Dualism (Identity)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, March 28, 2015, 23:12 (3527 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: 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.-There is, believe it or not, a lot of debate over that. But here are the facts:-

• The punctuation did not exist in original Greek, and therefore you have to go by context.

• "I say to you today.." Was a Hebrew/Greek idiom to indicate the special importance of what was being said. 

• When taken in context, and put against the back drop of the other events happening immediately before, and immediately after, this statement, the placement of the comma after the word today is the only place it logically makes sense. 

• Of the oldest known manuscripts of this verse that contain ANY form of punctuation, the dot (similar to a comma) is placed AFTER the word today. 


-Feel free to look all that up and correct me if you see that I am mistaken. - 
> 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. 
> 
>DHW: 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. -I will have to do more research and get back to you. You have picked 3 different scenarios here. The first, Saul, falls under what I was saying about Satan misleading people. The last, Revelations, is allegorical. One regarding Christ and Elijah, I need to do more research on. -
>Tony: 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. ->DHW: 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, surely even YOU would agree that when an addition/change can clearly be PROVEN to come from an outside source, with clear, substantiated documentation backing that up, that change is an adulteration of the original document. Numerous additions and changes that were made under the Roman Empires influence, for political reasons, are well documented and can/have been corrected in more recent translations by referencing texts that predate them. -->DHW:..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...Are the accounts of Christ's reappearance as a conscious spirit therefore the work of Satan?-Perhaps to avoid future confusion we can refer to the unconscious 'spirit' as what it is, pure information, and reserve the word 'spirit' for the conscious creatures that live in that other plane of existence.-No, he was not. Neither were the angels that appeared throughout the bible. Angel/Demon are just labels to two sides of a conflict, much like Theist and Atheist. Theist and Atheist are both human, just on different sides of a conflict. Angels and Demons are both spirit creatures, just on different sides of a conflict. What the NDE's see are rightfully called 'Spirits". The question is not whether or not they see spirits, but whether or not the spirits they see are who they believe they see. -It is also worth noting that Satan was considered beautiful, and was obviously in some position of authority before he turned against God out of jealousy.-
>DHW: 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.-Yes, but an open mind actually has to be open, not simply an argumentative closed mind. Challenging beliefs is all well and good, and something that all of us on here do on a regular basis. If we were all honest, though, all of us have a closed mind to some extent or another. We have all closed off certain parts of our thinking to other beliefs that are opposite to ours. For example, my mind is closed to the possibility of evolution by random chance. I may be open to other alternatives, but that one is scratched off my list permanently for the sheer ludicrousness of it.

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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.