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[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

I'm catholic by baptism, but an agnostic by choice. Yeah, I do agree that religion is the number 1. excuse for lunatics.

[Jackrabbit]

Yeah, Christians are communist.
Jews are Socialists.

Muslims are capitalists. (+ socialism)

But in the reality, it's... WAY OFF DERAILED.

Actually, if you knew about some of the backstory about Catholicism here in Australia, you'd say they were anything but. Hell, they created the Democratic labor party.

[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

Hooray for representing the interests of the workers!

[Vester]

Oh. Man, people just don't mention these things. I signed up to help the poor and do good in this world. Then, I learned about the inquisition.

I feel so confused. Christianity as a religion can have a strange affect on its worshipers. The message of 'spread peace and tolerance' somehow got watered down to 'shove red hot pokers up the bottoms of those who look at you funny'. Seriously, it's like a drug except it has no side effect apart from those you create for yourself.

Take a look at Mark, Matthew, and Luke, for example. They contain some internal contradictions. For example, Luke has some stuff that Matthew doesn't, and vice versa, and both have a lot that Mark doesn't, especially the part about the virgin birth. As far as I'm concerned, Mark is the closest to what Jesus meant to say. (we don't count the gospel of John. That book is filled with self-aggrandizing inserts, courtesy of John. Also, he was apparently on mushrooms most of the time).

The thing is, I know a lot of atheists/agnostics who are a hell of a lot more Christian than some of the Christians I know are. These atheists help the needy, and feed the poor, not because they want to go to fluffy cloud heaven, but because it's the right thing to do.

tl;dr: people need to practice what they preach.

[Jackrabbit]

And! Australian Catholics formed 'The Movement' specifically to root out communist influences in the unions, real or imagined.

Further proof that God is the one I should be listening here to, not mortals.

Jackrabbit conflicted! JACKRABBIT SMASH!

[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

I try to be a nice guy, and to do good. I viciously despise the notion that one needs the punishment of an eternal torment held over their head to be able to be moral.

[Vester]

I try to be a nice guy, and to do good. I viciously despise the notion that one needs the punishment of an eternal torment held over their head to be able to be moral.

Exactly.

You have pinpointed the problem with mainstream Christian morality.

And! Australian Catholics formed 'The Movement' specifically to root out communist influences in the unions, real or imagined.

Further proof that God is the one I should be listening here to, not mortals.

Jackrabbit conflicted! JACKRABBIT SMASH!

Wait.

Jackrabbit is in real life Bruce Banner?

[RAM]

Paradise isn't a 'place' of any sort, but rather a state of being - a return to the closest possible state as we are to "Pure Act", which is the Christian God. That would necessarily mean a complete loss of self, but I'm pretty sure that Christians are supposed to care more about other people than themselves.

This seems the most likely scenario if one assumes christianity. God gets bored, god creates the world, which creates reality TV... that is to say, god 'is' the world, god creates the world by turning part of god into the world, so yeah, you are made in gods image, everything is, because everything 'is' god... so god find all the parts of the world that appeal, and absorbs them, this is heaven, god is happy so when you become god you will be happy, well, all the happy parts of you that god wants will, the rest will be discarded... Maybe everything else will be destroyed at some later date, I doubt it would happen on an individual basis, god doesn't seem to bother with things on small time-scales, so it just gets discarded... and none of this makes god particularly evil, god just doesn't understands that god might not want to be god... It is very similar to your own imagination, if you imagine coming up with the perfect comeback to something someone said does it occur to you that some of the imaginary audience you dreamed up might not actually want to listen to your moment of triumph?

Derailment warning! We are perilously close to jumping onto the religion track!

[Vester]

This seems the most likely scenario if one assumes christianity. God gets bored, god creates the world, which creates reality TV... that is to say, god 'is' the world, god creates the world by turning part of god into the world, so yeah, you are made in gods image, everything is, because everything 'is' god... so god find all the parts of the world that appeal, and absorbs them, this is heaven, god is happy so when you become god you will be happy, well, all the happy parts of you that god wants will, the rest will be discarded... Maybe everything else will be destroyed at some later date, I doubt it would happen on an individual basis, god doesn't seem to bother with things on small time-scales, so it just gets discarded... and none of this makes god particularly evil, god just doesn't understands that god might not want to be god... It is very similar to your own imagination, if you imagine coming up with the perfect comeback to something someone said does it occur to you that some of the imaginary audience you dreamed up might not actually want to listen to your moment of triumph?

Derailment warning! We are perilously close to jumping onto the religion track!

Don't worry about the religion track, we're mellow here. Well, at least I am, when it comes to this. I like hearing other people's points of view on religion. (It's politics where I turn into an idiot.)

Anyway, so the thing about the Christian afterlife is that a lot of people take it literally, as, well, fluffy cloud heaven. A place with winged angels and trumpets and eternal bliss in the sight of God and whatnot. They should have learned long ago that nothing in the bible can or should be taken literally, especially not the discussions of eschatological happenings. That's why, for example, the Book of Revelations should be looked at purely from a sociological-historical perspective, because for one thing, if it were literal, the world would have long since ended, and for another, its author was fond of mood-altering substances.

Metaphysically, the Christian God doesn't want or do or need anything. It is. It exists. It is the fullest act of being (hence "Pure Act") that there is, and theoretically it is the most existent in its particular mode of being than anything can ever be in their own mode of being. In other words, God is the God-est. That's the philosophical take on god (not just the Christian God, but also the god referred to as the "Prime Mover", which is basically just a principle at the very beginning of the first ever chain of cause-and-effect - the two may overlap, but depending on what religion you belong to, or which denomination or interpretation of Christianity you subscribe to, they may also be entirely separate), at least.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

This seems the most likely scenario if one assumes christianity. God gets bored, god creates the world, which creates reality TV... that is to say, god 'is' the world, god creates the world by turning part of god into the world, so yeah, you are made in gods image, everything is, because everything 'is' god... so god find all the parts of the world that appeal, and absorbs them, this is heaven, god is happy so when you become god you will be happy, well, all the happy parts of you that god wants will, the rest will be discarded... Maybe everything else will be destroyed at some later date, I doubt it would happen on an individual basis, god doesn't seem to bother with things on small time-scales, so it just gets discarded... and none of this makes god particularly evil, god just doesn't understands that god might not want to be god... It is very similar to your own imagination, if you imagine coming up with the perfect comeback to something someone said does it occur to you that some of the imaginary audience you dreamed up might not actually want to listen to your moment of triumph?

Derailment warning! We are perilously close to jumping onto the religion track!

Don't worry about the religion track, we're mellow here. Well, at least I am, when it comes to this. I like hearing other people's points of view on religion. (It's politics where I turn into an idiot.)

Anyway, so the thing about the Christian afterlife is that a lot of people take it literally, as, well, fluffy cloud heaven. A place with winged angels and trumpets and eternal bliss in the sight of God and whatnot. They should have learned long ago that nothing in the bible can or should be taken literally, especially not the discussions of eschatological happenings. That's why, for example, the Book of Revelations should be looked at purely from a sociological-historical perspective, because for one thing, if it were literal, the world would have long since ended, and for another, its author was fond of mood-altering substances.

Metaphysically, the Christian God doesn't want or do or need anything. It is. It exists. It is the fullest act of being (hence "Pure Act") that there is, and theoretically it is the most existent in its particular mode of being than anything can ever be in their own mode of being. In other words, God is the God-est. That's the philosophical take on god (not just the Christian God, but also the god referred to as the "Prime Mover", which is basically just a principle at the very beginning of the first ever chain of cause-and-effect - the two may overlap, but depending on what religion you belong to, or which denomination or interpretation of Christianity you subscribe to, they may also be entirely separate), at least.

And this is why our scholars said that YOU should read the ORIGINAL books first, before analyzing them.

Yes, the Aramaic ones. Yes, I know that they are lost. But... WOULD YOU RATHER READ g(ay)reek translations-translations?

[Vester]

Um...

IWM...

The Gospels were originally written in Greek.

I didn't bring the Old Testament into it at all.

[Judas Maccabeus]

*waves at other Catholics* Hello!

And yes, every example of the afterlife I've had as a Catholic also gave it as being a non-physical state; heaven as spiritual nearness to God in the afterlife, hell as spiritual distance.  Which is, of course, the starting point from where my conceptions come from.  Dante might have been a Catholic himself, but I can't think of many Catholics around where I am, at least, who hold to the fire-and-brimstone v. fluffy clouds bit.  And we're fairly traditional in my parish, so yes, it's fair to say that such is the main belief, at least among those who've studied it.

[Vester]

*waves at other Catholics* Hello!

And yes, every example of the afterlife I've had as a Catholic also gave it as being a non-physical state; heaven as spiritual nearness to God in the afterlife, hell as spiritual distance.  Which is, of course, the starting point from where my conceptions come from.  Dante might have been a Catholic himself, but I can't think of many Catholics around where I am, at least, who hold to the fire-and-brimstone v. fluffy clouds bit.  And we're fairly traditional in my parish, so yes, it's fair to say that such is the main belief, at least among those who've studied it.

I'm pretty sure Pope John Paul II (I miss him... he was one of the most pro-women's-rights Popes) wrote quite a bit about the nature of heaven himself. I don't have the encyclicals on hand right now, but it's safe to say he thought the idea of fluffy cloud heaven was completely wrong.

Also:

*waves* Hello fellow Catholics!

[Jude]

There's really no mention of what heaven is like (excluding Revelation because of said  affinity for psilocybin) in the Bible except that it resembles the way Jesus told people to live - i.e., everybody looking out for each other and treating people as if they were all family.

Also, to get back to the "digitizing consciousness" thing, have I not already explained that making a computerized copy of your brain would be YOU in every sense? There's no essence of "you" that is somehow magically preserved throughout your life even when all your cells change. There's no "you" anyway; you're constantly in flux.

[RAM]

Unless there is a spiritual 'you' that maintains a connection to your physical body and does not attain a connection to the computerised copy. Given the lack of decisive proof on the topic it seems to be a valid argument...

And of course, the 'you' isn't completely random, it is a progressive process that is the result of a series of comparatively mild events, a sufficiently violent alteration could be perceived as severing the progress and creating a new series.

There is even an argument that the state of flux is somewhat random and has a statistically impractical but nevertheless possible chance of never taking place and/or being effectively reversed.

Not that I am currently advocating any of these, but they seem worthy of mention...

Of course the real killer is the fact that the copy and the original could co-exist, it isn't easy to persuade someone that the person they are looking at is themselves...