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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[itisnotlogical]

Do all Christian branches and denominations believe in original sin? If a child has not sinned at all (likely if not 100% every-time certain) and they're somehow absolved of original sin, then they should at least have a favorable outcome in the afterlife, if not the best.

[i2amroy]

Do all Christian branches and denominations believe in original sin? If a child has not sinned at all (likely if not 100% every-time certain) and they're somehow absolved of original sin, then they should at least have a favorable outcome in the afterlife, if not the best.

Not even close, and of those that do I'd be willing to say that the majority don't even follow the strict Calvinist view of original sin (i.e. that you are born with a "negative balance") but rather are of the opinion that instead you are born neutral/good, but the default state of man is to tip towards the bad unless checked properly (i.e. the original sin is a thing of temperament/temptation that needs to be check instead of starting in the red and needing to work your way up to the black).

[TheDarkStar]

Do all Christian branches and denominations believe in original sin? If a child has not sinned at all (likely if not 100% every-time certain) and they're somehow absolved of original sin, then they should at least have a favorable outcome in the afterlife, if not the best.

Not even close, and of those that do I'd be willing to say that the majority don't even follow the strict Calvinist view of original sin (i.e. that you are born with a "negative balance") but rather are of the opinion that instead you are born neutral/good, but the default state of man is to tip towards the bad unless checked properly (i.e. the original sin is a thing of temperament/temptation that needs to be check instead of starting in the red and needing to work your way up to the black).

Pretty much.

And in response to why it's bad to kill children, I believe that it would be kind of pointless because I believe that the point of life is to get experience. Children who die early are still going to have to have some kind of experience that also gives them the experience they need. But a lot of other Christians would probably disagree with my interpretation.

[penguinofhonor]

I find it hard to believe our species exists to acquire life experience when we've had a really high infant mortality rate for the vast majority of our existence. It would seem like a pretty major design oversight.

[TD1]

Added to infant mortality, there's just general mortality. I wonder how many youths the Plague killed?

[Rolan7]

If our purpose is to gain life experiences, why are those experiences stored in our fragile brains?  We're frankly terrible at remembering things, even before we get diseases like Alzheimer's.  It would work a lot better if memories were stored in our spirits instead.  Which could be the case, but if so, we're even worse at recalling said memories.

[lemon10]

Presumably if out memories were stored in our spirits we would get better recall after we are actually dead.

[Rolan7]

So maybe after we die, our spirits have perfect or good recall of our our entire lives.
And according to most doctrines, our spirits won't want the same things we did in life.
And will be immortal...
And by some doctrines will be reincarnated into a different person with a practically unrecognizable personality.

These spirits sound like completely different entities from us.  They sound like inhuman observers.

[Rolepgeek]

Yeah.

Welcome to spirituality. You're a completely different entity now than you were when you were 7. Do you think 7-year old you should still care about what happens to you now?

A physical being and a spiritual being will be different by definition. Viewing that as a bug betrays a flawed understanding of the fundamental concept of afterlives and stuff. I mean, you can argue that it's not a change for the better, but that's a different matter. *shrug*

I find it hard to believe our species exists to acquire life experience when we've had a really high infant mortality rate for the vast majority of our existence. It would seem like a pretty major design oversight.

Simple. Having your kid die is life experience. Knowing other people are suffering...and that maybe there's something you can do about it...is life experience. Means to an end, that must be genuine, or as close to it as possible. If God is omniscient, and everything is part of his 'plan', easy enough to imagine those kids/infants weren't given souls in the first place. Would also go a way to explaining deterministic behavior; to make it as real as possible to 'train' us, they make the physical shells of souls and the hollow shells of the automata which exist to be killed as similar as possible, then introduce quantum randomness so that the future can't be perfectly predicted, allowing free will to reside in the gaps, without revealing it.

Yeah, it's a stretch, but logical consistency is easy to do. Just imagine it's a really weird fantasy setting.

[Egan_BW]

So, why should good old physical-me care what happens to soul-me after I die? Never liked that guy anyway.

[Rolan7]

Yeah.

Welcome to spirituality. You're a completely different entity now than you were when you were 7. Do you think 7-year old you should still care about what happens to you now?

A physical being and a spiritual being will be different by definition. Viewing that as a bug betrays a flawed understanding of the fundamental concept of afterlives and stuff. I mean, you can argue that it's not a change for the better, but that's a different matter. *shrug*

Ah yeah, that's a good point.  We do change as we live, to an incredible extent.

Still, the difference between me and 7-year-old me is far less than the difference between me and a serene immortal with perfect recollection.  I think there are fundamental differences which make it hard to consider that immortal "human".  Or, "me".

[Rolepgeek]

You really think so?

You don't think the maturity you've gained, the different perspective of time(aka patience), the relative equanimity with which you handle being told 'no', your (likely) utterly different perspective towards attractive members of the opposite(or same) sex, your ability to keep track of 'oh yeah I have things to do' and the like, are significantly different there?

I mean, if I'd said 'the you 30 years from now' I think you would be absolutely correct. Additionally, we're only speculating that it's perfect; it could just be really good, without being photographic. Like you can definitely remember the stuff you talked about with that one guy, but not the exact words spoken.

Immortality is really only relevant insofar as one's attitude towards death and aging. Serenity...if you consider stress and worry to be central to being you, I can't really dispute it. I consider it central to being human, but only because we all experience so much of it; it isn't an intrinsic necessary feature for us to have life suck, it's a product of our environment.

[Rolan7]

It's kinda funny since I've been dealing with a very childish 60-year-old recently
But I do agree that we change extremely over time.  The metaphor of the boat which has every piece replaced is apt.  Maybe we retain a couple pieces, but mostly our past selves just influence what we become.

To stretch the metaphor, though, I'm a boat all my life.  An immortal is totally different...  Like, a news helicopter or something.  Recording everything, unbound by water.

Particularly if it has perfect recall, which I agree is an assumption on my part.  Though, I think most religious people would claim that an Alzheimer's gets at least their "normal" memory restored when they "become" a spirit.  Which I think raises worrisome questions.

[penguinofhonor]

Will I remember my blackout drunk nights in the afterlife? If so, oblivion may be preferable.

[Rolepgeek]

It's kinda funny since I've been dealing with a very childish 60-year-old recently
But I do agree that we change extremely over time.  The metaphor of the boat which has every piece replaced is apt.  Maybe we retain a couple pieces, but mostly our past selves just influence what we become.

To stretch the metaphor, though, I'm a boat all my life.  An immortal is totally different...  Like, a news helicopter or something.  Recording everything, unbound by water.

Particularly if it has perfect recall, which I agree is an assumption on my part.  Though, I think most religious people would claim that an Alzheimer's gets at least their "normal" memory restored when they "become" a spirit.  Which I think raises worrisome questions.

Well yeah, you get your broken bits restored.

Actually, if you look at it from a certain point of view, that's all that happens. You were a boat only because you'd never realized that you could fly, with a bit of fixing. The raft which is secretly a plane, hidden beneath the sea.

EDIT: To be fair, I may be biased towards 'immortal is not fundamentally different' since I'm hoping to help get people functionally immortal within my lifetime.