Dualism (Identity)

by dhw, Saturday, March 28, 2015, 17:08 (3527 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DHW:You base this on texts which now even you have admitted are unreliable - apart from the JW translation, which apparently alone can claim to be the Word of God...
TONY: That is not what I actually said, and in fact made no reference to the JW translation at all. I said translations that were made AFTER the dead sea scrolls were found, of which there are many.-Agreed. I just happen to have a JW translation which contains precisely the adjustment you quoted to Luke 23,43. But of course I have no idea how many modern translations you have, or how reliable any of them are.
 
Dhw: Matthew 17, 1-5 has Jesus chatting with Moses and Elijah (who turns out to have returned unrecognized as John the Baptist). In 1 Samuel, 28, Saul commands a medium to contact Samuel, which she does, and Samuel speaks to Saul. In Revelations, the souls of those slain for their beliefs call out to God to avenge them. Presumably, then, Matthew and the authors of Samuel and Revelations have been tricked by Satan - but then we can hardly say these texts are the Word of God, can we?
TONY: Yes, and Saul was condemned for doing so because he directly violated a mandate from God. I don't have time at the moment to do a lot of research on this one, though, so I will have to revisit it later.-That is not the point. You have claimed, in relation to NDEs, that patients have been deceived by Satan, because the Bible tells us that the spirit remains unconscious until God inserts a memory stick into the resurrected body. In all the above examples, the spirits of the encountered dead people are clearly conscious. -DHW: Now you are agreeing that some translations are not the Word of God. Thank you. Unless you are an expert in Ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, how can you even begin to judge the accuracy of any translation? Experts disagree anyway. Do you really think Jehovah's Witness translators are more objective and knowledgeable than any others?
TONY: Other translators seem to think they are more objective and knowledgeable.
However, that was not my point. To answer you question directly, it honestly doesn't matter which translation you use. If you study the bible, and allow the context of the bible to inform you views as opposed to other doctrines and traditions, then you can still arrive at the truth. -One man's “doctrines and traditions” are another man's truth. You are now implying that the millions of monotheists who disagree with you on the individual subjects we have discussed have not studied the bible and its many different contexts. Let me add that I frequently correspond with authors, and have myself corresponded with translators of my own texts, because we are all fallible. Modern translators cannot even correspond with their authors, and there is no reason to suppose that the ancients were any less fallible than the moderns. Nobody knows the “truth”.-DHW:... please clarify: did Jesus return from the dead, appear to the disciples (once apparently walking through walls, since the doors had been locked), and ascend to heaven in his own physical, memory-stick-reinforced body, or as a conscious spirit?
TONY: Sometimes I hate the English language, too many words have multiple meanings. I hesitated to initially use the word 'spirit' when referring to the 'back-up'. I also hesitated to use 'spiritual form' when talking of Christ's resurrection because I KNEW you were going to do just this. When Christ was resurrected it was in a non-physical form. When you 'spirit' (memory stick) returns to God, that is also in a non-physical form. Are the two non-physical forms similar in composition? I do not know. -I understand your frustration with language, and that's why I have to keep asking for clarification. As I understand you, there are now two forms of spirit: one unconscious - the spirit of life - and one containing all the information that gives the person his/her identity. But you say Christ's resurrection was as a spirit: i.e. a combination of the life spirit and the conscious-identity spirit. Not the body. This is precisely what NDE-ers experience: they and the people they meet are not bodies. Their conscious spirit appears to be independent of their body. According to you, the Bible says this is NOT what happens. Are the accounts of Christ's reappearance as a conscious spirit therefore the work of Satan?
 
DHW: What I am challenging is your assumption that the sometimes very moving stories of love and reunion (plus the acquisition of information they could not otherwise have known) are all part of Satan's evil plan to make people act AGAINST the very God they believe in and worship. 
TONY: But I thought you were "open mind about their implications."-I am. I have said that I don't understand them, but you claim that the NDE-ers have been deceived, and so I am challenging your assumptions. Similarly, I am open-minded about the existence of God, and so I argue against theism and against atheism (depending on the view that is being put to me). An open mind challenges the assumptions of closed minds.