Eternal Life (thanks, but no thanks)

Skipping over hooah212002's request for textual citation since it is largely irrelevant, doesn't this mean that humans can never go to heaven? Allow me to explain:When you are born you don't have a relationship with God. You don't believe in the tenants of Christianity that are required for someone to be saved because you can't understand them. Such a child would be an atheist, if you consider that term to properly apply to things that are incapable of being theists (rocks, trees, dogs, etc).At some point later in their life that child will become capable of understanding Christianity and fulfilling the requirements to be saved, and afterwards that child *may* be presented with the choice to become saved or not. This is contingent on them being exposed to the information of Jesus's sacrifice and the knowledge of the choice to be made; whether this happens through someone telling them about Christianity or supernatural revelation sometime in their life or after death is irrelevant. If they make that choice to become saved they stop being an atheist and become a theist.And there is the rub. If as you say they "become a new creature" through that conversion, whether it occurs immediately upon making the decision or later in their spiritual progression, the fact of the matter is that the atheist person or soul isn't what actually goes to heaven. The non-believing baby or the baby's soul never makes it to heaven. Its some simulacrum which is presumably based off of the original being, but is fundamentally altered in some important way. (Whatever that might be, it apparently required a complete remake and not just a modification.)So by your view, God created us screwed from the start. Nobody can actually become "saved" because that saving process requires the destruction of the original and replacement by *something else*. Its like traveling to Mars by being cloned on Mars and killing yourself on Earth, except in this case with your soul.The big question that remains here is why did God make people at all? If he isn't going to let any of them into heaven but only fundamentally altered copies somewhat based off of them, why not just make the copies that are fit for heaven in the first place? Why bother with creating beings with the sole intention of them coming to know him, and when they do so annihilating them in favor of a more pleasing replacement?

I view it as irrelevant because not only do I think the text itself is fiction, but theists have a very robust history of interpreting it to mean any number of things regardless of what it actually says. Since we are never going to be able to establish that Buzsaw's interpretation is wrong we may as well not bother.

You seem to have quoted me, but responded to an entirely different post. Looking back through the other nearby posts I'm not sure whatever you are responding to was even in this thread. In the spirit of benefit of the doubt, I will assume whatever conversation you were having was quite interesting.Midway through you only tangentially begin to address a portion of my point so I will start there. This is hardly the case. If Buzsaw's interpretation is correct, every human has a vested interest in not getting to know God. Its true that to the annihilated soul the point is moot, but souls presumably have a vested interest in avoiding annihilation. The only type of soul that could possibly benefit from a relationship with God are the ones created already knowing him, so to them the point is also moot. No, not necessarily. Well, at least not this slight tangent of Buzsaw's proposed eternal life scenario. In this case humans are simply offered an opportunity for voluntary soul annihilation; if there is an afterlife for humans who don't accept God isn't really defined or particularly pertinent. Even if humans were to just die and be gone at the end of their earthly lives it would still be in their best interest not to destroy themselves with choice during their life.So in conclusion I have no idea where you were going with this, or even where you started.

Doing some quick figures, such a cubic city would have roughly 70% the volume of Earth's moon. Even assuming that it is much less dense, one would be able to walk on the sides of the cube. If placed on Earth, such an object would probably sink right through the crust causing some sort of titanic geologic event.The logistics of even viewing such a city are implausible. Even assuming viewing from Everest and the middle of one side of the city, the theoretical maximum line of sight is only just over half the distance to the far edge. Assuming the city actually entered the atmosphere essentially 100% of the sky would be taken up by a single side. The corners of such a side would be well outside Earth's atmosphere regardless, and the International Space Station would collide with such a cube a mere 15% up its edge. One shudders to think of the structural stresses involved in keeping such a structure cubic, much less performing the gymnastics required to display itself to a mountain-top viewer.Its fictional magic of course, but its obvious even the writers didn't fully comprehend what they were claiming.

Is that like "make-believe science"?Edited by Phage0070, : No reason given.