Sorry, but I can’t even follow that. Can you rephrase?
No need to apologize. I was wrong to correct you. Now I’ve learned something. Thanks.
IMHO. it wasn’t the death of Jesus that was a sacrifice. It was the fact that he came to teach us and alter the spiritual path of the entire world, even knowing what was in store. An act of love. Greater love than this hath no man etc.
Hmmmm it seems to me we all choose according to experience and what we believe in. What we value. What we understand to be true. Some consciously and some unconsciously. I think that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. We may seem to be on very different paths of trheism and atheism, but if we both value what we percieve to be true and move forward in that belief, our paths will converge.
There could be NO YOU that proceeded existence; With out being in existence there is just Nothing, So you are saying when you were Nothing,no essence or goodness, If there was essence or goodness in existence, then existence was there first. I know you are stuck on that essence and goodness thing and why? I do not know. Perhaps you just don’t want to go that far or your beliefs may change and you are happy in your beliefs as they are. If something “is” it is in existence. If it is not in existence it is nothing. So you would say nothing had essence or goodness?
Monavis
I think we covered this before, but what the hey… There are two primary competing theories: existentialism and essentialism. Existentialism maintains the existence preceeds essence, while essentialism maintains that essence preceeds existence. Since you are already (surprisingly) an existentialist, I need explain only essentialism. The nutshell of it is that an undefined thing cannot exist, and if you disagree, I challenge you to name one that does. Now, by undefined, we don’t mean simply the common notion of having no definition (although that is a part of it). We mean the notion of having no soluble property. One example would be an object whose acceleration is zero. (Acknowledgments to SentientMeat.) The only thing that is propertyless in toto is nothing. Therefore, nothing cannot exist. And yet, nothing has an essence: specifically, it is characterized by a lack of properties. And in fact, everything that exists (e.g., horses) and everything that doesn’t (e.g., unicorns) has at least one soluble property. And so existence emerges from essence. Naturally, there’s more to it than just that, but if you want to investigate the theory that opposes your own, there are inumerable resources available. That’s what I did. I checked out both, and then made a decision as which I believed was more reasonable.
Using the term ‘Christian’ is like using the term ‘American’… you can’t answer these complicated questions from a universial belief… (well at least the metaphysical ones) …
Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists… are all ‘christian’ (they believe in christ as the son/god)… but their belief systems are as different as water and wine (literally in some cases)…
MANY within the protestants use the term ‘Christian’ to refer to their particular religion, (seems to be the ‘born again’ types exclude others from the 'christian title altogether)…
It would be more useful to tell us what KIND of faith you were curious about
I reject the notion (tentatively, of course) for lack of evidence, and thanks to the evidence that our selves are influenced so greatly by our physical bodies.
As far as inside and outside, I’m speaking figuratively - inside your head and outside in the real world. I’ll tentartively agree that your knowledge of your internal experience is 100% correct, barring any self-contradiction. What I don’t accept is that your interpretation of the mapping of this internal experience to external events and states is 100% correct. Thus my Mack reference.
And before you drag out your Indian friend again, let me say I agree. Evidence that religious experiences are associated with a certain part of the brain does not mean that they are not externally caused. All it does is provide a possible alternate explanation for the experiences. One common theme of scientific discussions is finding alternate explanations for evidence explained by a certain hypothesis. If all the evidence can be explained by other causes, it does not falsify the hypothesis, but weakens it. That we know of brain states that cause experiences like the abduction experience doesn’t prove they never happened, but does require abduction fans to come up with additional and better evidence if we are to give their hypothesis credence.
Being Jewish, I’d go every year to Yom Kippur services, confess my sins (including those not covered above - loved that part) and asked to be written into the book of life for the next year. Since I’m still here, guess it worked. But I prayed directly to God for this, and no one ever told me that God delegated this to anyone else.
Not having been indoctrinated in Christianity, I’ve never, never, never understood the theologicial justification of salvation only through Jesus. I certainly understand how the idea evolved in Christianity, and why it is successful though. Good marketing.
Hope that’s the part you didn’t get.
That isn’t a universally held Christian belief… though it is common enough…
Some believe that Christ coming to the earth and dying (or being ‘punished’ in the garden) was enough for all to get to heaven… even if they don’t ‘know’ they are going through Jesus… others believe that living a good life, no matter your religion is enough… others believe that you have to be a member of their sect…
All of this particular discussion is null, unless we know WHICH christian sects to discuss
I’m speaking of the mapping between internal states and reality here. Science can perhaps study the influences of external events and internal things on what we value, but not the correctness of what we value. We might choose to donate to charity after a careful study of the effectiveness of charitable organizations, or due to a dream, but it doesn’t really matter.
Some people believe in the primacy of internal experience, but I believe in the primacy of the outside world. I’ll test my experiences against the world, and will cheerfully admit to being internally deluded if they don’t line up. I’ve had enough hallucinations sitting in boring seminars after 4 hours of sleep to not believe myself anymore.
The dichotomy of the NT and OT personas of God are of course widely discussed topics. In his book O EVANGELHO SEGUNDO JESUS CHRISTO. Nobel Prize winner Saramago implies there is none. In fact, since God is omniscient, he actually gets even bloodier and more interesting human sacrifices from Jesus’ crucifixion.
On the other hand, if one accepts the role the human nature plays in the interpretation of events in the Bible, you could believe that the OT describes a “barbaric” God because the human community was “barbaric” itself and didn’t see anything wrong with sacrifices, bloody punishment, etc.
Concerning the “literal” interpretation, of (for instance) Genesis, imagine a 3000 BC person having to grasp the whole Big Bang; much less describing EVERY significant event so any layman could understand them… Asimov wrote a very funny short story where Aaron (I think) persuades Moses to abbreviate the account somewhat.
I’m not sure there are any universally held Christian beliefs. Don’t some Christians even doubt the existence of Jesus? I don’t doubt that there are some Christian sects that are so ecumenical that they are hardly Christian (like Reform Jews according to some) but I don’t understand the mainstream thingy. These other types never seem to knock on my door Saturday morning.
Or is it the other way around? Compare your statement to the findings of scientists studying the relation between our religious experiences and our temporal lobes. It is a mistake to draw from the data a conclusion either way as to which affects which. You can damage a brain, but have you damaged the person? Let us posit a kind and charitable man who has an automobile accident. He emerges as a curmudgeon — wait, no — a sociopathic serial killer. Unless we divorce entirely his previous personality from his present personality, we are forced to conclude (at least logically) that he did not before exist. Now, we may say that he has existed as two essentially different men, one who did kind acts and one who does mean acts. But that means that this is not now the same person as before. And although we often speak metaphorically in such terms, we never mean that a census would count two or that we should retrieve the gift we gave to him for his birthday last year on the grounds that he is now the ursurper of a gift we gave someone else. If you disagree, imagine calling the cops and reporting that he is the possessor of stolen goods, and then imagine convincing a court that that is the case. He is in fact still the same man he ever was in every essential way because, in toto, he is the man who once was kind but now is cruel. If you were to leave out either property of the man, you would be speaking of a different man altogether.
Actually, you have yet to characterize my experience correctly. The inside my head part was the aftermath of the experience. My knowledge, my comprehension, my worldview — these changed instantaneously and permanently. The event itself occured outside the universe altogether, and involved my spirit. It was an event that did not even involve my body, at least not until it was finished.
Then if you agree with my Indian friend, you cannot agree with the first assertion you made above that our selves are influenced by our bodies because the two contradict. Explanations do not consititute science, which is the main thrust of Popper’s theories. Marxism, Adlerism, Freudism — these all explain quite much. But they are all pseudoscientific.
Surely your Rabbi did not mean that the Book of Life has to do with biology. There are two of you, one here and one not bound by dimension. The former will die, and in an eternal reference frame is already dead. It is the latter that will never die. The theological justification for salvation only through Jesus is that Jesus and God are one. I was never a Jew, but I was an atheist, and the Jesus I knew about then was nothing more than something presented to me by third parties. I do not blame you for rejecting Him as you know Him. And neither does He. Consider two entities: A and B. Your lack of understanding is with respect to A. Jesus is B.
What are you talking about? You had best define what you mean by person before I can respond at all. If one thinks the mind is physically based, then the same brain and body means the same person, and no change in personhood has occurred. Someone who thinks a “soul” is divorced from a body would have more problems with this, since if a soul is identified by a personality, then in your example it might be said to change. I don’t think that.
I’m sure I am mischaracterizing it, since I wasn’t there. However it appears that you believe it occurred outside the universe. It no doubt seemed that way to you, but if it was caused by brain activity, it involved your body from the beginning. I’m in now way disputing your account of the events, just your explanation of them.
Exactly what do you think Ramachandran means by his statement?
Do you see this statement as falsifying or denying a purely physical cause? It seems to me that he is saying that finding a potential physical cause for these experiences in no way rules out a non-physical cause. I don’t see how this contradicts that our bodies influence our selves. Even if there is a non-physical influence, this does not rule out a physical one.
Scientists are such crappy witnesses since we learn to qualify every statement. New writers often get any absolute statement shot down by reviewers or advisors. That seems to be what he is doing here - and quite rightly. Scientists say to their girlfriends "you look beautiful (p < .05).
BTW, I have no trouble with the concept that the mind affects the body, since the mind is connected. I have affected my own heart rate just by concentration, with feedback but with no training. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to be able to do, in my worldview.
The Book of Life is a metaphor for the belief that God decides who will die during the next year. I don’t know where you got the idea of biology from. I remember precious little discussion of immortal souls and heaven. Not dying during the next year was an end to itself. I know that’s not your view, but that was my religious upbringing, and I rather liked it.
If Jesus is equivalent to God, (being one) I don’t get why we can’t pray directly to God instead of Jesus. if there is a god, I don’t buy that he turned a deaf ear when I was praying to him directly because I used the wrong name and was in the wrong house of worship. As for direct experiences with Jesus, my temporal lobe must be woefully underdeveloped, because I don’t have these types of experiences. Not even when I’ve fasted. If Jesus did try to visit, he bounced off my invisible shield of extreme rationality. This is the same reason I was never tempted to try even the mildest form of drugs. Not virtue, just wiring.
And I know this means nothing to you, but your vision of Jesus from your experience does not seem to match the vision of Jesus other people have had from their experience. That seems to me to argue against your experience (or their’s) being one derived from external causes.
I’m the guy who originally started this thread, and I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who’ve replied. I’ve been trying to keep up with the links and comments posted, but I haven’t been able to reply at all because the second week of school was much busier than I thought it’d be. Add to that the fact that I got sick a few days ago and I’ve really just been “out of it”.
But I’m definitely not ignoring this thread on purpose. If things get better, I hope I’ll be able to rejoin the discussion again this weekend.
Thanks!
I see, since essence is not in existence (doesn’t exist)but is nothing,nothing came before existence. Once you say essence exists, you are admitting it is in existence.You would then be implying that your image of God is the essence of nothing?
Monavis
Frankly, I think we may need to define quite a lot of things, judging by what you said above and continue to say throughout this post all the way to the end. We seem to be talking past one another using terms like “person”, “mind”, “body”, “spirit”, and even now “soul” (a term that I don’t need for my purposes). I’ll define these now as I’m using them, and you can compare with yours.
Person: an entity characterized by the union of biological temporality and spiritual eternity, and having the attribute of free moral will.
Mind: the scope of awareness derived from brain activity.
Body: the physical aspect of a man.
Spirit: the metaphysical aspect of a man.
Self: the essential man; his identity; synonym for spirit.
The brain causing the event has two insurmountable epistemological problems, easily proved by modus tollens: if the brain caused the event, then the event was either (1) not a real event at all, but merely an imagined event, or (2) a physical event that I observed empircally. Since neither (1) nor (2) is true, the brain cannot have caused the event.
I think he meant that science is unqualified to address transcendencies (read: immanancies), and that attempts to do so result in dubious claims. His assertion makes sense since immanent things are facts. Facts only describe; they do not explain.
It doesn’t deny a purely physical cause, but it doesn’t support one either. The problem with the statement that “our bodies influence our selves” is that it is categorical. While it is true that if A <-> B, then A -> B, it is equally true that B -> A. To state that A -> B when B -> A is to ignore the biconditional implication altogether as though it were not true. Not a logical fallacy per se, but certainly audiatur et altera pars.
In my experience, some scientists are crappy witnesses and some are good witnesses. It seems to me that there is a direct correlation between the quality of a scientist’s witness and the degree of his acquaintance with the underlying theory of science. Einstein, for example, was an excellent witness, careful to derive his theories by sound deduction. David Stove, on the other hand, is a lousy witness who seems to believe that science is everything that is plus everything that isn’t.
You do not see. Essence is not nothing.