Its Good news .

[sayak83]

Instead of only constrained beings that only avoid evil because they aren't given a chance to do it, or only avoid evil because they get an immediate hit like an electric shock to deter them....

Instead of that, we read that God wants reformed beings that truly want to do what is good, people with a changed heart.

Such people are free, and therefore can more fully love and enjoy others in a more complete, real way.

Not just I-love-what-you-do-for-me, but more: I love you as your unique self, unlike anyone else, and take delight in your being, regardless of what you've done for me.

Actually the ability to love others comes from empathy, a real but weak ability to feel other peoples' pain and happiness. That is what makes it possible for us to have emotional reactions like sharing others joy or feeling others pain. I am simply suggesting a world with a much stronger ability of empathy. Where you feel all of the joy and all of the pain that the others feel from these interactions (good or evil) we have with each other. Once your pain and your joy becomes my pain and my joy completely you will love and care for your neighbor as yourself. It will create a better world with better humans. I do not see any downsides at all.

 

[halbhh]

Actually the ability to love others comes from empathy, a real but weak ability to feel other peoples' pain and happiness. That is what makes it possible for us to have emotional reactions like sharing others joy or feeling others pain. I am simply suggesting a world with a much stronger ability of empathy. Where you feel all of the joy and all of the pain that the others feel from these interactions (good or evil) we have with each other. Once your pain and your joy becomes my pain and my joy completely you will love and care for your neighbor as yourself. It will create a better world with better humans. I do not see any downsides at all.

I like that.

To feel empathy, it is generally necessary to have had a somewhat similar experience/feeling as the person is going through.

If a person has an experience and reaction you've never had, you are puzzled or possibly interested in their reaction, like you'd be if you saw a strange new bug.

But, in contrast, if a person is having a reaction you yourself have had, you can "empathize" with their reaction -- you know what that feeling is, and identify with feeling it in response to the situation.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

Can a wicked person kill a soul? If he can't explain how killing his soul can be a just punishment?
Does a person cease to have free will after 1000 years? If not, explain how God can know he will not mend his ways in the infinite future time that he would have had if his soul was not destroyed?

Most of 'Christendom' (so-called Christian but mostly in name only) teach an immortal or death-proof soul.
The Bible's soul is the person himself. After God breathed the 'breath of life' into life-less Adam then Adam came to life. All of Adam became a living soul according to Genesis 2:7
The Bible does Not teach that Adam ' had ' a soul, nor that Adam ' possessed ' a soul, but Adam was a soul.
At death mortal sinner Adam became a dead soul or person, a life-less soul or person - Genesis 3:19
According to Ezekiel 18:4,20 'the soul that sins dies ', so the teaching of a death-proof soul is false.
Death is what kills the soul or person. - Romans 6:23; Romans 6:7
Since we can't resurrect oneself or another we need someone who can resurrect us.
According to the Bible it is Jesus who can and will resurrect the sleeping dead.- Revelation 1:18

A person will always have free will, we are all free to act responsibly toward God.
This includes angels: Faithful angels have everlasting life, the un-faithful angels are destroyed.
By the end of the thousand years humanity on Earth will have reached human perfection (No leanings towards wrongdoing)
So, by that time those faithful will have proved themselves upright and faithful, so they won't revert back to wrongdoing.

 

[joelr]

Yes many people selling books . Its lucrative .

It might be lucrative for some people. In this case it's peer reviewed scholarship that demonstrates Acts is a work of fiction.

 

[joelr]

Sorry not to read fully (I usually do, tho this was quite a long post), but The World Is Full of Competing Theories About the Scriptures, not just a few, but dozens.

And of course, naturally, many are quite clever seeming in and of themselves, even if they cannot generally (most all) be correct, being diverse competing ideas that are unalike and have different takes.

Hearing yet another theory stopped being of interest suddenly at a moment in time.

Why?

Here's why --> because I began testing the propositions in Mark.

Which is far more interesting and rewarding, I found.

It's disingenuous right off attempting to frame the consensus in the historicity field as just one of many competing ideas. I am sure you would not do this with any other field.
All you are saying here is that you are not interested in evidence or what is actually true.

We already have been here and you could not demonstrate that these "tests" were anything other than confirmation bias.
We can do it again. Please explain how one tests Mark and how you rule out confirmation bias when evaluating the results.
Give me your one best example.

 

[joelr]

I stopped reading when you used an obvious strawman.

God kills innocents and doesn't bring them back to life -- that's a strawman.

Why even bother? No one is fooled.

One has to admit the insane apologetics people use with the Deuteronic codes shouldn't be taken seriously by critical minded people.
The Canaanites, Hittites and 4 other cities, the idea that they were completely "evil" and should be wiped out is bad enough. But then modern people making excuses for an immoral book is terrible.
As if an actual God couldn't just show up, do some magic and convince them they should follow him. That didn't happen because each society had their own myths, also fiction. The archeological evidence does not reveal child sacrifice in Canaanite religion but does show they were very much like the original Israelites. Early Israelite myths even had Ashera (a Canaanite goddess) as the consort of Yahweh.

There is archeology on Canaanite society, quite a bit. They were not "evil". It's believed now that the Israelites emerged from Canaanite culture. Possibly a group who disliked the ruling party which would explain their hatred for them.

 

[sayak83]

Most of 'Christendom' (so-called Christian but mostly in name only) teach an immortal or death-proof soul.
The Bible's soul is the person himself. After God breathed the 'breath of life' into life-less Adam then Adam came to life. All of Adam became a living soul according to Genesis 2:7
The Bible does Not teach that Adam ' had ' a soul, nor that Adam ' possessed ' a soul, but Adam was a soul.
At death mortal sinner Adam became a dead soul or person, a life-less soul or person - Genesis 3:19
According to Ezekiel 18:4,20 'the soul that sins dies ', so the teaching of a death-proof soul is false.
Death is what kills the soul or person. - Romans 6:23; Romans 6:7
Since we can't resurrect oneself or another we need someone who can resurrect us.
According to the Bible it is Jesus who can and will resurrect the sleeping dead.- Revelation 1:18

A person will always have free will, we are all free to act responsibly toward God.
This includes angels: Faithful angels have everlasting life, the un-faithful angels are destroyed.
By the end of the thousand years humanity on Earth will have reached human perfection (No leanings towards wrongdoing)
So, by that time those faithful will have proved themselves upright and faithful, so they won't revert back to wrongdoing.

You have not answered the basic question: How does God know, given our free will, that a person will not repent, say a million years after resurrection?
I am pretty sure that it is God who gives the second death after 1000 years. The post resurrection human will be immortal unless God gives him death. Do you dispute this?

 

[sayak83]

I like that.

To feel empathy, it is generally necessary to have had a somewhat similar experience/feeling as the person is going through.

If a person has an experience and reaction you've never had, you are puzzled or possibly interested in their reaction, like you'd be if you saw a strange new bug.

But, in contrast, if a person is having a reaction you yourself have had, you can "empathize" with their reaction -- you know what that feeling is, and identify with feeling it in response to the situation.

It's good that you agree. But then of the scenario I outlined?

 

[John1.12]

It might be lucrative for some people. In this case it's peer reviewed scholarship that demonstrates Acts is a work of fiction.

There's a lot of strange ideas out there.

 

[joelr]

There's a lot of strange ideas out there.

There are. Luckily with scholarship there is a strict process of review by other PhDs who have spent their lives understanding the relevant field. So consensus is our best guess at what is true.

The only strange idea in this is that people would still believe a work which has been clearly demonstrated to be fiction.

Pervo is the leading scholar on Acts and is recognized as such. So your backhanded attempts to discredit scholarship show you simply do not care about what is actually true. Just what you want to be true.
Pervo walks through endless evidence that Acts is fiction and was likely intended to be. It was not a historical book it was trying to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Pauline gentile Christianity.

These are not "ideas". This analysis can be studied by anyone, the evidence can be seen by anyone.

"Pervo's thesis is simple: Acts is beautiful literature, but it is not a historically accurate or reliable book. In the conclusion of the book he states, "...Acts is not a reliable history of Christian origins. One important point is that it does not attempt to be. Another is that the literary techniques are too artistic. The use of cycles, parallels, repetitions, melodramatic characterization, stereotyped scene construction, inventing or presenting stories that replicate biblical narrative, unbalanced narrative with evident symbolic import, and a balanced structure. History cannot be so symmetrical" (Pervo, p. 151)."

Acts is replete with historical implausibility, an almost non-existent chronology, and a quite improbable characterization of its leading personality, none of which elements serve history and all of which serve the purposes of the author"

 

[John1.12]

There are. Luckily with scholarship there is a strict process of review by other PhDs who have spent their lives understanding the relevant field. So consensus is our best guess at what is true.

The only strange idea in this is that people would still believe a work which has been clearly demonstrated to be fiction.

Pervo is the leading scholar on Acts and is recognized as such. So your backhanded attempts to discredit scholarship show you simply do not care about what is actually true. Just what you want to be true.
Pervo walks through endless evidence that Acts is fiction and was likely intended to be. It was not a historical book it was trying to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Pauline gentile Christianity.

These are not "ideas". This analysis can be studied by anyone, the evidence can be seen by anyone.

"Pervo's thesis is simple: Acts is beautiful literature, but it is not a historically accurate or reliable book. In the conclusion of the book he states, "...Acts is not a reliable history of Christian origins. One important point is that it does not attempt to be. Another is that the literary techniques are too artistic. The use of cycles, parallels, repetitions, melodramatic characterization, stereotyped scene construction, inventing or presenting stories that replicate biblical narrative, unbalanced narrative with evident symbolic import, and a balanced structure. History cannot be so symmetrical" (Pervo, p. 151)."

Acts is replete with historical implausibility, an almost non-existent chronology, and a quite improbable characterization of its leading personality, none of which elements serve history and all of which serve the purposes of the author"

I meant from scholars.

 

[halbhh]

It's good that you agree. But then of the scenario I outlined?

Post #360 above was my explanation of the missing thing in the premises of that scenario. Did post #360 make sense then, if you read or reread, as a complete and full answer? If not, see this expansion:

To expand on post #360, God doesn't want beings He has to always prevent from doing evil, forever, so that as soon as the constraints were relaxed (to be the same freedom as all His already-there heavenly host have..., so that unreformed/unchanged human souls then would just start doing evil immediately as soon as they had much freedom.

He doesn't want such beings in His paradise.

He evidently (by the text of scripture) clearly wants beings that freely (of their own choice) want to love all others.

 

[halbhh]

It's disingenuous right off attempting to frame the consensus in the historicity field as just one of many competing ideas.

Try to learn more before you make assertions. Don't just assert things out of guessing or hoping they are true, mere ignor-ance -- that is, ignor-ing competing ideas, so that you don't even know they exist.

 

[halbhh]

One has to admit the insane apologetics people use with the Deuteronic codes shouldn't be taken seriously by critical minded people.
The Canaanites, Hittites and 4 other cities, the idea that they were completely "evil" and should be wiped out is bad enough. But then modern people making excuses for an immoral book is terrible.
As if an actual God couldn't just show up, do some magic and convince them they should follow him. That didn't happen because each society had their own myths, also fiction. The archeological evidence does not reveal child sacrifice in Canaanite religion but does show they were very much like the original Israelites. Early Israelite myths even had Ashera (a Canaanite goddess) as the consort of Yahweh.

There is archeology on Canaanite society, quite a bit. They were not "evil". It's believed now that the Israelites emerged from Canaanite culture. Possibly a group who disliked the ruling party which would explain their hatred for them.

You've got quite a mythology of your own it seems to me: a whole regional culture of human beings magically free of evil -- wrongdoing.

Just wow.

Ok, that's your baby, and I don't think you are going to even be interested to find out differently.

 

[sayak83]

Post #360 above was my explanation of the missing thing in the premises of that scenario. Did post #360 make sense then, if you read or reread, as a complete and full answer? If not, see this expansion:

To expand on post #360, God doesn't want beings He has to always prevent from doing evil, forever, so that as soon as the constraints were relaxed (to be the same freedom as all His already-there heavenly host have..., so that unreformed/unchanged human souls then would just start doing evil immediately as soon as they had much freedom.

He doesn't want such beings in His paradise.

He evidently (by the text of scripture) clearly wants beings that freely (of their own choice) want to love all others.

I will tell you what is wrong with the idea. A crime, if allowed to happen, may preserve the free will of the perpetrator, but destroys the free will of the victim. What of the will of the victim of rape or murder or violence of leading a life where they are not subjected to such horrible suffering and violation? Their desires and freedoms are trampled by such crimes. Thus, in a crime, God must choose between preserving the freedom of the violator vs both preserving the freedom of the victim and preventing the suffering caused by such crimes. It's clear then, that a moral God will always choose to go for the, latter option.

 

[halbhh]

I will tell you what is wrong with the idea. A crime, if allowed to happen, may preserve the free will of the perpetrator, but destroys the free will of the victim. What of the will of the victim of rape or murder or violence of leading a life where they are not subjected to such horrible suffering and violation? Their desires and freedoms are trampled by such crimes. Thus, in a crime, God must choose between preserving the freedom of the violator vs both preserving the freedom of the victim and preventing the suffering caused by such crimes. It's clear then, that a moral God will always choose to go for the, latter option.

I liked your useful post.

Yes, there's the rub: God must choose between preserving the freedom of the violator vs both preserving the freedom of the victim and preventing the suffering caused by such crimes.

Indeed so! If you read in the Old Testament with good listening, through the (short) books fully, to try to get the text as it was meant...

...then you will see God doing just that!

Balancing the scales perfectly, rescuing the oppressed -- over and over! -- both here and now, and later.

Later is important. Forever is awaiting us. A much longer time... Eternal life, where He has chosen this:

Revelation 21:4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,' and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away."

Isaiah 65:17 For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.

 

[sayak83]

I liked your useful post.

Yes, there's the rub: God must choose between preserving the freedom of the violator vs both preserving the freedom of the victim and preventing the suffering caused by such crimes.

Indeed so! If you read in the Old Testament with good listening, through the (short) books fully, to try to get the text as it was meant...

...then you will see God doing just that!

Balancing the scales perfectly, rescuing the oppressed -- over and over! -- both here and now, and later.

Later is important. Forever is awaiting us. A much longer time... Eternal life, where He has chosen this:

Revelation 21:4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,' and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away."

Isaiah 65:17 For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.

God does not prevent any crimes.
He has often destroyed entire cities and killed inmocents and new borns in OT.
So I do not see it.

 

[halbhh]

God does not prevent any crimes.
He has often destroyed entire cities and killed inmocents and new borns in OT.
So I do not see it.

By definition of "God", existing, when these temporary mortal bodies die we continue (because God exists).

So, that's not a true, real death.

God is the force that undoes death.

Ergo, the idea God kills in an unfair way when 100% of all of us, these initial mortal bodies, perish, isn't a logically consistent idea.

It'd be like saying the sun doesn't radiate photons.

God transports. The guilty to prison (temporary), but the innocent and forgiven and redeemed to paradise.

 

[sayak83]

By definition of "God", existing, when these temporary mortal bodies die we continue (because God exists).

So, that's not a true, real death.

God is the force that undoes death.

Ergo, the idea God kills in an unfair way when 100% of all of us, these initial mortal bodies, perish, isn't a logically consistent idea.

It'd be like saying the sun doesn't radiate photons.

God transports. The guilty to prison (temporary), but the innocent and forgiven and redeemed to paradise.

This is going round in circles.
In every religion, human beings are not destroyed at death but have an afterlife or resurrection, as the case may be. This does not mean that premature death, injury, suffering undergone in this life is somehow insignificant or a violation of the human being who goes through it. If that were the case, why would we care with a justice system on earth at all. Premature death caused by a human or a God is a violation, and remains a crime if the person has not committed a crime that deserves capital punishment ( like a premeditated murder, genocide etc.). Just because God can resurrect the person back in an afterlufe does not make premature death caused by God in this life justified. Is this so hard to understand?

 

[halbhh]

This is going round in circles.
In every religion, human beings are not destroyed at death but have an afterlife or resurrection, as the case may be. This does not mean that premature death, injury, suffering undergone in this life is somehow insignificant or a violation of the human being who goes through it. If that were the case, why would we care with a justice system on earth at all. Premature death caused by a human or a God is a violation, and remains a crime if the person has not committed a crime that deserves capital punishment ( like a premeditated murder, genocide etc.). Just because God can resurrect the person back in an afterlufe does not make premature death caused by God in this life justified. Is this so hard to understand?

There isn't such a thing as a 'premature' death of this temporary mortal body that makes logical sense, I think.

Isn't 50 years premature compared to 500? (Yes, it's far short of 500.)

Sincerely, and this is a real number that is meaningful to me personally, if I only lived 80 years, and not 500, it would seem very premature to me... -if- that was all there was.