Doubts about Hell, suffering. Please Help!

[AnAtheist]

john doran:

sounds sort of like the first, since it sounds like you are suggesting that the universe could be a giant virtual particle.

A giant quantum fluctuation, with a symmetry breach quite early.

people have been trying to avoid the initial singularity for decades, and none have managed.

Because we haven’t got a quantified theory of gravitation yet. After the introduction of a quantified space-time, the singularities will vanish automatically. A singularity is not necessary, a time delta small enough will do too.

 

[oriel36]

AnAtheist:

A giant quantum fluctuation, with a symmetry breach quite early.

Because we haven’t got a quantified theory of gravitation yet. After the introduction of a quantified space-time, the singularities will vanish automatically. A singularity is not necessary, a time delta small enough will do too.

I am sure you are impressing the hell out of each other with this empirical chanting but I strongly suggest that you both learn the correct value for the axial rotation of the Earth if you want to model the motions of the planets and the stars.

While it is intially tricky to figure out how the average 24 hour day translates into constant axial rotation at 15 degrees per hour giving 24 hours/360 degrees in total,I am confident that Christians who rely so much on the clock will give at least one hour to understand the Equation of Time correction which makes everything possible.The tricky part is seeing the pre-Copernican equable 24 hour day translate into constant axial rotation at 24 hours exactly through 360 degrees.

"After Harrison developed his chronometer, British ships would find their position by observing the time and the height of the Sun at Local Apparent Noon. The height of the Sun would produce the ship’s Latitude. The time of Local Apparent Noon, recorded as 12:00 local time, was compared to the time back in Greenwich as shown on Harrison’s chronometer and the difference would produce the ship’s longitude.

"Well, almost. Back at the beginning of the Longitude section, I said that it takes an average time of 24 hours for the Earth to rotate 360 degrees. The third and last idea needed for longitude is the Equation of Time.

Whenever I’ve mentioned clock time, I’ve called it average time. That’s because the time that everyone keeps for their daily affairs is an average value. But if you measure the length of the day by timing the exact amount of time that is required to go from LAN (Local Apparent Noon) on one day, to LAN on the next day, you discover a curious thing: the length of the day changes slowly. Starting with the clock day equal to the actual Sun day, the Sun day gets slightly longer, then slightly shorter until the clock day and the Sun day are of equal length again. The process continues, but this time the Sun day get shorter first, then longer. Don’t confuse this changing *day *length with the seasonal change in daylight. I’m referring to changes in the whole day, light and dark together. Clock time and Sun time are equal in length only four times during the year, on the other days they are different by as much as 16.5 minutes"

pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teache…ons/packet.html

Your woo-woo physics of singularities and quantum vacuums is a result of a very basic and silly error that originates at Flamsteed and while I hope that Catholics will no longer be fooled that you said something of substance,they will eventually pity that you probably spent you life chasing conceptual rainbows of a cartoon universe.

hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/JennyChen.shtml

The empirical tradition has to be the dumbest group of people ever to set foot on the planet,the values they adhere to proves it.

 

[john_doran]

eptatorata:

Naturalistic explanation? Human error, self-delusion, outright fraud? Can you decisively rule out any of these?

no, not at all. i can’t “decisively” rule out the actuality of any logical possibility

i was merely asking if you actually reject the existence of miracles, if you had done the research you stipulated as necessary for those who accept them.

if you are agnostic toward their existence, fair enough.

 

[john_doran]

AnAtheist:

Ok, lets assume, the universe did need a cause.
Why should this cause *necessarily *have to be an intelligent being?
Why not a natural (but outside of our nature==universe) cause?

natural causes require antecedent conditions and covering laws. but there is nothing antecedent to the necessary first cause, so it can’t be a “natural” cause.

moreover, if the first cause was some set of causally necessary and sufficient conditions, then the effect (e.g. the universe) would always have been present with them, since, by definition, when the necessary and sufficient causes for an effect occur, so does the effect. but the universe came into being a finite time ago. which means that it must have been brought into being in the absence of such conditions. like a person makes free choices.

 

[john_doran]

AnAtheist:

A giant quantum fluctuation, with a symmetry breach quite early.

sounds neat. do you have a reference for someone who’s come up with a workable model?

AnAtheist:

Because we haven’t got a quantified theory of gravitation yet. After the introduction of a quantified space-time, the singularities will vanish automatically. A singularity is not necessary, a time delta small enough will do too.

well, the hawking-hartle model is quantum gravitational. so is vilenkin’s. but the only way they manage to avoid the initial singularity is by introducing and reifying imaginary time. and just stipulating that imaginary time is real doesn’t make it any less meaningless or any more real.

i mean, if you’re going to buy that, why not buy me just stating “leprechauns exist”?

or, for that matter, “god exists”?

 

[AnAtheist]

john doran:

natural causes require antecedent conditions and covering laws. but there is nothing antecedent to the necessary first cause, so it can’t be a “natural” cause.

moreover, if the first cause was some set of causally necessary and sufficient conditions, then the effect (e.g. the universe) would always have been present with them, since, by definition, when the necessary and sufficient causes for an effect occur, so does the effect. but the universe came into being a finite time ago. which means that it must have been brought into being in the absence of such conditions.

Not if time was caused by that effect itself, then your expression “always have been present” is void.

like a person makes free choices.

:bigyikes: You agree with me, that free choices are uncaused effects? Which means, that if humans have the ability to make free choices, aka Free Will, we experience a plethora of first causes every day. Which of course contradicts all the first uncaused cause arguments, that rely on “everything must have a cause”. Welcome to another inconsistency of Christianity.

 

[AnAtheist]

john doran:

well, the hawking-hartle model is quantum gravitational. so is vilenkin’s. but the only way they manage to avoid the initial singularity is by introducing and reifying imaginary time. and just stipulating that imaginary time is real doesn’t make it any less meaningless or any more real.

Yes, current models are far from perfect. Give physics a decade or two.

i mean, if you’re going to buy that, why not buy me just stating “leprechauns exist”?
or, for that matter, “god exists”?

Well, those models explain with far less assumptions needed than for stating “leprechauns exist”, why the universe exists. The universe exists, that’s observable, leprechauns are not observable. Plus, if leprechauns exist, some other things should exist too, like rainbows pointing to a pot gold. The latter is evidently wrong, hence is the whole Celtic belief, thus no leprechauns. You may save the leprechauns by stating, they exist but not quite the way, Celtic folklore assumes, but then we get attributeless leprechauns, which turns leprechaun-believers into deistic or positve agnostic leprechaun-believers.
Same goes for the Big Leprechaun.

 

[LSK]

If one has no faith, no amount of argument will convince them so there is no reason to argue.

Hermie - I heard a wonderful talk by Father Corapi recently on EWTN. He stated (and I am paraphrasing) that when we are troubled by the evil and pain in the world, look to the greatest of all evils - the Crucified Christ - and remember that from that one cruel, horrible act (His creatures, created out of love, killing Him!) such wonderful things have happenned, namely the forgiveness of sins and the opening of the gates of Heaven.

We cannot judge the Lord. We can only strive daily to relieve what suffering we see around us, quietly and with dignity. Some can do more than others, but at the very least all of us can pray.

Now hang in there, stop being so negative, go outside and smile at a neighbor.

 

[oriel36]

john doran:

sounds neat. do you have a reference for someone who’s come up with a workable model?

well, the hawking-hartle model is quantum gravitational. so is vilenkin’s. but the only way they manage to avoid the initial singularity is by introducing and reifying imaginary time. and just stipulating that imaginary time is real doesn’t make it any less meaningless or any more real.

i mean, if you’re going to buy that, why not buy me just stating “leprechauns exist”?

or, for that matter, “god exists”?

I have one copyright to my name going back to 1990.The work is based on stellar collapse and non periodic geometry and in determining that a star collapses in the same efficient way as most of natural phenomena appears to operate,it means that a star never collapses to a point so say goodbye to black holes.

There are only two graphics in my 1990 presentation,one concerning non periodic geometry and one presenting stellar collapse consisting of two outer boundary rings and a smaller central ring as a point of intersection

Considering that the work in copyrighted in 1990 I am rightly proud that in 1994 or 4 years later this image appeared -

http://www.mindspring.com/~joeuhrig/Pictures/Space/sn1987A.jpg

Christians should jettison that relativistic/qm garbage and begin to discover the efficiency of nature around them just as they love its beauty.It won’t come from theories no matter how much you try to make them believe it does.

mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fib.html

I am proud of my work but it will remain private whie the horrible relativistic nonsensical exotic woo-woo physics is in circulation and the cretins who follow that stuff.

 

[NFPfamily]

Hermione:

Who am I to question God’s justice, right?

I certainly don’t want to do this. (And I hope it’s not a sin!) But it really bothers me that apparently so many people - most people, in fact - go to Hell. I don’t think most people are evil enough to deserve eternal torture. (Frankly, I don’t think anyone is evil enough to deserve to be tortured for ETERNITY.)

olrl.org/doctrine/cry.shtml I read this story which claims to be an account of the life of a hell-bound soul. And this person wasn’t supremely evil. All I got from the story was that she was selfish, materialistic, and didn’t pray. Should such a person spend an infinite length of time being tortured by the fires of Hell? It just doesn’t seem fair to me. At this rate most of us are going to be burned for eternity.

An earlier poster said that people who are motivated by a fear of punishment are like trained rats. It’s pretty hard not to fear eternal torture that most of us will be subjected to.

I briefly read through this link, and as I scanned it, something jumped out at me. The person says "We died with willful resolve to be separated from God." Regardless of how serious her sins were, she is saying that the ultimate reason she is in hell is because she rejected God, plain and simple. She chose not to accept God’s mercy. She didn’t feel repentant for her sins. She didn’t live her life to try to achieve Heaven. We need to live our lives to the best of our ability to get our souls Home. If you do that, then don’t be afraid.

 

[Genesis315]

:bigyikes: You agree with me, that free choices are uncaused effects? Which means, that if humans have the ability to make free choices, aka Free Will, we experience a plethora of first causes every day. Which of course contradicts all the first uncaused cause arguments, that rely on “everything must have a cause”. Welcome to another inconsistency of Christianity.

Well, only humans, angels, and God have free will. So all first causes would have to come from one of those entities. Since human beings didn’t exist at the beginning, that first cause must come from God.

 

[Thea]

Hermione:

I forgive you. I’m sorry I got upset and said bad things to you in return. Forgive me as well.

You know what’s really disabling and debilitating? A constant and overwhelming fear of Hell. I think I’ll end up in the mental hospital before long. (Just like another person who replied to my other post about Hell.) I already feel like vomiting and ending my life whenever I start examining my conscience.

And has God come to take away my pain? No, and why should I expect Him to? People in North Korea are suffering far worse things and they receive no help either.

Dear Hermione
I think you are a warm and charitable person who is being held back by unreasonable fear. A poster in the other thread referred us to a link where it is clearly stated that satan works his evil on good people to make them feel fear, despair, overwhelming panic - it is the best he can do, because he is unlikely to tempt them to real sin. I think you are probably one of these good people. Your forgiveness of Philthy and request for forgiveness was the sign of a generous and humble soul.

If you really are afraid that you have mortal sin on your conscience, is there a local friendly priest you could have a chat with? Is there anyone in your church you can confide in, who will help and reassure you? I do not sense in you any evidence you are someone who would reject the forgiveness of God. BTW I find the Sacrament of Reconciliation is now a great comfort, although it used to frighten me very much.

Whatever you do, please try not to stay in this condition. I also worry too much but have found solace through more prayer and also by leaning on people in my local church. You have more strength than you think - and hopefully you will find people to give you the support you need

I will pray for you
Thea

 

[Thea]

the other thing I thought was maybe all of us, when we say our prayers at night, could remember to include the people who post in these forums. All of them in one go so no-one is left out!

 

[john_doran]

AnAtheist:

Not if time was caused by that effect itself, then your expression “always have been present” is void.

i’m not sure what you mean.

if the necessary and sufficient cause for an effect is eternal, then so is the effect. ergo, the universe would be the eternal effect of its eternally existing necessary and sufficient causal conditions.

but the universe isn’t eternal. ergo, it has no eternal necessary and sufficient causal conditions.

:bigyikes: You agree with me, that free choices are uncaused effects? Which means, that if humans have the ability to make free choices, aka Free Will, we experience a plethora of first causes every day. Which of course contradicts all the first uncaused cause arguments, that rely on “everything must have a cause”. Welcome to another inconsistency of Christianity.

yes, i agree with you.

but how does it contradict the first cause arguments? at worst it entails “everything that begins to exist is (ultimately) the result of a personal first cause”.

sounds good to me.

 

[john_doran]

AnAtheist:

Yes, current models are far from perfect. Give physics a decade or two.

well, that’s my point: what do you mean, wait a decade or two? physics (and the rest of science) isn’t a search for a theory that describes the world the way we want it to be.

at any rate, despite a select few scientists’ earnest desire to eliminate the initial singularity, and despite their collective genius, it has yet to be done.

seems like a radical reversal of the spirit of science, to me.

AnAtheist:

Well, those models explain with far less assumptions needed than for stating “leprechauns exist”, why the universe exists. The universe exists, that’s observable, leprechauns are not observable. Plus, if leprechauns exist, some other things should exist too, like rainbows pointing to a pot gold. The latter is evidently wrong, hence is the whole Celtic belief, thus no leprechauns. You may save the leprechauns by stating, they exist but not quite the way, Celtic folklore assumes, but then we get attributeless leprechauns, which turns leprechaun-believers into deistic or positve agnostic leprechaun-believers.
Same goes for the Big Leprechaun.

not true. i can make a theory of leprechauns that involves only leprechauns - there’s certainly no logical entailments between pots of gold and leprechauns (unless it’s that the pots of gold are impossible to acquire ) and then i’ll just declare that it’s true.

 

[eptatorata]

john doran:

seems like a radical reversal of the spirit of science, to me.

There’s nothing wrong with having an idea of how one wants the world to be and concocting a matching theory to fit the facts. The reversal of spirit doesn’t come into play until fact is made to fit the theory or a theory isn’t abandoned despite a lack of explanatory or predictive power compared to other theories.

 

[misterX]

eptatorata:

What an extended analogy. If as a parent, you had perfect foreknowledge of every thought and action of your child and the power to change literally anything at will, be it the child’s environment or its thoughts, then what’s the point of punishment if not self-gratification?

Well if this was the case one would have to strictly monitor the child… forbidding it from doing what it wants…when it wants. I’m sure the child will grow full of love for me after keeping it on such a tight leash all of its life…Or i could teach him whats wrong or right and let him go and live his life freely…Forgiving many of his little mistakes, and punishing him when he does something wrong even after he was told it was wrong to do so…Now you might say but why punish them if you knew they were going to do it, but i still let them do it? Well i wonder how many parents out there have been faced with the situation of a defiant child… who dispite all your warnings while standing there in front of you will do something that they know is wrong… just to test their parents patience? should they punish the child? and if so do you think they should punish the child before or after it did wrong? And i don’t know about what sort of house hold you grew up in, but i’m pretty sure my parents didn’t feel any self-gratification when i was punished.

 

[eptatorata]

misterX:

Well if this was the case one would have to strictly monitor the child…

You miss the point. You already know absolutely everything there is to know about the child, from birth to death. You can also change any event or any thought the child will ever have at a whim. In other words, you have complete foreknowledge and complete control over the child’s life experience, whether you exercise the control or not.

Why would you punish the child for anything?

 

[AnAtheist]

john doran:

i’m not sure what you mean.
if the necessary and sufficient cause for an effect is eternal, then so is the effect. ergo, the universe would be the eternal effect of its eternally existing necessary and sufficient causal conditions.
but the universe isn’t eternal. ergo, it has no eternal necessary and sufficient causal conditions.

And what if the cause is periodic? Then it could be eternal and cause finite effects.

but how does it contradict the first cause arguments? at worst it entails “everything that begins to exist is (ultimately) the result of a personal first cause”.

Well, that’s not the usual 1st cause argument, but ok.

 

[AnAtheist]

john doran:

well, that’s my point: what do you mean, wait a decade or two? physics (and the rest of science) isn’t a search for a theory that describes the world the way we want it to be.

No argument from me. I mean, in a decade or two (or a hundred) we will know about those early stages of the universe, we do not know about yet.

at any rate, despite a select few scientists’ earnest desire to eliminate the initial singularity, and despite their collective genius, it has yet to be done.

Bah, it took 350 years to find a proof for Fermat’s Theorem. The early universe’s cosmology is analysed for only 50 years now, give it a decade or two…

i can make a theory of leprechauns that involves only leprechauns - there’s certainly no logical entailments between pots of gold and leprechauns (unless it’s that the pots of gold are impossible to acquire ) and then i’ll just declare that it’s true.

Exactly!!! While there is the possibility (although faint if you ask me), that *some *god may or even must have created the universe, to assume it is the Christian one is a non sequitur. For that, you need additional proof, and that does not come from reliable sources.