The Psychology Behind the Belief in Heaven and Hell

NO, I did not. Why are you lying about what I said when I can clearly reference the message and quote my words exactly?Again, here it is: Message 113

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Did you say you can "hear" your thoughts? Audibly "hear" your thoughts?

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No I cannot audibly hear them. I have the illusion that I hear them, but I know better than to think there is an audible voice in my head.

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I didn't "haphazardly" offer shit, I clearly said that the illusion was in reference to AUDBILY hearing your thoughts. Please stop misrepresenting me. Are you not reading my posts? Or are you reading them and not understanding?How are you still asking this question? - My position is clear, and it's the same one backed up by scientific evidence: You are conscious of your thoughts, but that too is part of the entire process that produces thoughts.Please re-read my last posts to you and try to follow what I'm saying a little better. The answer is in what you quoted: The stimuli is external to you.This is what you asked me: "If I am incorrect please point out where in the stimuli process, this takes place, pinpoint the thought ITSELF. "There is no "stimuli process," there is a process of experiencing reality through your sensory functions. These functions react to stimuli. No, science has already demonstrated this - (Please read the links which explains it in detail).Now, if you feel dualism is the correct interpretation, in other words, if you feel thoughts are seperate from the process, then you would need to explain how it is seperate.Here's another link for you to read: Mind-Body ProblemThis is why your "pin-point" question is continuously wrong:

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The absence of an empirically identifiable meeting point between the non-physical mind and its physical extension has proven problematic to dualism and many modern philosophers of mind maintain that the mind is not something separate from the body.[4] These approaches have been particularly influential in the sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology and the various neurosciences.

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I have not supported my position? Christ man! Please read the links provided for you, it IS what supports my position! No I am not. You have misunderstood what you read.But let me be clear, a thought is not seperate from the process, it's ONE AND THE SAME. AND - since the mind and body are not two different things, but one and the same, knowing that it is there and hearing it in your own introspective way IS PART OF THE PROCESS.If you disagree, please prove how the mind and body are two seperate things - In other words, support your dualistic argument with some facts. Dude are you even reading this stuff?! Dualism SUPPORTS the spiritual concept - that's what it was for, in support of the spirit and the body being seperate.You need to read the links properly. I think you are just debating with no reasoning behind what you say, you are just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing. It has already been demonstrated. Dualism has failed to provide evidence to support it.If you feel it is the correct interpretation then please provide the evidence for it.Science has already established why materialism is correct - I suggest you READ THE LINKS. It can, but you would have to show how.As far as neuroscience is concerned, there is no other area for it to be independent at. The mind and body are one and the same. Because they are the accumulation of the ENTIRE functioning brain.More to the point though is that neuroscientist have confirmed that it doesn't take place in one particular area; for you to be right you would have to show how they are wrong. Yes. But just as a blind person can't think in red, you can't close your eyes and create a situation involving things you have never seen or heard of before.Here's a test to prove what I mean: close your eyes and picture god - What do you see? It is your entire position! How have you failed to see this? Not only have I told you, provided links for you, but DA also explained it to you, twice, and you are still not seeing that your advocating a dualist position?While I'm enjoying the discussion a lot, I feel any further attempt on my part to explain things will either not be understood or ignored by you. I would rather this not be the case because I feel you would benefit from learning about this stuff (as I have benefited and learned from it too), but you have to do your part in following the discussion, reading the links and understanding my position so you don't misrepresent me.- Oni

I'm not one who holds to predetermination (in the sense of God predetermining who will be save and who will be lost).I see no problem in God foreknowing who would be saved and lost if those who are saved and lost are the deciders in their own eternal destination without being determined to decide as they do.- There are lost people in the Old Testament and found people there too. Just like in the New Testament. Just like now. Nothing much has changed over the centuries. Man sins, Gods love attempts to forgive and save. God wrath eventually destroys the wicked.Picture a rescue helicopter hovering over a stricken vessel which lists terminally in rampant seas. A winchman is lowered and strains his utmost to reach those clinging to the stricken vessel.God is the winchman. He's also the rampant sea.And nothing in the Bible, New Testament or Old, describes him as anything other than that.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Than why allow those individuals who you know are doomed to go to hell, be born in the first place.If you know for certain which people are going to hell, than why not prevent them from being born at all (which in no way is out of his power to do supposedly). In no way does this tamper with freewill. All he is doing is loading the deck. Except that the rampant sea in this analogy is really an eternal lake of fire in which people suffer forever. Where does free-will and love play into this? To me it just seems like a belief motivated strictly out of fear of not being eternally tortured.I also noticed you totally disregarded my other analogy. I would be interested as to your take on it,Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. - Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." - Carl Sagan"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

You seem to have missed out on something I said: the lost are the one's who decide on their eternal destination - their decision not determined by God to be the decision they make.Precisely how God foreknows their decision is irrelevant so long as he is not the one determining what it is.- And?Succumbing to a rampant sea in our realm signifies a removal from what we consider 'life'. And in our world the sea tends not to give up it's dead so it serves to model forever/eternity in terms we understand.- Salvation necessitates a person being brought to a position of desparation - such is the pride of a man who refuse to bow as he should. I mean, what possible reason (bar pride) have you got for not submitting to your Creator/Sustainer? What possible rational have you for pulling out the tubes that feed you life?When positing that reason perhaps you might add the source to which you attach the rightness of your reckoning. Remember, iIf found to be a bootstrap reckoning, a self-generated reckoning, then you'll land right back at Pride. Your Pride.You do it do yourself you do, and that's what really hurts.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

So if you could see into the future and knew 100% exactly what would happen before hand, that your child was going to run into the middle of the street and get run over by a car and you just stood on the curb and said "If you run into the street a car will run over you" but you did nothing to physically keep your child from running into the street, who would be at fault. You or the child?Isn't there much more of a gap in the foreknowledge that God has and that of human beings than there is between a parent and a child? If so, than wouldn't God be that much guiltier for not only knowing before hand that 99% of humans would be spending eternity in hell but creating and setting up the very circumstance that would inevitably doom all human beings to hell. How much more of a sadistic, cretin can you get than that. Because it leads you to dispair, misery, and unnessary self-flagelation. Who would want to serve the morally bankrupt, inconsistent, sadistic, egomaniac in the Bible? Only people who willingly suspend all their ethics so they can have a glimmer of hope that they will have an afterlife in heaven and God will wipe away those miserable relationships they had on Earth.Stop living a pipe-dream and live in the real world. This is the real world Iano. No one has come back from the dead to tell you heaven is real. You believe in God because you want to believe in God. Nothing else. You have not one shred of evidence that God is real besides a 2000 year old book filled with lies, inconsistencies, and errors. You get on your high horse to tell everyone that your way is the right way and you can't even give me straight answers why God capriciously murders people in the Bible while at the same time preaching a message of love and peach.And it is you who do it to yourself. You will live this lie your whole life, hoping beyond hope it is true. If it serves you, fine, but people like myself who have been on both sides of the fence, see right through this charade. I hope you do find some joy in this life, your only life Iano and you do not let this life leave you by wishing on a pipedream.Take care. Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. - Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." - Carl Sagan"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

onifre writesONI you are responding to something IN THIS QUOTE you said, NOT WHAT I ASKED YOU. I never askedyou in he first place, whether you could hear your thoughts AUDIBLY, go back and read what I said. Nowyour getting excited about something you think I am misrepresenting and I never asked you in the firstplace. Your responding to yourself, son.Explain to everyone here what "the illusion of hearing your thoughts" IS in and from a technicalstandpoint. That is explain where in the process this "illusion" takes place and how it is accomplished, ifit is an emergent property, as you suggest separate from the process.If its all a process show me in the process how, where and why you are SOMEHOW hearing your thoughtsExplain to this audience how (technically) you are hearing something and I don mean AUDIBLY. Got itnow?A device can measure, translate and manipulate radio and television SIGNALS (which are invisible to us)into pictures and sounds, because there is SOMETHING THERE TO MANIPULATE. My contention is thatthat which is in the process here and produced by the process is not measurable or testable to allow it tobe translated thusly. It (thoughts) exists and we know they do, yet they have no real substance. Or am Ijust like Oriville and Wiburs daddy? ONI I dont doubt you have complete confidence in your scientific method, Yet I am more interested inhow you are CONSCIOUS of your thoughts. this is why I firmly believe the thought to be both a part ofthe process and separate, because as you suggest it 'PRODUCES THOUGHTS"If on the other hand it is simply a part of the physical process show me the part where either in part orwhole the thought itself. This should be no problem since its all physical correct? it should bemeasureable, translatable and testable much like a radio wave. No problem correct? By stimulus process I simply meant the physical process. these "functions" produce thoughts, which isat present underconsideration. Your problem is that you percieve these functions and thoughts theyproduce as exclusive to the physical process. I see that which you hear and the thought itself as anabstraction produced by the process.In my view these cannot be demonstrated in a physical sesnse but exist nonwtheless , as we surelyunderstand. If not the physical process should allow us to accomplish this task. IOW we should be ableto see them as more than a physical process firing and going about its busniess I already have. We know they are there and are real. It is seperate because there is no way to measure,translate or produce that which has no substance, but they are there nontheless. Do you deny theexistence of your thoughts? Heck Im still waiting for you to explain from the process how you have theIllusion of hearing them then it should be measurable, teastable and more importantly TRANSLATABLE, into what you are thinkingand hearing, that is the body of the thought, your thoughts, your images in your thoughts No problemcorrect?I say its not because the thought that is produced has no real substance Are you listening? I am not saying the mind and the body are different, I am saying the mind and thethoughts they produce are distinctive, not seperate from eachother completley . the thought is nottranslatable into anything visual, but if it is only a physical process, it should be like a radio waveor anyother signal Im sorry I meant to say Materialism not Dualism, is an ATTEMPT. What I meant to say is that dualismdoes not apply to my contentions, because the thought is both produced by the mind and exists but withno substance. Im not talking about anything Spiritual here at present, only a physical process in bothareas, or one as you described it.Im not debating without reason, I believe you are simplistic in your thinking (as when I have debated youin the past)and have been conditioned to one area, specifically the scientific method and are missingwhat I am saying. You dont understand the debate method because you are missing and mistating mypoint, trying to make it comparable to something I am not equating it with I dont think they are wrong, I agree with them. They are not addressing what I am advocating. Im not advocating a difference in mind and body, as I have already explained. If your are correct, it should bepossible to measure in some physical sense or type the ACCUNULATION of the process, correct Whether a person can think is red is irrelevant that they can produce thoughts at all. Questions. can theyproduce thoughts, ofcourse they can. a thought is a thought whether it has enough or not enoughstimuli to assist it. of course if a brain it is dead (not, unlike yours, just kidding comedy boy), it canrecieve and produce no thoughts.Your test is to simple. if you wish me to close my eyes to picture God I will, it however, is not necessary.To picture God all one has to do is see or hear existence itself and know logically nothing could existoutside of God. God is existence. hence the statement to Moses, "Say I AM THAT I AM HAS SENT YOU"
He is telling Pharoah, the only true thing in existence is telling you to let my people Go. Im all that thereis pharoah, there is nothing besides meAnyother tests? I have no contention with your links, they are not saying what I am saying and they are not addressing it.
My position is not dualism, its physical in all respects. You simply need to TRANSLATE your purelyphysical process into images, sounds or whatever, the same you way you would anything else physical. Isay you cannot because the thought itself while produced by a physical process has no substance ATALL, unlike a spirit which has probably substance unknown to us.Ball is in your courtEAMEdited by EMA, : No reason given.Edited by EMA, : No reason given.

Do you compose your messages in a word processor before posting them? It looks like you do and that you have word wrap turned on when you copy/paste them over to here. It mucks about with the line feeds. Notepad is notorious for this behaviour. Next time you do it - try turning off word-wrap after you've finished editing it and then copy/paste it. It should sort out the issue.

I am not computer savy, I ll try and figure out what you are saying, thanksEAMEdited by EMA, : No reason given.

I don't know what "the illusion of hearing your thoughts" means. I never made that claim, so I couldn't explain it.I know what "being consciously aware of your thinking process" means. It's called cognition. And that it may give the illusion of audiby hearing your thoughts. I could explain that. But "the illusion of hearing your thoughts"...? Sorry, I don't know what that means.Maybe you could explain what you mean by "hearing" your thoughts; hearing them how? And could you be a bit more detailed than "hearing them in some way" ... that doesn't explain much. Where's the evidence for this? Where's the evidence that something is getting produced that somehow stops being physically real.Explain how a physical process of sensory input from physical stimuli, sending neurons to the central nervous system, can produce something without substance?How do you know that it does? You're not understanding what I mean and these questions don't make sense because of that.It's not part of the physical process, it IS the physical process. It's called cognition.

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Definition: Cognition is the scientific term for "the process of thought".

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Here's a link to Cognitive science. Which is the study of thoughts.It is fully understood in the field of cognitive science, that thoughts are the entire physical process. Not produced by the physical proces, not something seperate from the process, not something derived from the process. Cognition is the process of thinking, of having a thought.Now, if you feel they are produced by the physical process, yet are of no substance, then you'll have to explain how it goes from physical to non-physical, and, where this takes place. It has never been my contention that thoughts are produced by the process of cognition. I have clearly explain that thoughts ARE the process (not a product of it). If this is your contention then prove it. Show how thoughts are produced by the physical process. Explain how this happens. Don't just say it, demonstrate it.My contention is that the physical process of cognition IS the process of thought. Thoughts are not a seperate entity, they ARE the physical process. My links for cognition and cognitive science are the evidence in support of my position. The field of cognitive science studies the physical process of thought, I have linked supporting evidence for that too.It is well understood that thoughts are not produced, but are in fact a physical process (cognition) that involves are variety of different brain functions. Not in this context. Can a blind person think in the color red? Please answer the question directly. Yes or no? Can they or can't they? Don't worry about it being necessary, just picture god, and describe what you're picturing. They are not seperate from the process. They are not produced by the process. And if this is your position, that they are produced and seperate from the process, then please provide the evidence to support such a position.- Oni

oni writesNo problem
working on a response to your last post, be out later this evening. Mr Brooks just showed up, though I dont know how he got in here, I didnt let him in. Wait a minute, hes gone again. Well Im sure hell be back in a few minutes, Ill finish it up this eveing, if he is not here to distract me.EAMEdited by EMA, : No reason given.

From a cursory glance it appears this topic has been officially derailed. Admins?

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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

Not really, we are making progress twords the main theme or threadEAM

I agree EMA. Our discussion is in direct regards to the Heaven and Hell question, and that our thoughts (freewill) are the reason god would punish us to Hell.EMA (if we have understood each other) is claiming that thoughts (and ergo) freewill is seperate from physical existence and therefore seperate and independent of god. So we as freewilled beings make our own choices independent god.My position is that thoughts are an accumulation of physical processes functioning in the brain (known as cognition), are in fact real in the physical sense and because they are (IMO) if god is all of existence and created the mechanism for cognition, then he is as much responsible for our thoughts as we are, and should not punish us for his work.Also to note that DA, who started this thread, has chimed in as well. He has also not expressed any feelings of derailment.I suspected somebody was going to raise an eyebrow because at first glance it does seem like we're off-topic. But if anyone reading would follow our posts back (as they should to figure out in what context things are being discussed) they would see we are not off-topic.Take your time responding EMA.- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

The position sounds baseless because there would be no real way of knowing either way with certainty. If we are shot in the head and the brain damage is so severe that we die, do our thoughts cease?Scientifically it would appear that way, but there seemingly is no way to know for sure. Are thoughts connected with the brain? Scientifically it certainly seems that way, but there is no real way to discount empirically whether or not we can think beyond the grave. Edited by Hyroglyphx, : No reason given.

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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

The burden of proof lies with proposing that thoughts do not cease when the brain dies sense all of emperical evidence points to cognition as a process of a functional brain and there is nor evidence that supports that thoughts exists seperate of the brain. And we can't prove that there is not a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit between the Earth and Mars. Using your logic unicorns, big foot, orbiting teapots, the loch ness monster and any other mythilogical being (including God) exists because we have cannot definitively rule out there existance.The burden of proof lies with the one proposing the existance of something not the other way around because we do not see evidence indicating otherwise.Therefore, we can say scientifically and unequivocally that based on emperical evidence there is a very high likelyhood that cognition ceases with the functions of the brain. Then you would have to provide emperical evidence for existance beyond death, dualism and some type of spiritual realm that exists outside this physical reality in which these thoughts exist.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. - Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe." - Carl Sagan"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World