Keiren,

John? This week, I am busy with preps for some translators working on my research. Tight schedule. I still need to have closer look an the Compton Effect, which tend to relate to an eletromagnetic range way above visible light.

However, The earth receives and the distrubutes photon energy from the sun. My understanding there a few highly energized incomings and more less energized outgoings. The solar photos inteact with the each including biological processes (e.g., photosynthesis. Were collisions to occur involving gamma rays, would there no be a signature from the source and the interaction itself.

John Warren,

If we have lost our way, do you wish to give some comment to provide the tread some direction?

Oliver,

Several of the bloggers, including me, you, Scout and Keiran, seem to understand that heaven is a phenomenon of the mind.

The idea influences the emotions but has no external existence. Even Sells’ original sermon made no claim for heaven in time or place. It is, in fact, the great carrot: if we all behave ourselves, don’t upset the social applecart, obey the ten commandments and, in particular, don’t listen to the arguments of such troublemakers as Karl Marx, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, then we will all be rewarded by having a jolly spiritual after-life in eternity.

It has been said that in the beginning was the Word and now, after 2000 years, all we have is self-satisfying words.

Will this give the thread a new direction? Only to those who recognise that the mind is a product of the material universe. It can understand but not create that universe.

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. -Will Rogers

Scout,

You said “I am in heaven when I watch the King Parrots and Rosellas feed outside my window”.

Fifteen years ago I heard that rainbow lorikeets could be attracted to inner suburban Melbourne gardens and I dutifully planted dozens – no hundreds – of indigenous tubestock trees and shrubs in my backyard. Like most beginner native gardeners I overplanted, and within a few years I had a dense woody jungle – but no lorikeets. Finally I gave up, thought it was an urban myth, and started converting over to my current horticultural obsession: fruit trees.

Sure enough, just as I was cutting down the last eucalypt, a single brilliant green and orange and blue creature flapped over to check out my handiwork, and the next day brought all its mates. Ever since then I’ve been visited daily by scores of the little buggers who devastate my apples and stonefruit and persimmons and guavas and screech me awake on summer mornings. But God, they’re a beautiful bird, and I wouldn’t be without them for anything. Ain’t Heaven a funny place.

Oliver, I'm sure Heaven is chock a block with canines. Thing is, I'm a vegetarian, and my dogs tell me Heaven is full of bones. We're still arguing this one.

JW: So you "understand that heaven is a phenomenon of the mind". Understanding flows from knowledge and experience. Prove to me that there is no non-material existence. Full knowledge is informed by faith and is particular to the person, and as such cannot be measured and presented as evidence. It is the efficacy of a life: be it simple or elevated.

You are anchored to the idea that heaven is all about reward and an ongoing existence to overcome the fear of death. You have plenty of weight to the anchor from past and present sermons by people who have settled into that nice comfortable offering. But let us remember Christianity has ridden history and for most of its 2000 years life was tough for the many who drew comfort from it. And why not? Would you hold back any comfort to the distressed? A comfort that extends to joy and peace amidst turmoil.

You are ignorant of modern study of the Christian scriptures and the essence that now flows from such study. Such new understanding provides intellectual satisfaction for faithful people who seek the application of reason to their faith seeking understanding.

Thankfully you have ceased your esoteric dialogues involving matters far beyond most peoples' knowledge.

Yet I suppose you may be saying I am in the realm of the esoteric. Not so, as while I might find language to express an idea, its essence is shareable by the lowest of intellects to the highest.

Your intellectual arrogance is as old as time. It withers and blows away.

Now what if there is a God? One that willed the creation into being, and it has emanated with the human as the arrow of evolution to bring all things to completion at a final point in time? Alpha and Omega. And in the time of our individual material existence there is an opportunity to engage in relationship with that God. It can be missed through an absence of opportunity or through individual choice. The latter gives rise to the eternal anguish of missed opportunity to know love here and now.

Boxgum,

“JW: So you "understand that heaven is a phenomenon of the mind". Understanding flows from knowledge and experience. Prove to me that there is no non-material existence. Full knowledge is informed by faith and is particular to the person, and as such cannot be measured and presented as evidence.”

Prove that there IS non-material existence. You can’t. So then you have to resort to “Full knowledge is informed by ‘faith’ and is particular to the person.” Faith is BELIEF, not knowledge.

And yes, BELIEF cannot be measured – what you describe as ‘knowledge’ and ‘experience’ leading to ‘understanding’ is the internal effects of particular physical (including mental) experiences on a particular person, and how they choose to understand it within their internal mental framework of BELIEF.

But it is actually all happening in the material world. You can’t “know God” or “heaven” without your physical existence. And when you no longer exist, your particular God will no longer exist. BELIEVE IT OR NOT!