Would anyone want to really go to heaven?

Sam Vimes

antiskeptic wrote: »

But you consider the process of empiricism relevant don't you? So ask that he show up that way. And if he did, and the process would be rendered irrelevant by his doing so, isn't it pointless to specificy this or any other process?

You don't need to believe in God in order to ask him to turn up empirically. Do you?

Perhaps the above has narrowed things down a bit so that you can see how you don't have to believe in God in order to understand that process is irrelevant.

Ok, I view direct personal revelation to be unreliable and know that it is quite common for people to have absolutely convincing visions that are nonetheless false. Now you want me to ask god to show up by any process, so:

Step 1: I don't believe in god.
Step 2: I ask god to show up by any process
Step 3: I have a vision inside my mind of what appears to be god
Step 4: I dismiss this vision as my mind playing tricks on me because of the aforementioned unreliability and tendency for false visions
Step 5: I still don't believe in god

How could it go any other way?

antiskeptic wrote: »

Empiricism is a process which holds, for instance, that reliability is better assured through repeated, consistant-result experiment. By which process does this knowledge come about (given your claim that all knowledge is delivered via a process otherwise known to be reliable)? If 'consistant-result' itself is taken as proof of reliability then the process of empiricism is demonstrating that the process of empiricism is reliable. Which is circular.

All that 10,000 people seeing the same thing in the same way means is that 10,000 people see the same thing in the same way. It doesn't mean they see it as it actually is. It is a convention that decides reliability is acheived this way. However, a convention isn't an example of a demonstrably reliable process which you say all knowledge must come by.

Repeated consistent results is pretty much the definition of reliable. Consistent is a synonym of reliable something is reliable if we can rely on it. You're basically asking me how we "know" what the word reliable means and who decided that something is reliable if we're able to rely on it. If I turn the wheel of my car to the left I can reliably expect the car to turn left. If it occasionally shot off to the right then I couldn't rely on it and it wouldn't be reliable. You say it's circular if empiricism proves its own reliability but if I want to show that my car is reliable I'm hardly going to start cycling my bike. To show that my car is reliable I have to drive my car. My car shows its own reliability by consistently not shooting off into walls at random intervals and showing that I am "able" to "rely" on it. Seriously mate, you're very far off into la la land in your attempt to convince me that relying on a system that produces consistent results time after time is no different to listening to voices in my head. We don't "use a process" to decide what reliable means, something is reliable by definition if we are able to rely on it and we are able to rely on something if I can do it for the millionth time and "reliably" expect to get the same result I got the last 999,999 times I did it.

mackbolan

Heaven would get boring after a while.

Imagine if you lived 100 millions years in heaven?
By that time you would have read every word ever written, mastered science, philosophy, martial arts and any other discipline you could imagine, had sex with tens of millions of the most beautiful women who ever lived, met every wiseman, hero, leader, celebrity who ever lived, acquired all the knowledge of humanity and so on and on.

But still you would have no even begun eternity.

If you lived 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Billion years you would start becoming very very very bored indeed.

BUT still eternity would not even have begun.:D

Dougla2

no i would hate heaven if all the evangelicals are there and the wesboro baptist church (who follow the teachings of a bible to a t)

OldNotWIse

Not if my dog isn't allowed in...

Ellis Dee

A million years, a billion, a trillion, a gazillion -- and you still haven't begun to make a dent in the total.:eek:

And the only pleasure you have is riding your 72 virgins - all like this one:




:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

sensibleken

Braaaaiiiiiiinsssss

kylith

Ellis Dee wrote: »

A million years, a billion, a trillion, a gazillion -- and you still haven't begun to make a dent in the total.:eek:

And the only pleasure you have is riding your 72 virgins - all like this one:




:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

The aul' wan or the kid?



Just curious.