This is one thing I cannot comprehend as a Catholic. That thing is eternity, I just don’t understand what living forever means. It’s hard to explain. It just never ends, this had always bothered me. I wish I could explain it better.
[quote]stefan128 wrote:
This is one thing I cannot comprehend as a Catholic. That thing is eternity, I just don’t understand what living forever means. It’s hard to explain. It just never ends, this had always bothered me. I wish I could explain it better. [/quote]
[quote]stefan128 wrote:
This is one thing I cannot comprehend as a Catholic. That thing is eternity, I just don’t understand what living forever means. It’s hard to explain. It just never ends, this had always bothered me. I wish I could explain it better. [/quote]
[quote]stefan128 wrote:
This is one thing I cannot comprehend as a Catholic. That thing is eternity, I just don’t understand what living forever means. It’s hard to explain. It just never ends, this had always bothered me. I wish I could explain it better. [/quote]
This is a really cool question and topic. I used to wonder, and even worry, about this alot myself. Even when I was a kid, I used to wonder how FOREVER and EVER could even be possible.
It was actually this website and listening to a lot of the smart people here that led me to an understanding of just what this was.
Don’t let the atheists fool you. Heaven and eternity is not going to me a billion trillion quadrillion years of hanging around in a toga playing a harp on a cloud. That’s just crap they use in their strawman arguments to shut down discussion.
The way I now understand it is this: Eternity is necessarily NOT subject to the constraints of time. In other words, God exists outside of time. You and I can only conceive of a world within the constraints of time. But Heaven and God are not subject to these constraints. So, I’m not exactly sure how it’s going to be, but one thing I’m certain of is that, whatever we can imagine, that ain’t it.
Exodus 3:14, I think, is the best demonstration of God’s absoluteness and timelessness:
“I Am what I Am.”
I am who am… That is, I am being itself, eternal, self-existent, independent, infinite; without beginning, end, or change; and the source of all other beings. (Challoner)
[quote]pittbulll wrote:<<< Religion is all about money and power. Nothing to do with God . I have come to the conclusion that Religion is Anti God >>>[/quote]Properly understood you are entirely correct.
[/quote]
[quote]clip11 wrote:
I grew up in a christian household. My denomination was Church of God in Christ, the largest african-american pentecostal denomination in the world. Apart of this doctrine was the teaching that all non-believers in christianity are doomed to eternal torment in hell. Now, every christian i’ve ever ran across seem to have no problem with this and seem to believe that the person in question “chooses” to go to hell. I don’t want to go off on a tangent, so I won’t get into why I think that’s nonsense. But my question is, what if christians are wrong, compared to say muslims.
In Islam, they believe christians are wrong and hell bound. So suppose the christian in question dies and in the afterlife, finds out he was wrong all along and that Islam was the correct path. He’s standing in front of Allah who is ready to throw him into hell’s fiery pits. The christian explains that he didn’t know Allah was the true God and it isn’t fair that Allah should send them to hell, especially after he allowed Satan (they have satan in Islam) to deceive them into thinking christianity was the right path. Allah says he revealed himself in his infallible, holy word, the quran! The christian responds that it’s no way he could’ve known the quran was the infallible word of God.
The christian asks why didn’t Allah show himself and prove to people he is the real God, and Islam is his true religion. Allah says he must remain hidden, otherwise it’d violate people’s free will. Allah mentions the time 30 years ago when the christian was standing at the bus stop and a muslim came up to him and tried to convince him to convert to islam and invite him to the mosque, so the claim could be made that he “heard the truth”. The christian explains that he grew up in a christian household and christianity was all he knew to be correct and that he was thoroughly convinced that the muslim was wrong.
Allah says it doesn’t matter, and that he should’ve just had blind faith and believed. Even though the christian had no reason at all to change his beliefs on the spot or think islam was the real religion. Allah tells the christian “im not sending you to hell you sent yourself off to hell you go!” and throws him into the fiery pits.
The question must be asked, would any christian think Allah would be perfectly just for casting them into hell for having the wrong belief, even when Allah made no effort to make himself known that he was the true God, except thru a book a certain group of people claim to be his word?
If they would not believe Allah to be just for doing this to them, then why do they believe the Christian God is correct for doing this to non-christians, based on these exact same standards?[/quote]
All religion is anti-mind and anti-life. Man needs his mind to think. Religion demands that you shut off your thinking and accept something as true because of faith. But shutting down your brain is a formula for death.
If you have a PERSONAL EXPERIENCE that leads you to believe, that’s different. That’s using your brain. Religion has nothing to do with that.
“The first priest was the first rogue who met the first fool.” – Voltaire
[/quote]
Religion is all about money and power. Nothing to do with God . I have come to the conclusion that Religion is Anti God
[/quote]
Absolutely!
And if I said that, the mods would never allow it through. Maybe Prof X is the mod in here.
As with the other religion thread I have been informed that there is no answer, just an incredible amount of time wasting, so with that for this thread…
[quote]stefan128 wrote:
This is one thing I cannot comprehend as a Catholic. That thing is eternity, I just don’t understand what living forever means. It’s hard to explain. It just never ends, this had always bothered me. I wish I could explain it better. [/quote]
This is a really cool question and topic. I used to wonder, and even worry, about this alot myself. Even when I was a kid, I used to wonder how FOREVER and EVER could even be possible.
It was actually this website and listening to a lot of the smart people here that led me to an understanding of just what this was.
Don’t let the atheists fool you. Heaven and eternity is not going to me a billion trillion quadrillion years of hanging around in a toga playing a harp on a cloud. That’s just crap they use in their strawman arguments to shut down discussion.
The way I now understand it is this: Eternity is necessarily NOT subject to the constraints of time. In other words, God exists outside of time. You and I can only conceive of a world within the constraints of time. But Heaven and God are not subject to these constraints. So, I’m not exactly sure how it’s going to be, but one thing I’m certain of is that, whatever we can imagine, that ain’t it.
[/quote]
Thanks man! I have worried about it numerous times. It’s just hard to comprehend. I appreciate it!!!
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
There are many things that Pat is that I find biblically abhorrent. Anti-semetic is not one of them. No. He is not being that. Mildly or otherwise. That’s just not his thing. I’ve known him a very long time and have had year long conversations with him until he so courageously put me on ignore. He is enthusiastically (though ignorantly) agreeing with Jewbacca and nothing more than that should be read into it. [/quote]
In fact, we Jewish people were chosen because we were the least of the peoples of the world.
[/quote]
Precisely correct. I’d love to talk shop with you someday, you get it. [/quote]
Does this come off as mildly anti-semetic to anyone else here?
Jewbacca - We Jews were chosen because we’re the least of the people on Earth
Pat - DAMN STRAIGHT![/quote]
And you wonder how I could possibly know you didn’t read the Bible???
Tell you what, let’s let Jewbacca judge for himself…[/quote]
I’ve never wondered that. I have read the bible and I’ve seen you use this same ‘debating tactic’ on everyone, so I’ve known since the beginning that your go-to strategy for brushing off questions that make you uncomfortable is to say “You haven’t read the bible!”, as though that magically fixes the issue.
Wrong and wrong. Islam isn’t a copying of Christianity any more than Christianity is a copy of Judaism.
Jesus came along and said the Jews were stinking high hell up to heaven. He was considered a living embodiment of God and established the ideas of the trinity.
Islam is closer to Judaism than Christianity is in quite a few ways. For one, they believed that Muhammad was a lot like Moses, and that Jesus wasn’t actually the son of God but a messenger/Prophet that God communicated with when the Jews strayed from the path, some Muslims believe Jesus went to India and lived a full life, letting someone else die for him on the cross. Muhammad was the last person that God spoke with, and thus Gods final word and is often referred to as, “The Seal of the Prophets.” In the context of this particular discussion that far greater minds than yours or my own have discussed to exhaustion in the past.
Unless, you are like most republicans and don’t really have a problem with Romney as a Mormon. They believe the last messenger/Prophet was Joe Smith, I guess he got the word in after Muhammad. He believes that Mormons get their own planets to dominate when the body dies. They believe in an immortal soul, so if I understand it right full on Mormons go to planets where they are God like and have dominion over non Mormon souls who’s fortune leaves them at some weird mormons heaven planet, where you can’t enjoy things like dancing with your mom, a fine cigar, or a quality cognac even though Christ reportedly made water into wine.
Just in case you were wondering I thought I’d share the truth with you.
But, for some reason Islam is heresy, where Judaism and Mormonism are not.
Sad thing is, even the major beliefs from Judaism are rooted in other belief systems. All these religions have very different ideas of punishment and the afterlife.
One of the great things about Islam is that you can go to hell, through a trail and wisdom you can journey back to heaven, which shows that God is actually forgiving. In Christianity you go to hell for eternity. How imagine that? An infinite punishment for things done in a very finite life.
I said I wouldn’t post here again and was called a biggot for questioning people’s respect for Mormonism, I see that calling the Practice of Islam can be called heresy, I see that as actual biggotry since you actually have very little knowledge about Islam and probably don’t know a single Muslim.
Anyhow, cheers. [/quote]
Actually, many of your statements here are incorrect.
While the word “copy” is a poor word choice (I don’t remember who first said that), the fact is that Christianity’s roots lie in Judaism, just as Islam’s roots (based on some very cogent historical research and argumentation, which most Muslims are against a priori) can be said to lie in Judaism and Christianity.
Jesus said nothing about the Jews “stinking high hell up to heaven” (not really sure what that metaphor is meant to convey). His problems were with specific Jewish leaders, especially those responsible for the oversight of the Temple cult (priesthood) and those responsible for the religious guidance of the people (Pharisees, scribes). His issues were not with Judaism itself; if they were, it’s amazing just how Jewish Jesus’ teachings are, not to mention the extensive incorporation of Second Temple Jewish theological beliefs (resurrection of the dead, atonement through martyrdom, etc.) into Jesus’ own teaching. Moreover, Jesus did NOT establish the idea of the trinity; that was a later development in Christian theology.
Your statements about the similarities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam completely ignore the testimony of the texts themselves. Is Muhammed ASSUMED by Muslims to be like Moses? Sure, as they characterize Moses. In reality, however, the gospel writers go out of their way to portray Jesus as a Moses-like prophet. Matthew’s gospel, for instance, pays almost no attention to the concept of Jesus’ divinity, focusing instead on establishing Jesus as the prophesied “prophet like Moses.” Jesus does miracles like Moses (something Muhammed NEVER did), gives the law like Moses (Matt. 5-7), and is glorified like Moses in the very PRESENCE of Moses (the Transfiguration - Matt. 17:1-3). So your first claim (i.e., that Islam views its prophet more like Judaism views its prophet) is wrong. Christianity views its prophet (who Just happens to ALSO be the Son of God) like the Jews viewed their prophet. More importantly, the other implicit comparison you made between Jews and Muslims (i.e., the idea that Jesus didn’t die and may have been a prophet) is absurd. The legitimate references to Jesus in the Talmud are ALL clearly negative. Jews saw Jesus as a troublemaker; they did not try to whitewash him the way the Muslims did.
Most Christians DO think Mormonism is a heresy. They’d just rather have someone in office who they think will protect children’s lives rather than end them.
There is diversity in Islam just as there is in Christianity. Many muslims DO believe that the post-death punishment is eternal (and the Quran can be read in more than one way on this issue), just as many Christians believe that the post-death punishment is NOT eternal (and the Bible can also be read in more than one way on this issue).
[/quote]
Why don’t you grow a pair and not misquote me. I would never suggest it was a copy. I suggested that looking at the big picture since every single religion which believes in some version of the Abrahemic God borrows ideas from it’s predecessor, says the predecessor got x,y,z wrong, and that xy, yy, and xz are actually what God wants. That is what I said and this was in response to someone else saying that X religion is heretic because they practice a screwed up interpretation of the predecessor. It’s retarded, and it’s not looking at the whole first. It’s looking from a finite position and continually arguing it is the correct position simply, “because.”
You don’t need to tell me Jesus was a Jew. In order for you to understand what I am saying, simply examine the sort of actions Jesus took, and the sort of actions Jewish leaders took in order to ensure he died were the result of the actions and things that Jesus said about Jewish leaders. So, in effect Jesus wasn’t here only to save man, but was here to make sure people did the right thing for the right reason, the Jews were doing it wrong so God sent him. On the contrary if the Jews were doing it right (jewish leadership here included) Then Jesus would not have had to die. If you believe Jesus had to die, maybe you believe in determinism, and don’t believe in Free Will. But that’s a complicated matter, and good for another thread entirely.
You miss the point entirely. Judaism didn’t believe in a sort of trinity, or that God would necessarily embody human form. Christians version of the same God is a trinity, the son who lived as a human being. Yeah, Jesus was a prophet of sorts, but there is no such thing in Islam. Islam looks at these men as all prophets and believe that God would never embody a human form, and that such ideas are blasphemous. This is all common knowledge, they believe it so strongly that people are murdered for portraying Muhammad or God in picture form. It illustrates a strong break from Christianity and probably back to something more similar to Judaism. Now, Muslims don’t believe Jesus died on the cross or was crucified at all. Some believe he was wished away by Allah/God. Others believe he fled and someone else took his place.
I am talking about most Christians. A lot of Christians, or former Christians view Mormonism as heresy when it suits them. If they are heretics, would you want one as your leader or someone who you actually consider Christian? I mean, this is a matter of God for people of faith, but they have a curious way of separating Church and State. When it’s Islam it’s heresy, when its Mormonism and Mitt Romney it’s okay. Get it? One guy on here is outright saying Islam is heresy, but not Mormonism when it comes to Mitt Romney, this is the simple bias I was pointing out before you drug this thing out, you know you drug it out, I know you drug it out, the whole board knows it. When someone from the sackless republican club gets called out, people like yourself and sex machine come to defense by simply convoluting the conversation and nit picking aside comments rather than addressing the big issue. Change the subject, don’t keep your own people in check and continue with the mob mentality. Stay in line little soldier, if you differ too much your a weird hippy and cant be part of the club! Me personally, I think Mormons are strange. I’ve been around them, lived with them, been stationed with them, went through training with them, and I can’t bring myself to trust people who honestly believe it wrong to dance or to take part in some of the finer things we as men know that life has to offer. Be honest with yourselves. If you think I’m a piece of shit hippy that’s fine. Rather than trying to see things for what they are, often we use our logic and powers of reason to justify whatever it is we already believe in. This is a way of logic and reason, it’s the premise of hypothesis testing, but when you do it about your life and have vaguely inductive things to back up your beliefs, you corner yourselves and are doomed to the same rut until you open your minds.
As for the eternal hell thing. I bring it up because it is a classic, classic, classic problem for Christians. Not surprising all of a sudden people interpret it differently because you cannot have a just God if his punishments are unjust. Eternity in the worst you could possibly imagine butt rape hell is pretty harsh for ANYTHING you could do in a finite life when you really think about it. Most popular beliefs in Islam include things like greater and lesser Jihad as a reality of life, as Jihad is a struggle against. My understanding is that there are different severeties of hell. Something like a long desert where you suffer from thirst and boils for weeks, possibly years on end, but you can continually improve and struggle to make ones way to heaven.
Christian Hell is just hell. It’s supposed to be beyond your comprehension of awful, and it’s for eternity. As you point out I’m sure there are some different interpretations, there always are, but they are in no way classic interpretations and if there were, I’d like to see them from something published. And not from some extinct version of Christianity that was made extinct by the current version of Christianity for heresy. [/quote]
Wow dude… All I did was respond to your post. Your post was rather convoluted and disorganized (that’s not meant as an insult), and since it didn’t contain a quote of any other posts that you were responding to, I had nothing to go on except YOUR words. I tried to decipher them in the hopes of understanding your point. Perhaps you were responding directly to someone else’s post, in which case the organizing framework would have been provided by that post, but since you neglected to include that post, you comments appeared as a random assemblage of unrelated (and often intrinsically false) statements.
You said…
I didn’t misquote you. My response in paragraph 1 did NOT accuse you of calling Christianity and Islam copies; I was merely referring to YOUR statement that implied that someone else had called them copies. My response was essentially, “Severiano, you are correct - they are not copies. But there is a line of development from one to the other, and that is important.” I didn’t know who you were responding to; I simply responded to your statements as written in the post. I do agree that calling islam a heresy assumes that it was at one point a Christian belief system, which is ludicrous. Heresy arises within a faith, not outside, no matter how similar the new belief system is to a previous one.
As for this…
I don’t see how I missed the point, to be honest. You said,
YOU SAID JESUS ESTABLISHED THE IDEA OF THE TRINITY. You’re wrong. If that wasn’t your point, then you should use words in a way that actually reflects your point.
And if you knew much about Second Temple Judaism, you would realize that divine-human theophanies and proto-Trinitarian beliefs WERE part of some strands of Judaism in the first century A.D. Yes, I agree that Islam diverges quite sharply from Christianity in its unwillingness to depict its prophet or its God, but that doesn’t make it closer to Judaism. If you knew anything about the multiple characterizations of and attitudes toward God in early Judaism, you would see that your comparison of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism is entirely moot, because Christianity is much closer to Second Temple Judaism (3rd Cent. BC.-1st Cent. A.D.) than Islam, just as Islam is closer to Rabbinic Judaism (2nd Century A.D.-Today) than Christianity. Judaism has evolved in a very different direction from where it started; this is what I was alluding to in my post. You cannot simply smooth over 2000 years of historical development as if Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were all monolithic systems unchanged since their inceptions. This is the implication of your comparisons.
To summarize…
Is Islam more like Rabbinic (i.e., late) Judaism than Christianity is? Yes.
Is Rabbinic Judaism identical with Second Temple Judaism? No.
Is Second Temple Judaism the earlier form of Judaism? Yes.
Did Christianity arise out of Second Temple Judaism? Yes.
Is Christianity therefore more like Second Temple Judaism than Islam is? Yes.
And I have absolutely no idea why it matters what Muslims think about Jesus and his death. What is your point there? Are you just trying to say that Islam is different from Christianity? Agreed. It’s very different, which is why it is ludicrous to say that Islam is a heresy.
In response to this…
I’m not trying to convolute the conversation. I’m disagreeing with the erroneous “facts” you are presenting. If your facts are wrong, then your point falls. You’re obviously an intelligent person, and very intelligent people tend to experience lots of epiphanies and to assume that these epiphanies are essentially infallible, when what they should do is subject their “realizations” to critical scrutiny. Your “epiphanies” here don’t stand up to critical scrutiny, however accurate you thought they were when you came up with them.
FInally…
[quote] As for the eternal hell thing. I bring it up because it is a classic, classic, classic problem for Christians. Not surprising all of a sudden people interpret it differently because you cannot have a just God if his punishments are unjust. Eternity in the worst you could possibly imagine butt rape hell is pretty harsh for ANYTHING you could do in a finite life when you really think about it. Most popular beliefs in Islam include things like greater and lesser Jihad as a reality of life, as Jihad is a struggle against. My understanding is that there are different severeties of hell. Something like a long desert where you suffer from thirst and boils for weeks, possibly years on end, but you can continually improve and struggle to make ones way to heaven.
Christian Hell is just hell. It’s supposed to be beyond your comprehension of awful, and it’s for eternity. As you point out I’m sure there are some different interpretations, there always are, but they are in no way classic interpretations and if there were, I’d like to see them from something published. And not from some extinct version of Christianity that was made extinct by the current version of Christianity for heresy. [/quote]
Fact - There is remarkably little Christian consensus on the nature and duration of hell. Many Second Temple Jews believed hell was of a limited duration; many Christians throughout church history have argued either for a limited duration of the sinner’s stay in hell or have redefined hell simply as separation from the divine presence. My point is that there are many different views within Christianity on the subject, and the Scriptures can be read in more than one way. You cannot hold up one version of Christianity (even though it is the one I hold to) as being the standard Christian belief on hell, just like I cannot go and discount the minority belief in a limited duration of hell in Islam as simply an aberration. There is variety within both faiths. That being said, given the fact that Muhammed’s religion reflects a clear attempt to deal with the inherent conundrums of Christianity (hell, Trinity) and Judaism (extensive law code) through the simplification of the faith and practices of its predecessors, I find it extremely difficult to take Islam seriously.
Don’t let the atheists fool you. Heaven and eternity is not going to me a billion trillion quadrillion years of hanging around in a toga playing a harp on a cloud. That’s just crap they use in their strawman arguments to shut down discussion.
[/quote]
I don’t talk about Christians like that and I don’t talk to Christians like that… At least I do my best not to.
Also, I don’t believe that and I don’t tell people that.
I don’t know what else to say… You’ve done way better in the past. I’ll just do my best to accept it as a slip up in the heat of moment.
In fact, we Jewish people were chosen because we were the least of the peoples of the world.
[/quote]
Precisely correct. I’d love to talk shop with you someday, you get it. [/quote]
Does this come off as mildly anti-semetic to anyone else here?
Jewbacca - We Jews were chosen because we’re the least of the people on Earth
Pat - DAMN STRAIGHT![/quote]
And you wonder how I could possibly know you didn’t read the Bible???
Tell you what, let’s let Jewbacca judge for himself…[/quote]
I’ve never wondered that. I have read the bible and I’ve seen you use this same ‘debating tactic’ on everyone, so I’ve known since the beginning that your go-to strategy for brushing off questions that make you uncomfortable is to say “You haven’t read the bible!”, as though that magically fixes the issue. [/quote]
If you did read it, you would have said that dumb shit you said above. You would have understood it. It’s not a debating tactic. It has nothing to do with issues and you are presenting a debate. You are calling me an antisemite, which is not a debatable position. If you actually read the Bible you would have said what you said because you would have understood it. It’s one of those crystal clear things in the bible. That’s why I mentioned it. The discourse between Jewbacca and I is based in the OT and it’s plain, not hidden in double meanings.
Don’t let the atheists fool you. Heaven and eternity is not going to me a billion trillion quadrillion years of hanging around in a toga playing a harp on a cloud. That’s just crap they use in their strawman arguments to shut down discussion.
[/quote]
I don’t talk about Christians like that and I don’t talk to Christians like that… At least I do my best not to.
Also, I don’t believe that and I don’t tell people that.
I don’t know what else to say… You’ve done way better in the past. I’ll just do my best to accept it as a slip up in the heat of moment.[/quote]
Not sure why you are taking this personally, Fletch. It certainly was not directed at you. I was referring in general to those hostile to Christianity. Perhaps I should have clarified that better. You are not one of those and you certainly possess none of the traits of my implied posters above. I did think this was clear from the context of my post, that being, if you’ve never said that, you are not included in the group I am talking about.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
There are many things that Pat is that I find biblically abhorrent. Anti-semetic is not one of them. No. He is not being that. Mildly or otherwise. That’s just not his thing. I’ve known him a very long time and have had year long conversations with him until he so courageously put me on ignore. He is enthusiastically (though ignorantly) agreeing with Jewbacca and nothing more than that should be read into it. [/quote]
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
There are many things that Pat is that I find biblically abhorrent. Anti-semetic is not one of them. No. He is not being that. Mildly or otherwise. That’s just not his thing. I’ve known him a very long time and have had year long conversations with him until he so courageously put me on ignore. He is enthusiastically (though ignorantly) agreeing with Jewbacca and nothing more than that should be read into it. [/quote]
