Emperor Constantine: the second coming of Christ

Interesting ideas, Gib.

Or maybe just a slow, gradual version of Armageddon.

When I was quasi-religious, I used to think of the world as hell. I don’t think Wendy’s interpretation of hell would make much sense since hopelessness is the counterpoint to hope. I wouldn’t think you’d have one without at least the capacity for the other. Anyway, I saw things like joy, hope, love, etc. as far more transitory than what I saw as the default state of despair and longing.

The only capacity Hell has is suffering and hopelessness is that ride. How can one be quasi-religious? Don’t you either have a belief system based on faith or you don’t? Belief comes in degrees? It’s an either or.

What’s your source of information on hell? You seem to be an authority.

Of course belief comes in degrees, we aren’t talking about facts. You can have somewhat of a belief system that’s subject to change, or have varying degrees of strength in your beliefs. Being quasi-religious, for me, came from believing but being highly skeptical. I was essentially agnostic, but trying to convince myself that I believed at the same time. In other words, I wanted to believe more than I actually did I suppose. I didn’t know whether I was convinced or not at the time.

Not for me. Sometimes I think someone likes me, but I am not sure. I am pretty good at knowing, but have been wrong. My certainty levels tend to match my percentages.

Further, I have thought I believed things and then realized later for the most part I did not. When the belief turns out to be correct, I find I am surprised. I had an attitude. I thought I believed what I should believe, but deeper down I did not.

We are not binary. We can think so, but are not sure. We can think probably. We can be sure, like you are.

I’m not having much luck answering you and Karpel Tunnel, explaining faith is turning out to be more difficult than I at first thought. So far I have three drafts of answers, but none are complete and succinct. I’ll keep at it. :handgestures-fingerscrossed:

Realizing that you are an eternal being without realizing that that is what you are realizing sucks. Drugs may act as a portal allowing the transportation of partial truths back and forth between dimensions.

It sucks, but such teleportation would scare the s…t out of most mortals, they would loose their minds before loosing control over such helplessness. No, they need their gods to reassure themselves that everything is ok. If they are self professed atheists, they would deny everything but the ultra real

What inhabits a mortal human body, that soul of ours, is not mortal, Meno, that’s my point. Who says that being immortal makes you a God? It just means you continue indefinitely without supernatural powers to accomplish feats which defy the nature of this Earth dimension. The gullibility to believe that we are solely made of this dimension, that we beings originate from this dimension, is what flabbergasts me. People are mesmerized and stupefied by their human now. There’s so much more.

Indeed, it appears that Your bewilderment is justified! So lets suppose, that Your comment on other dimensions IS absolutely certain. If so, then , the relevant point must be in line with the idea, that such separate realities have some connection,and /or reflection of, and with, each other, even from the point of basic , primary logic.
You may, or might, question this corollary, but the phrase, as from above does that below, come to mind. This is more toward the reflective part , rather then the connective part that the argument adheres to.

As such, ’ the hierarchy of angels make more sense , in an afterlife. If our ‘souls’ survive, then at the most naive level of logic, Levii Strauss’ notion of a magical bonding makes sense. Not that it doesn’t make complete sense from the point of view of anthropology, but if the reflective sense with which the concept of soul is introduced, as another reality, using his method can only be understood as a conjuctive.

Wendy, I am digressing , but for a reason. That is, that even the idea of the argument for and against duality fits some parallel, between the naive totality which permeates the mind of elementary thought and post modern ventures into thought as : It’s Self.

If that opinion is held, then parallels would not fit the description, because by definition parallel lines never meet.
Therefore analogy would be as improper as well.

If the connection is a self prescribed tautology, then the connection is only based on a faux argument, and there really is no prior separation. It is an Absolute, because it requires an illumination, of reflective origins, and we, as individual souls are part of it.

By that I mean we are separate, while being part of it at the same time.

If one believes this form of argument, then we are both separate from God, and part of ‘IT’. And since I do not believe in transcendent beings, the conclusion ought to be obvious.

Then the primal connective at some point have a goal: an evolutionary goal: that of unifying with a reflective field to form a unity: as a proximate focus. This focus is the objective realization of the very basis of perception.

I touched on some things which may be tangential, but such bears on the pre-emphasis of perception on the realization of the (our) soul.

Then, we really can’t separate what is mortal from what is immortal.

A postscribed sense , as it were possible, could not have realized it, but then they held little store back then, in imminence and contemporality.

I doubt that from my visits. Our souls are our hard drives. Perhaps the shock of being in a human body causes a disconnection from previous knowledge, being in a dumb animal, we become dumb animals essentially.

Is becoming something of an amnesiac a true sense of death? I can’t say total amnesiac since I feel compelled by and drawn to some things and some people, there’s a familiarity, especially concerning deja vus which seems like some kind of incomplete reminder of past interactions. ILP has spawned many deja vus and dreams.

That might be because faith is belief without explanation… though you might be trying to explain the psychology of faith.

:laughing: That made me laugh. I’d like to quote that in my sig. May I?

Drugs transport your consciousness across realities. Another way to say that is: drugs create temporary realities for you.

That was me when I was 19. Atheist turned believer almost over night.

The implications of that are rather sobering, either You were precocious or I am retarded.

What made for the sudden conversion, if I may ask?

Sure, as long as you remember what eternity can feel like.

Let’s go with me being precocious. :wink:

The drugs were screwing with my brain. I started to believe in the Devil.

Well, that’s the catch. Do I really remember all the details of that experience at the rave? Not really. I know how I’ve come to interpret it: Samsara. And I know how I feel about Samsara today: more of a roller-coaster ride than hell. ← What do you think?

Does this mean I don’t get to quote you? :frowning:

Yeah, no quote.

Aw, you’re killing me. :laughing:

I know that not everybody is capable of being an atheist, the world was better off pagan or polytheistic. Semitic morality is slave morality.

I know not everyone is capable of being a pagan. Semitic morality with its focus on a transcendent God was part of the death of intuition. One of the side effects of this death is atheism. Abrahamism started the pre-frontal cortex war on the limbic system. Integration and collaboration are so much better. Fucking scientists couldn’t admit that animals had emotions and intentions until the 80s, and then they claimed they were the ones who demonstrated it, never apologizing to all the people they considered to be irrational and anthropomorphizing before, when the scientists were strutting around, back then, saying animals were mechanisms or impulse machines and we were not. That’s the kind of duh hubris prefrontal-lobes identifiers, who keep their limbic systems in dungeons, are capable of.