Fw: Spirit & Soul
Joseph Crea Joseph.Crea@worldnet.att.net
Tue, 31 Mar 1998 16:34:31 +0000 (00891383671, 19980331163429.AAA22367@LOCALNAME)
Hello again, Ron!
At 02:41 AM 3/31/98 -0500, Brian Dean wrote:
>>CREA
>> Strangely enough, I have yet to meet a secular atheist who espoused
>>dualism in any form. Every one has been a "devout" materialist of one
>>stripe or another. Please cite even ONE atheist who has acknowledged his
>>philosophical adherence to a Platonic dichotomy between matter and spirit
>>(or who posits the existence of a spiritual realm at all). To accuse
>>atheists of being dualists, whether "false" or not, is roughly on a par with
>>my accusing you (and other Christians) of being a "false" polytheist.
>>
>> If you feel that the characterization of matter as bad/evil or inferior
>>to spirit is foreign to Christianity, please explain Romans 8:3 where the
>>flesh is characterized as being "sinful" -- and more emphatically Galatians
>>5:16-25, paying special attention to verse 17, where it says:
>>
>> [17] "for the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against
>>the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot
>>do the things that ye would."
>
>RON
--snip--
> Atheists are dualists, from my perspective because they do not merely
>denigrate the spiritual, but in fact deny its very existence. A unitive
>view considers all aspects of reality (yes, I know we disagree on what
>is real).
CREA
And by using that rationale, I can show that triangles must have five
vertices, since they obviously don't have four!
Following the same line of argumentation, it makes perfect sense that
Jesus and Satan are one and the same individual, since the author of
Revelation makes no bones about identifying "the serpent" with the
Devil/Satan (12:9 & 20:2), and Jesus himself points out that just like Moses
raised up the "serpent" in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be raised
up (John 3:14).
With Mettaa,
Joseph Crea
<Joseph.Crea@worldnet.att.net>