Zygotes and heaven?

[Dauphin]

No but this is a soul within your cell… It is not like something outside of you that makes you work. It is core to the very fiber of your being. It is you.

I don’t think mitochondria are considered microorganisms. They’re simply organelles. A mitochondrion is no more a living being than my liver is; they form part of a greater organism.

 

[phantasm]

If God were to uncreate you right now, you would simply cease ever to have existed.

Jmcrae, that was a much better post.

Your quite right, God does not will anyone out of existence, rather he allows them to exist for all of eternity in ( depending on your subjective belief) in eternal agonizing damnation in hell or eternally separated from his loving embrace.

Remember, everyone seems to like to forget this, buy your Jesus said very clearly that only a few people are going to make it to heaven. Even inside the Church’s, the majority of parishioners are destined for hell, Jesus said it himself.

Either way, bizarre and such an obviously man made concept.

FOLLOW ME, OR ELSE!

 

[Dauphin]

Unless God actually creates you, He cannot know how you will choose to spend your eternity. Before He created you, He made no predictions at all about your life, because you didn’t exist, yet, and there was nothing for Him to watch you doing.

Keep in mind, we are not created in time - we are created in that Eternal instant of the Creation. It was only after everything (including you) was created, that God could “watch the video” so to speak, and see how everything turned out. By that time, it was far too late to unmake you.

My friend, I think you had better read up on Catholic theology. What you’re saying is simply wrong. From eternity, God has knows all things which have occurred, are occurring, and have yet to occur within time. To God, all moments in time are always present in their immediacy.

You’re making the mistake of speaking of God as if He exists within time, following the course of events to “discover” what happens.

 

[jmcrae]

Jmcrae, that was a much better post.

Your quite right, God does not will anyone out of existence, rather he allows them to exist for all of eternity in ( depending on your subjective belief) in eternal agonizing damnation in hell or eternally separated from his loving embrace.

Remember, everyone seems to like to forget this, buy your Jesus said very clearly that only a few people are going to make it to heaven.

And yet the Book of Revelation indicated that there is an uncountable number of Saints in Heaven, even now. However, perhaps the number of Saints in Heaven is fewer than the number of the damned.

FOLLOW ME, OR ELSE!

Actually, I think it’s more like, FOLLOW ME, OR ELSE!

I read the following quote somewhere, and copied it into my favourite quotes, because it makes sense to me:

***If we accept the premise that Hell exists, and that it is necessary, the rest of the story seems to be about God making every possible effort to keep us away from there, in much the same way as you might try to warn motorists that a bridge is out ahead of them. Never mind about the reason, the bridge is just out. Maybe we will find out what happened to the bridge later. ***

I wish I knew who wrote that.

 

[Dauphin]

Jmcrae, that was a much better post.

Your quite right, God does not will anyone out of existence, rather he allows them to exist for all of eternity in ( depending on your subjective belief) in eternal agonizing damnation in hell or eternally separated from his loving embrace.

Remember, everyone seems to like to forget this, buy your Jesus said very clearly that only a few people are going to make it to heaven. Even inside the Church’s, the majority of parishioners are destined for hell, Jesus said it himself.

Either way, bizarre and such an obviously man made concept.

FOLLOW ME, OR ELSE!

Yours are childish words. Because God refuses to treat you like a child and spare you the consequences of your actions, you whine and stamp your feet. Because He refuses to wheel out some happy ending at the end of time, you think He’s “mean”.

With the great gift of human dignity comes great responsibility. Life isn’t a game. It isn’t all smiles and giggles. The reality of hell is essential if life is to be anything but vacuous playtime.

 

[phantasm]

My friend, I think you had better read up on Catholic theology. What you’re saying is simply wrong. From eternity, God has knows all things which have occurred, are occurring, and have yet to occur within time. To God, all moments in time are always present in their immediacy.

You’re making the mistake of speaking of God as if He exists within time, following the course of events to “discover” what happens.

I tried to tell him.

( Do you know how many times on this forum that Catholics have told me that I’m completely and utterly ignorant in regards to Catholic teaching? :tsktsk

 

[phantasm]

The reality of hell is essential if life is to be anything but vacuous playtime.

Then what is heaven’s hell?

 

[Dauphin]

Then what is heaven’s hell?

I think you had better reformulate that question.

 

[phantasm]

And yet the Book of Revelation indicated that there is an uncountable number of Saints in Heaven,

If that’s in the Bible, then the primitive man who wrote that was a very simple man.

There have been a finite number of people upon this planet, there is actually an exact number. There are only so many Saints, unless you think that there have been an infinite number people upon the earth?

If that bit of scripture is real, you shouldn’t be quoting it.

 

[jmcrae]

My friend, I think you had better read up on Catholic theology. What you’re saying is simply wrong. From eternity, God has knows all things which have occurred, are occurring, and have yet to occur within time. To God, all moments in time are always present in their immediacy.

Actual things; not potentialities. If He never creates you, you do not exist to make choices, so God can’t “predict” your choices, because they are never going to be made - He does not “predict” what does not/will never exist.

You’re making the mistake of speaking of God as if He exists within time, following the course of events to “discover” what happens.

Quite the opposite. God exists outside of time, simultaneously at the end after Time has finished and at the beginning before Time began, and everything is happening all at once - when God creates you, He is not doing so within Time - He is simultaneously creating both your conception and your death, both together in the same Eternal instant, and watching the choices that you made/will make, from His vantage point at the end of Time - the Judgment Day - when everything has already been finished, all of the decisions have already been made, and cannot or will not at that point be unmade - and because He is simultaneously at the beginning and at the end, He remembers at the beginning what He knew at the end. (So to speak. Since God is outside of time, the term “remember” is inadequate, since God does not experience events sequentially, but I hope you understand my meaning.)

 

[phantasm]

I think you had better reformulate that question.

I understand, you believe that the Creator of the Universe created a very simple reward / punishment system for the human mammal.

Of course, this system is very much dependent upon worshiping the right God. The means of finding this correct God, was of course passed down to primitive and very much uneducated men living in the desert thousands of years ago.

Such a great delivery system, that deep pockets of this globe have yet to be penetrated with the good news, courtesy of the creator of the universe!

Gotcha.

 

[Dauphin]

If that’s in the Bible, then the primitive man who wrote that was a very simple man.

There have been a finite number of people upon this planet, there is actually an exact number. There are only so many Saints, unless you think that there have been an infinite number people upon the earth?

I think there’s a difference between uncountable and infinite. If you devoted the rest of your life to counting to 100 Trillion, you couldn’t do it.

 

[jmcrae]

If that’s in the Bible, then the primitive man who wrote that was a very simple man.

I think it’s clear in the passage that he could not count the number. He observed an extremely large crowd of people in Heaven, the number of which he was unable to estimate. Obviously, God knows the number, not only of the people, but also of the hairs on their heads, etc.

 

[Dauphin]

I understand, you believe that the Creator of the Universe created a very simple reward / punishment system for the human mammal.

Of course, this system is very much dependent upon worshiping the right God. The means of finding this correct God, was of course passed down to primitive and very much uneducated men living in the desert thousands of years ago.

Such a great delivery system, that deep pockets of this globe have yet to be penetrated with the good news, courtesy of the creator of the universe!

Gotcha.

The existence of God is knowable with absolute certainty from the light of reason alone. That’s an essential point of Catholic theology which grounds it perfectly. God may be known by His works through reason.

If you want us to take this point further, you’re going to have to start a new thread asking for a reasoned demonstration of God’s existence.

 

[jmcrae]

I understand, you believe that the Creator of the Universe created a very simple reward / punishment system for the human mammal.

I don’t see it so much as reward/punishment as it is the natural consequence of our choice to either be with God, or not.

If we don’t act like we want to be with God during this life, and we continually choose the evil, then when we come to the end, guess what, we are separated from God. Separation from God is called “Hell” and from what I understand it is rather painful, but not because of fire or guys in red suits - rather, because God is the source of all good, and when we are separated from all that is good, we are, by definition, in an evil place.

However, if we go through our lives sincerely seeking out the good, and acting like we want to be with God, then at the end of our lives, we will find ourselves with God, who is the source of all that is good, and we will be, and again, simply by definition, in a good place.

 

[phantasm]

I think there’s a difference between uncountable and infinite. If you devoted the rest of your life to counting to 100 Trillion, you couldn’t do it.

There have only been so many people alive on this planet. There can only be so many Saints.

Jesus made it very clear that only a few people are going to get into heaven.

With the message from Jesus, it is a statistical improbability that there could possibly be an uncountable number of Saints in heaven, as most people period, are in hell.

This is a number which best estimates the number of people who have ever lived;

prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

106,456,367,669

Here is another number from a different source, you can see it is fairly close;
math.hawaii.edu/~ramsey/People.html

96,100,000,000

Now, take a look at those two numbers and you will see that both of them are countable and finite.

If every single one of those people are Saints, that makes Jesus a liar, because he himself said only a few will find their way to heaven.

If most are in hell, only a few in heaven, and obviously, even fewer Saints, voila, a very countable number is what you will be presented with.

Like I said, the primitive man who wrote revelation, was a very simple man, indeed.

 

[Leopard]

It was never Jesus purpose to communicate to us any absolute population statistics about Heaven or Hell, or any kind of ratio of how many saints are in heaven as compared to how many damned are in Hell.

His purpose was to tell us that God offers every person salvation, but that everyone has the freedom to accept or reject this. The exact proportions of how many accept or reject God are not the point. The point is first that we choose for ourselves to accept God, and second that we help as many others as possible along the way to make the right choice.

 

[Dauphin]

There have only been so many people alive on this planet. There can only be so many Saints.

Jesus made it very clear that only a few people are going to get into heaven.

With the message from Jesus, it is a statistical improbability that there could possibly be an uncountable number of Saints in heaven, as most people period, are in hell.

This is a number which best estimates the number of people who have ever lived;

prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

106,456,367,669

Here is another number from a different source, you can see it is fairly close;
math.hawaii.edu/~ramsey/People.html

96,100,000,000

Now, take a look at those two numbers and you will see that both of them are countable and finite.

If every single one of those people are Saints, that makes Jesus a liar, because he himself said only a few will find their way to heaven.

If most are in hell, only a few in heaven, and obviously, even fewer Saints, voila, a very countable number is what you will be presented with.

Like I said, the primitive man who wrote revelation, was a very simple man, indeed.

If you think these numbers are “countable”, then start counting.

Tell me when you’re done.

 

[phantasm]

His purpose was to tell us that God offers every person salvation, but that everyone has the freedom to accept or reject this. The exact proportions of how many accept or reject God are not the point…

I disagree, it is the sole point. The creator of the universe has created finite life, only to have the majority of that life upon it’s bodily death, live for eternity in hell.

This is the plan of salvation, most go to hell, a minority go to heaven. It is Gods will, otherwise the numbers would be reversed.

Clearly, this is the way God wants it, as this is the system God created. If God wanted more people in heaven, he would have used his omniscience to create a different plan, maybe one that didn’t require a blood sacrifice!

 

[jmcrae]

I disagree, it is the sole point. The creator of the universe has created finite life, only to have the majority of that life upon it’s bodily death, live for eternity in hell.

This is the plan of salvation, most go to hell, a minority go to heaven. It is Gods will, otherwise the numbers would be reversed.

Clearly, this is the way God wants it, as this is the system God created. If God wanted more people in heaven, he would have used his omniscience to create a different plan, maybe one that didn’t require a blood sacrifice!

It occurs to me that from God’s point of view, even one human being in Hell would be “too many.” But it is our own choice, whether to go to Heaven or to Hell. God doesn’t force people to be atheists, nor to do evil things. They choose these things freely.