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The Forum > Article Comments > What happened to getting to heaven? > Comments

What happened to getting to heaven? : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 26/2/2013

John Locke, that doyen of empiricism, stated that: 'Our first and chiefest interest is how we may get to heaven.'

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Interesting approach, Peter: "Our church has become so obscure and unpopular that you've probably never heard of it, so maybe we have the answers you are looking for and you don't know it." But I don't see it working. Most of the people who have abandoned religion in the West know exactly why, and the minor differences between one cult and another -- including the careful way you sweep all the reasons for believing under an official carpet -- aren't enough to change the conclusion that the whole lot is nonsense.

"...there are the living dead ones, those who have died in order to live and there are the dead living ones."

Is your friend Donald Rumsfeld? http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/donaldrums148142.html
Posted by Jon J, Tuesday, 26 February 2013 6:19:33 AM
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I would reverse the position espoused by Locke to read 'our first and chiefest interest is how to persuade the credulous and gullible that there is no such place as heaven'. Why? Because in so doing we set them on the road to freedom.
Posted by GYM-FISH, Tuesday, 26 February 2013 10:08:01 AM
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As usual what Sells has written in this essay is complete nonsense. Just an extension of the song I used to sing in Sunday school about the mommy-daddy good luck "creator"-God
"Yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus Loves me, yes Jesus loves me cos the Bible tells me so - little ones to him belong, because they are weak, and he is strong - yes Jesus loves me"
Or the presumably adult hymn "What a friend we have in Jesus - all our sins and griefs to bear"
Such a message does not come anywhere near to establishing a truly adult way of living.

Please find an Illuminated Understanding of death, and therefore by extension every aspect of life via these references.
http://www.adidam.org/death_and_dying/index.html
http://www.aboutadidam.org/dying_death_and_beyond/index.html

Some paragraphs from an essay Death Is the Way To Life.

The Real Man or woman learns to live by becoming willing and able to die.
Such a one is able to confront the difficult barriers and frustrations of this world and, yet, remain capable of ecstasy.

Therefore the primary intitiation that leads to human maturity is the confrontation with mortal fear.
Only when the ultimate frustration that is death has been fully considered and felt and understood as a Process can the individual live without self-protective and self-destructive fears.
Only in intuitive freedom from the threat and fear of death is the (apparent) individual capable of constant Love of the Divine Being, and also capable of transcending the frustrating and self-binding effects of daily experience.
Only in freedom from mortal recoil is the (apparent) individual capable of ecstasy under all conditions.

Therefore, be alive - but learn right life by first dealing with your death.
Become aware that you do not live, but that you are Lived by the Divine Person.
Become willing to die in any moment, and maintain no inward armor against it.
Die in every moment - by not holding on to your life,
Posted by Daffy Duck, Tuesday, 26 February 2013 2:27:33 PM
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'(Mat 25:41) Then He also shall say to those on the left hand, Depart from Me, cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.

I don't think Jesus made up liitle stories to frighten people. I really don't know what bible Peter reads or what he is smoking. Either Jesus was lying and you discount all He said or you show a little intelligence and embrace the One who never lied
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 26 February 2013 3:50:20 PM
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Such arrogance, Mr Sellick.

>>..."the buffered self"... is a construction of the self that sees the world only as nature. It is buffered because it is closed to "the things unseen". These are not the spooks and demons of superstition but the things that are inherently of the human condition, especially love and beauty. To the buffered self the world is flat and dull. There is no room for art because it is the function of art to illuminate the beauty of the subject, to reveal the unseen.<<

You appear to be suggesting that people who see the world as it is - in nature, using your term - are unable to appreciate love, or beauty, or art.

If I have not misrepresented you, then I am afraid you are guilty of the most pathetically misguided of all religious accusations against the non-religious.

But, in your defence, you are clearly terminally confused about the whole god question yourself.

>>For is not secularism the highest fantasy?<<

Errrm, on the evidence you have presented here alone, I would suggest that you are yourself in the grip of a far more insidious and destructive fantasy. That in your personal religion, the...

>>...dying referred to here is the dying that takes place in baptism, the immersion in the waters of death and the rising to new life in Christ.<<

Ask a thousand people to explain "Those who believe in me, though they die, yet will live", only one, whatever their spiritual leanings, might conceivably give this answer

To hold this quaintly unique view is, I would suggest, just another step in your journey away from anything that your fellow citizens would equate to religious belief.

I look forward to the article in which you finally arrive at this conclusion yourself.

But wait. How would you then earn a crust?
Posted by Pericles, Tuesday, 26 February 2013 4:17:20 PM
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"Then He also shall say to those on the left hand, Depart from Me, cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels - Mat 25:41.

"... Either Jesus was lying and you discount all He said or you show a little intelligence and embrace the One who never lied."

Posted by runner, Tuesday, 26 February 3:50pm

Or, someone else wrote something alleging a Jesus character said it.

ie. the bible stories are embellished stories.
Posted by McReal, Wednesday, 27 February 2013 5:23:54 AM
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Typical Sells arrogance. As a person of faith he can have absolutely no understanding of the life of those - like me - who he refers to as having a 'buffered self'. My world is not flat and dull - it is full of wonder and delight engendered by both the natural and made world, including art. My mind is not closed to 'things unseen', just to religious gobbledegook and the sense of superiority it engenders people like Sells. In fact, as someone who knows that when I die, that's it, I have far more invested in making the most of my finite existence
Posted by Candide, Wednesday, 27 February 2013 9:41:09 AM
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It is with thorough delight that I read this article, deep and subtle - How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things!

The key point obviously is:

"The waters are muddied by our tendency to convert what is essentially a theological argument into one of natural science"

I wonder how many readers, including the Christians among us, are in a position to understand this.

While Peter Sellick is a Christian and I am not, this article is not limited to Christianity. Jesus was probably one, but not the only one, who by his personal example was able to encourage others to die to the world, to abandon one's attachment to nature, thereby attaining eternal life.

It is not a mental idea, such as "Jesus is my personal saviour" which brings salvation, real life and freedom, but the actuality of personally following Jesus' (or anyone else's) example and renouncing the false life, that which is engrossed with one's body and mind.

God be with you, Peter.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Wednesday, 27 February 2013 4:00:55 PM
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McReal

'Or, someone else wrote something alleging a Jesus character said it. '

Yes nice convenient way not to be able to face up to the truths Jesus taught including heaven and hell.
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 27 February 2013 6:00:11 PM
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Candide, don't be concerned by Peter's ongoing mental derangement. Get about living your authentic life, one based upon reality, and making every day count.

Reality eventually catches up with those who base their lives upon wishful thinking and fairy tales.

It happens when when they find out they can't get their money back or their wasted lives.
Posted by David G, Wednesday, 27 February 2013 7:53:43 PM
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runner,
the truths include

1. heaven & hell are merely unproven propositions

2. there is no primary evidence for Jesus - all the stories are later, and probably later than 100AD/CE. The writings attributed to 'Paul' mention an established church so are likely written after the synoptic gospels, and by more than one author.

3. There are no artifacts or archaeological findings that support the stories - none.

4. There is only information about the early followers of the early stories, and various sects following various beliefs.

5. We know the stories were changing: the changes from the early bibles - Codex Sinaiticus & Codex Vaticanus - are there to see.
.
Posted by McReal, Thursday, 28 February 2013 9:26:45 AM
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McReal

The most common view among biblical scholars is that Paul’s letters were written over many years but before the gospels, perhaps between 50-70CE. If Paul’s later writing was about 30 years after the likely date of Jesus’ death, the existence of communities of Jesus followers is highly likely. Caligula’s persecution of Christians in 65CE demonstrates that the movement had reached Rome by then.

Some of the “Pauline” material was written and/or edited by later authors, but much was written by Paul. The pastoral epistles are relatively late. The Gospels were probably written between 70-100, with John commonly believed to be the latest and Mark the earliest. Some scholars propose that Mark might have been written in the 60s, before the fall of Jerusalem, but most think its “little apocalypse” was written shortly after, with the siege of Jerusalem in mind.

There are discrepancies between early manuscripts, but these are mostly minor textual variations, not substantial:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_codices_Sinaiticus_and_Vaticanus

What kind of artefacts could there be that support the biblical stories? There is certainly supporting evidence for the broad historical context – Pilate, the emperors, events in Palestine mentioned by the gospels. In the unlikely event that the relics traded in the early or medieval church were authentic (e.g. fragments of the “true cross”) their authenticity is unprovable and they would (rightly) not be accepted as scientific evidence.

Heaven is likewise not a “provable” proposition. I agree with Peter that the idea of personal survival beyond death is unlikely given our current knowledge about the human identity.

The most important point is that Jesus’ message was not primarily about how to get a ticket to the afterlife, but about how we live this life.
Posted by Rhian, Thursday, 28 February 2013 12:17:37 PM
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A. This is an interesting list as the start of a discussion of dating Paul - http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=323219

About half the writings attributed to Paul are called the "Disputed Epistles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles#Disputed_epistles .......

... and several scholars question the so-called 'Undisputed Epistles" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles#The_.22undisputed.22_epistles

The Dutch radicals questioned all of them - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Criticism

B. I wasn't referring to minor discrepancies between the early codices - I was referring to discrepancies *from them* AND later versions of the Bibles: ie. "the changes *from* the early bibles".

C. this thread discusses aspects of the basis & dating of the synoptics - http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=322477
.
Posted by McReal, Thursday, 28 February 2013 3:49:04 PM
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