How do you as a Christian view an unconditionally loving god with conditions

Sounds like you might be arguing for moral relativism. If so, I think you lost your standing to criticize Trump and the Retrumplicans. Who are we to judge them? Anything goes! I, for one, believe in moral absolutes. Good is that which promotes the greatest happiness and harmony for the greatest number of people in the long run. Evil is what works to undermine that. Why do I believe human misery is bad and human happiness is good? Don't ask silly questions. That's what good and evil mean. How do I know what thoughts or actions promote or retard human well-being? I use my reason, experience, available evidence, intuition and judgment. Could I be wrong about those? Certainly. Does that mean that I should consider all viewpoints equally worthy? No way. I do the best I can, place my bets, and take the consequences.

You apparently didn't understand what I said about Satanism. I'll admit my post was long. You might read it again. Nowhere did I say Satanists alone aren't allowed in heaven no matter what their beliefs or variety. I said that lots of Christians probably believe that, including the ones who think Muslims, Hindus, etc., can go to heaven. Then I proceeded to elaborate on the fact that there are a variety of Satanists, many of whom don't even believe in Satan as a supernatural entity. I don't necessarily believe they're evil. Some like to shock. Others have a concept of Satan different from the Christian. Some may play a constructive role in countering the evil forces of Pharisaical Christianity. When the Oklahoma Legislature tried to place the Ten Commandments on the capitol lawn, a group of Satanists stopped it by threatening to put up a statue of Satan complete with a seat so kids could sit in his lap. Good for them! Nor am I condemning animal sacrifice. (human sacrifice is another story). Until the Romans destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem, animal sacrifice was the standard way the Jews worshiped God, and He is reported to have liked the aroma of animal fat. Santeria sacrifices animals, and I don't consider that inherently evil. My dog is different, because he's my pet, I have an emotional attachment to him, and anyone sacrificing him would have stolen something precious from me--which is anti-social. Getting one from the pet store or picking up a stray? Debatable. If, however, some Satanists have the same view of Satanism that Christians do--i.e., the worship of evil--and act on that, I'd stand against it. Do some Christian groups have beliefs that are as socially harmful as that and act on them. Absolutely! I stand against those, too.

 

Satanists are ornery . And have a limited identity relationship .The satanist music
is hollow-weenie distortion and not respectecfully avante-gard . Boring .

Die in peace and have a nice forever dream .

 

I remember Woody Allen writing something about the most pressing questions regarding the afterlife. I forget, it was something like, "Do they serve ham on rye, and can you get your hat blocked on Saturdays?"

My own philosophy of Archephenomenalism is an attempt to make rational sense of this crazy world that I have experienced. I have my theories of what non-physical reality represents: the reality of the quantum wave, rather than the physicality of the particle (the wave collapsed into a physical point in space-time where time is only the present). This philosophy has carried me, unexpectedly, into physical reality as holographic---that we in fact live in a holographic universe. Form is quantum information, three dimensionality, and the physical spacial-time illusion is created by the effect of the universal constant upon phenomena, and all of that is shaped by mind. In other words, our world in many ways is a product of our minds and the play of phenomena much like Kant understood it to be. The nonphysical world, being a quantum realm of superposition is timeless, simultaneously representing all time, and it is of absolute potentiality as opposed to physicality being a collapse into a singular actuality at each moment of Now. If our minds make sense of the physical world in such a way that it takes all these infinitessimal points of Now and forms them into a stream of time progression, than it is reasonable that should our mind survive this physical realm, that it could shape another reality out of this higher dimensional non-physical realm just as mind does within this physical reality.

It is even possible that if our reality is unknowingly created by our mind in this realm, that within a higher dimension we may actually realize that we have this power to create our own reality, as we would be home, within mind.

But much to the disappointment of Woody Allen, I suppose the hat shops would be closed on Saturdays... LMAO!

 

Yes actually, and that is based on my experience as well. In my writing, I refer to the research of Dr. Stanislav Grof and others to back up this possibility, and odd well documented cases of reincarnation, which are a little more documented than tabloid-like cases. Like the boy who kept claiming he was an air force pilot and knew the names of his friends who were in the flight crew with him. The family was able to trace this to an actual person, and they met the daughter of the deceased who spent time with the boy and was convinced that he was telling the truth. Dr. Grof has also documented some compelling cases (You may recognize him as the doctor that did a lot of research into the mind using LSD, and then later developed holotropic breath work as a way to induce a state where he could continue his research after LSD was made illegal in clinical settings).

This is part of why I put such a strong emphasis on the subjective in my philosophy, though I have long argued that one of the problems with the Modern World is its overemphasis on objectivity, and the objectification of literally everything. I trace this trend of objectivism back to the rise of the planter culture and the development of the institutions, including religion, and the creation of civilization.

There are fascinating things that happen in a culture where the idea of reincarnation is accepted, such as when it is based on the cultural unifying myth of the dominant religion. You can find some interesting stories in Japan on the subject, though religion there has become a little more like it is in Europe where culturally it is becoming more metaphoric than literal. But in India, for example, you find interesting stories that are readily accepted as natural events. The Hindustan Times, for example, reported of a boy who claimed he was a man that was murdered by his brothers over a family business he ran. They turned the issue over to the police who investigated and discovered that it matched a story from a village a few hundred miles away. When the brothers of the deceased were approached they confessed to the murder of their brother.

One of my books is near completion---my working title is, The Soul In a Quantum World, A simple philosophical and scientific argument for life after death. I don't get into much of the stuff we talked about here, though I guess I could add that. It was originally a chapter in another book I am writing, Archephenomenalist Perspectives On Reality, and I decided to expand upon it separately and it became a book of its own. I haven't marketed it out to publishers yet, but it is fairly close to completion.

 

I think I already asked and answered that question. I use my judgment, based on reason, evidence, experience and intuition. How do I know my judgment is right when others disagree with it? How can I be sure, in a world that's constantly changing? I can't. But if I think it through in light of the alternatives and it still seems correct I go with it. I do the same on political issues. We live in an era of "alternative facts", where lots of folks claim Trump won the 2020 election. Could they be right? I don't think so. In fact, I'm confident that they aren't. Neither are the Neo-Nazis.

I assume you're referring to the parable of Sāi Wēng Lost His Horse. Did Trump win the 2021 election? Maybe. Was it stolen by massive voter fraud? Maybe.

I'm better at giving my own views than speculating about those of others. My guess would be that those who view Satanism as evil are going by their belief that Satan is evil, therefore those who support him must also be evil. I consider Satan to be the metaphorical personification of evil--out to undermine the foundations of goodness, like the Buddhist Mara and the Zoroastrian Ahriman. Satanists who take this to heart and seek to do harm to others are evil in my book. How could a follower of Satan, then, not be evil? Well, from what I've read and experienced in Satanists I know, some are attracted by its shock value, while others find it a useful weapon against self-righteous Christians,or as an excuse to get naked and have an orgy, or see Satan as a misunderstood well-meaning serpent who just wanted humans to have a full understanding of Taṇhā and what they are being deprived of. I'd say there's a lot of moral confusion there that has to be sorted out, but I'd allow that a well-meaning Satanist who thinks his irreligious religion is good for humanity might get by like the Muslims and Buddhists under Jesus' "forgive them for they know not what they do" rubric, in my view, at least. But in the views of traditional Christians, probably not.

 

I guess I didn't quite get into this part much---though I did speak of reincarnation. Dr. Grof has uncovered cases of people who even had knowledge of animals buried within their subconscious minds that turned out to be very perceptive of zoological realities that only experts in the field would know--that people would understand the subjective experience of a whale or another animal, for example, that relayed biological or behavioral characteristics that they could not have known.

Who are we before birth, and what could we have experienced, is an interesting problem. As I pursued my own philosophical arguments I have become convinced that there is a First Cause---and we can speak of it broadly and generally in philosophical terms as, Mind. Philosophy uses this term to represent everything from the human mind to God and everything in between. Quantum Information fits easily into this philosophical concept. Philosophy has spent much of its history arguing whether there was a mind-body duality---whether there was a spiritual (nonphysical) and physical. This was likewise the same path I spent much of my life on. This includes the 80's as I resigned myself to there being no possibility of proof, and became very agnostic. Then when I had experienced my own proof; something that, try as I could, I could not deny it, then for me the philosophical problem became one of, not whether or not there was a mind-body duality, but 'how' there was a mind-body duality. I have also become convinced that the nonphysical reality, that which is beyond our physical perception, is more real than the physical one which is radically temporal. It has convinced me that phenomenalism provides the best description of reality.

The implication of this to the question of the soul is that, no matter how real our physical reality seems, it is nothing more than infinitesimal points of physical existence strung together by phenomena (quantum information) like individual frames of a film strung together by the film itself (the difference being that the film is set and determined by the action it recorded, and there can be no change, while reality is subject to randomness and absolute potentiality and anything can happen). We think that our physical presence--our bodies--and the objective world around us is what reality is for each of us as individuals. But it is mind that is the actual reality. Mind transcends the physical moment--and while the life we currently know and seems the most real, is only temporary, the subjective reality of who we are as mind is what Being really is.

How we exist beyond the physical may perhaps be as hard to understand as trying to perceive reality from the 4th dimension---which direction is the 4th dimension, for example? Einstein described time as the 4th dimension, but the math required use of what is known as imaginary numbers. To make sense of this--to relate to the past and the future--we have to do this through mind. We cannot physically ask which direction is tomorrow, or where did yesterday go in terms of physical direction. For example, we could figure the direction of the earth's orbit, the direction of our solar system as it orbits around the Milky Way galaxy, and then the direction of the Milky Way itself as it moves through the universe. We could even go further and consider the cluster of galaxies that the Milky Way is part of and how they are moving as opposed to other clusters of galaxies in the universe. We could combine all these movements and look back in space to where we were an hour ago, and say 'that is the direction of the past.' But if we look at that point of an hour ago within our 3 dimensions of physicality, we would not see an hour ago---we would not see anything but empty space.

Our perception is limited to the 3 physical dimensions---which we could label as front--back, left--right, and up--down. Which dimension is which is subjective and very arbitrary. But with each additional dimension we add, we add an infinite number of directions. For example, if you have two dimensions---front--back, and left--right, you have an inifinite number of potential directions which we can summarize as an infinitely thin a plane of 360 degrees, infinitely thin because there is no up--down. But that 360 degrees expands along that plane forever and therefore can be broken down into infinite directions. If you go out a few inches from the center of this plane, it may be hard to understand how 360 degrees can be broken down into infinite directions, but when you go out many light years, and it is not hard to understand.

But then we add the 3rd dimension: up--down and now we have a whole new infinite number of directions, as the plane becomes a forever-expanding globe of infinite directions. And that is as far as we can go, because that is the limits of the physical reality we understand as living beings. Therefore we cannot comprehend what it means to add another dimension, and how it adds another infinite number of directions. Which way do those directions go? This is the superpositioned reality of quantum mechanics, and we cannot understand it except as we can model it mathematically. It is also the reality of mind. We could just as easily ask which direction is mind, as we could ask which direction is tomorrow...

 

I'm always skeptical of those who claim we can't know what is good and what is evil, or even the nature of good and evil. At best, they become bystanders in a world where horrendous evil is going on. Was it evil for Derrick Chauvin to kneel on Goerge Flloyd's neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and in a prone position. I'd day yes. Some say no. Did he think he was ding the right thing? Possibly. Who's to say? The jury!

As for the Satanists, I'm not sure all or most of them believe they're doing good instead of evil. I suspect some think they're beyond good and evil, to use Nietzsche's phrase. Whatever we mean by "good', if we use it with reference to morality or ethics we must mean something more than simply advantageousl to the individual doing the act. From what I've read about Satanists and the ones I've known (admittedly a small sample) I'd bet at least some are rejecting society's ideas of how to behave in order better to pursue their own personal wealth, status, power, and/or sensual indulgence--unbridled id. Satanism gives them permission to escape their inhibitions. There have been plenty of people like that, not all of whom call themselves Satanists. Did Stalin or Hitler think they were doing good instead of evil? Who knows, but it's my impression they thought good and evil were whatever they said they were, and good was whatever got them power. There are plenty of sociopaths in the world who don't give a rats ass about good and evil. From what I've read about Anton LaVey, he didn't strike me as a spiritual man, or someone who was in it for the betterment of humanity. He seemed to be out for the bucks, and found a niche as a shock jock in which he could make money from the suckers--his followers whom he characterized as “fanatics, cultists, and weirdos.”. Of course, the same could be said about many televangelists, pedophile priests and politicians).. Are they evil? In the case of Hitler and Stalin, seems probable, at least to some degree. That doesn't mean that we can or should should judge them as persons. I have no doubt that they got that way because of malfunctioning in their nature or nurture. Psychologist Mary Trump has detailed the circumstances that led to the Donald's pathology. Only God can determine the degree to which they are ultimately culpable or could help themselves--access to heaven. But we, as moral actors, must recognize it as pathology, do our best to avoid it in our own conduct, and resist its influences in our society. Heaven is a condition we can potentially experience here on earth, but some people (not necessarily all Satanists) can create hell on earth.

 

First let me respond to your previous post---I do agree, and I probably used the term proof in speaking of reincarnation, and proof is a strong word. I should have said strongly suggests. I feel that Dr. Grof's work and other examples strongly suggest that such is the case.

Now to this post I believe in a mind-body duality so there is both a physical and nonphysical reality--but physical reality is not as concrete and real as what we believe it to be.

To understand this we need to define what is physical or material. A physical thing is something that has physical or material existence. Therefore it is some thing that has a specific position in space-time. It can have many positions in space, or a single position in space, but it can only have one position in time at a time. Really, a single object still has a single position in space, it is just that we can divide that space into smaller measurements (e.g. a foot long object covers 12 inches, etc) which, as we shall see, you cannot do with time. First it can only have a single time position because physical reality exists only in the present. There is no other physical existence except the present. We can say this because we can only grasp what existed in the past, or something that will exist in the future, mentally, and mind, by definition, is nonphysical (and if anyone doubts this definition of mind, I suggest you look it up in the dictionary). There is no where we can point to where the past exists or the future exists in physical terms so all we can truly say is that the physicality exists in the present. Therefore, if we bring quantum mechanics into the mix, we can argue that what is physical is based on the particles that have collapsed from the probability wave into existence, i.e. they have collapsed into a single space-time position. Now quantum physicists cannot actually tells us if there even really is a collapse. It appears that there is, but it is possible that there really is only a near collapse and that it is close enough to say that it did happen. But what the philosopher can say is that regardless of whether there is an actual particle or something close to one, that the phenomena of a particle exists. So this tells us that what is the actual point of Now is so infinitessimal that it must represent a single point of time at the edge of where the laws of physics coincide---the Theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and that all that exists within that moment is the totality of physical existence at that time. All of physicality therefore exists in a moment of Planck Time. Once that moment is gone, then all that is left is the phenomena of that moment, until the next moment of Planck time, in which there is a new totality of all physical existence, and nothing else exists physically. Planck time cannot be broken down any further without breaking down the laws of physics so time cannot be broken down smaller and we cannot say that physical existence exists in the past or in the future so physical time can only represent one position. In reality each point of physical existence only represents a single point of Planck Time at Planck Length but the reality we experience is not that of particles, but of whole objects, so the real world for us is one where larger objects can be said to have multiple positions as one position, but in the real world we cannot escape the argument that the future or the past cannot be said to physically exist. Therefore in physical terms the space-time continuum is actually the space-present.

Science, wrapped up in materialism, sees the wave as a physical thing. But it cannot be based on this definition. The wave is superpositioned---scientists struggle to define it---it is superpositioned meaning that it covers all of space-time simultaneously, so scientists will say it is like a wave but it is not, it is like a field but it is not. For example, a light wave stretching 400 million light years from a distant galaxy, from our perspective took 400 Million years to travel across that distance. But from the perspective of the wave, and Einstein's math, it is simultaneously at all points of space-time between that galaxy and earth. Quantum Mechanics would say that it is simulataneously at all infinite positions of space-time. Therefore the wave cannot be physical. If we speak of the particle, a single photon, then it was physical 400 million years ago at the surface of a star in that galaxy as the phenomena was created, or at the edge of an atom in the vision cell of a person's eyeball today as the galaxy is being observed. But the wave itself cannot be observed, it is not physical. People try to argue this, but the fact is, we cannot measure the wave as a wave. We can observe, perceive, or otherwise measure a wave as it is collapsed into a physical particle. A radio wave, for example, cannot be heard. But when the wave collapses into photons on the edge of an antenna, and is converted into electrons, then we can listen to it. All of reality is a dance of wave-particles, and therefore a dance between existence and non-existence. And what passes between is information---phenomena. The phenomena itself is not physical but of the wave, but this phenomena tells us what is physical.

What is physical therefore is trapped in the moment of Now. Mind on the other hand, or nonphysical reality transcends the moment. We can think of the past, or of the future, we can connect moments of time together. Therefore the nonphysical in a sense is more real than the physical. In fact, if the quantum collapse into particles does not even actually occur then we could say that physicality does not exist, only phenomena. In fact, physicality may very well occur in units of Planck Length by Planck Time, and it takes for example, 20 Million Planck Times for a photon to traverse the distance of the diameter of a proton (if I remember correctly) and Planck Length is determined by the distance light travels in 1 Planck Time, so in a single moment of physical existence, only an incredibly small part of a proton may come into existence, but this may be enough to generate the phenomena of a proton. But none of this really matters, because we experience the world as real. Whether it is brief moments of materiality or only brief moments of near-materiality this is the reality of the hologram we experience as the physical. And being that we are experiencing this reality, focused on it with an ego--as defined by Jung--that filters out all nonessential phenomena, this is our reality.

Einstein's math places time and space as separate but connected. One is the reflection of the other. The problem is that if physical space can only exist in the present than space-time outside of the present cannot be physical. We could argue it this way, that in the physical dimensions space is dominant and time is essence, whereas in the nonphysical time is dominant and space is essence. I argue that the mind-body issue is the same, one is the reflection of the other. One way to understand this is that my philosophy is the opposite of epiphenomenalism.

I will continue this in a moment.

 

Epiphenomenalism is a philosophy that argues that mind is an illusion, and simply reflects the biological processes of the physical brain. Therefore we may think that we are making a decision but it is an illusion, as the brain has already responded to physical stimulus and made the decision. This is actually an old Cartesian philosophy of materialism but many neuroscientists argue that they are validating this theory. My argument is the exact opposite, that the brain reflects mind and its perception of phenomena. But like space-time, in the physical realm, body is dominant and mind is essence, outside of the present, mind is dominant and the body is essence.

Now I am placing all of this in simplistic terms, so if I argue that time is dominant in the nonphysical, but we are speaking of a superpositioned reality, then time is not a continuum as we understand it. Time is infinite, but infinite time if experienced simultaneously is the same as no time. But it appears infinite and simultaneous because we are trying to comprehend it from the limits of a three dimensional reality. We can't really know what that means until we are there, much like if someone lived in a 2-dimensional reality, say up-down, front-back, and we suddenly stepped in. They would only experience the infinitessimally thin left-right portion of our body that fit within their two dimensions, and so we would appear from their perspective to be infinite and all around them.

My train of thought got interrupted, but let me know if that answers your questions. We have to deal with two types of reality---physical and reality, and one fits the philosophical argument of the rationalists and the other of the empiricists.

 

Yes, you are exactly right--because what we experience is the phenomena of a moment of Now that has already passed. The particles for that moment have already collapsed and then returned to the wave. In fact, Planck Time is so incredibly small that we would never be able to experience it in a meaningful way. In fact in any given point of Now there is no guarantee that any sizeable number of particles that represent a specific object has even collapsed. Any given object may only be partially present, and in the next moment of Now, other particles of that object may be present. But in truth we never truly experience any object anyway---what we experience is the nerve impulses that come from our sensory organs. But that aside, what we experience is the collective phenomena of the present; the phenomena generated from each present moment of Now.

If it was the object themselves that we experience, then I would agree with you that it would be in error to say that everything exists in a present moment which we cannot lock down. But it is the phenomena that we experience, not the things in themselves. Kant argued that we can never experience the things in themselves, but only the perception of the things that we create, and I agree with Kant. Also I should clarify, which you may have already gotten from my previous paragraph, that in a single moment of Now, it is not a situation where everything exists. but because the physicality exists in totality only within the present, then all that exists within that present moment, whether any object is partial or complete, then that is the totality of physical existence--nothing else has physical existence outside of that moment. But as you recognized each moment of Now is a new present moment, a new collapse of particles--a new object.

In fact, Planck Length and Planck Time are so small that movement is literally impossible. This follows the philosophy of an ancient Greek philosopher, whose name I suddenly can't think of, and a concept that is incorporated in Quantum Mechanics named after this philosopher that movement does not really occur. It does resolve the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle that in order for a particle to be observed (as much as that can happen) it must be at zero velocity. But our understanding is that everything is in motion, and therefore space-time positions in each point of Now must reflect this.

 

I have been meaning to weigh in on this part of the discussion too. I think that good and evil as we understand it is a human construct. In fact, I would argue that the concepts of good and evil, and the formulation of ethics, and the focus of all religion is a product of, what Schopenhauer called, our Will to Live and our attempts to wrestle with our own mortality. No matter how you frame it, religion is about death. (Spirituality is about life.) Good and evil are always grounded on an implication of death, even when it is something evil that will not result in death, there is still an attachment to death---such as, if we do this, what are our rewards after death. In the end times, for example, for those who believe in such prophecies, there is the belief that if one is good enough, and righteous enough, they will be raptured and avoid death all together.

Foucault did a great piece on madness, death, the irrational, darkness, plagues and evil, and how they were all connected in the dark ages and even today there is this subconscious, if not conscious, connection between all these things. Violence in all its forms as well implies the risk of death. This does not make the concepts of good and evil less significant. They represent a key part of our existential reality and that is all we can know, so they are significant. But the fact that they are human constructs does suggest that there is some amount of relativism to them. Certain Planter Culture tribes who engaged in headhunting for example, had a reasoning behind such acts that helped in the abundance of their crops, such as a specific tribes in Indonesia. They did not see this act as evil, but at the same time they also did not see death as a finality as it has long been viewed as in the West. The other thing is that, as human constructs, it is arrogant that we, as physical beings in a finite (what we see as a mortal) world, projects such constructs of good and evil upon a God who is transcendent of all reality. For example, if we were to look at death from God's perspective, we would understand that it is merely a passage from one form of life to another.

One thing that is universal among hunter gatherers and indigenous people around the world is that the world consists of multiplicities, and this includes good and evil. As people move into planter culture settings and then take on the institutions of civilization, including that of religion, their cosmology, and likewise their concept of good and evil becomes more dualistic. Perhaps you yourself have studied how the Semitic devil in Christianity has grown to become more powerful and absolute.

I feel that Satanism is a creation of the church. It was clearly created to demonize the pagan religions. It is interesting that Satanism today runs the gamut, as you explained, from simple rebirths of old pagan traditions, to atheistic movements meant to shock the religious establishment, to outright worship of the godhead of evil. I feel that, being a creation of the church, there is an inherent inauthenticity to it. The old European belief systems were largely destroyed by the church, and so that makes it difficult to recreate what once was, but anyone doing so, in my opinion would be more sincere in avoiding the label of satanism or satan. That is more of a side note to what you guys were discussing, but...

It would not make sense to me that an unconditionally loving creator who gave us free will, would take a mere 60 - 100 years of life, which is barely a flash of time when compared to an eternity, and determine that our choices in that brief flash of physical life would determine all that follows. Would heaven, for example, really be heaven, if certain loved ones who you wanted to spend all eternity with, were not with you because they did not make the grade?

I could see where we could create our own hell in the afterlife, as was suggested by the recent TV series, Lucifer. But I cannot accept the concept of jdugement and eternal damnation.