I love the Bible
Because it is so WEIRD! Labels: atheism, Bible, christians, religion
The latest weirdness I've been looking at in the Bible, is the issue of people taken phisically, bodily, direct to heaven, without dying.
Our candidates are:
Enoch: (Genesis 5:22-24 & Hebrews 11:5)Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away.
Elijah: (2 Kings 2:11)As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind
Moses: By inference, because he appeared with Elijah when Jesus was "Transfigured"
Jesus: Well, duh.
Mary, mother of Jesus: by Pope Pius XII, on November 1, 1950By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory
What I find weird is that we are taught, we assume that heaven is a spiritual place, somewhere we can't go. Yuri Gagarin was the first to go into space and declared that he couldn't find it. And yet thare are at least 4 (if you want to stick to the Bible) and maybe more actual flesh and blood people there. Do the still talk? Sweat? Sleep? Dream? Shiver? Laugh? Cry?
As physical things we are affected by gravity. These guys in heaven, do they walk about or float, or teleport, or what? HOW DOES IT WORK?
But that's why I love the Bible, I never seem to find an end to the weirdness and surprises. Because I was reading about Enoch, I found all that stuff about how old those guys were supposed to be, and about the Nephilim. Weird. I'll never know why christians don't blush. When I was a christian, we studied cults in church (JW, Mormonism, Scientology etc) to be better armed against heresy. How could we laugh at Smith translating the Book of Mormon thru his magic goggles and not see how stupid our own beliefs were?
posted by Stew @ 9:13 pm
4 people could be arsed to comment
4 Comments:
It's weird deconverting. No matter what your particular brand of delusion was, it seems almost impossible to understand what you were thinking at the time you were immersed in it.
The christians' heaven notion has always bemused me. Eternal bliss and happiness in the lord? This I think presents the ultimate existential problem.
Eternally blissful, shit, that sounds as much like hell as it does heaven - unberably boring ;)
Wow, God must have hated those people, taken physically up to the sky like that, to die horribly and painfully as the air gets cold and thin so you can't breathe, until reaching the vacuum of space and rupturing due to pressure differential.
I just found your "How dare the potter blame the pot when it has been poorly thrown?" rant on another site. I am stunned and wanted to offer my amazed compliments. What a remarkable piece that was. Have you published it elsewhere? Cheers and best wishes to you.
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