Dualism (Identity)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, March 23, 2015, 00:21 (3533 days ago) @ dhw

Thought and information are nouns, survive is a verb. What does that prove? How the backup can record the information that constitutes my individual identity, and yet exclude my opinions, hopes, beliefs, memories, predilections, tastes and all my other characteristic thoughts I do not know.-
Pardon me, I was looking at thought as an action (past tense), a thought, once thought, is not longer a thought, but information. Thinking, the action producing said thought, is the verb which ceases upon death. Clear as mud?-
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> TONY: As for Luke, (a) it is a parable (which even you recognize) and (b) read it all the way to the end. The point of the whole parable was that, as I have said to you before, some people won't believe the truth, even if you brought someone back from the dead to prove it to them. 
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>DHW: .. My point is that Jesus (or Luke, the reporter) used an image of dead people talking to dead people (one in hell, the other presumably in heaven), which seems a highly unlikely image for someone who knows that dead people don't talk to each other and there is no such place as hell. I notice you've skipped my reference to Jesus himself (and his promise to his neighbour on the cross) as a prime example of a dead man walking and talking.-That Christ promised his neighbor that he would be with him in paradise is a reference to the resurrection, not to walking talking dead. It is not a highly unlikely image if you consider the audience was not just Jews, but gentiles who believed in Hades (Greeks).->DHW: I don't know what pagan holidays and traditions have to do with NDE patients turning to the God you worship. Once more, please tell us what Satan would have gained from their new or reinforced love of your God.
>-This is where a lack of biblical knowledge kind of comes into play. Doing things for false gods is considered spiritual adultery. It got the Israelites in a whole heap of trouble repeatedly throughout their history. Pagan holidays are celebrations to pagan gods. Easter to the Goddess Ishtar. New Years to the Roman God Janus. Valentines Day goes back to Lupercalia for Lupercus, a fertility god. Halloween goes back to Samhain when the dead could walk among the living. Christmas goes back to Saturnalia for the Roman God Saturn.-If God requires exclusive devotion, and people are lead to a system of beliefs that deceptively encourages the worship and celebration of other God's, then how do you think that will work for them? The information regarding the pagan origins are pretty common knowledge, so they can't claim ignorance, and the admonition to only worship Jehovah is explicit in the bible, so they can't claim they didn't know it was wrong. -
>DHW: But my sweet Mrs X is serving God, worshiping him and nobody but him, and helping her neighbours, and her only “crime” is believing she has a soul that will go to heaven when she dies. This is what she has been told by Mummy and Daddy and the Reverend Moishe Mohammed Smith. Bearing in mind your quote from James, and the fact that she hasn't read a couple of lines in Ecclesiastes or been informed of your interpretation of God's thoughts, what wrong is she actually DOING that you think is so detestable to God?-Mrs. X's crime is knowingly choosing to practice things which are detestable to god. See the information on pagan holidays above. Failure to read and study the bible is not an excuse either. There are numerous admonitions throughout the bible regarding such things, and it instructs to examine the scriptures daily and to keep digging as if for buried treasure. If she makes no effort to learn, then what she has is faith without works.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.