Does the Pope visit the MURC?

[Jorden]

Alec, Culture and Religion are most of the time weaved into eachother. For most Cultures their Religion is what depicts their Culture.

For Muslims, we westerners are probably nothing more than alcohol drinking, pig eating heathens. While we look strange upon them for their singing out loud out of minarets, for how they eat, what they drink etc.

I don't think one could erase a culture without erasing it's relgion as well. Or change a religion without changing the Culture (Azteks, Maya, Indians).

And about those schermishes between 'fans' of football-clubs? They are just hooligans, coming along to beat the shit out of 'fans' of the other club, without giving a flying f*ck about the football
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It was nice to see some Turks coming out of the flat here late last night, entering there cars and driving around... What wasn't nice was that they did do so with blasting horns, as it was 1am
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Congratulations Pope John Paul II with your 80th birthday today
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Sorry Jason

Jorden.

[This message has been edited by Jorden (edited 18 May 2000).]

[Alec]

I agree, Jorden. What I was meaning to say is that the human kind has got to find an outlet for something that I haven´t figured out yet through violence and/or domination. Football is, for some, one hell of a reason, as is religion to muslims, for example. The variety of cultures explains the variety of behaviors.
Northern Europe´s level of litteracy (Finland, foe example) is the highest in the world, and those countries don´t have (at least to my knowledge) problems of excessive violence.

[HedsSpaz]

Himself: I think most people would settle for a heaven that was just like life on earth, perhaps the only modification would be no taxes.

I think you're pretty close on that one Himself. I know that I for one would get bored very rapidly if heaven were an idyllic place of eternal relaxation. That would just drive me nuts. Which is why I don't believe that that's what heaven is like. Here's what I think. Assuming the belief that God is an all loving being and his greatest desire is for us to be in heaven with him and be happy, we have to ask ourselves, what would we be happy doing for all of eternity? And where would we be happy being for eterninty? Well, the where shouldn't be to hard, in general earth is a good place(as you've observed), the problem is just that there are lots of not so bright people messing it up for everyone else. Now, obviously God is not going to put up with that in heaven. So, we can assume that everyone in Heaven wants to be there, and they are going to live by God's rules. So the result is that no matter where you are in Heaven, everyone is always trying to be helpful and useful and friendly towards everyone else!

So, how then is it that people are always happy and never bored and always ready to do something to help others. Well, the most obvious answer is that they always have something to occupy them, such as,(heh heh, HELL forbid ), a job! Now think about it for a minute, if you had a job that you truly loved, you would have something to do every day when you woke up, and you would never wake up with that feeling of disgust and not wanting to work. You would also never get bored. And furthermore, there are still weekends(or the equivilant thereof), everyone still wants a day or two to relax on occasion! You can then just go and wander around Heaven as it were, visit other people, go wander the landscapes(which are infinite), or whatever suits you!

Now how does that sound to you? I think it sounds like a pretty good deal.
So, thats basically what I believe Heaven is like. Maybe it doesn't sound quite like Heaven to you, or maybe it's just not quite what you had in mind, but you have to admit that it has merit.

Ian

[HollyBerri]

I think most people would settle for a heaven that was just like life on earth, perhaps the only modification would be no taxes.

As I was told some years ago, this is the Heaven envisioned by the Jehovah's Witnesses, in which you get a perfect body of about 25 years old, and live on a perfect Earth.

Unfortunately, the admittance is limited to 144,000 pre-ordained slots, as I recall, so most of us are SOL.

And:

no matter where you are in Heaven, everyone is always trying to be helpful and useful and friendly towards everyone else!

To paraphrase "Field of Dreams", Ian (what a great movie!!)-- that's not Heaven, that's <u>Holland</u>! Heaven is very similar, but bigger, I think. Also takes fewer forms to get in...

But seriously, though.... would you or someone explain to me what the point of "Heaven" is, really? I have never gotten it.
You come from... somewhere... live for 35 (in the olden days) to (currently) some 80-100 years, and then off you go to "Heaven" (hopefully).

Why?

As a reward for having lived? Well, is living such a trial, then?

As a reward for having lived as a good person? What meaning does it have, when one can do so little in 80 years? Surely many people have lived as good people in the last 2000 years, but the world is very little different (in the fundamentals).

So what is it all supposed to be for, then?

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Holly, T-22

[Gurm]

Actually, the last time a Jehovah's Witness tried to talk to me, he showed me a picture of heaven with Panda Bears (TM), Lions (R), and men harvesting wheat. It was supposed to be "joyous".

- Gurm


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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[merchant2112]

the last time a Jehovah's Witnesses, knocked on my door, i had been drinking, (they haven't come back. it's been 3 years) i seem to remember something about shot guns and satin, and get off my property. but like i said i don't remember too clearly.

[ALBPM]

LOL...Speaking of Jehovah's Witnesses's !!

Holly, how's the goat doing???? If it's starting to eat your furniture send him back.
I have a brand new grill

Paul

[SCompRacer]

Get a head start on marinating the goat by sharing your alcohol with it before you grill it.

[Himself]

<quote>As I was told some years ago, this is the Heaven envisioned by the Jehovah's Witnesses, in which you get a perfect body of about 25 years old, and live on a perfect Earth.</quote>

Sounds just as boring as sitting on clouds getting your ass wet, trying to learn how to play the harp.

A lot of ideas about heaven are about conformity and getting rid of the "bad element", which would tend to give you a very boring place. They even segregate animals to thier own zoos, banish insects altogether, and eliminate all signs of dirt or anything unpleasant to them. Basically the absence of life in the afterlife.

OK, How about reincarnation? Recycling is good and all, but I think this one goes a bit too far. I have no idea WTF a soul is supposed to be, but just going along with the idea for a moment, there have to be newly created souls, otherwise the population wouldn't increase. If each new birth is a new soul where does that leave the old ones? I think this is another idea that passes the buck to achieve validity, you go from the finite amount of humans to the unknown amount of something else to cook the books. You get down to counting ants or dreaming of other worlds and aliens. Imagine being reborn as a virus.

I just think it's pointless to consider problems without information to work with.
All religions assume they know the truth, there is only one way, and they were born with the manual to life in their hands.

However, I do believe the proper way to crack an egg is at the bottom end.

If you have an opinion about what you think the universe is about, gab about it all you want, but don't take your opinion seriously, or form groups to convert others to your opinion, or fight wars over it. Having numbers of people who have the same opinion as you won't force the universe to conform to what you think. Strangely enough, that seems to be a common failing in people, if enough people say something, then it must be true. Is organised religion about success in hype?

The one religion society is crap, there should be as many religions are there are people.

Ok, that's enough preaching today.

[HedsSpaz]

But seriously, though.... would you or someone explain to me what the point of "Heaven" is, really? I have never gotten it. You come from... somewhere... live for 35 (in the olden days) to (currently) some 80-100 years, and then off you go to "Heaven" (hopefully).

Oi Holly, you do ask interesting questions! This could take a bit of work.

Ok, so here goes. First, there are a couple of facts that we have to assume for the sake of this argument.
1. There is a God.
2. God is an all loving being.
3. God's ultimate nature is to love others outside of Himself.
Next, from those assumptions, a fourth can be drawn.
4. If God is all loving, and His nature is to love others, then His purpose in creating the universe was to create beings for Him to bestow His love upon(that would be us).

Now, for God to be able to give us His love, and give us happieness it does require a couple of things on our part. Basically it comes down to something very simple. We have to want Him to love us, and we have to accept His love. Now the question is, how do we show that we want His love?
The two great commandments: "Thall shalt love the Lord thy God with all the heart and all thy strength and all thy soul, ad the second is like unto it, thall shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

So, now we come to the purpose of Heaven and Earth. We are here on earth with basically one purpose, to come into a state of mind in which we love to do what is good(aka, love the Lord and love the neighbor).

Now the purpose of heaven. God's ultimate goal is to create a heaven from the human race. Why? Because His nature is to love other outside of himself, thus He wants us to be happy. We spend our time on earth in order to learn(or not learn as the case may be) to love what is good and true. When we die we go to Heaven if we love what is good and true, and if we don't love what is good and true, well, we wouldn't fit in very well in Heaven, and so we end up with those who, like us, also do not love what is good and true.

This is what Hell is. It's not a place of eternal torture and torment(at least not in the traditional sense), it is a place where people act upon what they love most, which is themselves. As such, they seek to dominate everyone else, they seek to gain wealth, power, reputation, and control over others in every way. Because of this everyone is constantly suspicious of everyone else, no one helps anyone other than themselves(unless they enter an alliance of convenience that is motivated by fear). As you can probably imagine, that wouldn't be a very nice place to be. And before anyone says it, yes, these kinds of things occur on earth as well, but in Hell, all of those people are concentrated in one place. On earth there is at least a balance of good an evil.
Anyway, thats sort of off the topic.

So, Heaven is a place where we those who love to do what is good, can eternally be with the Lord, receive His love, and can love Him, and their fellow angels, and serve a use for their fellow angels.

So, Heaven isn't exactly a reward, it's just sort of the natural(or spiritual rather) result of being a person in this world who loves to do what is good and true.

As for the Jehova's witnesses, well, I think maybe we better not go there. They aren't to far off in that you do return to the prime of your life when you go to heaven, but the 144,000 bit, well, thats the problem with the JW. They are literalists, and not all of the Bible can be taken literaly. The thing to remember is that most of the stories in the Bible have alagorical meanings as well as limited historical truth.

Anyway, I hope that helped you to understand Heaven a little better. Of course I may have just obfuscated things even worse, but that wasn't my intent.

Keep in mind always that these are my beliefs. In all honesty(now how should I put this without sounding hypocritical), I have a certain conviction that what I believe is true. I believe that there is and ultimate truth to the universe, that there is a RIGHT, and a WRONG. However, I do not believe that I have even half of the RIGHT. In fact, I feel that I understand very little of God's truth. I believe that I have found a portion of the truth in the Writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg, but I don't believe that it is anywhere near the only place to find the truth. Every religion in the world has some small peice of the truth, no matter little that piece may be.

Anyway, the point is that I do not want to force anyone to accept the same things that I believe, I do though want to offer what I believe for others to evaluate and make to their own rational decision on the matter.

So, I just wanted to make that absolutely clear cause I don't think I have really done so before.

So, at the very least, this makes a good long ramble on my part and some food for thought for the rest of you.
Have fun!

Ian

[HedsSpaz]

My goodness! When writing a post in this tiny little box you have know idea how long it really is! I had no idea that my rambling was quite that long!
Oh well. Like I said before,
Have fun!

[Jorden]

Me loving Holly, just because she is so good at asking (the right) questions, I'll ask you, Ian:

2. God is an all loving being.

How come this all loving God lets us die at every moment in our lives when we least expect it? Due to train-, car-, boat-, air-, bicycle- or just pedestrian travel.

Or accidents in factories or storages that kill many people in one go. Is this a way of God to tell us he loves us, or is this by accident?

What about nature's flukes, tornadoes, storms, etc. ? We would believe they are due to the God's hands, but does that storm need to take away a child's life, so a person of 86 can live??

Just an example out of 100's... Why would a God look onto it that a church, his house, would be destroyed by a fire? Or worse, by loothing people? Or even more worse, by it becoming another place, where people live together, like in a house, thus desecrating the holy ground of the church?

The latter parts could be because God himself (not you, Himself ), doesn't want a house for him, for worship, as we do.

What is the difference between showing gratiousness to a pagan god and showing graciousness to a statue of the Holy Maria?

Maybe we're all just looking for things we want, but won't find out about for long.
Maybe we're just ... human

And don't humans make up things on the fly?

I'm still not really making clear what I wanted to make clear. Maybe the next time

Jord.

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"Falling in love is the easy part...
Staying in love is much harder!"

[HollyBerri]

God's ultimate goal is to create a heaven from the human race. Why? Because His nature is to love other outside of himself(emphasis mine, as you can see.)

This must be one root of fundamental difference of opinion between us, Ian... I am not "outside of God"; nor are you. How can we be, if God is all (or All) there is?

In fact, I believe that God is ultimately comprised of all of us, together, including... everything... from the cosmic gases that make up stars to the least littlest single-celled organism. I can't see how it logically could be otherwise (but then, I don't see why God couldn't have <u>created</u> evolution-- in 6 days if necessary for everyone's comfort).

Otherwise, there would have to be something other than God (which there isn't, both Bibically and as per faith).

I believe God to be an ... entity, for lack of a better word... which has divided itself into trillions of parts to learn, and to entertain itself (think about it: if God had not subdivided, what would be the 'point' or use of It's existence? Dead boring, to put it mildly.)

I mostly agree with you about the ultimate purpose of human life; as we all learn our lessons over our many lifetimes, wisdom (of all religions) seems to say that we ultimately grow in our ability to love, and find that participating in Love is pretty much the only thing really worth doing. I feel that as we each become able to love "perfectly" (whatever that means, but more on that in a minute), we, as the parts/children of God link together, eventually re-forming the original entity (yes, all right, so we're all Transformers toys. Makes as much sense as anything else, if you ask me )

I also believe that our human understanding is, by it's nature, incapable of truly "understanding" God (similar to the way a child cannot understand its parents until it has become a parent itself-- be that of actual children or of some project that is as dear to one's heart as a child). So I don't worry too much about whether my beliefs are "correct"; I know they cannot be, and I don't see why God would demand that they be (since God should know perfectly well what I am capable of, both personally and as a member of my species), as long as they serve the purpose of helping me--as I am today-- grow in Love and become a more positive force in the Universal Learning Lab.

Not that I could be anything else; everything serves, ultimately, even if it does not do so in the highest possible way. God seems very economical, in my experience .

I could go on, but this post is already way long (think I beat you, Ian! ).

Oh, but I should say, "No, Pauly, I am <u>not</u> sending my goat friend back over there just to be barbecued! What could you be thinking?*sigh*"

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Holly

[HedsSpaz]

I could go on, but this post is already way long (think I beat you, Ian! ).

Thats what you think mortal!! My powers of rambling can NEVER be defeated!!! MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAH......


Oh wait... nevermind.

Anyhoo....

I don't have time right now to write up a proper response to your comments as I have to head home in a few minutes. I don't think I'll have time tonight to do so either. I just wanted to let you know Jord and Holly that I get something suitable written up hopefully sometime tommorow morning.

Also, I think I can probably explain my position a little bit better if I quote a passage from one of Swedenborg's books. I don't remember exactly where it is so it may take me a little time to find it.

Right now however I would like to quickly counter with a question of my own for you or anyone else who is intersted.

Do you believe that humans are free rationaly beings? Thats is, do you believe that we have free will?

Think about that in relation to God. In particular, for the sake of argument, assume for the a moment that God is a being such as I have described Him. What kind of relation would that set up between us and Him concerning free will? ( I don't really expect an answer to this question, mostly I just want to offer it as an important point to consider.)

So, until tommorow.
Ian

[Aurel]

What I question is not the afterlife, but the necessity of our current existance. I mean, why does he make us (our souls maybe?), send us to Earth, give us free will, put all these temptations in our path (if not Him, then the other Him puts them. But God still sends us to confront with those temptaions) and judge us for what path we've taken instead of keeping us with Him from the start ? Some of you might say it's for what Adam and Eve have done, but if God loves us and forgives, why can't he forgive us at this stage ?
I don't know, but it seems to me He has a bit of a sadistic pleasure in doing all this, or there really is a motive (we can achive the state he plans for us only by going through life ?).



[This message has been edited by Aurel (edited 19 May 2000).]