The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

[St. Clown]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

It's a question of eternal life. Either you believe in what the Bible says or you do not. Before you hand in your playbook, I would encourage you to seek out a WELS Church (or other Christian Church) and have a discussion or 2 with the Pastor and see if they can make some sense of the questions/issues/concerns you have about your faith as a Christian. It certainly doesn't hurt anything so spend some time digging into it.

My experience with the WELS sort is that they're Biblical literalists, the 6,000 year-old-Earth people, the ones who will tell you that Jonah really was eaten by a whale and survived and that it's not just symbolic allegory, and that humans and dinosaurs walked these lands at the same time because Hey, all those different cultures creating dragon lores had to have come from somewhere.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

It's a question of eternal life.

It's been said that the Irish version of eternal life is to have people continue to propose toasts in your memory long after you are gone from this life.



Given that matter is never created nor destroyed, we all have a form of eternal life, it's merely a bit dispersed....


For those who say we have a corporeal eternal life, do we have a particular age? It wouldn't be much of an eternal life if one had Alzheimer's, for example....

 

[burd]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Given that matter is never created nor destroyed, we all have a form of eternal life, it's merely a bit dispersed....

Many have said, and I tend to agree, that contrary to standard Christian doctrine, our soul dies with us while the physical lives on, as you state above. To the extent our soul can be said to be the memories we leave behind as a result of our relationships and, hopefully, good works, that part of us endures for a time, but is less permanent than that which makes up our corporeal self.

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

I asked myself why I was a Christian... and came up with no good answers. The only two things I kept coming back to were:

1. My mom and dad are/were Christians and so passed it to me.
2. You've done it this way since you were 6.

And those aren't very good reasons to continue...

Huh. Yeah, sounds like your right. Too many people go through life thinking of themselves as Christian without anything to it.

But before you go, you might consider taking a bit of a closer look. Then you know for sure. I would consider doing two things. 1) Read some of the Bible. Maybe John. You don't have to decide whether its definitely true or not. Just see if it inspires you...see if you get any feelings from it at all. 2) Go check out some cool church. Many aren't just reading scripture...but rather giving interesting messages. And they vary, so try different options. Likewise, see if there are any groups to check out. Try sharing a bit and see if you can learn or offer perspective. While Jesus is the starting point...there are many ways it could touch your life. Remember, its only through your own exploration can you determine if it truly makes sense or not.

 

[burd]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Huh. Yeah, sounds like your right. Too many people go through life thinking of themselves as Christian without anything to it.

But before you go, you might consider taking a bit of a closer look. Then you know for sure. I would consider doing two things. 1) Read some of the Bible. Maybe John. You don't have to decide whether its definitely true or not. Just see if it inspires you...see if you get any feelings from it at all. 2) Go check out some cool church. Many aren't just reading scripture...but rather giving interesting messages. And they vary, so try different options. Likewise, see if there are any groups to check out. Try sharing a bit and see if you can learn or offer perspective. While Jesus is the starting point...there are many ways it could touch your life. Remember, its only through your own exploration can you determine if it truly makes sense or not.

If more believers of ______ gave advice such as yours, 5mn, the world would be a happier, saner, more tolerant place.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Many have said ... that ... our soul dies with us while the physical lives on.... To the extent our soul can be said to be the memories we leave behind as a result of our relationships and, hopefully, good works, that part of us endures for a time, but is less permanent than that which makes up our corporeal self.

It seems to me that we do have a non-corporeal, eternal soul that will live well beyond the cessation of our physical body.

What is our mind? Based on my subjective experience, it "must be" something more than the firing of neurons in the brain: consciousness and self-awareness spring from the patterns created by said firing, yet due to the number and density of interconnectedness, take on an entirely new level of existence beyond the material into something ineffable.

I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of how a lens works, of how the view from one side of it is inverted and focused into a much smaller area on the other side of it. To the extent that our consciousness, mediated by the senses, is a lens between the outer and inner world, based on how quantum mechanics seems to work, each of us has a unique soul that is a reflection of our interactions throughout our lifetimes with the universe. Those interactions create ripples that extend through infinity and eternity. Our soul is much more likely to have eternal existence after we are gone than our bodies are.

Would the universe exist at all if there were no conscious beings to interact with it? or would all merely be latent potential?

 

[geezer]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

For those who say we have a corporeal eternal life, do we have a particular age?

Has any religion ever said this, that you know of?
... I suppose there were those who buried food and whatnot with their dead for "the afterlife"...

I like the "dust though art, and unto dust shall though return" idea.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Would the universe exist at all if there were no conscious beings to interact with it? or would all merely be latent potential?

The physical existence of the universe doesn't depend on consciousness (since consciousness post-dated physicality), but the "meaning" of the universe is an artifact imposed by consciousness.

If you're talking about Aristotelian potentiality (the potential of the oak tree in the acorn) what's needed is not consciousness but energy. In fact the "nous" of Greek philosophy which was interpreted as consciousness / soul / God / The Word / Being-in-Itself can be thought of as a primitive concept of energy (and Cartesian dualism as the energy / matter duality).

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Has any religion ever said this, that you know of?
... I suppose there were those who buried food and whatnot with their dead for "the afterlife"...

Even with those, I'm not sure whether the gems, cats and slaves buried with the pharaoh were expected to be actually, physically used or just representative of "immortal" forms for him to play with.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Would the universe exist at all if there were no conscious beings to interact with it? or would all merely be latent potential?

And here we have solipism writ large.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

And here we have solipism writ large.

That's too harsh. Another way of thinking about FF's statement is whether anything "is" without anything to conceive of its "is-ness." Some pretty smart folks have danced around that question for a long time without getting to a simple answer. Personally I tend with you towards a common sense materialism, but Bishop Berkeley deserves a fair hearing.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

And here we have solipism writ large.

Not quite, I was trying to translate Schrodinger's wave equation into English. The "state" of a system is fixed at a moment in time through an observation, and then it devolves into a series of superposed likelihoods over time, which only crystallize into a singular reality when another observation occurs. In between observations, there is no one single "reality" merely a superposition of probabilities.

I was trying to use the word "potential" in the sense of "potential energy" which only manifests as physical energy when something is placed into motion ("motion" to include heat, sound, light, electricity, etc).

 

[burd]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

I don't know how a regular person is supposed to keep up with you guys and your solipsisms and large writs. I thought this was going to be about a good ol' fashioned kind of GAAWD that can be cited as authority.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

I thought this was going to be about a good ol' fashioned kind of GAAWD that can be cited as authority.

"The Way that can be spoken of
Is not the Constant Way."

-- Lao Tzu

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

"The Way that can be spoken of
Is not the Constant Way."

-- Lao Tzu

That's a strange version of that quote. I've always heard it as "the Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao," which is just "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him," for nice people.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Huh. Yeah, sounds like your right. Too many people go through life thinking of themselves as Christian without anything to it.

But before you go, you might consider taking a bit of a closer look. Then you know for sure. I would consider doing two things. 1) Read some of the Bible. Maybe John. You don't have to decide whether its definitely true or not. Just see if it inspires you...see if you get any feelings from it at all. 2) Go check out some cool church. Many aren't just reading scripture...but rather giving interesting messages. And they vary, so try different options. Likewise, see if there are any groups to check out. Try sharing a bit and see if you can learn or offer perspective. While Jesus is the starting point...there are many ways it could touch your life. Remember, its only through your own exploration can you determine if it truly makes sense or not.

Well said. In the end we are all influenced by our past , parents, etc. but we all reach points where we, either actively or passively, have to decide what we buy into and believe or not on our own.

From some of Shirtless Bob's past posts, I'm not sure some of the folks he's described being around him in "Christian" settings want him to explore and understand on his own, but rather just do as he is told and follow someone else's set of rules. I'd never support anyone who says you should blindly follow any belief system/religion/whatever without doing your own questioning and exploring and reading and discussing in whatever way you feel you need to.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Well said. In the end we are all influenced by our past , parents, etc. but we all reach points where we, either actively or passively, have to decide what we buy into and believe or not on our own.

No matter what road you're on, you're still the driver.

I am more convinced every day that the road matters much less than how good a driver you are. The basic drivers' ed course is pretty much the same regardless of where you want to go.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

No matter what road you're on, you're still the driver.

I am more convinced every day that the road matters much less than how good a driver you are. The basic drivers' ed course is pretty much the same regardless of where you want to go.

Not everyone has drivers ed courses (like here in Arizona).

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Not everyone has drivers ed courses (like here in Arizona).

Wait, really? I know you don't have to parallel park on your road test (which blows me away), but there's zero drivers' ed? No wonder the drivers* in Tucson were so awful.

(* To be fair, the worst drivers in Tucson learned to drive in Santiago de Querétaro.)

 

[joecct]

No matter what road you're on, you're still the driver.

I am more convinced every day that the road matters much less than how good a driver you are. The basic drivers' ed course is pretty much the same regardless of where you want to go.

New Jersey teaches you to be NASCAR drivers. Don't believe me? You have to turn left in traffic circles.