First of all, modern Christianity has gotten a little carried away with the concept of Heaven and Hell, so they have forgotten some of the finer theological points.

There are actually 2 different "hells" the one reffered to in the Hebrew Old Testament and is often mistranslated as straight Hell is the word [i]sheol.[/i] It really is more of a waiting place than a true damnation as that it, at one place is litterally called "the place where ancestors meet."

The New Testament uses a different Greek word [i]gehenna,[/i] which, conmtextually is concidered more of a final damnation. The interpretation is that after death, one goes to [i]sheol[/i] to await for Judgement Day, when God will actually send the damned to Hell. God is a just God, so I don't think He is going to send someone to Hell without trial.

The Bible says little about the actual mechanism of Hell's torment, so anything we can come up with is [b]purely speculative,[/b] but I think that I have a reasonable model.

[quote] The mind is it's own place, and in and of itself can make a hell of heaven and a heaven of hell.[/quote]

Satan in [i]Paradise Lost[/i]

[quote] Those who hate Me love death [/quote]

Proverbs 8:36

Milton wasn't the best at theology, but this is a pretty good start.

Assume that Hell isn't a place of literal pain, but a place of utter boredom. The damned spend their time daydreaming. As time progresses, they forget things and their daydreams become less and less about the world they knew and more and more about their dull surroundings until they are literally daydreaming nothing.

(This can also work in a painful Hell, where the mind daydreams as an escape from the pain and slowly re-enters the pain as the daydreams fade.)

Reminder:[b]This is not the official position. This is my best guess based on very slim evidence with numerous Church leaders saying that this is not the case, so it is quite probably wrong.[/b]

Really, the physical body is an intergral part to existence. The idea of a "soul" is not really a Christian idea, but more how some passages have been mistranslated in light of the greek "ghost in the machine" philosiphy. Almost all Christians I have met are at least somewhat confused about this, as am I when it comes to [i]sheol[/i] and heaven. The best understanding I can manage is that God recreates everyone's body twice, once for [i]sheol[/i] or heaven, and once for Hell proper, [b]but that's another hypothesis.[/b]

Note: Salvation is also broken into two stages, before and after Judgement. The first is Heaven, which is temporary for humans and is only until Judgement. Afterwards God creates the New Heavens and the New Earth. (I am pretty sure that "heaven" here means sky, not God's throne room.)

I am not good enough at string theory to really get into the physics part of the question you ask. I barely understand how we can have 11 dimentions, I am more of a theology buff. Reason is a Gift will probably be far more able to answer that.

EDIT: I am about to listen to a systematic theology tape on Hell, so I will shortly be able to answer with my church's official position.

Neither of you have explained to me how the concept of the afterlife could possibly exist in light of the fact that the soul technically does not.

You still have not answered this:

For the afterlife to exist, be it heaven, hell, or whatever even if you do not believe in eternal damnation, the mind and brain would have to be a complete dualistic dichotomy. Even though we cannot demonstrate the electrochemical basis for every brain function, even if there was a soul, please explain how it would be

a) conscious

b) aware of it's own existence

c) be "you"

d) be able to "exist" in the context of space-time

e) be able to feel pain

f) Be able to feel any sort of emotion

Could it do any of these things if it did not "reside" inside a physical brain?

Furthermore, the brain is not a "glob of jello". How dare you insult the astonishing complexity of the physical brain. 100 billion neurons, 10 trillion cells, 9000 types of synaptic pumps and voltage gated ion channels, trillions of electrogated synaptic barriers and molecular diffusion pathways. Do you understand anything about neuroelectrochemistry?

[quote]I know more than most about neurochemistry. I have taken AP Biology and a Teaching Company course specifically on neurology.

Note: all of that list could be outside of the brain. You just assume that they aren't. I assume that some of them aren't either, but it still is an assumption.[/quote]

And your still a thesist? Hm.

[quote]Funny. According to evolution the brain really is only a "glob of jello." [/quote]

Its funnier to think someone snapped their fingers and it began to work.

[i]2. Sheol and Hades are equivalents, except that they are Hebrew and Greek respectively. In the Septuigent, which predates Christ by 200 years, 64 of 71 occurences of Sheol were translated as Hades. I will just refer to it as Sheol henceforth.[/i]

Prove it. Scripture will just bounce off me. It is just mythology.

[i]3. Sheol is a waiting place, where all dead (saved and unsaved0 will await the Final Judgement. The saved and the unsaved are divided and Sheol itself is organized into layers (implied in Deuteronomy 32:22.)[/i]

See above.
[i]
4. Gehenna is a refference to a real place. It literally translates to "the valley of Hinnom," which in Old Testament times was a place of human sacrifice and by the time of the New Testament, was concidered unclean and used essentially as a "landfill" for Jeruselem. Fires burning refuse and decay were both constant.[/i

What does that have to do with anything?

[i]5. No one is sent to Hell proper (Gehenna) until after the resurection and the Judgement. Everyone (both saved and damned) is resurrected and judged on the final day of history, so Hell is not outside of time. It is outside of our own four dimentional space-time existance, but time flows there in the same direction (but perhaps not at the same rate.)[/i]

You are just making stuff up. There is no evidence for any afterlife.

[i]7. It is also often asserted that the doctrine of Hell is too harsh. If you know what goes on there, it is. Damning someone is still far stronger a curse than any possible reference to anatomy. Perhaps the problem is not our own understanding of damnation, but our own acceptance of sin. Isaiah 64:6 says "all our righteousness are as filthy rags." We all deserve to be sent to Gehenneh, but not all of us are because God is a graceful God. He could have created a creation full of sin and utterly decimate it to prove that He is just. He created this world, and has proven that He is both graceful and just[/i].

Prove it. Evidence?

All of you must have failed philosophy badly. The Bible is not evidence. Quoting some Bronze Age mythology will not help your case for the afterlife. The soul is only defined by theologians based on attributes of which it is not. The ontology of the "soul" is bound to a logical fallacy known as Loki's Wager.

Loki was a trickster God of Norse Mythology (emphasis on the word mythology, just like the Christian God or Yahweh or Allah) who made a bet with some dwarves on the precondition that should he lose, they would decapitate him. He agreed only on the basis that should he lose, they could only take his head, not his neck.

Of course, he lost, and the dwarves demanded to kill him. But he kept insisting they could not take his neck, something to which they had agreed. Seeing as they could not take his head without taking his neck, they were forced to drop the matter.

This is the Loki's Wager Fallacy: A concept cannot be defined ergo cannot be discussed.

Indeed, much of religion seems bound to this concept. The soul being a prime example. The soul is usually defined by theologians as [i]a self-aware ETHEREAL substance unique to a living being[/i]
The ethereal is realm is defined of lacking in matter or indeed any physical substance. Thus how can we empirically demonstrate it's existence when by our own definition it does not? There is no empirecal evidence to suggest that any part of us survives death, much as we can observe the gruesome effect it has on the brain, the physical substance which generates all the properties a soul is deemed to have.

Something cannot be defined by it's negative if it lacks positive attributes like the soul, especially if it is supposedly outside our comprehension of existence by which definition it would simply be no more than a made up concept. This is why the afterlife is a meaningless concept based on worthless epstimology.

Uh, actually I can say the brain is not jello because it is not jello. jello implies containing gelatin, which is found in bones and connective tissue. the brain is made up of solid matrixes of neurons and glial cells surrounded by viscous membranes and fluid channels. No part of the brain is made out of jello.
[i]
"In a debate, the one who gets angry first is usually the one in the wrong." Attributed to Ghandi[/i]

[i]Thank you very much for suggesting that my position is right to the whole world. It is a great encouragement.[/i]

I dont know how long you have been on the online forums, but just because I swear does not mean I am angry. Exasperated, drunk, annoyed, or just for a jolt, perhaps, but not necessarily angry. Actually, this rather amuses me.

[quote]God didn't make anything.[/quote]
Thank you for trolling, AA.

[quote=P-Dunn][quote]God didn't make anything.[/quote]
Thank you for trolling, AA.[/quote]

How the fuck am I trolling?

I wonder why people are talking to the moderators like that.

PLEASE DO NOT DO WHAT YOU USUALLY DO, WHICH IS TO QUOTE THREE OR FOUR LINES OF THIS POST AND RESPOND TO THAT ONLY

[i]So the brain is an extrordinarily complicated but still meaningless and valueless lump of nerve tissue and not a lump of jello. You still have not justified it being anything worth defending from an insult.[/i]

Yes. Although not just extraordinarily complicated. It is the most known complex object in the universe. But what on earth do you use the term meaningless for? From a teleological standpoint, everything is meaningless, so there is no need to attach such a label.

[i]If you really wanted to do something "good" and you believed that you came about through evolution, you should take over a nuclear silo and nuke the world's food supplies. That way only the fittest of humanity survives and the species as a whole evolves. This is the only kind of good that is consistant with your view of origins.[/i]

Sigh. Social Darwinism fallacy. The only reason that there is a fundamental driving force to evolve is out of necessity. In nature, evolution is necessary for survival. But humans, because they build societies and protect themselves from nature, have ground evolution to a halt. I see no reason why humans should "need" to evolve, unless you can give me a good reason.
[i]
Thankfully, very few evolutionists' ethics are consistant with their origin views. You probably are going to give me some "mother earth" and "for the good of humanity" mumbo jumbo that is totally irrelevent, but KNOW THIS: KILLING OUGHT TO BE YOUR BUISNESS, LADIES!! (Appologies to all who have not seen Major Payne.)[/i]

Again. Social Darwinism fallacy.

This post makes me realize you are completely insane. Your disgusting comment makes me almost want to leave the debate. I have half a mind to do so.

Firstly. Your use of the term "evolutionist". Typical American ignorance. Thankfully I do not live the USA, I live in an onverwhelmingly secular nation where religion stepping on the toes of science is not tolerated. If I went to someone here and asked them if they thought the Earth was 6000 years old, I would be regarded as insane.

You, in your just typical mindest, have set up an idiot's dichotomy of splitting the world into "evolutionist" and "creationist". Well, since creationism does not exist outside of the United States, essentially the entire world would fall into the category of "evolutionist". Do we see them murdering each other and ethnically cleansing the weak? Do we see them executing the disabled or euthanizing the handicapped? No. You know why? Because society and co-operative altruism are the determinates of our physcology, not our evolution per se. Our origins tell us the ruthless method by which nature created us. Does that mean we have to do the same?

Furthermore, I would point out the obvious, that the social darwinism fallacy is a naive argumentum ad consequentium, except in reverse. X is undesirable therefore X is untrue. I do admit that it would feel quite nice to think that God created us for some special purpose or that we are somehow different to any other animal. But the fact of the matter is, it simply isnt true.

Does it feel nice to think that? Definitely. But I do not care for what "feels nice". I care for TRUTH!

-It is better for men to seek truth than to cling onto delusions, however satisfying they may be
-Carl Sagan

PLEASE DO NOT DO WHAT YOU USUALLY DO, WHICH IS TO QUOTE THREE OR FOUR LINES OF THIS POST AND RESPOND TO THAT ONLY

Also, are you going to comment on my response to your response regarding heaven and hell?

I am leaving now. I dont really like FTT much. If you want to reply, I will be on the Rational Response Squad message board, which I very much prefer to FTT.

[quote=Egann]I meant according to my worldview. In this context, I could care less what you think.[/quote]

Actually, you do care.

Read what you put below.

[quote= somewhere elso on the web..."] Trolling

A troll is someone who posts messages that are designed to cause trouble. This is also known as flame-baiting.[/quote]

[quote]I do think that that counts as trolling. I cannot see how you don't know what I was getting at and deliberately acted as a jerk, but I'm not angry because trolling still suggests that I am right and you know it. You are just willing to admit it to everyone [i]but[/i] yourself.[/quote]

For someone that doesn't care, you took the time to look up "Trolling".

You're right about what? You haven't made any good points and you still haven't brought up any proof of a creator.

And this is my 666th post. Yay!

[i]What about 'dem darn mooslimz?[/i]

Ah, yes, of course. Islam. The only religion where they have the gall to insult academia by calling clergy "scholars" (actually, that would be clerics, Islam has no clergy)

They, of course, have their own creation story, which is adhered to under the pain of death, in Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Of course, Arab/Farsi countries make up approximately 20% of the Islamic world. On the other hand, even in the Southeast Asia countries like Indonesia, they teach evolution.
[i]
You have just said it is wrong. Unless you give me a reason otherwise, I have to assume that you are begging the question with "Social Darwinism is wrong because Social Darwinism is wrong."[/i]

Actually, you are begging the question by assuming evolution is a necessity. Please explain why. Evolution IS ONLY NECESSARY IN NATURE. Hell, not even in nature either. For the first half of geological time, we were prokaryotic organisms. They did not evolve until the punctuated equilibrium broke.

[i]I am posting this here not to get your response, but rather to leave a monument to the ignorance of man without the wisdom of God.[/i]

Fuck you too

[i]So we can ignore the fact that we evolved until we hit a punctuation mark in the equilibrium. Otherwise, we can all live happily together singing kumbaya around the fire.

...But as soon as the punctuation mark hits we are at each others throats "evolving." Survival of the Fittest after all.

Or have we "out-evolved" evolution?[/i]

Yes. We should be able to happily sing kumbaya around a fire.
Do you know what punctuated equilibrium is? It is a rapid catalysm that brings about massive shifts. The atmospheric change to oxygen that killed the prokaryotes that first originated on the Earth was one. If there is indeed a punctuated equilibrium today (nuclear war, asteroid impact) then it will indeed become survival of the fittest.

Oops, not punctuated equilibrium. I always get PE confused with catastrophism (in Biochem I keep confusing ribofuranose and pentose, but noone bashes me for that)That has no contextual relevance to your argument regarding why we should nuke the world's food supplies. My mistake. I meant catastrophism. I was actually referring to catastrophicism in the context of prokaryotic atmospheric gas shift.

Stephen Jay Gould proposed that sexually reproducing organisms would show little evolution throughout their existence, and usually occurs by rapid split-offs. However, it is not a clash-theory with gradualism. Anyway, for the umpteenth time [i]you have not presented a good reason why we should "cause" such disasters in order to promote catastrophism, which is demonstrated to cause rapid evolution, because you have not presented a case for WHY we should evolve[/i]

Why should we evolve? Why? Tell me. Nature does it out of necessity. Why is it necessary for us? You have not made it clear as to any sort of "purpose" to evolution because you clearly do not understand that it does not actually have any purpose. It just IS. Focusing your whole post on my accidental confusion between PE and catastrophism (not exactly a mistake worthy of major lambasting) does not change the fact, you still have not provided (despite me asking you three times) any sort of reason why we should evolve. Obviously, this is a loaded question, because there is not why to evolution.

Look, man. I was wrong. I admit it. I had just come home from a rowing competion, I had been celebratory drinking, I was alchohol-befuddled and needed to pee. I was thinking about a warm bed, not about the fundamental axioms of evolutionary speed gradients versus mathematical divergence functions. But it seems to me that your drawing attention to the error is a diversion from the issue at hand, namely: Can you present a genuine, solid case for why there is any good reason for humanity to evolve, or attempt to speed the process? What purpose would it serve?

Actually, I think your analysis is incorrect (the one which stated that we should nuke the world's food supplies) if we really wanted to ensure evolution speed, we would all line up at sperm banks, and woman would send their eggs to get in vitro fertilized. I am not suggesting, obviously, we should do that, but after all, evolution is not necessarily about Darwinian competion, that is an important factor, but it is also about reproductive viability. Have you read Dawkin's The Selfish Gene. You should. It is fantastic. He fundamentally altered the way we think about life (indeed, there is a book about Dawkins by that title) by tracing our evolutionary lineage, Dawkins concluded we are essentially vehicles to ensure the success of our genes. At the molecular level, there is a savage battle between self-replicating molecules all determined (metaphorically speaking) to procreate as much as possible (hence the sperm bank scenario) the weak constantly being crushed and the strong taking evolution to the next level. Dawkins and EO Wilson were the first to realize this, that genes are inherently selfish, thus I think that your nuking the food scenario is wrong.

[quote=deludedgod]Look, man. I was wrong. I admit it. I had just come home from a rowing competion, I had been celebratory drinking, I was alchohol-befuddled and needed to pee. I was thinking about a warm bed, not about the fundamental axioms of evolutionary speed gradients versus mathematical divergence functions.[/quote]

I think that we all agree that it would be difficult to post anything coherent in that state. I have made a few mistakes here, too (like underestimating your (deludedgod's) reaction when exposed to ICR, which made electroshock therapy look humane.) so I think that we have a mutual understanding.

[quote=deludedgod]Actually, I think your analysis is incorrect (the one which stated that we should nuke the world's food supplies) if we really wanted to ensure evolution speed, we would all line up at sperm banks, and woman would send their eggs to get in vitro fertilized. I am not suggesting, obviously, we should do that, but after all, evolution is not necessarily about Darwinian competion, that is an important factor, but it is also about reproductive viability. Have you read Dawkin's The Selfish Gene. You should. It is fantastic. He fundamentally altered the way we think about life (indeed, there is a book about Dawkins by that title) by tracing our evolutionary lineage, Dawkins concluded we are essentially vehicles to ensure the success of our genes. At the molecular level, there is a savage battle between self-replicating molecules all determined (metaphorically speaking) to procreate as much as possible (hence the sperm bank scenario) the weak constantly being crushed and the strong taking evolution to the next level. Dawkins and EO Wilson were the first to realize this, that genes are inherently selfish, thus I think that your nuking the food scenario is wrong. [/quote]

I have read [i]parts[/i] of The Selfish Gene, but that was a while ago, so to touch up, I read the Wikipedia on it (not that that is the same as the book, but it helps the memory.) The argument, while not presented as such, is used more or less an assertion to explain altruistic behavior because the gene is what is in question, not the individual.

A criticicm that I have not heard of, but I am sure has been raised, is why altruistic behvior other than child rearing is practiced on such a restricted species distribution, I know of only 2: humans and vampire bats. There are sure to be more, but they are obviously not that common.If "Selfish Genes" really helped evolution, there ought to be far more. As final as The Selfish Gene theory appears, it is no where near as complete in its ability to explain than it is presented.

There are metaphysical problems here.

A metaphysical understanding of existance (what I usually refer to as a "worldview") must be two things:

1. Not arbitrary. If a worldview is arbitrary in several places, defenses will boil down to begging the question and we will have no real reason for agreeing with the worldview. All wordviews, however, need at least 1 arbitrary point: the ultimate authority of the worldview.

2. Not Inconsistant. This is far worse than arbitrariness. If a worldview is inconsistant, it metaphysically [i]cannot[/i] be the case. To find an inconsistancy effects the same as proving a worldview wrong.

All of us have a metaphysical understanding of things, even if it is metaphysical naturalism (the belief that nature is all there is.)

What probably was the most disrupting thing about my arguments was that they are not evidencial in nature. I have always regarded evidence based arguments as weak at best. Think about it:

If a person holds to a belief that can explain everything we see physically, but that belief can be proven incorrect with inconsistancies, the evidence [i]must[/i] have an alternative explaination. If the worldview is full of arbitrarinesses, the evidence only constitutes reasons that we ought to agree. The more internal arbitrariness, the more evidence is needed to bolster a worldview.

Ergo, I use metaphysical arguments whenever possible. These are much harder to put together or to refute than evidence based arguments as that they need conscious thought on both ends, not just google the argument and find a prefabricated response like we all can for evidence.

I am, and am not your run of the mill Christian. I believe most of the same things, but use different arguments to prove it.

I wish there was an afterlife, but I don't think so.
That is why people need religion. To be able to accept the fact that you will cease to exist requires strength, and not everyone is that strong. Hence why we have religion.

Hell might be phycological more than physical. How about enternal boredom? For me, hell would be locking me in a room with Michael Savage.

Now, here are just a few short stories & examples of how faulty the "scientists" & philosophers you & I BOTH believe in can be:

1 - The educated scientists who lived during the Middle Ages were considered the most intelligent people & were never contradicted. Of course, these were the same educated scientists who wanted Christopher Columbus killed for promoting such heresy as to suggest the World might not be flat. THESE SCIENTISTS WERE WRONG!!!!!

2 - Do you think Albert Einstein was ever congratulated by his teachers for his brilliant mind while he was in school? No, Albert Einstein was not an honor student & he was never even considered for such a position. His teachers said he was 'dumb' and would never amount to anything. HIS TEACHERS WERE OBVIOUSLY WRONG!!!!!!

3 - There was a man asleep on his couch. He had two very mischevious boys who decided to play a trick on him. They went into their kitchen & got a dab of Lighnberger??? cheese from there refridgerator. They quietly crept up to their snoring father & smooshed that cheese into his moustache, right under his nose. They then quickly ran to their rooms. A few minutes later the father awoke because of the smell. "What stinks?!?" he said as he jumped up. He looked all around the room sniffing as he went. "This smell is everywhere. Maybe it's coming from the kitchen." He walked into the kitchen & took a big whiff. "MAAAANNNN! It still stinks!" He again looked everywhere for the source of his discomfort. By now he was getting irritated by the stink so he decided to go outside to get away from the smell. He walked outside & took a great big breath. He expected to smell refreshing, clean, air & he was, of course, disappointed. He sunk down into his lawn chair & yelled "THE WHOLE WORLD STINKS!!!!"

These 3 examples show how people can be tricked by something small being missed or being messed up. The same could happen to us or the scientists we believe in. What if a blind person tried to prove the existence of atoms? Would they succeed??? No of course not! A scientist might have their judgment impaired by their presupposition.

Praise God,
GWG

LOL!

Yeah, it's the dumbest argument I've heard so far today!