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Your belief
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I am sorry to hear about your struggles. And yes, complaining never accomplishes much of anything. I have heard this stated many times by people "heaven and hell are experienced right here on earth". I only contend that your version of Heaven and Hell is not the version that God lays our. If a person believes in Heaven and Hell, I assume that you have to believe in a creator. What source to do use to understand this creator. Or do we just imagine what we want it all to be. The pictures painted in the Scriptures (Bible) about heaven and hell are something we will never experience here on earth, but I do understand your logic. I have always believed that a positive attitude is the only way to live, even in pain. I love the song from the musical Annie, "there is always tomorrow, the sun will come out tomorrow".
What is to you is what is to you....can you accept that?
I do not believe in a physical location of heaven and hell...but a mental one, constructed in our minds. Nor do I believe in a creator G!d, or angels.and devil critters other than our thoughts arguing in our heads defining discerning choices.
The Bible is my primary source material...added to that are tons of othe books, thoughts, interpretations and my experience and understanding.
It is obvious to me we disagree on belief, and that is fine with me. How about you?
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Yes, that is fine with me. Since very few people agree about much. I just like to find out why people believe what they believe. I am a curious person who never seems content with thinking that I have the right answers. It seems though from you answer that you must believe in creation and not evolution. Not trying to presume
Interesting, can you show me where you inferred that?
So you are saying 'what is to you' may not be true, but maybe true to me?
I am afraid i cannot pretend to follow.
Insofar as religion and world views are concerned, yes, I think so. One person's divine Truth is another person's infernal Lie.
The only capital T truth I recognize is that of my mortality, that my existence is finite. To me, this seems self-evident, yet this is denied by every religion I have come across.
So, I truly think that Truth is highly subjective and personal.
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I do not understand how you seem to separate "Christian" from "Catholic" given that:
"The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church"
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church
We all have to die .. we are mortal.
However, we cannot be certain that we won't find ourselves conscious again at some point after our death.
The assumption that it is impossible, relies on a materialist view that all of our being can be
reduced to a "piece of meat" i.e. brain
Is consciousness really due to hardware, or software?
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Yes, when speaking about "true", it does not mean that it is Truth. It's just your truth or my truth. Is there a Truth, yes. But most people just believe in their truth. What I say is true, No it might not be. You don't have to follow, this is the way it is. I believe the Bible to be totally truth, you don't. And you don't have to. People can believe whatever they like, it just does not make it true. I would be foolish to think that everything I believe is true. No one is true in all their beliefs. Most of what people live in are opinions, much like Science, theories that have not been proven yet. Maybe that was a bad example.
Yes. We can't be sure the sun will rise tomorrow, either. But it seems to be very predictable. And the link between neurology and consciousness is likewise predictable enough for me to feel comfortable with the assumption that my functioning, living brain is required for my consciousness to arise.
These are my beliefs. I respect yours, and only wrote the above in answer to your question about mine, not as a challenge.
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Truth is Truth. 2+2=4 Truth, nothing subjective or personal here. Either there exists a creator or not. One is truth, even if we can not validate it.
Truth is, the Sun exists, the earth exists, the earth rotates every day, 1 turn. The earth is moving through space kept in orbit by the gravity of the sun. Nothing subjective here.
Gravity exists, we not that to be truth, yet no one has ever been able to tell where gravity comes from. The entire universe is held together by gravity. Or should I just come out and say, By the Word of God.
John 18:37–38 (NASB95)
37 Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”
38 Pilate *said to Him, “What is truth?”
Many are like Pilate here. People are afraid of truth, it makes them accountable.
S
Sky Milinet
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Hi, Muhammad Isa. I can imagine some people reading your post may think of hunger as not having much to eat or missing a couple of meals in a row, rather than going a week or two with no food but grass and seeing no help in sight, watching people turn into skin-draped skeletons; and lack of painkillers as relating to pain that can be easily reduced rather than the unrelieved continuous pain that prevents both activity and sleep. If you are more specific, people will perk up more.Oh, I don't know..
If somebody is in constant pain, and does not have access to decent painkillers, I can
understand why they might be grumpy.
Same goes for those who have no access to shelter or food.
Shelter is more than a roof. That means the difference between living and dying in icy winters, rainy climates, tornado alley, dust-choked arid lands, searing heat under cloudless skies, warzones. In those conditions, I even _expect_ a few complaints. If there were none, I would be suspicious that foul play was underfoot - or that these people had discovered the ever sought True Religion!
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I'm not sure one can generalise regarding your first question.
I grew up in a typical British, Christian household. My parents went to church for Christenings, weddings and funerals. I would not say my beliefs come from my formative years.
That's mathematics, though, not religious Truth, isn't it? It's a formal system that can be reasoned about, within formal rules.
I seem to remember that it comes from mass.
Again, this is not religious, revealed Truth, but scientific understanding, based on evidence and repeatable experiments.
I'm not saying you should hold this as superior or more valid than religious, revealed Truth, just that I think it is arrived at very differently, and that I don't think it is valid to gloss over these differences.
Okay, cards on the table, then, let's be accountable to our respective Truths right now.
Mine you already know: "It is certain that I will die."
Give me your truth about accountability, then, in a few words or sentences, the one which Jesus was testifying before Pilate. In the same way you summarized the truths of addition and gravity.
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I am not sure how you can believe that your parents were Christians, sorry. Going to church three or four times a year doesn't make anyone a Christian. A true Christian does not stay away from other believers. I am not trying to insult you, just trying to clarify Christianity. Christianity died long ago in Europe, just look at all the empty Churches. The Church of England is Anglican Protestant but functions more like a Roman Catholic church which it broke apart from.
That might well be true .. but there is nothing to say that somehow, your "functioning" might not
be transferred to another shell.
I'm not taking it as a challenge .. just sayin'
S
Sky Milinet
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Hi Muhammad Isa. I am very confident that consciousness continues after the brain ceases functioning - "ceases" as currently defined.
Even "anecdotal" accounts had me almost persuaded. As I poured over the few methodological studies I had found, I was persuaded more and more. I was skeptical, so looked for even small flaws in the efforts to unravel this issue. After I was done with my nit-picking, I realized that even without the parts I doubted, the basic conclusion was undeniable.
Now I wonder if the first understanding of the afterlife, acquired through near-death experiences, may have been one of the pillars that established experiential religion as a source of truth, albeit interpreted differently: one person might interpret the universally encountered loving being as a personal ancestor, another as the gate keeper to the afterlife, another as the Architect of the afterlife.
Easy to interpret the light seen by most NDEs as the passageway to the Stars (heaven), since they are already several feet off the ground.
And for one who died and recovered - Grogg the Caveman or Adam or Gilgamesh or whoever - once people realized that what he saw a mile away while "dead" was reality, they might have appointed him Guide to the Horizon (or Horus), or Messenger of the Beyond (Isimud, Djehuty, Mercury).
I was going to do some experiments regarding near death experiences, but couldn't find any volunteers.