The fishy state of North America

The US economy is in a crisis. In the meantime the governments of the USA, Canada and Mexico have been involved in trilateral agreements. The latter had been happening quite hush-hush. Most citizens are unaware of their governments' threesome-flirtations. For now the idea of a North American Union is still downplayed, and maybe even a farce, but a new North American currency, the Amero, is quite plausible. Imagine a total collapse of the US economy? Imagine the US Dollar suddenly losing all value… In such a case, only the combined forces of Canada, Mexico and the USA could save the North American economy from total disaster. (After all, both Canada and Mexico are siamesed to the USA, that if their big brother should collapse, they are sure to collapse with it.)

Such grandiose economic merging might be a Utopian ideal, and will surely save the US from utter depression, but at what cost? Something about the whole thing smells of aquatic vertebrates.

Surely it is all just silly conspiracy theories, isn't it?

Love your enemies

“Die voetewassing van Jacob Zuma” / “The Feet-washing of Jacob Zuma”

Recently I taught a Bible class and we spoke about Jesus’ inclusive character – how He treated the ostracised of society with grace and forgiveness. I also referred to Jesus’ radical teaching in the Oliviet Discourse, and the extreme teaching of loving your enemies.

To try and make it practical I asked the members in my Bible class to each name someone they consider enemies. Being good Christian folk they don’t have enemies and so I had to change my approach. “Who then,” I asked “if you had to choose, do you not like?”

Two names came up as statistically significant. Both political figures – Robert Mugabe, the dicatator-president of our neighbouring country, Zimbabwe, and our own once vice-president, Jacob Zuma. The latter came up the most. Zuma is a notorious presence in South Africa. Recently voted as the president of the ruling party, the Afican National Congress, Zuma is likely to become the next president of South Africa in 2009. Although a democracy, South Africa is not a healthy democracy as there are no real opposition parties to balance the ruling party. To many, the idea of Zuma as our next president is a chilling thought.

Zuma is infamous for his unruly behaviour. He was let off from his position as vice-president by the current president, Thabo Mbeki, for alleged corruption. He is notorious for his sexual escapades, polygamy and hordes of children (many out of wedlock). He shocked the nation during a rape-trial (him being the accused) for admitting to having had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman (decades his junior) and then taking a shower afterwards as infection-prevention. This single act negated years of AIDS-prevention education amongst the black community who look up to Zuma as a role model.

Regardless of his unconventional lifestyle, Zuma is a charismatic character with a large following of political supporters, especially under the black male youths. His example only encourages licentiousness and chauvinism.

It, therefore, makes much sense to me that my group of Bible study students should list Jacob Zuma as somebody they dislike.

And then I dropped the bombshell: “Jesus teaches that you should love Jacob Zuma.” Love the sinner, not the sins – yes, but do love the sinner!

In demonstration of this principle Jesus washed the feet not only of his loyal disciples, but also of Judas Iscariot, the “friend” that would stab him in the back. Jesus had mercy on the whores, and cared for the downtrodden. Jesus audibly forgave those that spat on and tortured him. Jesus loved his enemies.

The challenge of being a disciple of Christ is a radical one – a most unnatural one. It does not come naturally to us to love those we dislike – not to mention our enemies! It is not merely unnatural - it is supernatural.

But for the grace of God, it is impossible! To love your enemies is a wholly divine act. Christianity is a wholly divine religion.

In the [science] but not of the [science]...

For about a year I was part of a creativity project called Tracking Creative Creatures. The purpose of the project was to collect data on the creative process. I was invited to contribute as an artist, which entailed the creation of artworks inspired by predetermined stimuli. My contribution also had to include a log of the creative process as I experienced it.

As a scholar, I was also invited to make an academic contribution. An academic journal decided it will focus one full publication to this project. And so I made up my mind to write an article for this publication, on my own creative process while involved in the project. Being an academic journal a mere subjective vomiting of ideas would not be accepted. I therefore need a scientific model to give structure and credence to the article.

My instinctive thought was to use Semiotics – the study of signs. But after some thought the study of Memetics stood out as an excellent model to explore the creative process. Memetics basically study the propagation of ideas, known as memes, from mind to mind (in the same way as genes propagate from organism to organism) and their evolution. This models fits ideally with the Tracking Creative Creatures project.

The projects started with the imaginary creatures of a young boy who described them to his artist father who in turn made sketches of the creatures. These sketches were given to artists from different disciplines and asked to use the sketches as inspiration to create own artworks. The original memes, developed in the mind of a five year old boy, propagated through his father’s sketches to different artists, where they mutated and evolved. The memes competed for survival. The “strongest” ones were chosen by the artist and ended up as artworks. The “weaker” means went extinct.

As you can see, Memetics provides an excellent metaphor for studying the distribution and evolution of ideas as it occurs in the creative process.

And here is my dilemma. Memetics, inspired by Darwinism, is fundamentally an atheistic science, developed by two outspoken atheists (Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet), and used to promulgate Darwinian ideas, specifically for anti-religious means.

And here I am, a theist, sceptical of the supposedly infallible Theory of Evolution, wanting to use an evolutionary theory to explain my own study. Aren’t I being a hypocrite? I undeniably disagree with what Memetics stands for, specifically as it is used within evolutionary biology. Yet I wish to exploit it as a metaphor to discuss my own work.

We know that the Apostle Paul used the literature and philosophy of the day to appeal to his audience. But to what effect? Afterwards he complained that he will henceforth preach Jesus and the Cross only. I’m not sure if using the Apostle Paul as a case study is applicable to my dilemma. Paul was concerned with preaching the gospel. I’m trying to write a non-religious article concerning creativity and the transfer and development of ideas.

Jesus prayed that Christians should be in the world but not of the world. How am I to be in the science, but not of the science?

Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop

Imagine my suprise when the one of the highest clerics of the Church of England reiterate somewhat similar sentiments as myself concerning life-after-death. Actually, it shouldn't be surprising. Anyone that seriously studies the Bible has to come to parallel conclusions.

I'm thankful to a friend of mine for sending me this article, even though we are of different opinions regarding the subject.

Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop
TIME Magazine - Thursday, Feb. 07, 2008
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710844,00.html

N.T. "Tom" Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought. As Bishop of Durham, he is the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England and a major player in the strife-riven global Anglican Communion; as a much-read theologian and Biblical scholar he has taught at Cambridge and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event.

It therefore comes as a something of a shock that Wright doesn't believe in heaven — at least, not in the way that millions of Christians understand the term. In his new book, Surprised by Hope (HarperOne), Wright quotes a children's book by California first lady Maria Shriver called What's Heaven, which describes it as "a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk... If you're good throughout your life, then you get to go [there]... When your life is finished here on earth, God sends angels down to take you heaven to be with him." That, says Wright is a good example of "what not to say." The Biblical truth, he continues, "is very, very different."

Wright, 58, talked by phone with TIME's David Van Biema.

TIME: At one point you call the common view of heaven a "distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope."

Wright: It really is. I've often heard people say, "I'm going to heaven soon, and I won't need this stupid body there, thank goodness.' That's a very damaging distortion, all the more so for being unintentional.

TIME: How so? It seems like a typical sentiment.

Wright: There are several important respects in which it's unsupported by the New Testament. First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. St. Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies. And finally, the location. At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.

TIME: Is there anything more in the Bible about the period between death and the resurrection of the dead?

Wright: We know that we will be with God and with Christ, resting and being refreshed. Paul writes that it will be conscious, but compared with being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep. The Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish text from about the same time as Jesus, says "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," and that seems like a poetic way to put the Christian understanding, as well.

TIME: But it's not where the real action is, so to speak?

Wright: No. Our culture is very interested in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in what I've called the life after life after death — in the ultimate resurrection into the new heavens and the new Earth. Jesus' resurrection marks the beginning of a restoration that he will complete upon his return. Part of this will be the resurrection of all the dead, who will "awake," be embodied and participate in the renewal. John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: "God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves." That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom.

TIME: That is rather different from the common understanding. Did some Biblical verse contribute to our confusion?

Wright: There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state. And chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, where there is a vision of worship in heaven that people imagine describes our worship at the end of time. In fact it's describing the worship that's going on right now. If you read the book through, you see that at the end we don't have a description of heaven, but, as I said, of the new heavens and the new earth joined together.

TIME: Why, then, have we misread those verses?

Wright: It has, originally, to do with the translation of Jewish ideas into Greek. The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential.

TIME: Can you give some historical examples?

Wright: Two obvious ones are Dante's great poetry, which sets up a Heaven, Purgatory and Hell immediately after death, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine chapel, which portrays heaven and hell as equal and opposite last destinations. Both had enormous influence on Western culture, so much so that many Christians think that is Christianity.

TIME: But it's not.

Wright: Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do.

TIME: That sounds a lot like... work.

Wright: It's more exciting than hanging around listening to nice music. In Revelation and Paul's letters we are told that God's people will actually be running the new world on God's behalf. The idea of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you transpose that all the way through, it's a picture like the one that you get at the end of Revelation.

TIME: And it ties in to what you've written about this all having a moral dimension.

Wright: Both that, and the idea of bodily resurrection that people deny when they talk about their "souls going to Heaven." If people think "my physical body doesn't matter very much," then who cares what I do with it? And if people think that our world, our cosmos, doesn't matter much, who cares what we do with that? Much of "traditional" Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won't be going up there to him, he'll be coming down here.

TIME: That's very different from, say, the vision put out in the Left Behind books.

Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.

TIME: Has anyone you've talked to expressed disappointment at the loss of the old view?
Wright: Yes, you might get disappointment in the case where somebody has recently gone through the death of somebody they love and they are wanting simply to be with them. And I'd say that's understandable. But the end of Revelation describes a marvelous human participation in God's plan. And in almost all cases, when I've explained this to people, there's a sense of excitement and a sense of, "Why haven't we been told this before?"

Agreeing with an atheist

I’m reading the book “The God Delusion” (2006) by famous (and somewhat self-acclaimed “aggressive”) atheist Richard Dawkins, known for his activism against religions.

I’m halfway through the book and must say that I am enjoying it. He makes some good arguments – but is yet to convert me. However, I am finding, as I have found in the past that I am agreeing with an awful lot of his atheistic standpoints. I have always said that if I had to believe in the kind of God that most atheists understand God to be, then I too would be an atheist.

Take for instance the following list of religious (Christian) beliefs Dawkins list (and by default disagree with) and with how little I agree with (or rather with how much I agree with Dawkins). My comments are in square-brackets.

• You will survive your own death. [If, by this, Dawkins means the innate immortality of the soul, I also disagree with the statement.]

• If you die a martyr, you will go to an especially wonderful part of paradise where you will enjoy seventy-two virgins (spare a thought for the unfortunate virgins). [Okay, not a Christian doctrine, but of Abrahamic religious origin. I do not believe in this. Whether God has pleasantries installed for martyrs I don’t know, but I disagree with the idea that militant “holy war”-martyrs is looked upon favourably by God. I disagree with the statement.]

• Belief in God is a supreme virtue. If you find your belief wavering, work hard at restoring it, and beg God to help your unbelief. [Belief, Hope and Love are listed as priority virtues. So I do agree with this statement. However, Dawkins’ understanding of “belief” and mine differ as we will see with the next point. But for the sake of arbitrariness let’s say agree fully with this statement.]

• Faith (belief without evidence) is a virtue. The more your beliefs defy the evidence, the more virtuous you are. Virtuoso believers who can manage to believe something really weird, unsupported and insupportable, in the teeth of evidence and reason, are especially highly rewarded. [My understanding, from the Bible, of what faith differs greatly from Dawkins understanding of the term. Faith, as I understand it, is “trust” and not blind-faith. I don’t think that God is an adherent supported of blind-faith. So I disagree with the statement.]

• Everybody, even those who do not hold religious beliefs, must respect them with a higher level of automatic and unquestioned respect than that accorded to other kinds of belief. [I think we should allow people their differences in opinion. We do not have to agree, but we can respect such differences and even engage in dialogue. So I only halfway disagree with this statement.

• There are some weird things (such as the Trinity, transubstantiation, incarnation) that we are not meant to understand. Don’t even try to understand one of these, for the attempt might destroy it. Learn how to gain fulfilment in calling it s mystery. [To start with, I do not belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation. Neither do I think we are barred from contemplating the other two, or similar, “mysteries” mentioned. Our musings over such concepts cannot destroy them, just as little as our musings over the number “0” can destroy this mysterious icon of “nothingness”. I mean, what is “nothing”. It is not something I can mentally grasp, yet mathematics claims it to exist. So, although I believe in the inspired concept of the incarnation, for instance, I disagree with the statement.]

Let’s for a moment remove the statement referring to Islamic-doctrine (the one about the martyrs and the seventy-two virgins), which will leave us with five archetypal Christian doctrines. I disagree with 3½ of the 5 statements. In other words, I agree with 70% of an avid atheist.

Where does that leave me? Clearly a heretic in the eyes of conventional Christendom! The interesting thing is that my reasons for agreeing with the atheist 70% of the time are not because of materialistic, Darwinian reasons, but because of my (Biblical) understanding of God’s character. Isn’t that ironic?!

Salvation by spam

Email this to 15 people and God will love you more.

Email has become the next bondage to works-religion. Almost daily I get (Christian) emails telling me to forward this to people and I will be blessed. Here’s an example:

Pass this message to 15 people except you and me.

Don't ignore and God will bless you. 

So if I do not send irritating time consuming emails to other people God will not bless me? In other words, I have to work (send emails) in order to gain God’s favour?

Christianity is unique among the great religions because it is centred upon the idea that salvation (i.e. God’s favour) is not because something we do, but due to something God has done. The greatest struggle for many Christians is to accept God’s love and saving provision. Not to try and save ourselves, but accept God’s salvation on our part.

These chain-letters also usually make emotional manipulative appeals to make you feel guilty. For instance in the letter already quoted, the author pretends to pray for me. Included in that prayer is this sneaky manipulative sentence:

I pray for those who don't know You intimately. I pray for those that will delete this without sharing it with others. I pray for those that don't believe.

By proximity of the sentences I am to deduce that if I “delete [the email] without sharing it with others” then I do not know God intimately and do not believe. Apparently ones relationship with God depends on whether or not you “share” these irritating emails with other people. So the more you spam other people’s mailboxes, the closer you are to God?!

Call me paranoid, but I think that these emails are a ploy of Satan to get Christians to doubt in the faithfulness of God. Getting us to doubt in God’s complete salvation. Getting us to subtly try and contribute to our salvation – thereby insulting our Lord and Saviour by insinuating that His saving sacrifice was insufficient.

To become perfect I still need to send this to 15 more people.

Church's doubt caused by unbiblical doctrines

There is a strong movement within Christendom to question the Bible (Higher Criticism), and specifically question fundamental Christian givens, such as the Virgin Birth and the Death-and-Resurrection of Christ, and other similar metaphysical wonders recorded in Scripture.

The main protestant denomination in South Africa is the Dutch Reformed Church, commonly referred to as the N.G. Kerk (“Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk”). A recent (2007) documentary exposes how leading professors within the N.G. Kerk and many other denominations deny the death and literal resurrection of Christ. This includes the internationally known Archbishop Desmond Tutu (of the Anglican Church).

St. Paul warned: “…if Christ is not raised, your faith is foolish; you are yet in your sins. Then also those that fell asleep in Christ were lost. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are all men most miserable. But now Christ has risen from the death, and has become the firstfruit of those who slept” (1 Corinthians 15:17-20).

The Christian faith would be “foolish” and “miserable” if Christ did not literally rise from the dead.

I think part of the reason for such questioning lies in the pagan dogma of the innate immortality of the soul, adhered to by most of Christendom. If one believes that at death a thinking rational soul separates from the body and goes to heaven (or hell), then why is a physical literal resurrection necessary – not only of Christ, but of anyone?

However, the Bible does teach of a physical resurrection. Christ being the “firstfruit of those who slept”.

The unbiblical idea of an innate immortal soul is leading to other unbiblical theories such as “The Historic Jesus” and the “Jesus Seminar”, which propagate ideas such as that Jesus did not die at the cross, but married Mary Magdalene and other such fantasies.

When people cling to unbiblical doctrines (like the innate immortality of the soul) it is inevitable that they will come up with other false theories to uphold the silliness they already adhere to.

Barry Goldwater - the last sane Republican

Some of my favourite quotes by the late Barry Goldwater (1909-1989) , five-term USA Senator of Arizona:

"There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate that Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the us of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, U must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of conservatism."

"When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."

"Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you've hurt the Republican Party much more than the Democrats have."

From a mindless “life force”, to a sentient being.

Have you ever heard of the mystical life force referred to as Ki, Chi or Qi in the Oriental cultures? This term is defined as the life force associated with breath. That is why you find so much of Chinese Medicine focussed on breathing, in an attempt to rekindle the life force.

In the Bible, the terms most often translated into “spirit” (and sometimes as “soul”) are [nephesh / r­­uach] (Hebrew – Old Testament) and [pneuma] (Greek – New Testament). In both cases they literally mean “wind” or “breath”. For instance when Jesus said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit [pneuma]” He literally said that He gave His breath back to God (Luk 23:46). As Adam became alive when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [nephesh] (Gen 2:7), so Jesus as a human being now died and his breath [pneuma] (i.e. His life) returned to God.

Throughout Scripture it is abundantly clear that this breath, or “spirit”, is considered the life force. This vital energy is lent to every living creature by God. It is not something that they possess innately, nor can they keep it indefinitely. God alone possess life intrinsically (1 Titus 6:16). And when a creature dies that life energy returns to God.

The Encyclopaedia of Taekwon-Do (a Korean martial art) makes an interesting distinction between Chi and Ki. According to Choi Hong-Hi, the author, Ki is the life force, while Chi is the mental aptitude that directs the Ki. “The Chi leads, the Ki follows.” Nowhere else have I found this interesting distinction, but it has proven to be valuable for me in trying to understand the Scriptural principle of the “spirit”.

The spirit is the breath or life-principle. It is similar to the idea of this impersonal Ki. But in combination with the body, when it becomes a living soul, this Ki acquires another level – a personal characteristic – i.e. Chi. “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen 2:7). These last two words “living soul [chay nephesh]” directly translated means “living breath”. The inanimate impersonal “breath” has now become an animate personal “breath”. The Ki is now possessed with a mental aptitude – it has become Chi.

Separated from the body this breath is only life energy – apart from God’s active emanation, it is mindless. However, once merged with the body, “formed…of the dust of the ground”, a wondrous thing occurs. A Divinely ordained synergy between body and life energy creates something marvellous – a psyche. Quickened by this breath, a lifeless body doesn’t merely become alive, it also becomes sentient. And the impersonal life energy becomes personal – mindful.

The complexity of the body itself, (the magnitude of the brain), dictates the degree of sentience. God designed the human body to be the most sentient of all living creatures. Sentient to such a degree that we even imitate something of the Divine: “And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness…” (Gen 1:26).

Comparing the Evilbook with similar services…

Did you read the small print? Let’s compare the “Terms” from Facebook with other similar social networking services.

The Bad:

Facebook

“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.”

The Better:

Bebo.com

“Bebo does not claim any ownership rights in any Materials that you submit, post, or display on or through the Bebo Services or on the Bebo.com Web site. After submitting, posting or displaying Materials on or through the Bebo Services or on the Bebo.com Web site, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Materials, and you continue to have the right to use your Materials in any way you choose. By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the Bebo Service, you hereby grant to Bebo a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Materials (and all components or underlying works making up the Materials) solely on and through the Bebo Service.”

Jaxtr

“Jaxtr does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials works of authorship (collectively, "Content") that you post to the jaxtr Services. After posting your Content to the jaxtr Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the jaxtr Services, you hereby grant to jaxtr a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the jaxtr Services.”

MySpace.com

“MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the MySpace Services.

“The license does not grant MySpace.com the right to sell your Content, nor does the license grant MySpace.com the right to distribute your Content outside of the MySpace Services.”

Windows Live

“You may be able to submit materials for use in connection with the service. Except for material that we license to you, we do not claim ownership of the materials you post or otherwise provide to us related to the service (called a “submission”). However, by posting or otherwise providing your submission, you are granting to the public free permission to:

· use, copy, distribute, display, publish and modify your submission, each in connection with the service;

· publish your name in connection with your submission; and

· grant these permissions to other persons.

This section only applies to legally permissible content and only to the extent that use and publishing of the legally permissible content does not breach the law. We will not pay you for your submission. We may refuse to publish, and may remove your submission from the service at any time. For every submission you make, you must have all rights necessary for you to grant the permissions in this section.”

The Bad’s evil sisters:

Classmates.com

“When you participate in the Classmates community you are granting Classmates certain rights to use the Content you submit or post through the Website. By submitting Content you grant us a royalty-free, worldwide, non-terminable, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, market, publish, store, distribute, have distributed, publicly and privately display, communicate, publicly and privately perform, transmit, have transmitted, create derivative works based upon, and promote such Content (in whole or in part) in any medium now known or hereafter devised, for editorial, commercial, promotional and all other purposes including, without limitation, the right to publish your name in connection with your Content; and the right to sublicense any or all of these rights. You acknowledge that Classmates owns all right, title, and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created using or incorporating the Content.”

Netlog

“When a user enters data that is meant to be viewable to the public via Netlog, including but not limited to text, pictures, images, drawings or graphics for a profile, guestbook entry, comment entry, a photo description, etcetera, the user grants Netlog an unlimited licence to disseminate, use, process, translate or modify this data.

“Netlog RESERVES ALL RIGHTS AND DENIES ANY LIABILITY WHATSOEVER.”

The Verdict:

There are okay social networking websites and there are bad ones. And then there’s Evilbook. Choose carefully who you wish to sell your soul to.

Facebook – More intrusive than previously thought

A friend forwarded me this link to the article below from PCWorld. If people would just take the time to read Facebook’s Terms of Use, they wouldn’t be surprised at these privacy intrusions. Facebook makes it very clear that they collect information about their users outside of the Facebook-interface. I hate to tell you: I told you so!

The real question is not if they are collecting personal information about it, but rather why do it and what do they do with it?

…ooOoo…

Facebook's Beacon More Intrusive Than Previously Thought

A Computer Associates security researcher says that Facebook's controversial Beacon online ad system goes much further than expected in tracking people's Web activities.

Juan Carlos Perez

Friday, November 30, 2007 4:10 PM PST

A Computer Associates security researcher is sounding the alarm that Facebook's controversial Beacon online ad system goes much further than anyone has imagined in tracking people's Web activities outside the popular social networking site.

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.

That's the finding published on Friday by Stefan Berteau, senior research engineer at CA's Threat Research Group in a note summarizing tests he conducted.

Of particular concern is that users aren't informed that data on their activities at these sites is flowing back to Facebook, nor given the option to block that information from being transmitted, Berteau said in an interview.

"It can happen completely without their knowledge, unless they are examining their network traffic at a very low level," Berteau said.

The CA news comes after Facebook scrambled on Thursday night to tweak Beacon in order to calm complaints from privacy groups and Facebook users that the ad system is too intrusive and too confusing to opt out of.

Beacon is a major part of the Facebook Ads platform that Facebook introduced with much fanfare several weeks ago. Beacon tracks certain activities of Facebook users on more than 40 participating Web sites, including those of Blockbuster and Fandango, and reports those activities to the users' set of Facebook friends, unless told not to do so.

Off-Facebook activities that can be broadcast to one's Facebook friends include purchasing a product, signing up for a service and including an item on a wish list.

The program has been blasted by groups such as MoveOn.org and by individual users who have unwittingly broadcast information about recent purchases and other Web activities to their Facebook friends. This has led to some embarrassing situations, such as blowing the surprise of holiday presents.

On Thursday night, Facebook tweaked Beacon to make its workings more explicit to Facebook users and to make it easier to nix a broadcast message and opt out of having activities tracked on specific Web sites. Facebook didn't go all the way to providing a general opt-out option for the entire Beacon program, as some had hoped.

But Berteau's investigation reveals that Beacon is more intrusive and stealthy than anyone had imagined.

In his note, titled "Facebook's Misrepresentation of Beacon's Threat to Privacy: Tracking users who opt out or are not logged in," he explains that he created an account on Conde Nast's food site Epicurious.com, a site participating in Beacon, and saved three recipes as favorites.

He saved the first recipe while logged in to Facebook, and he opted out of having it broadcast to his friends on Facebook. He saved the second recipe after closing the Facebook window, but without logging off from Epicurious or ending the browser session, and again declined broadcasting it to his friends. Then he logged out of Facebook and saved the third recipe. This time, no Facebook alert appeared asking if he wanted the information displayed to his friends.

After checking his network traffic logs, Berteau saw that in all three cases, information about his activities was reported back to Facebook, although not to his friends. That information included where he was on Epicurious, the action he had just taken and his Facebook account name.

"The first two cases involve the transmission of user data despite 'No thanks' having been selected on the opt-out dialog, and are causes for deep concern. They pale, however, in comparison to the third case, where Facebook was receiving data about my online habits while I was not logged in, and was doing so silently, without even alerting me to the cross-site communication," he wrote in the research note.

If a user has ever checked the option for Facebook to "remember me" -- which saves the user from having to log on to the site upon every return to it -- Facebook can tie his activities on third-party Beacon sites directly to him, even if he's logged off and has opted out of the broadcast. If he has never chosen this option, the information still flows back to Facebook, although without it being tied to his Facebook ID, according to Berteau.

Berteau wasn't able to determine where this data flows to in Facebook. "That's part of the concern here," he said in the interview. He repeated the Epicurious experiment with Kongregate.com, another Beacon-affiliated site, and got similar results.

In e-mail correspondence with Facebook's privacy department, Berteau was told, among other things, that "as long as you are logged out of Facebook, no actions you have taken on other websites can be sent to Facebook."

A similar statement was made by a high-ranking Facebook official on Thursday. In an interview with The New York Times, Chamath Palihapitiya, vice president of product marketing and operations at Facebook, was asked whether Facebook would receive information about a user's purchase if the user declined to broadcast the purchase to his Facebook friends.

His answer: "Absolutely not. One of the things we are still trying to do is dispel a lot of misinformation that is being propagated unnecessarily."

Facebook didn't immediately reply to requests for comment from IDG News Service.

The Ethics of the Innate Immortality of the Soul

For more than a week now I’ve almost ceaselessly been contemplating this whole “soul”-issue. I’m still far from a perfect understanding of the topic. No human knows perfectly and I guess it will take me still a long time to chisel out my own believes. It is for this reason that I rely on Inspiration as it is in Scripture, on philosophical logic, on science even, to try and appreciate what the “soul” is, and what is wishful thinking.

White strikes me is how our understanding of the soul will influence our ethical basis.

The following are the basic soul-views which I can now quickly think of:

1. The soul is innately immortal.

2. The soul is innately mortal, but may receive Eternal Life as a gift.

3. The soul is innately mortal and that’s the end, or put less esoterically, there is no soul.

For ease of explanation let’s call the proponent of #1 Jack and the proponent of #3 John and let’s use abortion as a vehicle of ethical discussion.

Jack, a typical Religious Right Christian, believes in the innate immortality of the soul. Therefore, he must believe that if a baby is killed (or to put it less emotive – if a foetus is aborted) it will go directly to heaven. I have to ask then, what’s the issue? Why is Jack against abortion?

That child will now experience bliss everlasting. Aren’t you in fact sparing it from lots of pain here on earth? If its soul is innately immortal then you are actually doing it a favour, rather than having it be born as a bastard child; with a mother that is still a child herself; as the spawn of a rapist. What kind of life will such a child have?

In this context, Jack’s pro-life propaganda doesn’t make sense. His argument is that the child is deprived of the opportunity to life. But if the soul is innately immortal then it cannot die, and is really not deprived of life at all. Instead, as discussed above, it will actually have a better “life” in heaven, than here on this sin-stained Earth.

Even if Jack is not a Christian, and doesn’t believe in Heaven, but still insists on the innate immortality of the soul, it doesn’t matter. The fact is, that killing the foetus isn’t an issue, since from Jack’s paradigm physical death isn’t real death.

Jack’s only real argument is not that the child be deprived of the opportunity to life, but rather that it is wrong to kill. This is a different argument altogether, and one that he will only be able to make from an external moral framework. I mention an external morality, because Jack will have a hard time philosophically qualifying why it is wrong to kill if the soul is innately immortal. Jack’s argument must be substantiated by some external morality. Killing must be wrong for some other reason, such as God saying: “Thou shall not kill.” But even this sounds like an arbitrary reason at best.

John, on the other hand, has the right to advocate the pro-life argument. Since John doesn’t believe in the innate immortality of the soul, then aborting the foetus will deprive it of the opportunity at life – since this is the only opportunity at life it has.

John can much more strongly argue against abortion than Jack can, because to John the pro-life argument is sensible. Also, John has stronger motives for agreeing that it is wrong to kill. For John, one’s life is of utmost importance, because there is no other.

James, representing #2, which says that the soul is innately mortal, but may receive Eternal Life as a gift, can adopt similarly strong ethical arguments as John, but can also keep sound spiritual motivations as well.

…ooOoo…

This blog-entry is not really about abortion. I’m still in the process of trying to come to terms with the abortion dilemma myself. Therefore I won’t now box myself in as a proponent of either “pro-life” or “pro-choice”.

What this entry is about, though, is the ethical implications of the innate immortality of the soul. How you understand the nature of the soul has severe implications on your ethical expression.

Is it all just interpretation?

In a previous post I stressed my reluctance to get involved in an argument against someone that is convinced by experience. We ultimately believe what we have experienced. If I have experienced Korea first hand, and afterwards you come to me and try to convince me that Korea does not exist, there is probably no amount of persuasion you can try that would convince me otherwise.

But the Bible warns us against experiences. Apparently experience can also fool us into believing a deception. Christ cautions: “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders; so much so that, if it were possible, they would deceive even the elect” (Matthew 24:24). People will experience “signs and wonders”, and will be fooled into believing the truths that they propagate.

Where is the line between trusting our experience, in other words trusting our senses, and being skeptical of our senses? How can we know what is truth and what is deception?

The scientific community would propagate that one should only trust measurable experimentally-replicatable facts. But this leaves out of equation all those things that cannot be tested in a laboratory. And it is precisely those metaphysical things that concern me at present.

On the other hand the Christian community would push that the Bible, the Word of God, is our measure of things to trust.

But this is presented as an argument against Christian objectivity. Christians are accused of seeing the world through a specific Biblical paradigm, which disallow most to see anything beyond that paradigm’s framework. That is why a minority of Christians even refuse to believe in the existence of dinosaurs, because according to their narrow understanding there is no room for dinosaurs – and they are therefore unable to conceive of such creatures, even when presented with proof, such as dinosaur bones. Conversely, other Christian who believes that God also created these creatures can more easily fit the extinct beasts into their mindset.

Having had countless providential experiences myself it would be almost impossible for me to conceive a reality without God. Even though I may try and be as objective as possible, it is almost unattainable for me to interpret Life, the Universe and Everything purely materialistically, i.e. atheistically. My experiences stain my understanding.

I can imagine a reality without religion, and definitely without an innate immortal soul, but not one without God. My paradigm doesn’t allow it. And why not? Because of philosophical arguments for God’s existence, yes, but more so, because of experiences; experiences of God providence.

The only way for me to believe otherwise, is if the experiences could be interpreted differently. At the moment, there is no way I can imagine those experiences as just mere random accidental events. They were to consistently accurate to be accidents – for instance receiving exact amounts of monetary donations for pressing needs. My only interpretation is Providence. And if so, I have to believe in something behind such Providence – i.e. God.

Again, my question: Where is the line between trusting our experience, in other words trusting our senses, and being skeptical of our senses? Is there any real objectivity – or is everything merely interpretations of experiences?

I experience random favourable events as providence; you experience it as accidents – as good luck. Does everything just water down to personal interpretation?

I don't have a soul, I am a soul.

A Time Magazine article, in July 1995 – “Glimpses of the Mind”, reduced the mind to processes of the brain. This is to the chagrin of most Christians who belief that if there is no metaphysical mind, then there is also no metaphysical soul. And to them, it means the end of the Christian religion.

One reader replied in the next August issue as follows: “You do not mention the profound religious consequences of the scientific investigation of consciousness. If it turns out to be true that consciousness, the soul, is not a separate reality, but a consequential phenomenon of the material world, then a fundamental truth of Christianity is shown not to be true because the concepts of heaven, and hell, and eternal life are based on the immateriality and indestructibility of the soul. The scientific demonstration of the material basis of consciousness would seem to mean the end of Christianity.”

I disagree with the reader on two major points. Firstly, Christianity is not centred on the innate immortality of the soul (and heaven, hell and eternal life do not hang on this idea) and secondly, the innate immortality of the soul is not truly Christian. The innate immortality of the soul is not of Scriptural origin, but of pagan origin – or worse yet, of Satanic origin! It was the Snake that said: “You shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4).

The Scriptural view of the soul is one that is not innately immortal.

Body + Breath = Living Soul

The Bible teaches that God formed man from the dust, breathed life into him, and he became a living soul: “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7).

God did not implant him with an immortal soul. No, the body plus the breath-of-life became a living soul. A living soul is therefore the combination of a body, plus life.

A Soul Can Die

This entity (a living soul) is not innately immortal. The Bible is very clear that a soul can die.

“The soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4, 20).

“And the second angel poured out his vial on the sea. And it became like the blood of a dead one, and every living soul died in the sea” (Revelation 16:3).

A soul is not innately immortal. If it were, it would not be able to die.

When the person dies, his life energy (breath) returns to the Life-Giver, and the body returns to the earth, and his consciousness cease: “His breath goes forth; he returns to the earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (Psalms: 146:4).

Scripture and science agrees that there is no separate soul, apart from the living body. This idea of an innate immortal soul that survives the deceased body is unbiblical. God alone is innately immortal (1 Titus 6:16). Everlasting life in the Bible is a conditional gift, given to people only at the Second Coming of Christ.

Immortality is only imparted at the Second Coming

“And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes on Him should have everlasting life. And I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:40).

“For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall ever be with the Lord” (1 Th 4:16-17).

“Behold, I speak a mystery to you; we shall not all fall asleep [die], but we shall all be changed; in a moment, in a glance of an eye, at the last trumpet. For a trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53).

The Bible is very clear on this teaching – immortality is a conditional gift: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). This gift of everlasting life, though we can accept it now in faith, is only truly received at the Second Coming of Christ. In the meantime those that die, stay dead (or symbolically asleep) until that day when the “trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible…[with] immortality”.

Heaven and Hell

Mainstream Christianity erroneously holds on to the unbiblical doctrines that when a person dies his or her soul immediately transcends from this physical plain to another metaphysical plain – either heaven or hell (or limbo / purgatory).

The Bible teaches that the person stays dead (or “asleep” as the Bible refers to it), until the Second Coming of Christ. My dead mother is not at this moment being tortured in hell, or pampered in heaven. On the day she died her breath went forth, her thoughts perished and a few days later we returned her body to the earth.

Those that are dead “in Christ” will stay dead and unconscious, soulless as it were, until the Second Coming, when the dead in Christ will be raised with incorruptible bodies and with the gift of eternal life (immortality). God will again form their bodies and breathe the breath of life into them as he did with the very first man. And God whom knows everything and remember perfectly will reinstall into them their characters – network of synapses.

The doctrines of Heaven and Hell do not falter before the truth that we do not have an soul, but that we are a soul – and a soul that is not innately immortal. Instead the clear Biblical teaching of Heaven and Hell comes to the fore with this understanding of the human soul.

Science and Scripture in Agreement

Science is confirming Scripture. We are, in fact, bodies that are alive. This does not diminish us, nor does it take away the mystery and wonder of life and consciousness. Rather it enforces that we are holistic beings. Unlike the unbiblical teaching of Dualism, that tries to separate body and soul.

Science and Scripture are in agreement that I do not have a soul, I am a soul, and when I die, I’ll be a corpse.

Ultimates

There is probably a fear that if we do not have some separate soul, then all metaphysical truths will disappear. Whether or not I have a separate immaterial soul does not affect true metaphysical phenomena. “1 + 1 = 2” is still just as logically sound, and philosophically viable as ever. The great morals of not stealing, killing, and so on are still just as sensible as before. These “truths” are true regardless of humanities soulfulness or soullessness. These truths are seated not in the human soul, but in God.

Can a mind exist without a brain?

Scientifically speaking, a mind cannot exist without a brain, because a mind needs the matter of the brain to act as the hardware, whereupon the mind can run like software. The mind is the network of electric pulses acting according to a program. Once the electricity is cut, the program ceases – so too, once life is cut, the mind ceases.

The greatest problem with this understanding does not really involve how our minds work, but how God’s mind work. Are we to understand that God has a physical brain? And if not, does God have a mind? The question is liken to ask if God needs to eat, or sleep?

The answers are “no”. God does not need to function in the same way as we do. God does not need a brain as we do. His mind is different from ours. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways My ways, says Jehovah” (Isaiah 55:8). God is self-sufficient and not limited to our physical limitations. We, on the other hand, are not self-sufficient. For instance we need to eat and drink to live.

Just because we are physical does not mean God needs to be physical as well. Similarly, just because we are not metaphysical, does not mean that God has to be similarly reduced from supernatural to natural. He is the Creator and we are the creatures. Pretending that we are of the same stuff as God is pagan – not Christian.

Talking about the Dead over Pizza

“I don’t believe in death” she said. “Shortly after my father’s death I had a dream in which we strolled on the beach and talked.” My friend and I were walking towards a pizza parlour for dinner when she shared with me this intimate experience she had.

In response I recounted a similar experience. “Just after my girlfriend died in a car accident I also dreamed of having a conversation with her. We were discussing how to plan for her funeral. It felt very real.”

The difference between my friend and I is that that dream about her father confirmed for her that the soul survives death. I on the other hand do not read any supernatural meaning into my dream even though it was extremely vivid and tremendously emotionally touching. If I had to impose spiritual significance on my dream, at most I can believe that God evoked such thoughts in me, as an artificial way for me to say goodbye to someone I loved deeply. I do not believe that I actually spoke to the spirit of my girlfriend, even though the idea might be appealing.

“I don’t believe in the immortality of the soul.” I added.

We kept walking in silence for quite a while. Clearly we were in disagreement. We both had similar experiences, but our interpretations of those experiences differ greatly. The soul survives death and is therefore innately immortal, or the soul does not survive death and is not innately immortal. Those are the two camps.

I thought about sharing with my friend some Scriptural reasons, or even philosophical motivations, as to why I do not believe in the innate immortality of the soul. But almost instantaneously I decided against it.

Her reason for believing what she believes is based on personal experience. The conversation she had with her departed father was overwhelming proof for her and certainly had some therapeutic benefit. I doubt any amount of theological or philosophical discussion, abstract as they are, could easily persuade the subjective conviction of a personal experience.

For me, in contrast, my personal experience did not convince me. If souls are innately immortal, then from my Christocentric paradigm an everlasting hell must exist at this very moment, with loved ones being tortured there at present.

While my friend finds comfort in the idea of the soul surviving death, I’m absolutely horrified by it. I explained in a previous post that the concept of hell, a place where people are burned for ever and ever, requires that the soul be innately immortal.

Because I believe that God is infinitely good, I cannot believe that God would be torturing souls in hell at present. And of course if souls are immortal they have to go one of two places, hell or heaven. Since not everyone will be going to heaven, some must go to hell and must therefore be tormented right now. If you are Catholic you have a third option, which is not that much better either. The soul could instead be in purgatory where it is also tortured for thousands of years until it is cleansed enough for heaven.

Life and Death in a Nutshell

Sin is selfishness (inward focussed). God is Love (always outward focussed). Because Sin is selfishness, it separates us from God. (We are to selfish to trust God.)

Since God is also the Source of Life, and we are separated from God through our sin, we are also separated from the Source of Life. The result is death.

Death is not strictly the punishment of sin. It is rather the natural consequence of being separated from the Source of Life - God. One can just as well say that death is the punishment for not eating. Or the wages of not breathing is death. Separation from the life-giving elements results in death. God is the ultimate life-giving Element. Separation from God results in ultimate death.

The Shaky Pillars of Hell

The idea of hell, where sinners burn through all eternity, balances on two pillars: the immortality of the soul and a vindictive God. Both doctrines are shaky, yet the majority of Christians believe in such a concept of hell, where an angry God keeps people alive for the sole purpose of torturing their souls without ceasing.

A closer look at these pillars foils the problem with this common belief.

We do not have immortal souls. Only God is immortal.

Nowhere does the Bible teach that people have an immortal soul. God, alone, is said to possess immortality: “…the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality…” (1 Timothy 6:15, 16).

There’s no talk of an innate immortal soul that survives death, accept in hyperbolic parables. Immortality is a gift, which is received not at death, but at Jesus’ Second Coming, when Christ returns to pay the wages. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). The Bible teaches us to strife for eternal life (1 Timothy 6:12), to hope for it (Titus 1:2), and to accept it as a promise (1 John 2:25) – a gift we are to receive, which we do not innately posses.

If immortality was inherent, we would not need to strife for it, hope for it, or receive it as a gift later at Christ’s return. It therefore makes sense that the wages of sin should be “death”, not eternal life in hell.

By means of Hebraic parallelism the Bible frequently equates hell with death, for example:

“The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.”
“Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell…”
“The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me…”
“Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.”
“Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.”
“But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.”
“Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement…”
(Psalm 18:5; Psalm 55:15; Psalm 116:3; Proverbs 5:5; Proverbs 7:27; Proverbs 9:18; Isaiah 28:15.)

Hell is not eternal life while tortured, but eternal death. The final end for the unsaved is complete annihilation, called the second death: “And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death” (Revelation 20:14).

Even Jesus said that hell is not a torture chamber where souls are kept alive, but a place where “both soul and body” are destroyed (Matthew 10:28): “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

The dead are not conscious in some other dimension, either heaven or hell. “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence” (Psalm 115:17); “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing…” Ecclesiastes 9:5).

The followers of God that already passed away (also known as the “dead in Christ”) will one day be raised from the dead to receive the gift of eternal life. “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52).

God is not vindictive.

The second pillar is the idea that God is a vindictive, arbitrary deity that believes it is just to torture people for thousands upon thousands of years, even though they only sinned for a short lifetime. And this counts for both the adult that sinned for seventy years, as for the child that sinned for ten years. Clearly this does not make sense!

No, Jesus came to show us that God is not vindictive and arbitrary. He said: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). At the cross, Jesus was spat upon and cursed, tortured and beaten, yet he forgave his aggressors. This is also the character of the Father who forgives our sins for His name’s sake (1 John 2:12).

God does not now, nor will He in the future, keep souls alive in hell in order to torture them. That is a sick doctrine that brings shame to a loving God.