NO AFTERLIFE (Page 2)

Zanjan: Substance def: "a particular kind of matter with uniform properties."

When I ask 'What's the matter with you?', I don't want to hear you say 'Nothing" - my aim is to get a substantive response.

Zanjan: We have no idea what the essence of a soul is; we only know its a living entity, not seen with physical eyes but recognized by its presence.

TheismIsUntenable: We don't "know" any of that. There isn't any evidence for the soul.

Zanjan: Since 6 billion people know what the soul is, maybe you should be speaking for yourself here. There's a lot of dictionaries and religions to convince otherwise.

Despite being cognizant of its reality, none of those people have invented their own definition of the soul - would it be plausible that you could?

Those 6 billion see the evidence and agree on what that evidence is. Since you're determined to stand against the Tsunami of agreement, what would you call "evidence"?

TheismIsUntenable: A lot of people understand what a unicorn is too. Doesn't mean there's any evidence for them.

Zanjan: Instead of the word "understanding", perhaps the word you want is "familiar".

Our understanding of the unicorn is that it was a fanciful caricature of the narwhal or a rhinoceros. Some folks would argue whether any of them had souls.

You still didn't answer my question. I was very much looking forward to your giving it a shot.

TheismIsUntenable: Makes no difference how many people believe something.

GeraldtheGnome: There's no evidence for or against that there is an afterlife, there really is no way to prove or disprove it.

Zanjan: TIU, I see you shied away from my question. It's now not possible for you to defend your position. Funny how denial works - it takes no effort at all. That's your privilege. You have to live with yourself, not me.

Many times, I've seen a handful of people make a huge difference. The history of both war and religion has shown us what can happen when a small group is outnumbered. In neither case though, does anyone overtake the world. The world moves forward with or without us.

Zanjan: GTG, we intuit there's a Hereafter. God has explained how and why this is true. He wouldn't do that without giving us evidence of the truth. The truth stands the test of time. God asks us questions about our perceptions; if we couldn't reason, why would He do this?

The actual *proof* of the Hereafter is only good to the observer. Believers have seen their visions, they've seen the prophecies fullfilled, and people have died and lived to tell about it. There's no way any of them have control over these events. There's no way to kill or mute the intangible or to disrupt their consistency.

Those are evidences - things we can accept as realities because they can't be explained away or reproduce them.

Zanjan: When I read in scripture "Is it thy wish to die upon thy bed?!", I found that amusing. Most people would answer, "Yes, and quietly in my sleep please".

This, of course, sports no courage or glory - no sparkle throughout eternity. Today, we have some names of our forbearers whose efforts in life were so memorable, their name never dies. They gave it everything they had. This is the immortality in the Hereafter as well.

Now, if all souls continue to exist, each has to live with how they spent their life on earth. God tells us that, as soon as we pass on, the reality of our true rank and station will be revealed to us, in the presence of all the living souls - that is, those that have life.

What if, when the reality is made known to you, you see you were the fool the whole time? That would certainly give new meaning to dying of mortification. You couldn't go back for a redo. As on earth, your place is with those who are just like you - that doesn't change no matter how much you know.

Don't take this as anything but a reasonable reflection. We've all done really stupid things even when we've known better. Everyone of us can recall a seriously embarrassing moment. Even animals have had those. We just don't want that to be our last or foremost memory.

TheismIsUntenable: I think I've been over the evidence thing before on the soul question but I apologize for misreading it.

Take this hypothetical scenario:

You have two individuals. They are indistinguishable from one another in their physical appearance and actions. One of them has a soul and the other does not. How do you determine one from the other?

TheismIsUntenable: "Believers have seen their visions, they've seen the prophecies fullfilled, and people have died and lived to tell about it."

And people have been abducted by aliens, seen Bigfoot, and traveled out of their bodies to Saturn.

Or...they haven't and these are simply hallucinations. I'm inclined to think it is the latter.

GeraldtheGnome: I am grammatically incorrect when it comes to politically correct English and so on. I also don’t have a politically correct way of thinking in any way whatsoever. Now I will put political correctness aside. The mind is not something you can physically show anyone even though it is real.

The soul is a made up concept, no one has a soul. As for things about a god named God and about any god I will use another message to explain what I think about that. In regards to the afterlife it is as silly to claim that there is an afterlife as it is to claim that there isn’t. No one knows and no one will ever know. By the way the damn book and every other holy book similar to it was written on scrolls and so on so if anything is true then the words were found within the scriptures instead of within a scripture. The world is a planet, the only moving that it does is by rotation. I am not mocking anyone.

GeraldtheGnome: A lurker who is perfect in his own mind goes psychotic about having a message without at least two paragraphs, now hopefully he's not around but if he is then he should keep it to himself.

I put this on Blackshoes's forum and the bit about a god named God is applicable to Zanjan's mistaken certainty about what has already been disproven.

Nothing has changed on this forum, another day and another day of mistakes. The first mistakes on this forum were made in the first message of this forum. When someone doesn't watch and listen to a certain number of videos as I have been told, which wasn't a surprise to me, then that person doesn't have the right to delete the messages that have those videos because that person doesn't even know what they are about. If there is even a hint that it goes against the religious beliefs of the Jew (in one case that I know) then it's not right, if it is even thought that it goes against the religious beliefs of the Christian (and I can give two examples of people that think that way), then it's not right.. None of them know that, all three of them though are notorious for deleting this though for no valid reason. I am civil and I am not evil, it's not a civil thing to do to delete the messages that most strongly go against someone or are at least believed to be strongly against that person's belief system.

What really is considered to be blasphemous ? How many times did I tell anyone that I had things that were blasphemous ? I have told people that I have things that some may perceive to be blasphemous ? Is it okay to always delete anything considered to be blasphemous and/or go against someone in another way because that someone is blasphemous or mistaken to be blasphemous ? Why are some people afraid to answer if their book has anything about a flat Earth ? If someone has fully read the damn book then that person would know if a flat Earth is mentioned at all in the book or just doesn't know if there is or isn't anything about a flat Earth in it. I'm supposed to withstand the political correctness that is used on here but I still don't need to withstand false claims, false accusations, delusions, insults and slander.

If there is a god then how did he come about ? With that I don't get an answer or the unproven he never had an origin. How was there a beginning ? With that I don't get an answer or the unproven there never was a beginning. The first line is a claim that there was a beginning and that the first one to form from nothing was the god of the story. If he is around right now somewhere then something was used to form that god otherwise he is made up. If everything was created by a god then what was each thing created by for that god to be able to be able to create even one thing at all ? What was used to create something is never mentioned each time and how each thing was created is never mentioned until you get to the stories about all of the life forms. In the first six day creation story it has that seeds were used to create land plants. Where did the seeds come from ? Since there is nothing about how seeds were created the only answer is that they were the seeds of life that came from non-life. All of those plants grew in a second or at least before the the first six or seven hours of that day without sunlight and without water into the adult species and subspecies of those plants. That is an example of spontaneous generation. A god of no origin is a made up god. So without a god there was no Earth, no Sun and there wasn't anything else, not even a heaven. The entire book of Genesis is made up.

Zanjan: TIU wrote: “You have two individuals………One of them has a soul and the other does not. How do you determine one from the other?”

Assuming you’re talking about humans, both DO have souls but, in keeping with your scenario, we’ll say one soul has withered away to nothingness. This happened because that one was deprived of the bounties of God; most often this situation is self-inflicted since they’ve denied God.

This person has failed to develop their potential so can’t display any real virtue. They don’t behave in a noble manner and gradually descend into a worsening state.

Basically, it’s a case of starvation – the soul has be fed and nurtured so it can thrive and flourish. The healthier it is, the more empowered it is to learn and produce good things, especially things which are enduring.

The godless person is heartless, self-centered and fearful but, the “soulless” person has no sense of humanity; they’re barbarously cruel and wicked as all get out. Think of the worst human being who ever walked the earth……ok, there’s a lot of them but you get the drift.

Really, its very easy to distinguish the difference, even while blindfolded. Now, if you were to have two identically nice individuals, it would be harder to tell whose soul was healthier. You’d need some time to watch them in action.

TheismIsUntenable: That doesn't answer my question. How do you "test" for a difference if their actions are the same and their physical traits are the same?

Zanjan: Ah yes, the actions........it stands that if their actions are the same, they're the same person as seen in a mirror. The image on the polished surface has no sense of "self".

By the way, physical traits are irrelevant - every human has the same parts.

"And people have been abducted by aliens................."

Is it fair to compare those who like to attract attention to themself to the those who've selflessly volunteered their services to help their fellow man?

TheismIsUntenable: I guess I don't understand what a soul is. You don't seem to be telling me that much.

So for example, and it is silly, but you're telling me all about these invisible sock stealing leprechauns. You're telling me about their hair color and their clothes, and how evil they are, etc. But you haven't confirmed they even exist at all yet...you're putting the kart before the horse.

Before you can explain all these *effects* from a soul, you first need to confirm souls even exist and so far you don't appear to be stating how this has been confirmed at all. It is just assumed.

Zanjan: Hmm, gee, I thought I'd mentioned that - it's the faculty of "intellect".
It's the power to unravel mysteries, comprehend the abstract, be creative, and appreciate beauty. It's the capacity to know and worship God.

The "effect" will be the brightest effusions of one's mind and heart.

Therefore, when you die, all the bad falls away - only the good in your soul is immortal, if only a tiny ember.

TheismIsUntenable: So if a soul is "intellect" then it isn't a useful word since there's already a word for intellect. I'm sure that's not really all you mean.

But if it is then you can toss the word soul in the garbage.

GeraldtheGnome: The same mistakes are always made. There really is no god named God to know or to worship, even everything based on Judaism, Islam, Christianity, your own religion, that of every other religion based on any god are based on fantasies. Each god of every religion is made up, so no matter if you use the name God that can't be found from anything from The Iron Age and before it or any other name of your religion, of Islam, of Christianity and any others if there are any others based on it it is all about a made up god. A god in the first verse of the damn Bible was referred to as elohim that really isn't singular though it was accidentally used as such, it is really the plural of eloah which means what you refer to as God or as the word god for any god. Your religion and those I just told you about are from a polytheist religion where El, eloah, YHWY, Yahweh and so on for his name was one of the made up gods. There is no so and you can use riddles as much as you want to answer something even though it still will come to the fact that you don't know a god named God and you are worshipping an imaginary god.

You are guessing what is so, there is no way that you know. What is this crap about effusions ? Regardless of the Oprah way of thinking the mind is merely about how someone thinks and the heart is really nothing other than an organ that pumps the blood around. The soul is imaginary and no one knows anything about any heaven, the afterlife and any other superstitious/supernatural beliefs that are claimed to be true.

Zanjan: TIU, what alternative words could I have used? Intellect is the word God used for the general character of the soul's reality. Would it help if I told you what it's NOT?

As I said before, we can't know what the "essence" of the soul is because we didn't create it; but, we know what it does and some of the powers it has. It's what differentiates us from animals - in other words, it's NOT a heritable feature.

The soul permits us to rise above natural instincts. Therefore, it's NOT a product of the brain - it drives the brain, directing it what to do; the soul is operating at all times. It's our true identity in terms of what it means to be the noble spiritual being that is Man.

I've included the words "Mind and Heart" (heart is spirit), which is a fairly expansive combination. You know we all have that - one can't reduce this to one word other than "soul".

TheismIsUntenable: "Intellect is the word God used for the general character of the soul's reality."

No...some book you read said that. Big difference from book says X to "GOD says X".

"As I said before, we can't know what the "essence" of the soul is because we didn't create it;"

We didn't create trees or the Sun or rocks or any multitude of things that have a known *essence* so I'm not following this line of reasoning.

"It's what differentiates us from animals - in other words, it's NOT a heritable feature."

Well we're not different from animals as we are an animal and there are many non-human animals which have intellect.

"The soul permits us to rise above natural instincts. Therefore, it's NOT a product of the brain"

This doesn't follow.

GeraldtheGnome: The same mistakes as yesterday. There is no god named God and there is no religious god of any kind. There’s no soul, there’s no certainty of an afterlife as well as that there is a heaven and there is no word of any kind by any god by any name at all. Using your mind properly and challenging your own thoughts is better than you being brainwashed that there is certainly a god named God looking out for you right now, he’s made up, you cannot prove that he isn’t and he’s already been disproven.

When Zanjan asked me a question on here last night I was watching a movie about dead Cops in heaven that come down to Earth to capture the evil undead. I never thought that it was based on a true story and I still don’t. There’s no Moses, Paul and so on. No Adam and Eve.