bob wrote:Many sensible people who have read the English version of the New Testament with all it's references to eternal this, everlasting that and come away with anything the idea that we would all be judged, and either punished or rewarded depending upon whether or not we are uneducated and/or delusional enough to believe the bullshit presented therein. You could argue that the "original" (whatever the hell that would be given that it was written so many years after the fact) didn't imply that then you are stuck with the question of why god would allow such a version to confuse people for so many years. You are aware I take it that a good deal of confusion on the issue existed, exists, and will no doubt continue to exist in the future? And you do believe that the Bible was directed by god in some way I take it.
It's clear you didn't read what I quoted. What you don't understand is that personal Bible reading outside the influence of Catholic dogma correlated positively with rejection of the doctrine of the immortal soul. From the early medieval era to the late Middle Ages, literacy was so low that virtually no one was reading the Bible; they derived their belief in the immortal soul not from the Bible, but from being told to believe it by their local priest.
During this time, many of those who were actually reading the Bible could see it didn't teach the immortal soul,[2] [3] [4] much to the frustration of the clergy and other church officials interested in maintaining the Church's official position. Medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas acknowledged freely that everything known about the mind and the body at the time indicated that consciousness was a property of the body rather than an immortal soul, such that it was impossible to argue that the immortal soul constituted the eternal consciousness of the self; theologians of this persuasion usually held that the immortal soul was a substance inserted into the body by God at a point in time subsequent to birth, though acknowledging this was not found anywhere in the Bible. Later medieval and early modern theologians and philosophers also acknowledged it was impossible to support the doctrine either from the Bible or from philosophy.
During the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, when English Bible translations proliferated, we find exactly the opposite of what you claim. The more English Bibles were translated, the more Christians came to believe that the doctrine of the immortal soul was not found in the Bible, despite the traditional English word 'soul' being used in the translation.[5] Not only was it observed that the soul was not referred to as immortal anywhere in the Bible in any translation at all, English or otherwise (even in English translations the number of verses referring to 'souls' eating, sleeping, and dying, demonstrated that the 'soul' referred to was not an immortal part of human beings, but referred to the entire person), Catholic theologians involved in the Counter-Reformation freely acknowledged that the doctrine wasn't found in the Bible, and claimed that those Reformers who still clung to this doctrine were being inconsistent, since they were holding the belief simply on the basis of the authority of the Church, not on the basis of Biblical teaching (
Sola Scriptura being the Reformation warcry).
This bit seems to indicate that there "is" some eternal reward afterall, but only for the good Christians? Where does the soul reside in the interim, does it like go in a big freezer and exist in a state of suspened animation, or does it like appear, sort of like "poof" magico when god decides to bring you all back to Jeruselum after murdering all the rich people or what exactly?
I suggest you read what I quoted. The 'soul' does not exist 'in the interim', so it doesn't 'reside' anywhere. As the quotations make clear, resurrection is the only hope for those who have died.
Rockefeller wrote:Personally I'd like to believe that there's something beyond death (not necessarily heaven or hell or whathaveyou), that YOU carry on somehow, in whatever form. That death isn't the end of the road. But my mind and logic and science tells me otherwise. So it's somewhat depressing, but hey, at the same it also allows me to understand why some people would rather believe in what their religion tells them to-- It's easier on the mind that way.
Well even if my faith in a future resurrection is misplaced, I'm not particularly fussed about the idea of being annihilated at death. It doesn't seen depressing to me, just natural. I don't remember being disturbed by my non-existence prior to my conception, and I'm sure I'll be equally undisturbed after my death.
bob wrote:It would be interesting to see if there is any convincing arguments to be made against these simple points. I'd say they were pretty deadly to the faith position but who knows, maybe there "is" a way to worm out from under them.
Your arguments on this topic demonstrate the same lack of evidence, lack of logical coherence, and lack of knowledge of the subject as Fundamentalist Christian arguments about evolution, arguments like 'OMBBQ, evolution does not explain the origin of life, I have JUST DISPROVED EVOLUTION!'. For this reason alone there is no point in trying to reason with you because you either don't understand the answers or else simply reject them because they contradict what you've already chosen to believe. I can't reason someone out of an argument they didn't reason themselves into.
Tempo Gain wrote:A question Fortigurn, does this concept of the soul as part and parcel of the person negate the possibility of an afterlife, or not?
It completely negates the idea of the person continuing to survive after death, such that they are conscious although being, and necessitates the complete resuscitation of the body; resurrection (which you can call 'afterlife' if you like, though I think a more accurate description is 'restoration to life'). You're either alive (you have a functioning body), or you're not alive (your body has died). You can't be conscious if your body is dead, and you can't have an 'afterlife' while your body is dead.
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[1] Mortalism was preserved by early Christians such as Arnobius, and among Syrian Christians such as Aphrahat, Ephrem, Narsai, and Jacob of Sarug. Syrian Christianity inherited it from earlier Jewish teaching. It was was retained through the late medieval era and early Middle Ages by Jewish commentators such as Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1167), Maimonides (1135-1204), and Joseph Albo (1380-1444). Christian Syrian mystic Isaac of Nineveh (d.700), also held a mortalist position.
[2] '
Till the end of the sixth century and beyond, Christians in Nisibis and Constantinople, Syria and Arabia adduced Leviticus 17:11 which states that “The soul of the whole flesh is the blood”
to argue that the soul after death sank into non-existence, that it lost its sensibility and stayed inert in the grave together with the body.’, Samellas, ‘Death in the eastern Mediterranean (50-600 A.D.): the Christianization of the East: An Interpretation’, Studien Und Text Zu Antike Und Christentum, pp. 55-56 (2002).
[3] '
Still others argued for the outright death of the soul, which, they claimed, was mortal and perished with the body, and which would be recreated together with the body only on the day of resurrection.', Constas, ‘”To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”: The Middle State of Souls in Patristic and Byzantine Literature’, in Talbot (ed.), ‘Dunbarton Oaks Papers’, No. 55, p. 94 (2001).
[4] '
Thnetopsychism [‘soul death’] continued to challenge the patience and ingenuity of church officials, as evidenced by writers such as John the Deacon, Niketas Stethatos, Philip Monotropos (Dioptra, pp. 210, 220), and Michael Glykas, all of whom are keenly interested in the survival of consciousness and memory among the souls of the departed saints. John the Deacon, for example, attacks those who “dare to say that praying to the saints is like shouting in the ears of the deaf, as if they had drunk from the mythical waters of Oblivion” (line 174).', Gavin, ‘The Sleep of the Soul in the Early Syriac Church’, Journal of the American Oriental Society (40.111), 1920.
[5] Such as John Wycliffe (1320-1384), Michael Sattler (1490-1527), the Anabaptists (1527-1700), William Tyndale (1494-1536), Camillo Rentao (1540), Matyas Devai (1500-1545), Michael Servetus (1511-1553), Laelius Socinus (d. 1562), Faustus Socinus (1563), the Polish Brethren (1565), Dirk Philips (1504-1568), Gregory Paul (1568), the later Socinians (1570-1800), John Frith (1573), George Schomann (1574), Simon Budny (1576), the Sussex Baptists (17th century), Edward Wightman (d. 1612), Samuel Gardner (1627), Samuel Przpkowski (1628), George Wither (1636), Joachim Stegman (1637), Richard Overton (1624), John Biddle (1654), Matthew Caffyn (1655), Samuel Richardson (1658), John Milton (1608-1674), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1670), Thomas Browne (1605-1682), Henry Layton (1622-1705), William Coward (1702), John Locke (1632-1704), Isaac Newton (1643-1727), Pietro Giannone (1676-1748), William Kenrick (1751), Edmund Law (1755), Samuel Bourn (1759), Richard Price (1723-1791), Peter Peckard (1718-1797), Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), Francis Blackburne (1765), the Millerites (1833), Edward White (1846), Thomas Thayer (1855), François Gaussen (d.1863), Christadelphians (1865), Henry Constable (1873), Louis Burnier (d. 1878), the Conditionalist Association (1878), Cameron Mann (1888), Miles Grant (1895), and George Stokes (1897).
