The Human Body. How much pain & suffering can it take?

I've always wondered.. How much pain & suffering can a mortal man take?
hmm. How long can a mortal man suffer, wither he be tortured,starved,choked,punched,slapped, and kicked with people spitting at him. Will this mortal man stand up? will he fight back? can he mentally & physically take a beating like this and be able to walk?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

The first thing you would need to do is to design an experiment:A good place to start would be to define pain and suffering in a measurable way.How would you measure it? Using electrocution springs to minds. You could use the voltage/current/amps etc to set a standard. Or you could use 'time till death' as the dependent variable if you don't want to vary the pain administered.However, people have varying ability to cope with pain so you would have to have a large enough sample to get some form of parametric data so that you could do some inferential statistics.Would you be interested in finding the varience caused by (for instance) sex, age, atheism vs religiousity, IQ, race?These would called for something like a t test and you could get a pretty good idea about the amount of pain and suffering you can inflict before death occures.When you've done the experiment post your results!Oh, you may need some quick talking to get it past the Ethics board/committee you apply to fo funding though.

Is this supposed to be a left-handed reference to Jesus?

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If you are referring to Jesus, then the implication of your message is you have an amazing ability to remove yourself from reality.The church, the one that Jesus created, came up with ways to torture people that were far worse than what Jesus supposedly went through. The methods that the church came up with to torture people during the inquisition were absolutely horrendous and could take months of agonizing pain for a person to die.You really ought to learn a little bit more about history before trying to tell us that what Jesus went through was the ultimate torture and execution.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

That is probably dependent on more factors than anyone could ever quantify. A person in excellent physical condition, with a strong cardiovascular and pulmonary system might be more physically able to handle the stress to the body.On the other hand, there is no discounting how pivotal the mind can be in such extreme conditions.

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

What do you mean by "take"? Survive? Remain defiant? Become a whole person again afterward?Given time enough, nearly everyone can be broken by torture, although broken can mean many things: "made compliant" (willing to do or say almost anything to avoid further torture), driven into catatonia or other insanity, etc.Nonetheless, some victims have resisted torture to the point of death; some victims have sufficient control of their pain to remain composed in the face of torture (e.g., some Tibetan Buddhists and, by repute, some Christian martyrs). Check out the stories of the various death marches and death camps (ours and others) to see what enormities human beings can survive. Prisoners of war have suffered worse treatment than Jesus supposedly did for a much longer time without losing their will to resist (I assume Jesus is the referent here). Well, I've been burnt, shot, beaten and stabbed, and I've held up pretty good, aside from an attitude or two.Do you think any of Jesus' trials were as painful as being splashed with gasoline, set afire, then left writhing in agony while the stink of your own burning flesh fills your nose? I don't. But that doesn't prove anything about me or Jesus.Mortal men are pretty tough--even the ones who don't think they are godlings. And mortal women are even tougher.

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Jesus didn't create that church. What a stupid assertion. Men built that church and those things clearly contradict his teachings of loving your neighbour. Christ's church is the group that follows his teachings without warping and twisting them for their own psychotic ends. His church, as spoken of, consists of the body of Christ, and the fruit of the spirit etc...At the very least a reasonable rational person segregates Jesus from the idiotic Christians that followed him. You really ought to buy reading glasses as Jesus hasn't been mentioned yet.You know, it strikes me as pretty lame, those kind of people who are contrary to every little thing that is stated by a person just because they believe in Christ.Oh look - now Jesus didn't suffer at all, apparently it's like eating cake being nailed to the cross, and he enjoyed the lash.Do you intend to be so obtuse, because it sure looks stupid when you guys come out with this stuff.If X then Y and Z.The idea is to agree with X, if it is clearly a fact, and then to repudiate the consequences. Not to deny facts. That is pathetic.For example;" Listen, if I make this huge cut in my throat and bleed to death, then it's painful and I'll die and then you have to worship me. "Now, here's the idea Taz. You don't have to say that I won't bleed to death or that it isn't painful, just because I am a Christian. Instead, be rational for once and simply say that you don't agree that you have to worship me if I cut my throat. Don't say that I won't bleed, or that it will be fun for me, man, or that someone else's death is worse, or that my blood will turn back into the wound.If I eat chocolate bars I will grow a chocolate lung.What? Therefore mikey doesn't eat chocolate bars, or those chocolate bars were less chocolatey?LOL. Nobody has claimed that. You are refuting assertions that don't exist.It wouldn't matter. The LEAST suffering on our behalf, by a holy God, would be VASTLY consequential. If Christ stubbed his toe for me, that would be enough to justify my faith in Him, for God would stub his toe for an ant??? I am amazed he even considers the ants! Yet he dies on a cross for me, an ant? An inconsequential carbon unit that the lowest of animals would see as food? That's the great irony isn't it? That you - an ant, would not consider God (creator of the universe), as having worth for dying for an ant? Whereas God, the Most High, would become an ant, and say that you do have worth!Man - you big losers!

I guess you should have been in chat to see what he really meant by his OP. Haha, mike, do I sense another 'no true scotsman' coming along here somewhere?Edited by Taz, : No reason given.Edited by Taz, : Welcome back, mike.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

quote:

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Men built that church (snip)

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Men wrote the bible, too.So if you don't trust men who built that church, then maybe you can't trust the men who wrote the bible, either.

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I've always wondered.. How much pain & suffering can a mortal man take?

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Probably less than a mortal woman.

How much pain and suffering can a body take?Until it's dead.Can you inflict pain and suffering on a spiritual being?Only to the extent it thinks it's a body.So, are you only a body?Now you have the answer to your question.

I don't know. But I know that Thich Quang Duc took self-immolation like a champ. Not a peep. Not even so much as a wince of pain, according to onlookers.****WARNING**** Footage my be considered ****graphic.*****

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

I'll pass on that footage, N_J--it's a bit too close to home. I don't find Hollywood "burn suits" entertaining, either. I was almost 12 when Thich Quang Duc died, and I remember it well.During my own relatively brief (not self-)immolation and long recovery, not screaming was the best I could do.Guess I shoulda had more Buddhahood Anyway, it seemed to me that the OP was headed toward arguing that "No mortal man could endure what Jesus endured; therefore, Jesus was more than mortal man" and that's just silly--both by the lights of Christian tradition (Jesus was a man) and common sense (Jesus was a man), as well as the history of human torture and endurance.

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Real things always push back.
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DING DING DING DING!!!I can't tell you (mike the wiz) how many times I've heard this line of argument by christians. In fact, I've actually heard it in a religious sermon before, too, when I was young.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!