Religion's tool of fear...again.

[the_ignored]

Unverified anecdotal reports of near death experiences (http://raptureready.com/soap/all3.html).

From a xian perspective...anyone got any testimonies af non-xians dying WITHOUT the "I'm going to hell" rubbish? I've heard that Bertrand Russell was supposed to have tossed off a snarky remark just before he died, but I can't remember what it was.

[Kopji]

My grandfather said one of the three Nephites* and an angel or two visited him in the hospital. He was renowned as a very honest person.

Of course, these same people over at raptureready would probably call him deluded.




* The Three Nephites are a mormonish belief that there are some ministers who were told that they would not see death until Jesus came again. They are thought of as sort of immortals, or at least very old.

(Don't you wonder sometimes all the interesting things you don't know?)

[Kopji]

Russell's remark was a response to a question something like 'what would you do if you died and found yourself accused by God for not believing'

The answer was something like 'you should have given some evidence'.

Russell had a game he apparently liked to play with believers that seemed to include proving to him that everything was not created five minutes ago. Nobody ever won.

[ehbowen]

Originally posted by Kopji
Russell had a game he apparently liked to play with believers that seemed to include proving to him that everything was not created five minutes ago. Nobody ever won.

But the world was created five minutes ago. Also five seconds ago. Also .05 seconds ago. Also 5*E-5 seconds ago. And so forth. Googols and googolplexes of universes, each one just oh-so-slightly different from the one before but trending inexorably to a distinct and definite conclusion. And when that interval, as it will, goes to zero--then Creation, or at least this phase of it, will be completed.

(Twilight Zone music. Cue Rod Serling)

[Riddick]

Originally posted by Kopji
Russell had a game he apparently liked to play with believers that seemed to include proving to him that everything was not created five minutes ago. Nobody ever won.
oh my goodness, im comletely befuddled by that question. :s

[FireGarden]

My grandfather said one of the three Nephites* and an angel or two visited him in the hospital. He was renowned as a very honest person.

Of course, these same people over at raptureready would probably call him deluded.
Don't be so uncharitable to RR. They would say, "God made him tell those Mormon lies to test our faith."



Isn't it amazing how earthly politics is just a pale and weak reflection of heavenly politics?
This, my friend, is the description of the unpardonable sin. A sin so grievous that when committed it cannot be repented of, cannot be forgiven and the perpetrator cannot be cleansed of all unrighteousness as 1John 1:9 promises. This sin leads to eternal condemnation -- hell.
That sin is saying "no" to the Holy Spirit.
'Cause you're either with us or you're against us.

[Dubium]

I tried to find Russell's last words on Google, and have so far been unsuccessful, but I did find this, written in 1956 - 14 years before his death.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy -- ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness -- that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what -- at last -- I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.



I thought that was such a beautiful piece of prose that I would share it.

[c4ts]

Originally posted by Kopji

Russell had a game he apparently liked to play with believers that seemed to include proving to him that everything was not created five minutes ago. Nobody ever won.

I saw that movie. It was called Dark City.

[the_ignored]

Hmmm..I may have messed up..maybe it wasn't Russell.

I remember the story going something like: a preacher asked this guy on his deathbed to convert to christ, and this guy refused, saying something along the line of that pissing off the devil like that would just give him more enemies, which he doesn't need right now.

[Nex]

Originally posted by Dubium
I tried to find Russell's last words on Google, and have so far been unsuccessful, but I did find this, written in 1956 - 14 years before his death.

[...]

I thought that was such a beautiful piece of prose that I would share it.
Thank you for sharing that, Dubium -- that was absolutely beautiful. :)

[Kopji]

I like the new Riddick.

[Robin]

Originally posted by Riddick
oh my goodness, im comletely befuddled by that question. :s
ohmygoodness im so utterly impressed that riddick isnt befuddled by the brussel question that i mustgostraightto a church and confessmysinsorwhateveritisthatyouaresupposedtodo and then maybe i wont be beffuddledbyabrusselquestion andiwillgostraighttoheavenand rubsuntanoilintothe spunkofmychoice when jesusraisesmeto heaven.

[Kopji]

I'll see if I can find more on the 'five minutes' story I attributed to Russell earlier. (I am quite capable of making things up in my head or getting people and places confused.)

Wiki has this:


There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago."

— Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind, 1921, pp. 159–60; cf. Philosophy, Norton, 1927, p. 7, where Russell acknowledges Gosse's paternity of this anti-evolutionary argument...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell


The story I'm thinking of was not from the web and I have not read the book mentioned above. I'll keep at it.











Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

The Problems of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

[swstephe]

it seems that religion is slow to accept scientific evidence and quick to accept any new-age idea that pops up.

i was reading some books on neurology recently which mentioned that the idea that a believer would see anything at all is a fairly recent invention and that the vatican had pretty much accepted the older idea that souls resided in the physical body, dormant, until the day of judgement -- but hasn't forced it as official doctrine on the lay people yet.

i guess there are loopholes in christianity. the vision of "st. stephen" just before he was killed is more of a "pre-death experience". i'm not sure about the claims that jesus went to hell for 3 days before ressurection. lazerus seemed to still be inhabiting his body after death. i think it might be related to pagan beliefs or belief in ghosts that crept in to give the impression that someone dies and their soul immediately ascends to heaven.

the koran makes a big point, several times, that a person is dead, then resurrected hundreds of years later, and is totally unaware of any passage of time -- and that god can resurrect someone no matter what state they are in.

[FireGarden]

the koran makes a big point, several times, that a person is dead, then resurrected hundreds of years later, and is totally unaware of any passage of time -- and that god can resurrect someone no matter what state they are in.
Yes it does.
However, you still get Muslim mediums that talk to the dead. My grandmother's sister was one!

[FrankP]

It's always confused me why "near-death" experiences are supposed to give any evidence of an afterlife. I mean, the experience may be near death, but it happens in life doesn't it?

My objection is a logical one, not an evidential one. To see what I mean, contrast it with mediums communicating with the dead. Logically it's correct to conclude "if there is reliable evidence for dead people sending us messages, then the soul survives after death". So, you go and look for reliable evidence and find that all mediums are fraudsters and their believers gullible. No logical problem, just an evidence problem.

But if someone says, "I had some weird experience when I was nearly dead", then so what? Interesting, maybe, to shed light on what happens to the mind near death. But there is no logical way that it should be seen as offering evidence for an afterlife.

[kmortis]

Originally posted by FireGarden
That sin is saying "no" to the Holy Spirit.
'Cause you're either with us or you're against us.

A non-fundy Christian (actually, I think he's a concervative episcapalian...to the point that his church is actually called Anglican. He lives in Virginia.....) and I were discussing the "unpardonable sin". He stated that his church's philosophy was that the meaning of Blaspheming the Holy Spirt was when you denied the HS and put yourself in a place that you would not accept His teaching (yadda-yadda).

I replied that that's a self-fullfilling situation and the conversation died at that point.

[Beerina]

Originally posted by FireGarden
[quote=Kopji] This, my friend, is the description of the unpardonable sin. A sin so grievous that when committed it cannot be repented of, cannot be forgiven and the perpetrator cannot be cleansed of all unrighteousness as 1John 1:9 promises. This sin leads to eternal condemnation -- hell.
That sin is saying "no" to the Holy Spirit.
'Cause you're either with us or you're against us.

Technically incorrect.

The unpardonable sin would be saying "no" to a deliberately unprovable, deliberately hiding Holy Spirit that is only revealed by scientifically illiterate writings thousands of years old.

I suggest this sin is no sin at all, and that such a God would be illogical, and not deserving of worship.

[Tony]

Originally posted by the_ignored
From a xian perspective...anyone got any testimonies af non-xians dying WITHOUT the "I'm going to hell" rubbish?

There should be some on this page.

http://www.near-death.com/

[Beerina]

Originally posted by FireGarden
the koran makes a big point, several times, that a person is dead, then resurrected hundreds of years later, and is totally unaware of any passage of time -- and that god can resurrect someone no matter what state they are in.
Yes it does.
However, you still get Muslim mediums that talk to the dead. My grandmother's sister was one!

I could never even figur out if that was Christianity's official position -- you die, and are dead, until God resurrects everybody at the end time. Although ghosts might exist due to bugs in God's flawed supernatural design, nobody was yet in Heaven or Hell (except for two humans brought directly to Heaven, still alive.)

[Beerina]

Originally posted by kmortis
A non-fundy Christian (actually, I think he's a concervative episcapalian...to the point that his church is actually called Anglican. He lives in Virginia.....) and I were discussing the "unpardonable sin". He stated that his church's philosophy was that the meaning of Blaspheming the Holy Spirt was when you denied the HS and put yourself in a place that you would not accept His teaching (yadda-yadda).

I replied that that's a self-fullfilling situation and the conversation died at that point.

Would declining God's offer of salvation be a sin, technically? Isn't He just saying, "Ok, you don't want it, so be it. See ya!"

And why would be it unforgivable? If I were to go psychotic and become religious, God would still throw me into Hell? Or is it just unforgiveable in the Pergatory sense, wherein even Hitler eventually gets into Heaven, but not otherwise decent athiests?