How To Get To Heaven When You Die

[Spray_resistant]

You are completely wrong and I can prove it. Go stick your hand in the fire on the stove.

I could come up with many more examples of the opposite, like how attractive someone thinks someone else is, how good some food tastes, the quality of a movie and so on and so on.

Even your own example proves nothing because you can not know what anyone experiences from their individual perception when touching a hot stove but can perhaps relate to a very similar experience but it will not be exactly the same.

[creekrat77]

That's funny because when I say "deviance" I'm referring to traits that deviate from the norm. So if everybody has those traits they aren't deviant, are they?

Wow, I picked up all this knowledge from reading books that aren't the bible, who knew?



You already implied as much. If you don't want people to have that impression then stop saying it!



Only among drinkers of the kool aid. Nobody outside of the cult thinks that eternal punishment is a fair response for temporal crimes. Nobody outside of religious cults think that ***ual urges are evil. Nobody outside of religious cults thinks that failure to love and worship somebody is grounds for punishment.

That's why I keep telling you to take a step back. If I told you that Wargleblargle loves you and wants you to be safe but if you don't love Wargleblargle back he'll cut your balls off you would dismiss it as absurd cruelty. And if I then told you that this was only just and fair you would think I was crackers!

The whole deal with *********ity is not a loving exchange, it's the sort of bargain offered by a mob boss. Declare you fealty to god and god will protect you from himself.



That's not what it says in the bible.



That's an interesting take on the world. Without wanting to present a false dichotomy you have one group who has genuine useful knowledge of the world gleaned from logic, science, and the testing of hypotheses, and on the other you have a group that slavishly devotes itself to a hodgepodge of bronze age legends that were codified by ass-covering Romans purely because that's literally the first explanation they were ever given about how the world works.

If you were going to label one of those groups "simple minded" which one would it be?



Congratulations! That's the first true thing you've said ever! It's just a shame that you're misusing a beautifully complex philosophical and psychological conundrum as an excuse for believing in silly nonsense.

So how do you explain the existence of Jesus Christ and the fact that he fulfilled the 353 Prophecies proving his divinity? Historical records prove Jesus's life on earth. Not only that but in all accounts ever given he was never deemed to be emotionally troubled or showing any sign of mental disorder. How do you explain Jesus Christ's existence?

[Spray_resistant]

I can come up with many more examples of the same, but I really only need to come up with one to prove you wrong. I can know whether other's experiences are good or bad, horrifying or bliss by their reactions, and feed back. You won't go stick your hand in the fire because perception is not meaningless. You perceive that if you stick your hand in the fire, you will experience pain and damage to your hand, therefore, you won't do it.

No example you come up with qualifies as an experience of another. Any example of an experience you relate to is just another thought story your mind is fabricating, as is any memory of a negative experience you had like putting your hand on a hot stove for example but just like imagining what it was like for you or someone else you are not perceiving that experience at the moment but rather experiencing a thought of what that would be like for someone else or what it was like for you.

These are not substitutes for experiences of these events nor are they the same because the contents of your thoughts are all fictional even if your thoughts do exist in some sense and you cannot know what it is like to experience an event in the body of someone else no matter how similar the experience thus cannot with 100% honesty assign a good/bad meaning to anyone else experience but can only place a good/bad label on your thoughts of their experience.

[squealpiggy]

So how do you explain the existence of Jesus Christ and the fact that he fulfilled the 353 Prophecies proving his divinity? Historical records prove Jesus's life on earth. Not only that but in all accounts ever given he was never deemed to be emotionally troubled or showing any sign of mental disorder. How do you explain Jesus Christ's existence?

1. Historical records of Jesus are nonexistent. There is no clear evidence he was even a real person. The evidence that is usually claimed to support the existence of Jesus actually supports the existence of *********s. But we already know that *********s exist!

2. The fulfilled prophecies are a weak argument. Somebody who was familiar with prophecies made in the Old Testament wrote their Jesus story with a view to making him fulfill prophecies. Which is why there are so many contradictory accounts! That's why he was an immaculate conception, while also descending from David via his earth-dad Joseph.

Any evidence that requires an a-priori belief in the bible is not evidence. Prophecies made in the bible and fulfilled in the bible are not proof of anything, unless you also consider that prophecies fulfilled by Harry Potter and Voldermort make JK Rowling's books a true story.

[Spray_resistant]

1. Historical records of Jesus are nonexistent. There is no clear evidence he was even a real person. The evidence that is usually claimed to support the existence of Jesus actually supports the existence of *********s. But we already know that *********s exist!

2. The fulfilled prophecies are a weak argument. Somebody who was familiar with prophecies made in the Old Testament wrote their Jesus story with a view to making him fulfill prophecies. Which is why there are so many contradictory accounts! That's why he was an immaculate conception, while also descending from David via his earth-dad Joseph.

Any evidence that requires an a-priori belief in the bible is not evidence. Prophecies made in the bible and fulfilled in the bible are not proof of anything, unless you also consider that prophecies fulfilled by Harry Potter and Voldermort make JK Rowling's books a true story.

You gave me an idea 1. Church of Harry Potter 2. ??????? 3. profit

[Spray_resistant]

So then you are going to stick your hand in the fire on the stove?

No but it is besides the point, when someone is having a tough time do you tell them "I know how you feel"?

If so you are the first person ever to know how someone else feels.

Going back to how this relates to the Bible and ********* belief, you are going on faith alone based on the experience of reading a book and deciding for whatever reason that this is true. Someone else might read it and need more evidence that this is true, that person may read a different text or other life philosophy and decide that is much more sensible.

There is no way to really know unless you find out and we all are going to find out eventually what is what when our bodies die but we are not coming back to tell, no one ever has.

[Welsh Jon]

Frodo I went through all your sources before. Only 2 of your sources were alive at the time Christ was supposed to be around and they were both living in the wrong part of the world, and both never met Christ. You have not provided a contemporary source.

The Bible is clearly not an unbiased source and so can not be used as evidence of Christ's existence.

[squealpiggy]

My responses are in bold above

Yes I know. They're stock responses you make to every argument and they're still wrong.

[creekrat77]

Was Jesus Really Convinced that He Was the Son of God?

Yes I know. They're stock responses you make to every argument and they're still wrong.

"The psychological profiler is a new weapon in the arsenal of criminal investigators. They understand that behavior reflects personality. These highly trained professionals examine the actions and words of criminals and from these clues construct a psychological and sometimes historical profile of the likely perpetrator.

These same skills can be applied to our question of whether Jesus actually thought He was God. We can learn a great deal about what Jesus thought of Himself, not just from what He said, but what He did and how He did it.

Ben Witherington was educated at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (M. Div.) and the University of Durham in England (Th. D.). He has taught at several universities and seminaries and authored numerous books and articles about the person of Jesus.

Strobel began his interview by stating that Jesus wasn’t very forthcoming about His identity in public, even mysterious. He didn’t come right out and say He was the Son of God or the Messiah. Couldn’t it be that Jesus simply didn’t see Himself that way?

Witherington points out that Jesus needed to operate in the context of His day. To boldly state that He was God would have at first confused and then maddened the ***s of His day. Blasphemy was not treated lightly. Therefore He was very careful, especially at first, of what He said publicly.

There are other clues to Jesus’ self-identity as God. He chose twelve disciples, as God chose the twelve nations of ******. He called John the Baptist the greatest man on earth; yet He went on to do even greater things in His miracles. He told the Pharisees, in contradiction to much of the Old Testament law, that what defiled a man was what came out of his mouth, not what he put in it. “We have to ask, what kind of person thinks he has the authority to set aside the divinely inspired ***ish Scriptures and supplant them with his own teaching.”{2} Even the Romans labeled Him King of the ***s. Either Jesus actually said that or someone thought He did.

Since Jesus’ followers called Him Rabboni or Rabbi, it seems they just thought of Him as a teacher and nothing more. But Witherington reminds us that Jesus actually taught in a radical new way. In Judaism, the authority of two or more witnesses was required for the proclamation of truth. But Jesus frequently said, “Amen I say to you,” or in modern English, “I swear in advance to the truthfulness of what I am about to say.” Jesus attested to the truth of what He was saying on His own authority. This was truly revolutionary.

The evidence that Jesus believed that He stood in the very place of God is absolutely convincing. Maybe He was just crazy. We’ll explore that question next." - Raymond Bohlin

[creekrat77]

Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to be the Son of God?

Yes I know. They're stock responses you make to every argument and they're still wrong.

"There’s considerable doubt in the general public about the usefulness of psychological testimony in the courtroom. It seems that you can find some psychologist to testify to just about anything concerning someone’s state of mind at the time a crime was committed. But while abuses can occur, most people recognize that a trained and experienced psychologist can offer helpful insights into a person’s state of mind while examining his words and actions.

In our investigation of Jesus, if He really believed He was God, can we determine if He was crazy or insane? You can visit just about any mental health facility and be introduced to people who think they are Julius Caesar or Napoleon or even Jesus Christ. Could Jesus have been deluded?

Not so, according to Gary Collins, a psychologist with a doctorate in clinical psychology from Purdue and the author of numerous books and articles in popular magazines and professional journals. Disturbed individuals often show signs of depression or anxiety or explosive anger. But Jesus never displays inappropriate emotions.

He does get angry, but this is clearly appropriate–in the temple, for instance, when He saw the misuse of the temple courtyard and that the moneychangers were taking advantage of the poor. He didn’t just get ticked off because someone was annoying Him. In fact, Jesus seems at His most composed when being challenged. In a beautiful passage, Collins describes Jesus as he would an old friend:

He was loving but didn’t let his compassion immobilize him; he didn’t have a bloated ego, even though he was often surrounded by adoring crowds; he maintained balance despite an often demanding lifestyle; he always knew what he was doing and where he was going; he cared deeply about people, including women and children, who weren’t seen as being important back then; he was able to accept people while not merely winking at their sin; he responded to individuals based on where they were at and what they uniquely needed. All in all I just don’t see signs that Jesus was suffering from any known mental illness.{3}

OK, so maybe Jesus wasn’t mentally disturbed, but maybe He used psychological tricks to perform His miracles. Many illnesses are psychosomatic, so maybe His healings were just by the power of suggestion. Collins readily admits that maybe some of Jesus’ miracles were of this very type, but they were still healed. And some of His miracles just can’t fit this description. Jesus healed leprosy and people blind since birth, both of which would be difficult to pull off as a psychological trick. His miracles over nature also can’t be explained psychologically, and raising Lazarus from the dead after being in the tomb for a few days is not the stuff of trickery. No, Jesus wasn’t crazy." - Raymond Bohlin