Sapo, from bigbabysweets2000:
Welcome back Sapo
(Post split from this thread)
Yeah, that’s the logical first thought. But if Salvation is a choice we make with full awareness of Creation (discussed elsewhere, a while ago), not having spread the word might turn into a stumbling block, for some. All in all, I believe knowledge never hurts (that doesn’t mean I am terribly active in spreading the word, though)
Indeed.
So what’s so bad about a caterpillar changing into a butterfly?
I’m not sure that a value judgement can be placed on it - it’s how the life cycle of a caterpillar progresses.
To put this into context, it seems as though you are saying that we do become a different person when we get into heaven - regardless of our will.
If that’s the case, then what’s the purpose of being on earth since we change anyway when we get to heaven?
On a side note, I think it was William Lane Craig who postulated something to the effect of us losing the memories of our loved ones who aren’t in heaven, so that we wouldn’t suffer at the thought of them being in hell.
To be honest that doesn’t ring like a good solution to me and seems quite disingenious. I’m not sure what anyone else’s thoughts are on this (nor whether or not I have nailed Craig’s thoughts successful), but it seems to me that heaven could hardly be heaven without my loved ones.
So it’s the same being it was before the cocoon as it is afterwards.
I’m not sure where I said I believe we become different people in Heaven. I’ll still be me, you’ll still be you.
I believe our time on Earth is like a cocoon for our soul.
What’s the point of a butterfly being a caterpillar if it will turn into a butterfly anywyas?. It is a necessary growrth stage and what happens to the caterpillar stage does affect the butterfly.
I’ll tenatively say yes, although there is a whole philosophical can of worms in that question.
If this is so then I’m not sure how the caterpillar comparison is a good representation - the caterpillar changes physically, whereas you suggested that we change mentally (ie, we no longer have a desire to sin).
Edited to add - you didn’t out right say that we’d change, but it’s implied by saying that we’d automatically rise above such pettiness. Why would we rise above such pettiness? One avenue is that we’d change. The other avenue is that we’d discover something that would make us want to do such. If it’s the second avenue then why isn’t this avenue available on earth? It could be a different avenue altogether, but I don’t see how.
But if our ‘soul’ changes regardless of our wants and desires, then the time on earth doesn’t matter - just like the wants and desires of the caterpillar do not matter to whether or not it physically changes.
The butterfly has evolved that way, it’s not that the growth stage is necessary. After all, not all organisms morphologically change as drastically as the caterpillar does. In short, there is no ‘point’ to it, it’s just a pathway that it evolved naturally.
The resources and energy expendature for such a transformation are surely deliterious for the butterfly and it might have been better off had it just been a butterfly in the first place.
However growth doesn’t have anything to do with the plight of the human soul, since we supposedly change regardless of our desires. We are changed into the beings we should have been. If that’s the case, then what’s the point of life on earth - who we were is going to be gone anyway.
I know of no better place than Great Debates than to get into a philosophical can of works. 
Who says this method isn’t available on Earth?
If nothing we do matters, then everything we do matters.
Bonus points if anyone can identify the quote.
While that’s true, I think that we would get side tracked into the nature of being a little too much and the original purpose of the thread would be eclipsed. 
Only by inference would I think it’s not available on earth. If this reason for not doing such was already present here on earth then there would be people who do not sin and always behave correctly.
This is not the case, even within born again believers.
I’m not sure how that’s true in regards to the context. It seems paradoxical since we are supposedly judged on our performance on earth and that since god values free will. But if our performance on earth doesn’t matter and free will ultimately doesn’t matter then it seems like our time on earth is valueless.
I say that our performance on earth doesn’t matter because we are changed into different people with different values - in other words, we would not reflect our time on earth. I say that free will ultimately doesn’t matter because we lose it in heaven (if we ever had it to begin with, which I don’t see how it’s logically possible that we did).
Fine then, another time.
Certainly you know that Jesus was supposed to have been sinless. I don’t know what I think about that, but that’s beside the point. The fact that there aren’t any sinless people on this planet at this moment (that you know of anyway) doesn’t prove it impossible. Unlikely or improbable maybe, but not impossible.
Do we really have a desire to sin? or just a tendency or a weakness for it?
Do people really want to expressly offend God by hurting others? When we steal something or kill someone, do we do it with the purpose of offending God and lessening Creation? or do we just do it because we can’t help it, or couldn’t resist temptation of an immediate instant gratification even if it means the loss of a greater but delayed gratification.
I personally believe that in Heaven you are just freed from the monster of desire and emotion that makes you do evil or good things and that we call our bodies. We become our true selves with our true desires, be them good or evil.
The person that really wants to sin and to do evil, that person has no interest in being in Heaven anyways. He is free to choose to repudiate God and live in his perfect and depured evilness just as the good man is free to live in his perfect and depured goodness.
As the good man rejoices in being free of the burden of a body full of desires and the tendency to do evil, the evil man will be free of a body full of desires and the need to do good things. Or do you think that the truly evil man is not pissed at not being able to knock down the shelves at the supermarket when he goes for bread? He wants to do evil but his weakness makes him need to eat and he must respect the others for a moment to satisfy his need. As embarrassed as you might be at eyeing your neighbour’s wife, he is embarrassed at not being able to spit at the nice police officer in the corner.
Our mortal lives are a flat representation of our true selves. A video of yourself is a fair representation of yourself and your behaviour but it is not you. You recognize yourself in that video but it doesn’t capture you in your entirety. Likewise, your mortal life represents you but doesn’t capture the fullness of your being.
It is not so much that you change when you reach life eternal, it is just that you “stop” being changed by your mortality.
Cool.
Right - but Jesus was also born without sin and I wouldn’t exactly call him the everyman. 
I’m not suggesting it is impossible - what I’m saying though is that if we do have access to the same sin-preventing knowledge that we will in heaven then why do we sin now? Our time in heaven will be exponentially longer then our time here - if we can’t help sinning here and we gain nothing new that will prevent us from sinning in heaven, then why would there be a change?
That depends. I could see it going either way - A&E desired knowledge, which is why they ate the apple (to be technical ‘fruit’).
I’d say that some do, yes. I’m thinking of serial killers here. I’m not sure what difference in meaning you are using when you say ‘desire’ verses ‘temptation’, they seem the same.
Then that would necessarily change who you are, don’t you think? Why can’t we be freed from these desires/emotions prior to going to heaven? Why aren’t we our ‘true’ selves now?
Further, if we aren’t our true selves on earth, how is it just to judge us on our behavior while on earth?
So why was that person created?
Hold on - first you said you think we should be freed from desire/emotion altogether, now you are saying that we will be freed from desire to do evil (or good, depending on what our ‘false selfs’ like). I’m not sure I follow you here.
But if the ‘evil man’ isn’t really his ‘true’ self, then why does a good entity burden him with those evil desires - only to punish him later for it?
I don’t see how this is possible if our true selves don’t have desires. What would that entail anyway? If an entity had no desires, then what would it do?
Right, but you seem to be saying that our mortal life doesn’t reflect us at all - since ‘us’ is without desires and emotions. If that’s the case, then how can we be fairly judged on our actions?
I’m sorry, I just don’t get it - what are you without your desires and emotions? what remains? All your experiences are based off of desires and emotions in some way or another - at least that’s how it seems to me. We are products of our genetics and our environments. We do things out of desire, take that away and what’s left isn’t really all that apparent.
Meatros, excuse me for not quoting you and going point by point. We can go back to it if you want, but let me try a different tack.
Let’s call the “real you” the person sitting in front of your computer. Now, have you ever been really, REALLY mad about something? or desperately hungry? in agonizing pain? holding a massive dump with no toilet in sight? In any of those situations, you still were your true self, but you were also changed. You acted in ways you normally wouldn’t. You still have a desire to respect and uphold civility, but you know you run to get to the restroom door before the guy with the two fighting kids. And if it is too close to call, the good old elbow might come to play.
Life is a desperate situation. Our true selves do have desires and emotions, and those shape the way we choose. But they don’t manipulate us the way the more immediate necessities do. In life eternal, you still hold the higher desires and emotions but are no longer tugged around by the more immediate urgencies of mortal life.
And we are not judged by our mortal deeds. We are free to choose salvation based on our truest desires. Remember our souls are timeless (atemporal). Mortal life doesn’t come after or before salvation, it reflects our choice.
As for the creation of the evil man, he was not created to be evil. He was created free to choose and to carry out his choice unhindered.
That’s fine.
Yes, those emotions do change my temperment - however I’m not sure that there is just a steady state me, a ‘me’ without any emotion or desire entangling itself. As you say, that without those desires/emotions (anger/hunger/etc ) I would still have other desires (to respect and uphold civility.
So am I to interpret you as suggesting that it’s on a certian type of emotion/desire that we will not have in heaven? Or is it all desires/emotions?
I don’t get how you are just cleaving desires/emotions in that way - if they are bad they don’t count as being of our true self. If they are good, that’s our true self. How do you know? It seems to me that all my desires and emotions contribute to the collective ‘me’.
Immediate desires/emotions are not the only ones that get us into trouble either. Some of our desires and emotions can be long lasting, inspiring us to greed on a profound level (ie, Enron).
Also, if these negative desires/emotions can be done away with anyway, why do we have them?
Isn’t disbelieving in salvation a sin and therefore a mortal deed?
If we are essentially cluttered up with false desires then that seems to suggest that we will all attain heaven since that would be everyone’s truest desire - even without acceptance of god while on earth.
On a slightly different angle, if we aren’t judged by our mortal deeds, then what’s the point of living on earth? What’s the point in creating people who don’t freely choose salvation? After all, god would know ahead of time everyone’s path in life, all the choices he or she would make, so why not create people who only choose salvation?
Perhaps you might say that if god did that then certain percentage X would not choose salvation because it’s only through interaction with the unsaved lot that transforms that person into one that seeks salvation. However, if that’s the case, then why not create philosophical zombies?
In short, I don’t see the purpose of Hell or ‘non saved’ people.
There is no purpose for him though - unless god values condemned evil souls.
Good, sometimes one gets so enthralled into those point-by-points that one forgets what the discussion was about in the first place.
You are right in that there is no steady mortal self. It is continually evolving as we grow and learn. An atemporal soul, though, I believe must be constant, as God is constant and not reactive. When you live outside of time and events don’t happen in succession, there is no such thing as a reaction, I believe.
I don’t believe that in the afterlife will feel hunger or an adrenaline rush, for example. I do believe we will feel love or hatred. I am sure there is a list of emotions that I am not sure whether I would rate as earthly or heavenly, of course, but I hope you get my general feeling of what I am saying. The more “animal” feelings won’t be there in the afterlife.
I believe this is where language is tripping us. I am not separating good from bad, just higher from animal. There are both positive, neutral and negative in both levels. If that is what you had understood, then I will need more clarification of what you are asking.
Indeed, our highest desires are the ones that get us into real trouble. Those are the choices we make and the ones we have to answer for. If you value personal comfort over human life, there might be some answering to do later on.
I am not sure I understand this question but the crossed message might come from 2 paragraphs above.
If the question is why do we have this animal emotions, then the answer is that we do because that is part of what keeps us alive. If you need to go further and are asking why are they part of what keeps us alive, i.e. why didn’t God create us withouth them, the answer is “I don’t know”
What does this have to do with the price of fish? If you mean that there are religions out there that will consider my views heretical, my answer to them is a respectful 
Not that we WILL but that we will be able to. I don’t think acceptance of God while on Earth is such a big deal. We are not playing with all the cards. We won’t be judged by it. And remember that Salvation is not a choice we make AFTER mortal life. Salvation is not a consequence of mortal life. Rather, mortal life is a reflection of our choice for Salvation (which is not to mean that bad mortals are evil souls, btw!)
Again, we run into the timing issue. Still, to the last question, I reply with a question: what would be the point of creating people who only choose salvation? That would be total masturbation. God creates people who are free to choose. A creation where the created are not free to choose (i.e. don’t share the divinity of God) is not something He can love.
Let me try yet another different tack (and my apologies if I am abusing of your attention):
Picture your soul as a person standing under the sun. Your mortal life would be the shadow of that person. The shape of that shadow is a consequence of the pose of that person but it doesn’t capture its totality. Your mortal consciousness is like an ant walking on that floor, not seeing the persons but only the play of light and shadow on the floor caused by all the persons on that floor.
Just by scale alone, grasping the shadows is beyond the ant’s ability. Picturing the persons who project those shadows is simply beyond their ability to even imagine it.
Let’s suppose there is some arbitrary goal to those shadows (like, let’s make a big mapamundi, or let’s shade all this side and leave the rest lit). Once the goal is set, you can pose any way you want, either to help the goal or to hinder it. There are factors outside your control, of course, like other intervening objects, the ground not being perfectly flat, etc. You cannot fully choose the shadow that you will cast, but you can choose your pose, and in the end, what matters is that you were either helping or screwing the game.
When your little ant walks around and sees someone’s shadow, you don’t know the pose that person had, or whether that person was helping or messing the game. You don’t even know the figure they were trying to make!
God, of course, created everything. The sun and the floor (which I guess would be the laws of nature), and every person, not knowing whether they would help or spoil. They are created free to choose what they will do. Otherwise, if God controlled your pose or forced you to help, there would be no game, just a military drill, a parade of mannequins.
In the end, the picture on the floor (the Creation we as mortals perceive) is a compromise. It is the absolute best that could be achieved with the group of people at hand each trying to help or spoil.
The fullness of Creation (the game as a whole) is perfect. Everybody who played had a fair chance to play and the final result is the unadulterated result of the combined efforts of all the players.
Each player is free to think whatever they want as to whether the goal was achieved or not and how crucial their part was. They are free to be happy with the result (Salvation) or unhappy (Damnation).
And they are free to make that choice no matter whether they were trying to help or spoil! You could be a spoiler, think the goal was met despite your efforts and still like the picture that came out and be happy with the time you had.
The important points are:
God created the setting, the game and the players
The players were free to play to the best of their abilities and all had the same chance to play. (we are all created equal and the game itself is perfect)
The resulting shadow/picture, although a consequence of the players actions, doesn’t fully capture them.
The relevant result (that is whether you enjoy the game or not) is entirely up to the player itself and although the events of the game are likely to influence that decision, they don’t mandate it.
Our mortal perceptions (as the ant walking on the floor) of the game are simply way off of whatever might be going on, up there.
And now as a desperate effort to tie this to the OP, although God is all powerful, and all Creation is His, He doesn’t micromanage it and doesn’t force his creatures into something or another.
Can God ask for a figure that He cannot make a shadow with that shape? The question is pointless because God is not the one casting the shadows in this game.
Ok, now I have exceeded even my own capacity for attention. Good luck reading that.
Your logic is self contradicting!
Your logic to disprove an all powerful being is just another form of that old paradox “What happens when an infinite force meets an unpenetrable barrier?”
The answer to which is that if you have an impenatrable barrier, you cannot then, by definition have an infinte force. And vice versa: If you have an infinte force in the universe, you by definition rule out the existance of an impenatrable barrier. You can only have on or the other existing but nver both by definition.
The scenario of this question is just another form of that paradox, so that if an all powerful being exists, then by logic, it is impossible for their to ever exist a weight he could not lift. You are ruling out in your own statement the permission for such to exist.
Does that make sense to y’all?