Author Topic: No Hell  (Read 3126 times)

0 Members and 9 Guests are viewing this topic.

Plane

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 26993
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
No Hell
« on: March 24, 2011, 11:37:37 AM »
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110324/ap_on_re/us_rel_hell__no




    That is right, Jesus let himself be beaten to death and crucified to save us all from, nothing in particular.

     I would have fired this preacher also and no apology, a message that evicerates the Christian gosphel isn't a good idea just because it is an attractive idea.

Xavier_Onassis

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 27916
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2011, 01:16:25 PM »
As I recall, the Bible speaks of Hell in one place, and in another says "The wages of sin are Death", which is not really the same thing, is it?

One Christian view involves Hell, but another simply states that if you believe in Jesus, you go to Heaven.

Of course, the Apostles Creed states that you die, remain dead until the Second Coming, and then you get resurrected, no matter how you died. One assumes that all those Christians eaten by lions are resurrected from an assortment of lion turds from the Colosseum Litter Box.

Once you get your body back (the form in which you get it back, with regard to age and possible amputations seems to be a subject of some debate), THEN you go to Heaven.

The Book of Revelation speaks of Hell, but not precisely for the already deceased and buried, cremated or eaten by vultures. Those who are alive at the time of Final Judgment are carted off by Satan & Co. It does not indicate that the already deceased are resurrected for Eternal Damnation, though I imagine that some assume that this is the case. The problem with that is that Satan could not be in charge of resurrecting the dead, since that is one of Jesus' miracles. Having Satan work miracles, or even God performing miracles for the benefit of Satan brings up some rather disturbing theological questions.

The general assumption is that Heaven is a wonderful place, but descriptions given seem rather incomplete. Singing praise to the Lord in the Choir Celestial might be less exciting after a couple of centuries to at least some people.

So, Mohandas Gandhi is at present either dead, awaiting the final judgment, or in Hell, since he was not a believer in the divinity of Jesus. Or is he?

Whether we will ever know is also a theological question.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 26993
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2011, 03:43:13 AM »
Quote
"Whether we will ever know is also a theological question."
Yes believeing in no afterlife also requires faith.

Xavier_Onassis

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 27916
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2011, 03:42:08 PM »
Believing or disbelieving anything that cannot be conclusively proven always requires some degree of belief.
We could say that there is an even chance of either the existence or nonexistence of any given proposition, but that is a poor idea, because we do know some facts.

Take the pegasus, or flying horse. We can calculate the minimum possible weight of a creature that would appear to be a winged horse, and we know enpough about birds and aeronautics to determine the minimum possible wingspan to allow for a pegasus to fly,as well as the minimum wingspan a pegasus would have to have to fly with a human passenger, and it turns out that the wings would have to be far larger than any likely animal could have, unless the pegasus were made of something far, far lighter than horseflesh. It is pretty easy to conclude that a pegasus is an impossible, or at least a very improbable creature.

We can conclude the same thing about flying monkeys or flying humans, or angels, at least as popularly described. Of course, if God can do anything, then He can create angels that can fly without wings.

I have read that half of all Americans believe that they are watched over by a guardian angel, so I imagine that even more believe in angels as actually real. Apparently logic does not apply to this belief. Of course, aeronautical engineering is not taught as part of any HS curriculum, and I deem the probability that the mechanical impossibility of humanoid angels is rarely discussed in aeronautical engineering.

The number of facts about the physical universe is as infinite as the universe itself, so we have to depend on logical speculation or perhaps faith to deal with life on this planet.

For our court system in the US, we presume that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

Science generally assumes that an entity is assumed to not exist until some evidence of its existence is discovered.

Religion has always assumed that sacred texts (depending on the religion) are infallible, and if we find proof that some statement in a holy text is incorrect, then it is because our perception is erroneous.

For example, the RC Church declared that Adam and Eve making a poor culinary choice due to listening to a talking reptile condemned the Earth to the imperfections that it has. Before their sin, the Earth was perfect. It was assumed that the rest of the Universe was God's realm, and in that part of Creation, everything was still perfect. Therefore, the moon and Sun must be perfect spheres, and their orbits must be perfectly circular. Galileo saw sunspots and calculated that orbits were not circular. This really hacked off the Church, since it went counter to divine theology, as had been calculated by St. Thomas Aquinas, and they censured Galileo and forced him to retract his heresy.

But it turns out that although St Thomas was perfectly logical in his theological assumptions, he was dead wrong about the planets: the Sun does have sunspots (which are clearly imperfections as defined by Aquinas), the heavenly bodies are not perfect spheres, and their orbits are not perfectly circular, all of which contradict Aquinas' conclusions.

The Universe is only as balanced as it has to be to exist. It is NOT perfect, and has never been perfect.

Based on these facts, I conclude that the description of the universe as described in the Bible, is erroneous.  Therefore, although there might be a God, it is also unlikely that He is identical to the entity described in several ways, some of them contradictory, in the Bible.

I have faith in the logic I use to arrive at these conclusions.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 26993
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2011, 02:59:21 AM »
  I wasn't aware that  St. Thomas Aquinas had written any of the Bible.

   If he didn't then his interpretation of it isn't the equal of the origanal.

   I don't even know what makes a sunspot an imperfection , would a leopard be better in a solid color?

      Elliptical orbits are perfect no matter how far they are from circular they span the same area enclosed in arc in equal time , which strikes me as an elegance.

        I think you have a good case here for pointing out that simplicity isn't really  perfection or that our ability to percieve and measure have improved a lot in the last 400 years.

       I don't see that you have found the Bible itself in error , attributeing the error of  St. Thomas Aquinas to the Bible is importing it..

Xavier_Onassis

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 27916
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #5 on: March 28, 2011, 02:38:55 PM »
St. Thomas Aquinas, of course, did not write any of the Bible. However, he represents the epitome of the effort, considered necessary and holy by the RC Church, to unite the logic of Aristotle with the Bible. A circle is perfect, because every line that could represent its radius is identical to ever other possible radius. Hence the term "perfect circle". A square is also more perfect than a rectangle for the same reason. An Isosceles triangle is the perfect triangle, and so on. These are Pythagorean concepts that were incorporated into Aristotle's descriptions.

A sunspot, in classical terms, is an imperfection, because it is not uniform or homogeneous. If the Sun is a perfect body, it will be uniform in color, texture, temperature and every other aspect. Leopards with spots are not a problem, since a leopard is an Earthly being. I imagine that there are theologians that would say that before Adam and Eve bit the forbidden fruit, the world was perfect and no animals had spots. No animals needed camouflage, because they all lived in perfect harmony. As Mark Twain said, the lamb and the lion must have lied down together in vegetarian bliss.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 26993
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #6 on: April 01, 2011, 07:14:02 PM »
St. Thomas Aquinas, of course, did not write any of the Bible. However, he represents the epitome of the effort, considered necessary and holy by the RC Church, to unite the logic of Aristotle with the Bible. A circle is perfect, because every line that could represent its radius is identical to ever other possible radius. Hence the term "perfect circle". A square is also more perfect than a rectangle for the same reason. An Isosceles triangle is the perfect triangle, and so on. These are Pythagorean concepts that were incorporated into Aristotle's descriptions.

A sunspot, in classical terms, is an imperfection, because it is not uniform or homogeneous. If the Sun is a perfect body, it will be uniform in color, texture, temperature and every other aspect. Leopards with spots are not a problem, since a leopard is an Earthly being. I imagine that there are theologians that would say that before Adam and Eve bit the forbidden fruit, the world was perfect and no animals had spots. No animals needed camouflage, because they all lived in perfect harmony. As Mark Twain said, the lamb and the lion must have lied down together in vegetarian bliss.

   I consider the Catholic Church to be mistaken on other subjects also, I note no where in the Bible itself any Pathagoriean or Elucidian errors, let alone any Arestotlean errors.

   The reason to import the errors outside into the Bible is not something I really get.

    I don't know how the Garden of Eden ran without any creatures dieing , but that would make the creatures of the garden creatures far outside the experience of modern humans ., Were they lions and lambs?

Xavier_Onassis

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 27916
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #7 on: April 01, 2011, 10:42:29 PM »
There was no death in the Garden of Eden, according to the Catholic theologians. Perhaps all the animals were vegetarians and lived forever. although it seems that some plants must have died, logically.

I agree that this does not seem logical, but Creation itself was a miracle to the theologians, so it must have seemed to them perfectly logical that it would simply operate miraculously.

Protestant theologians did not waste a lot of time on speculations about the nature of the Garden of Eden, and how all those animals fit peacefully on that Ark for 40 days and nights.

The thing is that St Thomas saw a need for most of creation to be logical and intelligible, and where there miracles were necessary, it needed to be stated that they were indeed miracles.

The Bible is not a philosophy, it is a collection of stories of various types, commandments, dietary laws, poetry and folklore. The Roman Church had a need to make it all as logical as possible, since the role of the Church was to maintain an orderly society. Uneducated preachers spouting apocalyptical doom every so often is an impediment to an orderly society.

The goal was to make the Bible seem logical, not to import errors into it.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

hnumpah

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2483
  • You have another think coming. Use it.
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #8 on: April 03, 2011, 07:03:20 AM »
   I consider the Catholic Church to be mistaken on other subjects also, I note no where in the Bible itself any Pathagoriean or Elucidian errors, let alone any Arestotlean errors.


pi = 3.14159... except in the Bible, which states the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a round vessel is exactly 3.

1 Kings 7:23 - And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.   

"I love WikiLeaks." - Donald Trump, October 2016

Xavier_Onassis

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 27916
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #9 on: April 03, 2011, 01:40:52 PM »
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 26993
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #10 on: April 04, 2011, 07:00:50 PM »
   I consider the Catholic Church to be mistaken on other subjects also, I note no where in the Bible itself any Pathagoriean or Elucidian errors, let alone any Arestotlean errors.


pi = 3.14159... except in the Bible, which states the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a round vessel is exactly 3.

1 Kings 7:23 - And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

Good to see you H !

You will now tell me exactly what the value of phi is and I will tell you that you are wrong.

I will be right .


Phi is 3 if the required precision is the nearest whole number, perfectly correct.

Phi is 3.1 if the required precision is to a single decimal place, absolutely correct.

Any amount of phi precision you wish to describe, up to an including and new world record for computeing phi will not be exact to the next less signifigant decimal place.

Forever and ever amen.

To me what this passage suggests is that a scribe haveing no decimal syatem of numbers availible and perhaps never haveing heard of phi (possible that he did, the concept is older than the decimal notation) actually walked around the vessel and walked across the vessel measureing it with a rod or a string. try this on a round pool about this size useing simular equipment I would bet that you will discover the result to be 3 and an insignifigant fraction.
the diffrence between 3 even and phi being 4% of error (approxamately).


Xavier_Onassis

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 27916
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #11 on: April 04, 2011, 11:46:51 PM »
Actually, the exact value of pi can be given by simply expressing it as a fraction of the ratio of the circumference and the radius.

It is irrational when expressed as a decimal, but not as a ratio.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

hnumpah

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2483
  • You have another think coming. Use it.
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #12 on: April 05, 2011, 06:14:54 AM »
Weasel as you will, Plane, your previous statement:
   I consider the Catholic Church to be mistaken on other subjects also, I note no where in the Bible itself any Pathagoriean or Elucidian errors, let alone any Arestotlean errors.


is still incorrect. Stating an absolute value of pi as 3 is an error.
"I love WikiLeaks." - Donald Trump, October 2016

Xavier_Onassis

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 27916
    • View Profile
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #13 on: April 05, 2011, 11:48:31 AM »
No matter how the value of pi is stated, it still is a decimal that stretches to infinity and as such it can have no practical absolute value, though something very close can be used.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Amianthus

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7574
  • Bring on the flames...
    • View Profile
    • Mario's Home Page
  • Liked:
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: No Hell
« Reply #14 on: April 05, 2011, 11:58:14 AM »
It is irrational when expressed as a decimal, but not as a ratio.

The definition of an "irrational number" is a number that cannot be expressed as a simple ratio (a/b where a and b are integers and b is non-zero). Any circle that has an integer diameter has a non-integer circumference hence it cannot be written as a ratio.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)