. You could pull it away. *Tada* No pulpit after all. Their eyes and belief deceived them. If they had faith then they would still think there was a pulpit there even though there eyes no longer saw it. They may believe that you, the magician, were going to return the pulpit to its rightful place even if you never intended to. Faith (ie. their ability to be persuaded or their conviction of truth in this instance) would sustain that (people expect things to return for a looooooong time without any reason to do so).

 

mwc

[Grandpa Harley]

Dr. Funk,

I still think that belief is only needed until proof transforms it to knowledge.

 

But, not to get bogged down on semantics, I was agreeing with Crazy-Tiger that both of us have a belief about what happened to us and neither knows for sure. I think you would agree with that regardless of what definitions we use for faith and belief.

 

Kratos

 

There is a difference between someone who thinks it's stress related and someone who regards it as religious experience. If the Stress believer continued to have the symptoms they'd have medical check ups and a CAT scan. The Religious experience person would try and claim it was objectively real and start on a Tent mission of the Southern States.

 

One man's 'proof' is another man's incipient Lewy's Bodies dementia...

 

Based on my genetics, if I start hearing voices or seeing thing, then I have a friend with access to a CAT scanner and other toys on speed dial...

[crazy-tiger]

Since then, it's been proven to be stress... an amount my mind just couldn't handle and cracked under the strain, leading to blackouts with the resulting feelings and almost heard voices of people telling me I'll be ok.

Your belief and mine have equal validity as they are both not knowledge as they cannot be proven with physical evidence.

You claim it's belief... you claim it's unproven... you know almost nothing about what has been done to investigate this, but you're able to proclaim it as being unproven.

 

 

So you know, one of the major bits of evidence is the fact that I still experience these blackouts... Another is that they only happen when I'm under a LOT of stress... Yet another is they've had me attached to Xaru knows how many machines, taking readings on all kinds of stuff, while I've experienced a blackout...

 

There's plenty of physical evidence, and it all points to one thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogenic_n...leptic_seizures

I was agreeing with Crazy-Tiger that both of us have a belief about what happened to us and neither knows for sure.

See above...

[Kratos]

Crazy-Tiger,

 

I now understand why your belief seems more than that based on subsequent occurances. Does the fact that this has never happened to me either before or since prove that mine was of a different order?

 

Kratos

[Kratos]

Antlerman,

 

I appreciate your reluctance to relegate our experiences to just a trick of the mind. It does show me that what you experienced was similar to mine as I could never do this either. You seem to have come almost to a new-age humanism belief that we are all God. Forgive me if I have trivialized your beliefs as I hate when labels are put on me, but believing in the supernatural with no other source than us has that ring to it. Is this how you see it?

 

Kratos