Everything or nothing?

Originally posted by twhitehead
I did mention that possibility, and did say that it was the most reasonable explanation I had heard to date. I am not questioning Gods ability. I would however like more clarification on a number of details:
1. What exactly would he be recreating? A new brain exactly as mine was at some point in time, or some other mechanism that simulates a brain?
2. W ...[text shortened]... If I could promise to resurrect your five year old self after your death, would you care?

Thank you for your honesty, and I think what you are stating is very interesting. I used to have similar questions before I was born again.
In fact for many years after, I still did not understand until I started learning about renewed mind.
Let explain what I mean, and perhaps this will answer some of your curiosity.

All my life all I knew was to look after my own interest. I lived by my senses like every one else. I knew what I liked to eat, see, touch, etc.
Then when I started learning about the bible, I read that the flesh (the 5 senses) were contrary to the spirit.
This was very confusing to me and has taken a long time to understand.
What this entails is simple but very difficult. The command is to put on the mind of Christ.
This means believing who God says you are in Christ, (the new birth) and the old you will will decrease more and more. It is a life long process.
So, in answer to the topic which you were speaking, a believer will eventually end up discarding the old self and put on the new self completely when Christ returns. But we can start now, because there are great rewards.
Think of it this way, I like rock music, Santana, Allman Bros., etc...
I used to love smoking cigarettes, pot and the like...I put this off many years ago. Not by denying myself, but my interest is changing.
I enjoy peace, health, love, kindness, gentleness, relationship with Jesus, being reminded of how much he cares for me and loves me.
Much has changed in my life for much better than what I had before, and I thought I was happy then.
But now I see limitless possibilities, life is an adventure! Sometimes I can't wait to see what God has planned for tomorrow.
So, in my opinion, and the bible is pretty clear, all your questions are irrelevant. Every one will think like Jesus but have their own personality because every one has a different heart, they will have great joy, the bible says in Ephesians it will take God all eternity to show his love and kindness to us.

1 Cor 2:9
But as it is written:

"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him."
NKJV

We live in a broken world, corrupted by sin. But we can have victory in this world now because Jesus is Lord and has made many promises to those who believe. The bible says he will meet our every need now.
As to your other question about the 5 year old, I will have to guess. I do know that in the 1000 year Kingdom there will be children because in the Old Testament it speaks of children reaching in to a den of snakes and will not be harmed. But they will not stay children, they will grow into adulthood without death. Hope this helps...

Originally posted by checkbaiter
So, in my opinion, and the bible is pretty clear, all your questions are irrelevant.

They may be irrelevant to your sermon, but they are nonetheless relevant to the thread, and very interesting questions. Why do you not wish to discuss them?

As to your other question about the 5 year old, I will have to guess. I do know that in the 1000 year Kingdom there will be children because in the Old Testament it speaks of children reaching in to a den of snakes and will not be harmed. But they will not stay children, they will grow into adulthood without death. Hope this helps...
No, I don't think you even read my question. You certainly didn't even attempt to answer it.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I have considered the possibility, but it just doesn't match with reality. I do wish life after death were possible, but then I also wish fairies existed.
If you understand how the brain works, there is simply no way that consciousness could exist without the brain.
The best attempt at side stepping this I have heard from theists is the claim that God w ...[text shortened]... you then study some brain science, you will see that those problems are simply insurmountable.

I was thinking about exactly the same example with the teleportation machine. The universe therefore is brutal in it's efficiency of purpose, and that purpose as far as earth based life is concerned is to reproduce, but only within the confines of the biological and temporal. Evolution has not yet "discovered" a permutation whereby the consciousness is preserved from one generation to another and therefore it remains a generation and not a regeneration.

The hopelessness of our situation occurs to me, it confronts my sensibilities and demands my attention and curiosity.

Originally posted by Velns
I was thinking about exactly the same example with the teleportation machine. The universe therefore is brutal in it's efficiency of purpose, and that purpose as far as earth based life is concerned is to reproduce, but only within the confines of the biological and temporal. Evolution has not yet "discovered" a permutation whereby the consciousness is preser ...[text shortened]... situation occurs to me, it confronts my sensibilities and demands my attention and curiosity.

It seems you are an existentialist.

"Evolution has not yet "discovered" a permutation whereby the consciousness is preserved from one generation to another..."


And yet, if consciousness exists at all, consciousness is preserved, it is just that currently the individual continuity of consciousness (identity) that is not preserved.

So it is not now of evolutionary value. Perhaps someday. But why? It seems like a step back.

Originally posted by JS357
It seems you are an existentialist.

"Evolution has not yet "discovered" a permutation whereby the consciousness is preserved from one generation to another..."


And yet, if consciousness exists at all, consciousness is preserved, it is just that currently the individual continuity of consciousness (identity) that is not preserved.

So it is not now of evolutionary value. Perhaps someday. But why? It seems like a step back.

What is more important, our existence or our consciousness of it?

Originally posted by Velns
I'm interested in people's thoughts on the possibilities or not of what happens after death. Everything or nothing?

If you are an atheist does that mean you cannot accept that there is some sort of existence, raw energy, cognitive presence or otherwise, after death?

Theists here seem resolute, the 'hard' atheists also, but is there a middle ground between everything and nothing?

Thoughts...

Death is an illusion.

The living principle within this body which animates the body to life is the spiritual soul.

In the moment just after death the first thing you realize is that your not dead.

You are conscious and aware even though you just got hit by a train.

The thing is you did not get hit by a train at all, but instead your material body was hit by the trian.

YOU are really the living principle within the body THE SOUL and the soul is eternal and indestructible.

You have been wandering around this cosmos for thousands or maybe millions of years trying to exert your personal power of the material energy because you are in illusion and deluded to what your true identity is in truth.

Your true identity is that you are an eternal spiritual-Being full of bliss and knowledge and beauty and strength and perfection and you have voluntarily accepted to come to this material creation to be independent from God.

This is the material world and that means you have to exist in a body made of atoms.

So this is why the material world is such a bummer, because your body made of atoms will one day disintegrate back to where it came ( the earth).

After death your soul is given another body and you will live another life of suffering and disappointment and then the illusion of death shall come again.

You may stop this almost eternal cycle of [birth and disease and old age and death] by embracing true spirituality which allows you to re-kindle your forgotten love for God and then you will be able to return to your real home in the spiritual sky where you will enjoy eternal blissful relationship with the Lord and an infinite number of friends and family and associates.

So remember there is no such thing as death..................but only a change of body.

And the material body that you get is subject to the good or bad karma you have incurred in your past lives.

Originally posted by checkbaiter
Thank you for your honesty, and I think what you are stating is very interesting. I used to have similar questions before I was born again.
In fact for many years after, I still did not understand until I started learning about renewed mind.
Let explain what I mean, and perhaps this will answer some of your curiosity.

All my life all I knew was to l ...[text shortened]... they will not stay children, they will grow into adulthood without death. Hope this helps...

You enjoy peace and love and gentleness and kindness / but you condone your Christian Corporate buddies to drag millions of animals into the slaughter houses and kill them.................after which you eat the flesh of slaughtered beasts.

Don't you thing something is wrong with this...........in the light of the commandment "" Thou Shalt Not Kill"

Christianity is presenting falsity and error to the people because the doctrine of Christianity is founded in speculation and fabrication from poets and writers who where intoxicators and womanizers and meat eaters and who only had their ignorant mundane senses to guide them in their speculations / and thus we have a 6000 year old cosmos.

Examine your religion closely and reject error and falsity.

Originally posted by Velns
What is more important, our existence or our consciousness of it?

Our existence is eternal and our mundane material consciousness is not.

Therefore embrace true relgion and raise the consciousness to the transcendental platform so you may enjoy liberation from ignorance.

Then your consciousness will also be eternal along with you existence in the spiritual world [your true home].

Originally posted by twhitehead
Not all theists think there is life after death.
I am an atheist, but I believe there is no life after death on scientific grounds, not because I am an atheist. My understanding of the brain and how consciousness works simply rules out any such thing.

How on earth can you use scientific evaluation to support your belief that life doesn't continue after death.

What science experiment did you conduct to support your findings.

My dear sir I think there is a dash of speculation going on here......and no scientific proof what so -ever.

Originally posted by Dasa
How on earth can you use scientific evaluation to support your belief that life doesn't continue after death.

What science experiment did you conduct to support your findings.

My dear sir I think there is a dash of speculation going on here......and no scientific proof what so -ever.

I believe he is referring to the physical life of the body. Obviously, as an atheists, he has no knowledge or belief in the soul of mankind as we do.

The Instructor

Originally posted by checkbaiter
If God could create billions of stars and name them each, if he has created every part of the human body including the brain, then why should he not be able to recreate an exact duplicate with duplicate thoughts, etc.?
He said in the old testament he can restore Israel out of dead men's bones.
As far as creation and restoration, nothing is impossible ...[text shortened]... e kinds of questions...
Is it to gloat over us not having all the answers? What is your point?

The thing is, why would a god with infinite power WANT to have the thoughts recorded of a near infinite amount of beings. You have recordings like, If I kill her I can collect the insurance money. or If I build that cathedral just right, I can bilk them out of 20 million. or I need to save that little girl's life, so I can get into heaven. Or no thought, just someone actually saving someone's life.

So a near infinite amount of such thoughts floating around the cosmos.

Just WHAT would a god so far above such things want that crap? I didn't even go into the what would probably be 99% of all thoughts, about sex.

Just exactly what good would thoughts of sex be to a spirit floating around in the void?

It would be more like quadrillions of weeds in a garden where there are occasional thoughts by an Archimedes or Einstein or Mozart drowned out by billions of trillions of worthless thoughts about where I am going to get laid tonight or I have to buy groceries.

The whole thing just falls apart under its own weight of BS. It is so preposterous and to not be worth discussing.

Religious folk who make up these kind of tales should follow through with their thoughts and see where it actually leads. Mainly to BS. So why bother?

The answer to that is, they want to build a theological political structure in such a way as to have a huge power base.

That is the long and short of it. Nothing more.

Originally posted by sonhouse
The thing is, why would a god with infinite power WANT to have the thoughts recorded of a near infinite amount of beings. You have recordings like, If I kill her I can collect the insurance money. or If I build that cathedral just right, I can bilk them out of 20 million. or I need to save that little girl's life, so I can get into heaven. Or no thought, ...[text shortened]... such a way as to have a huge power base.

That is the long and short of it. Nothing more.

The goal of Satan and atheists is to turn mankind away from God for their own selfish ends. That is why they object to freedom of science instruction in the schools. They want the children to be taught their propaganda to turn them against believing in a creator God. That way, they gain power and control of the thoughts of mankind.

The Instructor

Originally posted by checkbaiter
Thank you for your honesty, and I think what you are stating is very interesting. I used to have similar questions before I was born again.
In fact for many years after, I still did not understand until I started learning about renewed mind.
Let explain what I mean, and perhaps this will answer some of your curiosity.

All my life all I knew was to l ...[text shortened]... they will not stay children, they will grow into adulthood without death. Hope this helps...

Thank you for this post. 🙂

Originally posted by Velns
What is more important, our existence or our consciousness of it?

In what sense is either one important?

Originally posted by Velns
I'm interested in people's thoughts on the possibilities or not of what happens after death. Everything or nothing?

If you are an atheist does that mean you cannot accept that there is some sort of existence, raw energy, cognitive presence or otherwise, after death?

Theists here seem resolute, the 'hard' atheists also, but is there a middle ground between everything and nothing?

Thoughts...

Here is the Bibles words on death....

"The dead are shown to be “conscious of nothing at all” and the death state to be one of complete inactivity. (Ec 9:5, 10; Ps 146:4) Those dying are described as going into “the dust of death” (Ps 22:15), becoming “impotent in death.” (Pr 2:18; Isa 26:14) In death there is no mention of God or any praising of him. (Ps 6:5; Isa 38:18, 19) In both the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, death is likened to sleep, a fitting comparison not only because of the unconscious condition of the dead but also because of the hope of an awakening through the resurrection. (Ps 13:3; Joh 11:11-14) The resurrected Jesus is spoken of as “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death.”—1Co 15:20, 21"