For a person to be qualified to go to heaven it is generally understood thattheir favourite thing is god - thats why the material world is the sphere for the performance of mixed religious principles (the needs of the body vs the needs of the soul) or just straight out gross materialism (the needs of the body)
Should We Respect Religion?
- Thread starter SkinWalker
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For a person to be qualified to go to heaven it is generally understood thattheir favourite thing is god - thats why the material world is the sphere for the performance of mixed religious principles (the needs of the body vs the needs of the soul) or just straight out gross materialism (the needs of the body)
Hopefully, when you die, a person will by then have realized how temporary the world is. Maybe your favourite thing will be another soul that you have a part in helping get to heaven.
You can refuse right now or accept heaven- it is your choice.
it seems I should ask the question again, two responses but no answer.(if you think your s was a response Light you are joking ar'nt you, well that is the norm for you( and thanks for that again ), your saying you love god more than, your wife, kids, mum, dad, dog, cat, etc. I dont thing so!)
so here goes: oh and lets take it as read your dead and it's judgement day, or whatever. rjr6: what if you've been faithful to god, but you want to take your favourite thing with you,(this is not necessarily, a person, but can be an animal, or a thing) can you? or you dont want to go to the heaven,(you would rather live, lets say in pergatory or whatever, with you favourite thing) Can you refuse?
if you say no to the first question, and no you cant to the second then it's slavery.
because you personal choices are removed.
so here goes: oh and lets take it as read your dead and it's judgement day, or whatever. rjr6: what if you've been faithful to god, but you want to take your favourite thing with you,(this is not necessarily, a person, but can be an animal, or a thing) can you? or you dont want to go to the heaven,(you would rather live, lets say in pergatory or whatever, with you favourite thing) Can you refuse?
if you say no to the first question, and no you cant to the second then it's slavery.
because you personal choices are removed.
pavlosmarcos
If you love your dog more than you love god it kind of indicates what you can expect in the inevitable future
pavlosmarcos
If you love your dog more than you love god it kind of indicates what you can expect in the inevitable future
What's wrong with loving a dog? Do you consider it some sort of inferior beast?
Just because one loves god it doesn't mean that they hate dogs - for the pinnacle of one's expression, love has more noble applications than being applied to one's dog
pavlosmarcos
If you love your dog more than you love god it kind of indicates what you can expect in the inevitable future
No I don't know what to expect, LG. Please tell me what I can expect in the long term for not believing in god.
The risk of viewing one's relationship with a dog as the most meaningful thing in one's life for a start
If I have a relationship with God, I'm not aware of it. Nonetheless I'm more likely to view my relationship with my family, or my friends, or my lover, as more meaningful than my relationship with my dog. (My dog is very important to me.) What does God have to do with it?
baumgarten
Therefore by default you form a relationship (with the view that it is the pinnacle of your existence) by default
Then you are more elevated than a dog lover but you still run the risks incumbent with having relationships with such entities (I guess at least you don't have to pick up their stool by hand with a plastic bag when you are walking on the street with them)
who is more important? Your dog or your lover?
Please explain to me how a relationship with God is suddenly the pinnacle of my existence.
lightgigantic said:
More elevated, eh? I am grateful for your judgment. I could not live the good life without the guidance of an epistemological authority such as yourself.
You have a lot of clarifying to do, as usual. Don't be afraid to explain yourself.
baumgarten
Its not - thats why you're on the search for alternatives
Sooner or later you will have to face the fact that your love for another entity will leave you - you will die or your beloved will die (or more realistically, given the social climate of contemporary life, your lover will leave you - locked outside and screaming at you to drop dead - I guess this is why dogs are so popular because they offer unconditional love even if you neglect them for days on end and feed them the same stuff day in and day out)
What if I don't view life itself as a teleological process? There is no need for any pinnacle to aspire to.
lightgigantic said:
I don't see that as a problem. There's no reason to externalise the meaning of my existence; does not life have intrinsic value?
baumgarten
I see, so its just a coincidence that you are forming the same predictable relaionships with the same predictable entities which leads to the same predictable demise
The highest punishment in prison (apart from death) is solitary imprisionment - of course if you are having such a bungling dreadful experience of life you might view living in a cave on some solitary island as ideal, but whether you could maintain yourself permanently in a social vacuum without turning into a nutter is questionable
Ah, reductio ad absurdum. It would follow that I am at the utter mercy of circumstance, devoid of the ability to act or exercise free will, no? Of course, I could not choose to end my own life prematurely on a mere whim. It would be much too far from this relational telos which is evidently a precondition to my existence.
I am essentially taking an existentialist position here. You do not seem familiar with existentialism. Interesting.
lightgigantic said:
Yes, well, good thing I didn't suggest that. The inevitable demise of everyone and everything important to me is something I am quite aware of and have accepted. Entropy has no regard for our feelings. What is your point?
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M*W: I don't think it takes death to realize how temporary the world is. All it takes is the aging process. Heaven is relative, but it certainly doesn't exist outside one's own mind. My heaven is my family (warts and all). My heaven is in this life, not by hoping for one after I die.
the intrinsic value of life is to form relationships (even an incredibly rich, famous, beautiful, intelligent and healthy person fears lonliness) - the irony is that most of the anxiety and misery we reap from life is due to relationships (either their presence or absence - the other extreme of the bumper sticker "Everyone makes me happy - some people I am happy to meet and some I am happy to leave") - in otherwords what goes down in the name of happiness (in the material world - ie one materially defined entity forming a relationship with another materially defined entity) is actually properly defined as a cause of future distress - all the small set backs in life are a precurser to the inevitable set back (death).
I don't see how the existential standpoint helps any (“The only philosophical problem is the problem of suicide.” - camus.)
Its not clear how you can argue the point of a purposeless universe since nobody is satisfied with a purposeless life - it just leads to topics of existential despair ("our purpose in life is to understand that the universe is purposeless" etc etc)
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If this is your belief, then you do not understand the meaning of the word 'intrinsic'. What I mean is that life alone is a worthy end in itself. There is nothing else that needs to give it value, like a relationship or an occupation. Surely we are social animals and we crave intimacy, but a lonely man -- unless he is depressed -- still thinks his life is still worth something in itself.
Your statement is actually self-contradictory.
lightgigantic said:
I'm not sure if that's exactly what Camus said, and anyway, it's not precisely representative of the existentialist standpoint if it is. (Camus and Sartre had some disagreements.) More accurately, to an existentialist, the greatest and most pressing philosophical problem is that of suicide. Existentialism is actually a much larger and more complex philosophy than that one single facet which happens to be the quintissential subject of teen angst.
lightgigantic said:
The contention of existentialism is not that life is purposeless but that man creates his own purpose.
Thank you for the inspiring comments. What do you mean by 'Heaven is relative?'