Christianity

[Belinda]

So, you believe he is burning in Hell?

I believe what the Bible says about that: that those who know God have salvation, and that those who do not do not.  Now, where Buddha ended up on that scale, you’ll have to ask him, if you ever see him.

Right, I'll just ask him. I hadn't thought of that.

Note to any Buddhists here:

You heard him. If you don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, you are both damned and doomed. 

On the other hand, IC is able to provide you with all the scientific and historical evidence you will need in order to accomplish that. You just have to figure out a way to convince him to go there. 

Of course, it's only the fate of your very soul that's on the line here. 

Then this part:

"In Catholicism, Limbo is a theological concept describing a state or place for those who die without baptism or prior to Christ's coming, but are not condemned to hell. While not an official dogma, it was a common theological opinion for centuries, particularly concerning unbaptized infants and virtuous individuals who lived before Christ. However, the Catholic Church has largely moved away from Limbo as a formal teaching." 

I’m not a Catholic. Catholic theology does not regard the Bible as definitive revelation of God’s will.  It puts the decisions of the prelates and councils ahead of the Bible, and claims that they can alter what it says.  Check it out: it’s true.  And that’s how you get a completely lunatic, gratuitous idea like “Limbo.”  You won’t find it anywhere in the Bible.

So, what are you suggesting here...that Catholics are not True Christians? 

And, come on, IC, over and over and over again, and from any number of people, the Bible has been shown to contain many contradictions. Just Google "Biblical contradictions": https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=r ... VtghmHksJB

Or, one by one, has WLC already provided us with "reasonable faith" videos debunking each "so-called" contradiction?

We’re all responsible for what we know.  Those who know less, have to answer for less. Those who know more, for more.

And of those who know nothing at all of Christianity? ]For example, take God's very own abortions...stillbirths and miscarriages? They all go to Heaven? After all, what do they have to answer for? And how to even imagine the souls of embryos and fetuses in Heaven.

 Ask God.  Why ask me?

Right, I'll just ask Him. I hadn't thought of that.

What a man actually believes are known only to
him and to God.

Well, one of them. If He does exist. And for those who know little or nothing at all about your God, well, chances are they have their very own One True Path to salvation. In fact, for any number of them, the worry is about your soul. 

But their situation is not yours; you know much more, and are thus responsible for much more.  Perhaps you should worry less about what their destiny is, and spend a little more thought on your own.  I suggest it might be prudent.

Sigh...

What on Earth do you think I am attempting to do in asking you to peruse those WLC/RF videos.

Oh, that’s easy…not accepting the evidence of what you asked for and I supplied — namely, scientific and rational evidence for God.

No shame! Absolutely no shame whatsoever in posting this!! And now along with the historical and scientific evidence, we have rational evidence as well.

Uh, philosophical, as it were? 

And, again, supplying evidence you claim substantiates His existence given the videos from the WLC/RF clique/claque...? What, we're just supposed to take your word for it? You won't examine this evidence because, well, it's so clearly true?!

I can't even get WLC to discuss and debate it.

Then you’ll have to use your own little brain.  Review the evidence,  consider it, and decide what you believe.  I’m sure you can do it.

I did that. But where were you?

In fact, here's my reaction to their science assessment...

The fourth video: The Kalam Cosmological Argument - Part 1: Scientific

https://youtu.be/6CulBuMCLg0

My reaction:

What we have here is basically God being "deduced" into existence. Only, we are assured, there's science behind it.

Though, again, the argument in no way comes around to demonstrating that even if a God, the God is "thought up" into existence "scientifically", it is the Christian God. Why not one of these...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...instead?

Okay, we are told, the universe exists. And it simply makes more sense that something caused it to exist. Then the narrator points to the second law of thermodynamics which [we're told] tells us that the universe is "slowly running out of usable energy". And if the universe had been here forever, it would have run out of energy by now. On the other hand...

"It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe."  nasa

So, who is to say how that is factored in here.

Then the claim that this second law "proves" that the universe had to have had a beginning. And scientists have discovered that the universe is expanding so it must be expanding from whenever that beginning was. And yet others argue that the Big Bang itself is just one of an infinite number of prior Big Bangs. And depending on whether dark matter or dark energy wins out it will continue to expand forever or will begin to contract again.

So, how on Earth does any of this demonstrate that a God, the God is behind it all?  And [of course] it is just assumed that God Himself is an uncaused cause.

Oh, and all of this, we are assured, is applicable in turn to the multiverse "if there is one".

Finally, "since the universe cannot cause itself, its cause must be beyond the space-time universe."

Then this particular "leap of faith":

"It must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, uncaused and unimaginably powerful. Much like...God. The cosmological argument shows that in fact it is quite reasonable to believe that God does exist."

Again, this is simply asserted to be true as though in asserting it that makes it true.

Though, again, which God?

Iambiguous, it's to be expected The Bible, despite the best efforts of its editors, contains contradictions. The Bible is not one book but an anthology.

[Belinda]

I believe what the Bible says about that: that those who know God have salvation, and that those who do not do not.  Now, where Buddha ended up on that scale, you’ll have to ask him, if you ever see him.

Right, I'll just ask him. I hadn't thought of that.

The important thing is not whether you or I know where he is. The important thing is that God does. And my suggestion is that rather than looking to mythical others, about whom you could not speak even if you ever knew them, you should perhaps attend more closely to your own case. For whatever knowledge they have or have not had opportunity to attain, your case is not like theirs.

God's omniscience is one of the strengths of Christianity ; omniscience is a prerequisite for forgiveness and mercy.

Human forgiveness and mercy is as someone said(Paul?) "through a glass darkly" whereas God's omniscience implies absolute omniscience and necessary forgiveness and mercy: God can't be other than forgiving and merciful.

God the father is a spirit without a body. He incarnated as Jesus Christ. Christian doctrine states JC is the only incarnation of God .

[Immanuel Can]

Right, I'll just ask him. I hadn't thought of that.

The important thing is not whether you or I know where he is. The important thing is that God does. And my suggestion is that rather than looking to mythical others, about whom you could not speak even if you ever knew them, you should perhaps attend more closely to your own case. For whatever knowledge they have or have not had opportunity to attain, your case is not like theirs.

God's omniscience is one of the strengths of Christianity ; omniscience is a prerequisite for forgiveness and mercy.

Yes, it is. It’s a necessary condition, though not a sufficient one, for sure: how can one be just, or merciful, or forgiving, if one is not even aware of the offence?

Human forgiveness and mercy is as someone said(Paul?) "through a glass darkly" whereas God's omniscience implies absolute omniscience and necessary forgiveness and mercy: God can't be other than forgiving and merciful.

But you’ve forgotten His duty to justice, as well. That’s a funny thing for somebody who is committed to “social justice” to forget, isn’t it? A god who did not provide justice for the suffering and victimized would not be merciful or kind either, would he? He’d be an unjust judge.

So evil must be dealt with, or mercy is incomplete. The recompense for evil cannot be dispatched with a backward wave of the hand, as if the victims and the oppressed simply do not matter.

So now you have God in quite a bind, don’t you? You say that if he does not forgive, he’s not merciful. But you also have to recognize that if he does merely forgive, He’s not just. And what will He do, that the price of justice may be paid, and yet mercy may be the outcome?

And here we come to the core of the Christian message: that God, both just and merciful, has both dealt thoroughly with sin and yet provided complete mercy. And all that is necessary for us to be the beneficiaries of both is to be willing.

God the father is a spirit without a body. He incarnated as Jesus Christ. Christian doctrine states JC is the only incarnation of God .

This is true. And now, if you think about that statement in the context of the above, you’ll also gain some understanding of WHY.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Right, I'll just ask him. I hadn't thought of that.

The important thing is not whether you or I know where he is. The important thing is that God does. And my suggestion is that rather than looking to mythical others, about whom you could not speak even if you ever knew them, you should perhaps attend more closely to your own case. For whatever knowledge they have or have not had opportunity to attain, your case is not like theirs.

God's omniscience is one of the strengths of Christianity ; omniscience is a prerequisite for forgiveness and mercy.

Human forgiveness and mercy is as someone said(Paul?) "through a glass darkly" whereas God's omniscience implies absolute omniscience and necessary forgiveness and mercy: God can't be other than forgiving and merciful.

God the father is a spirit without a body. He incarnated as Jesus Christ. Christian doctrine states JC is the only incarnation of God .

Omniscience is meaningless, untrue. Even nature doesn't have it. So there is no chance God, a posited intentional ground of eternal, infinite being, would. Just as They can't have free will and neither can we.

So, I'm not forgiving and merciful? Not the recipient of forgiveness and mercy? Nobody has ever forgiven me?

And what has omniscience got to do with it?

The orthodox, fundamentalist, text-as-in-egg-bound God is meaninglessly omniscient and that doesn't stop Their misanthropy.

God needs our forgiveness and mercy if They dare to forgive us. For Their absurd incompetent lovelessness.

This is all part of Christianity's fatal weakness.

Transcendent Love doesn't need to forgive. They need to make things right. Then we can forgive Them.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Very recently, by way of Divine transport, I was brought up into the Platonic Attic and came face to face with The Forms.

I kid you not.

If you’ll permit it, I’d like to share this pretty glorious experience.

Space bats. In the cosmic belfry, man.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

I understand that Christians in ancient Rome were accused of atheism for rejecting the pantheon.

That is correct. They were called “Atheists” for failing to believe in enough gods. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us know, and that should tell us all just how badly the word’s been abused, historically.

But it’s just as bad today. If you look up “Atheist” on the internet, you’ll find it used to refer to all kinds of things, ranging from real Atheists, to various forms of agnostics, to people who don’t think about the question at all (sometimes called “Apatheists” — ironic, because their position is supposed to be a stand on something they claim not even to care about), to Humanists (who are actually deifiers of humanity) and even to some Buddhists. Basically, the label is being bullshitted (pace H. Frankfurt) out of existence.

And understandably so. Atheism, actual Atheism ( a.k.a. the claim that no God exists), is irrational; and yet, it’s the only definitive and imperious position that allows the dismissing of the whole God discussion. So people want both to be Atheists, and yet not to be Atheists. They want to BE that, in order to insult and challenge “religious” people from a commanding position, a posture of intellectual superiority and certainty; but they certainly also don’t want to BE CAUGHT being one, since Atheism is so obviously irrational and debunkable with the simplest of questions.

So what can they do? They fudge. They fudge a lot. When they want to be strident and superior, they declare themselves to be Atheists. But when they are challenged, they retreat into some form of agnosticism, or just squirt mud into the water to keep from being identified at all. And their favourite dodge is to say something as ambiguous and silly as, “I don’t say there are no gods; I just lack belief.” And they hope that “lacking belief” is sufficiently soft and confusing to exempt them from critique.

Of course, a moment’s thought shows how silly that is. All one has to ask is, “When you say you ‘lack belief’ in God,” are you trying to make a personal declaration of your own uncertainty, or are you trying to say “I lack belief, so you ought to, as well”? The first is the only intelligent thing they could be saying, but the second is what they want you to believe. They want you to absorb with their “lacking” the implication that you ought to be “lacking” too, and, in fact, that everybody should be “lacking.” But here again, the question returns: what’s your evidentiary basis? And they have none, and don’t want to be asked to produce any. So they recirculate the same ambiguous answer: “I just lack belief; don’t ask me to explain."

So there it all is: the sorry history of the abuse of a word, including its present day vacillations. And this is why I suggest we simply do with what the word actually means. An “Atheist” is a person who says, “No gods.” Everybody else who uses the word differently is simply a different kind of weasel.

But the meaning of a word is its use, no more no less. The meaning of all language is social.

I - Martin Peter Clarke - am atheist. For only, entirely rational reasons. I don't need to be, as materialism, the evidentiary basis, reason, doesn't have to go there. It's only historically necessary to deconstruct to as we've been superstitious-religious for at least 50,000 years. Probably 10 x that despite not being able to speak well and 10 x that and again and again in feelings. When we were fish. I 'lack' belief, just as I currently lack cancer, in unwarranted, unjustified, untrue beliefs. I know there are no gods. It's a hard, brute fact. Gods talk is under the umbrella of absolute meaninglessness, purposelessness. Pap to misguidedly pretend with children. The umbrella of death. I have no uncertainty. And no oughts, but for myself. I lack nothing worth having, including false humility in the face of the deliberate lying ignorance above, for the greater good of course.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I don’t feel like this is verbal tennis. I’m not looking for a “win,” or to get off a “zinger,” far less “match point.” I labour under the delusion that philosophy ought to be about pursuing truth…and that a good critique should be as useful, or even more useful and even more an act of kindness, than facile agreement. And I try to believe others are operating on the same sort of assumption, at least until they disconfirm it.

The true Evangelical, and the true Christian, cannot be looking for anything else in his apologetics but a "win". Any effort to establish absolute and final truth -- which Christianity purports to deal exclusively in -- that does not result in conversion of the unbeliever or the semi-believer, is according to the system itself a veritable loss.

Similarly to Belinda, and perhaps it is partly because of how my mind works, I find that I cannot accept the Jewish zealot's religious revelation and apologetics. But, when the Hebrew worldview was 'translated' into Greek philosophical terms, and the *meaning* of the Christian message was expressed in terms of philosophical logic and, importantly, the metaphysical concept of a universal Logos was realized in the realm of ideas (intelligence, intentionality, final end toward which consciousness tends), the fact of the matter is that it is really at that point that Christianity could begin to become effective. Because it was made philosophically intelligible.

Having read Immanuel Can for ages now, I am suspicious of his claim that he is exclusively seeking truth, and even speaking from a truthful platform. I do not doubt that he sincerely believes that he operates from this platform, but that is the only option open to a truly convinced Christian believer. (I.e. I am right, you are wrong: God says so).

In my view, and if one -- if we -- are really concerned about truth, then the terms of Christian belief and its ethical principles can quite easily be translated into clear, philosophical predicates. And in my own case this undertaking can only be carried out if one resorts to *belief in* metaphysical principles. I.e. ideas, imperatives, patterns that are non-physical and which are not, in fact, found in the manifest world (Earth, nature). I cannot see any other way for the Christian message(s) to become intelligible to man. And a man who is convinced intellectually, and assents to the realized principles, is in a stronger position than a man who comes to belief through an emotional or sentimental revelation.

The problem that the *philosophical Christian* encounters, it seems to me, is that his intelligible apperceptions and the ideas that flow out of these, contradict that very picture of irrationality that is the Hebrew god. The man operating through realized metaphysical principles must, necessarily, undermine and even correct many of the emoted irrationalities of half-crazed *believers*. Grounded intelligence, in this sense, will do, must do and should do just that.

The idea of Platonic Forms is in fact more intelligible, and really more universally applicable, than the child's story picture that is expressed in the Gospels. I once suggested to Immanuel or, put another way, challenged him to consider how an earthling would communicate the essence of the Christian message to a being on another planet, circling another star, somewhere in the cosmos.

It would not work to hand him the Gospels themselves and expect that he would glean the basic message from it. That Story is one pertinent to the Earth alone. However, it could well be conceived that the principles, the metaphysical and ethical principles, should or could apply *universally*: i.e. in our world and in all worlds. And how would these principles be spoken about and revealed? Only in terms that are intelligible. And that means ideas that are taken out of Pictures and Stories and transcribed into (essentially) philosophical principles.

Obviously, the notion of Logos is where it all hinges.

What has happened, I think -- and it all occurred in this thread -- is that people largely grounded in Greek methods balked at the very idea of an irrational lunatic 'god' that could be capable of committing a person to Eternal Fire. It is really quite simple: the idea is diametrically contrary to an intelligent ethical proposition. The idea of a god that could or would act so cruelly can only be interpreted as an emblem of the unethical. If one starts from this point, and begins to work one's way through the larger Story, one effectively has no choice but to intelligently revise the story to accord with a sensible, intelligent understanding of the function of logos-principles.

For this reason, when I read Belinda's exposition, I can well understand that she feels compelled to put to the side the emoted, irrational elements that genuinely stand at the core of traditional Christianity and Christian conversion (what Christianity seeks is a full fledged conversion of the subject). She has no choice but to *revise* the Story and to express it in intelligible terms.

[As you-all might guess, I do reveal much more about this process of revision and the soul's progress in the Fourth Book of The 28-Week (Universal) Email Course®, open always to those with the money or a credit rating.]

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Not as good as the near perfect, original, Danny Boyle 28 Days Later.

[Belinda]

That is correct. They were called “Atheists” for failing to believe in enough gods. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us know, and that should tell us all just how badly the word’s been abused, historically.

But it’s just as bad today. If you look up “Atheist” on the internet, you’ll find it used to refer to all kinds of things, ranging from real Atheists, to various forms of agnostics, to people who don’t think about the question at all (sometimes called “Apatheists” — ironic, because their position is supposed to be a stand on something they claim not even to care about), to Humanists (who are actually deifiers of humanity) and even to some Buddhists. Basically, the label is being bullshitted (pace H. Frankfurt) out of existence.

And understandably so. Atheism, actual Atheism ( a.k.a. the claim that no God exists), is irrational; and yet, it’s the only definitive and imperious position that allows the dismissing of the whole God discussion. So people want both to be Atheists, and yet not to be Atheists. They want to BE that, in order to insult and challenge “religious” people from a commanding position, a posture of intellectual superiority and certainty; but they certainly also don’t want to BE CAUGHT being one, since Atheism is so obviously irrational and debunkable with the simplest of questions.

So what can they do? They fudge. They fudge a lot. When they want to be strident and superior, they declare themselves to be Atheists. But when they are challenged, they retreat into some form of agnosticism, or just squirt mud into the water to keep from being identified at all. And their favourite dodge is to say something as ambiguous and silly as, “I don’t say there are no gods; I just lack belief.” And they hope that “lacking belief” is sufficiently soft and confusing to exempt them from critique.

Of course, a moment’s thought shows how silly that is. All one has to ask is, “When you say you ‘lack belief’ in God,” are you trying to make a personal declaration of your own uncertainty, or are you trying to say “I lack belief, so you ought to, as well”? The first is the only intelligent thing they could be saying, but the second is what they want you to believe. They want you to absorb with their “lacking” the implication that you ought to be “lacking” too, and, in fact, that everybody should be “lacking.” But here again, the question returns: what’s your evidentiary basis? And they have none, and don’t want to be asked to produce any. So they recirculate the same ambiguous answer: “I just lack belief; don’t ask me to explain."

So there it all is: the sorry history of the abuse of a word, including its present day vacillations. And this is why I suggest we simply do with what the word actually means. An “Atheist” is a person who says, “No gods.” Everybody else who uses the word differently is simply a different kind of weasel.

But the meaning of a word is its use, no more no less. The meaning of all language is social.

I - Martin Peter Clarke - am atheist. For only, entirely rational reasons. I don't need to be, as materialism, the evidentiary basis, reason, doesn't have to go there. It's only historically necessary to deconstruct to as we've been superstitious-religious for at least 50,000 years. Probably 10 x that despite not being able to speak well and 10 x that and again and again in feelings. When we were fish. I 'lack' belief, just as I currently lack cancer, in unwarranted, unjustified, untrue beliefs. I know there are no gods. It's a hard, brute fact. Gods talk is under the umbrella of absolute meaninglessness, purposelessness. Pap to misguidedly pretend with children. The umbrella of death. I have no uncertainty. And no oughts, but for myself. I lack nothing worth having, including false humility in the face of the deliberate lying ignorance above, for the greater good of course.

I do understand your unbelief. I don't believe the God Who is omniscient exists as a thing exists I believe He is an idea. As idea , the omniscient God is good for us as He stands for "What if there were such an absolutely forgiving and merciful being, would we not worship and love Him." God is a heuristic device that lets us imagine how to live good lives.
I know you will object He is not omnibenevolent as we clearly see from the newspapers and more. However the idea of God is omnibenevolent sans the omnipotence qualification. What remains is existentialist God .

[Immanuel Can]

I don’t feel like this is verbal tennis. I’m not looking for a “win,” or to get off a “zinger,” far less “match point.” I labour under the delusion that philosophy ought to be about pursuing truth…and that a good critique should be as useful, or even more useful and even more an act of kindness, than facile agreement. And I try to believe others are operating on the same sort of assumption, at least until they disconfirm it.

The true Evangelical, and the true Christian, cannot be looking for anything else in his apologetics but a "win".

That’s silly, and untrue. A Christian can believe in freedom of will. He makes the best case he can, but as Locke said, nobody can be “forced to Heaven,” so he has to leave it there.

If I could only count the number of falsehoods promoted by those who hate Christians without knowing anything about them, or how they actually think…

[Belinda]

The important thing is not whether you or I know where he is. The important thing is that God does. And my suggestion is that rather than looking to mythical others, about whom you could not speak even if you ever knew them, you should perhaps attend more closely to your own case. For whatever knowledge they have or have not had opportunity to attain, your case is not like theirs.

God's omniscience is one of the strengths of Christianity ; omniscience is a prerequisite for forgiveness and mercy.

Human forgiveness and mercy is as someone said(Paul?) "through a glass darkly" whereas God's omniscience implies absolute omniscience and necessary forgiveness and mercy: God can't be other than forgiving and merciful.

God the father is a spirit without a body. He incarnated as Jesus Christ. Christian doctrine states JC is the only incarnation of God .

Omniscience is meaningless, untrue. Even nature doesn't have it. So there is no chance God, a posited intentional ground of eternal, infinite being, would. Just as They can't have free will and neither can we.

So, I'm not forgiving and merciful? Not the recipient of forgiveness and mercy? Nobody has ever forgiven me?

And what has omniscience got to do with it?

The orthodox, fundamentalist, text-as-in-egg-bound God is meaninglessly omniscient and that doesn't stop Their misanthropy.

God needs our forgiveness and mercy if They dare to forgive us. For Their absurd incompetent lovelessness.

This is all part of Christianity's fatal weakness.

Transcendent Love doesn't need to forgive. They need to make things right. Then we can forgive Them.

To put it crudely 'To know all is to forgive all.' It's not expected of the human to know all, but is expected of the human to know that if you were to know all the circumstances (and I mean all) then you would forgive the sinner.


Can not conceive of God as a thought experiment?

[Immanuel Can]

To put it crudely 'To know all is to forgive all.' It's not expected of the human to know all, but is expected of the human to know that if you were to know all the circumstances (and I mean all) then you would forgive the sinner.

That hardly follows, B.

You’ve forgotten the question of justice. But let’s do a thought experiment.

Go to the six million people murdered by Hitler. Tell them that “if they were to know all his circumstances,” they would forgive him. So he’s not to be judged for his six million murders, or Stalin for his twenty-some million, or Mao for his 42 million, because people just didn’t “understand their circumstances.”

That’s what your claim would imply. How does that thought experiment strike you?

[MikeNovack]

Relevant ---- The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal (and lots of other people giving their opinion. Part of the question is "who has the right to forgive"

[iambiguous]

I believe what the Bible says about that: that those who know God have salvation, and that those who do not do not.  Now, where Buddha ended up on that scale, you’ll have to ask him, if you ever see him.

Right, I'll just ask him. I hadn't thought of that.  :roll:

The important thing is not whether you or I know where he is. 

The important thing is that God does.  And my suggestion is that rather than looking to mythical others, about whom you could not speak even if you ever knew them, you should perhaps attend more closely to your own case.  For whatever knowledge they have or have not had opportunity to attain, your case is not like theirs.

No, to Mr. Snippet, given all that is at stake on both sides of the grave and all the many, many, many conflicting One True Paths to attaining it, the important thing [by far] revolves around which denomination is able to provide us with the sort of scientific and historical and rational evidence that leaves little or no doubt about a God, the God, their God's existence.

Not only does IC refuse to explore this with me and others, he refuses even to note the evidence that most convinced him.

And my suggestion is that rather than looking to mythical others, about whom you could not speak even if you ever knew them, you should perhaps attend more closely to your own case.  For whatever knowledge they have or have not had opportunity to attain, your case is not like theirs.

On the contrary, according to IC, each and everyone of us here is basically in the same boat. In other words, we either accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior or our soul is "left behind".

It's just that it becomes increasingly more problematic when you take into account all those who have gone to the grave never having even heard of Jesus Christ and the Christian God. Let alone that they were one and the same.

So the "loophole" -- or whatever True Christians call it? -- seems to be such that God makes exceptions if He looks into the minds and the hearts and the souls of particular mere mortals and deems them to be, what, "for all practical purposes" worthy of admission into...Abraham's Bosom/Paradise.

But not Heaven? At least not until Jesus was resurrected? 

These parts: 

https://www.gotquestions.org/Abrahams-bosom.html
https://www.gotquestions.org/sheol-hades-hell.html

Yet, once again, rather than God making all of this entirely effable, it all becomes "subject to interpretation" instead. Then those like IC here insisting that only their own interpretation will actually save your soul.

[promethean75]

"Not only does IC refuse to explore this with me"

This simply cannot be. You and Mannie have been exploring this with each other for so long that you're like a veritable Lewis and Clark. Y'all have been arguing the same stuff for so many years now that your posts can be carbon dated. Y'all have gone 'round and 'round so many times that you're like a RATT greatest hit.

So, you must be a:

A) knucklehead
B) sadist who enjoys humiliating posters in front of a handful of regulars at a philosophy forum.
C) gpt-4 biggs system.