Which family and friends? You mother at 10 years old, 15? 20? 30? when? My father had dementia before he died. I’d rather not have him in that state again, certainly not for eternity.
Oh yes, believing in such a totally depressing view of life is so attractive that we reject liberty, equality, love, eternal bliss, and everything good for the sheer thrill of believing in meaningless despair. Yeah, right.It’s hardly surprising because the anti-religious crew have opted for a philosophy of despair. There’s nothing to look back to, into or forward to when you have blind, unquestioning faith in the hypothesis that we are just sparks in the dark…
Yes, and we can look at the history of Christianity, with its persecutions of pagans, Jews, and heretics, its burning of pagan temples and alleged witches, its widespread fear and hatred of other creeds, its constant wars between Christian nations, and so forth, and marvel at how well its precepts “teach us how to live according to the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity” (ironically the slogan of the ferociously anti-Catholic French Revolution).It’s incredible how people can deny the evidence of the Gospels which teach us how to live according to the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity yet they readily swallow NeoDarwinism which purports to be a metaphysical theory, has no moral significance and is rejected by many biologists…
Please share your hopes as to what happens when you die.
Isn’t it amazing how many they are, though. Wonder why that is…
Because the teachings of Christ are hard to practice. Most humans cannot live them. However, the Church is a hospital for sinners. Everyone in it is a sinner. The difference being, we fail, we repent and try again and again. Some of us do better than others.
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It doesn’t really matter what a person hopes. I could hope that I will end up with 72 virgins like some Muslims do but wishful thinking isn’t enough to believe.
My main concern in that regard is I want to say goodbye before I die. Bc I expect those goodbyes to be forever.The idea that your family and friends will **never **be with you again doesn’t bother you in the slightest? Who are you trying to kid?
How do I tell spiritual reality from ordinary reality? In ordinary reality age is relevant. How do I determine what is, and what is not a correct description of spiritual reality?
Buddhist teaching is that a person includes both physical and non-physical elements. AIUI, Christian teaching is similar. Don’t some people get resurrected glorious bodies?
Since we are changing throughout our lives, the question is which one of the various different versions of ourselves we are during our lives is the one which reflects our spiritual state. Which spouse do people with more than one marriage have? Like Jackie Kennedy-Onassis; she had two husbands. What’s the deal there?
I believe that Luke and Matthew, as well as Mark and John, wrote about the things they witnessed from their own individual perspectives, similar to the way journalists of today report about the things they’ve witnessed. But if a handful of journalists, though, were to write about a certain event from exactly the same perspective, using exactly the same words and idiomatic expressions, then a person could reasonably suspect that the journalists had worked together to make up a fictitious story. However, Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John wrote about the things they saw from their own individual point of view, using different words and idiomatic expressions, just as we would expect from any conscientiously objective journalists writing about an event. And although Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John reported differently from each other the things that they each saw and heard, their words are not contradictory as some have imagined; on the contrary, their words are quite complementary.
Since Christians believe in God, they naturally can posit the existence of God, who Webster defines as “the supreme or ultimate reality"; and since the world has never discovered any evidence to the contrary, it is valid. The theist posits God; the atheist posits “nothing.” And since the laws of physics state that from nothing comes nothing, nothing therefore has no power to create anything. God, by virtue of His omnipotence and omniscience, has the power to create the physical universe of space, time, and matter from the absence of space, time, and matter, since He is eternal and not limited to space, time, and matter. Therefore, although science states that “nothing” cannot cause a thing into existence (because nothing is not something except in the land of make believe), something (the pre-existent and eternal God) can cause things into existence from nothing.
It’s not amazing when you’re aware that forbidden fruit is enticing, breaking rules is exciting and the prospect of power and wealth is very inviting!
I’m certainly a minority so I’m not going to disagree with you there. I prefer “peculiar” or “unusual” to abnormal though.