BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?

Subject: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 09:36 PM

I recently started a thread and asked a simple question about a religion thing. The thread went to hell (joke).

But, within that thread, I asked a second simple question after the discussion went south and I grew tired of the bullshit bickering. NObody really addressed my initial question and they didn't address my second question so I figured I would start a new thread to ask a very simple question...

Do you know what heaven and hell are? What are they?

I would really like to know if anybody actually knows the concept of Heaven & Hell and would care to share their views in a mannerly way. Seems a LOT of people don't.

So... what is it and do you believe in it?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 09:55 PM

Complicated religious concepts with all sorts of wild-eyed mythology connected with them.

But I would say states of mind.

I'll put some serious thought to the matter and be back later. Good question, deserving of serious answers.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 09:58 PM

"Do you know what heaven and hell are? What are they?"

No, I don't know for sure. I've considered various different theories about it, and there are a great many of them, but there's no way I can know for sure unless I directly experience heaven or hell, is there?

"Do you believe in it"

Yes...in a sort of general sense, but that would need considerable explanation.

No...in the sense of any absolutely specific definition of what it's supposed to be like. I have no direct experience of my own to go on, so how could I do anything but speculate about it? Other people's opinions can be interesting, but they're not a basis on which I would form a belief. Belief, after all, indicates certainty.

I have some possible theories about it.

Here's one: Heaven could be the most joyful state of consciousness. Hell could be the most painful, unpleasant or despairing state of consciousness. That's one way of looking at it.

Here's another: Heaven could be a state of feeling complete (fullfilled). Hell could be a state of feeling extremely incomplete and unfulfilled, and having no idea what to do about it.

Here's another: Heaven could be the experience of communion with all that one truly loves. Hell could be feeling totally alone, with no positive connection to anyone or anything.

I've seen a few people who were in a heaven-like state of mind, more than a few who were in a hellish state of mind, and a lot of others who were somewhere between those extremes. Most of us are somewhere between.

Are you asking about an afterlife? I think it's likely, it seems very likely to me, but I have no way of being absolutely certain about it...until I die.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:05 PM

I know what I was told when I was a child... and I know many opinions from various religious groups... and there are so many variations that it's hard to start.

I have an illustrated copy of Dante's Inferno (Gustave Doré's engravings) which may have done as much as anything to put images of Hell into Western culture.
I personally believe both are embroidered stories based on human hopes & fears as they try to make sense out of life and imagine what 'comes after'.

In many Asian religions there was no Heaven & Hell as such, but rather the Wheel of Saṃsāra.

I do kind of like Sartré's conclusion in "No Exit" that "Hell is other people"

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:09 PM

Simple...

Yer current wife = Heaven

The ex = Hell

Wes Ginny Algebra...

B;~)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:13 PM

It certainly seems like that at times, doesn't it, Bill? ;-)

I was told absolutely nothing about either heaven or hell when I was a child. Nada. Zip. I was told about all the usual stuff (money, furniture, family, relatives, neighbours, mathematics, books, science, machinery, politics, society, guns, history, war, art, food, house rules, etc.).

My parents were atheists. ;-) I never thought about stuff like heaven and hell when I was a child.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:17 PM

Hey, Bobert...I pretty much got the impression while I was growing up that marriage is hell. As a result, I never did marry, had no intention of doing so, but I have experienced both heaven and hell with girlfriends at various times anyway. It just didn't last as long as my parents' marriage did...(a lifetime).

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bobert
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:22 PM

Same deal, LH... You got it...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:23 PM

Whatever you make them. You define your own.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: frogprince
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:28 PM

Wow. Some years back in my life, I could have given ya a nice simple relatively clear answer. Heaven is "where" (I don't think I would have really pointed up into space since I was very young) God is, and where people attuned to Him spend eternity with Him. Also in my early years, hell for me was a place of literal agony in flames, the destiny of those who didn't measure up to God's standards, and who didn't ask his forgiveness/accept Jesus's sacrifice/for their sins/shortcomings.

If "hell" has any meaning for me now, I guess it is alienation; from others, from "God", from one's best self. I absolutely reject a literal/fundamentalist "hell". Say for a moment that "Osama Bin Laden definitely deserved to go to hell". Then think with me; he is dropped into searing flames. He is there in agony for three hundred sixty five billion years as punishment for the first of the victims of 9/ii. Then three hundred sixty five billion years for the next victim. Except it doesn't really work that way. He is now actually no closer to relief from total agony than he was 770 billion years before. And, to the true-blue fundamentalist, Osama is accompanied there by millions of decent people whose downfall was...failing to accept Jesus.

I've been so conditioned to think of Heaven in terms of eternal peaceful fellowship with God, that is still there in my mind. But I have no real conviction now that I'll ever know any "Heaven" except that my wife survived last summer and is still with me, I have some very dear family and friends, and I've learned something of the best hearts of even a lot of people I may never meet in person, thinking especially just now of Nigel Patterson's thread here.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Charmion
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 10:50 PM

I really don't believe in an afterlife, although I occasionally make jokes about it. Over the years, I have come to think of Heaven as the state of being aware that one is not only in the presence of the divine principle, but also playing in the same jam session and keeping up nicely. As for Hell, like others with experience of untreated clinical depression, I passed through one of its suburbs once and was lucky enough to find the highway again more by accident than by design.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 11:11 PM

They are metaphorical terms describing the condition into which the individual soul can arrive by tending or neglecting its own integrity, clarity, and karma.

The karma is aways running into stray dogma, which makes the whole situation hard to understand.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 17 Mar 13 - 11:32 PM

My life partner, Susan Urban, and I have a Unitarian/Universalist service on the very notion. I remember having a stoned conversation with another friend where we thought if you were into materialistic things when you died, where you went would be like hell. If you were not into that sort of thing, it would seem like heaven. I could send you what the whole homilies were if you wanted.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 12:10 AM

gnu, I think that everyone has to find out in their own heart what heaven or hell means to them. Nobody else can decide that for you, but there's no harm in people discussing what they think about it. If they're willing to respect one another, it could be quite illuminating.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 02:28 AM

I too have fairly vague notions regarding heaven and hell.
Though I was raised in the concept of "ever-lasting punishment with unrelenting agony of burning and unquenchable thirst" it amazes me that I believed it and feared it for as long as I did.

If there is a god, vengeful or otherwise, then, yes, I can believe that extinguishment is a possibility. I can even accept that any creator has the right to knock down the tower of blocks.

But hell as in the first depiction? Nah. For one reason: We know instinctively that to torture is wrong, is evil. And a creation cannot be better than its creator.

And heaven? There have been brief periods in my life that felt like heaven. A period of time and space where I was exactly where I wanted to be and doing what I wanted to be doing and with exactly the right people around me.

A literal heaven? I suspect that "heaven" is a transitional place, a graduation if you will, a completion of one level.

A little segue here: Has it ever occurred to you that Zeus and Athena and all the rest may be our gods in reality? Yoicks.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 02:48 AM

"We know instinctively that to torture is wrong, is evil."

Exactly. So it's ridiculous to imagine that God would do something like that to people who are purportedly His/Her own children! Though my parents certainly made some mistakes in bringing me up, I'm very glad they didn't put the idea of a vengeful God into my head. It would have been nice, though, if they'd put the idea of a loving God into my head...it would've helped.

Oh, well, it worked out pretty well anyway, so why complain?

Zeus and Athena and the other Greek gods and goddesses were an interesting and entertaining lot, but they seem to have had a penchant for all the same competitive, nasty mindgames that people waste their time on, and that seems odd to me. It worked for the Greeks, though. ;-) They clearly saw the gods and goddesses of their pantheon as larger and more powerful versions of themselves, afflicted with the same strengths and weaknesses...but with greater authority. That makes no sense to me.

Native Americans spoke of a Great Spirit (or Great Mystery) that was the source of all existence and of all life...not a god or goddess, but a universal, immeasurable, infinite source. That makes more sense to me than a pantheon of human-like gods and goddesses, because they are just too small to believe in.

The Infinite is implicit in everything that exists...and it's limited to no one thing or expression. That means it doesn't begin or end anywhere, but is simply everywhere. That's something big enough for me to believe in...or at least consider worth believing in.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: michaelr
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 02:59 AM

Fiction, is what they are. Figments of the human mind which is desperate for meaning.

John Lennon had it right:
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky


Anything we imagine beyond that gives rise to the dangerous mental illness known as religious faith.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 03:57 AM

What are heaven and hell? Well, I think that Europeans and their offspring got most of their concepts from Dante, but where did Dante get his ideas from? It the Divine Comedy almost entirely from his imagination mixed with a bit of scripture, or are there folkloric sources also?

In general, I prefer not to speculate, but I do have some general idea of heaven as being absorbed into the One, the unity of all with God (or if no God, then just the unity of all). Some theologians speculate that if God is as good as we claim God to be, then hell could not be God's creation - that it is built somehow by the evil that exists in humankind. Most progressive theologians seem to think that if there is a hell, not many people go there.

But I don't think about heaven or hell very much. I focus my life on the present, of drawing as much as I can out of the current moment. I was raised in a Catholic family and went through 16 years of Catholic education (half of that in a Catholic seminary), and I didn't really get very much exposure to thinking about heaven and hell.

Works for me.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 04:31 AM

I suppose you need to differentiate between seeing them as what you wish for versus what you hope you don't get, or what you are promised versus what you are threatened with.

The former is using terms to describe your own take on life and the latter is the take others wish to prescribe.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 04:51 AM

"What are heaven and hell? Well, I think that Europeans and their offspring got most of their concepts from Dante," Joe wrote above.

Right. And another source to be mentioned is the C18 Swedish scientist & occasional mystic Swedenborg, who published a book called Heaven & Hell. It's not easy reading ~~ in my literarily conscientious youth I found a Penguin edition, which I still have somewhere I think, and did my best to read it, tho much of it was pretty heavy going. I simply mention it here as a reference for any who want to follow up the topic. There are good Wikipedia entries on the author & his book.

HTH

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 05:04 AM

It seems very unlikely to me that there's an afterlife, so in that respect the concepts have no meaning for me.

In terms of consciousness or state of mind while alive, people can be in either a joyful or despairing state, sure, but not continuously, or there's be no yardstick to measure the feeling.

If you were always in the same blissful state of joyful consciousness, how would you *know* that this was a "good" state unless you'd also had a taste of unhappiness or despair to calibrate against?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 05:14 AM

As hell is a Christian construct, I'll stick with primary source. On the other thread mg replied stating that hell was a fiery pit in which you are roasted for eternity (approx) and it certainly seems like the Bible agrees with that. As to what metaphorical places different denominations of Christianity imagine, I've no clue.

Cut & Paste from: http://www.faithfulwordbaptist.org/hell.html

"3. What is Hell really?

Hell is a place of flaming fire.

Revelation 20:10 "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."
Revelation 20:14 "And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death."
Revelation 20:15 "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

II Thessalonians 1:8 "In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:"
II Thessalonians 1:9 "Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;"

Mark 9:43 "And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:"
Mark 9:44 "Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."
Mark 9:45 "And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:"
Mark 9:46 "Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."
Mark 9:47 "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:"
Mark 9:48 "Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."

Luke 16:23 "And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom."
Luke 16:24 "And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame."

Jude 1:7 "Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire."

Hell is a place of smothering smoke.

Revelation 14:11 "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name."

Hell is a place of dismal darkness.

Jude 1:13 "Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."

Hell is a place screaming and wailing.

Matthew 22:13 "Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Hell is a place of everlasting chains.

Jude 1:6 "And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day."

Hell is a place of flesh-eating worms.

Isaiah 14:9 "Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations."
Isaiah 14:10 "All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?"
Isaiah 14:11 "Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee."
Isaiah 14:12 "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"

Isaiah 66:24 "And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh."

Hell is a place of no rest day nor night – no sleep.

Revelation 14:11 "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.""

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 05:40 AM

"As hell is a Christian construct"...
.,,.
In the main, indeed; though Isaiah & probably Jude which you cite CS, are pre-Xtn. Tho many regard Isaiah as proleptic and predictive of Christ's coming, this would clearly not be a Jewish view. But the concept of Hell is generally, in its Biblical citations, NT rather the OT otherwise; though there are some refs to Gehenna, a sort of Jewish equivalent named after a valley near Jerusalem where human sacrifices took place in evil times.

Wikipedia ~ "This article is about the Biblical term that has been interpreted as analogous to the concept of "Hell" or "Purgatory". For other uses, see Gehenna (disambiguation).
Main article: Jewish eschatology
Valley of Hinnom, c. 1900
Gehenna (Greek γέεννα), Gehinnom (Rabbinical Hebrew: גהנום/גהנם) and Yiddish Gehinnam, are terms derived from a place outside ancient Jerusalem known in the Hebrew Bible as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom (Hebrew: גֵיא בֶן־הִנֹּם or גיא בן-הינום); one of the two principal valleys surrounding the Old City.
Originally, it was believed that this was a location where children were sacrificed to Moloch, hence from the perspective of the authors of the Hebrew Bible, it was deemed to be cursed.[1]
In Jewish, Christian and Islamic scripture, Gehenna is a destination of the wicked.[2] This is different from the more neutral Sheol/Hades, the abode of the dead, though the King James version of the Bible translates both with the Anglo-Saxon word Hell."

OT refs are given in the rest of this article in wiki. But this is not altogether the Christian 'Hell", which appears indeed, apart fom that one mention in Isaiah, to be a later concept. The Gospels quote Jesus' use of the term, saying e.g. that anyone who, in anger, called his brother a fool was "in danger of Hellfire", Matt V.22.; and Jesus was a Jew, of course, tho he had clearly his own theological glosses on many of that faith's traditions an teachings.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 05:45 AM

Interesting!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 05:53 AM

This is taken from a Bible... is not my personal interpretation!
What is hell like?
>>>>>>>>>>There are two descriptions of hell in the Bible. One is of burning fire.. Jesus often used the word Gehenna to describe hell. Gehenna was the refuse dump outside Jerusalem that was always on fire. Jesus said hell is a place of worms, maggots, fire and trouble. FGrom that we get the image of the lake of fire and the concept of perpetual burning. The evil ones there are full of remorse and torment. (Mark 9:43-48)
Jesus said hell would be 'outer darkness'... weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt 18:12). Here the image is one of terrible loneliness: separation from God and man. Those who are consigned to hell will be put into the inky blackness of eternity, with nobody to turn to or talk to- constantly alone. They will suffer the remorse of knowing they had the opportunity to come into Heaven with God but turned it down. The Bible speaks of a lake of fire reserved for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41) Human beings were never intended to go into hell, but the ones who chose to reject God will one day follow satan right into this eternal torment. There will be no exit from hell, no way out, no second chance. That is why it is so important in this life to reveive the pardon that God extends to all men through the Cross of Jesus Christ (Rev 20:11-15<<<<<<<<<

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 06:53 AM

Human beings were never intended to go into hell, but the ones who chose to reject God will one day follow satan right into this eternal torment. There will be no exit from hell, no way out, no second chance. That is why it is so important in this life to reveive the pardon that God extends to all men through the Cross of Jesus

To paraphrase Frank Zappa : if hell there is, then it is reserved exclusively for those who not only believe in it, but routinely take delight in condemning others to it on account of the somewhat warped tenets of their utterly idiotic faith. If heaven there is, OTOH, it's there for the rest of us who just want to quietly get on with our lives without consigning people to eternal torment for the expedient of simply being human. Burn again, Christians!

Otherwise, whilst the reality of hell is confined to the maggot-ridden brains of lunatic who choose to believe in it, the historic iconography of hell has long intrigued me. I adore the imps, devils, demons that run riot over the churches & cathedrals of the middle-ages. I especially love the medieval depictions of the Harrowing of Hell in which Christ liberates souls through the mouth of hell which is invariably depicted as simulacrum of female genitalia in a double symbolism of rebirth on the one hand and luscious drooling fragrant blossoming sinful dripping pussy lust on the other.   

And then, of course, there's this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr00G-UMgVU

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 07:31 AM

Excellent discussion. Much appreciated. Thanks. I hope it continues.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Jack Sprocket
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 07:33 AM

"Women are the only heaven. Marriage is the only hell" - Abiezer Coppe, according to Leon Rosselson and (probably) Christopher Hill, but I can't find the book just now.

Human beings were never intended to go into hell

I wonder why he created them then, since, being omniscient, he knew that some (according to some believers the vast majority) would go to hell and, being omnipotent, he had the choice of creating the Universe in a different way.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 07:36 AM

Reduced to the simplest terms, a stick and a carrot for the faithful.

Hell awaits if you disobey.
Heaven is the reward for doing what you are told.

When I was a kid, it was the bogeyman who dealt with naughty children (so we were told).

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 07:52 AM

Used to be a gay nightclub, in Brighton.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:06 AM

& a coffee bar in Soho ~~ Greek St, I think ~~ I used to meet my girlfriend Jackie there in 1957. Or maybe it was in The Strand. Ah me; my memory is not what it was ~~ how hellish!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:13 AM

Best answer yet!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:15 AM

Meaning Johns post re gay club

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Lizzie Cornish
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:31 AM

Heaven:
What the Human Species is capable of Creating.

Hell:
What the Human Species is capable of Creating.

Purgatory:
Where the Human Species finally decides which it WILL Create.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: kendall
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 09:15 AM

Heaven is being one with god. Hell is being apart from god.

The name Hell comes from Scandinavian mythology. She is the equivalent of Hades in Greek mythology.
Remove hell and Christianity pretty much falls apart.

It's up to each of us what we need to believe. I'm a Deist; the creator gave me an inquiring mind, one that questions everything, and I doubt that he/she/it will punish me for using it.

To me, all religions are superstition.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 09:22 AM

As I said before, you create your own Heaven and Hell, whether or not there's an afterlife, a mandala, or even being chained to a rock with vultures eating away you liver for Eternity.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 10:31 AM

"L'enfer, c'est les autres," usually translated as "Hell is other people."

Jean Paul Sartre.

I'd better go there, as if I went to the other place, I wouldn't know anybody.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 10:45 AM

It's a fear tactic used by fundamentalists to control others. It's sort of like Grimms Fairy Tales used to scare children into good behavior.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 12:21 PM

when Hell freezes over

(Note.. Dante used images of the damned frozen in eternal ice for his 9th circle)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Will Fly
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 12:41 PM

Heaven is the smell of roasting coffee beans drifting down the street.

Hell is knowing that the taste of that coffee will never be as good as the smell of the roasting beans...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 12:58 PM

Hell is also referred to as "sheol" (Hebrew word) in a number of places in the Bible. Sheol simply means "the grave".

People decide for themselves whether the various descriptions of hell in various Bible passages should be interpreted literally or metaphorically. I doubt that most of them were intended literally, and I also think that unless you can place yourself in the mindset of the social culture at the time the biblical passages were written, you will very often be misled as to the meaning of the words used.

We use common language now in all kinds of ways which someone 2,000 years from now would be very much misled by, and it has always been so.

So, a study of ancient writings in any tradition needs to be accompanied also by a study of that ancient culture and the common ideas of the time if one is to understand what one is reading.

Rob Naylor - Way up there in the posts you said something quite interesting: "If you were always in the same blissful state of joyful consciousness, how would you *know* that this was a "good" state unless you'd also had a taste of unhappiness or despair to calibrate against?"

Good point. We do gain perspective and understanding from experiencing all the various ups and downs in life...just as we develop character by encountering difficulties, and grow strong overcoming adversity. We (hopefully) gain compassion for others through experiencing pain ourselves. We appreciate plenty by experiencing scarcity. All of this is very useful on the path of evolution, the path of maturing, the path of gaining wisdom.

This can make a pretty good argument for why God wouldn't just swoop down one day and make everything perfect, doesn't it? If He/She/It did, we'd be deprived of the opportunity to find our own wings, deprived of the chance to learn through experience, deprived of the chance to reach our true potential through using our mental and moral muscles.

If you do that for a child...simply remove every obstacle and provide a surfeit of every desirable circumstance...what happens? The child gets spoiled, bored, and does not mature. Challenges are good. Without them, how would we learn to become our own best selves?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 01:03 PM

How about the smell of freshly ground coffee?    That's heavenly.   And I don't like coffee in the least. Humans are funny in a lot of ways.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 01:06 PM

It is a good smell. And I don't like coffee anymore either.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 01:18 PM

kendall - PM
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 09:15 AM

"Heaven is being one with god. Hell is being apart from god."

OK- a bit of religious history here:

Christians speak of Jesus's sacrifice as being superlative, the ultimate altruism, in his choosing to die on a cross, to be killed for humankind.

That has never made sense to me. To be crucified was not an uncommon way to die - even in the biblical story, a common thief was condemned to die on the cross.

So that cannot be the point. If human being were capable of identifying with ants, say, became aware of their problems and discovered that if s/he sacrificed their life, knowing that s/he would then return to life as a human being, I have little doubt but that someone would do it.

Where the sacrifice comes in, I believe, is not the dying on the cross but the necessary separation from God.

And perhaps, that is what hell is: Separation from God.

Thus spake Ebbie, product of longtime indoctrination.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 01:40 PM

Could be, Ebbie. If by "God" we mean: every good thing that there is....then separation from God would indeed be hell, wouldn't it?

I've been somewhat puzzled by the traditional notion of Jesus' "sacrifice" too, but not because he died in an ordinary way. That's neither here nor there. It doesn't matter which way he died. All that matters is, what was his own personal nature? What was he doing? And why? The degree of his sacrifice would depend on those factors.

For a comparison to explain what I mean: If the English army in the early 1400s had siezed a young French girl who had never done anything of particular note and burned her at the stake in Rouen...would we be hearing about it till today? No, we wouldn't. Actually, the English troops killed a great many young women, men, children, whoever they wanted to kill all across about half of France in those days, and they did burn some of them, but we don't know the names of most of those people.

But when they burnt Joan of Arc in Rouen, they did something that will not be forgotten! Why? Because Joan was a remarkable individual who had done extraordinary things to help many people. That made her innocent sacrifice an enormous event with reverberations that are still being felt today.

The thing that is significant about Jesus being innocently sacrificed is likewise that he was a remarkable individual who had done extraordinary things to help many people. How he died (on the cross) is not the point. What he had done before he died, his character, and what he died FOR is the point. That made the event extraordinary, and that's why he is still remembered, while thousands of other people who died similarly on the cross are not.

People long remember those whom they care deeply about.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 03:40 PM

One could write all kinds of lengthy treatise on this subject, but after giving it a good think and reading some of the (quite lengthy and verbose) commentaries above, I come to the conclusion than Don(Wyziwyg)T nailed it quite succinctly in his post at 18 Mar 13 - 07:36 a.m. above.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Kenny B Sans kuki
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 04:16 PM

To a masochist heaven is hell and to sadist hell is heaven and for all those in between .... its just what you make it.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 04:33 PM

He said:

Reduced to the simplest terms, a stick and a carrot for the faithful.

Hell awaits if you disobey.
Heaven is the reward for doing what you are told.

But what would we call it when an idealistic cop or teacher advises a young gang member as follows: "Look, Jason, if you keep hanging with the gangs and dealing crack, you are going to wind up very badly...in jail or dead. Is that what you want? Why not instead go back to school, obey your parents, obey the law, and then I won't be on your back anynmore, will I? And you can have a good future ahead of you, get a good job, find a nice girl, and live a happy family life. What's it gonna be, Jason? What future do you want for yourself?"

The cop (or teacher) just offered the crack-dealing kid a carrot and a stick.

What exactly is wrong with offering a person a carrot and a stick if it is done with a positive intent? We do it all the time with our own children when we're bringing them up.

What Don T. appears to be ojecting to is the very idea OF organized religion per se, rather than the concept of the carrot and the stick.

Every crucial decision we face between making a serious mistake and not making it does involve a carrot and a stick if you are capable of seeing the situation clearly.

Religious teachings in all cultures and religions advise people not to be cruel, selfish, criminal, violent, greedy, unloving, etc...or there will be negative consequences. Will anyone here assert that there are no negative consequences to such negative behaviour? We can argue till the cows come home about what form those consequences will take, but they will definitely come in one form or another. In India they call that "karma".

We all know about the carrot and the stick, and we face it everwhere in life, not just in religion.

If Don's objecting to a religion based on fear, well, then, we're on the same page. I'm not at all attracted to religious groups that use fear as a motivator. I'm attracted to those who use love, idealism, and a sense of responsibility and community as motivators.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 06:02 PM

There is nothing wrong with the carrot and the stick analogy in many situations. "If you work productively, you will be rewarded." Carrot. "If you lead a life of crime, you'll eventually wind up in jail." Stick.

But religion should be a matter of choice, not of coercion. And the carrot and stick is counterproductive in that context.

For example, who is the better person, someone who does good works because he genuinely feels it's the right thing to do and because he wants to, or the person who does good works, not because he cares for others in the least, but because he's afraid if he doesn't, he'll go to hell?

The outward results may be the same, but the motivation of the two people is far different. One out of love for others (deemed to be a Christian value) and the other out of fear of the consequences.

Who, then, would God judge to be the better person?

Which, within some religious denominations or churches, is the issue. Some of them use the Heaven or Hell issue for reasons of secular power, such as getting their congregations to beggar themselves by making lavish contributions to the church, or voting a particular way the church favors.

=======

Back in the days, the Church was "selling indulgences." Offering the very large carrot of being able to buy one's way into heaven—with the implied stick of hell if one doesn't, hovering in the background. The wealthy could buy their way into heaven by making a lavish contribution to the Church. The popes where still trying to pay off the mortgage on St. Peter's and Michelangelo had to be paid for decorating the Sistine Chapel. The Church needed money. So they set up a turnstile and charged for getting into heaven.

The idea that the wealthy could bribe their way into heaven, and that the Church was selling this idea to obtain funds was one of several things the Church was up to that really got up Martin Luther's nose.

He did a bit of raging and storming.

Hence, the birth of Protestantism (i.e. protesting against this scam the Church was peddling). The carrot and the stick of Heaven and Hell to manipulate people for secular purposes (such as fund raising).

God, Who is the Ultimate Judge, Luther maintained, doesn't work that way. He sees into every heart and judges that way.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 06:45 PM

Don... well said. And you struck on my fundamental belief in the concept, as have others, but they have not put it so simply. Still, I am pondering my explanation... my belief. All of this gives me food for thought and the insightful and thought provoking posts are a breath of fresh air.

I was inspired to ask this question because of a poem/song I wrote when I was a teenager. I remembered it after my other thread went south. Odd how the memory gets jogged. It was an 'OH... yeah!' moment.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 06:46 PM

i think that geogiansilver pretty much expressed how i would answer.some of the expressions and wording of the texts may be poetic but hell is still a place to be shunned and heaven a placed to be accepted [by repentance and faith] but i wish there were not a hell but i am not going to gainsay the perfect judge.He also takes no delight in it.
"God is not willing that any should perish,but that all should come to repentance"

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 07:09 PM

Oh... yeah! A lad I knew said once, "I am a Frisbetyrian... I believe that, when ya die, yer soul lands up on the roof and ya can't get it down." Fat Boy Lee Clark. He was a gem of a man... a true comedian. Broke his back in a rail yard accident workin fer the CNR... used to say he was the only one who ever broke his back workin fer CN. That lad was a joke a minute. RIP, Fat Lee... wherever you ended up ya crazy b

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: kendall
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 07:22 PM

As far as I can see, all religions are scams. Based on fear, ignorance and ego.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 07:51 PM

"scams. Based on fear, ignorance and ego."

That's how I feel about most government propaganda nowadays, kendall! ;-D And much of what the news media tells me. And religions too when they are mishandled....but not when they are not. And most commercial advertising, for sure.

You see, governments try to sell you a policy that may very well hurt your nation...for the gain of a few rich people at the top.

Businesses try to sell you a product you may very well not need...for the gain of a few rich people at the top.

The news media, owned by a few rich people, tell you the propaganda that their rich owners want you to hear, so as to form public opinion as they would like it to be.

Those are scams too.

If a religion tries to sell you a false or frightening idea in order to control you for the gain of that religious hierarchy...or for the gain of a few leaders...that's a scam.

And I avoided religions for many years simply on that basis. But I knew almost nothing about them at the time. My prejudice (having grown up as an atheist) was based on a mere sliver of knowledge and supposition about religion, not on actual experience around religions.

If, however, a religion offers you a way of getting together with other people you really like and with whom you share common values...if it offers you a way to build a better community and help the poor, for example...if it helps you to look deeper into ideas and philosophical viewpoints that you find inspiring, and finding greater inner peace...if it motivates you to be a better person and to treat other people in a kinder way...that's NOT a scam.

Having discovered a number of religious groups over the years who did all of the above (and they were not all in the same religions, and some were inclusive of all major religions or were non-denominational)...I know that religion is not necessarily a scam.

It's just a scam when it's used in a hypocritical and fraudulent way.

To be cynical about ALL religion on principle is about as perceptive as thinking that "all women are stupid" or "all men are brutes" or "all Irish are drunkards" or "all Americans are fat, racist, fundamentalist slobs". A prejudice like that can't be based on a whole lot of real experience with a variety of different examples or cases of the subject at hand. It's a position of blind prejudice, not actual knowledge.

****

Don - I pretty much agree with everything you said in your last post. As you said, "religion should be a matter of choice, not of coercion. And the carrot and stick is counterproductive in that context"

Absolutely! Dead right. Anything I have ever had to do with religion was definitely a matter of my own free choice as a freethinking adult. I don't go near any outfit that tries to coerce me.

Since my parents made no effort to enroll me in any religion whatsoever, being atheists, I can assure you that I've been under no coercion at any time to join a religion. And if people are so foolish as to threaten me now with "hell" if I don't take up their specific beliefs, I avoid them. I don't judge them. I just avoid them.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:16 PM

""& a coffee bar in Soho ~~ Greek St, I think ~~ I used to meet my girlfriend Jackie there in 1957. Or maybe it was in The Strand. Ah me; my memory is not what it was ~~ how hellish!""

Heaven & Hell, Old COmpton St, Soho, two doors away from the 2 Is, and a short distance from Le Macabre in Wardour St, where you sat on hassacks around coffin shaped tables and stubbed your out Players Navy Cut in ceramic skull ashtrays.

Happy days Mike! Rock & Roll, Jazz, Skiffle and Classical music, all within a five minute walk.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:31 PM

I recall that Al Stewart mentioned Old Compton Street in one of his songs...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:34 PM

""What exactly is wrong with offering a person a carrot and a stick if it is done with a positive intent? We do it all the time with our own children when we're bringing them up.

What Don T. appears to be ojecting to is the very idea OF organized religion per se, rather than the concept of the carrot and the stick. ""

Where exactly did you get that idea from anything I have said LH.

I don't object to religion, organised or chaotic. I simply don't feel the need for it.

Like Kendall, I am a Deist. My communications with God are my own affair, private, and I have no neede of men in black frocks, Turbans, or skull caps to tell me how to reach him.

I have somewhat less than no interest in how other people communicate with him, providing only that they do not try to force their way on me, or teach children their beliefs as science.

I gave my reasons for ditching Catholicism without suggesting or implying that anybody else should follow my example.

I hope that is now abundantly clear!!

As to stick and carrot, there is nothing in the least wrong with a system which offers punishment and reward, and I don't believe that I implied otherwise.

I simply stated what heaven and hell amount to in real and simple terms.

Knowing how you feel about having your words misinterpreted, perhaps you might accord me the right to the same feelings.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:37 PM

Strip away all those religious connotations (I would, wouldn't I) and I actually think that heaven and hell are quite useful concepts for helping to define our lives on this planet. Seeing a simple linearity, though, doesn't wash. There's no scale of one to ten with hell=0 and heaven=10. You can have a heavenly orgasm and realise, two seconds later, that you foot is itching like crazy, or that you're on your last clean shirt. You can have a hellish day at the office and savour that sublime first draught of Talisker when you get home (which you had increasingly heavenly expectations of as the afternoon dragged on). You can be standing there freezing nearly to death at the bus stop and when the bus finally arrives the most beautiful woman you've ever seen is on it. You can hurry along worrying about what you'll have for lunch, or you can savour the feel of your feet on the ground, right there at the exact interface between the Earth and space. Stand outside and wish you'd cut that bloody tree back that is now shading your barbecue, or see it for what it really is, a true winner in the billions of years of evolution that produced it. You can indulge yourself with hellish dark thoughts but you can turn it round in a heartbeat and relish your good fortune in just being here. If you can do all that you're more fortunate than many, a heavenly thought in itself. Heavenly things and hellish things are all little vignettes that make up a great big kaleidoscope of life, and the one knocks the sparks off the other.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:53 PM

Okay, Don. That's interesting. Can you elaborate a bit on being a Deist?

I don't want intermediaries of any kind between me and God either...I think of everyone as an equal in that respect...but I don't go to a church or a religious setup in order to find those intermediaries or be dependent on them. I go in order to participate and connect with other people in a way that helps brighten up my life and encourages discussion and sharing of ideas.

What I find with spiritual study is this: it doesn't supply a set of pat answers or dogma or a set of rules...rather it encourages asking a lot more questions and considering all kinds of new possibilities.

I have no idea what heaven or hell might be like...assuming they are actually some kind of dimensional existence....or whether they are just symbolic of states of mind. But I do know what is heavenly...and what is hellish. That's pretty clear.

I do think that part of the spiritual journey has to do with relating to other people, so although, like you, I don't need the guy in the robe or skullcap to "get me to heaven", I do find much benefit in just being around people with similar spiritual interests and ideals.

It's more fun than hanging out with people I can't stand or have really little in common with. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 08:58 PM

Good post, Steve. I like the images you came up with.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 09:02 PM

""If, however, a religion offers you a way of getting together with other people you really like and with whom you share common values...if it offers you a way to build a better community and help the poor, for example...if it helps you to look deeper into ideas and philosophical viewpoints that you find inspiring, and finding greater inner peace...if it motivates you to be a better person and to treat other people in a kinder way...that's NOT a scam.""

I would agree that all of the above activities are very desirable, and in fact I believe that I have managed every single aspect of your outline, including helping others without one ounce of input from any religious organisation.

I even managed to raise about £4000 in one year (jointly with a friend) for the purpose of helping to prevent the collapse of a church spire, simply because the friend in question was a member of that church congregation.

I'm not saying that your comment is untrue, because it isn't!

I am simply pointing out that empathy and human feeling are not the exclusive property of the religious.

After all, in addition to the virtues you describe above, the world's three major religions (I don't count Buddhism in this), have been, are still, and probably always will be busily engaged in trying to slaughter one another by any means possible.

Go figure!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 09:12 PM

I can never get my head round this "spiritual journey" thang. I'm already here and I'm not going anywhere else. If there's a spiritual journey, then it's going to have me hitting the buffers in a big spluttering mess one day. I'll have spent far too much time plotting my spiritual route and wondering if I'm going in the right direction. I might even start to fret about the meaning of life or whether I'm getting my spiritual fill, heaven forfend. Life is and should be deliciously earthbound, with time for flights of imagination, lots of reverie, serious bouts of reflection and private musings and occasional bouts of transcendent joy, but mostly down 'ere in the rough and tumble. A big patchwork quilt.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 09:35 PM

""Okay, Don. That's interesting. Can you elaborate a bit on being a Deist?""

Yes LH, I think so.

I look around me at the wonders of what I can see of the Universe, and I find it difficult to believe that it was created purely randomly, or that it was created just for the inhabitants of one speck of matter in the vast spread of stars.

So OK, some entity unknown (call it God, for convenience) designed the whole shebang for a purpose unknown to any but itself.

Thus far I'm sort of tending toward starry Pete's POV!

BUT, nothing that I have seen, heard, or been taught has come close to convincing me that any religious organisation knows more than I do about that unknowable purpose.

Science, on the other hand, has convinced me of certain natural processes and scientific facts which are undeniable within the limits of current knowledge.

My conclusion?

Science has shown that there is no specific need for, or indication of, the entity in which I believe.

Nonetheless, there is no evidence that would suggest that this entity doesn't exist.

Until I see such evidence, I can continue to believe as I choose and if I am deluding mysellf it is by my own choice, not by a system set up to control my beliefs, which is how I see the Catholic Church based, I emphasise, upon physical experience.

What I cannot embrace is the denial of scientific knowledge (Young Earth Creationism), or the concept of the many times translated and re-interpreted bible as the literal and inerrant word of God.

I'm not sure that I have explained my position particularly well, but the bottom line is this.

I can talk to God when and where I choose without the trappings and fripperies, the rites and rituals, or the bias and prejudice of mortal men who know no more about him than I do.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 09:42 PM

unknowable purpose.

Why does there have to be a purpose, unknowable or not? Shed this incredibly human notion of the universe and you immediately make it far easier to see that the whole shebang does not need a supernatural being. Dammit, if the purpose of the universe is unknowable, the purpose of its alleged creator is infinitely more unknowable. I like to think we try to get nearer to answers, not further away.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Janie
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 09:48 PM

Like Rap, I think it likely that heaven and hell are pretty much whatever one imagines them to be and not destinations.

When my sister died, as I've shared elsewhere on Mudcat, I had the experience of feeling her presence flutter through my mind like the gentle wings of a butterfly accompanied by "thought insertion", i.e. I didn't hear her voice, I heard her thoughts express, "Janie, I don't know why I was so afraid. It's beautiful."

At the time and for some time afterward I contemplated that transcendent experience. Over time I have reached the personal conclusion the most likely explanation for that profound experience was a protective hallucination my unconscious devised to mitigate against the otherwise overwhelming emotional pain and devastating loss, and the intense existential angst when confronted with my powerlessness over her suffering and death - which intimated my powerlessness over my own death.


Was and is a transcendent experience for me. I could be wrong. Kaye, my grandparents, the roach I squooshed on the back porch, the chicken or cow whose body parts I ate earlier this week, or the red snapper, rock lobster, rabbit, deer, kale plant, potato, lettuce head I grew and dug up, or the "weeds", mold, mildew, powder post beetles, etc. I have killed or sanctioned the killing of either for my own sustenance or because I saw them as threats or inconveniences to my comfort and have perhaps done my best to exterminate over the years of my life might all be there to confront or embrace me in a sentient afterlife or reincarnation. I think it unlikely, but whatever....

That which has lived has died for eons, here and elsewhere in the universe. I am merely part and parcel of the universe. I see no evidence to suggest that being human is inherently any more special in the scheme of things than being a dinosaur, ant, lion, possum, bacteria or virus. Somehow, we all have a time to dance in the scheme of things, if there is a scheme of things.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 09:56 PM

""What I find with spiritual study is this: it doesn't supply a set of pat answers or dogma or a set of rules...rather it encourages asking a lot more questions and considering all kinds of new possibilities.""

You might have come away with a totally different set of experiences, had you been taught by the Jesuit brothers who ran the Catholic grammar school, where I suffered my secondary education.

Not only did they not encourage asking questions. They actively discouraged them with beatings and banishment from the class.

Why do newborn babes, who die unbaptised go to limbo, when they cannot possibly have sinned? Caned for that one until his arm was too tired to continue.

One example will suffice of what happened virtually every time I dared to open my mouth.

I spent most of the five years outside in the corridor during Religious Instruction (that is what it was called then, not Education) classes.

I'll never forget, the day the GCE "O" Level results came in and I, based on what I had learned in church and at primary school, had passed the exam.

To my dying day I'll never forget the look on that bastard's face. I thought he was going to choke to death before he had finished.

He told the head that I must have cheated, but the invigilator scotched that one.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 10:00 PM

""Why does there have to be a purpose, unknowable or not?""

You have your beliefs. Why not allow me mine?

Does belittling my viewpoint make yours feel more real?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 10:16 PM

Janie... thanks for sharing. Unlike others who have decided this thread should veer off into their own discussion(s).

To wit.... start yer own damn thread and stop fucking with this one. Thread drift is fine but when it just goes back to the same old shit it bugs the crap outta me. I thought that by stating such in the op, this thread would make it further than this without someone hijacking it by addressing a different topic that has already been to hell and back.... MANY times... on other threads.

Heaven and hell? Heaven in this case is having this thread STAY on the discussion! Fer FUCK SAKE! Seriously.... start yer own damn thread! It ain't rocket science. Read the title of the thread... read it again, if required. If you still don't understand what that means, well, how do I put this politely.... ahhh... I can't. So... fuck off with that shit eh!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 01:59 AM

Don ~~ Right, thank u: That's it: Old Compton. The one in the Strand, it comes back, was the Dantesque equivalent, Paradis e Inferno. I think that one is still there!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 02:08 AM

Paradiso

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 07:27 AM

Don't get all prickly with me, Don. I didn't say for one millisecond that you weren't allowed your beliefs, nor did I do any belittling. I simply proposed an alternative way of viewing the universe as one without a purpose imposed on it. As we have no evidence for a purpose (and a fair bit of evidence that the universe might one day end in a bit of a splutter - what price purpose then?), I'd say that it was a valid view. Just as unknowable as yours. My universe, innocent of purpose, doesn't require a God, that's all. That'll do me. Whatever stirs your loins in these realms of the unknowable, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 07:47 AM

""To wit.... start yer own damn thread and stop fucking with this one.""

I have a question for you Gnu. Have you ever sat down with a few friends and chewed the fat without the conversation veering off into side alleys and dead ends?

Or do you scream and swear at your friends if they dare not to stick to your chosen subject, as you do here?

If you do that, I don't imagine you have many friends left.

LH asked me a direct question, which led off at a tangent and caused a degree of drift in which others got involved.

I'm not about to apologise for giving a courteous reply to a fellow member, with whom, incidentally, I often disagree.

I had, in any case, said all that I had worth saying in direct response to your OP, so I'll bugger off now and you can continue fulminating to yur heart's content.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 09:19 AM

Sartre was right.☝

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 09:30 AM

Ah, but which other people, Bill? That is surely the vital point...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 09:34 AM

My "Religion" is based on the code of Hammurabi. the golden rule.

I am not a sheep, and I don't need a Shepard.

If YOU do, that's your problem.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 09:48 AM

As in The Wizard Of Id ~

"Remember the Golden Rule."

"What is the Golden Rule?"

"The man who has the Gold makes the Rule."

??

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: kendall
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 10:56 AM

thread creep

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 11:39 AM

The "carrot and the stick" is what rules religions. The assumption is made that somehow mankind is bad and must be tamed like a wild beast.

God is an autocratic parent who will spank you if you misbehave. No wonder so much religion is infused with physical violence.

"Heaven and Hell" are folkloric fabrications used to control behavior.

"If you don't behave, the Bogeyman will get you."

Anyone who actually believes there is a Heaven and a Hell is deluded.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 01:58 PM

From: kendall - PM
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 10:56 AM
thread creep
.,,.
Well, dearie-weary me. There's a new one ~~ something never ever ever ever ever been known on Mudcat before. Well well well well we can't have that, can we now!

☺〠☺~M~☺〠☺

Teeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 02:53 PM

I believe there is a fundamental underlying unity to the universe. I also believe that death of the human body does not equal death of consciousness. I believe there is an "afterlife" of some sort. I further believe that our "adjustment" from human consciousness to the universal consciousness which comes after death is colored by the manner in which we have lived our human lives. A human consciousness which is in reasonable accord with universal consciousness will be easily absorbed into the universal. That's Heaven. A human consciousness which is far out of accord with universal consciousness will both reject and be rejected by the universal. That's Hell. It's the difference between diving into a cool lake and driving into a brick wall.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,jts
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 03:06 PM

Gnu, I'd like to answer your question, but it is a bit too broad for me to answer without writing a tome. I believe that the reality of such things are based on point of view. I don't have the space or the time to answer your question in relation even to the points of view I am familiar with. Certainty a 74 year old Christian on his deathbed might see the concepts differently than a 17 year old entering a bus wearing a ball bearing bomb or a 33 year old Jewish Holy Man hanging from a Roman Cross.

I think everyone on this thread had equally valid things to say about Heaven and Hell, though Steve Shaw seems to have confused the concept of Heaven with that of pleasure and Hell with mild discomfort. But if you wanted his beliefs about those things you got it poetically and in spades. Steve seems to be a person who has intense feelings about mundane things and seems happy with that range of emotional experience. I see nothing wrong with that.

On the other hand I did have a "spiritual journey" that had me choose between religion and suicide. A friend of mine in the UK made the other choice. I do not know if he is in Hell now. But he surely was tormented by demons, so terrible I could barely imagine them, before he was found hanging in that closet in that hotel room in Scotland.

How much is Dante or any of our depictions of Hell metaphor for guilt, loneliness, terror or other mental torment? Maybe "Heaven" is simply relief for that, or simply, love, hope and clear thoughts. Is the real Heaven we are working for just all of us in a room with our brains constantly pumping endorphins? Is Hell a similar room where our brains experience nothing but fear and adrenaline? Certainly when we contemplate Heaven and Hell, thinking of how a society which did not have the psychological vocabulary we have today may have seen mental health is worth considering.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: olddude
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 03:09 PM

For me Joe nailed it ... The oneness with the creator ... Heaven.
Hell is the lack of it .. not fire not brimstone but the loss of that oneness with God

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 03:16 PM

Yes Joe/Dan... That is the whole basis of the Heaven and hell belief..... We all make choices in life to live one way or another and I personally believe that oneness with God is not ultimately achievable on earth.. but finding out how to get to Heaven to experience it is a goal worth striving for.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: kendall
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 03:19 PM

Mthe GM, I'll do the jokes. Mine are newer.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 04:11 PM

Heels together! Up to attention! Salute!

Yes, Mr Kendall, Sir! Of course, Mr Kendall, Sir! Three bags full & a tiger, Mr Kendall ~~~ SIR!!!!

teeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 04:21 PM

"Heaven and Hell" are what is known as Manichaean: from dictionary • of or characterized by dualistic contrast or conflict between opposites.

This is endemic of religious discussions that deal with absolutes, and extremes.
It's always "either/or" with no room for degrees. No Christian wants to go to half Heaven or avoid half Hell.

There is no realistic scientific basis to establish these imaginary places.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 05:29 PM

Have not read this thread again since I last posted because I am trying Charlie Sheen's anger management technique of LEAVING THE THREAD.

I had a PM from a buddy and, paraphrasing my response...

"I disagree. (DELETED). Unfortunately, (DELETED) of whatever the fuck they felt like and that REALLY pissed me off. The thread is about the OP. Thread drift is fine but taking THIS thread totally of the OP and down the road to hell is unacceptable to me. I haven't been even able to bring myself to reopen that thread but I suppose I had better do so and set the record straight."

So I'll just say... Kendall's post was simply a statement... innocuous... an observation. Fine. And, thread drift is WELCOME... it's brainstorming, really, and I LOVE it. But taking over the thread and running it where it never should go when there are MANY other threads on such or =anyone so inclined can OP their own? Fuck off!

I shall now read from where I left off. Maybe.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 05:50 PM

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T - PM
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 07:47 AM

Jump to your own conclusions and ignore mine if you want. What happened is NOT just veering off (thread drift)... it's FAR MORE than that and it is RUDE!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 06:06 PM

Right... it's time for me to explain my "view". But, I shall first have to write it out. Even tho it's rather simple, I want to get the words down properly to convey the meaning so that NObody decides I am an asshole for expressing it and simply speaks to my concept, pro or con... if THAT is possible.

See yas when I see yas.

Oh... as for swearing at my friends... you bet I do when they fuck up that badly after being asked, politely, NOT TO DO SO in the first place. But, MY friends usually apologize. If they choose not to be my friends in future, their loss. Of course, even if they don't apologize, I still condsider THEM a friend of MINE. I AM a GNU! and ya just can't change a gnu's horns sayeth the leopard.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 06:43 PM

Very good post there, Jack (the Sailor).

It was back at 19 Mar 13 - 03:06 PM   Anyway, well said.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 06:56 PM

Yes, LH. JtS' posts are consistently consistent in logic, forethought and imsight. Whot else would ye expect from a Newf?

Besides a wink and a nod and a laugh? >;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: kendall
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 07:19 PM

Gnu, I'd like to hear what you think.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,jts
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 08:37 PM

thanks lh,

Gnu

I am curious to know your thoughts as well.

I would love to know the thought process behind this can of worms. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 08:59 PM

Can of worms will be opened soon as I beat on Micro$oft and get my account to allow me access to MS Office that I paid for and loaded on Sunday! Those bastards will surely burn in Hell!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 09:29 PM

First stab... let me know if it is fleshed out enough to get my basic meaning across. I didn't wanna be too verbose. I excluded a paragraph that I thought was comical about the Cat'lic religion and my take on that because I figured someone would accuse me of more than thread drift for making a simple joke....

I believe in "heaven and hell" as a concept and it need not be associated with religion.

When you die, you don't necessarily "go" to heaven or hell. But, you WILL spend eternity in either, based on the concept of my interpretation of a very simple postulate of mine that may apply to all humans, including even ******** (sorry, couldn't resist that one).

At the very moment of death you have made that choice of heaven or hell… you made it by the way you lived your life and the things you have/have not done… your choices.

As you are dying, you will be judged. You will be judged by you. If you have done "the right things", you will have no regrets. Your conscience will be clear. You be ready to "enter heaven". That is, die with a clear conscience and you will be at peace. If you have done "the wrong things" ("sinned" against "yourself" (God), YOUR God, or others, you will have regrets that CANNOT be undone or atoned for upon your deathbed. That surely must be "hell" and, at that point, you cannot make it right in any way, shape or form. If you are in that "hell" at the moment that you die, that is where you will spend eternity… in hell.

So… that's what I think. It's a quick go at it and it's rough around the edges but I think it's a start to try to explain what I actually feel… think… heaven and hell truly is… regardless of religion. It ain't about religion. It's about "What is Heaven and Hell?"

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 10:05 PM

Pretty good, gnu. I think I agree with a lot of that. Yes, I do think we judge ourselves in the end, according to what we did (or didn't do), and we very well may be inclined to punish ourselves accordingly...and also be glad about the good we did. Most of us have to face a mixture of bad and good that we did, after all.

I also think, though, that we are all connected to a source much greater than ourselves, one which loves us beyond measure, no matter what we've done...just as a parent loves a young child.

But when death comes...we can choose to run away from it in fear if we want to...and if so, that's hell.

Or we can choose to forgive ourselves and others, willingly surrender to that great love from which we came...and that's heaven.

And there are probably many different versions of both heaven and hell, depending on how your individual consciousness works.

And I don't think "punishment" is eternal. I think even the most unforgiving and cruel person IS capable of finally waking up at some point, forgiving himself and others, and thereby redeeming himself...just as soon as he gets fed up with the pain of not doing so.

Not saying I know.   I just think it may be kind of like that.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 19 Mar 13 - 10:57 PM

LH.... "Or we can choose to forgive ourselves..."

Nope. We cannot. That is truly the hell of which I speak. We cannot forgive ourselves... it is not within our power. THAT is why we have to make changes NOW... to live our lives making the "good choices" because we cannot get an "undo" at the end, Even Bill Gates can't get the "undo" to work at that point. CTRL+Z just don't work!

Okay... against my better judgement, I will add the paragraph I didn't add previously... and I hope nobody takes this as an invitation to start a religion discussion even tho it's kinda... oh, whatever.... PLEASE???? I think my request will come clear after youse read it. I SURE hope so...

Ask for forgiveness at the time of death? Well, yeah, in the Cat'lic religion, you can be granted that absolution by simply crossing yourself and saying the magic words (if you don't know what they are, convert! Hehehehe.) but any good Cat'lic knows that really ain't worth shit on accounta you KNOW the difference and so does HE if you believe in an actual "He". Yes, many good Cat'lics don't believe in "He" but believe in the good that the Cat'lic religion can do and that all religions can do. CAN DO. (BTW... Cat'lics got that there crossing thing, eh? It's like "direct dialing"... straight line thru to the Big Guy - no answering machine, no "How may we dirct your call?", no "Yer call may be recorded for...", no nothin. Not even, "If you are a Protestant, please try your call again later.")

I might go to hell for that, but I will probably absolve myself... I already have... it's a joke and MY God likes levity so I am good to go.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 02:15 AM

"...you made it by the way you lived your life and the things you have/have not done… your choices."

Well, I don't know about other people but when you postulate having no regrets and that we are judged by the way we have lived our lives and have and have not done- all I can say is that I have MANY regrets- and sometimes in the darkest hour of the night they keep me awake. I have not killed anyone, I have never been arrested- but I HAVE hurt many people intentionally and not. As I said, I have many regrets. If other people have not, well, bully for you.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: kendall
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 06:26 AM

This is hard for me to get my head around because I don't believe in either.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 06:29 AM

I get the 100.
Heaven!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 07:10 AM

Hotel California? Could be either......

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 08:32 AM

I think everyone on this thread had equally valid things to say about Heaven and Hell, though Steve Shaw seems to have confused the concept of Heaven with that of pleasure and Hell with mild discomfort. But if you wanted his beliefs about those things you got it poetically and in spades. Steve seems to be a person who has intense feelings about mundane things and seems happy with that range of emotional experience. I see nothing wrong with that.

Well this works only if you are so rigid in your own concept of heaven and hell that you can only operate by trying to align alternative views with your own, finding they don't fit, then firing imperialist barbs. My starting point, as an atheist and adherent of evolution, is that I am here because I'm one of the rarest phenomena in the universe, an evolutionary winner. The chances of my existence at all, bearing in mind the billions of other sperms, the thousands of other eggs, the myriad possible combinations thereof, the multiplication of those numbers generation after generation and the sheer scale of death, disease, predation and destruction in the struggle for existence, are as near to zero as you can get without it actually being zero. If I take pleasure in the mundane (which you are confusing with my thanking my lucky stars for being here at all and my desire to make the most of it), then I feel sorry for you if you think that there are "mundane" things in creation or in human endeavour and imagination. I'm glad you like the poetry.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 09:18 AM

Don't forget, Steve, Shane McBride thinks of himself as an evolutionary winner too! ;-D

(That's a joke, mate.)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 09:21 AM

The poetry of the situation so well postulated there by Steve will be found also in Aldous Huxley's

"A million million spermatozoa,
All of them alive:
Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah
Dare hope to survive.
And among that billion minus one
Might have chanced to be
Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne -
But the One was Me."

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,jts
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 10:20 AM

Of course I take pleasure in the mundane.
and I derive sadness from pain
But do I have to explain
its just chemical reactions in my animal brain.

When your eggs start to smell
that isn't hell
when you bread leavens
It is not heaven

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Amos
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 12:07 PM

I am impressed with the frankness of much of this thread.

But I am puzzled by the strong assertion that forgiving oneself is not possible. In my lexicon, all the priests and totems in the Universe cannot fully execute forgivenerss until one has forgiven oneself; and conversely if one does so honestly, no jujus are necessary to the process. But genuine honesty with self is.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 12:16 PM

With my 130+ hours of classes in Philosophy dangling 'round my neck like an albatross, I read phrases like "spend eternity" with pedantic fervor.

If one means literally "spend eternity" as a consciousness, then I can only shrug, as I have no sense that my current consciousness extends past my moment of death, so I can treat Heaven & Hell only as linguistic concepts. When I reach the moment of my death (assuming I am aware) I may indeed 'reflect' on my life,: as gnu says "As you are dying, you will be judged. You will be judged by you."
However, I doubt that I must wait until that final moment to have an opinion of how I have conducted my life. At my age, I have thousands of data points to give me a sense of the balance between Heavenish & Hellish parts of my life. I don't feel like I'm close to the end,(who knows?) so I always am able to *choose* stuff that makes me more content with my efforts.
   I guess I feel like even using the terms Heaven & Hell is falling into a linguistic trap that distorts my own attitude toward life & death.

............but you asked. (27 more paragraphs redacted, thus reducing the total blather I could inflict on everyone here. I feel better already.)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 12:27 PM

To Aldous Huxley and Steve Shaw:

Had you not been born, there would be another born with your consciousness so that would still be you.

Got it? :)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 01:20 PM

Ah, Ebbie... we must discuss that sometime... *grin*

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,JTS
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 01:23 PM

Is consciousness hormones and electrical impulses buzzing around in the meat computers we call our brains or is it more?

Do we have souls?

Is there something after death.

Gnu's description makes me think of our souls as binary switches having only two possible values, "self-forgiven" & "Not self-forgiven" I can see that the inability to change these values once you are dead makes them "eternal" ie, not changable from that point on. Also Bill makes a good point that, you have time to influence these values up until the time that you die. He implies that if you want a certain value when you die, you are best advised to work on it now and that implies that the whether or not you are forgiven by yourself depends entirely on you. Forgive me if I have read to much into your statements Bill but I am trying you reconcile your logic with Gnu's.

Christianity in virtually every form says that we can gain forgiveness for ourselves for all of our transgressions at any moment in our lives, including the last moment, by accepting Christ as our savior. Gnu says we judge ourselves. I think that is very consistent with Christian thought. For the trick is not to simply accept Christ's forgiveness, but to do so wholeheartedly, and most importantly in light of Gnu's philosophy, sincerely.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 01:23 PM

The fact that no one can produce evidence that there is no god is still a logical fallacy, you can't prove a negative. With this logic, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the floating teapot in the sky exists because there's no proof that they don't.

There's no proof that what you perceive is just a dream and not reality.

Scientific proof is the only means to verify reality. Anything else is simply delusion.

Had you not been born, there would be no other with exactly the same brain, therefore no "you", as consciousness emanates from the brain. I get that.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,JTS
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 01:27 PM

Bill, Since you have no belief in "Heaven and Hell" as Gnu sees it, it must be very difficult maybe impossible for you to describe it. Thank you for trying and for injecting some interesting logic into the discussion.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,JTS
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 01:37 PM

"Do you know what heaven and hell are? What are they?

I would really like to know if anybody actually knows the concept of Heaven & Hell and would care to share their views in a mannerly way."

Above is the topic of discussion of the thread. Stringsinger, is it reasonable to say that you believe and are saying that in your opinion "Heaven and Hell" are "delusions" or have you been drawn off topic.

If you are simply addressing Ebbie's point please consider the ":)" and think about whether she wanted it to be taken seriously.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 02:03 PM

Blake had an interesting conception of heaven and hell. From The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell:

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,
Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.
Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing
from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

Whilst on Blake, how about this for refutation that there is such a dismal concept as "the mundane":

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour"

I like this a lot, though in other ways Blake could get a bit mystical for my taste. I wonder whether he thought he was, or whether that's just the way we've come to see him. I thing the most extraordinary thing about the world around us is the sheer, wonderful ordinariness of it all, the utter normality. There's plenty enough to revel in. I don't want some extra mysterious sheen on it all that I can never quite reach. I just don't think that's the way things are. The mysteries of the downright ordinary stuff will do me. I think "the mundane" can only be the invention of tired minds.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 02:37 PM

Ah the Mudcat! Thank you catters! Helluva long thread, but with some heavenly bits. Don't usually have the patience for longer threads, but I wanted to thank you folk. Now I'm off to work on a musical setting for William Blake's The Proverbs of Hell from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
keep on pickin'
dennis

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 02:46 PM

Jack said, "the trick is not to simply accept Christ's forgiveness, but to do so wholeheartedly, and most importantly in light of Gnu's philosophy, sincerely."

EXACTLY!!!

Just to utter a few rote words according to accepted ceremony or tradition means little or nothing. You have to mean it deeply, sincerely, with the full committment of your mind, your heart, your soul, and your whole strength. That takes some considerable thought and hard work...and it usually takes some time to accomplish. It might take weeks, months or years. It isn't just a question of saying in a few short seconds "I accept Jesus Christ as my personal saviour" and then imagining that you are home free from that moment on.

You might fool someone else, you might even fool yourself, but you sure won't fool that which can save you.

string - I don't think consciousness emanates FROM the brain. Not at all. I think it was there before the brain and uses the brain as a receiver. I think it passes THROUGH the brain which serves as an excellent transmittor/receiver (just like a radio receiving a program and transmitting it). The brain is then used to direct that consciousness throughout the rest of the body, via the nervous system. I think consciousness existed long before the body in question, that it helped build the body cell by cell right from the moment of conception, that it maintains the body as long as the body is still alive, and that it survives the body and departs from it when the body dies...and that it continues on to do a great deal more very creative work long after that.

I expect you won't agree with that, because there's no physical proof (for or against what I said). Fine. No problem. We are each expressing whatever we think about the subject, and it's okay if we disagree.

I only demand physical proof of things which are susceptible TO physical proof, and what we're talking about here (heaven, hell, afterlife, soul, etc) is not and cannot be...because it's not anything definable in physical terms. It's not among a list of identifiable physical or energetic items or phenomena in this observable Universe, therefore it can't be examined, proven, or disproven in a physical way...by machinery...through a microscope...in a test tube...etc.

And neither can my love for whatever or whomever I love....but my love is real. And so are a number of other extremely valuable forces/principles/factors in life which no one can ever prove through any measurable phenomena. They are subjective matters, not objective things. They are not found in any outer phenomena, but are experienced inside the human heart, and they are only experienced through our consciousness.

That is what the spiritual search is about: Consciousness. Governance of consciousness. Raising of consciousness. Improving one's consciousness. Turning from hate and fear to love.   Purificatation of consciousness. It is in no way opposed to science, but cooperates fully with science in any situation where science can usefully be applied. No serious spiritual student I've ever known was opposed in any way to science or to the scientific method. I've always believed in science without question. That's what they call a no-brainer. ;-) It's totally obvious that science is a good and useful discipline. I only came to believe in spirituality later, when I realized there was a bunch of other really important stuff in life that science couldn't help me with at all, because science simply has no means of effectively dealing with it. You cannot grasp a moral ideal in a pair of plyers or look at it under a microscope...but without a coherent, loving, and wise set of moral ideals as your foundation for action, you are nothing much more than a dangerous animal.

And we all probably pass people like that on the street every day. What do they believe in? They believe in themselves. Maybe they beieve in money too. Or possessions. They believe in winning. Survival of the fittest. They're "looking out for number 1". And that may be all they care about...because it's all they have yet consented to understand. I call that the equivalent of "walking around dead"...but to them they're just playing what they think is the only game in town. Real love doesn't even exist in that game.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 02:47 PM

hey Steve! I had not refreshed, so you were referencing Blake before me ... nother cool thing about the Cafe ...
I was thinking of Huxley after he was cited ... thread drift is inevitable and xcusable, but I've appreciated a great many of your contributions...
pickin' and grinnin'
dennis

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: frogprince
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 02:47 PM

"Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing
from Energy." Sorry, Mr.Blake, but that part just looks to me like oddball notion, if not just mumbo jumbo. Does anyone else see worthwhile meaning there?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 03:19 PM

I don't think Blake has expressed it very well.

I'd say that Good is the impulse to love life and to love others, and that Evil is the direct result of a fear-driven impulse to simply grab whatever you can get, because you regard everyone and everything else as either a threat...or an opportunity. And...it's the result of thinking that you're "number one" and that everybody else is, like I said, either a desirable opportunity or a competitive threat.

The latter attitude of "looking out for number one" is so common and so institutionalized in this world by governments, schools, and big business that it pretty much dominates most of society, restricted only by people's fear of what their society may do to them...if they take it too far by breaking the civil laws.

Short of that, they are mostly encouraged (specially by the world of commercial advertising) to be self-centred, greedy, acquisitive, vain, insecure, jealous, competitive, and heavily addicted to one thing or another. It all makes money for someone if they are.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,JTS
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 03:32 PM

"Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing
from Energy."

Unless Blake means that "Evil is entropy and good is using reason and effort to postpone it," and there is a case to be made for for that point of view. I haven't a clue either frogprince. And with that I am grasping at metaphoric straws.

I do get the part about Heaven and Hell being necessary opposites though.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 03:48 PM

Good is "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
Evil is failing to do onto others as they would do onto you.

This covers every moral issue except the Commandments about loving God. Make God your neighbor, make the world your neighbor for the purposes of these instructions and every sin or act or emotion possible is covered.

The beauty is not that you don't have to know what is ultimately good or bad for others, just that you filter their point of view through yours.

Would you want your neighbor to pollute the stream going through your property? No? Then don't do it to them. Would you want your son sent to an unjust war? Would you want your property stolen? Etc.. etc..

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 04:11 PM

Well, I suppose I ask for it when I quote bleeding chunks of Blake. I think it would be good, before having a go at the poor chap for not expressing himself very well, to look deeper at the two references in that post of mine. It'll be one of your more enjoyable googles, I promise. I actually think he's rather good at expressing ideas, getting to the heart of things. Poetry without hard labour, art concealing art. He's a free spirit who can be exasperating. He's almost an exact contemporary of Beethoven, my favourite free spirit of all (er, along with Darwin...), who could also be exasperating. That's free spirits for you.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 04:14 PM

Good is "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
Evil is failing to do onto others as they would do onto you.

This covers every moral issue except the Commandments about loving God. Make God your neighbor, make the world your neighbor for the purposes of these instructions and every sin or act or emotion possible is covered.

Ah, I see that you really do dig the concept of the mundane!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 04:38 PM

Yes mundane. Mundane the way E=MC2 is mundane.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 04:54 PM

You're absolutely right in what you say, Jack. Love God. Love one another. Act accordingly. There's nothing mundane about the Golden Rule. It's a very simple concept, yes...but that doesn't mean that the average ego doesn't find it pretty challenging at times...since the average ego seems to prefer to "look out for number one" most of the time.

What really horrifies me is the self-serving Neocon philosophical viewpoints in vogue with accolytes of Ayn Rand who attempt to argue things like: selfishness is a "good thing", and that being rich is clear evidence that one is a superior person favored by God! I am reminded of Scribes, Pharisees, and Robber Barons of the past when I hear that kind of stuff...the privileged and merciless few trying to claim that they are God's Chosen, while the only thing they really give a damn about is lining their own pockets and living high at the rest of society's expense.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 05:16 PM

frogprince: Blake's Proverbs of Hell, which I have been grappling with for well over four decades, is packed with the seemingly trivial ["mundane"] and the "oddball wacky" bits one encounters in his writing, but overwhelmingly with quite profound ones--all of which must be taken as "infernal wisdom". Easily misconstrued or misunderstood out of context, Blake is a tough enough nut to crack within his context. I'll leave you with this one, probably my favourite:

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

keep on pickin'
dennis

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 05:21 PM

That is well said. I suspect that Blake, like anyone else, needs to be read in context in order to really appreciate what he has to say.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 06:18 PM

"The most sublime act is to set another before you."

With fava beans an a nice Chianti?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: frogprince
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 06:26 PM

I really had no intention to either hassle Steve for quoting Blake, or to slam dunk Blake. Just looked at those two little sentences and scratched my head. This is a really good thread for inducing some worthwhile head-spinning.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 06:35 PM

FP, I agree that the Bake quotes are an interesting topic. I am not so certain that they belong on Gnu's thread in so much as they only address the topic from a tangent. I think I may read about Blake. I guess I will start with Wiki.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 06:59 PM

Good to see you feeling uncomfortable, Jacko. Whatever else you discover in your Blake studies, I guarantee you won't find the mundane.

Good man yerself, Dr Word! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 07:22 PM

To Aldous Huxley and Steve Shaw:

Had you not been born, there would be another born with your consciousness so that would still be you.

Got it? :)

That's a delicious thought, and, a bit like when we're contemplating the after-death, we'll simply never know. I like it that there are things I'll never know, mainly because it's probably a good job that I'll never know them. If I die an atheist and there really is no God, if I could know it I'd be chuffed, but I never will know, which could be construed as faintly annoying. If I die a Christian and there's a God, I'm on a winner (as long as I've been good, of course). If I die a Christian and there's no God, well I'm not really a loser because I'm on the same footing as that atheist (though he might have led a more free and easy life, I suppose...), and anyway I won't know much about it. The only loser is the atheist who dies and finds out there really is a God. Bejaysus, he'd be at the mercy of the Almighty then all right! How bloody fair is that lot!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 07:35 PM

Wow... I go to my shop for a few hours, and lots more to think about!

Thanks for the nice words, Jack... and you're right, it is hard to address a concept that I think is largely linguistic. It is relevant to think it thru though, because it is such a pervasive idea in religious history.
I do feel that your attempt to reconcile my thoughts with gnu's is pretty close. I'm not sure, however, that "forgiving one's self" is entirely a workable notion. One can 'let go' of personal regrets and ... um... 'stop beating yourself up'... but forgiveness of the self would be kinda phenomenologically awkward, rather like monitoring one's own motives to see if they are honest. There are just some things that are something between circular and tautological.
This does no invalidate what gnu is trying to get at... I just prefer different terms.

As to "mundane" ideas as expressed in poetry by Blake or Golden Rules or other well-worn imagery: one of my favorite quotes about Philosophy is: (paraphrased, as I have lost the exact original).."One of the important values of Philosophy is rescuing admitted truths from the neglect caused by their universal acceptance."

Is it appropriate to investigate our attitudes about Heaven & Hell?

Well, it became a relevant thing for me when I was in 6th-7th grade.

I was member, for 2 years or so, of Boy Scout Troop 448 in Wichita, Kans.."Bill Coulson's Eagle Mill"...if you weren't seriously heading for Eagle, Mr. Coulson kinda looked down on you. And the religious bit soon became obvious...we were singing one night before the full meeting started..."I Ain't Gonna Grieve My Lord No More" (Oh, you can't get to Heaven in...etc.) and someone did the verse, "If I get to Heaven before you do, I'll plug that hole, and to hell with you"...and Coulson came storming out of his office telling us that verse was NOT appropriate, "I don't want boys in MY troop sitting around singing about Hell!"

It was fine to sing about how to get to Heaven...but..
That was one of my first times to wonder just what words were really about.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 07:45 PM

Oh.. and Steve's musing about winners & losers is really the crux of the argument in Pascal's Wager, where he decides that believing is really a pragmatic bet... can't hurt to go along- it all 'might' be true. Of course, there are far more logical possibilities than ol' Pascal let on. (As Walter Kaufmann put it, "God might save a special place in Hell for those who go to Mass.")

Anyway, many times in these threads I have complained that it ain't fair.... if I am right about no afterlife, I don't even get to say
"I told you so!"

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 07:51 PM

I suppose my idea of heaven, is more-or-less akin to the Wikipedia definition of Nirvana. And I do think we can at least occasionally touch heaven during our lifetimes.
I'll bet most of us "of an age" have been affected by the popularity of eastern religions during our formative years - and I think that's a good thing.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 08:13 PM

I think that a poet, or anyone else, who cajoles you into contemplating your innermost self by considering a wild flower, or a grain of sand, is warning you (whilst cuddling you) that the world of creation has no room for the mundane. We are not here to condemn "ordinary" things as mundane things. To me, "ordinary" is a beautiful word. Pick up a grey stone and feel its weight, its warmth on your skin, its silky hardness; stroke it with your thumb to feel its texture; turn it over to see how its colour responds to the glinting sunlight and contemplate its millions of years gone. All the better if it isn't a spectacular, glittering diamond. In the words of Bob Dylan (or was it Carly Simon), you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. Or 'til you've gone. Which makes stuff urgent.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 08:23 PM

Oh.. and Steve's musing about winners & losers is really the crux of the argument in Pascal's Wager, where he decides that believing is really a pragmatic bet... can't hurt to go along- it all 'might' be true.

Well not really. In my context, pragmatic is a bit of a dirty word. I don't do insurance. What I've come up with for the way I live my life, inside and outside my head, is my best shot. End of. No gnawing away, worried in case I should do a back-up 'cause, well, let's face it, it can't hurt... Paradoxically, or maybe not (you tell me), I think we atheists trust in God more than any believer does. As long as I'm a good bloke (which will never be defined by any religious notions of morality), God will ultimately look after me, I reckon. Cor, that might annoy a good few believers as we queue up at the pearly gates...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 08:52 PM

"(27 more paragraphs redacted, thus reducing the total blather I could inflict on everyone here. I feel better already.)" Hahahaa!

LH aand others... great insight and comments. This is the discussion I had SOOOO hoped for. It's reasonable and not a... you know.

I am still upset that Don fucked off in a huff but, after the third time my last two threads were screwed over, I just lost it and went Wildebeeste. Anyone that is truly surprised at my reaction either don't know my 10 year+ history here or (deleted).

LH sent me a PM and, damn if George didn't trump me, yet again! I said ya can't forgive yourself. Ya can, according ta LH and he is right (I wish he would post his PM - it's GOOD) EXCEPT that I still believe ya can't do it on yer death bed NO MATTER how sincere you are about your repenting on accounta it's too late to let those you have trespassed against know that you are truly sorry for screwing them over.

Now... that is a bit technical, but I kinda think we both might have a point worthy of consideration, LH?

AHEM! When I said one can get absolution as a Cat'lic... true absolution done near death with a priest in the Cat'lic religion... I am not qualified to explain TRUE absolution at death but it was explained to me by my grandfather... it is VERY involved. Short story... one confesses to the Father and he takes it where it needs to go. In other words, you cannot forgive yourself if those you have trespassed against are not informed that you are truly repentant for those trespasses. Father is the intermediary. You must confess to him so that he can seek forgiveness from those you have trespassed against on your behalf on accounta yer gonna croak.

All the more reason to not swear at your frinds when they treat you like shit and fuck up yer threads after you asked the specifically not to fuckin do that for the third god damned time in just two threads.

I forgive youse. >;- Do you forgive me for going Wildebeeste? If not, go to hell.

>;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 08:55 PM

I'm not saying that you and Pascal viewed it all in the same way... just that Pascal made the idea of variable options famous. Pascal thought thought it was all a very important point and was one justification for being a 'good believer'. I have no doubt you'd never go that way.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 09:40 PM

LOL! Funny last line there, gnu. I might post that PM. I'll think about it.

Steve - one thing it is definitely NOT about is winning or losing. That's immaterial. If there is life after death, we'll find out when we die. If there isn't, we won't. If there is, I don't think God will punish you for being an atheist, because I wouldn't...and I am a bit less merciful than God! I don't love you as much as God does. ;-D He/She loves you regardless of your beliefs, in my opinion, and can easily forgive someone for not knowing or believing something.

Punishment is something humans do a great deal to each other, they're vengeful creatures, but I don't think God does.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 09:50 PM

Oh, interesting distinction about the deathbed forgiveness thing, gnu. It does sound a bit impractical to wait till the last minute t try and deal with everything. I think the time to start working on forgiveness is now, not at the last minute....so you've got a good point there.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 10:15 PM

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

IMHO as a Christian, if you want to be forgiven, all you have to do is forgive.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 10:22 PM

Steve - one thing it is definitely NOT about is winning or losing. That's immaterial. If there is life after death, we'll find out when we die. If there isn't, we won't. If there is, I don't think God will punish you for being an atheist, because I wouldn't...and I am a bit less merciful than God! I don't love you as much as God does. ;-D He/She loves you regardless of your beliefs, in my opinion, and can easily forgive someone for not knowing or believing something.

Well that's very nice (in a buttock-clenching way, seen from a certain angle...), but the thing is, I wasn't trying to be that serious. More stupidly whimsical, really. As I'm at point 6.9 on Dawkins's scale of non-belief (same as him: his scale goes from 0 to 7), I'll just plough me furrow and not worry too much about God's love/mercy/vengeance. If I get to the pearly gates as an atheist who's led a reasonably decent life, and God decides to go all shitty on me, I shall regard that as fully his problem.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 10:56 PM

If you, Steve, get to the pearly gates, and you will (conceptually speaking) as an atheist who's led a reasonably decent life, yer in like Flynn.

Screw the religion part... it's just about being a good person. That is the whole reason I started this thread... and it's the same reason I started the last thread. TO DISCUSS. That thread went south fast and, when I attempted to focus it it slightly differently in hopes it would provide serious discussion and insight into a reasonable postulate for thought, that lasted about fuck all posts. I think it is still on the board. People emoting and hamming and whatever... sad shit that they get their non/religion in the way of being nice or discussing what's on the table. But, such is the www.

BTW... I wanna thank everyone who posted to this thread and kept within the OP and those that provided meaningful thread drift. Means a lot to me, as I am sure youse can discern from my posts. Read nthing more into that than what I said.

Don... I ain't such a bad guy. I am just a gnu/Wildebeeste.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 13 - 11:41 PM

Jack, I think you're right. But you do have to really mean it, IMO, and people don't always really mean it. I don't think just mouthing the words each time one says the Lord's Prayer will necessarily do the trick...providing one doesn't really mean it. It takes quite a bit of focus.

I try to be forgiving, and I keep trying, and mostly I succeed...but I have a little trouble forgiving myself, first of all, both for stuff I did and didn't do, and one or two other people I was very much involved with in this life. Oh...I try. And I keep trying. And I make progress on it a step at a time.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 12:02 AM

" I don't think just mouthing the words each time one says the Lord's Prayer will necessarily do the trick."

Obviously not. You do have to mean it, every word, and you have to follow the instructions.


I think that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" sums it up. You and make a deal with yourself to do what it takes to get and stay rich and try to repent on your deathbed. You are not likely to succeed.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: michaelr
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 12:36 AM

"If I get to the pearly gates as an atheist who's led a reasonably decent life, and God decides to go all shitty on me, I shall regard that as fully his problem."

Brilliant! Priceless! With you all the way!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 12:45 AM

God doesn't have problems, michael. People have problems. So, if it wasn't a problem for Steve, then it wouldn't be a problem for anyone.

What I mean is...an ant can't cause a problem for whatever brought forth the entire Universe (Big Bang theory?). You follow? An ant can only cause a problem for himself...or a few other ants...or another bug...or maybe for you at a picnic, but certainly not for the source of the Big Bang, nosirree.

***

Yessir, Jack. I think you're right.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: michaelr
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 01:14 AM

Sorry - am I in the wrong thread? I thoughtg I was quoting, and seconding, LH.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 07:22 AM

If you, Steve, get to the pearly gates, and you will (conceptually speaking) as an atheist who's led a reasonably decent life, yer in like Flynn.

Not if I peer inside and see Thatcher and Reagan in there, I'm not.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 12:55 PM

>>>>From: Steve Shaw - PM
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 07:22 AM

If you, Steve, get to the pearly gates, and you will (conceptually speaking) as an atheist who's led a reasonably decent life, yer in like Flynn.

Not if I peer inside and see Thatcher and Reagan in there, I'm not. <<<<

Forgive us our trespasses
AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US.

If you see Ronnie and Maggie in there, think carefully about your reaction. That may be your final test.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 03:26 PM

Brilliant, Jack!

(Boy, don't we find it hard to forgive our political opponents and our designated political "Antichrists"? I don't know why it is, but nothing else on Earth seems to summon up such visceral hostility in people as politics does. Maybe it's because politics, as it exists presently, is a trade fundamentally based ON division, accusation, and opposition to someone or something.)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 03:38 PM

Maggie Thatcher did all in her power to keep "middle-class" people like me on board, so she never, er, "trespassed" against me. Reagan hardly impinged either. But they were both unreconstructed evil bastards and I will not share any of God's many mansions with either of them. Let that be a warning to you, Deus.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 03:57 PM

I once remarked to my devoutly religious sister: If everybody has a mansion of their own, everybody is going to live alone.

She said, shocked: I'm not.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 04:46 PM

Ebbie LOL!! I am more certain of this than any other religious belief. If there is a physical heaven and if it is as good as some suppose it to be (I'll guess your sister is in this group) no human being has an imagination capable of envisioning it or the words to describe it.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 04:50 PM

Steve... Where to begin.

Is not a trespass against your countrymen or the world for that matter also a trespass against you?

barring that,

Can't you at least forgive them for the 30-40 years of bile they have raised up in your stomach?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 04:50 PM

LOL! (Ebbie's post)

****

Steve...you can't "get tough with" God or lay down ultimatums. (ultimata?) It has no effect. ;-) It would be like trying to intimidate the ocean. Wasn't there a king once who tried to command the surf to stop rolling in? Or here's another example: it would be like trying to have a fistfight with the wind or to stop the rain by repeatedly yelling, "Rain, rain, go away, come again another day!" I actually saw a toddler try that once. Damn funny! She uttered a final cry of frustration and then ran inside after she started getting well soaked.

(Yeah, I know you're just joshing and making a point about Maggie Thatcher. Fine with me. I detested her policies, but I am willing to forego hating her personally.)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 04:52 PM

JtS... so many do. And they want to sell you a ticket. That's a problem. Their take on "Heaven and Hell" is "How do I make $ off it?"

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 04:52 PM

Fascinating thread creep since my last look in.

Loving neighbours is easy. Especially the foxy one at number 76..

Forgiving? I will happily forgive on the basis that there is no god to do it for me. After all, why have a dog and bark?

If the rhetorical Pearly Gates did exist and Thatcher and Reagan were sitting on nearby clouds tuning up their harps, I would be upset. After all, what have I done done to deserve hell?

Apart from covet my neighbours shapely bum. Oh and take a little wine for thy body's sake? Been practicing. Worshipping false idols? nothing false about Sheffield Wednesday let me tell you.

In fact.. heaven is in S6 and hell is in S1. This is my Creed.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 04:58 PM

Yeah Gnu, Describing Heaven in exchange for tithing. That is were the evil begins

That and threatening damnation to get a "donation."

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 06:43 PM

Psychiatrist dies. Knocks on Pearly Gates.

St Peter says, "Not sure if there's a vacancy. What did you do?"

"Psychiatrist."

"Oh, wow, Come on in, Just the man we need. There's a guy up here called Jesus Christ and he's going around telling everyone he's Steve Shaw."

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 06:55 PM

MtGM... good one. Not that it is about SS. I just like the joke.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 07:12 PM

MtheGM - THREE points!

(in basketball terms, that's damn good for one shot)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 09:07 PM

Steve... Where to begin.

Don't bother. You know you can't win.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 09:17 PM

Steve...you can't "get tough with" God or lay down ultimatums. (ultimata?) It has no effect. ;-) It would be like trying to intimidate the ocean.

Ultimatums will do. Don't even begin to go all Chiff 'n' Fipple and start referring to "fora". As for laying down ultimatums to the Godhead, well why not? He's not that bloody perfect himself, is he? I mean, just look at all the death, misery, disease, famine, drought and manifold other destructions he so eagerly visits on us all, just because a dame bit into his precious bloody apple. Vindictive sod! And no bloody room for a woman in the triumvirate, is there! (Mind you, perhaps he jibs at the thought of a woman sitting on his right hand...). Finally, yanks, lighten up, else you'll all end up just like Jacko. You too, Michael. New jokes welcome. Old ones had better rehash better than that one!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 10:19 PM

Steve, Steve... ;-) You say that Jack "can't win"? I told you before, it's not about winning! It's about being equal brothers and sisters living in common respect and love for one another, that's what it's about. That doesn't mean playing the usual win/lose scenarios that our world is so afflicted by.

Listen to the closing lines in Bob Dylan's "Gates of Eden" sometime.
There are no trials inside the Gates of Eden...
There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden...
There are no sins inside the Gates of Eden....
And There are no truths outside the Gates of Eden.

That's poetry, it's metaphor about life, and it says something profound. He wrote it when he was only about 25 years old.

"He's not that bloody perfect himself, is he? I mean, just look at all the death, misery, disease, famine, drought and manifold other destructions he so eagerly visits on us all, just because a dame bit into his precious bloody apple. Vindictive sod! And no bloody room for a woman in the triumvirate, is there! (Mind you, perhaps he jibs at the thought of a woman sitting on his right hand...)."

Ahh...I get your drift now, Steve. You're talking about that horrible plastic effigy of God that various people carry about in their heads, specially people who also say they don't believe in God. The old bearded guy on the throne, hurling thunderbolts. Talk about a silly notion! Heck, when I was 5 years old I already knew that no such ridiculous heavenly monster as that could possibly exist, and it bears no resemblance to what I refer to as "God". What it does bear a resemblance to is the very worst type of mortal human patriarch, a violent, cruel individual without mercy, tolerance or compassion, one who has no respect for women, and one who doesn't have the right to rule a pay toilet, let alone the Universe! Anyone who takes the story of Adam and Eve and the apple literally perhaps believes literally in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Batman too, because it would be at about the same level of comprehension to do so.

Don't make the common mistake of the more militant type of atheist, Steve, that everyone who believes in God believes in the grotesquely stupid and childish little caricature of God that is carried around in the heads of professional God-botherers such as Mr Dawkins, for whom the religious cup is never anything but "half empty". It's just wishful thinking on their part...they wish that all religious people were as ignorant and foolish as they'd like them to be in order to justify their atheist argument.

(Kind of like how Hitler wished that all Jews were as venal, corrupt, devious, and horrible as he would've liked them to be to justify his argument.)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 10:28 PM

In my philosophy it is the person who creates the quality of their experience in both life and afterlife.

Imagine a simple dwelling, with a little land around it where, by working diligently it would be possible to grow, find or make all you might need.

Is it Heaven or Hell?

Your choice.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 10:33 PM

By the way, I think of God as comprising the masculine and feminine archetypes in equal measure, Steve.

But I'm not a bit surprised that ancient Jewish tribal societies of 2000 or more years ago, societies which were totally patriarchal in nature where men held all positions of authority, would have written about their concept OF God in words that routinely depicted God as a male figure. It simply fit their contemporary view of things and their normal way of expressing things, that's all, and they'd never have dreamed of putting it otherwise.

And after that...church people simply followed the traditional forms set out in those writings, because they were afraid to question them, but there are a great many Christians now who DO question those traditional forms and who consider God to equally represent both the male and the female principles...or to simply be beyond definitions of gender altogether.

The female and the male are equal to me, always have been, always shall be.

Adam, Eve, the snake, the Garden, and the "apple" are all symbolic, not literal. The story is, IMO, a parable about an ancient evolutionary time period when the consciousness of the human race changed in a very significant way.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 10:45 PM

Good point, Rumncoke. Yes, I think Heaven and Hell are analogous to widely differing states of mind...and your state of mind is what takes you to either one of them.

My view of your described

"simple dwelling, with a little land around it where, by working diligently it would be possible to grow, find or make all you might need."

Heaven. But even better if I can share it with some people I love.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 10:45 PM

Well yes, all those apocryphal tales, yet Christians employ them shamelessly to perpetuate their institutions' built-in sexism. I'm rather fond of Dawkins myelf and I'm sorry you feel that he's such a threat. We're pussycats really. You say there is a God. He says there probably isn't. Who's the extremist?! And what a good job Mr Godwin refuted his own law! And I've told you before. The charlatan Dylan only ever wrote one good song, and your quoted one ain't it. (Have I covered everything?)

There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life! (I'd rather believe a London bus than a load of dodgy old desert scrolls any day!).

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Mar 13 - 10:50 PM

The female and the male are equal to me, always have been, always shall be.

Not to me they're not. They are different, and long live that. Neither deserves to be unfairly discriminated against, of course, but equal they are most decidedly not. And I like that. And so should you!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 04:09 AM

"Michael. New jokes welcome. Old ones had better rehash better than that one!"
.,,.
Nowt personal you realise, Steve. Joke just came to me after you had been prominently sounding off on the thread ~~ in which in general I am more of your party, as you will know.

Gnu & Joe liked it anyhow; they hadn't heard it, obviously, old or not: so it wins 2-1 by anybody's reckoning.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: IanC
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 05:04 AM

I've always felt that the Banquet story encapsulates the whole business.

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 06:57 AM

I don't take stuff personally, Michael. You should know that by now. I admit to having been mildly amused by that joke, though corset-splitter it was most decidedly not. As for those who professed to like the gag, I bet you can't find that many from this side of the ocean that didn't read it with a valiant yet evanescent grin which rapidly morphed into a groan. Never judge the efficacy of your jokes by the reaction you get from across the pond. You should also know not to do that by now.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Muset sans cookie
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 09:20 AM

Somewhere much earlier in this thread, I suggested differentiating between the heaven and hell representing your hopes and fears and the heaven and hell representing the good cop bad cop of those who set out to control you.

And then some bugger comes and spoils it by bringing their construction of God into the debate. That of course winds up those who wish to debate without recourse to fantasy and so it goes. Even Godwinism from someone who should know better..

Me? I'm on the London Bus. Bemused to see the metaphor heaven and hell needing superstition attached before some people can begin to discuss it.

Heaven is as described by John Lennon when he imagined not believing in it and hell is finding out the insecure sheep were right after all....

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 11:54 AM

Ah, Steve, you are such a contrarian reprobate! ;-) But I do enjoy talking to you.

I don't regard Dawkins as a threat at all. I think he regards religion as some kind of threat, but I don't regard him as a threat. I regard him as an annoying man with a very limited and paranoid viewpoint of divinity, but certainly no threat to anyone of faith.

Now, let's see...what else were you talking about? Hmm.

"We're pussycats really." Yes, you are. I regard you as quite harmless, Dawkins included.

"You say there is a God. He says there probably isn't."

Well, I think there probably is, but I can't state it with absolute certainty, because I haven't met God in an undeniable way that I can totally confirm through direct experience. I just think God is very probable.

Therefore, I am not the extremist you would have me be, because the only thing I base absolute certainty on is my own direct experience.

"The charlatan Dylan only ever wrote one good song, and your quoted one ain't it. (Have I covered everything?)"

No, Steve, you haven't covered everything. I predict we'll be talking yet for a long time, and uncover lots more. Now...I have long known that it's hopeless to convince people who don't relate to Dylan's material of its great worth, so why would I try to convince you? I think he's the finest songwriter of the 20th century. You don't. Nothing further that we can say is going to change that.

"There's probably no God."

Well, certainly there's probably no nasty little vengeful patriarch like the one you imagine when you hear the word "God", Steve. ;-) But there is either a reason for our existence or there is not, and we either live in a meaningful Universe imbued with purpose...or we don't...in which case it's all just a meaningless series of events on a very large scale. I think that is probably not so, that there is probably a governing meaning and principle involved in everything, and one word I refer to it by is the word "God".

"Now stop worrying and enjoy your life!"

I am. I talk here not because I'm worrying, but because I find the subject of this thread fascinating.

"(I'd rather believe a London bus than a load of dodgy old desert scrolls any day!)."

A london bus is useful if you want to go somewhere, no doubt about that. ;-) As for the desert scrolls...well...I'm interested in any ancient records and ideas from any culture, whether they are Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Islamic, Hindu, Mayan, African, Celtic, Roman, Greek, whatever...and they all had ideas about the Divine, and those ideas all form part of the great picture of Life itself, and Life interests me, because I'm part of it, and it's sacred. It's not that it worries me, Steve, it's that it fascinates me.


****

Regarding my statement that the female and the male are equal to me, Steve, don't be disingenuous in responding that they're not because they're different! Good heavens, man, EVERYONE knows perfectly well that they're different, so it should be bloody obvious that my statement of equality did not mean "the same in their specific nature and definition". What I meant was that they are of equal value, of equal importance, should have equal rights and respect, and that they are equally valuable partners in the drama of life. The fact that they are different from one another is quite handy, and it's why they make such good partners.

As you well know.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 12:09 PM

Maybe I should make another thing clear, Steve. My feeling that it is very probable that there is a God was not put in me by the Bible. I came to the feeling that there probably was a God long before I had given the Bible or Christianity any real attention at all. The time in life when I first began seriously thinking there was a God was in my 20s, and it was due more to experiences with the Native American community and Native American traditional religion and my reading of various books from several Asian traditions (Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu).

All of the above gave me the feeling that there is a guiding moral and spiritual purpose to life and a purpose that is found throughout the Universe, not just here in our little human societies.

That life is about far more than survival and competition, that it has a much higher moral purpose than those concerns.

That life did not develop by accident, but through that higher purpose.

And NONE of the above conflicts in any way with my modern science-based understanding of life, which understanding I already had well in place from the time I was a very young child, and which includes the usual scientific viewpoints of evolution, natural history of the planet, astronomy, physics, chemistry, math, etc.

So your problems with the Bible, Steve...I can understand what concerns you there...there's a lot in the Bible that I have problems with too...but the Bible is not the origin or the cornerstone of my faith. Life itself is the Holy of Holies...depending on how you look at it. If you think it's all just a fortuitous accident, then maybe not. If you think it's a sacred and purposeful Unity, then yes.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 03:43 PM

I don't regard Dawkins as a threat at all. I think he regards religion as some kind of threat, but I don't regard him as a threat. I regard him as an annoying man with a very limited and paranoid viewpoint of divinity, but certainly no threat to anyone of faith.

Well he certainly appears to put the fear of God into a certain kind of believer. Why else all the demonisation? Why not just laugh indulgently and forget him? I think you do not speak for many believers.

"You say there is a God. He says there probably isn't."

Well, I think there probably is, but I can't state it with absolute certainty, because I haven't met God in an undeniable way that I can totally confirm through direct experience. I just think God is very probable.

It would be a healthy thing if more believers were like you and publicly declared their doubt. I suppose that wouldn't go down especially well coming from the pulpit or in a Catholic classroom. Inconvenient... After all, you don't have any evidence, do you? When you say that something is probably the case for which you have no evidence, you might have to conclude that your rationality has taken a day's holiday and that Mr Delusion is waving at you through the window.

And most religions speak of God with certainty. You do not pray "Our Father, who quite possibly art in heaven...", do you now? All major religions are full of stuff that. You might say it's all harmless ritual but it happens so much that it must be inculcating a strong message of certainty in believers. There's no escaping this. If you declare that a mere possibility (or,in my view, in this case, an utter improbability) is true, you are not being truthful. That's fine for yourself, though disappointing, but, in my view, definitely not fine if you are propagating it to someone else. Children especially, though not exclusively.   

Therefore, I am not the extremist you would have me be, because the only thing I base absolute certainty on is my own direct experience.

Hmm. Careful with that one.

"The charlatan Dylan only ever wrote one good song, and your quoted one ain't it. (Have I covered everything?)"

No, Steve, you haven't covered everything. I predict we'll be talking yet for a long time, and uncover lots more. Now...I have long known that it's hopeless to convince people who don't relate to Dylan's material of its great worth, so why would I try to convince you? I think he's the finest songwriter of the 20th century. You don't. Nothing further that we can say is going to change that.

Even Dylan himself thought he was just a pop singer. That's getting close to accurate, though one might demur at "singer". One good song and a vast amount of obscurantist dross. One good song. Tell, me - when I say that to you, how does it feel? How does it feeeeel?

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life!"

There ya go. One conditional assertion and one admonishment. Better than a whole bible-load of theology any day!

"(I'd rather believe a London bus than a load of dodgy old desert scrolls any day!)."

I'm interested in any ancient records and ideas from any culture, whether they are Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Islamic, Hindu, Mayan, African, Celtic, Roman, Greek, whatever...and they all had ideas about the Divine, and those ideas all form part of the great picture of Life itself, and Life interests me, because I'm part of it, and it's sacred. It's not that it worries me, Steve, it's that it fascinates me.

Me too. But I part company with anyone who starts to claim that they were divinely-inspired or similar hooey.

Regarding my statement that the female and the male are equal to me, Steve, don't be disingenuous in responding that they're not because they're different! Good heavens, man, EVERYONE knows perfectly well that they're different, so it should be bloody obvious that my statement of equality did not mean "the same in their specific nature and definition". What I meant was that they are of equal value, of equal importance, should have equal rights and respect, and that they are equally valuable partners in the drama of life. The fact that they are different from one another is quite handy, and it's why they make such good partners.

As you well know.

Of course! I was merely trying to get you to focus!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 03:48 PM

As for your last post, I repeat what I said up the thread (I think it was this one) - I have yet to see any evidence that the universe/life/nature has to have a purpose. I say to anyone (and it's really just that innocent schoolroom question again), if stuff has purpose, who put the purpose into the guy who put purpose into the stuff?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Kenny B Sans Kuki
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 04:29 PM

Heaven is smiling :<) at a joke like " God promised men that good and obedient wives would be found in all corners of the world. And then He made the earth round and laughed till he was sore" Hell is being told that the joke is sexixt :<{

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 04:33 PM

I took the joke as a good-natured hint to Steve that a little humility might be welcome.

I found it funny because of the repurposing of the old
"doctor" jokes to make that point. Frankly, I found it even funnier that Shaw upped the arrogance level because of the joke. Does he get it or is he playing along?

He seems to be painting a picture of a universe that has no God for one very good reason, because there is not room in the Universe for omniscient intelligence other than his own.

Very amusing.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 04:37 PM

Does God have the resources to make a Personal Hell for each of us?

Or do we do that ourselves?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 05:17 PM

If there's no God...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 05:47 PM

Steve, I don't particularly care what your opinion of Bob Dylan is. It doesn't matter. You just enjoy whatever music you like, and I'll do the same.

I'm also puzzed that you seem to be answering some of your own past statements in my post (ones that I put in quotes)...and thinking you're responding to something I said, when it's not something I said, but something you said to ME in the first place.

The ancient writings we are both fascinated by, Steve, may have sometimes been divinely inspired. For you to assert that they are "hooey" is merely to make yourself the dogmatic extremist, not me, because you are the one claiming certainty of a matter you cannot BE certain about on the basis of any evidence one way or the other. Actually, Steve, you're making a faith-based statement when you say it is hooey to imagine anything can be divinely inspired. Your faith is the hardbound assumption that there cannot be any divine involvement in the Universe. You want it to be that way, so that's what you adamantly believe...and that's blind faith, mate! It's faith in saying "no" to a given unproved and unprovable proposition.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 05:56 PM

Whether one sees any "evidence" of a purpose in Nature or in the Universe is generally entirely dependent upon one thing, Steve...not the evidence itself, but the prior prejudice that exists in the mind of the observer. You're not going to see what you don't want to see.

Hitler couldn't see any good in Jews. Israel and Iran both can't see any good in each other. They're all mistaken. Human blindness is less often a matter of actual physical (or mental) inability to see something, but rather merely a very strong emotional disinclination to see what one has already decided simply isn't there or SHOULDN'T be or CAN'T be. (your assumption about a divine factor in things)

To admit even the possibility that it is there would be to admit you'd been wrong! And this is what most people are honor bound not to do, simply on the basis of their personal pride and their intense desire to be right all the time and to "win" the argument, whatever the argument is.

And it won't matter. Because the "win" means nothing. And will change nothing.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 06:06 PM

Yup, Jack, we each make our own personal hell. No point in blaming God for it, that's for sure.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 06:06 PM

Out of interest, what is the 'good' Dylan song anyhow? If it isn't 'Hattie Carroll', you're up the creek....

dri·i·i·i·i·i·iffffff·t

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 07:02 PM

Musket.... "And then some bugger comes and spoils it by bringing their construction of God into the debate. That of course winds up those who wish to debate without recourse to fantasy and so it goes. Even Godwinism from someone who should know better.."

NO SHIT! And I got TOTALLY shit upon for going apeshit earlier when my second thread was about to be hijacked after the first similar thread was hijacked and fucked over twice... in succession... in a few days!!!! Don left this discussion and even my PMs can't get him to return.

And then you post with the same complaint and are TOTALLY ignored by people who can't be arsed to post to previous threads on the issues they wanna shove up each others asses and... and... and simply wanna grandstand about SHIT THAT THIS THREAD HAS SWEET FUCK ALL TO DO WITH and say, "Hey! MOMMIE! LOOK AT ME!"

Fer fuck sake! Tell yas what. *I* know what Heaven and Hell is to me and I have listened to others address the OP TOPIC POLITELY and DIRECTLY. NONE of you thread hijacking motherfuckers do... yer all goin ta hell just fer your piss poor manners. Yer either too stunned to understand or to fuckin lazy ta start yer own thread or post to a thread on the topic ya wanna discuss... which IS NOT THIS ONE!!! FER FUCK SAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I AM GONE. Have fun jerkin each other off.

gnightgnu

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 07:47 PM

Gnu, I'm pretty sure that Musket was joking. But in a good-natured way. He was just having some fun as many of are. Your original question was answered long ago. If you think that once your question was answered, no one should talk and carry on on this thread, maybe you should ask to have it closed.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: frogprince
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 08:36 PM

I sometimes fear that I'll be darned all to heck for some of the things I've done.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 08:48 PM

Well, why shouldn't people discuss different concepts of God if they want to? We seem to have pretty much covered our various ideas of Heaven and Hell by now. It means some things to some people, other things to others, like everything else does, so what's the big deal?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 08:56 PM

Out of interest, what is the 'good' Dylan song anyhow? If it isn't 'Hattie Carroll', you're up the creek....

Keep guessing, Michael. I mean, when I refuse to tell you, how does it it feel? How does it feeeel?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 09:16 PM

I took the joke as a good-natured hint to Steve that a little humility might be welcome.

I found it funny because of the repurposing of the old
"doctor" jokes to make that point. Frankly, I found it even funnier that Shaw upped the arrogance level because of the joke. Does he get it or is he playing along?

He seems to be painting a picture of a universe that has no God for one very good reason, because there is not room in the Universe for omniscient intelligence other than his own.


Know summat, Jacko? I just love it when you post apropos of me. You never address me directly (I feel that that is about to change... :-) ). I love it when you call me Shaw to the rest of this board (even the dreaded Keith calls me Steve). It tells me much about your frustration. The very gritting of your venerable teeth shines through (as I'm sure your well-groomed teeth do shine!). Keep it up, old boy! I love it when you use inelegant words such as "repurposing". Michael often uses flowery English (I have been known to fall into such ways meself) but it is always oh so elegant. There is poetry and then there is Jacko. Read his posts, Jacko, and learn! As for getting it, oh yes, even my erstwhile faux-foe (hey, Shaw - good 'un!) Michael will tell you that I "get" his jokes (and you can bloody shut up when you're told, Michael!) Your final paragraph/sentence is replete with the sort of base sarcasm that I can only conclude (wrongfully, 'tis to be wished) is born out of sheer bitterness. Now that I don't get. :-(   Still, Little Hawk loves you, and what more could you possibly ask for!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 09:40 PM

I don't love Jack, Steve. ;-) Neither do I hate him. He's somewhere in that moderate middle area between the volatile extremes such as love and hate. After all, I've only met him once. He seemed like an okay guy at the time. I have to be around people (in real 3D life) for quite a long time before I can genuinely say I love them.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 09:42 PM

He is a dull-witted sod, though, innit!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 09:50 PM

Steve, I think you're just trying to provoke Jack for your own enjoyment. A bit of sadistic glee can be seen in your remarks. Did you bully other chaps a lot that way back in your school days?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 10:09 PM

Dearie me. Jack is the archetypal po-faced provocateur. We do have history, you know. We're OK when he wisely keeps his distance, but he has this habit of weakening and having a pitch every now and then. I know how you love him, despite your protestations (come on now - it can be perfectly manly, you know!), but do try to be even-handed. I'll be disappointed if you turn out not to be, but one will crack on regardless in any case. Northern grit they call it (did I tell you I was a northerner, Michael?)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 10:10 PM

Okay.. 4 PMs (one initiated by me) and six emails. Apparently, I didn't make myself clear. Astounding to me but there it is. To wit...

Why not discuss other topics in this thread?

WHY?

My question was not answered by the next person that opens the thread. That person may not post when they see all the fucking spew bullshit crap that has NOTHING to do with the OP. Come on... surely you can get with that? It's just common sense, no?

The thread is not about what you want it to be about. It is what the subject and title of the thread wants it to be about. NOTHING ELSE. Thread drift within reason?... WELCOME. But HIJACKING AND DESTROYING A THREAD??? (Two in a row! I tried to save the other one and it was dashed again in an instant! I had to leave.)

There are lots of existing threads about the OTHER subjects. OR anyone can start a new one. To hijack my thread(s) and fuck them completely when it isn't at all necessary is EXTREMELY disturbing to me. I feel like a small kid on a school playground surrounded by bullies who taunt me because they feel they can and don't have the fuckin brains to realize that is what they are doing... and they are ding it to EVERYONE who has EVER started a thread herein and then said... fuck these assholes... I AM GONE.. and to anyone considering starting a thread herein. Think about that... you are all sending a message to anyone and everyone who may be thinking about STARTING a thread. Do you really want to send them your message of... piss poor manners?

Sorry if that sounds a bit off the wall or harsh but that is what is in my heart.... TRUE FUCKIN RAGE! Seriuosly... WTF is wrong with you guys? Your Mamas never slap you upside the head and teach you some fuckin respect and good manners????

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 10:22 PM

WTF is wrong with you guys? Your Mamas never slap you upside the head and teach you some fuckin respect and good manners????

I see that irony is apparently completely lost on you.

This thread, apart from the usual spats wot crop up everywhere on this board, has stuck to the point more than most threads this long manage to do. Wassup, mate? Post some good on-topic stuff and keep us on track if you're not happy. You'll be doing yourself a mischief at this rate.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 10:38 PM

Dammit, IanC posted a link that contained a reference to the superb fresco in Vank Cathedral. I wanted to reply by linking to my photobucket pic of the incredible mosaic on the back wall of the cathedral in Torcello, Venice, but this website won't let me make a flippin' link! Tell me what to do, somebody! Here's my link anyway. [IMG]http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c268/SteveShaw1951/P1010141_zps7ebbc064.jpg[/IMG] The mosaic is far more impressive than the photo suggests (we weren't allowed to take our own pics so this is a pic of a pic). The large doors at the bottom give an idea of scale. My missus couldn't drag me away. The next day she had the same issue when I stood gawping for over half an hour at a Titian Virgin and Child in the Accademia gallery in Venice.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 10:50 PM

I hate to agree with Shaw, but If you want the thread to stay on track, we can't read you mind. Tell us what you want.

I'll tell you something else when I was a kid on the playground, I dreamed of being ignored.

So stop throwing a tantrum because you are not getting something you have not clearly asked for.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 22 Mar 13 - 11:01 PM

Yeah... it stuck to the point that long because I made it clear from the OP that assholes with poor manners should fuck off. Which begs the point...

Now... I just got another PM from a gentleman (one of the finest I have met herein). Here is my response to him when he said he would post no more to the crap which has sullied this thread...

Don't "abide by my wishes"... do unto othe as you would have them do unto you. Suggest another thread... one of the past ones or a new one. It really is that simple to me.

Thanks, buddy. Your PM means a lot to me. Yer ona a the good guys.
******************************************************************

Steve... not so much.

gnightgnu... unless I get a bunch more PMs and emails... even then, at this point, I think I made my pointssss. I really don't think any newcomers will want to post thier intimate thoughts in a forum where people are so rude no matter what I might add in future. Mqatter of fact, Steve just made my main point for me, again. Thanks, buddy.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 12:27 AM

Gnu, Its an open forum with rules. Steve is not breaking the rules. Whatever he does or says you have to roll with it.

Whenever the topic goes near religion he says whatever he can to try to anger people. If you want to get even, don't get angry. If you want to really really screw with him pretend that he is making sense. His head will get so big he'll think he is floating above us all like an angel. Then he will say all of these incredibly arrogant, amusing things.

Its all good.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 02:12 AM

'and you can bloody shut up when you're told, Michael!'
.,,.,.
Shan't! Stamp! Scweem! Sulk! And you said bloody and I'm telling teacher of you so there!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 07:12 AM

Whenever the topic goes near religion he says whatever he can to try to anger people.

I say exactly what I think about religion, that's all. I must have said it a dozen times: if a certain category of believers are so happy in their skins with their certainties, they would shrug off those atheists who haven't got the manners to keep conveniently silent. There are certain aspects of our religious heritage that I admire - architecture, art, music, community spirit and more - and I have engaged, and will engage, constructively with anyone who wishes to discuss them. There are even some aspects of belief that I respect (more of a struggle, but I try). Why don't you just try to avoid the perfect fit with the stereotype of the frightened Christian who sees every atheist as a mortal threat and who deserves no more than a session with your attack-dogs?

If you want to really really screw with him pretend that he is making sense.

Perhaps later, darling. One must hasten to buy the fish.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 07:15 AM

Calm down, Michael. I've already bought the teacher off with a 99p Cadbury's mini-egg Easter egg from Morrisons.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 07:15 AM

Calm down, Michael. I've already bought the teacher off with a 99p Cadbury's mini-egg Easter egg from Morrisons.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 07:16 AM

I have no idea why that posted twice. Apologies.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 10:42 AM

I haven't read all the posts here, so forgive me if I'm merely repeating what others have already said. I accept that there may be a heaven and a hell, although it's obvious they must exist on a different plane as we now know so much about the physical Universe and its limits. What has always troubled me is how one qualifies for entry into heaven. Having been an academic all my life, accustomed to exams and qualifications, it appears one must be 'judged' as fit, by God. (Rather like the Attestation of Fitness I has to gain for entry to Edinburgh Uni!) Now, having studied Moral Philosophy as an extra subject there, I became totally sceptical of the concepts of 'praise', 'blame' 'punishment' and 'reward'. Should a person be rewarded with entry to heaven simply because they've been 'good'? Maybe they had a genetically-determined personality which happily led them to behave well? Maybe they had a stable and good home with all the attendant advantages? Did a 'bad' chap draw the short straw genetically, a sort of closet psychopath? Was he/she abused as a child and turned into a consummate sinner? Does free will really exist? Most prisoners (I've worked with many of them) have had horrendous starts in life and a large proportion are mentally ill too. Why should they go to Hell because of that? Does God 'take into consideration' the disadvantages/lucky breaks before His judgement is made? And what, pray, is the Pass Rate? What are the odds that I'll get in? Seen from this angle, the whole thing becomes ridiculous. I just hope I can 're-sit'the entry exam, as I'll surely fail!
.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 11:27 AM

Eliza, from what I understand, the person with all the blessing is often less likely to receive the blessings.

I always go back to this passage.

"Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

First let me say that I am not sure whether "kingdom of God." is the physical place that many people imagine Heaven to be. From my experience it is a State of mind and inner peace that I have felt from time to time and that is enough to motivate me.

In the New Testament the only thing required to enter the "kingdom of God." Is to accept Jesus as your personal savior. Personal experience tells me that it is much much easier to do so once we have hit rock bottom than when we are comfortable.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 01:29 PM

Jack, your interesting answer gives rise to yet more questions. If rich persons are so unlikely to reach heaven, then the vast majority of folk in the West won't make it. We are fabulously rich in comparison to those in dire poverty in the Third World. And if heaven is a state of mind, what happens when the mind (ie the brain) dies? Does 'consciousness' live on somehow? Also, I have to say my pupils in primary school used to find the idea of 'adoring God' endlessly up there terrifically boring! I'm a churchgoer and try to be a good Christian, but sometimes even I can't get my head round a lot of this!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 01:55 PM

"If rich persons are so unlikely to reach heaven, then the vast majority of folk in the West won't make it."

Yes, that is the way that I think it is. Most people in Western society are like the camel. They are not on a path to the kingdom. Jesus' teachings about our behavior. Loving your neighbour is very hard, especially when you are "fighting" for a promotion or trying to close a sale.

There are American Churches that say that all you have to do is come to their church, pay your tithes and pray and Jesus will reward you with money. I believe that is heresy.   


"And if heaven is a state of mind, what happens when the mind (ie the brain) dies? Does 'consciousness' live on somehow?"

I really don't know. I don't know what The Bible means by "everlasting life." I find it hard to believe that it has anything to do with wings and harps and everyone having a literal mansion on a literal cloud. If it is so, for my happiness, it had better come with a staff that I won't feel guilty about serving me. ;-)

I think I empathize with your students. I have yet to find a description of heaven enticing enough to motivate me. When I was their age, I wondered if was was described to me is all that there was to it. (Sorry about the clumsiness, Though I remember those thoughts and feelings, they are very difficult to put into adult words.) On the other hand, the peace of mind, the state of grace implied in Jesus' teachings is very very compelling.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 02:56 PM

""NO SHIT! And I got TOTALLY shit upon for going apeshit earlier when my second thread was about to be hijacked after the first similar thread was hijacked and fucked over twice... in succession... in a few days!!!! Don left this discussion and even my PMs can't get him to return. ""

DAMN RIGHT I LEFT!

Two points.

1. The reason for my leaving after having done no more than respond politely to questions directly addressed to me, was that you chose me to VERY PUBLICLY SHIT ON from a great height, and rather than respond in a similar manner I left.

2. If somebody has upset me publicly, I do not regard a private message as an appropriate way in which to handle what should be an apology as public as the attack.

I have learned one thing, and that is to stay away from your threads.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 03:56 PM

I agree, Jack. Despite the conflict of mind and the doubts, and difficulties in imagining the Hereafter, I still try to keep plodding on towards my God, doing what Jesus advised, (which after all is very simple, as others have said:- Love God and Love your neighbour) and just hoping that God accepts my feeble efforts and takes me to Himself at the end. It's all any of us can do really. As they say at the end of a TV episode: "All will be revealed..."

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 04:20 PM

Yes Eliza, I think that is the consensus on this thread. Expressed in many different ways.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 04:34 PM

I am happy to love my neighbour. I can find, however, no necessity, in order to do so, for any belief in anything remotely resembling any concept which could reasonably be defined by the noun, common or proper, of god, or God.

I am moreover confident that if there were such a thing as a God then there would be no such things, to take only minor examples, as toothache or the perpetual inconvenient necessity to piss and shit. "Intelligent Design" is a coinage some well-meaning fudgers have tried to make catch on as a sort of disinfecting of the absurdity of the concept. "Unintelligent Design" is what I should call it. Thank Unintelligent Design that I have never been in any danger of having to experience that oh-so-marvellously designed process, childbirth {except my own trauma, of course}!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 06:13 PM

hi eliza.you are quite right to surmise that a "pass rate" would be hard to determine.fact is the pass rate is 100% non sinful.only Jesus attained that measure.he gave his life for us,the sinless on behalf of the sinful that all who repent and believe are accounted righteous and accepted by God.as Jesus said -john 14 v 6
"i am the way,the truth,and the life,no man comes to the Father but by me"
perhaps you know JOHN 3 V 16 ,if not its well worth looking at this wonderful invitation.   blessings pete.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 06:19 PM

"I am happy to love my neighbour."

No doubt you are. But do you do it as a daily practice? Are there limits to what you would do for this neighbour for the sake of this "love?"

Yeah me too :-) and I am trying to be a good Christian.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 06:21 PM

"i am the way,the truth,and the life,no man comes to the Father but by me"

How do you screw up a quote?

Have you taken some sort of vow of grammatical ignorance?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 06:30 PM

Like most people, I'm afraid I have limits on what I'd do for a 'neighbour'. I'd steal food if I were starving and I'm often jealous of my 'neighbour's' goods. I try to be kind, but I'd never give anyone ALL my worldly goods, no way! So I doubt that I measure up too well for entry to The Realms. In my prayers I often grin ruefully at God and tell Him I don't get much of what I read in the Bible. My husband, a Muslim, is a far better person than I'll ever be. It's all a muddle. Anyone who reckons they understand it all is kidding themselves!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 06:33 PM

Got two PMs and an email so I had to check in. Glad I did.

First... Don???? Can you clarify that last post with specifics?

JtS... ""I am happy to love my neighbour." No doubt you are. But do you do it as a daily practice? Are there limits to what you would do for this neighbour for the sake of this "love?""

Indeed I DO! I don't kill his yappy little dog. I don't even call the bylaw enforcement dept to report the barking. But, it IS March. We'll see how much I love him and the little yapper come "window open"... that is, I'll see where my limits are when he yapping wakes me up at 5:30AM and continues until I rise.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 07:04 PM

I haven't read all the posts here, so forgive me if I'm merely repeating what others have already said. I accept that there may be a heaven and a hell, although it's obvious they must exist on a different plane as we now know so much about the physical Universe and its limits. What has always troubled me is how one qualifies for entry into heaven. Having been an academic all my life, accustomed to exams and qualifications, it appears one must be 'judged' as fit, by God. (Rather like the Attestation of Fitness I has to gain for entry to Edinburgh Uni!) Now, having studied Moral Philosophy as an extra subject there, I became totally sceptical of the concepts of 'praise', 'blame' 'punishment' and 'reward'. Should a person be rewarded with entry to heaven simply because they've been 'good'? Maybe they had a genetically-determined personality which happily led them to behave well? Maybe they had a stable and good home with all the attendant advantages? Did a 'bad' chap draw the short straw genetically, a sort of closet psychopath? Was he/she abused as a child and turned into a consummate sinner? Does free will really exist? Most prisoners (I've worked with many of them) have had horrendous starts in life and a large proportion are mentally ill too. Why should they go to Hell because of that? Does God 'take into consideration' the disadvantages/lucky breaks before His judgement is made? And what, pray, is the Pass Rate? What are the odds that I'll get in? Seen from this angle, the whole thing becomes ridiculous. I just hope I can 're-sit'the entry exam, as I'll surely fail!

What an excellent, questioning post. What a pity that far more believers than you, fed for so long the tale of their all-seeing, all-mercifiul God, are so willing to accept without demur what comes from the pulpit instead of asking awkward questions. Of all the beings that ever existed, God is surely yer man for answering awkward questions. But he doesn't, does he. He leaves his acolytes in a state of permanent quandary. The spin put on that is that he "moves in mysterious ways". You must have a leap of faith (and, bejaysus, how hard it is to leap back!). I could suggest even more awkward questions that you could put to your Almighty. Why did he callously let evolution take place? Evolution involves the death of 99%+ of offspring, selection by disease, famine, conflict and vicious, uncaring competition. If you are here at all you are one of the lucky 0.000001% of organisms that ever tried their hand. Yet you too will end your life in fear, misery and death. Even now you're scared of dying! Your God, being all powerful, did not need to play his hand that way at all. But he did. The only paltry excuse I've heard for this tyrant is that he cast us all out because a woman bit into one of his apples!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 07:17 PM

Despite the conflict of mind and the doubts, and difficulties in imagining the Hereafter, I still try to keep plodding on towards my God, doing what Jesus advised, (which after all is very simple, as others have said:- Love God and Love your neighbour) and just hoping that God accepts my feeble efforts and takes me to Himself at the end. It's all any of us can do really. As they say at the end of a TV episode: "All will be revealed..."

Well I also do what Jesus advised, though a good deal of it I might have been doing whether Jesus had advised it or not (I happen to be one of those wacky atheists who are convinced that Jesus was the real thing and said some very sensible things. He is also alleged to have said certain things that I ascribe to the fanciful imaginations of some of his more tendentious followers, writing mostly long after he died, and it isn't always easy to separate the two). All will be revealed? Ask the bugger why he can't reveal a bit more right now! He'd get a damn sight more people on board if he did! He's an illogical fellow, this God! Oops, sorry...forgot about those "mysterious ways"...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 07:23 PM

hi eliza.you are quite right to surmise that a "pass rate" would be hard to determine.fact is the pass rate is 100% non sinful.only Jesus attained that measure.he gave his life for us,the sinless on behalf of the sinful that all who repent and believe are accounted righteous and accepted by God.as Jesus said -john 14 v 6
"i am the way,the truth,and the life,no man comes to the Father but by me"

Glory alleluia. Why get involved in muscular debate when you can shut yer eyes, join yer hands and raise yer mush to heaven! Deo Grassy Arse!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 07:27 PM

It's a good thing you don't believe in God Steve Shaw.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Mar 13 - 07:42 PM

But that is simply not true, Jacko. I don't not believe in God. Bejaysus, I've explained this so many times. God is your concept, not mine. If you and your fellow-God-travellers weren't here, I wouldn't not believe in God. The only sense in which you can say I don't believe in God is that I don't agree with whatever notion you are proposing. I can't say I don't believe in God for two reasons. First, if I say it, it immediately puts me into believer territory. Second, I don't know whether there's a God or not, do I, so it would be illogical to say I "don't believe in him". All I can say is, going from all the evidence I can glean (and, try as I might to be accommodating, I have to reject on rational grounds old stories, ancient texts scribbled in the desert, tradition, hearsay, witness and the edicts of holy men), the existence of God is a possibility that is vanishingly small. Believe it or not. Hope this helps. Again.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 12:16 AM

"Jacko?" You complain that I don't use your name the way you want and start your post "Jacko?"

OK.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 12:17 AM

I think that you protest a little too much.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 02:41 AM

Well, he [we] wouldn't Jack, if you lot didn't go on & on postulating arguments, and concepts, and 'beings', that seem to us so pretty well self-evidently absurd.

OK, maybe, just maybe, they are not absurd, but right after all. Well then, he and I are going to look pretty silly some day, aren't we, and you will all look down from your heavenly home and pity the miners laugh at us writhing in our eternal torments, and we hope you'll have a ball. Don't we, Steve?

Maybe maybe maybe maybe

Oh, the hell with it [joke: geddit?]. It is, too, absurd!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 07:27 AM

I don't "protest", Jacko. I put you straight on things. Me and Michael. Listen and learn!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 08:35 AM

No one with a genuinely spiritual outlook laughs at anyone else's torment, M, nor wishes eternal torment on anyone. We're all in this together, and we should wish the best for one another...if we want to become truly human, and that's what spiritual work is actually about...it's about becoming truly human, which is to become a loving and forgiving person. It's about fulfilling our real human potential and destiny which is brotherhood/sisterhood, rather than engaging in bloody competition and destruction of one another to the detriment of all of us.

****

Steve,

If you want to be respected, then respect other people as you would wish they respected you, and that includes not belittling them in small, petty ways, nasty little putdowns, like repeatedly calling somename whose name is Jack, "Jacko". (The smirk on your face...or at least in your mind...is quite evident and palpable when you say it.)

The nickname Jacko is something a lot of people habitually called Michael Jackson, and they didn't do it because they liked him. They were making fun of him and putting him down every time they did it.

Steve, I started encountering bullies from the moment I entered Grade 1 in primary school, and I know how they behave. They often don't call a person they're picking on by his real name, because they want to reduce his status and hurt him and make him "small"...it makes them feel in control, and makes them feel more powerful, and it pleases their sadistic desire to dominate and ridicule their target...so they call him by some scornful nickname. Like "Jacko". Or "Fatso". Or "Four Eyes". The names change, but the intention to hurt the other person is clearly there.

Your various rational arguments are certainly worthy of fair consideration in themselves, but your cavalier attitude toward the people you disagree with discredits your arguments and makes them hardly worth listening to. In short, you make it plain that you think anyone who doesn't see it your way is a dummy...simply because they don't agree with you about something. This is no way to relate to other people, Steve, and in real life (not in this safe little long distance environment of torturing and harassing other people through hostile keystrokes) it leads to a degree of risk, as we all know. So in real life...face to face...we usually restrain our meaner impulses. We ought best to restrain them here as well.

You will reap exactly what you sew in life, Steve. It just takes awhile to come to fruition, that's all.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 08:54 AM

Thank you for the lecture.

I have no idea, in this world of pseudonyms, what Jack The Sailor's real name is, except that that is clearly not the whole truth of it (well, I concede that "the" can be part of one's name, as in The Edge: I recall Jonathan Ross asking him if it was OK to call him The). The thing is, Little Hawk, Jack and I go back a fair distance on this board and whenever he has chosen to engage with what I say his remarks have typically been filled with his barbs (which I'm fairly adept at firing back, of course). As you can easily glean from this thread he is disrespectful of my stance on religion and is very quick with the sarcasm. He tends to talk about me as if I'm not here and he quite unnecessarily uses my surname (the trait of the school bully, n'est-ce pas?) As for my cavalier attitude to those I don't agree with, ask Ebbie, Eliza or Joe whether I show disrespect to them for their beliefs. In fact, my posts on this topic are thought through and carefully constructed on the whole, which is more than may be said for some of, for example, Jack's or pete's. Ridiculous posts kind of deserve something back other than indulgence, I suspect. I certainly expect to get it in the neck for mine. C'est la vie. Life's rich tapestry and all that. Well, that's me anyway. Perhaps you would see fit to remonstrate with your good friend on whom you spend so much effort indulging. Or just quit trying to be the board policeman. There, a little barb for you too.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 08:57 AM

It's reap what you sow, by the way. Other spellings simply have me in stitches.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 12:54 PM

"...what you sow, by the way. Other spellings simply have me in stitches." :)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 01:27 PM

'No one with a genuinely spiritual outlook laughs at anyone else's torment, M, nor wishes eternal torment on anyone'
.,,.
How consolatory, Little Hawk. But there may, I fear, be an element of Spiritual Pride in your 'No one'. You mean you, personally, & others of your faith who share this particular view, do not do so. But would you have the gall to deny that such concepts as Salvation [conceived by some, either literally or symbolically, as perpetual entertainment in a delightful environment by golden harps & heavenly choirs] & Damnation [seen as perpetual imprisonment in conditions of extreme unpleasantness and permanent subjection to various disagreeable experiences] have ranked large in the conceptions of various theologies?

Look at Augustine, say; at Calvin with his doctrine of

'Predestination, --- in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God. John Calvin interpreted biblical predestination to mean that God willed eternal damnation for some people and salvation for others.' wiki;

or read the sermon in James Joyce's Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, recollected from the author's Dublin youth...

...and then justify your 'No one' -- if you can. I bet you there are still, to this day, plenty in the Deep South or Dublin or Lutheran Scandinavia who will look forward with great glee to the prospect of watching the likes of Steve & me copping a nice well-deserved dose of damnation and eternal torment. And I bet you even know some. You might say they are showing themselves to be not true believers, or whatever; but you must see that that would be a question-begging cop-out!.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 02:12 PM

LH, Please do me a favor and do not defend me to Shaw.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 02:16 PM

Hello Sailor!

He doesn't like that one either Steve.

Suffice to say that as ever, those with an imaginary friend make the mistake that rational people have a stance, as in not believing in God. Well, as the concept is the invention of humans, it isn't a matter of believing or not believing, there is nothing to believe. If it is your comfort blanket or heritage, then fine. Get on with it, but don't get all upset when the grown ups are talking..

I no more believe in God as I believe that a particular style of American football is the best way to win. You can't say that just because I don't agree with that style that therefore I don't believe in it, as the reason is I don't agree with it is that it is a non debate to those of us who don't know or understand the sport.

Same with God. Just because as a child I was told by teachers to put my hands together etc, doesn't mean I have a view as a rational adult. Religion can be very comforting for people, but sadly it can be useful too. Hence the more people who treat it as an irrelevance, the more society can get on with improving without bigoted boundaries.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 02:41 PM

MtheGM,

I think that LH means that if you find glee in others' torment you are not genuinely "spiritual." Certainly if he is referring to Christianity as I see it, I agree with the statement.

I can't reconcile "Love thy neighbor as thyself" with expressing glee at my neighbor's torment.

On a related note,

I quite like you and the lively discussions we have had.

I like Mr. Shaw as well. I assume that he wants the treatment I give him (In fact he seems to very much enjoy it.) because that is the way he treats me. Let me put it this way. I respect him a lot more than I respect his expressed opinions and tactics.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 02:56 PM

So the "rational adults" call people names when they disagree? :-D

BTW, I don't mind being called "Sailor." I commented about you doing so because of the rationality of the tactic. Likewise "Jacko" is not offensive. But it is Mr. Shaw's intent to offend. That is why I rarely reply to to his "rational adult" goads.

I think this line of discussion is way off topic. I am done with it.

Cheers,

Jacko The Sailor

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 03:07 PM

Thank you, Jack. Fully reciprocated. You are one of those with whom one can discuss without heat even when not necessarily in agreement.

I take your point re LH;, but that appeal to the 'spiritual' still begs the question, IMO. I am sure that such sects as the followers of Jim Jones, say, or some of the more extreme adherents of the Southern Baptist Church, would regard themselves as thoroughly 'spiritual' ~~ would probably, indeed, regard no-one else as entitled to consider themselves so; so that LH taking his stand on an appeal to 'spirituality' won't quite do it for me as a denial or refutation of the idea that anyone could take a self-righteous pleasure in the prospect of ultimate postmortem suffering for the unrighteous ~~ like Steve & me, say!

Regards

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 03:18 PM

But it is Mr. Shaw's intent to offend.

Not so. To challenge, to rib, to goad, to provoke. And to get just the same back. That's what's up, Jack. You're far too quick to inflate ordinary disagreement into the firing of barbs, and I'm too weak to resist. Don't make me quote the examples in this thread, please.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 03:27 PM

MtheGM, I'm not sure what you are saying. I agree that joy at the suffering of others is a bad thing. I concede that joy at eternal damnation proportionately is worse. I concede that there probably are people who consider themselves to be Christian who might take joy in your damnation. Certainly there are those that seem to feel that way about The President and Muslims, and Liberals.

But the vast majority don't feel that way. And as I said before, that does not square with Jesus' teaching of "Love thy Neighbor as Thyself." I don't understand how people can call themselves Christian and disobey Christ so blatantly. But there are millions of people who do.

Spirituality are Christianity are more journey's than states of being. There are many wrong forks in the road. Looking at the answers Gnu got to his question it seems that most people on this forum on a spiritual path are on the right road for them. (that is just my opinion, I make no claim to Divine Knowledge) But that doesn't mean everyone on Earth is on a constructive rather than destructive path. Clearly there are millions who are on the latter path.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 03:31 PM

Very well Mr. Shaw. Your intent is to "To challenge, to rib, to goad, to provoke." without giving offense. ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 03:44 PM

I am sure you are right that it would not be a majority view, Jack, and thank you for conceding that there are nevertheless probably some. You will appreciate that my tone in my post of 0241AM today about your all looking down gleefully at Steve's and my torment, to which LH responded, was not entirely earnest, but somewhat tongue-in-cheek! My point was that, if it did turn out that Steve & I had it wrong after all, why, wouldn't we both look silly, just!

Still don't think we have, tho, mind!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 04:40 PM

I am not so confident of my path that I don't have my own worries. I have to contend with conflicting instructions from the Bible and my own faults.

I do feel compelled to say that that when I was an atheist I was a lot more firm in my beliefs (or lack of them) than you appear to be. I never fell for that "what if you are wrong?" trap.

I also would be the first to admit that the underpinning of my beliefs are more practical that theological.

I am happier and more emotionally strong when I believe that when I didn't.

Your mileage may vary.

One thing I have always believed is that most TV evangelists are evil. But it doesn't take much wisdom to see that.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 04:43 PM

TYPO: ... than when I don't."

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 04:44 PM

well steve,we can at least agree that if some god did create via aeons of evolution,it would reflect badly on said god.
i was listening to a discussion yesterday between an atheist and a theistic evolutionist who IMO did not do so well precisely because he already was conceding too much ground.i would love to see a debate by the likes of dawkins against a qualified creationist scientist like ,for eg johnathan sarfati.of course dawkins refuses - supposedly not to give creationism respectability.on the other hand if he did accept the challenge he could demonstrate what nonsense it is - could,nt he?.well i have no worries about any such fair contest demonstating which position is weak.

little hawk - on line bullies may try to intimidate.if i dont reply to such it is because their attitude and foul lanquage dont deserve any response.

eliza - i am sorry that you seem to find my post too simplistic,reassured or not the answer you were looking for. jack that you find it needful to gainsay that post for some grammatical error.wishing you well.
pete.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 04:55 PM

Pete,

Your lack grammar is inconsiderate and rude and frankly, perplexing. Don't you want people to read what you write and understand it?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 04:56 PM

WOW! glad to have paid the visit to catch up around here. just back to "...tangent. I think I may read about Blake. I guess I will start with Wiki."

no disrespect to your friend Wiki, but do the fellow a favour, and start with Blake, not with opinions, however learned, about Blake. Maybe start with the aphoristic|epigrammatic Auguries of Innocence quoted in part above. OK I'm a Luddite with a website, preferring books, and loving libraries. But I really love this place, too. Thanks

keep on pickin'
dennis

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 05:39 PM

Sarcasm??

And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

William Blake

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 06:27 PM

I never fell for that "what if you are wrong?" trap.
.,,.
I haven't really fallen for it, Jack. I know that I just am not wrong. Just facetiously playing wotiffery, which can be quite a fun game if you don't play it too seriously.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 06:49 PM

"if some god did create via aeons of evolution,it would reflect badly on said god.
i was listening to a discussion yesterday between an atheist and a theistic evolutionist who IMO did not do so well precisely because he already was conceding too much ground.i would love to see a debate by the likes of dawkins against a qualified creationist scientist like ,for eg johnathan sarfati.of course dawkins refuses - supposedly not to give creationism respectability.on the other hand if he did accept the challenge he could demonstrate what nonsense it is - could,nt he?.well i have no worries about any such fair contest demonstating which position is weak."

I agree with JtS that pete of the stars's latest post is fairly incomprehensible. Are you seriously saying, Pete, that God could not/would not/did not use evolution in his creation, that it "would reflect badly on him if he did"? Are you truly proposing that Dawkins's position would be "weak" if he were to debate with a "qualified creationist scientist"? Don't you realize that there is no such thing as 'creationism science', that there cannot be?

I have no problem with believing things through faith; to my mind we utilize faith in a thousand unnamed ways. But don't call it "science", for pity's sake.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 07:17 PM

Pete--To follow Ebbie's remark, but with a different twist--

"debate by the likes of dawkins against a qualified creationist scientist.."

I'm sure you find it hard to accept this, but being a "creationist scientist" means he is wearing 2 hats at once. In so far as he-- or anyone- is being a creationist, he is not acting as a scientist- no matter what his scientific credentials. Science and creationism simply use two different standards to defend their claims. Creationism assumes from the beginning that religious claims are correct, and merely look for evidence to 'support' them. Science (done properly) make no assumptions and goes where purely scientific data takes it.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 07:50 PM

On the whole, I'm ashamed to admit, I don't really "get" most poetry. To me, much of it seems to have been laboriously chiselled from the perpetrator's tortured brain. Not only laboured, but mannered too, in so many cases (though I love to little pieces "Miss Joan Hunter Dunn" by Betjeman - wonderful!). Yet, every now and then, something pops up that kind of cuts me to the quick, says something that I had inside me that I couldn't properly articulate for myself. To me, great poetry is the stuff that brings my own inchoate notions to articulate fruition. It doesn't happen often (I think I was turned off at school by having to study the lengthy and turgid poems of the addled Wordsworth). The little snippet of Blake I quoted a day or two ago:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour

...is as beautiful an idea as anything by Mozart or Bach. It's a lovely nugget, a bright light to reach out to, still yet moving, in a long poem that is somewhat patchy elsewhere in its invention, but it's none the worse for that. Now Jack, enigmatically, inserted the word "sarcasm" in front of the well-known Blake-Parry anthem. I'm not sure whether he sees the poem in the same light as me, but I think the first half of the poem is a cynical rejection by Blake of the apocryphal tale of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea sanctifying England when they allegedly made the trip to Glastonbury. Not of the trip itself (who knows?) but of the notion that sacredness was somehow bestowed on a country, just because the sacred feet of Jesus might have touched the soil, that could then go on to exploit people fully as shamelessly as the slave trade in those dark satanic mills (I come from Lancashire, where those dark satanic mills still belched out their smoke and sent people to early graves when I was a little lad). The second half of Blake's polemic (that's what I think it really is) serves to sweep away the complacent, received religious "wisdom" expressed in the first two stanzas, and almost amounts to a socialist aspiration to seize the means to transform England into a proud and decent country. Jaysus, I've typed bullshit there all right, but do pardon my sudden stream of consciousness outbreak!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 08:09 PM

well steve,we can at least agree that if some god did create via aeons of evolution,it would reflect badly on said god.

There is so much wrong with this little sentence that I hardly know where to start. First, no "god" "created" anything via evolution. The story of evolution is the story of acquiescence, over billions of years, in perfectly comprehensible and natural laws using natural materials. I know you find that so inconvenient, but, you see, I have evidence for what I say and you have none to counteract it.

i would love to see a debate by the likes of dawkins against a qualified creationist scientist

Can you have a triple oxymoron? Any scholar care to elucidate?

like of course dawkins refuses - supposedly not to give creationism respectability.on the other hand if he did accept the challenge he could demonstrate what nonsense it is - could,nt he?.well i have no worries about any such fair contest demonstating which position is weak.

The interwebby thingie is full of Dawkins' debates with all manner of people, including atheists, Christians, archbishops, evangelical types, evolution deniers and creationists. He is notorious for accepting any challenge that comes his way and he always acquits himself well, never mind what you think of him. Just google and spend a happy night watching Dawkins take on the world. Your suggestion that he "refuses" is just yet one more sign that you hugely enjoy talking directly out of your vast creationist bottom.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Mar 13 - 09:02 PM

Bugger! I can't resist! Here 'tis in full, A Subaltern's Love Song by the beloved John Betjeman, who's buried in a beautiful place I visit at least six times a year:

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymus shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 25 Mar 13 - 04:02 AM

The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.

My contribution to the Blake bit.

I don't need to contribute to the starry delusion as pete made a contribution that speaks for itself. Is that Christianity? no wonder it's becoming irrelevant in the real world.

Notice how Sailor Jack is becoming more evangelical in recent posts? Hope he doesn't pm a link to Watchtower. It does seem to be getting that way...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 25 Mar 13 - 10:34 AM

If I knew the following about an opponent, I would not lower myself to debate with such an arrogant, ignorant, unqualified self publicist.

The following from Wikipedia.

""Jonathan Sarfati is an angry man who is a vocal proponent of Young Earth Creationism. Despite his insistence on using logic — using his qualifications to lend weight to his arguments — he often resorts to emotional appeals and name calling.
He is also startlingly ignorant of evolution, as seen in his book Refuting Evolution, wherein he states,
...evolution is not just about ape-like creatures turning into humans. Evolution is a philosophy trying to explain everything without God.
Before going full-time into creationist evangelism, Dr Sarfati was a chemist. He is also an expert chess player.
Sarfati has been a proper scientist, a physical chemist, with a B.Sc with honours and a Ph.D,[1] and claims several publications in this area, including in Nature. It should be noted that expertise in physical chemistry, although a proper hard science, lends absolutely no expertise on any aspect of biology.

Sarfati is an itinerant speaker and author. His ability to sell books or gain speaking engagements is based on his perceived authority within creationist circles, and his status as a "towering intellect". Thus, much material on CMI's website and in their printed matter is cringe-inducingly laudatory.
One article, An Awesome Mind, incorporates hyperbole like
·        "Very few people interested in creation/evolution issues would not have heard of Jonathan Sarfati. His books have become best-sellers—standard fare for Christians wishing to engage those who hold to evolutionary/long-age ideas. One of the reasons they have become such a powerful tool for Christianity is the amazing flow of his clear, crisp trademark logic, which has 'skewered' and silenced many an evolutionary detractor."
·        "Here was someone the Lord had blessed with a brilliant mind like a steel trap"
·        "Jonathan's response systematically demolished their arguments."
·        "The value of having a formidable talent who can quickly provide such solid answers—especially to Christians who feel intimidated by a barrage of the so-called 'facts' of evolution—cannot be overestimated"
If such fanfare fails to drive home the point, the article goes on with a section titled Audiences in awe, describing Sarfati's unsurpassed abilities. In relation to an exhibition of his chess skills,
·        an observer conveniently stating "This is astounding. World-class. The world's media should be here"
·        "It is truly astonishing to watch... For most 'mere mortals' like me, this kind of 'brain power' is an almost unimaginable gift."
The article then concludes that Sarfati is "A privilege to know".
The problem with the objectivity of such testimonies is that Sarfati is himself the editor of this material. This piece (one example of many) carries the byline of Gary Bates, Sarfati's colleague, and who works "one desk over" from Sarfati. But it is not disputed that Sarfati is identified as an editor of CMI's materials, and was chief editor in the Ex Nihilo magazine in which this piece appeared. Although this kind of self-promotion is not unusual for creationists, since they have no credibility outside the narrow confines of fundamentalism, Sarfati's self promotion has reached such giddy heights it would make a North Korean dictator blush.
Sarfati's debating technique is infamous for a "take no prisoners" approach that is so offensive, it regularly brings the reproach of other, more irenically-minded Christians. A Christian review of Sarfati's Refuting Evolution says Sarfati is "blinded by his own ideology and has probably never honestly and open-mindedly faced the main issue about which he writes", noting that Sarfati attacks Old-earth creationist Hugh Ross as a false teacher in need of Biblical rebuke. This is typical. Sarfati frequently retreats to "X calls himself a Christian, but..." succumbing to the classic "No True Scotsman" logical fallacy. Sarfati repeatedly and clearly implies non-Young Earth Creationists are barely saved, and are otherwise misguided, apostate, ineffective or tools of Satan for failing to take a literalist, presuppositionalist approach to scripture. This approach is typical of the more histrionic Creationist organisations, but Sarfati is its exemplar: Giving lip service to the idea that other Christians can sincerely disagree about doctrine without heresy, but taking the gloves off in personal argument, conducting desperate ad hominem rejoinders, and casting aspersion on any adversary's salvation or motivations.
Comments on fora where Sarfati has editorial control reveal repeated instances of Sarfati removing comments from those who rebut him and him then crowing over his "speechless" opponents. Sarfati also regularly retreats to name calling, referring to "celebutards" or "Commissar Obamov".
Sarfati has been known to employ the nom-de-guerre "Socrates" in online forums, even when commenting on himself. This is sufficiently well known that it is unlikely he still uses it when aiming for anonymity.""

At the top of the page which contains source links for almost every point made, in a yellow box, is the following:-

"This page contains too many unsourced statements, and needs to be improved.

Jonathan Sarfati could use some help. Please research the article's assertions. Whatever is credible should be sourced, and what is not should be removed.""

It is absolutely correct on one point only. Jonathan Sarfati could use some help, mainly psychiatric and anger management.

Bottom line:-

1. He has a doctorate in Physical Chemistry, miles away from even basic knowledge of biology, or any other discipline which would qualify him to comment on evolution on any other basis than as a layman.

2. Almost every comment extolling his intellect and knowledge comes direct from his own mouth, via his colleague Gary Bates at the next desk.

3. He isn't above cheating: ""Comments on fora where Sarfati has editorial control reveal repeated instances of Sarfati removing comments from those who rebut him and him then crowing over his "speechless" opponents.""

I think, Pete, you've picked a real dud there, but it seems Dawkins did take him on in a debate which was posted on Youtube on March 1st 2011

Debate

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 25 Mar 13 - 10:56 AM

no sarcasm intended. Just precisely what I said ["no disrespect"] and I'm glad you've found some of Bill's poetry!

& of course Blake is more than a writer. My earlier remarks about Blake in context also apply to the medium. Much of the work Blake himself valued most highly he engraved and printed in colour. As with all visual arts there is no substitute for the originals. Pretty good reproductions of some are in print, however. Again: I'm a book and library person, and a huge admirer of the collaboration and scholarship in Wiki. I hope you (and others) find enough in Blake to keep reading. Those of you with access to the Tate can see the real thing. Heavenly.

keep on pickin'
dennis

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 Mar 13 - 01:01 PM

Is it just my player or is Sarfati's voice technologically altered? It is my suspicion (unfounded?) that back home in New Zealand or wherever, this interview is only on radio so that, for whatever reason, Sarfati's identity is withheld. The alteration is really badly done.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Mar 13 - 01:59 PM

"Notice how Sailor Jack is becoming more evangelical in recent posts? Hope he doesn't pm a link to Watchtower. It does seem to be getting that way."

Pardon me for explaining my religious ideas in a thread whose purpose is to examine our ideas about Heaven and Hell. If you don't want to read my religious beliefs you will not find them above the line or in a any other thread not about that topic.

If there is a metaphorical Jehovah's Witness in this case it is you. You have knocked on Gnu's door. After he told you not to, I might ad. No one has knocked on your door.

Please, Mr. Musket, examine yourself. Why did you open this thread if you are not interested? Why do you complain about seeing the subject of a thread addressed within a thread? Maybe the answers are closer than you think.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Musket
Date: 25 Mar 13 - 02:54 PM

I didn't know this was for superstitious people only? Pardon my French..

Twice I have contributed to this thread as per the thread title. Neither post was religious nor entertained religion. It merely said that there is the heaven and hell that describes your idea of perfection and your idea of your worst nightmare. Then there is the heaven and hell that is promised or threatened to you.

You, you may recall, started bringing fantasy into it. Heaven and hell are words that transcend religion as they are in everyday use, often by rational people.

My observation of you reflects the way you have started having a pop at anybody who doesn't share your delusion. Fine, I envy you. I really do. I wish I could believe in jam tomorrow. I can't though and find the defensive attitude of religious people on this and current threads to be somewhat disturbing. It seems alright to use the word atheist in a derogatory way, even to link it with the term militant. Yet the minute someone says they don't believe in all that God bollocks, you find it appalling. Yet does it occur to you that the opposite can apply? That religion tries to impede science, tries to control people yadda yadda yadda?

If I ever said I wasn't interested in a thread, you can tell because I don't go on it. If people can address this thread without reference to their imaginary friend, live with it.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 25 Mar 13 - 04:48 PM

Mr. Musket.

Can you honestly say that you opened this thread not expecting it to be about what you call "fantasy?"

Again, please pardon me for discussing my religious belief on a thread started to discuss religious beliefs.

You are childishly baiting me now with terms like "God bollocks".

No one asked you about "religion tries to impede science, tries to control people"

People were asked to talk to gnu about Heaven and Hell.

No one was asked to bash people for believing those things. In fact you all were asked, very passionately to leave all of that at the door.

By you did it anyway. Barged in and spread you anti-religious prejuidices, your mundane and secular definitions of religious terms, your tendencies to provoke, taunt and utter playground insults.   And when you didn't get enough attention for your tantrum, you personally attacked my motives with a snide remark.

You are the evangelist on this thread. You need to live with that. Since I have clearly made my point, twice. I am done with this topic sir.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 06:09 AM

Good. Gnu can now sift through and see the answers to his OP.

Heaven is freedom to know how to think.
Hell is being told what to think.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 12:57 PM

It all goes back to one basic, and none of the posts have changed that one iota.

HEAVEN is a carrot, to acquire which the faithful are admonished to do as they are told, failing which there awaits the big stick called HELL.

Whatever posters may make of it on a personal level, it was, and is, an invention of organised religion, for precisely the above purpose.

The Greek Hades was the God of the underworld, the place dead people went to, not just evil people. Once there they were judged by a panel of three judges, Rhadamanthus, Minos, and Aeacus, who pass sentence. The very good go to the Elysian Fields. Others are singled out for special treatment. Sisyphus and Tantalus being prime examples of the latter.

The Catholic Church seized upon it as a controlling mechanism for the population as well, over the years, as a source of considerable income in return for indulgences.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 05:54 PM

"A cynic knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."

I'll tell you what heaven and hell are. Heaven is being in the presence of those whom you truly love. Hell is getting entangled in endless Mudcat Cafe threads where people are bitching about politics and religion.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 06:11 PM

Musket - to add to what you said...

Heaven is the freedom to think for oneself.
Hell is being told what to think.

Heaven is freely living the way you wish to live.
Hell is being forced to live in some other way.

Heaven is freedom.
Hell is enslavement (to a dogma, a government, a slavemaster, a boss, a bad habit, a drug, a religious order, and any other form of outer control imposed upon oneself against one's own better judgement).

Heaven is peace.
Hell is war.

Heaven is love.
Hell is hatred.

Heaven is inner peace.
Hell is fear and inner torment.

Heaven is a sense of purpose.
Hell is having no idea what to do next.

Heaven is being interested and inspired.
Hell is being bored and frustrated.

Heaven is seeing yourself in others.
Hell is seeing every other person as just an opportunity or a threat.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 06:13 PM

got more. ;-)

Heaven is a friendly dog.
Hell is a dog that wants to attack you.

(attitude is everything)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 07:57 PM

Don... "It all goes back to one basic, and none of the posts have changed that one iota."

Apparently, you missed my post explaining the actual meaning of the concept as it relates to human "life" and discussing the concept's overall importance re the way one lives one's life, which has sweet fuck all to do with religion or any "child's play" carrot and stick crap. Read back. I am sure you will find it among all the nasty, pontificating bullshit about crap that has nothing to do with the OP.

No, don't thank me. It's my job as a superhero.

I thought my work here was done but, alas, no.

I guess my take on this thread is this.

It went south.

I went Wildebeeste!!!

I was told that my OP had been answered and ERGO... any other discussions or whatever were none of my business, thank you very much!

Welllll, seems to me that if the OP was answered (bullshit) then all the crap that ensued should have been posted to threads about all that other crap or a new thread started.

I guess what I am saying is, nobody can speak to a deaf man, especially if he chooses not to hear you. I asked a question. I listened. It was a great discussion until it was ruined. Now I come back to see what is going on and I see the dog has bitten it's own tail... again and again and again.

I know what the concept truly means. Those who try to make it in any way a religious concept or rule and shit upon the concept as it relates to living one's life in a "good" way simply because they perceive it as dictated by a religion do not - if you don't get that, wellll, don't worry... you can't end up in Hell for being stunned as me arse... matter of fact, it almost precludes you will. Be happy in your ignorance!

Go to Heaven you ignorant bastards! >;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 09:02 PM

"
I was told that my OP had been answered and ERGO... any other discussions or whatever were none of my business, thank you very much!"

I don't think you were told they were none of your business. I think you were asked to lighten up.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 08:22 AM

""Apparently, you missed my post explaining the actual meaning of the concept as it relates to human "life" and discussing the concept's overall importance re the way one lives one's life, which has sweet fuck all to do with religion or any "child's play" carrot and stick crap.""

With respect Gnu, I didn't miss it, I disagreed with it.

What you, and several others, are doing is taking a specific pair of terms which are linked inextricably with 3000 years of organised population control by a process of fear versus reward.

It is playing with semantics to take those words and apply them to altogether unconnected concepts, simply because those concepts are what you may think of as either good, or bad.

You may be (in fact you are) correct in your assessment of those concepts as good or bad, and I would have no quarrel with the use of moral/immoral, or ethical/unethical, but heaven, or hell they absolutely are not.

If one accepts the existence of heaven and hell, as propounded by the Ancient Greeks and much more so by the Catholic Church, they would, by definition be so far exceeding just good or evil as to be beyond our capacity to imagine.

If you don't believe in them (as I don't), they are a simple controlling mechanism.

The bottom line for me is this. Depending on your belief, they are either too good, or not good enough to apply to the concepts expressed here.

I hope this is comprehensible, as I had considerable difficulty in figuring out why I felt as I do.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 08:51 AM

There are innumerable different views about the concept of Heaven and Hell, Don, and they are found in most cultures that have ever existed, certainly aren't restricted to the Roman Catholic Church or the Greek Mythos.

What they all have to do with is human conduct in a moral sense, and the long range results and consequences of human conduct....this being a philosophical matter that is of great concern to ANY even moderately civilized community of human beings. The basic idea is this: Good conduct leads to good results in the long run. Bad conduct leads to suffering of one type or another...and may lead to punishment of one type or another...in the long run. (It also leads to people not liking you!)

We all know this. It's self-evident. It is reflected in the rules we teach our children about personal conduct, and in the civil laws that our communities enact to regulate conduct and to prevent (or punish) crimes.

You can call it "carrot and stick" if you want to...(shrug)...it doesn't matter...it's still necessary to have bad consequences for destructive actions in a community and in a society, and everyone understands that.

To extend these same factors into ideas about a world of spirit or an afterlife is perfectly natural....and most civilizations have believed in something spiritual and have had ideas about an afterlife (or ideas about karma and reincarnation).

What is surprising about any of that, and why would anyone find it objectionable?

You feel that the Church has used stories about Hell to control people? Well, yeah!!!! Secular society uses stories about arrest, trial, and jail time...and even execution....to control people! Meaning: to control their behaviour so they will hesitate before breaking the law.

As I said above...what is surprising about any of that? It's an inevitable feature of people attempting to form and regulate a workable, complex society.

Good behaviour has good results. Bad behaviour results in punishment and suffering as natural consequences OF that bad behaviour.

If it's that way in secular life, and it bloody well is, then why the hell shouldn't it be that way in religion too???????????? As above, so below. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You commit the crime, you pay the price.

I gather you don't object to secular society controlling people through fear of punishment when they break civil laws. Why would you object to the church attempting to control people through fear of punishment when they break spiritual laws? (most of which are based on ordinary morality anyway)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 09:17 AM

Good behaviour has good results. Bad behaviour results in punishment and suffering as natural consequences OF that bad behaviour.

If it's that way in secular life, and it bloody well is, then why the hell shouldn't it be that way in religion too???????????? As above, so below. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You commit the crime, you pay the price.

I gather you don't object to secular society controlling people through fear of punishment when they break civil laws. Why would you object to the church attempting to control people through fear of punishment when they break spiritual laws?

Not very New Testament, this lot, is it?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 09:28 AM

I know what you mean, Steve. ;-) But we all know perfectly well that behaving like a prat gets you into trouble eventually, don't we? Do you have any objection to that notion or would you favor a world where being a total prat doesn't bear any consequences at all? Tell me.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 11:58 AM

Gnu

I have to disagree with Don. At least in small part. Yes Heaven and Hell are very old concepts. They have been analyzed and referenced for at least 2000 years, by priests, by authors. The most influential example, Dante wasn't just presenting a stick. He was illustrating the moral comparison of earthly sins and saying some interesting things about human nature.

All of these analyses. All of these writings add up to one clear conclusion. There cannot be just one clear definition of "Heaven" or "Hell" you are welcome to say yours is right. But if someone sincerely tell you what it means to them, you have no ground to say that they were wrong. I think that every answer on this thread but one was a legitimate answer to your question and deserves respect.

On the other hand

If it is clear that they are taking the piss and deliberately misunderstanding, trivializing and mocking the question, As one person on the thread has done. Have at 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 12:47 PM

Hello sailor!

And what gives you the right to be serious?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 12:51 PM

Hello hand cannon! Shooting off another wad I see.

Its not a matter of rights. Its a matter of choice.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 01:19 PM

Well stop moaning about the choice of others then.

Anyway, thanks for calling me a wanker. Your Bible reckons that's a sin you know. You'll never go to heaven whilst being fascinated with my hell..

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 01:57 PM

I was just doing onto you something that gave you great pleasure.

Two things really, since it allowed you to express sure knowledge in something you claim no interest in. Be careful though. Every Christian judgement you make brings you one step closer to salvation.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 02:15 PM

Actually, Musket, the "sin of Onan" as described in Genesis, although often used as a synonym for the activity you rubricate above, was, from the words used,"spilled his seed on the ground", rather an act of coitus interruptus, surely, than of masturbation?

~M~ OLP (Official Legendary Pedant)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 02:33 PM

""You feel that the Church has used stories about Hell to control people? Well, yeah!!!!""

It's not control per se that I disagree with. It's control by "Fairy Godmother" versus "Bogeyman".

Arrest jail time and execution are real, as are honours and knighthoods and the equivalents round the world.

Also that control has been misused for the material enrichment of the controllers. Go look at any major Catholic or orthodox Christian cathedral, or better still the Vatican, and see what they have accumulated, then consider how many poor people and sick people could be helped.

There are of course Christian churches which don't have the same riches, and they tend to be the more modern offshoots.

Our own Church of England owns huge areas of land, yet bullies parishioners to fund raise for maintenance costs of their churches.

None of that is a particularly edifying endorsement of the use of Heaven and Hel which has facilitated it.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 03:38 PM

Yes, you make some good points there, Don. The churches have, of course, often abused their power....and have often been taken over by greedy men who were out to increase their own wealth and power, in truth, rather than pursuing any honest spiritual ends. Such is the folly of humanity. You could say exactly the same thing about our political systems, banking systems, and large businesses....all were originally based upon worthy intentions, but have often become corrupted through the self-serving actions of venal men. Any system is only as good as the people at the top of that system.

You say that "Arrest jail time and execution are real, as are honours and knighthoods and the equivalents round the world."

Yes. We know they're real because they occur in this physical reality.

Spiritual rewards and consequences may well also be real. If so, they don't occur in this reality, but in another. We have no way of proving or disproving that at present, since direct proof of any other hypothetical reality is not attainable in this one, so we can neither categorically confirm nor categorically deny the possibility of spiritual consequences for one's actions.

There are countless ideas about Heaven and Hell, and about reincarnation, and karma, and various other theories. I don't know which is right...or if any of them are right...but I'm certainly willing to consider them as possibilities. I don't deny what I have no proof against...nor do I insist upon what I have no experiential proof in support of. I simply give it fair consideration, admitting that I don't know for sure. Some things seem more probable to me than others...but stating probability is not the same thing as stating certainty.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 03:49 PM

It's also a night club, in Kingston upon Hull.


From Hull and Hell, and Halifax eh!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 05:51 PM

Are there other living things in Heaven and Hell apart from human beings? Are there dogs, cats, beetles, daisies, grass, toadstools, bacteria or viruses in those places? If "yes", how does God decide whether to send, say, an octopus to Heaven or Hell? If "no", where do wildebeeste, sharks and smallpox viruses go when they die?

One thing is certain, though, by destroying all of the other living things we currently share the planet with, we certainly aren't creating Heaven!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 06:16 PM

Well, HELL'S BELLS! Ye lads are back on track big time! I am fuckin gob smacked!

Nice of youse to actually address the OP and provide legitimate discussions of same. I say that in the nicest sense and I am not being trite. I hope genuine discussion continues and leads where it may.

Bravo ALL!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 06:34 PM

"an octopus to Heaven or Hell?"

Do you mean any octopus or one that has not accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior?

Seriously, I would imagine that any animals in Heaven would be there for the benefit of the people.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 07:05 PM

"Seriously, I would imagine that any animals in Heaven would be there for the benefit of the people."

Is that the only reason that animals (what about plants and fungi?) are on Earth then - for the benefit of people? Who or what benefited from dinosaurs, say, before people evolved?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 07:08 PM

Well, again...this is just hypothetical...but I think that if people have souls which survive physical death, then other living things probably do as well. I don't see why they wouldn't! So, yes, why shouldn't animals have a life in spirit if we do?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 07:13 PM

Is "GUEST" shimrod?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 07:49 PM

Yes, Jack it's me.

I have to say that what troubles me more and more about discussions like this is that they are so 'human centred' - there's an underlying assumption that humans live in isolation from the rest of Nature and are 'above it'. To the religious the rest of 'Creation' appears to be a mere detail - an afterthought. The irreligious or anti-religious case too seems to be framed in terms of human pre-occupations.

In a world which is falling to bits around us, I think it's time that we started developing a higher form of consciousness - one which begins to acknowledge the limits of our existence. If we were truly the 'pinnacle of Creation' we wouldn't be carelessly trashing everything in sight.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 08:52 PM

I've also been troubled by the human-centred thing, Shimrod, and it shows up in both religion and the other various aspects of culture.

However, it's not all that surprising. If rabbits had a planet-dominating civilization somewhere, I expect they'd have rabbit-centered religions and philosophies, and at least some of them would imagine God as a very large and powerful rabbit.

The thing is, though, you can look at humans 2 ways...

You can look at all the harm we've done. ("glass is half empty")

You can look at all the creative and beautiful things we've accomplished. ("glass is half full")

Either way, there's a lot to look at. I think it's an honor to be a human being...but if I were a rabbit, I'd feel the same honor in being a rabbit. People are far better off to believe in themselves than to despair over their errors. Animals are wise in their innocence. They accept what they are without question. So should we, and we'd be a lot happier.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 10:01 PM

For a lot of people Heaven is a reward for good behavior on Earth. IMHO Animals don't make moral decisions they just do as their instincts command. They can't earn Heaven but they have no risk of Hell.

Trashing the environment can be a sin in any number of ways. But if you are immoral enough to pollute, you are likely to go to hell for any number of reasons, IMHO.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 10:49 PM

I tend to think of Hell as a temporary condition, not a permanent one. I can't see any useful point in having "eternal damnation", but I can see a point in experiencing unpleasant consequences as long as you remain in an unpleasant attitude, so to speak. In other words...God doesn't condemn anyone to Hell, they put themselves in Hell on the basis of their own general attitude....and an attitude can change as time goes by!

When I'm speaking of "Hell"...I don't have any particular picture or definition of it in my mind. I'm not imagining the traditional fiery pit or anything like that. Likewise, in the case of Heaven, I'm not imagining any particular traditional scene either...not the clouds and harps, etc, nothing like that.

Why? Because I don't know yet, that's why. And I don't necessarily accept other people's versions of it, because they probably don't know yet either...nor do I literally accept versions of it in some ancient holy book such as the Bible, because the writers may not have known either, and furthermore they may have been speaking in symbols and metaphors rather than in literal terms.

Then too, there could be a great many different forms of both Hell and Heaven, many different levels and degrees of both...so one person's description might only apply to one of them.

For instance, I remember a rather funny cartoon in the Far Side. A guy has just arrived in Hell and he's looking around. It's a sort of barren, empty place without any vegetation or buildings, but there are a lot of people scattered around in easy chairs, all sitting alone and watching television.

"Wow!" he says to the Devil, "You've got TV here."

"Yes," replies the Devil with a wicked grin. "Unfortunately...it's ALL we've got!"

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 10:59 PM

About whether *all* living things get to go to heaven, that's kind of problem-laden, right? They say that the air of Phoenix, Arizona, was excellent for people who went there to get away from their allergies. Until the people started planting the bushes, flowers and herbs that they missed from 'back home'.

So maybe transporting all manner of critters to heaven- see?

I like to think that all beings that can *love* are eternal.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 11:01 PM

By the way, in a lot of places in the Bible the word that has been translated in English as "Hell" was originally the Hebrew word sheol. That word does not mean a place of punishment or torture. Literally translated, it simply means "the grave" or "the place of death".

This is why Jehovah's Witnesses, among others, do not believe in a fiery Hell or a place of torment for the punishment of unrepentant souls. They think souls that are not saved simply go to "the grave", and experience nothing conscious at all there, but are simply not alive anymore. As for those who are saved, the JW's think that many will be resurrected in physical bodies in a completely restored Eden-like condition on Earth, while a much smaller number (144,000) will go to Heaven to be in the company of God.

It's quite a different viewpoint from that held by most Christian fundamentalists, who seem to be very taken with the idea of a fiery Hell and eternal punishment for the wicked.

All these different Christian viewpoints have arisen because of different interpretations and translations of the Bible over the past 2,000 years.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 11:06 PM

"I like to think that all beings that can *love* are eternal."

That's a wonderful thought, Ebbie!

Regarding the plant allergies, that seems to be a huge problem for a great many people, and it may be why I tend to get depressed in the Springtime...for no apparent reason. I'm beginning to think it's probably a reaction to pollen.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 03:25 AM

Hello Sailor!

I'd piss myself laughing if, when I get there I bump into you...

Any more pontifications regarding what gets you to hell? May as well make it worth my while.   

I wonder which animals would deserve hell then, based on flawed logic with a slight nautical air?   My bloody greyhound pollutes alright. Farts in the house and shitd on my lawn. Whether you would give him the fire and brimstone codswallop is another story.   Presumably the dinosaurs are there because God was displeased with them and was happier with Noah. ..

Best not to discuss heaven and hell when ripped to your tits, it conjours up fantasies no chemical can get near. ..

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 03:36 AM

"I'd piss myself laughing if, when I get there I bump into you."

A merciful God will keep us apart and not even Satan would be that cruel to me.

I'm going to stop taking to you now. Fire and brimstone I could take, but the tedium of your jokes is torture beyond the pale.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Musket
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 06:08 AM

Heretics like me were put "beyond the pale" in mediaeval times, so your turn of phrase is rather apt.

It is Satan's job to be cruel, if the religious fairy stories are anything to go by. Although the God dude in old testament could be a bit of a bastard by all accounts.

Anyway, this does raise an interesting heaven and hell conundrum. If I were a God botherer, then heaven would be full of clap and be happy sanctimonious smiling Christians. My idea of hell is a place full of clap and be happy sanctimonious smiling Christians...

There are times when I feel I have reached heaven, and times when I reckon hell has caught up with me. So, I wonder if heaven and hell are a figment of your imagination? I wonder what else from the good book started that way?

I have a family branch that are Jehova;s Witnesses, (my Aunty married a bloke who became one to avoid being called up in the war and as with all brain washing, it kind of stuck...) and I am aware of their acceptance that there may well be the big zero once you snuff it. Two issues though. 1) They feel it is certain that there is a big zero, rather than state the lack of evidence for any other scenario, and 2) there are more Jehova's witnesses than there are places in paradise available according to their literature. Seems a bit of a bugger, especially as the place will be crowded what with a huge bunch of virgins for every Islamic martyr and God keeping Sailor Boy away from people who fail to take his waffle seriously.

Hell. That's the place to be. Low energy costs, entertainment, all my mates. Yeah, where do you sign up?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 07:13 AM

""Seriously, I would imagine that any animals in Heaven would be there for the benefit of the people.""

The Catholic Church states unequivocally that animals, possessing no soul, will not be admitted to heaven. This was one of the points which got me thrown out of the RI class.

I asked what would be the replacement in heaven, given the pleasure derived by humans from animals in general, and pets in particular. I said that it seemed weird that in a place which was to be the reward for goodness, we should have less pleasure than we had in life, and commented that, if I couldn't take my dog, I wasn't sure I wanted to go.

45 minutes outside the door, and a visit to the head for caning, and all these years later there is still no answer, and if it should turn out real, I don't think I've been rotten enough to be excluded, but if that dog isn't waiting I'll have to think carefully whether it's the place I want to be.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 07:18 AM

Surely there is an exception for seeing-eye dogs?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 09:40 AM

Don, I thank God I did not have your religious upbringing!!! ;-)

So the Catholic Church says animals have no souls, do they? I wonder how they figured that one out? Seems more like wishful thinking to me than any kind of informed opinion.

Anyway, I bet there are some individual Catholics who do believe animals have souls, because there are some pretty independent-minded Catholics around (I've met some of them) and they don't necessarily agree with everything that comes under the authority of the Pope in Rome. In some cases this causes them to leave the church...but in other cases there is enough stuff that they like about the church that they can put up with the stuff they don't agree with.

I'll give an example of how that works: I'm a Canadian. I basically like Canada...for many different reasons. But....there are some things I don't like about Canada. There are things my government does that I totally disagree with! And the winter's too long. Still, I haven't left Canada, have I? That's because there's enough I like about being here that I can put up with the parts I don't like.

The same goes for churches. You don't have to agree with everything in a given church to stay associated with it. You don't have to agree with every point of its dogma.

The same goes for relationships. You don't have to agree with everything about the other person to stay in the relationship.

Everything in life is like that. There is no perfect church, no perfect country, no perfect government, and no perfect relationship...they all involve compromise. And that's why a person can disagree with the Pope about quite a few specific things...and still want to remain a Catholic (for various other reasons quite aside from what the Pope thinks).

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 02:03 PM

"Hell. That's the place to be. Low energy costs, entertainment, all my mates."

Sorry, Musket. If Hell is the absence of God and God is Love and Friendship derives from Love then there are no Friends in Hell. :)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 02:22 PM

LH... "You don't have to agree with everything in a given church to stay associated with it."

You never met a Hard Shell Baptist, eh? >;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 02:30 PM

"It is Satan's job to be cruel, if the religious fairy stories are anything to go by. "

Yes genius, that it why it is funny to say that even Satan would not be sp cruel as to make me suffer you "humour" or in this case your lack of it. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 02:45 PM

>>>>""Seriously, I would imagine that any animals in Heaven would be there for the benefit of the people.""

The Catholic Church states unequivocally that animals, possessing no soul, will not be admitted to heaven. This was one of the points which got me thrown out of the RI class.

I asked what would be the replacement in heaven, given the pleasure derived by humans from animals in general, and pets in particular. I said that it seemed weird that in a place which was to be the reward for goodness, we should have less pleasure than we had in life, and commented that, if I couldn't take my dog, I wasn't sure I wanted to go.

45 minutes outside the door, and a visit to the head for caning, and all these years later there is still no answer, and if it should turn out real, I don't think I've been rotten enough to be excluded, but if that dog isn't waiting I'll have to think carefully whether it's the place I want to be.
"<<<

Thanks Don, you illustrated my point with a clear personal example.
If Heaven is paradise for you, then your dog is there. But dogs don't need salvation and can't go to Hell for their sins. So your dog would be there for you. One thing I might point out is that my dog had very long fur that tended to clump and mat. In his version of heaven there would be piles of dung and stinky, boggy water and bushes with burrs for him to roll in and explore. But then if it is my version of heaven then someone else would bathe him and comb that crap from his fur.

I sometimes think that Heaven, to be the physical paradise it is sometimes made out to be, would have to be customized to the needs of each individual, with many subservient beings to tend to us. I wonder if that is the thinking behind the Mormon idea of each man ruling his own planet.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 03:08 PM

"The Catholic Church states unequivocally that animals, possessing no soul, will not be admitted to heaven."

Is that why Western civilisation thinks it's OK to trash the world - because only human's possess souls and therefore all other living things are of no account and can be carelessly destroyed?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 03:12 PM

"humans" not "human's" - what is the matter with me!?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 03:15 PM

Western "civilization" does that because we are greedy, lazy bastards. Religion is used as an excuse, after the fact.

The Bible talks about "dominion" over creation but also a responsibility to preserve it.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 04:08 PM

Religion is a moral crutch, for the socially inadequate.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 05:16 PM

our internet has been down awhile so this is a very brief response to past criticisms.despite my being "incomprehensible" ,ebbie and bill [and i suspect most others] knew what i was saying.
yes ebbie - that was what i was saying.
bill- every scientist is influenced by presuppositions,and i have previously cited admissions of such.
don t - i see you went straight to the primary source to dis sarfati - not!.that link to " debate" does you no credit at all.
jack - did i spot incorrect grammer in your reply [smile]

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 05:30 PM

I'm curious, pete, is your refusal to use capitals when appropriate a case of passive-aggression? Do you capitalize GOD?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 06:15 PM

"every scientist is influenced by presuppositions ..."

And your point is, pete? How do you define "presupposition"?

There are theories, models and laws out there - but you probably couldn't do science without them. But all science is, in a sense, provisional and subject to constant review. On the other hand, religion is dogmatic, fixed and unchallengeable. But you'll go on and on and on with your idiot project of trying to force God into the 'gaps' whatever I say, won't you, pete?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 06:55 PM

pete, u r inconsiderate.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 07:11 PM

bill- every scientist is influenced by presuppositions

Don't worry, Shimrod. Pete has copied and pasted this piece of meaningless drivel from somewhere or other. If you ask him to explain it he won't have a bloody clue what to say.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 08:42 PM

"What is 'Heaven and Hell'?"

Concepts with which we offer rewards or not to our sense of what we consider moral. Most of us die believing that we have succeeded in discerning both, with our enemies consigned to the latter and our humble selves to the former. With just modesty, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 09:01 PM

Intolerance and blind prejudice is a mental crutch for the emotionally inadequate, John.

gnu - No, man! ;-D I don't think I have met one of those Hard Shell Baptist guys...but I've seen them in the movies.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 09:42 PM

"emotionally inadequate"

Would you be kind enough to explain what that means?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 09:44 PM

Pete... and *I* have posted explanations of very different types of presuppositions.
Assuming that strict rules of scientific investigation are required is very different from assuming that there is one 'book' which owes its existence to a supernatural being.... and that is the basic difference going on.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 02:00 AM

pete, it's a serious question: Do YOU capitalize the name of God?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 04:50 AM

Ebbie... YOU are GOD? Heheheheee... >;-)

Oh man... I DO SO NEED another cuppa tea!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Claire M
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 03:34 PM

Hiya,

Heaven is anything that takes me out of myself – a great concert, book, etc., a good chat with someone else who shares my interests.

Hell is a group of nursing homes I ended up staying in. They should be evacuated, shut down & bombed so they can never re-open again.

I'd love to read the Bible – all that burning fire & blood really appeals to me. It just sounds like a very long folk song. Anyone got any recommendations for a kids' version?? My eyes can't cope with the small font. When I was younger my parents took me to this shrine – I was blessed by a nun who gave me a St. Rita, (she's the patron saint of sick/disabled people) which I wished had been a St. Theresa because of the song.

There were candles in red & blue glass things, statues of nasty things happening & a tape of chanting, a bit like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDc2FD-vy8M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_jKsQjuCfE

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Ebbie
Date: 30 Mar 13 - 03:25 PM

Well, I have my answer- in checking some threads I see that pete does capitalize the name of God. It is evident, since he doesn't use capitalization here, that he is displaying his lack of respect for us. And for himself.

Come on, pete.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Mar 13 - 08:39 PM

Ebbie.. if you have listened to certain evangelist preachers, you may have noted that is is common to pronounce 'God' as if it were the most ostentatious word in the universe...(I suppose it is to them).

It is impossible to do it justice in print, but it is sort of like..
"Goowwadd", done with throat tightened and mouth opened roundly, and the sound held for an extra second. I assume that capitalization is an exercise in 'respect' done out of deference to the idea.

It rather bothers me too, even though I see the intent.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Mar 13 - 09:46 PM

I'll swear I heard John Wayne saying, at the foot of the cross, "Truly this man was the son of Gawd..."

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 06:38 AM

According to a survey carried out in Ireland, published in the Irish Sunday Times, the majority of Catholics here no longer believe in Hell - they couldn't have visited Birmingham!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 07:18 AM

How & when literal belief in Hell disappeared from Catholicism is one of the main themes of David Lodge's clever novel about a group of Catholics from 1950s-80s & the doctrinal changes they lived thru in those years, 'How Far Can You Go?', pub 1980. (US title - 'Souls & Bodies', I think). I have recently reread it, and it stands up pretty well.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Musket
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 12:37 PM

I prefer the other religious threads on the go at the moment. Especially the one where Sailor Jack puts me in the same boat as Dawkins. Hope I can live up to it.

Just out of interest, does anyone know if other religions have an equivalent of heaven and hell, or is it just the christian cult? (And then only certain sects, as I am aware Jehova's Witnesses don't subscribe to the hell bit.)

Heaven by the way was being at Hillsborough yesterday, thrashing the tykes.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 06:30 PM

Bollocks! Heaven (had I been able to go) would be to have been at Villa Park this afternoon to see Stevieboy picking holes in Lambert's benighted boys...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 31 Mar 13 - 06:55 PM

"Just out of interest, does anyone know if other religions have an equivalent of heaven and hell, or is it just the christian cult?"

If you'd bothered to read this thread....

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 02:41 AM

I have read the threads. My question was rhetorical you prat, to draw out the debate as it was getting very defensive by those with a superstitious claim on heaven and hell.

Steve, you poor deluded chap. Gerrard impressed me last Tuesday to be fair so it was to be expected he was going to be on form. However, for a truly holy experience you need a local derby and a bit of tyke bashing. The atmosphere in the cathedral, the cradle of worship since 1867 was superior to anything experienced in the false prophet church of Anfield. Mind you, you were playing away. And on that subject I'm off to pick up my lads and head down to Bristol. Heady stuff this heaven lark..

Up the Owls!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 04:13 AM

Why has this thread petered out into a tedious load of drivel about f***ing football? I can get that anywhere - newspapers, the radio, TV, the Internet, toilet walls and probably, very soon, beamed directly into my f***ing brain, whether I want it or not! Now there's a vision of Hell!!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 04:31 AM

The thread petered out ages ago. Im just pointing it out.

Anyway, to normal well adjusted people football is heaven hence appropriate for this thread. At least it exists...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 05:19 AM

But it's all relative ~~ the weekend was heaven for me coz Arsenal won, but hell for Emma coz Chelsea didn't.

Shimrod ~~ don't forget the famous graffito: "Jesus saves ~~ but Gervinho scores on the rebound".

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 05:25 AM

"Don't just say God - say Shankly"

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Musket
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 05:40 AM

Has to said I suppose.. 89 mins in a cup final, 1.0 to your team... There aren't many atheists in the stadium.....

SWFC v MUFC 1991. Wembley place of Worship.   I was that pilgrim....

Whenever I read "latterday saints," I still think of John Sheridan.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 05:50 AM

When I were nobbut a lad oop north I were a Burnley supporter (it was where me grandad, me dad and me uncles came from), and I will never forget the early 60s FA quarter-final replay in which we knocked out Sheffield Wednesday 2-0, the goals being scored by Jimmy McIlroy (the greatest footballer who ever lived) and Jimmy Robson. You had to be there - and I was!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 06:56 AM

Aye and come 1966 we got to the final. I was too young to go but recall it well listening on the radio. Pity Everton beat us... My confirmation was the1969 - 70 season when I got my own pew. (Stood on the cop behind the goal.)

Of course I remain bemused how you can say you support a team and then you say you support another? You don't choose your team. Your team chooses you.

That's real religion. ...

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 07:49 AM

Groan!!

Why do some 'groan' men like watching other 'groan' men kicking a ball about?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 10:09 AM

Yeah. Fully agree Shimrod.

However, we are discussing football now. Kicking a ball about helps the odd idle moment but what the hell (or heaven) has it to do with this thread?

Up the Owls!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 10:16 AM

Not when you live in the depths of Cornwall it doesn't. Unless you really expect me to support Argyle? Jaysus...

And shirley I was permitted to go right off Burnley when I discovered that Alastair Campbell supported 'em? Have you no pity?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 10:31 AM

Why do some 'groan' men like watching other 'groan' men kicking a ball about?

Well at least it's a damn sight better than that game played by men with oval balls.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 11:16 AM

"Stood on the cop behind the goal.)..."
.,,.

Hope he didn't complain about your weight, Musket. Or did he nick you?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 12:39 PM

"
I have read the threads. My question was rhetorical you prat, to draw out the debate as it was getting very defensive by those with a superstitious claim on heaven and hell. "

No you haven't read that thread. there was a detailed discussion of the origins of the concept of heaven and Hell being from other religions in the first part of the thread when the adults were having their say.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 12:47 PM

Not when you live in the depths of Cornwall it doesn't
Bude?
Only just in Cornwall!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,Musket sans cookie
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 12:55 PM

Well we children want our say now.

Sailor Jack's a Christian. Ha ha ! We'll beat him up at playtime ha ha!

Christianity is just about all from other religions, not just the threat and promise bits of controlling people. Although on balance, the bastards seem far more efficient at it than the other religions... I love the quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu when he said that "when the white men came, they had the Bible and we had the land. They invited us to close our eyes and pray. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land."

I had read it 'you prat'. My question still stands. The other examples indicate places other than this world but do they all use them as carrot and stick? Are they all of the threat and promise variety?

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 01:12 PM

You read it but you asked the question as if you hadn't?

Carry on schoolboy.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: gnu
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 07:24 PM

Ya know, apparently, there does come a time when all actually is said and done.

Amen.

For those who don't know, look it up. For those that do know...

gnightgnu

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 08:01 PM

I'm told by someone with a doctorate (not in religious studies) that Heaven and Hell are exactly what the bible says they are: opposite destinations in the afterlife.

However, they exist in a "different dimension," so to speak, so you can't fly or dig to them.

When you're in one, after death, you'll know instantly which.

Since God is loving and all-forgiving, it may be possible for certain non-Christians to go to Heaven, but my friend does not recommend testing the theory.

When I asked him how sure he was of these things, he replied, "Close to 100%. I can't say absolutely 100% only because this life is the only one I've actually experienced."

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 08:29 PM

Not when you live in the depths of Cornwall it doesn't
"Bude?
Only just in Cornwall!"

What a prick. I live four miles outside Bude and almost a half hour's drive from the Devon border. The nearest village (no pub, no shop) is two miles away, the nearest small town is four miles away, the nearest large town (if you call Barnstaple a large town) is an hour's drive, and similar for the nearest emergency hospital. Keith, piss off back to your hate-Palestine threads, please.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Apr 13 - 08:34 PM

Sailor Jack's a Christian. Ha ha !

Sailor Jack's no Christian. He's just brought Christianity into total disrepute by posting hatred on a new thread. I predict a long period of embarrassed non-support from real Christians. Ugh.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 06:35 AM

been away over easter.
ebbie - i am not disrepecting anyone ,at least not itntentionally.but neither am i gonna be pedantic over grammer when i am not a fast typer.yes i do use capitals when i refer to God,and you will have to indulge me if i dont put you in the same category!
it somewhat amuses me that i am charged with rudeness,while other posters [mostly atheist but excepting bill] spue out vulgarity,insults and profanity by the bucketload.
if this explanation is not to your satisfaction, i suggest you ignore ignore my posts - i shall not be offended in the least.that is what i do with posts that are truly offensive.
had i capitalized my own name you might have grounds for dissing you by ommittimg capitals .

jack- you made me smile again.while i think the accusation against you is unfounded re insiting hatred, you do disrepect steve,though im sure you can make a case for that being deservedly so!

i had the great joy on sunday of witnessing a young woman being baptized who was atheist till last year.i wonder if there is hope yet for mudcat materialists! maybe,,,they are just too hardened.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 07:45 AM

maybe,,,they are just too hardened.

Well that isn't very Christian of you, is it! Aren't you supposed to be like the shepherd who puts all his energy into restoring his one lost sheep to the flock? You don't do a very good job, I can tell you!

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 08:16 AM

Steve, you must have a very slow car.
The border is about 5 miles from Bude on the Holsworthy road, and being a few miles outside could not put you much further from it.
More likely closer.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 08:37 AM

""The same goes for churches. You don't have to agree with everything in a given church to stay associated with it. You don't have to agree with every point of its dogma.""

Ah, but the point is that I have looked around and reached a few conclusions, which are:-

1. The Catholic Church didn't want me unless I blithely accepted all its teachings and the same applied to others who were questioning.

When I ask a question, it's because I genuinely want to know the answer, and there were damn few of those, but more than a sufficiency of punishments for not having sufficient faith.

I know there are good people in the Catholic Church I'm not stupid, but, with notable exceptions, they tend to be the ones who can swallow the blurb whole, and get on with being good.

2. I looked at other Churches and absent the pomp and panoply, didn't see sufficient difference.

3. I had always known that I could pray anywhere, so concluded not only that I didn't need a church or a preacher, but that God didn't either.

Q.E.D.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 09:00 AM

""don t - i see you went straight to the primary source to dis sarfati - not!.that link to " debate" does you no credit at all.""

I went to Wikipedia, which I know, can be inaccurate, but can easily be straightened out by the person himself. The fact that he has failed to take any such action rather suggests that he has no answer.

On numerous occasions I have seen people complain of inaccuracy, when they didn't like or agree with what was posted.

The link, I didn't watch! Merely pointed out that apparently there was a debate. I was too busy organising a four day Folk & Ale to do more.

Perhaps you will tell me what was wrong with that.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 09:15 AM

The border is about 5 miles from Bude on the Holsworthy road, and being a few miles outside could not put you much further from it.
More likely closer.

Further. I live on the Camelford side of Bude. And I never use that road. If I'm driving out of Cornwall I always use either the A39 northbound (25 minutes at least to the Woolley turning) or the A39 nine miles south to Otterham Station, turn left, left again at Wilsey Down on the A395, a good few miles over Cold Northcott (lovely views across to Bodmin Moor) to Pipers Pool and shortly thereafter to the eastbound A30. 40 minutes before I get into Devon that way. You have a point, though no-one in their right mind knowingly goes to Holsworthy. Thanks for your interest.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Lighter
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 10:23 AM

How could my extremely intelligent friend be so close to 100% sure that what he believed was true? Because "It's just something you know deep down, like you know the sky is blue and you need to eat food to live and move your legs to walk."

Then how can so many people not believe?

"I don't know. Maybe they've deliberately suppressed their faith so they can do whatever they feel like. Maybe they're misusing reason to justify their own sinning. They've been doing it for so long they've forgotten how they started."

What about Muslims and Jews and others? "Any religion that teaches a sound morality may be better than none in the eyes of God. But way deep down non-Christians may know they're in error, that their religions are at best incomplete. I can't really answer the question."

Is the bible literally true? "What's obviously meant to be literally true is literally true. What's meant to be symbolic is symbolically
true. Humans wrote it, so even though God directed them in general it isn't perfect. The crucial things like the Ten Commandments and the Resurrection are absolutely true."

Did God hand Moses the Commandments carved on stone tablets? "I don't know. I wasn't there. He could have if he wanted to. He's God. Or he could have just inspired Moses."

How about Noah's ark? "I wasn't there. I wouldn't take the story literally, but symbolically it's true." What does it symbolize? "God ultimately punishes the wicked and saves the good."

Do you believe in evolution? "Sure I do." Why? "There's too much scientific evidence not to, and I don't see how it really conflicts with any crucial teachings."   

What about people who think it does? "They're wrong."

I believe that my friend is more or less typical of serious, church-going Christians.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 02 Apr 13 - 11:04 AM

""i had the great joy on sunday of witnessing a young woman being baptized who was atheist till last year.i wonder if there is hope yet for mudcat materialists! maybe,,,they are just too hardened.""

1. Don't make assumptions! The opposite of Creationist is not Materialist, whatever you may think.

2. I strongly suspect that if you scratched a Materialist with a YEC Creationist, its the Materialist who would be damaged, as probably would a diamond.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 04 Apr 13 - 06:02 AM

well steve,the bible does describe certain people that so harden their hearts that they put themselves beyond repentance and the judgment of God confirms them in that state.of course we dont know who they are and dont give up.

don t thankyou for conceding that you posted a misleading,vulgar,crude voiceover link which was not a "debate",inadvertantly because you were to busy to check what you posted.nothing wrong with that i suppose.we all make mistakes.
pete.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 04 Apr 13 - 06:39 PM

""don t thankyou for conceding that you posted a misleading,vulgar,crude voiceover link which was not a "debate",inadvertantly because you were to busy to check what you posted.nothing wrong with that i suppose.we all make mistakes.""

Call me a pedant, but I don't recall conceding anything of the sort. Had I looked at it I might have conceded what you said.

All I did was to state that I hadn't looked at it.

Make of that whatever you like, but not by putting words in my mouth that never came from it.

Incidentally, being laid fairly low by a throat infection, which is playing hell with my emphysema, I still haven't looked at it.

Don T.

PS. You really must try to establish some connection, however tenuous, with the English language.

Subject: RE: BS: What is 'Heaven and Hell'?
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 05 Apr 13 - 04:04 PM

we have established what happened ,and we can see that dawkins did not debate safarti.you posted link without realizing the content.as i originally said,- dawkins dont debate creationists[unless they are not qualified scientists]
wishing you a speedy recovery.pete.