Sells has written some nonsense in his time - perhaps this one takes the prize for its sheer ignorance (on the topic of death)

Bodily mutilation 101:
http://spiritlessons.com/passionofchristpictures.htm
And mortification too (as a means of getting "closer" to "Jesus" or "God"
http://www.odan.org/corporal_mortification.htm

Remember that opus dei is now a powerful force within the "catholic" church. It was given very special favors by the two previous popes, and perhaps by the present one.

And of course all of the usual dreadfully sane Christians,especially Catholics, participate in a vampire ritual when they ritually drink the "blood of 'Christ'" in their various versions of "holy communion".

But what is the actually Truth about Death, and therefore by extension life altogether?
What if the necessary key to true human maturity, and thus the living of a ccmprehensive Right Life, is to deal with the overwhelming fact of death with Real Intelligence?
Three Truth Telling References
http://www.adidam.org/death_and_dying/index.html
http://www.aboutadidam.org/dying_death_and_beyond/index.html
http://global.adidam.org/books/easy-death

Bloody hell Sells.

Its just another stupid pop culture fad. Like disaster movies in the 70s, those stupid turtles in the 90s and the current obsession with faked "reality", cooking, talent and renovation shows.

It will pass. It means nothing.

Thankyou for your interest Mr Sellick

Vampirism provides a viable, I dare say self-stimulating, alternative to the "blood of Christ" Sacrament.

Pete
(for my Count and Master)

H Peter

I agree that preoccupation with getting the soul into heaven in the afterlife is more a focus of the later church than the scriptures, and that the turn from life after death as a focus in modern churches is welcome.

But I found your thumbnail history a bit over simplistic.

Ancient Jews did believe in a form of afterlife – Sheol – though it did not have much theological significance, nor did ancestor worship or succouring individual souls feature. This was not unique to Judaism: the Greek idea of Hades was not that different.

There did seem to be some Jewish concept of resurrection of the nation, though not necessarily the individual (e.g. Ezekiel 37’s dry bones).

Jewish belief in the individual’s resurrection after death, and its association with judgement, seems to have developed later, but well before Jesus: mainly in the late postexilic and inter-testamental periods (Daniel 12, 2 Maccabees) and under the influence of the Hellenism of that time.

The NT suggests conflicting views by in Jesus’ day: e.g. belief in an afterlife was a distinction between Pharisees and Sadducees (Mark 12:18). I think the NT also reflects this diversity, with some passages suggesting an immortal soul, and some not. Paul certainly seems to have considered it important (1 Corinthians 15:19, Romans 8:11).

The reason for the plentiful supply of magic, supernatural and horror books and films is that there is a dearth of writers with any real experience of the world. It is easy, cheap bumpf to produce and call entertainment.

Of course there was a time when Hollywood was pumping out similarly superficial hideous-violence-instead-of-decent-yarns, bumpf based on a formula, in the form of religious movies. 99% were absolute trash (I would say 100%, but I am trying to be kind). Recently the sado-masochism that is always very much appreciated by the Roman Catholic Church was revived by Mel Gibson.

Religious sado-masochism, voyeurism and other cringeworthy nasties always find an audience where traditions of religious fundamentalism exist, emerging rather expectedly in women's eroticism such as Fifty Shades of Grey. There is plenty of horror to be had in religious fundamentalism, as Catholic audiences, particularly women victims of Roman Catholicism, attest. It is a wonder the women are not all in therapy, but maybe many are.

Jesus lives - the sun never sets on the Jewish vampire.

To my mind, the idea of vampires, mummies, and the living dead are no more unreal than the notion of mythical gods, Devils, heaven, hell or the supposed resurrection of Jesus.

They are all just results of ancient superstitions from ancestors that sought answers to their existence, and of old men seeking to have power over others by suggesting they know what is 'out there', even though nothing has ever been proven at all.

They are great for fiction stories, movies, TV and books though!

Dear Mademoiselle Suseonline

Illa submit yo doubtas to meh Master da Count Drac de la Suck de Blud.

But I don't theenk he gowan to like eet :)

Me

Pete

'To my mind, the idea of vampires, mummies, and the living dead are no more unreal than the notion of mythical gods, Devils, heaven, hell or the supposed resurrection of Jesus.'

ignorance is bliss Susie, at least for now

Emmm an interesting thread you have there DAFFY DUCK ? Opus Dei and their crowd are just a bunch of deluded but ultra-pious Christians of the Catholic faith, who have this penchant of flogging themselves as an overt demonstration of their repentance and their faith ?

The other three citations you furnished, refer to a now deceased crack-pot who had been on the FBI radar for years, for alleged fraud, sexual exploitation of minors and several other crimes associated with his somewhat unusual religious proclivities and commercial exploits.

Having spent some time as an assistant Coroner's Officer, at the Morgue in Glebe, the only thing I can state with absolute certainty is when you're dead, believe me you're absolutely dead, the end ! You see enough cadaver's you'll fully appreciate exactly what I mean. I do not wish to intrude or violate in any way upon people's faith or belief's, but I can only state what I've witnessed, nothing more. When life is declared extinct, the human remains are completely inert, and death is most evident, for all to see.

Personally (and I'd not wished to state a personal opinion) but death to me, amounts to nothing more then a deep, dreamless sleep ?

Dear Sells,

Oh dear my friend, all your pontifications that gain their authority from scripture are now at risk from this simple act of dialling back of a core aspect of the Christian faith, resurrection and the afterlife.

As I detailed on another thread I attended a funeral service at a very evangelistic Christian church this afternoon. The pastor said; 'Last Thursday night at 4 in the morning our brother in Christ passed away and left behind 'the sins and sorrows of this world' going straight up to be with our Lord Jesus Christ.'

This is a deeply held religious belief held by so many of those assembled.

I get that it might be problematic for a 'thinking Protestant' like yourself and you would like to distance yourself from groups like ISIS who are truly living out the logical conclusion of a resurrection belief, but it is insipid.

In for a penny and in for a pound or just walk away.

My wife had a good friend who was a god-botherer. When her husband died she was happy as he was now enjoying life in heaven. About a year later the fact that he was gone hit her. She then experienced the grief that would have been natural when he died. In living life to the fullest I think it is best to experience the emotions that the situation evokes rather than to deny them. Happiness, sadness, grief – whatever reflects the situation we are in. One of the earliest philosophical questions is “What is a good life?” One answer is a life where we fully experience what is happening to us. Since there is no evidence that death is not the end we should accept that it is the end and act accordingly.

>>Scriptural conception of death as the end of human individual consciousness.<<

You might or might not believe in afterlife, whatever that word means (“after” requires time, hence some event or events that natural science should be able to investigate though it is obviously not), however I doubt that personal salvation, redemption, Jesus’ resurrection etc are compatible with a belief in “death as the end of human individual consciousness”. Nevertheless, here I am not an expert, Rhian’s insight is more qualified than mine.

"This has largely been the product of research into the biblical sciences."

What on earth are 'biblical sciences', and how do you research them? What you apparently mean, Peter, is that people are no longer credulous enough to swallow evidence-free accounts of eternal life as the payoff for obeying the rules laid down by exploitative churches. Whether or not that's true -- and I doubt whether it would fly in, say, Nigeria, now with the largest Protestant population on the planet -- it's turning a bug into a feature when you try to depict that as a good thing for religion.

It's rather like those ads which induce you to buy something by telling you how much fat it doesn't have: "Munchy-Snax, now 82% fat-free!" Your new, improved religion -- 'Now 20% less unbelievable!' isn't going to fool anyone.

Who would have thought the entirely unproven martyrdom mythology would have created so many devotees, still clinging to their belief systems in spite of the fact that no laying on of holy hands has produced so much as one single case of promised spontaneous remission.

Therefore proof positive that the empowering holy spirit is just more of the mumbo jumbo mythology or the placebo effect!? Which just proves via phenomena like fire walking or pointing a bone, that the mind is indeed a powerful instrument!

It's all about faith they say, so also when they claimed the world was flat at the centre of a six thousand year old universe!

Simply put faith just didn't make it so any more than any other faith alone supported mythology! Rhrosty.

Rhian,
You are quite right to point out some exceptions in biblical literature. But I think I have carried the gist of it, particularly in a 1000 word essay. There is a huge difference between the conception of Israel and its myth-driven neighbours. However, I suspect they were not entirely free of it. The cult of sacrifice in the temple being the one big elephant in the room.

George,
I had thought that you would have caught on to my materialist view by now. It is obvious from the resurrection narratives that they carry theological truth rather than historical truth. Clinging to historicist and literalist readings of the bible and the resultant theological results has produced the great chasm that now exists between believers and unbelievers and the loss fo theological culture in our time.

JohnJ,
Go to the great universities in the world and you will find departments of biblical studies that research language, history, exegesis, form, narrative, etc of biblical literature. This is a science in the broadest and no the narrow Enlightenment sense of the term. It is a discipline of study that has its own rational and is thus a "science". Our ignorance of this time honoured activity in Australia exists because the theological sciences were excluded from our universities from their origin in the name of the new learning.

Hi there DAVID F...

The opinions you shared with us in your most recent thread, I generally agree with you. I'll not attempt to insist there's absolutely no future for any of us after we die. It sounds both supremely arrogant and it completely lacked sensitivity ? I think I didn't express my views particularly well either with my last thread, directed to DAFFY DUCK'S views ?

We all handle death of loved ones in different ways, and grieving is very much a personal thing. Personally I don't know how to grief. Death to me is just another event in my life, something to be embraced when the time comes. It's for this reason DAVID F I tend to agree with you, when you say, live the best life you can, while the opportunity still exists for you to do so.

This notion of the existence of the paranormal, the occult, vampires etc. is rubbish, as is ghosts and all the other so called supernatural occurrences that have allegedly happened. I think since time in memorial we humans have feared death, so over time we've developed these mechanisms, like religion and other superstitions, to give us all aid and comfort when we're confronted with our own end times ?

Sells

Universities of old were religious institutions very much into the fiction that is the Bible. Such "teaching" has since been exposed.

Miracles and Noah's Ark are for priests who minister to the credulous.

Sells,

I did not question your materialist view, only the compatibility of one sentence you made with the belief in e.g. a personal salvation by a wide scale of Christians from the philosophically most simple-minded to the philosophically most sophisticated.

You are right that today only a few literalists and historicists believe that e.g. the Earth was created in six days some 5000 years ago, although a few centuries ago that was a universal Christian belief. They have a conflict with natural science, which is not the case with belief in personal salvation that could be overridden by science.

You know, with some of the horrors and crap that I've seen and experienced, both in Vietnam and later the coppers - and being a complete atheist, I suppose it wouldn't be too bad to believe in something really good ? Some sort of salvation or whatever you wish to call it, when we reach the end of our lives ? Instead of being interred, 6ft down and suffer the indignity of decomposition, or spend our allotted 60 or 70 minutes in the 'retort' at our local crematorium ? An exiting prospect no doubt ?

"I am glad to say that emphasis on the afterlife is waning in most churches and in scholarly circles it is commonly acknowledged that the kingdom of God is an earthly reality of justice and love."

Yes it is good that there is less emphasis on the afterlife, but that doesn't change the validity of the afterlife itself, it only means that we should rather concentrate on how we conduct ourselves in this very life.

Earthly justice and love are indeed better than earthly corruption and hate, but even that is short of the kingdom of God which is beyond all this, so it seems that the author is aiming too low.

"Thus the church is coming closer to the Scriptural conception of death as the end of human individual consciousness."

The Jewish scripture does not elaborate on the concept of death simply because it is useless to do so:

"It is not the dead who praise the Lord, those who go down to the place of silence; it is we who extol the Lord, both now and forevermore, Hallelujah."
[Psalm 115, 17:18]

No scripture can teach the dead for the obvious reason that the dead have lost their memory along with their bodies and brains and also their eyes and ears, so for scripture to attempt to instruct them is wasteful.

While death certainly marks the end of human individual consciousness, being a human individual is only an illusion to begin with, so in fact nothing is lost!

---

Dear David,

<<Since there is no evidence that death is not the end we should accept that it is the end and act accordingly.>>

So should we commit all manner of crimes when our death comes near and we believe that the police would not have the time to catch us?

While concentrating on the afterlife is a waste of time and energy, one should still consider its probability, which even if one believes to be small (due to lack of evidence), one should still consider the overall statistical expectation due to the weight that such a possibility carries.

Yuyutsu wrote to me: "So should we commit all manner of crimes when our death comes near and we believe that the police would not have the time to catch us?"

Please leave me out of your 'we'. I have no desire to commit any crimes. Crimes generally hurt somebody else. I have no desire to hurt somebody else. I can't stop you if that is your desire.

Dear David,

Neither do I have a desire to commit crimes, nor do most people, but temptations exist and if someone believes that the only way they could ever get what they always wanted is one that isn't kosher and on the other hand they also believe that this is their very last chance to get it because death is the end of all, then what's there to stop them from acting on their temptation?

Dear Yuyutsu,

If the only reason one doesn't commit a crime is that they either don't think they can get away with it or some big Daddy in the sky is going to punish them after they're dead they're not a very good person. Maybe you are the kind of person who is kept from committing crime because you don't think you can get away with it or you will be judged after you're dead. I am not that kind of person. I am not tempted to commit crime.

If one hopes to gain by a crime and one will be dead soon it doesn't make sense to commit a crime. I would rather spend my last moments with my loved ones or doing something else pleasant. I don't understand. Why would even a bad person with only a short time to live spend that time spend that time committing crime? Doesn't make sense.

Hi there STEELEREDUX...

If a belief and trust, however erroneous it is to others, gives some spiritual and emotional solace and comfort to others, especially in their hour of grief, then so be it, allow them that peace. I don't belief anyone has the right to condemn or attempt to disabuse a person, with some scholastic argument, contradicting or rebutting the reality of an afterlife, and the existence of an orthodox Christian God.

Golly there's more than enough pain with us all, 'in the here and now', without some cerebral academic, repudiating everything a person believes will happen, at their time of death. How we deal with such a question, is a personal issue. Our duty is both clear and concise. We do everything possible to ensure that person receives all the emotional and spiritual comfort they seek. Nothing more nor anything less.

Dear o sung wu,

I think if you read what I posted I was attempting to do just that.

Sells may well think “A literal reading of the resurrection of the dead is a horror story” but there are many who take great comfort in a literal interpretation of the bible. There is always a place for 'individualising' the bible's message, for letting slide some aspects that one might find problematic or distasteful. He can indeed welcome “that emphasis on the afterlife is waning in most churches and in scholarly circles it is commonly acknowledged that the kingdom of God is an earthly reality of justice and love.”

But for him to liken the biblical tracts about the resurrection of the dead to horror movies smacks of sectarianism, of wanting to distance his brand of faith from the literalists. It is understandable of course, but what I am taking issue with is his propensity to lecture us on what he sees as our failings as dictated by his version of the bible.

I think people need to understand the more they strip from the bible the less effective any bible bashing will ultimately be. Being clipped under the ears by selected chapters from a couple of the Gospels and perhaps the Letter to the Corinthians is not going to do much head turning. Indeed, why even bother.

Hi Peter

I agree an article such as this can’t cover all the complexity of biblical scholarship, and in general one of the reasons I like your writing that there is clearly a depth of unstated scholarship behind it that informs your argument without it being too academic. But I think your historical shortcuts are material in this case, for two reasons.

First, your argument relies on a sharp dichotomy between Jewish and pagan thinking on the afterlife that in reality didn’t exist – within both Jewish and pagan thought there was a variety of different perspectives at different times.

Second, you imply that the church’s view on life after death is largely a medieval embellishment. But I think that by NT times there was a great diversity of views within Judaism, with belief in some sort of afterlife more common than not. It does seem to have been the “default” position for the NT authors. For example, the synoptics felt the need to tell their readers that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, which would hardly be necessary if most people at the time held this view. Jesus’ response suggests he disagreed with the Sadducees on this. Likewise, Matthew’s many judgement parables and Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross in Luke (“today you will be with me in paradise”) suggest belief in an afterlife. And Paul’s theology hinges on the resurrection proving that Jesus is Messiah.

I agree that the reformation corrected two major flaws in the way the medieval church came to view life after death – that the main purpose of earthly life is to gain admission to heaven when we die; and the way to do this is to accumulate brownie points (which the church had power to award). But we can’t dismiss it entirely.

Dear David,

Other than feeling miserable and desperate, I find it difficult to imagine or hypothetically predict how I would actually conduct myself had I believed myself to be a human, hence mortal, because then "I wouldn't be myself".

But to the little extent that I can imagine so, it seems to me quite likely and reasonable that if I were in that predicament, were about to die and had a dream that could not be fulfilled other than by criminal means - say for example that my dream was to play a Stradivarius and the only way I could do so was by breaking in and stealing it from a famous musician who otherwise refuses to let anybody else touch his precious instrument, then I guess that I would have gone ahead and stolen it.

Rhian,
I think the difference between the culture of Israel and their neighbours is well documented. Read Brevard Child's Myth and Reality in the OT. Israel did not escape the mythological consciousness completely but it did in the main.
I think a compendium of the various views about death in Scripture does not lead to a firm conclusion. Neither does the influence of neo-Platonism on the early Church. We now see all of this as historically conditioned and not very relevant to our situation.
We need to listen as well to the voice of the modern age, especially to physiological science that can demonstrate that consciousness does rely on the proper working of the brain even though we have no idea how it is produced.
The materialist view of the world has won out! Most educated people do not believe in the supernatural or in a personal god. My point in all of this is that the gospel is existential and is true in the absence of the supernatural.

Dear Peter,

<<We need to listen as well to the voice of the modern age, especially to physiological science that can demonstrate that consciousness does rely on the proper working of the brain even though we have no idea how it is produced.>>

Science demonstrates that the CONTENTS of one's consciousness depends on the proper working of the brain - that is WHAT one is conscious of, which could be a combination of sensations, feelings and thoughts, including the empty set when one is not conscious of either - yet science says nothing about consciousness itself: Just because, perhaps due to brain malfunction, one is not aware of any sensations, feelings or thoughts, does not imply that their consciousness itself was affected or has disappeared.

<<The materialist view of the world has won out!>>

And rightly so regarding our view OF THE WORLD.

Give Caesar (science) what is his, but also give God what is His, as religion directs us to become aware that while we may still be IN the world, we are not OF the world.

Sells,

>>physiological science can demonstrate that consciousness does rely on the proper working of the brain <<

This is obvious. It is like saying that one can demonstrate that driving a car does rely on the proper working of the car. What is not so obvious is the conclusion that hence the car can drive itself, i.e. that there is no need to assume the existence of a driver because his existence cannot be deduced from what is in the car mechanic’s manual. (Yes, I know the metaphor limps, since soon driverless cars will be common.)

Or - to repeat what I wrote above but got it somehow distorted - today only a few literalists and historicists believe that e.g. the Earth was created in six days some 5000 years ago, although a few centuries ago that was a universal Christian belief. They have a conflict with natural science, which is not the case with belief in personal salvation (unless naively understood) since this belief is irrelevant to what science can or cannot “demonstrate”.