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ORIGINAL: BLoved

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ORIGINAL: Rule

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ORIGINAL: BLoved
If revelations is correct, my father, my wife and my son are all slated for the lake of fire.

I doubt that. Humanity and the human mind is evolving. In the course of millenniums perforce the relationship with the Divine changes.

I do not know why you think that your deceased are slated for a lake of fire, but you are probably wrong. People usually are.

May the God of the Dead reward your deceased according to their merits.

Thank you.

I do not believe in the book of revelations.

In my 30s, before I met my wife, I had an experience which I consider fundamentally spiritual, a vision of my father and grandfather in what I later learned is a place called "The Summer Lands".

We were able to talk, say our farewells, something we never got to do in life. It put my soul to rest regarding death.

Death is not the end.

When my wife and son passed away, this belief was considerably helpful.

There is so much more to life than worrying about whether some old guy with a beard will be punting me into a lake of fire.

So much to learn about love ...

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: BLoved
I am unfamiliar with any scientific theory or fact that states there was a time when there was no rain but that moisture arose from the ground.

To the best of my understanding, there are two hypothesized sources for the water found on our planet. One source is water in the materials which formed the Earth, with surface water resulting from condensation due to the outgassing of water vapor. The other hypothesized source is comets. But whether one or the other or both, and in the latter case how much due to each, remains unknown to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps someone else can add more.

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ORIGINAL: AnimusRex
So of course the brutal God who vaporized Sodom and Gomorrah was actually kinder, more just and loving than the daily perversity of droughts and floods the people had to contend with.

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ORIGINAL: BLoved

Don't even get me started on S&G ...

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ORIGINAL: Smutmonger

I actually liked the version of "Passing through the door to Elysium" you see at the End of the movie "Gladiator" with Russel Crowe.
If there is anything after death-I would rather beleive in that version. Perhaps these are your Summerlands.

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ORIGINAL: BLoved

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ORIGINAL: Smutmonger

I actually liked the version of "Passing through the door to Elysium" you see at the End of the movie "Gladiator" with Russel Crowe.
If there is anything after death-I would rather beleive in that version. Perhaps these are your Summerlands.

I cry when I get to that part ... there are days ...

Yes, I wondered if there might be a connection. Wiki describes the Summerland as "containing wide (possibly eternal) fields of rolling green hills and lush grass".

That was exactly what I saw in my vision.

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ORIGINAL: Vendaval

I would say that the lesson is to be prepared and plan ahead for changes in the environment. 

FYI - Stories of a great flood are common in cultures around the world.

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ORIGINAL: Smutmonger
I know, it's a real tear jerker-bitter sweet. I don't care for religions-I see most of them as political manipulation attempts. The book is still open to me on the subject of human energies and the spiritual realm. There is simply too much that I cannot explain away with a cold,scientific approach.

Especially with things I have done with kink-and D/s.

And really,is a world devoid of mystery and a sense of awe really worth living in? I don't wish to be so cruel as to remove things from people's lives that they find comfort in. I just don't want them to try to force them on me.

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ORIGINAL: sravaka
I will probably regret this....  but, so be it.

Three thoughts:

1.  To me, the Bible, OT and NT alike, tell the story of a people "growing up" with an ever evolving understanding of the nature of their place in the world and/or of their God. (related questions)   It starts out with "do this! don't do that!" when people are constantly on the edge of extermination, whether through natural or human means....  there's no time to think about "love" et al., until things settle down a bit.

2.  I'm absolutely with Musicmystery from way back in the first couple pages--  you simply cannot hope to read any text intelligently, or derive any useful "answers" from it, without consciousness of a) how it came into being and b) how it reached you.  You need to think about the historical circumstances not just in which OT evolved, not just in which the NT revised the OT, but also about how Augustine, Jerome, Aquinas, Luther, Joseph Smith, Pope John Paul II (i need a televangist name here to round things out-- fill in your own), whoever....  how all these "authorities" over time shaped/constrained interpretation in exceedingly complex/entangled ways.   (I'm not speaking of religious sense here-- that tends to be a matter of "faith" et al....  but if you want to pose the question in an abstract way, these things need to be accounted for.  Faith, or history:  take your pick.  there is no 3rd option.) 

3.  In Buddhism there is "upaya," (sometiimes translated "expedient means.")  The idea is that the Buddha tailors his message according to the receptiveness and cluefulness of the audience.   Thus you had intensively monastic, rule-driven Buddhism first, and "woo hoo! we all have buddha-nature!" Buddhism later.

Maybe the god of the OT was playing the same sort of game.  He just omitted to give a handy word for it.

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ORIGINAL: blacksword404

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ORIGINAL: Vendaval
FYI - Stories of a great flood are common in cultures around the world.

Billions of years and dinosaurs going extinct via meteor. But no flood. 

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ORIGINAL: BLoved

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened
What I find interesting about the story is that the earth is described as previous to this event, having not experienced any rain at all but moisture arose from the ground.  Science confirms this but it would have been at a time in earth's history before there were humans.

I am unfamiliar with any scientific theory or fact that states there was a time when there was no rain but that moisture arose from the ground.

Would you please provide more details?

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

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ORIGINAL: BLoved
Would you please provide more details?

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/water/?section=blueplanet&page=blueplanet_d#
How did all the water we see around us get here? Most scientists argue for an origin in the planet itself. Water was present in the cloud of gases and dust from which Earth formed, and volcanic eruptions on early Earth must have brought much of it to the surface in the form of water vapor.
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/5b.html
Most of the Earth's early atmosphere was created in the first one million years after solidification (4.4 billion years ago). Carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor dominated this early atmosphere.
 
Here's some interesting reading:
http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/genesis-6-11-and-other-texts/the-tradition-in-sumer/

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ORIGINAL: BLoved

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

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ORIGINAL: BLoved
Would you please provide more details?

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/water/?section=blueplanet&page=blueplanet_d#
How did all the water we see around us get here? Most scientists argue for an origin in the planet itself. Water was present in the cloud of gases and dust from which Earth formed, and volcanic eruptions on early Earth must have brought much of it to the surface in the form of water vapor.
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/5b.html
Most of the Earth's early atmosphere was created in the first one million years after solidification (4.4 billion years ago). Carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor dominated this early atmosphere.
 
Here's some interesting reading:
http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/genesis-6-11-and-other-texts/the-tradition-in-sumer/

Thank you.

I should point out that there was rain and rainbows long before Genesis.

Rivers do not flow if there is no rain, nor do mountains erode. There is more than sufficient evidence of both prior to the existence of humanity.

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ORIGINAL: eyesopened

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ORIGINAL: BLoved
Rivers do not flow if there is no rain, nor do mountains erode. There is more than sufficient evidence of both prior to the existence of humanity.

Yes!  Of course!  It's just a story.  I thought it interesting that the story mentions a phenomenom that should not have been known to the writer of the story.  The writer would have known about water of course but should not have known about the early atmosphere prior to human existance.  But it was mentioned.  I found it interesting.