How To Get To Heaven When You Die

[crowTrobot 2]

Or is that 30% of the world thinks it's correct?What percentage believes in Darwinian evolution/ I bet it's less.

52% of the world accepts species descent through evolution (2007 poll i think). people's beliefs on whether and how much god may have been involved in the process is another issue, but certainly world-wide there are way more people that believe in evolution than in the bible (i'm not arguing that numbers = truth, just pointing out your misconceptions about the status of evolution).

Ohh, let's compare the literary value of teh book of mormons to the Bible. Please.

literary value? i'll take lord of the rings over the bible any day.

I'll even give you that we have found zero anthropoligal backing for the stories in the book of Mormon, but most every archeologist ackowledges the Bible is very accurate wh n it comes to history.

your double standard is showing.

[Nimue1995 1]

Really Crow if you'd even read the Bible you'd know that Christians expect to be in the minority. God said we'd be in the minority. Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destructiion and there are many who go in by it.Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Matt 7:13-14

[Balloon guy 158]

52% of the world accepts species descent through evolution (2007 poll i think).

Really?They polled the world Johnny and the survey says: 52%.Sample size?: .00000001%Margin of error?: +/-51.999%Thank you, let's see who paid the bill?: No one, because there was no bill, no poll, and no way anyone has ever polled the entire world about anything ever.But thanks for playing Johnny, here's your keys to a new car.Next week we're going to poll the world and ask them: Paper or plastic?

[Balloon guy 158]

literary value? i'll take lord of the rings over the bible any day.

Tolkien = Christian

[crowTrobot 2]

Really?They polled the world Johnny and the survey says: 52%.Sample size?: .00000001%Margin of error?: +/-51.999%Thank you, let's see who paid the bill?: No one, because there was no bill, no poll, and no way anyone has ever polled the entire world about anything ever.But thanks for playing Johnny, here's your keys to a new car.Next week we're going to poll the world and ask them: Paper or plastic?

how dark is it in that cave you're living in?

[crowTrobot 2]

Tolkien = Christian

NT authors = christianNT = lord of the ringslord of the rings = fictionNT = fiction

[Balloon guy 158]

how dark is it in that cave you're living in?

It's dark, but I have a phone so that if they poll the whole world I'll be ready.I know a lot of people, and none of them were polled See, I can do crazy too

[Balloon guy 158]

NT authors = christianNT = lord of the ringslord of the rings = fictionNT = fiction

Cute, but LOTR was a great book, must have read it 7 times growing up.Peter Jackson will forever in my mind be awesome, even after King Kong

[Southern Buddhist 1]

There are some interesting things biblically, but for the most part the evidence you are looking for and I look for are different. It does make me smile, because to get caught up in all that leads nowhere- either you believe or you don't. When he says "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen", he REALLY meant that, he wasn't being coy or secretive. He was basically telling christians even then,"Look, you can't PROVE this in worldly terms." So, why fight that? Why even find it neccesary? I will tell you why- lack of faith, and Buddhist lady nailed that. It's a lack of faith that drives one to prove there faith through physical means when it is clearly impossible- that's the whole POINT of faith.

Sorry I'm getting back to this so late. Shocking as it may seem, Lois and I are in total agreement here. As I've said, I'm not in either the Christian nor the atheist camp -- I believe in an atheistic religion, the fundamental question of which is, "what makes me a better person, right here, right now?" Not who created the world, not how will the world end, not am I saved or forgiven my sins, not who's right or wrong. Just "what can I do, in this moment, and the next, and the next, to be wiser, kinder, more accepting, more peaceful?" [Yes, I know, Lois and BG -- if I want to be wiser, I can vote Republican. We can argue about that elsewhere. ]I think faith, in itself, is a beautiful, transcendant thing. But if you feel the need to back up your faith with evidence, then your faith is, whether you'll admit it or not, shaky. You want it proven to others, and you want it proven to yourself, that your faith is correct. But to have faith is precisely to accept what cannot be proven, and to be at peace with that acceptance.

BG: You and others on here want us to explain why Christianity is the truth. Using logic, science, math whatever, you want a clearly logical definitive set of data that leaves you with no choice but to say: "This religion is the absolute end all truth."

No! I don't want you to explain that at all. Crow may want that, but I'm afraid you're misunderstanding me completely. If I "want" Christians to do anything, it's to truly embrace the mystery at the very heart of their faith -- to believe with the faith of a child, the faith that doesn't need to insist on evidence. And I don't want this because then I can play "gotcha" and say, Ha, ha, you don't have any evidence! I want this because it seems to me to be the real transformative promise that your religion offers you, and so few of you seem to have accepted it. Buddhism is all about letting go. When I let go of my ego-based need to be right or wrong, then I feel a sense of spaciousness. I don't give up my beliefs, but I'm able to allow room for everyone else's need to be right without getting caught up in it myself. If Christians embraced their faith completely, and had total faith regardless of evidence, I think you would feel that same sense of fresh, open, peaceful spaciousness.

[crowTrobot 2]

Sorry I'm getting back to this so late. Shocking as it may seem, Lois and I are in total agreement here. As I've said, I'm not in either the Christian nor the atheist camp -- I believe in an atheistic religion, the fundamental question of which is, "what makes me a better person, right here, right now?" Not who created the world, not how will the world end, not am I saved or forgiven my sins, not who's right or wrong. Just "what can I do, in this moment, and the next, and the next, to be wiser, kinder, more accepting, more peaceful?" [Yes, I know, Lois and BG -- if I want to be wiser, I can vote Republican. We can argue about that elsewhere. ]I think faith, in itself, is a beautiful, transcendant thing. But if you feel the need to back up your faith with evidence, then your faith is, whether you'll admit it or not, shaky. You want it proven to others, and you want it proven to yourself, that your faith is correct. But to have faith is precisely to accept what cannot be proven, and to be at peace with that acceptance.No! I don't want you to explain that at all. Crow may want that, but I'm afraid you're misunderstanding me completely. If I "want" Christians to do anything, it's to truly embrace the mystery at the very heart of their faith -- to believe with the faith of a child, the faith that doesn't need to insist on evidence. And I don't want this because then I can play "gotcha" and say, Ha, ha, you don't have any evidence! I want this because it seems to me to be the real transformative promise that your religion offers you, and so few of you seem to have accepted it.

i know we've been through this before, but i have to say again that you are confusing/mixing what is meant by christian faith with your buddhist philosophy. christianity is not buddhism. when you say "give in to the mystery" in reference to religious faiths based on specific objective-fact-based teachings for which there is no objective evidence such as chrsitianity, you're NOT saying give in to an aesthetic world-view for the sake of self-betterment. all you are saying is "evidence doesn't matter so give in to belief in the truth of specific objective factual and frequently empirical claims that you have no good reason to believe in". this may lead to self-betterment in some cases, but it has nothing specific to do with it, and as history has shown validating/respecting such irrational religous belief is more frequently socially detrimental. nobody needs to "give in" to irrational belief in objective claims to become a better person. it's not a requirement for anyone to better themselves. giving in to christian faith is NOT a beautiful thing any more than any other form of insanity is.

Buddhism is all about letting go. When I let go of my ego-based need to be right or wrong, then I feel a sense of spaciousness. I don't give up my beliefs, but I'm able to allow room for everyone else's need to be right without getting caught up in it myself. If Christians embraced their faith completely, and had total faith regardless of evidence, I think you would feel that same sense of fresh, open, peaceful spaciousness.

that may be fine for a buddhist talking about some transcendant *subjective* view of life/self, but if you apply that to christian belief which is based in objective claims you're describing someone that is no different than your average lunatic.

[crowTrobot 2]

double P

[Southern Buddhist 1]

i know we've been through this before, but i have to say again that you are confusing/mixing what is meant by christian faith with your buddhist philosophy. christianity is not buddhism. when you say "give in to the mystery" in reference to religious faiths based on specific objective-fact-based teachings for which there is no objective evidence such as chrsitianity, you're NOT saying give in to an aesthetic world-view for the sake of self-betterment. all you are saying is "evidence doesn't matter so give in to belief in the truth of specific objective factual and frequently empirical claims that you have no good reason to believe in". this may lead to self-betterment in some cases, but it has nothing specific to do with it, and as history has shown validating/respecting such irrational religous belief is more frequently socially detrimental. nobody needs to "give in" to irrational belief in objective claims to become a better person. it's not a requirement for anyone to better themselves. giving in to christian faith is NOT a beautiful thing any more than any other form of insanity is.

I'm NOT saying "give in to belief in the truth of ... empirical claims.... You and I agree, and so does Lois, that those claims can't be proven in worldly terms. I'm saying give in to the faith itself, and abandon entirely the need for any kind of evidence. Or don't "give in" -- the phrase itself is unimportant. What I'm saying is that the objective claims don't matter for Christians -- or at least they shouldn't, but to those who are as hung up on having "truth" as you are on proving they don't, those claims are the most important ones. Instead, the spiritual claims are what should matter most to them, and those are solely a matter of personal faith. Did Jesus die to save our souls from sin? He died -- that much is objective (if he lived at all, but I'm willing to accept that he probably did). The rest is NOT an objective claim. It can't be proven by Christians, nor can it be disproven by you.

that may be fine for a buddhist talking about some transcendant *subjective* view of life/self, but if you apply that to christian belief which is based in objective claims you're describing someone that is no different than your average lunatic.

Most Christians are hung up on objective claims, but I disagree that the religion is "based" on objective claims. It's based on unproveable spiritual claims. [FWIW, belief in the literal truth of the bible is a very recent theological position. There is no evidence that theologians from early Christianity all the way through about 1850 saw the bible as anything other than metaphorical. The insistence on literal truth is a reaction against modernity.]I do understand and sympathize with your frustration. The belief that one's religion is right and all others are wrong has led to millions upon millions of deaths, and the persectuion of millions more. But to say "therefore the beliefs must be rooted out and destroyed" is the wrong approach. It only causes believers to hunker down and fight all the harder. The theology of literal truth shows it -- from the Enlightenment through the Age of Reason through the Victorian era, there were centuries of skepticism and growing atheism. It's not a coincidence that that was the moment when theologians felt under attack, and reacted by retreating into a conservatism that hadn't even existed before.Rather, what I said of Buddhism fits just fine with Christianity. It's the insistence on being right that needs to be let go, so that everyone can live in peace. Not only is it better for the world, but it's better for the individual, too. As I said, it feels better to be at ease than it does to be constantly at war. I'm sure I walk past people on the street every day who hold irrational beliefs -- in UFOs, in lottery tickets, in not stepping on sidewalk cracks. The difference is, I don't try to be the rationality cop. I think all you want is for the faith-driven war and persecution and murder to stop. So fight for that, rather than fighting to destroy the faith. Because if you are fighting to destroy the faith, then you are a very rational one-legged man in a billion-person-large ass-kicking contest.

[crowTrobot 2]

I'm NOT saying "give in to belief in the truth of ... empirical claims.... You and I agree, and so does Lois, that those claims can't be proven in worldly terms.

i do NOT agree. the claims absolutely are subject to being proven or disproven for practical purposes. it may have been different in the historic past, but in today's enlightened world the only thing keeping christianity from shrinking into a fringe cult right now is the general perception among christians that there is a lot of historical evidence supporting the literal truth of the the bible (omitting genesis).

I'm saying give in to the faith itself, and abandon entirely the need for any kind of evidence. Or don't "give in" -- the phrase itself is unimportant. What I'm saying is that the objective claims don't matter for Christians -- or at least they shouldn't, but to those who are as hung up on having "truth" as you are on proving they don't, those claims are the most important ones. Instead, the spiritual claims are what should matter most to them, and those are solely a matter of personal faith. Did Jesus die to save our souls from sin? He died -- that much is objective (if he lived at all, but I'm willing to accept that he probably did). The rest is NOT an objective claim. It can't be proven by Christians, nor can it be disproven by you.

the rest? if the physical stories of jesus aren't true "the rest" is irrelevant.

Most Christians are hung up on objective claims, but I disagree that the religion is "based" on objective claims. It's based on unproveable spiritual claims.

christianity without any consideration for the objective literal truth of the bible is belief in the easter bunny. it's nothing. lois and BG have both implied that here over and over.

[FWIW, belief in the literal truth of the bible is a very recent theological position. There is no evidence that theologians from early Christianity all the way through about 1850 saw the bible as anything other than metaphorical. The insistence on literal truth is a reaction against modernity.]

some early authors of religious philosophy may have taken that position, but obviously the public advocation of the catholic church and the perception of the general christian public has been in a literal bible for way longer than that.

I do understand and sympathize with your frustration. The belief that one's religion is right and all others are wrong has led to millions upon millions of deaths, and the persectuion of millions more. But to say "therefore the beliefs must be rooted out and destroyed" is the wrong approach. It only causes believers to hunker down and fight all the harder. The theology of literal truth shows it -- from the Enlightenment through the Age of Reason through the Victorian era, there were centuries of skepticism and growing atheism. It's not a coincidence that that was the moment when theologians felt under attack, and reacted by retreating into a conservatism that hadn't even existed before.

again you misunderstand what i'm advocating. i am not out to root out and destroy - i only want to do what i can to help take away religious belief's uniquely privileged position of respect (which you seem to be a proponent of) among all forms of irrational human belief. if you do that it will go away on its own. it's already happening rapidly in most educated societies. only the USA is lagging behind.

I'm sure I walk past people on the street every day who hold irrational beliefs -- in UFOs, in lottery tickets, in not stepping on sidewalk cracks. The difference is, I don't try to be the rationality cop. I think all you want is for the faith-driven war and persecution and murder to stop. So fight for that, rather than fighting to destroy the faith. Because if you are fighting to destroy the faith, then you are a very rational one-legged man in a billion-person-large ass-kicking contest.

if someone came on an internet board and claimed to believe in UFO's based on faith would you feel the need to respect their belief? would you think there was anything to be gained in terms of social benefit from telling them to go ahead and "give in to the mystery"? also if someone tried to legislate public education of belief in UFO's would you become a rationality cop then? (i hope).of course the ego-denying selfless "spirituality" for purposes of self-betterment you are talking about in relation to your approach to buddhism has nothing to do with faith in the christian sense. i and many non-religious people are spiritual in that same sense to some degree. however unlike you i don't think there's any value in associating spirituality in that sense with ancient superstitions.

[timwakefield 68]

Really?They polled the world Johnny and the survey says: 52%.Sample size?: .00000001%Margin of error?: +/-51.999%

That's not how math works. Also, you're implying that you disbelieve any poll ever made, since polls (political and otherwise) generally sample about 500-2000 people. They have a very scientific system for doing it, and work out a very specific margin of error based on the number of people polled (generally under 3 or 4 %).

[BigDMcGee 3,352]

Cute, but LOTR was a great book, must have read it 7 times growing up.Peter Jackson will forever in my mind be awesome, even after King Kong

Hippy

[BuffDan 0]

Jesus either performed miracles or he didn't. Jesus either rose from the dead or he didn't. All of the animals on the earth were either on a boat or they weren't. Moses either made water move or he didn't.These, and many other claims in the bible, are objective. They either happened or they didn't, and most Christians believe they actually happened. This isn't a matter of personal preference; again, these things either happened or they didn't. It is not possible for me to say they didn't happen, BG to say they did happen, and both of us to be right in some feel good, relative way. Either I am wrong or he is wrong, there is no middle ground.Science can and should investigate the many objective, falsifiable claims of the bible. Now, of course, that may be difficult, since they happened quite a few years ago, but there are ways to look into it.My point, along with Crow's, is that there is a difference between spirituality in general and belief in specific, objective events. The former may not require evidence or be susceptible to the scientific method, but the latter absolutely does and is.

[Spademan 94]

I know a lot of people, and none of them were polled See, I can do crazy too

So you've asked every person you know (and that's a lot of people) if they were polled? And even if you have asked every person you know and they told you they were not polled, you know for a fact they weren't lying?Crazy indeed.Gee, reductio ad absurdum is fun.

[Loismustdie 0]

Jesus either performed miracles or he didn't. Jesus either rose from the dead or he didn't. All of the animals on the earth were either on a boat or they weren't. Moses either made water move or he didn't.These, and many other claims in the bible, are objective. They either happened or they didn't, and most Christians believe they actually happened. This isn't a matter of personal preference; again, these things either happened or they didn't. It is not possible for me to say they didn't happen, BG to say they did happen, and both of us to be right in some feel good, relative way. Either I am wrong or he is wrong, there is no middle ground.Science can and should investigate the many objective, falsifiable claims of the bible. Now, of course, that may be difficult, since they happened quite a few years ago, but there are ways to look into it.My point, along with Crow's, is that there is a difference between spirituality in general and belief in specific, objective events. The former may not require evidence or be susceptible to the scientific method, but the latter absolutely does and is.

I will buy that. Now prove Christ didn't perform miracles. You can't. Now let me prove he did. I can't. So wtf are we arguing about? This, literally, gets nowhere. I repeat- there is literally no way for you or I to ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, physically, scientifically prove what I believe. There is no way to ever, ever,ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, disprove it either. The best advice I could give you is this- let it go, man.

[crowTrobot 2]

I repeat- there is literally no way for you or I to ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, physically, scientifically prove what I believe. There is no way to ever, ever,ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, disprove it either.

teapot

[Nimue1995 1]

teapot

tempest?

[crowTrobot 2]

tempest?

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."bertrand russell

[BuffDan 0]

I will buy that. Now prove Christ didn't perform miracles. You can't. Now let me prove he did. I can't. So wtf are we arguing about? This, literally, gets nowhere. I repeat- there is literally no way for you or I to ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, physically, scientifically prove what I believe. There is no way to ever, ever,ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, disprove it either. The best advice I could give you is this- let it go, man.

Not getting into the argument of whether or not these statements can be proven or to what degree (I'll leave that to others who are more knowledgeable than I), the point, which we seem to agree upon, is that there is no subjectivity here. It can't be a truth to you that he did these things, and a truth to me that he didn't. One of us absolutely has to be wrong, regardless of whether we can ever know which one actually is right. So I am not arguing with you about which one of us is wrong, but rather with others who say that somehow, in a subjective, relative way that we are both right.This is actually similar to the intuitionist philosophy of mathematics, which basically says a statement is true only if we can find a constructive proof of it and false only if we can find a constructive proof of its counterexample. However, for a statement like "there are infinitely many primes p and q such that p - q = 2" they would claim it has no truth value, since there is no proof of it or its counterexample. However, there either are an infinite amount of these primes or there aren't, and just because we don't know which it is doesn't change that fact. Similarly, Fermat's Last Theorem was true before 1994, even though we didn't know this fact until then.Similarly, there is an objective truth to whether or not Christ did the things claimed to him, or even whether or not the universe was created by an intelligent being, regardless of whether we will ever know what this truth is.

[xfrodobagginsx 0]

Ahh, but thousands saw Him actually perform the miracles. If it were a lie, surely someone would have spoken up. Doesn't that mean anything to you?

[KramitDaToad 0]

Ahh, but thousands saw Him actually perform the miracles. If it were a lie, surely someone would have spoken up. Doesn't that mean anything to you?

Thousands hey?Perhaps you could name just 1. Demonstrate that person actually existed and show something that would indicate they witnessed a miracle.Just 1kthxbai

[crowTrobot 2]

Ahh, but thousands saw Him actually perform the miracles. If it were a lie, surely someone would have spoken up. Doesn't that mean anything to you?

there's a living hindu guru that millions, not thousands, of people believe is working miracles right now. doesn't that mean anything to you?