Then, don’t lose the data. One “future human theory” postulates that your life flashing before your eyes in Near Death Experience is a recorder mechanism collecting all the data it would need to recreate you.
But, you wouldn’t have had to look far since I quoted it recently (post 408.) Unless you wanted the full context. The whole elephant story… which is irrelevant. (a red herring, if you will.) Yes, it’s easier to believe elephants on the roof. That’s not the point. We weren’t discussing that.
I agree it’s better evidence, but for what?
And it’s not the point that someone claiming alien abduction is more immediate, first hand evidence. We weren’t discussing alien abduction at all. I already pointed out that, (even ignoring everything that weighs against it,) that evidence doesn’t add anything to a case for aliens resurrecting Jesus. And that was the question. Whether we phrased it as: is there better evidence for, (or later, )a better case for God resurrecting Jesus, or aliens doing the same thing. (And if we are talking a case for, then we have to take into account everything that counts against it too.)
(If you can’t find any difference, then you aren’t analysing them. )
Certainly you can’t find a difference… If you don’t bother to look at each set individually. Miracles, as previously attested… recently, in this thread… are rare events. If you lump them all toghether, the majority are going to be false. You can then comfort yourself in the idea that you’re “right” to reject them without ever analysing them. And you will automatically miss any that happen to be true. You’ve then just done the same thing that Diogenes did.
This follows immediately from the previous thought. Just wanted to make sure it didn’t get missed again with people not reading to the end of the post.
Yes, but why don’t you believe? This is why you can’t convince me it is a counter-argument. I commented on this just recently, and no one apparently read it. In reading the thread, I found the account Meatros posted; read it; analysed it; and concluded it wasn’t a miracle. But I think where we differ: I concluded the event probably happened. The witnesses recalled fairly accurately what they saw. Did you do that? Or did you lump it in as “miracle account, to be discounted.”?
That’s another fail on your part. He stated quite clearly that we know too much about human physiology to accept a body dying and coming back to life naturally. That’s what he said the first time that you commented on. What I posted recently. And you finally understood it when he said it again. (The third time the same thing was mentioned.)
You have a consistant, documented history of missing what is plainly said, (collecting data,) and misinterpreting the implications, (not properly analysing the data,) even when you do. Is it any wonder I don’t accept any conclusion you have come to? That is what I meant when I said it was the process I was most interested in.
Collect data.
Analyse data.
Come to a conclusion. If you haven’t done the first two steps properly, you won’t get this one right, either.
I have absolutely no idea what you mean by suggesting that God, an immaterial, non temporal, omnimax entity could act in a natural way to bring someone back.
You act like it’s just some matter of fact that needs not be explained. I’m sorry to tell you, I think you need to explain it. Or you would, if I had any desire in continuing this tangent with you. I don’t though. You’ve worn me completely out.
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I’ve previously said that the supernatural **encompasses and surpasses **the natural. It is not less than it. The supernatural **has access **to every natural mechanism. If there is a natural mechanism that aliens could discover to resurrect someone, then the God who created the universe would know it was there and have access to it as well. The supernatural can act naturally as well as super-naturally. Not immaterial. super-material, super-natural… extra-dimensional, not contained in some lesser dimension, (ghost like.) Would you say that a 3 dimensional being couldn’t draw a 2 dimensional square on a piece of paper naturally?
Is that more clear? Or is it one more thing you can’t interpret the implications of?
Supernatural beings manifest and act naturally in numerous accounts in the bible.
Jacob wrestled with a supernatural being who wrestled naturally. (he didn’t stand 10 meters away and hold Jacob magically.) Jesus picked things up and handled them physically both before and after death. After he died and appeared to the disciples, one account has him picking up a piece of fish and eating it. It didn’t float off the table into his mouth. He picked it up… naturally.
As I already said, I hadn’t even started supplying an explanation yet, since I hadn’t been given a counter explanation that even comes close to explaining anything. Once Meatros said he had always been speaking of “explanations” I pointed out that he hadn’t supplied one. I gave a list of points for what constitutes an explanation. Several of them had not been addressed, and still haven’t been. But the same points were mentioned as existing for my argument, (and not by me; by my opponents.) I’m the only one who has supplied an explanation involving future humans; unfortunately for your side, the motive I suggested boils down to them becoming God and doing it for the reasons Christians suggest. The only motive so far suggested **for anyone **to do this is the Christian one: to eventually bring humans into a higher existence. There has been nothing for me to argue against that says otherwise.
So we are to take stories written by unknown folk a couple of thousand years ago as scientific evidence as to the nature of the supernatural? Would you likewise accept as solid evidence “facts” from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae?
Sorry man, but it’s your turn to eat crow. I made it clear what I thought his point was - you misinterpreted me in order to attempt to say that I was arguing two different things. Own up to it. The question is, will you?
So how does God access this “natural” mechanism? How does an immaterial being use a natural mechanism? How does an immaterial, non spacial, non temporal being use CPR (as an example)?
Is this proposed mechanism mechanistic? Is it natural, using physical laws that are consistent, merely as-yet-undiscovered? If so, it sounds like the starting point for physical scientific research.
But if it is of supernatural or miraculous origin, then…where does it lead us?
In long-ago days, a few scientists tried to discover the physical soul by weighing bodies immediately before and after death. This is scientific.
But if, as most theologians do, one defines the soul as immaterial…then…where do we go with it? What does it tell us about reality?
It almost doesn’t matter. It’s just an observation that eyewitness testimony is “better” than second-hand testimony. Almost a tautology. But…it was disputed, and so I continued to debate. Now that you agree…um…I haven’t really anything further to maintain! It was the only thing I came into the thread to say!
Well, this is why I changed the subject. I don’t have any clear notion on how to assess the “aliens resurrected Jesus” idea. I’ve never seen any evidence for it. It has the microscopic advantage of being “naturalistic.” But…so what?
At least, with the Book of Mormon example, I had some parameters to work within.
My question would be: how do I analyze a miracle? If it is, truly, a miracle, a violation of the laws of time, space, energy, and information, then what set of protocols can I enter into in my analysis? No matter what I try to put forward in terms of hypothetical or speculative explanation, someone else can say, “No, that isn’t right: it violates all natural laws.”
It’s like the omniscience thread, ongoing: if God is “outside of time” then…um…what am I supposed to do to learn to know him? How do I conduct inquiries on an entity that is “outside of time?”
A miracle occurs… How do I know that you saw it the same way I did? How do I know that it occurred at 10:15 p.m. PST? How do I know anything about it? If it is truly a miracle, then an apologist can always say, “It seemed to occur in this way, but it didn’t truly: your mortal perceptions cannot encompass an event that exceeds natural laws.”
It’s a little like working with a conspiracy-theory believer. “No, no, no! The newspapers are all part of the conspiracy!”
In a miracle, none of my procedures of gathering evidence can be depended on.
It’s a long story! And, to be honest, much of it is not evidence based. I do not believe, at least in part, for some of the same reasons those of the faithful do believe. It is part of a life-long development of the powers of human reason.
It is fascinating…philosophically…that human reason can look at an issue like this and come up with such entirely different answers!
I believe I missed that part of this (long and complex!) thread, and I very much apologize for it.
If you hold that the resurrection of Jesus was “not a miracle,” that’s fair. That’s good, in a way, as it lets me bring back in my questions based on natural laws as we understand them. And yet, it forces me to disagree with you, because the event would seem to violate natural laws as I understand them.
To be wildly speculative, maybe the stones of the sepulcher emitted gases that counter-acted the natural decomposition of the body… But how would it repair cellular damage that had occurred before interment? It isn’t impossible, but it seems so vastly unlikely…
Occam’s Razor isn’t a formal law of evidence… But…
I don’t know where to go from here. You’ve granted the only real point I had, and I don’t actually have a proposition, any longer, that I need to defend!
It’s evidence of what Christians believe is the nature of the supernatural. I was attempting to dissuade someone’s thought that the supernatural must be immaterial. I was just pointing out that the belief he’s arguing against shows the supernatural interacting with our reality both from without and from within.
I will freely admit that you misunderstood his argument, plainly and clearly presented, twice, and that you only realized what it said on the third try. You yourself only believed the one thing, but your words clearly supported both of them. You wrote in support of an argument you didn’t understand. The fact that you didn’t actually read the argument closely or agree with it does not change the fact that you wrote in support of it, and therefore, were arguing two different things. You may not have believed two different things at the same time. but his post was clearly stating that resurrection is physiologically unbelievable; it is unbelievable to him that a resurrection could physically happen. And your post clearly parroted, and supported that statement. I realized this last time that you didn’t think that was the position you were supporting. But you clearly were.
the fact that you might not believe that, (actually, I still don’t know what you believe on that score,) in no way changes the statement you actually quoted either…
It is what he said the first time. It’s what you commented on and supported the first time. It’s the same statement, clearly stated, that you still misunderstood the second time. Those are the facts, exactly as I stated them. Wow, you made me eat crow on that… So, I have to assume you didn’t actually know what the statement you quoted meant, since nothing in it has been contradicted.
Will try to be back tomorrow to comment on Trinopus’ post.
All this in an attempt to wiggle out of misunderstanding me. Your ‘spin’ makes no sense. As I pointed out, if I understood what Trinopus said as you suggest, the rest of my point makes no sense. It makes no sense for me to say:
“I think you missed his point - the point wasn’t that it was impossible”
So go ahead and be condescending, I think it’s clear you don’t want to own up to it. I wouldn’t care, except you’ve been extremely condescending and nit-picky with regard to my posts for months now.
Now it’s obvious that you don’t want to admit that you misinterpreted me (then you’d have to admit that in lengthy threads that span months people - gasp - make mistakes or misread things!) - even though I plainly stated what I took to be his point. Do you understand that? You don’t, apparently, because you seem to think that my misstating his point as something else means that I supported his initial point, even though the rest of my sentences would make no sense.
So I ask again, where did I “support an opposing claim that human physiology suggests that even aliens wouldn’t be able to do it.”?
My words did not support both things, since I specifically said that Trinopus’s point was not that it was impossible, that it was about what is easier to believe.
You were wrong on this. You can’t let it go because you apparently spent a long time (nearly a month) going through and collecting various quotes in order to try to nail me on it. You ignore vast swaths of my posts in order to try to get me contradicting myself. So now it comes out that I didn’t actually contradict myself. Yet you can’t admit this. Instead you have to continue to throw verbal manure at me rather than admit you were wrong. Instead of responding to how you misinterpreted me, what do you do? You focus on how I misinterpreted Trinopus. Which, hey, is good show if all you were doing was saying that I got Trinopus’s post wrong. That won’t fly though since you were attempting to make me ‘that guy’ who supports two contradictory claims, remember?
In any event, congrats ch4rl3s for all of this. I’m sure it was well worth the many weeks/months you’ve spent on it. Perhaps during the next month you can investigate the amount of typos and misspellings I’ve had and then provide us all with a 25,000 word post with detailed quotes.
Is there any chance whatsoever that we can stop this off-topic hijack discussing what people back then believed, and get back to the actual topic as stated in the OP and the title: What is your best evidence for the literal, historical resurrection of Jesus?
Eh. Any debate, and particularly one for which the baseline assumptions differ so widely between participants, has side-topics which arise naturally (no, er, pun intended). Maybe it seems to you like a hijack, but without establishing what events are natural — what requires evidence; what doesn’t require evidence; what isn’t even applicable to the search for evidence — arguments for such-and-such evidence explaining such-and-such an hypothesis can’t even get off the ground.
So it seems appropriate to note whether the very supernatural beliefs in question have material implications.
So how does God access this “natural” mechanism? How does an immaterial being use a natural mechanism? How does an immaterial, non spacial, non temporal being use CPR (as an example)?
[/QUOTE]
Here’s part of what I said last week…
[QUOTE=ch4rl3s]
Supernatural beings manifest and act naturally in numerous accounts in the bible…
…Jesus picked things up and handled them physically both before and after death. After he died and appeared to the disciples, one account has him picking up a piece of fish and eating it. It didn’t float off the table into his mouth. He picked it up… naturally…
[/QUOTE]
How would an immaterial being perform CPR??? By manifesting physically, (as I’ve already said.) Presumably, if he could pick up a piece of fish, he could perform CPR.
Once again, way to miss what I’ve already said.
Not going to comment much on what you posted next… Not because you “got me.”
[QUOTE=Meatros]
…(then you’d have to admit that in lengthy threads that span months people - gasp - make mistakes or misread things!) …
[/QUOTE]
I’m not concerned about missing things that happen months ago. That would be the camp to put your criticism of me misunderstanding you. And I’ll admit I was being nit-picky on that.
I’m concerned that you continually misread, misinterpret, and miss the implications of a post between the time you quote it and the time you comment on the quote. That should be a worrying trend to anybody.
I’m not going to say this to be mean. Just as a statement of fact. Something that you should spend some effort to work on…
You are bad at this. You don’t read an argument carefully. You don’t catch the salient data. And you don’t analyze the data properly. As I said before, if you can’t do these things properly, your conclusion is meaningless…
So… I am not concerned with any conclusion you have come to concerning what mistakes you think I’ve made. Your conclusions are meaningless. You’ve misinterpreted almost every argument I’ve made.
This discussion seems to me to point out there is no evidence of a Ressurection,just belief that it happened,once evidence could be proven then it could be a fact!
Look, you seem to think this makes sense. I don’t. I don’t know what you mean by an immaterial being manifesting physically. On the face of it it seems contradictory.
As to what you said last week - if God is not immaterial, then what is God?
Honestly I don’t care about ‘getting you’ - the only reason I’m harping on the misunderstanding you had of my post is because of the sheer amount of effort you put into being condescending.
With regard to the pertinent stuff (ie, God acting natural), I simply don’t get what you are trying to say. I mean, I know the end result (God manifesting physically and performing CPR), but it’s the steps to that point that I don’t get. To be frank, I don’t know what a physical - and I’m supposing ‘natural’ - God even means.
I can concede that it might make sense - but to act like it’s absurd that I don’t think it makes sense is going a bit too far in my opinion.
Wait, you mean you aren’t concerned now? When did this shift happen?
Let’s remember that your attempt to catch me being the guy saying two opposing things revolves around posts I made on September 14.
I could swing this back at you for your misunderstanding - it happens. Let it go.
It’s not even relevant to the OP, really, yet it’s taken months.
Again, I could swing this back on you for your misunderstanding. You found a way to take pot shots after a month of scrutiny and you went for it. And you misunderstood my point. At least with the gaffs that I made, it didn’t take me months of analysis.
Yet this doesn’t give you pause? Seriously, I make a mistake reading the text in the moment and you catch me. Okay, it happens. I’d say that when someone posts 60 some odd posts that **two or three **errors are acceptable.
That said, the fact that you poured through the thread and spent weeks to try to nail me and in the end you misrepresent what I said speaks volumes. You ignore your own gaff to continually rail at me. Bravo. Plank, eye, all that.
Is this proposed mechanism mechanistic? Is it natural, using physical laws that are consistent, merely as-yet-undiscovered? If so, it sounds like the starting point for physical scientific research.
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At least one version of that theory has a mechanistic mechanism. (one that exists in our dimension. But is currently undetectable.) But you can also postulate that future humans have gone outside our space-time, and the recording devices are undetectable from here. (Or, as I suggested previous, a super-intelligent being from outside our space-time.) Does it make it less mechanistic if the consistent, undiscovered laws are of the reality outside our space-time, and are not detectable from here?
We’re probably going to end up with a theory of the universe that is like that, proposing laws outside our space-time we can never verify unless we leave this space-time. For instance, string theory, versions of which postulate 11 dimensions and particles that are smaller than the planck length. Despite the difficulties with billions of versions, if we ever find one that describes everything in our observable universe, it will be starting with things outside our observable universe. (Some have suggested that isn’t science, it’s merely philosophy.)
Kurt Godel proved that any sufficiently complex system will be either incomplete or inconsistent. Since science strives to be consistent, it’s likely to be incomplete. Stephen Hawking, and other physicists have admitted as much. Meaning that any consistent system that completely describes our space-time, will actually be a system that describes, incompletely, a larger reality that encompasses our space-time. We’re going to be postulating something larger than our universe eventually. The only real question, then, is whether or not anything already lives there.
Similar criticisms are made of string theory. Similar things were said of many scientific revolutions… Einstein was criticized for violating Newton’s laws. Quantum Mechanics was criticized for violating, among other things, basic common sense, (I joke only slightly.) But, at least General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics made testable theories. They are theories of our universe. String theory is a theory of another reality entirely. If we ever find one to describe our universe, we’re likely to have to just accept without any evidence what it says about the reality beyond ours, (and simply accept that such a reality actually exists.)
How to analyze a miracle? Good question. And you’re right, you will always find the Diogenes who won’t accept anything that violates natural laws. But, you don’t really believe in a miracle because of the specific event. Jesus is quoted as saying, if they won’t believe the law and the prophets, even a man coming back from the dead won’t convince them. People may have been interested in Jesus because of the miracles, but they didn’t compel belief, even in those who witnessed them. Jesus is quoted as once asking his disciples if they would leave him too. The response wasn’t: you perform miracles… it was: where would we go? You have the words of life.
It’s the life of Jesus, the lives of the disciples, and the life of Paul. It’s how what Jesus said changed them and how they changed the world that compels me that, first, the whole story took place basically as described, and then, that the miracles must have happened. And any one can simply say I can’t prove to them that Jesus said or did this or that. And they’re right, I can’t. I’m compelled to believe it happened, not only because of the lives of early Christians, (up to the “conversion” of Constantine, and only a few after, been meaning to critique that statement by someone on my side for a while,) but also becuase of the change it’s made in my life.
So, then people say they can’t believe it because of the bad example of Christians.
Ok. Let’s analyze another “miracle.” The conversion of Constantine, (and the bad example of “Christians” since.) Only one Christian leader recorded Constantine’s conversion. But his account at the time doesn’t mention it. Only 13 years later does Constantine convince him to add it in. And suddenly, Christians aren’t being fed to lions, and they have influence and power. (A book I’m currently reading points out that Christians have never been good examples when they are seduced by wealth and power. Jesus even spoke out against being swayed by them.) Constantine’s own monument to this event, (the Arch of Constantine,) has no Christian images, none of the stuff he claimed in his vision, no crosses on shields and standards as he said he used to win. But many pagan icons and many from Mithraic tradition, (Mithras was another resurrected god, like Osiris, and Mithraism was probably Constantines belief system,) and Mithraic traditions begin showing up in Constantine’s “Christianity.” The “church” began to exercise power over others, against the teachings in the bible. So, I don’t believe in Constantine’s conversion, or that most professing “Christian’s” since even knew what it means to be Christian. How can you be called Christian if you don’t know anything about Jesus’ life or teachings, and don’t try to do what he said? And try is the operative word. Even Christians… especially Christians… are not perfect. Jesus’ message was accepted mostly by people who knew they were sinners and needed to be redeemed. Jesus spoke a lot about those who didn’t know they were sinners and thought themselves better than the people who came to Jesus for redemption. (Luke 18:9-14) We’re going to make mistakes. The best example of Chrisians is what they do when they make a mistake, and how they react to the mistakes of others. That said, I’m going to go back and look at where Meatros thinks I made a mistake. Will comment on it soon. And I’m not trying to be condescending to him, but, how can you point out to someone that when you get every step wrong, your conclusion isn’t going to be accurate? Luke 18 is appropriate for this. The Publican who admits his conclusions were mistaken gets mercy, the Pharisee who does every step wrong and still thinks himself right won’t see the mercy that is readily available. Jesus was very condescending and sarcastic to those who believed themselves righteous.
I didn’t say the resurrection wasn’t a miracle. I just said that if aliens had the ability to do it, it doesn’t have to be, since there already exists a mechanism in our reality to accomplish this.
My analogy on miracle vs. natural is a computer programmer. A computer programmer is omnipotent and omniscient… At least he can be, within the universe of a program he wrote. He can stop the program where he wants to insert a new command, a miracle if you will. Or he can use subroutines he set into the program from the beginning, the natural laws of the program, a natural phenomena if you will. He can set up initial conditions to arrive at an outcome he wants and let it run for billions of program years without having to manually write in every single star, planet, plant, animal, or person. He can speed it up with flags set to alert him when certain conditions are met, (intelligent life arises, for example.) Or, he could slow it down to watch and control every single variable in a given situation.
Don’t let the damage occur in the first place. Control the variables so Jesus’ death results in a state of suspended animation, for example. Then you just have to reverse the death part, and don’t have any further damage.
To begin with…I am enjoying this conversation, and hope that you are also. I’m trying to learn, and am also trying to express my own beliefs in a clear and valid way. I am pretty sure we are at a fundamental impasse, based on incompatible beliefs…but so long as no harm is done, I’m willing to continue trying.
If the laws are always undetectable, then that’s a big problem for me. I am a very big fan of the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum physics, but it has the glaring drawback of proposing other worlds which can never have any causal interaction with our world.
Some versions of string theory propose effects that would be observable, and thus save the theory from being “nonsense” in the scientific sense. Effects which would “leak” across the dimensions, and thus show up in some experiments. Without such predictions, I would have to say that string theory is very pretty, mathematically, but perhaps impossible to verify experimentally.
Alas, that’s my opinion. For it to be scientific, a testable hypothesis needs to be put forward, and, at least in an ideal sense, an actual experiment must be possible.
(It may not be an experiment we can actually perform today. If someone said, “My theory proposes effects that would only show up in particle collisions at energies thousands of times greater than any possible at CERN today,” the idea isn’t formally nonsense…just nonsense in today’s practical terms.)
Sure. But the problem (as I see it) with theology is that theology then goes on to fill in that incompleteness with specific predictions. I see all the difference in the cosmos between “A human body might, by some means we cannot describe, return from death to life” and “Jesus of Nazareth did so in 33 A.D.” Theology cannot rely upon incompleteness and then make concrete declarations at the same time.
Correct, and, alas, this is the core, I think, of our impasse. I don’t think that sufficient evidence has been produced.
To me, this is a circular argument, since, to date, the claim that a man did return from the dead is, itself, not convincing. A Mormon might say, “If they won’t believe the word of an Angel of God, then what would convince them?” The problem is that the non-Mormon Christian population doesn’t believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of an Angel of God.
The same argument applies to the Mormon faith…and, in my opinion, it is stronger. The miracles are better attested, the heroism of the faithful in adversity is more inspiring, etc. Yet I do not believe that this is sufficient to bring about my belief.
And here, of course, I can only salute you and your faith, and hope that it serves you well. I don’t have the faith you have; I don’t believe the miracles you believe. My faith leads me in other directions.
It’s sad, in that it is a conversation stopper, but, hey, it’s a free choice which we all get to make, and I celebrate this freedom in most of its forms.
(I’m gonna have problems if a group of Kali worshippers set up a murder-cult near by and start strangling people in honor of the death goddess…)
My opinion is that this was solely a political arrangement, and had very little to do with theology.
I also note, with great sadness, that Christians, once in power, were about as nasty as their pagan forebears, engaging in suppression, theocracy, torture, corruption, and all the other ills of one-party statesmanship. If Christian Rome had been pure, clean, glorious, and godly, an argument might be made that it was truly of miraculous inspiration. But it was just about as dirty as anything that came before, or which has come after.
(I feel the same way about Leninist Communism. If the USSR had truly exhibited advanced socialist cultural advances, with the elimination of privilege and the democratization of resources, it might have been something truly remarkable and laudable. Instead, we got the horrors of Stalinism. The ideal is noble; the reality was uglier than cholera-puke!)
An universal human failing, I trow. Ain’t nobody pure enough to wield power without succumbing to corruption. (That’s why the division of power inherent in Parliamentary systems, and in the U.S. Constitution, is so wonderful. It’s the only method ever invented to plays the corruption against itself, making it harder for it to seize control.)
Fair enough. Clarke’s Law and all that. Aliens might have technology so advanced as to clone a new body from cells in the corpse of the old one, and even to recover the memories and personality of the deceased from traces found in the corpse. Not a miracle, just really advanced tech.
The problem is that this removes the “theology” from the event, and makes it a material occurrence.
(Historically, we have seen the definition of “death” evolve several times, to accommodate physical revivification. First, when cessation of breath was found to be, in some cases, reversible. Second, when cessation of heartbeat was. Will flat-lined brain-waves go the same way some day?)
This leads to the wonderful philosophical conundrum of the “Sim.” The “Brain in a Bottle” or “Holodeck Universe” riddles. I see these as profitless, as, like full-blown solipsism, they don’t really open any avenues of further research and inquiry. Okay, maybe God can re-write the program, reverse it and pick it up from a checkpoint, intervene in its running and change variables on the fly… How do we examine such a cosmos? What can we learn from it?
Such a viewpoint seems to be “nonsensical” (in the technical, non-pejorative scientific sense, I hasten to add, not in the commonplace rhetorical and moral connotation. I’m speaking more Popper than Lewis Carroll…)
Anyway… Um! What more can I say? I don’t agree with you…
(If I were ever to become a Christian, I would follow the theology of “Universal Salvation,” where everyone gets saved. On Judgement Day, hell is empty, and every soul is rewarded with God’s love and presence. Pretty heterodox, even heretical, but anything less is a failure to be “perfect.” So it goes!)