History shows it will not last that long, but the Bible will still state " In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" It is good to have some things that will never change.
Religion ( the early church) has a bad history in its treatment of scientists. But this was the action of men, not God, nor were they acting based on anything I have read in the Bible.
Understanding and learning about God, is understanding and learning about ourselves
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses.[a] 3 So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. 4 They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.
5 “Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels.[b] 6 And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. 7 They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi.’[c]
8 “Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters.[d] 9 And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven is your Father. 10 And don’t let anyone call you ‘Teacher,’ for you have only one teacher, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you must be a servant. 12 But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
13 “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.[e]
That is interesting - I remember a bishop joking with school students that as they embark on Religious Education they also risk leaving their faith.
Maybe that’s why Jesus thanked the Father for ‘hiding these things from the learned and disclosing them to mere children’.
I once went to a talk from a Biblical Scholar that was entitled “why John the author of John’s Gospel cannot be the Apostle John”.
The scholar had spent many years teaching/reading/understanding the Bible - he kept his faith.
He had a number of arguments as to why John the Apostle was not the author - I remember 2 of them - 1st that John as a lowly fisherman could not read/write and 2nd that the Roman soldiers would not have allowed anyone close to the execution site.
That’s the thing about study - it can narrow focus instead of widening - the Officer in Charge of the cohort commented ‘truly this was a son of God’ - being the OC he had the say as to who could be close - sounded quite sympathetic comment to make.
As to reading/writing being a lowly carpenter yet Jesus could do both, so who taught him?
In those times children, both male and female, could board in the Temple and were taught the Law & how to read/write - tradition holds that Mary was one of these children.
Jesus said ‘son behold your mother, mother behold your son, and from that time the Apostle went to live with Mary’. John’s gospel was written many years later.
There are other pointers that indicate John’s Gospel being authored from memory - later perhaps.
Once again… No one courageous enough to debate critical Biblical inconsistencies exposed in many of my posts…
Just swathes of nonsensical scripture used to deflect, to bat away discussion of modern day scientific reality revealing the many fallacies and much of the fantasy and myth containing ancient and redundant beliefs and archaic customs in Religious Books…
The Bible and it’s primitive teachings can be compared to the rise… And fall of the Encyclopaedia. Fantastic resources of learning and discovery at that time… Wisdom and knowledge captured at a particular point in History…
If we took a set of Encyclopaedia’s from say, the late 1960’s… We would only see the feats and the knowledge of Mankind as seen in that era… Basic, transportation, computing, communication, No walks on the Moon… Many Nations, Cultures… Cities and Society’s far different to the world we now inhabit…
Encyclopaedia’s were only a snapshot of the thinking, the understanding, the beliefs, the science at that time…
Vast resources of collated beliefs, knowledge and science much of made redundant in less than a Century… Compare this to a Book of beliefs, knowledge and science collated 2500 plus years ago…
In summary… Let this be a record for those inquisitive enough to wade through this thread in the future… Why religions remain such a powerful enigma… Even in enlightened times…
Their origins shalt not to be debated… Their verses shalt not to be critiqued… Their influence shalt not to be challenged…
What is reality?. Ask a neuro surgeon what is love
It is a chemical reaction in the brain.
What then is knowledge?
It is a portion of the brain that has the ability to store information also known as memory.
So what then is wisdom?
It is the brain’s ability to make decisions based on many factors both within the memory section and other information being fed to it from the senses.
Taking that a step further what is contemplation and imagination?
It is the brain’s ability to create an image within itself though not present to it’s sensory faculties.
So what then is awareness?
It is the brain communicating these things to the person i.e. itself.
Therefore a person with all their worries, emotions, fears, hopes is merely a brain made up tissue with chemical and electrical reactions?
Wisdom is knowing you do not put the Tomato in your fruit salad
Today’s best A.I. has lots of knowledge but zero Wisdom
Wisdom is also akin to Common Sense
If you watch the tv sitcom Big Bang, The character Sheldon was the smartest person on the show, he had great knowledge, but his nickname was Dumb Ass because he was totally lacking in Wisdom/Common Sense
I like to think I have a good balance of both, but if I could only have one, I would want Wisdom
The Bible ( rather you believe in God or not) is by far the greatest source of Wisdom ever put into print, and it being banned from our schools is why millennials are such Dumb Asses
Most scientists still shared Darwin’s belief that proteins were the likeliest candidates for self-reproducing molecules, since proteins were thought to be capable of reproducing and organizing themselves into cells. After the discovery that DNA is the basis for genetic transmission, many researchers began to favor nucleic acids over proteins as the ur-molecules. But there was a major hitch in this scenario. DNA can make neither proteins nor copies of itself without the help of catalytic proteins called enzymes. This fact turned the origin of life into a classic chicken-or-egg problem: Which came first, proteins or DNA?
RNA, DNA’s helpmate, remains the most popular answer to this conundrum, just as it was when I wrote “In the Beginning…” Certain forms of RNA can act as their own enzymes, snipping themselves in two and splicing themselves back together again. If RNA could act as an enzyme, then it might be able to replicate itself without help from proteins. RNA could serve as gene and catalyst, egg and chicken.
But the “RNA-world” hypothesis remains problematic. RNA and its components are difficult to synthesize under the best of circumstances, in a laboratory, let alone under plausible prebiotic conditions. Once RNA is synthesized, it can make new copies of itself only with a great deal of chemical coaxing from the scientist. Overbye notes that “even if RNA did appear naturally, the odds that it would happen in the right sequence to drive Darwinian evolution seem small.”
The RNA world is so dissatisfying that some frustrated scientists are resorting to much more far out—literally—speculation. The most startling revelation in Overbye’s article is that scientists have resuscitated a proposal once floated by Crick. Dissatisfied with conventional theories of life’s beginning, Crick conjectured that aliens came to Earth in a spaceship and planted the seeds of life here billions of years ago. This notion is called directed panspermia. In less dramatic versions of panspermia, microbes arrived on our planet via asteroids, comets or meteorites, or drifted down like confetti.
So therefore I am my brain, completely physical without spirit?
Yep
If my brain flat-lines even if my body is still alive, say by life support machine, it is possible for me to experience consciousness or awareness?
You are brain dead; therefore it’s impossible for you to be aware – you are your brain.
I get that, what about the Near Death Experiences I’ve heard about, even read recently of a Brain Surgeon who testifies that he experienced awareness of other beings whilst flat lining?
NDE is still the subject of study, not yet fully understood by science. There is a theory that the brain induces a dream like experience not unlike chemical sedation in order to console itself to impending death.
Dreams are said to be like imagination, apparently we all dream though many forget, when I imagine I choose the imagination, yet when I dream there is no choice?.
Dreaming is still the subject of study, not yet fully understood by science.
I am my brain, which receives information via the senses; it is not possible for it to compute data outside of the senses, e.g. telepathy?
Studies such as telepathy is not science, it’s regarded as pseudo science.
Yet there are established instances of “intuition” – commonly called gut feeling?
There are more neurons in your gut than in your spinal cord, over 100m of them.
That suggests that I am my brain and also my gut, but doesn’t explain whether it’s possible for neuron networks within my body can receive information outside of my body’s senses?
This is the realm of the ‘sub-conscious’ it is below or beyond our conscious/awareness mind (brain) , science is increasingly of the opinion that it governs over 90% of human emotions – not yet fully understood.
Back to ‘outside’ senses feeding the brain (and now the gut), it’s not possible for information to be received by either the conscious or sub conscious by any other means other than my body’s senses?
Yep, you are your brain, when it’s dead you are too.
Your lungs can stop breathing, Your heart can stop beating, neither of these are immediately fatal, people come back from drowning or from heart attacks. But no one that I am aware of has ever come back from being brain dead.
If Thor had understood this we could have been spared the last Avenger movie
In the Bible there is a passage that states, “Joseph was warned in a dream” about impending danger. This suggests input from an outside intelligence not within the scope of his senses.
Is such a scenario possible in medical science?
It’s possible to imagine within a dream such input but it would remain only in imagination, therefore the danger would not be real it would remain imagined.
I encountered a man who was warned in a dream about imminent health danger; he was given a time frame. In the dream he could ask questions, “What should I do?” the obvious one.
He was given advice on a particular food that would mitigate the risk.
He changed his eating habit from next day, the health issue occurred within the time frame suggested in the dream and having been warned he was able to insist on invasive tests, the first of which was negative, he persisted and the issue discovered and resolved.
Would medical science have an explanation for such an occurrence?
Since the health issue did not remain in imagination but was in fact real then no explanation.
No, no, not really… You three are frantically posting nonsense amongst yourselves about Tomatoes, Pseudo Science, Fictional Nordic Mythological Beings… Dreams and Imagination…
Many of the factors that are the basis of most mainstream Religions…
Although scientists agree that climate change is real and human-caused, some people do not accept consensus science when it comes to climate change, But they use consensus science on other topics.
Research in all sciences has holes and gaps, some have little importance, some have a lot, but that doesn’t prove God’s existence or nonexistence. Science should not be used to make decisions without researching what science has provided
were not made of things which do appear ;- they were not made from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing
Hebrews 11:3
By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
Colossians 1:16
for in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and unto him;
