So... what happens when you die?

I to believe in the bible as being the truth. I'm also a Christian, though sometimes it doesn't show. When you die, you will either end up in Heaven or Hell.

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Originally Posted by Weber

I to believe in the bible as being the truth. I'm also a Christian, though sometimes it doesn't show. When you die, you will either end up in Heaven or Hell.

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How do you reconcile conflicting information while believing in the Bible as being the truth?

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Originally Posted by Supermarioman

I'm a Christian, so I believe in Heaven and Hell.

no need for a long post woo

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You believe in Hell? What's god like, then? Is he too weak to eradicate Satan? Is he so hateful that he'd imprison a human being's soul in Hell for eternal torture for mistakes they made in life? Is he so unforgiving and without compassion that he'd condemn all of Adam and Eve's descendants to exist as flawed creatures, subject to temptation from Satan and without any direct proof of God's existance, and when they sinned condemn them forever to hell? This is a fucked up god my friend. Very fucked up.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

You are a whore

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Originally Posted by littlelolligagged

Gee, I've never heard that before.

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Wow. What's this emoticon look like: :? or this one :D

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Originally Posted by Weber

I to believe in the bible as being the truth. I'm also a Christian, though sometimes it doesn't show. When you die, you will either end up in Heaven or Hell.

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Originally Posted by littlelolligagged

How do you reconcile conflicting information while believing in the Bible as being the truth?

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Wow, the noobs are freaking me out. What's this look like: :p or this :&

No God can't just defeat Satan. He is bound by the law of balance in all things. That is why he doesn't just appear to the world and say "Blah-blah-blah and all is well". That would allow Satan the same access to our world. Thus they are both forced to use emissaries, the kind of dumbasses who think they understand it all. But don't listen to me, I only have an idea.

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

No God can't just defeat Satan. He is bound by the law of balance in all things. That is why he doesn't just appear to the world and say "Blah-blah-blah and all is well". That would allow Satan the same access to our world. Thus they are both forced to use emissaries, the kind of dumbasses who think they understand it all. But don't listen to me, I only have an idea.

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You have issues. Take out the blue font. It doesn't show up on the shiny dark skin at all.

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Originally Posted by littlelolligagged

You have issues. Take out the blue font. It doesn't show up on the shiny dark skin at all.

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Sorry about the blue, just picked one at random I could see better than the black text I keep getting. I'm having to reset everything. But then, I suspect I'm not the only one.

Issues? Lady you got no idea.

While I'd love to hope that some remnant of our consciousness will remain when the meat dies, I accept that the evidence so far points to the meat causing the mind, so that oblivion is all that awaits us.

Sometimes this gives me a minor panic attack if I think about it too much.

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No God can't just defeat Satan. He is bound by the law of balance in all things.

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Isn't he supposed to be omnipotent and thus bound by no laws?

Supposed to be maybe, but I don't see it as "God the almighty creator of all". Why would the universe seek entropy in the way it does if this were so?

There can't be good without there being bad.

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

You believe in Hell? What's god like, then? Is he too weak to eradicate Satan? Is he so hateful that he'd imprison a human being's soul in Hell for eternal torture for mistakes they made in life? Is he so unforgiving and without compassion that he'd condemn all of Adam and Eve's descendants to exist as flawed creatures, subject to temptation from Satan and without any direct proof of God's existance, and when they sinned condemn them forever to hell? This is a fucked up god my friend. Very fucked up.

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I lean toward Universal Reconciliation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Reconciliation

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

No God can't just defeat Satan. He is bound by the law of balance in all things. That is why he doesn't just appear to the world and say "Blah-blah-blah and all is well". That would allow Satan the same access to our world. Thus they are both forced to use emissaries, the kind of dumbasses who think they understand it all. But don't listen to me, I only have an idea.

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What a bunch of silly nonsense! Might as well worship Athena and Zeus.

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Originally Posted by Tempus Vernum

While I'd love to hope that some remnant of our consciousness will remain when the meat dies, I accept that the evidence so far points to the meat causing the mind, so that oblivion is all that awaits us.

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Yeah, I get that feeling too.

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Sometimes this gives me a minor panic attack if I think about it too much.

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I've gotten used to it. Its almost comforting to know your choice isn't between lakes of boiling blood and choirs of celibate angels singing "alaleuia" over and over again. Horrible.

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Isn't he supposed to be omnipotent and thus bound by no laws?

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Perfect, infinitely loving and compassionate, all powerful, all knowing. Yeah, god can't defeat satan and it can't even tell us about itself. Right.

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

Supposed to be maybe, but I don't see it as "God the almighty creator of all". Why would the universe seek entropy in the way it does if this were so?

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So god's not the creator of the universe??? It's just our little human god? What IS the creator of the universe? God's god? Maybe you should worsip that one instead. Less fickle, more powerful. Maybe it can get rid of Satan for you.

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Originally Posted by CedarPointer

There can't be good without there being bad.

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That's a bunch of crap. Guess what? There's no Good and there's no Bad, not in a cosmic, flows from God/Satan sense. Good is whatever satisfies our physical and cultural requirements for goodness and evil is what satisfies similar requirements for badness. Example - starvation is bad. Making people starve is really bad. Starving pregnant women and children is the worst. All of this flows from biological imperatives and our instinctual and cultural rules that have evolved with our species. Not Satan.

Wonderful! I love it. Its a much better belief system than the childish concept of heaven and hell. IMHO there is no salvation avalialbe or necessary. If anything, salvation is something humanity could acheive here in our societies, amongst each other. When there ceases to be have-nots, when there ceases to be warfare between cultures, relgions, ethnicities, when everyone learns to treat each other with a certain minimum of respect, allowing people to live more or less as they choose, then we will have found a kind of real salvation. But there's no apparent god out there demanding and teaching us to do this. Not as far as I can tell.

What this amounts to is our minds, our learning, our ability to choose our behavior, overcoming our instinctual, hard wired tendencies. The duality is animal vs. rational. The gut urge, vs. the thoughtful consideration.

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

Wonderful! I love it. Its a much better belief system than the childish concept of heaven and hell. IMHO there is no salvation avalialbe or necessary. If anything, salvation is something humanity could acheive here in our societies, amongst each other. When there ceases to be have-nots, when there ceases to be warfare between cultures, relgions, ethnicities, when everyone learns to treat each other with a certain minimum of respect, allowing people to live more or less as they choose, then we will have found a kind of real salvation. But there's no apparent god out there demanding and teaching us to do this. Not as far as I can tell.

What this amounts to is our minds, our learning, our ability to choose our behavior, overcoming our instinctual, hard wired tendencies. The duality is animal vs. rational. The gut urge, vs. the thoughtful consideration.

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Who are you responding to?

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

He is bound by the law of balance in all things.

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Theological problems are so much easier to solve when you can just make vague sounding laws up out of thin air.

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

Theological problems are so much easier to solve when you can just make vague sounding laws up out of thin air.

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Isn't that the only way to "solve" them?

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

Theological problems are so much easier to solve when you can just make vague sounding laws up out of thin air.

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Vague? the concept of balance is prevalent in everything we experience. supply and demand; give and take; predator and prey, the list goes on. It's like yin-yang, not at all "made up out of thin air". If a system is not in balance it degrades, falls apart, and dies. Nature won't allow it to continue in an unstable state. In fact, nature occassionally injects a new variable to balance the system, or modifies the system itself in order to restore it to a balanced state. So, I don't think I've made anything up out of thin air. If there indeed is a god, and he created everything, it is through this law that he accomplished it.

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

Vague? the concept of balance is prevalent in everything we experience. supply and demand; give and take; predator and prey, the list goes on. It's like yin-yang, not at all "made up out of thin air". If a system is not in balance it degrades, falls apart, and dies. Nature won't allow it to continue in an unstable state. In fact, nature occassionally injects a new variable to balance the system, or modifies the system itself in order to restore it to a balanced state. So, I don't think I've made anything up out of thin air. If there indeed is a god, and he created everything, it is through this law that he accomplished it.

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This is not even remotely true when looking at the Universe around us

Uhm... are you serious?

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

Uhm... are you serious?

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Very much so. Are you?

Of course. Do you think I say shit I don't mean? I'm not saying balance exists everywhere, but where it doesn't exist chaos emerges. Now you're going point out that the chaos balances the order?

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

Theological problems are so much easier to solve when you can just make vague sounding laws up out of thin air.

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So i see...

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Originally Posted by CedarPointer

There can't be good without there being bad.

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How long did you think about that sentence before posting it?

What do you even mean with the terms chaos and balance?

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Originally Posted by Supermarioman

Who are you responding to?

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You. Sorry, mixed up.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

Isn't that the only way to "solve" them?

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There are other, more draconian ways. :o Like genocide.

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

Vague? the concept of balance is prevalent in everything we experience. supply and demand; give and take; predator and prey, the list goes on. It's like yin-yang, not at all "made up out of thin air". If a system is not in balance it degrades, falls apart, and dies. Nature won't allow it to continue in an unstable state. In fact, nature occassionally injects a new variable to balance the system, or modifies the system itself in order to restore it to a balanced state. So, I don't think I've made anything up out of thin air. If there indeed is a god, and he created everything, it is through this law that he accomplished it.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

This is not even remotely true when looking at the Universe around us

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

Uhm... are you serious?

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Originally Posted by Nessus

Very much so. Are you?

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

Of course. Do you think I say shit I don't mean? I'm not saying balance exists everywhere, but where it doesn't exist chaos emerges. Now you're going point out that the chaos balances the order?

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Balance doesn't exist anywhere for any length of time. Look around you. Read a history book. Take a biology or physics class. Nothing is in balance for very long, if ever. Such things are illusion or hope sprung from short-sighted and ignorant human minds.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

What do you even mean with the terms chaos and balance?

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Order is predictable and balanced/countered by forces that act contrary to their normal behaviors, or Chaotically.

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

Balance doesn't exist anywhere for any length of time. Look around you. Read a history book. Take a biology or physics class. Nothing is in balance for very long, if ever. Such things are illusion or hope sprung from short-sighted and ignorant human minds.

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replace 'balance' in that statement with 'order' and I'd agree. Neither order nor chaos exist in system for long. The constant flux is the balance I refer to.

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

Order is predictable and balanced/countered by forces that act contrary to their normal behaviors, or Chaotically.

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:bulb:

That's circular reasoning at its finest. Or what would you call "normal" behaviour other than "ordered" behaviour?

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Originally Posted by Nessus

:bulb:

That's circular reasoning at its finest. Or what would you call "normal" behaviour other than "ordered" behaviour?

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Me? I'd called it boring and stagnating. Circular indeed, on that we agree. Everything spins.

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Originally Posted by rumrunner

Order is predictable and balanced/countered by forces that act contrary to their normal behaviors, or Chaotically.

replace 'balance' in that statement with 'order' and I'd agree. Neither order nor chaos exist in system for long. The constant flux is the balance I refer to.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

:bulb:

That's circular reasoning at its finest. Or what would you call "normal" behaviour other than "ordered" behaviour?

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There is no BALANCE! Everything is becoming something else, changing linearly, not oscillating from one extreme to another. The universe is the simplest example. It went BOOM and has been cooling and expanding ever since. It will eventually cool to the point that molecular motion stops and everything will be cold and dark forever. That's it. No fucking balance, no return to whateverthe fuck. The Earth is like that too. It went from a fiery hell hole to a much ocean world with living scum for three billion years before some how by some accident multi-cellular organisms appeared. That wasn't some orderly thing back and forth, it was linear. And it will continue. There is no cycle, no bouncing from one to the other. That's a fantasy.