"Ascended into Heaven" - Theological Problem

I wonder why English bibles use the word "heaven" if the Greek new testament literally says ουρανός meaning sky.

Okay, user: just for you~

We do have to stay on topic, though.

tfw no bf

Don't be so down, user: I'm in the same spot too, you know. Maybe we'll find someone someday?

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In regards to this thread, I think it's ridiculous how Christian apologists keep moving the goalposts. For centuries, it was literally believed God resided high in the sky; once humans finally devised ways to travel higher (even beyond our planet's orbit), God's domain was no longer located above us, but instead relegated to another entirely separate dimension.

God-damn, anyone with half a decent brain could see this is grasping at straws. Christianity is reactionary to the core.

>but I should say it would have been much more reasonable for Elijah and Jesus to simply have "faded away" or disappeared into thin air
Why though? How would fading away or disappearing be any different than rising up?

Beam me up Gabriel.

>semantic literalism

simply disappearing is what going to another dimension without a show would look like. his point is that flying into the sky implies that heaven is in the sky. If physically moving up isn't required to go to heaven than he shouldn't need to fly. nor would the tower of babel be seen as an attempt to reach heaven

The idea that Heaven is an immaterial realm of thought is a Platonic heresy. The heavens are a physical location, regardless of whether they are located 'outside' the observable universe or somewhere inside it. Being thus, there are too possibilities.

1. Upon leaving the atmosphere he literally flew the rest of the way to 'Heaven'. OR

2. He left the atmosphere then teleported, because it looked fucking badass. This is the same man who created the cosmos in a week instead of a second, because the former was more impressive, destroyed humanity by flooding it, and whose idea of casual conversation is lighting an entire mountain on fire then speaking out of a pillar of smoke.

The Almighty is clearly a fan of pyrotechnics and grand displays, why would this be any different?

>>>/global/rules/3

Going off of Greek philosophy, things close to or on the Earth are imperfect and become more perfect the further out they are. Heavenly bodies (stars) were thought to be perfectly round glass spheres.

is this a historical furries thread

Actually I just read into this thread past the furry imagery and now I feel fucking stupid for trying to derail it with a dumb meme.

Please just ignore me.

Too late. It's a furry thread now.

Thanks, asshole.

>furry shit
kys degenerates

I want OP to talk more about christian tales while posting furry

I'd pay you to do so on a daily basis if I could.

>the furry poster's ban expired
But why continue

nice

The writer of Luke and acts (same person btw) was most likely an educated Greek gentile whose aim was to teach other gentiles about Christ. At many points in his writings points are made to show connections to the old testament, with this case being the ascension acting as the final fulfillment of the messiah the prophet Elijah promised. So the writer made their endings be the same to highlight this. A major point in his writings is using the old testament to show gentiles the importance of the messiah and his role in Jewish teaching. It was less a metaphor but more a point to solidify that Jesus was surely the messiah in regards to the old testament. Also, many people seem to forget that all the synoptic gospels are at least second hand accounts of the disciples or people from their congregations. Let alone that the gospel earliest, Mark, was written 20/30 years after the ministry of Jesus toke place (Luke and acts being written around 50 years after the life of Jesus). The gospels took on a more symbolic teaching role rather than dictating the actual events involving Jesus.

TL;DR Its's an act of symbolism to show connection to the old testament prophecy of the Messiah.

*took and *the earliest gospel, Mark

What are you even going on about? OP was talking about incidents exclusively in the Gospel of Mark, both the canonical one as well as the purportedly 'Secret' one of Mar Sabaa

Christians say heaven can refer to the sky, outer space, or god's realm beyond space.

>it's not a metaphor it's a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, a metaphor if you will

Why does it have to be furry?

Because it catches people's attention, and gives me (us) something pleasant to look at while posting and dealing with unpleasant people like Christians

>The Biblical account in both Luke and Acts states that Jesus

>a metaphor if you will

Did I ever deny that? One of the main themes found in the authorship of Luke and acts is the frequent use of symbols as metaphors in either reference to the old testament or to the concept of the "kingdom of heaven on earth." The books of Luke, Acts, and especially John should be viewed as having a huge amount of metaphors that should be looked at to find a greater understanding of the ministry of Jesus. OP should remember that the Gospels do not contain definite historical truth but instead christian religious truth.

>oh yeah it really is a metaphor and OP should remember that truth is subjective

Truth is objective. Things are either true or false.

antichrist confirmed to be a furry

Didn't some theologian do the math and came to the conclusion that if Jesus really did rise up into the sky he wouldn't have reached even the closest star by now?

Wouldn't that depend on how quickly he accelerates outside the atmosphere? The nearest star is just over 8 lightminutes away, it's not THAT far.

>Earth is flat

Yet you can prove the Earth is round by looking at the horizon...

I'd say it was more to fulfil scripture of rising up to heaven and so witnesses would understand and could spread the word as 'he rose up to heaven' sounds better than 'he just disappeared' if people see him as just disappearing it brings about confusion and doubt so the rising up to the sky whilst not necessary to go to heaven is necessary for the peoples understanding of heaven

Jesus post-crucifixion was pretty blatantly godding it up for his followers already. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea he wouldn't hammer it home with one last display of divinity. What else was he supposed to do, peace out and vanish into the heaven dimension or whatever? His ascending was pretty symbolic, as was the rolling back of the stone at the tomb. Jesus could have just ghosted out at that point but didn't for a reason.

>So the account of Jesus floating away just leaves us with a petty God/Jesus, who flies away exclusively for the aesthetic effect of impressing his followers
You answered your own question.

>he hypocritically and explicitly warns his believers to not ask for miracles or grand displays.
Don't know how you find this hypocritical, nor what section you are referencing. Odds are you are severely misinterpreting God's word, so that you can create some false hypocrisy to justify how fapping to gay animals isn't disgusting and an abomination.

I am not a Christian, however I believe that many accounts of Jesus post-death, and accounts of the supernatural sans Jesus, are best described as hallucinations. They can be confined to individuals or experienced as groups.

Hallucination would imply to you fraudulence, I'm sure, but I don't think that's necessarily true. If God can accomplish feats of divinity using purely physical means, then I think it would make the most sense to do so.

However, as far as Jesus turning water into wine, I have no clue and need to do more research.

But I think it's important to note that atheism is not bulletproof, nor is any manner of deism.

Personally, my best argument for the existence of God is this: Through the span of infinity, existence occurred due to sheer probability stacking upon itself, again, infinitely. And given that the post-Universe is as infinite as the pre-Universe, it is likely that probabilities will continue to stack until eventually, again due to the sheer span of infinity, either God, a Godlike being, or a being capable of becoming God, will EVENTUALLY exist.

If God doesn't exist now, then someday he will due to probability. It doesn't matter if God pops up as a complete entity, or if humanity achieves omnipotence and omniscience ourselves. Once an entity has achieved omniscience and omnipotence, they ARE God, and if multiple beings achieve this, then they become the same being due to having the same domain of power and mind.

Therefore, if God can someday exist, then through his omnipotence, he can retroactively force his own existence into the past.

This is my own personal theology, and speaks nothing of my moral or ethical beliefs on the matter.

Where do you get the idea that Heaven exists in another dimension and isn't a physical place?

Now, one might argue that there is no such thing as time pre and post Universe. I would like to disagree here. I would refer to the time we use, which is entwined with matter and called "spacetime", is best referred to as "Real Time"; time which flows only as long as something exists and changes.

Then, in eras of non-time, such as the pre-Universe void, we would use what I call "Meta Time". It is a hypothetical measurement of time which uses our Real Time as a reference, in which we may count imaginary moments passing by in eras of Void.

Meta Time is a valid concept to me, because there must be something, some form of time, we can use to measure the rise of probability in a void-Universe. These probabilities do in fact rise, with the best proof being our own existence.

And even if there were a primordial and real existence preceding the Big Bang, you will eventually run out of causes in the cause-effect chain of causality. Therefore, there must have been a nothing at some point; only it is semantically illogical to define a nothing, because nothings can not exist.

However, they CAN exist in concept, and I believe that conceptual-existence DOES account for some manner of reality that the sciences of physical existence can not account for.

>mfw Jesus and furfags

god this place has gone downhill fast

how do you know what going into an other dimension looks like? it could be literally anything. there's nothing to say that heaven doesn't literally exist in the sky, we might just not be able to see it because of our sins or being in our physical shells or so on.

>his point is that flying into the sky implies that heaven is in the sky.
because people at the time believed heaven was literally in the sky, so instead of sperging out at their harmless belief, he did what everyone present would recognize as "going to heaven" so there would be no ambiguity what occurred.

>Truth is objective. Things are either true or false

You're confusing philosophical truth and historical truth being the same thing.

Nature abhors a vacuum to such a degree, then, that it would make Gods out of them?

That is my hypothesis, yes!

However, the fatal flaw with my idea, is that it hinges on the possibility of omniscience or omnipotence existing.

If omniscience can exist, then omnipotence can be obtained through knowledge.
If omnipotence can exist, then omniscience can be obtained through power.

However, if neither of these are at all possible, then neither is an absolute God.

I lean toward the possibility of God on the count of infinity being a ludicrous amount of time for probabilities to give birth to exotic forms of existence which defy the laws of our own.

Also, I really, really like the way you phrased that, regardless of where you stand in support or denial of my idea.

I want Anubis to hold me in his strong arms.

It's not difficult. The third heaven, where God and the angels live, is not higher than our two heavens (atmo and space). It overlaps both at all times and at all places.

People in the third heaven talk to people on earth.

Angels ascend and descend ladders from earth to the third heaven.

There is very likely a portal to the third heaven where Jesus chose to ascend. After all, he would have made it himself.

The truth? Yes, the truth is the best we can come up with.

You can continue to love lies, and the people who craft lies, if you'd like.

Christians prefer the truth.

Once you stop worshiping random chance and time, your explanation falls rather flat.

I wouldn't call it worshiping. But if what I'm doing is worship, then what method do you "worship" as an explanation?

I'm sorry but your reply is starvingly shallow.

If you subscribe to the "existence always existed" train of thought, which does have its own compelling evidence, then I would still ask you to elaborate.

I find it hard to believe that existence wasn't uniform at some point; and once existence is perfectly uniform, it is functionally equivalent to a void.

What I'm perhaps worshiping here is not time, but concept. Time has no place in a uniform existence or a void. But a conceptual analog to time, does.

Sorry, I skipped a step and made some assumptions.

The title "God" is given to whatever or whomever a person believes created the universe.

By your post, I assumed you believed that this universe was created through the process of random chance and time.

By definition, then, your god would be random chance and time, which you believe responsible for the existence of the universe, and all people worship their gods.

Fair enough. But I'm not sure where to go from here conversationally. Calling it worship might be apt in the sense that it is a leap of faith to make assumptions about such an abstract and far away era of existence, but I am agnostic and observant first.

What I ask for is a more compelling alternative. Which, I believe, is possible.

>your god would be random chance and time

I would like to argue about the semantics here, however. The source of creation is not the God I'm talking about. As a matter of fact, God is the ends of the means, not the means to the end. God occurs later, not first.

To call the origin of existence, which I believe to be nothingness, a God, would be to characterize something which by its very nature does not exist by any means except conceptually.

Existence is antithetical to a void. There is no void. There is no nothing. Never has been, never will be.

Not in a universe with an eternal God.

Of course there is. When you start talking about one single variable, the cosmological constant, and that if it varied 1 part in 10^123 there would be no life in the universe, you have to throw random chance right out the window.

Or adopt an even more wildly unsupported position that there is an infinite number of multiverses, out of which this one just happened to get every single possible variable that provides the opportunity for life to exist just exactly right.

The combined chance of that happening at random is literally 1 in infinity.

I don't know why you can't realize that the creation infers a creator. Perhaps is't just the scale and scope of the creation that is boggling your mind where you would otherwise make such an inference.

This is assuming of course that you have no difficulty seeing a painting and inferring a painter; seeing a building and inferring a builder; or seeing code and inferring a coder.

After all, what is DNA but coded information?

It's simpler to believe the truth.

God is a supernatural triune spirit being who has always existed, who made this universe, and who will always exist.

You'll find if you search hard enough that the christian worldview is the most robust, explanatory, and predictive worldview available.

Existence not existing is paradoxical because it implies non-existence is possible; and if it were, then there would be the existence of non-existence.

But conceptually, it can exist. And physically, I would describe its properties as a perfectly uniform infinity; a scape without any warps, defects, changes, or time.

I do not believe it's possible for shapes and motions to exist perpetually without beginning, because that begs the question as to what shaped it and why it is shaped as such; thus creating a form of time that perhaps runs perpendicular, or extra-dimensionally, from time as we know it.

Ultimately, after we burn through every cause, we're gonna have to get to a first-cause. And that first-cause is going to invariably be nothingness rejecting itself, which I would describe as a probability.

If that sounds paradoxical, then give me a model that isn't! The best we can do is come up with a paradoxical model that explains its own paradox.

In which case, existence emerging from nothingness is at least somewhat feasible, because nothingness would have existed for so long that something had to happen. Existence can't fill the role of non-existence, because you run into the hows and whys of its form and shape.

Space has no properties, and there is no void. Even the most remote space is 4 degrees K.

As the universe works on pressure mediation, any void would be filled by any pressure anywhere around it, and cease to exist. Nature abhors a vacuum, after all.

The first cause's name is Yehoshua, or Jesus. The Unmoved Mover. The Uncaused Cause. Or as he calls himself, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end; I Will Be Who I Will Be.

>The combined chance of that happening at random is literally 1 in infinity.

Non-zero possibilities might as well be 100% guaranteed in the scope of infinity.

Believe me, none of what you said went over my head. I believe I have accounted for it.

Your explanation is, to me, too... what's the word? Anthropocentric? You suggest that failed universes without life can never happen because we don't see them. I don't think that's right.

So wait, are you now suggesting there was a coder to do the coding? Are you personifying it? Because my whole argument is that the God comes after the fact, not before it.

God doesn't NEED to have created us. Once God exists in some far off infinite future, it can retroactively do whatever it wants.

Also this is fun.

>Space has no properties, and there is no void

If you make your way out to the edge of the Universe on the perimeter of the Big Bang's sphere of influence, is there not a void that goes beyond the "space" containing the Universe?

Once you impregnate that void by moving into it, it is no longer a void. But it was, before you violated it.

But come on with the Christian cosmology... My lack of belief is not for a lack of trying. I've deduced the very real likelihood of a God through my own methods. Christ is not relevant to that.

Christ is hard to make relevant, because even from a moral standpoint he is highly dubious.

I'm sorry. If love were all he was about; hell if loyalty and faith in love were all he was about, then sure, he's relevant to me. But if you scrutinize the Bible and the decisions of Jesus, I'm not sure it's quite so simple.

Look, my point is, God too came from nothing; whether he came before us, after us, or retroactively willed himself into existing before us despite being created afterward; your first cause behind God is going to be the void.

God is a decision-maker, and decisions all have origins. God is not a static being; neither in my cosmology, nor yours.

It is not an insult to God to suggest there was nothing before him. Because that's literally what you believe. If God was the first existence, then before his existence, there was nothing.

And no matter how old God is, some non-uniformity in his composition caused him to start doing things, as opposed to doing nothing.

>Non-zero possibilities might as well be 100% guaranteed in the scope of infinity.

You asked for an example of you worshiping random chance and time?

This would be such an act of worship.

1 in infinity is not non-zero.

No, God stretches out the heavens like a tent.

Moshe Carmelli came up with some higher ordered dimensional equations to include the stretching of space itself with the movement of the universe from inception to current perceived position. They are notable in that they do not rely on "dark matter" or "dark energy" as fudge factors to explain the anomalies in the current peer reviewed mistake filled model.

>God too came from nothing

No, he did not. He has always existed. He did not "come from" anywhere or any time. He has always been.

I know this is a tricky concept to wrap your head around, but it's true.

>1 in infinity is not non-zero.

It literally is non-zero, bro.

0 in infinity is not non-zero. But you didn't say 0, you said 1.

That is literally the same thing as saying "before God, there was nothing."

I know this is a tricky concept to wrap your head around, but it's extremely amusing to me.

Like, you've literally just repeated my explanations with a different syntax, then told me I'm wrong. And why I'm wrong is because you think my assumptions, which you keep agreeing with, are some how more baseless than yours.

It's... amusing and frustrating at the same time.

Look, this conversation isn't going to go much farther. We are at an impasse. I would rather not dishonor us both by insulting you. And telling you that you're as proud and unmoving as I am would probably seem like an insult.

1/infinity = 0

Bro.

There is no "Before God".

There has always been God.

No, you're just conflating the universe with God.

Can you tell the Mona Lisa from da Vinci?

phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html

This model of the universe is not only extremely accurate, but has no reliance on "fudge factors".

Your math is terrible, see me after class.

"What came before God?"
"Nothing. God has always been."
"So... nothing?"
"No, God has always been. There was nothing before him."
"So... Nothing?"
"What the fuck dude. I'm trying to be nice. Get the fuck outta here, with your... shit..."

>conflating the Universe with God

This is a gross and incompetent reduction of everything I've been saying. Bravo.

My amusement only goes so far. It goes against my ethics to insult you, which is a line I'm dancing on by continuing this conversation. Not out of animosity, but out of vexation for your... fairly frail grasp of logic.

I'm sorry. I'm out. If you were trying to troll me, you've done a good job; a teenage me would be impressed. But the adult me who wants a real conversation, is becoming dispassionate with the tedium of all this.

Wait, why am I trying to be nice when you've clearly insulted me numerous times and have instigated provocation numerous times? This is absurd!

Also, just to clarify...

1/infinity == 0.000....1

Furthermore,

( 1 / infinity ) * infinity = 1

An infinite amount of time cancels out infinite possibilities. They're literally the same variable. This is sophomore shit man, cmon.

Jesus christ how do you not know this