A short and simple question.
-CHRISTIANITY QUESTION
I have one easy question about heaven and hell.
Lets say a man has MPD, (Multiple Personality Disorder.) (A good example of this would be in the movie Me, Myself, and Irene.)
Anyway, this Man is a great christian. He goes to church every sunday and lives his life without sin. He seems to be getting a first class ticket to heaven, when his other personality kicks in. His other personality goes berserk and kills his boss, along with himself.
Now that this man is dead, he has to answer to the infallible god. Would God send this innocent man to hell, or this guilty man to heaven?
This has probably happened in the past, but my question is, what is God's plan for this man?
_5amgordon_
Boy are you in the wrong place. Christianity is inconsistant on this. The Catholics believe in rituals like bathtism and confession for salvation. The calvinists believe only the chosen can believe in jesus and the rest are doomed. The Universalists believe all are saved thanks to jesus. There might be others, but those can be backed up by some verses, well I'm not sure about the catholics.
But no, unless he was jesus, he did sin, and I'm not even that sure about jesus. Though by definition sin is simply what is wrong in god's eyes, and jesus could do no wrong I guess.
Maybe the man has multiple souls, some of which go to Heaven and some go to Hell. Sorry, I'm being silly here.
Since I have no idea if there even IS an afterlife at all, I'm not qualified to answer this one.
I don't think there is an afterlife, but Im looking for any logical answer to the question. I thought of 2 souls too, but I thought about how its only a different personality, not a different person. Does every personality have a soul?
If God is infallible how does he squeeze through this one?
'Soul' comes from 'Sol' = Sun. not pointing towards the assumption we need to worship it, or use such as a spiritual ascention rather, every ego does radiate and thus has what it already is. the essence of existence, is the destruction or feeding on of a higher form of 'life'. As is the famous Christian ceremony of eating the body of 'Christ'.
johnarmstrong wrote: "Maybe the man has multiple souls, some of which go to Heaven and some go to Hell. Sorry, I'm being silly here."
Actually you are not being silly. The ancient Egyptians and Chinese belived in the soul having several parts (something I have used in a fanfict story I have written):
These different parts would all be doing their own thing: sort of an after-life case of multiple personality.
The practice of preparing shrunken heads originally had religious significance; shrinking the head of an enemy was believed to harness the spirit of that enemy and compel him to serve the shrinker.
They believed in the existence of three fundamental spirits:
To block the last spirit from using its powers, they decided to sever their enemies' heads and shrink them. The process also served as a way of warning those enemies.
If a man was killed during battle, the warrior who killed shrunk his victim's head in the hope that the warrior could possess the soul of the victim. The more trophies a warrior attained, the more arutam -- or personal power -- he possessed. The only way to attain this power was to shrink the head of the victim. If the head was not shrunken, the victim's avenging soul could return to harm the killer and retrieve his arutam.
Even with these uses, the owner of the trophy did not keep it for long. Many heads were later used in religious ceremonies and feasts that celebrated the victories of the tribe. The heads would either be discarded or given to the children.
Spinoza wrote a couple of fairly large "proofs" that boiled to fact that the soul existed, but was not "eternal". Spinoza was enormously influential and probably could be seen as one of the founders of "deism", although at the time he was viewed as an atheist. I read a history about him (but not any of his writings).
Trying to answer this question could be a lifelong pursuit, with no guarantee that you reach the one inalterably true conclusion.
Baruch Spinoza was a pantheist. However, this may be nitpicking since pantheists are deists' tree-hugging cousins. Also, he was accused of atheism because the common attitude is "either you believe in our god or you believe in no god". Because of this, many people see philosophies such as deism and pantheism to be scarcely distinguishable from atheism or theism (depending on who you talk to). For example... "Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism." Do any pantheists or deists besides me cringe at that quote?
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." - Albert Einstein
I've often found that both deism and pantheism are confused for atheism, at least in the minds of many Christians. This is understandable, since the practical outcome is similar in any event. My life wouldn't change if I became an atheist or a pantheist tomorrow but it would be radically different were I to convert to Islam or Christianity.
The quote you cited comes from Dawkins and it surprised me that he drew such a massive distinction from a hair-splitting difference. I'm not sure what kind of deists he's known. His outlook seems unusual, as other notable atheists like Hitchens and Sagan, seem to hold deism in greater resepct.
Well the whole concept of death is a flawed one. As a living being you are always changing.
YouTube - We're all dead in 7 years!
Now if there was some sort of eternal after life, would that be you? No, you are not the you you were seconds ago, add eternity to that and you won't be even close to you. I have however thought of time as a spatial dimension. Imagine time is a train going from birth town to death city, you get on and along the way you look out the window and you pass by a field of beautiful flowers (or whatever), but then you pass by it and never see it again. The field of flowers still happened, even when you forget it and no one else remembers. We existed and are permanently etched into time.
If we did have souls, what would they even be? Our brains contain all our memories, and they will disappear is our brains are damaged. Do we suppose there is a place that stock piles our memories? Will we find Jimmy Hoffa there?
YouTube - Consciousness
I have had solipsist musings, that reality is an illusion, and I am the only thing that is real. Or maybe my stream of consciousness ends and begins with all others. Is reality supposed to be like this, or is this just a state of mind? Reality just a string of chaos that my mind simply gives logic to? Are there other worlds, other states of mind? is that what god is?
My jury is still out on the issue of whether "souls" exist.
Let me explain what I mean. By "souls", I mean some sort of cause for our consciousness not currently understood. If it turns out that consciousness is simply an emergent property of the brain, than my use of the term is just metaphoric. On the other hand, if there's some kind of energy that we don't yet comprehend at work here, than soul is as good a term as any other.
Consciousness is a separate issue from memory. I can lose all my memories and still be "me", that is experienceing reality from my perspective. I can completely change as a person and still be "me", that is making different decisions or looking at things differently and yet still experience reality from my perspective. (Side note: I have indeed changed quite a bit in some ways, going from conservative Republican in the 80s to liberal Democrat today but I'm still "me").
So if, say, reincarnation is the way things work. I'll still be "me" but with different memories, life experiences, DNA, and so forth. I might be a completely different person but still experiencing reality from my perspective. This is what I mean when I use the term "soul".
Even if there is some sort of component that accounts for consciousness, the brain is definately involved in supplying sensory input from the environment, memory and instincts. So what would consciousness be without all these things? This is why I don't have a lot of confidence in an Elysium type place, much as I would love to believe in one. Seeing a mother die of necrosis of the brain and a grandmother to alzheimers has painfully driven home the message that memory can be lost prior to death. I see little hope that it can be retained afterwards.
Reincarnation may be a possibility. It fits nicely into the order of things in this universe. It has its problems, specifically with the fluctuating population but perhaps time isn't as linear as we think. Our reincarnated lives could overlap and interact with each other. It would give literal meaning to the phrase "do unto others..." since it could very well be you.
Or perhaps everything just fades to black and we hear some background music as the credits roll...
I generally dislike referring to the "soul" as energy, if our consciousness is simply some sort of electromagnetic matrix, than that certainly can be destroyed. Our brains aren't our consciousness, our brains only tell us we have one. From a physical stand point we are an illusion. However as consciousness has does not really exsist physically, it can never be destroyed, you can't destroy something that never existed to begin with.
YouTube - Things That Don't Exist
Theoreticalbullshit on youtube gives does a good job at explaining how god would have the same traits as nothing, and I think consciousness has these same traits.
I heard about a very odd form of cyclic reincarnation, our "souls" move back into when we were infants and we live our lives over without memories of our previous identical life.
In my opinion there is no such thing as soul. Your mind is your soul. and reincarnation is just another name for recycling. Once you are dead you are just returned back to the components you are made of.
According to Genesis, we are lumps of earth animated by the breath (spirit) of God. At death, the spirit (breath) returns to God and the lump returns to the earth leaving no entity (soul) to survive the dissolution. Obvously then, ego, personality etc. are part of our earth portion and not part of our God portion.
Multiple Personality Disorder. In all the cases, the subject never acknowledges his MPD until a therapist (red flag! No real degree needed for this professional title) suggests MPD. Any diagnosis which requires hynopsis to ascertain symptoms are also immediately questionable, so the same goes for MPD's variant "Repressed Memory Disorder."
If for argument's sake MPD did exist, the soul that has split personalities would probably have to have his/her demons cast out :) If soul refers to consciousness then the dude in question is, for want of a better term, f*cked.
PS: I'm new to this forum is swearing (sparingly of course) allowed?
As long as the swearing isn't projected AT someone (ie: You're a fucktard!) but rather used as an adjective (This is _______ incredible!) then I don't think anyone will mind. I know in real life I can swear the air blue at times and I've certainly heard John mutter the occasional expletive. So in moderation and used to express your mood/attitude toward something and not used to insult someone, then all is good. ^_^
fablespinner.com
I remember studying MPD in biology class. I recall seeing brainscans and how they were different whenever a certain "personality" took over. From what I learned, the process of transitioning from one personality to another is not random. For example, a "child" persona wouldn't take over while the subject was driving.
Popular belief confuses MPD with schitzophrenia but these are two different disorders. Schitzophrenia is having delusions or hallucinations.
My mother was a school psychologist. I can assure you, she had to get a graduate degree for that job. I would expect that anyone dealing with a psychosis would need to be a psychiatrist, which would require a doctorate.
Contrary to the view RyanCheong presents not all cases of MPD come from therapists; a handful of MPD diagnosis have come from psychiatrists (who are licenced by like doctors because they ARE a type of medical doctor) The problem is that John Q. Pulbic doesn't know the difference between therapists and psychologists (which have no formal cerification) and psychiatrists (who are MDs) and the first two have left the true professionals (psychiatrists) with a mess. The biggest headache is trying to seperate whatever wheat is from the chaft especially as in the 1980's a good number of old schizophrenia diagnosis were reclassified as MPD. Thanks to this situation the jury is still out if MPD is real or a manufatured illness though there are some strange reference in history and even in the Bible tha tmakes you wonder if the former is more likely than the later.
I would say that the whole idea of a soul insists that you are responsible for everything your body does. This would be a fault from God considering "you" might be a whole new person the next day. Why would he give you one soul that would belong to your whole life? It seems illogical, which by definition, he can't be.
Not quite. I'd say that we're three parts: nature, nurture and self-determination. The first two are debated in psychology and philosophy circles. The third is not a factor for people who go through life in reaction mode (I suspect these are a vast majority).
As with a sailboat's direction being determined by wind and current, a lot of who you are is determined by nature and nurture. However, like someone trying to steer a sailboat, you can work within these forces to decide which way you're going to be going.
Well everyone has self determanation, which is a composite of natural and learned drives, ex. you are thirty, but what drink specific you want to buy is based on learned tastes. People have to move up each step to some degree in order to reach the next step in maslow's pyramid. But if the percieved benefit of moving up a step is less than the effort it takes to get there, people just stay where they are. But all of this is determaned by chemicals in the brain. Though it the brain is too complex to perfectly predict, estimations about the actions of an individual can be made. Whether or not the soul exsists, it does not give us free will, if you believe free will somehow defies the laws of causality. However it might give free will if you define it as separite will, or individuality.
I agree that there is no free-will if you define the term too strictly. To deny that we're the product of biological instincts and envoironmental conditioning would be to deny an obvious reality.
Personally, I use the term "proactive", a word in vogue during the self-help kick I had during the early 90s. I also commonly use the sail-boat analogy. We're at the mercy of winds and tides but can still make choices to get to our desired destiny. Unfortunately, most people just seem to drift through life.
If they exist (big "IF"), Heaven and Hell are not temporal, which means that they are absent the dimension of time as opposed to possesing infinite quantites of it. They are unchanging, which means time doesn't exist there.
Good point. For a few years now I've engaged in a little research and lots of thought on the relationship between God (the infinite) and Time. If any Being and it's Eternal place are to make any sense at all, to say they exist outside of time only works as a metaphor to realize it will be a different sensation. But all existing things need time. To think, to act, to love, to do anything at all... and to be engaged in this world from another existence needs time to occur and engages in time of this world so time can and must be an aspect of the infinite (not to mention some kind of space to "travel" or "cover" distances). Any literal interpretation of God outside time is simply non-sensical.
why did god let mankind run arround 200,000 years being chased by lions tigers and bears ,liveing in ragged furs ,suffering and dieing in childbirth ,disease ,one child in mabey ten reaching adulthood .short ,brutish ,very hard ives ...and then suddenly only 2000 years ago send himself down to die on the cross so he could forgive us for being what he made us .was he away from his desk , gone fishing perhaps ? did he start homo sapians up then forget us on the stove while he answered the phone for 198,000 years .what of the souls of hominids predateing homosapians for another half million years ?
did dr leakeys "lucy" of oldievi gorge have a soul ? , neanderthals ? do chimps go to chimp heaven ? is the muslim god better than our JC god ,certainly there will be a lot more muslims than christians in another fifty years .the christian churches of europe are empty but mosques are springing up like toadstools in cowpies and their god plainly wants all jews ,christians and agnostics dead or muslim , and europe will be muslim in fifty years ..is this all part of the grand plan ? ..for being all knowing and perfect ,god seems to be a lazy and not too swift kinda guy .i suspect our god is the kinda fella who will leave a rake lying on the ground tines up , then step on it later in the dark .
the chinese and east indians aint commin to jesus any time soon .is gods plan to have an ever smaller and smaller flock as time goes by ?.joseph smith and L ron hubbard are clearly hucksters and con men but they are rakein in the sheep while "the god " nods off at his console again .our judeochristian god must have tenure or something .perhaps he is in a union job that is simply immune to fireing .for the love of god ! ..who hired this guy ....
Let's introduce another problem with the introductory question, does this 'God' also have MPD?
As for this whole 'Soul' discussion, the fetus always requires an energy source (heat, blood circulation, etc), a body can contain several of these entities (one for each vital organ for instance). simply by being human, you're alsready posessed by your 'self' which is also just a collection of fragmented other people that aligned at your birth or conception as a unique individual - not here to prove myself, just something that can be applied scientifically because of chaos/random mutation in and of the universe.
Quote: If they exist (big "IF"), Heaven and Hell are not temporal, which means
that they are absent the dimension of time as opposed to possesing
infinite quantites of it. They are unchanging, which means time doesn't
exist there.
Absolute, static, lower than infinite infinities, and the absence of time. sounds dead too me. As for 'Hell', how is fire supposed too damage a non-organic entity? sounds like an absurd eternal punishment scenerio.
The will of the 'soul' is not free, if under control (via mind focus on distractions and body decay). there is hardly any freedom in competition too reach the 'top' which is no better than the 'bottom' of the food chain. There is going to be another parasitic or predatory force outside the common nature - as is humanity.
Yes, the thought of having a soul or spirit, that which is not organic or material in any way, burning, seems a tad impossible. Perhaps it was never meant to be interpreted that way. The word from the Bible that has been translated as Hell is Gehenna, the valley of the son of Hinnom (2 Kings 23.10; Jer 7.31), symbolizing the place of eternal punishment by fire. The actual location supposedly is a deep ravine to the south of Jerusalem. Human sacrifices were allegedly made there during the judean monarchy.
This certainly implies quite strongly that the burning is literal. However, there was a time, I believe it was closer to the Renaissance, that the interpretation was taken to mean "without the embrace of God". Because of the reasoning given above: You no longer have your body, how can it burn. Plus, Hell is not Hades. Perhaps it is not so much a place but certainly (and here we go with time) a process of suffering. One who has been cast off; but not by God, but by what you did; hence you lose God's embrace because of your own choosing (I'm definitely taking the Judaic form of responsibility here without dealing with predestination of Christianity at all)
For info. on Gehenna, I took it almost verbatim from the NT 75 and 121, out of the Oxford Annotated Bible, 1993, NRSV
I recently had a very interesting exchange with a user there. Someone had mentioned that there must be a lot of unborn babies in heaven to which this user had replied something about an 'age of accountability'. We had gone back and forth for a bit about how some believe we're born in sin but this particular measure allowed for a loophole of sorts(which got deflected nicely actually).
Perhaps a similar such loophole exists here too. Call it a mentality or stability of accountability possibly. Maybe God has a special zoo for his special cases. Maybe he gets recycled or a mulligan. You're writing the story.
The question I believe was, "what is God's plan for this man"? The answer would be to bring Himself glory rather it's in heaven or hell. Romans 9:16 takes care of the rest of your concerns..."So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy." NASB