Jamie123
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Posts posted by Jamie123
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7 minutes ago, zil2 said:
In this case, it would be between 4 and 17 million people who are mistaken.
I'm an idiot I know, but I'm taking the bait. (I'll regret it later.) The alternative is that everyone who believes in "soul sleep" is mistaken, and that would include 8.7 million Jehovah's Witnesses and 21 million Seventh Day Adventists!
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2 hours ago, zil2 said:
FWIW, @Jamie123, belief in the reality of our spirit form, its existence prior to our mortal birth, and its continued existence after our mortal death are so critical to our faith that I don't see how any Latter-day Saint could not believe it. We are the same individual moving through phases of existence.
This is a matter of some considerable interest to me. I've tried to give my honest thoughts on the matter, but perhaps I've underestimated how strong the feeling is on one side. When Person A is unsure about a thing Person B is utterly convinced of, he will inevitably have to entertain the possibility (not necessarily the certainty!) that Person B is mistaken. But perhaps there are times when he needs to keep his trap shut. If I've offended you Carb (or anyone else) I am sorry.
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A couple more thoughts... I overuse my modest supply of poetry, I know, but this is Tennyson In Memoriam:
QuotePerplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at lengthTo find a stronger faith his own;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinaï's peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho' the trumpet blew so loud.Perhaps Carb has gone through all this already and found "a stronger faith his own". If so, then good for him. As for me I have flashes of clarity now and then, but for much of the time I'm in "the darkness of the cloud". And (although its true I can't speak for other people) I don't believe I'm alone in there.
Perhaps if I was a little more "pure in deeds" I'd get on better, but that's something to work on.
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2 hours ago, Carborendum said:
While it appears that this would perfectly describe how you've concluded this on your own, you'd be in error to automatically believe that of all people. But since you've shown that you are closed to anything more, there's not much point in talking more about it.
I have not concluded anything and I am certainly not closed to anything else. Perhaps I should not have said "most of us" - in the final analysis I can only speak for myself. But I dare to suggest that I am a fairly representative example of humanity, and I am not the only person ever to have doubted the miraculous. Zechariah had difficulty believing that Elizabeth would bear a child at her advanced age. And Thomas would not believe that his friends had seen the risen Christ until he had seen him himself. If I'm something of a doubter myself, I think I'm in pretty good company.
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On 5/30/2024 at 4:03 PM, Carborendum said:
And she is really looking forward to her final rest.
It makes me think of these lines by Johnson:
QuotePour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resign’d;
For love, which scarce collective man can fill;
For patience, sov’reign o’er transmuted ill;
For faith, that panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind nature’s signal of retreat:
These goods for man the laws of heaven ordain,
These goods he grants, who grants the pow’r to gain;
With these celestial wisdom calms the mind,
And makes the happiness she does not find. -
2 hours ago, Carborendum said:
I know that they exist now in the most clear and literal sense. The "here" may be transitory. But they exist today.
The existence of "spirits" cannot be clearer. While poets and philosophers may talk of some figurative existence, they know not because they have no faith. Spirits are real. We don't have the scientific knowledge to be able to describe them or weigh/measure them as we would normally do for mortal understanding. But that doesn't mean they don't exist in a very real and literal sense.
They exist.
Well actually they could be clearer if they were visible to us. You're right we cannot prove they don't exist, but that takes us straight to Russell's flying teapot argument.
But as well as a persistence of doubt, there's also a persistence of belief - or perhaps "make- belief" - though often in a rather negative kind of way. I've always had a nagging suspicion that my dead relatives are floating around me all the time, watching what I'm doing. I remember once as a teenager thinking "I'd better be careful when I think I'm alone, Aunt Phillis could be watching!"
Do you not think that for most of us there is a "believing self" and a "doubting self" that stand in opposition to each other? For example, the believing self can look at the beauty of creation and think "there must be a God". But the doubting self will point to the Mandelbrot set and say "Look at the beauty here, and that is just numbers! No God needed!"
You might pray to God and think you get an answer, but the doubter within you might say "that was just coincidence" or "it was your imagination" or "you think God gave you strength, but you really found that strength within yourself". It's not enough to say "doubt is bad". It is the age-old argument of "pooh-pooh". There needs to be a reason for it that you can trust.
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It's almost a year now since my mother died. Over the past few months my father has had a growing friendship with a really nice widow lady - a friend of my late mother. They have been away on holiday together several times, and when I spoke to him this evening I ventured to ask if there was any possibility of romance. He said no, absolutely not, and he would never ever be over my mother
He got quite emotional about it, about how he still missed her every day. I miss her myself of course, she was the most loving mother I could ever have had, but its a well known fact that old people die. If they went on living forever, there would be no room for all the new babies. We know that we won't have our parents/ grandparents forever, and if we are wise we appreciate them while we still have them and let them know how much we love them.
But where do they go? As Christians we suppose that they live on in some form of afterlife, we hope some kind of paradise. Do we really believe this? It's easy to say we do, but it makes me think of T.S.Eliot's Four Quartets:
QuoteFirst, the cold fricton of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder."Shadow fruit". Even as a child I knew the sentiment behind those words - long before I ever read the poem. Death is final, and compared to it what is the "shadow fruit" - the words of priests?
As for people who claim they can talk with the dead, I have no schmuck with them. For one thing the Bible tells us to stay away from that malarkey, and for another have you ever been to one of those meetings? I have - I once took my wife to the spiritualist church in Kingston (after she had been asking for some time to go) and you never saw or heard such garbage in all your life. This "medium" woman was quite clearly making it all up - giving out little bits of information (which could have applied to almost anyone) and letting members of the congregation fill in the details. My wife got so excited with it and so cross with me for my pooh-poohing of it all. Enough about that though. I'll talk about that some other time.
And yet, wherever dead people "go" (assuming they go anywhere at all) they are still with us in our memories. My mother still feels as real to me now. Its as though she still exists - just in the past, not the present. Does that make any sense?
So maybe our dead relatives still do exist - not in some parallel universe or "higher dimension" but in that portion of spacetime that we (quite arbitrarily) label "the past".
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Why did the fridge fall out of the tree?
It was the monkey and the elephant's day off.
Sunak lost the election. Starmer is now Prime Minister*.
Big surprise! NOT
*Literally. We don't have any of this "lame duck" stuff in UK. This very morning the King accepted Sunak's resignation and appointed Starmer.
- Backroads and NeuroTypical
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Fridge jokes are the greatest. For example...
QuoteWhat's white and kills you when it falls on you from a tree?
A fridge.
What's white and stands in the corner?
A naughty fridge.
What's white and can't climb trees?
A fridge.
What's white and blue and can't climb trees?
A fridge wearing a denim jacket.
Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
Someone threw a fridge at it.
Why did the elephant fall out of the tree?
It was sellotaped to the monkey.
How do you put a giraffe into the fridge?
Open the fridge door
Put the giraffe in
Close the fridge door.How do you put an elephant into the fridge?
Open the fridge door
Take out the giraffe
Put in the elephant
Close the fridge door.- mordorbund and NeuroTypical
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14 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:
Refrigerators are amazing too, though.
- Backroads, Carborendum and NeuroTypical
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I like it rare - though not too rare. Rare enough to be red in the middle, but not cold. When I'm cooking it myself I like it with fried onions and mushrooms, and baked potato with actual butter, and peas*. My mouth is watering at the thought!
*Fresh peas only though. Or frozen are as good as fresh. The very thought of tinned peas makes me want to vomit!
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Thanks very much everyone, I really appreciate all your support.
Today my wife contacted me to ask if I'd paid my daughter's allowance for this month and last. I told her that I hadn't for this month (though I have now) but I reminded her that in the middle of May I paid double my daughter's usual allowance early for June. She said that she thought that money was extra for expenses she was having. I managed to find the texts where we agreed that the "extra expenses" were why it was doubled, but it included her regular allowance for June. She would NOT get another allowance for June on top of that, so her next allowance would be July (which I have now just paid). I told her that they must NOT expect any more money from me until the end of July at the earliest, because I'm going to struggle to get through this month even as it is.
Well there it is. We'll see how it goes...
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I'm afraid I haven't taken anyone's advice and it's got worse. This afternoon my wife texted me again to say would I give her a "one off" payment of £900. I was shocked, and told her I would need to think about it. Then I remembered the car insurance is coming up and that will be £700, and I am already in big debt. She said not to worry and she would get the money "somehow" and I asked her "how, by going to a loan shark?" She said she would " never sink that low" and if I couldn't do it then don't worry, and I said I always could, just at the expense of going deeper into debt and more stress. She said not to worry and it was her responsibility and she would get the money "somehow" and I said "what are you planning to do, sell your body on the street?" That went down like a lead balloon. She kept saying then that she didn't want anything from me ever again and she would never ask for another penny, and (well you know what guilty conscience is like) I got straight online and transferred her £900. I'm getting dangerously close to my overdraft limit now. But I haven't a lot of faith in my wife's ability get money "somehow", and if she suffers so does my daughter (or "child" I should say).
The good news is i get my salary Wednesday, but I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get professional help. I can't go on like this.
- Vort, Carborendum and zil2
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16 minutes ago, Vort said:
There are some very deep differences between Americans and the English in matters of temperament, manners, mannerisms, expectations, and social grace.
I notice in America it's the norm to address people you don't know as "sir" or "madam". I think that was common here once but its gone out of fashion. Instead of "Excuse me, sir," we would just say "Excuse me".
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Reminds me of something else too. When I was about seven, a little girl was abducted and murdered near our school. The investigation went on for weeks, during which all children had it drilled into their heads that they must NEVER talk to strangers and should CERTAINLY never get into a car with a stranger.
Well at the height of all this, I was just leaving school when a bearded man I didn't recognize stepped in front of me and asked me if I wanted a lift.
I said "No".
He said "Why not?"
Had I been a little older I would have invented a little white lie. However, I was only seven. My 100% truthful reply was: "Because you might be the man who murdered the girl."
By the time I got home it was all over the neighbourhood that I'd been "Calling Mr. Williams a murderer". My parents were dying with embarrassment, and it was all anyone wanted to talk about for ages.
Well what the Dickens did they expect?
1. I'd only met the guy once or twice before in my life and in a totally different setting.
2. He had grown a beard since then.
3. We had had it drummed into us for weeks about not getting into cars with strangers, so how the heck was I going to react?
4. Who was to say he wasn't the murderer?
For all I know he still might have been. The police did "get" somebody for the crime, but his conviction was later overturned on appeal. A few years back someone wrote a book about the case claiming it was the Yorkshire Ripper. But after all this time I doubt we'll ever know.
- Carborendum and Vort
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It reminds me of "William's Truthful Christmas" by Richmal Crompton. Eleven year old William Brown is spending Christmas with his aunt and uncle. He has taken a little too literally the vicar's Christmas sermon on "casting aside deceit and hypocrisy and speaking the truth".
QuoteUncle Frederick looked out of the window and groaned aloud.
“It’s Lady Atkinson,” he said, “Help! Help!”
“Now, Frederick dear,” said Aunt Emma hastily, “Don’t talk like that and do try to be nice to her. She’s one of the Atkinsons, you know,” she explained with empressement to Mrs. Brown in a whisper as the lady was shown in.
Lady Atkinson was stout and elderly and wore a very youthful hat and coat.
“A happy Christmas to you all!” she said graciously. “The boy? Your nephew? William? How do you do, William? He—stares rather, doesn’t he? Ah, yes,” she greeted every one separately with infinite condescension.
“I’ve brought you my Christmas present in person,” she went on in the tone of voice of one giving an unheard-of treat. “Look!”
She took out of an envelope a large signed photograph of herself. “There now ... what do you think of that?”
Murmurs of surprise and admiration and gratitude.
Lady Atkinson drank them in complacently.
“It’s very good isn’t it? You ... little boy ... don’t you think it’s very like me?”
William gazed at it critically.
“It’s not as fat as you are,” was his final offering at the altar of truth.
“William!” screamed Mrs. Brown, “how can you be so impolite!”
“Impolite?” said William with some indignation. “I’m not tryin’ to be polite! I’m bein’ truthful. I can’t be everything. Seems to me I’m the only person in the world what is truthful an’ no one seems to be grateful to me. It isn’t ’s fat as what she is,” he went on doggedly, “an’ it’s not got as many little lines on its face as what she has an’ it’s different lookin’ altogether. It looks pretty an’ she doesn’t——”
Lady Atkinson towered over him, quivering with rage.
“You nasty little boy!” she said thrusting her face close to his. “You NASTY—little—boy!”
Then she swept out of the room without another word.
The front door slammed.
She was gone.
Aunt Emma sat down and began to weep.
“She’ll never come to the house again,” she said.
“I always said he ought to be hung,” said Robert gloomily. “Every day we let him live he complicates our lives still worse.”
“I shall tell your father, William,” said Mrs. Brown, “directly we get home.”
“The kindest thing to think,” said Ethel, “is that he’s mad.”
“Well,” said William, “I don’ know what I’ve done ’cept cast aside deceit an’—an’ the other thing what he said in church an’ speak the truth an’ that. I don’ know why every one’s so mad at me jus’ ’cause of that. You’d think they’d be glad!”
“She’ll never set foot in the house again,” sobbed Aunt Emma.
Uncle Frederick, who had been vainly trying to hide his glee, rose.
“I don’t think she will, my dear,” he said cheerfully. “Nothing like the truth, William ... absolutely nothing.”
He pressed a half-crown into William’s hand surreptitiously as he went to the door....
SPOILER: Uncle Frederick was being overoptimistic. Lady Atkinson returns later in a mercilessly forgiving mood.
- zil2, Carborendum and Vort
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5 hours ago, Carborendum said:
Then, more importantly, "What claim does she have on your assets because she is still married to you?"
You're right - I do need to research exactly where I stand. If we're set for long-term separation there likely need to be some safeguards. Deep down I still love her and I like to think this separation is only a temporary thing. Right now I couldn't handle having her back in the house. (I have uneasy dreams about it.) But maybe one day...
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I've told my wife that the only reason I would ever divorce her would be to get remarried, and since that's not on the cards I see no reason to give free money to lawyers. If she wants a divorce then that's up to her, but it'll be her project not mine. Maybe one day I'll reconcile with her, but until then I'll be a MGTOW
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I'm happy that my wife and daughter have started being nice to me again, but I can't help thinking I'm being taken for a ride. My wife has now rented a nice apartment, and my daughter ("child") is staying with her over the summer vacation. My wife said to me the other day that she has counted all the money she has coming in and it's not enough to cover her rent. I asked her if that included the allowance I'm still paying her. She said no, and including that she might just have enough. Then she said that our daughter needs £550 to pay the deposit on the apartment she is renting for college next year. I told her I didn't have enough to pay it, so she said could I pay part of it and she would pay the rest? I asked her how she would get the money and she said she didn't know.
Well you can guess what I was thinking, can't you? Do you use the term "loan shark" over there? If she gets herself in trouble with one of those, which muggins do you think will be getting her out again? So I gave her the £550 (despite putting my account into the red) - after all it is for my daughter's education, fair enough.
But last Saturday I took them both over to Ikea at Reading to buy some furniture for the apartment. Fine, no problem. Everyone needs furniture. But while we were there (and this is what my "moan" is really about) they spent about £70 on stuffed animals. I asked them if this was really needed, but mostly kept my gob closed for fear of being put back into the dog house. It may be my wife's money, but whose going to be supporting her when her account is empty again?
While we were in the waiting room waiting for the furniture, I tried relieving the pressure by performing the "Octopus and Cat Show" with two of the stuffed toys, but was promptly told to shut up. *Sigh*
I wrote a resume for my wife so hopefully she can get a job, and I thought it would be a good idea to ask our curate to be a reference. Our curate is actually a canon at Guildford cathedral (maybe similar to a stake president's counsellor for you?) and thought that might add a bit of gravitas. However, when I approached the curate she told me she wasn't happy with the way my wife had been "giving everyone the run-around" and she might not write nice things about her if asked. I didn't ask for details, but I can infer that there have been shenanigans that I don't know about.
Anyway if you read this far, thanks for listening. Moan over.
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2 minutes ago, mikbone said:
I thought Charles was a figurehead? He making life or death decisions for your country?
Like our dear dementia leader?
That's a scary thought!
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15 minutes ago, zil2 said:
@Jamie123, many Americans may not be aware that a country can have different people as "head of government" (e.g. your Prime Minister) vs "head of state" (e.g. your monarch). In the US, they're the same person: the President. (At least, that's how I understand it.)
That's how I understand it too. Some countries (France or Ireland for example) have a nonexecutive president, who is kind of like an elected monarch, and a Prime Minister who is head of government.
This is probably the least-fuss route we would take if we ever abolished the monarchy. Some great wise fatherly (or motherly) scholar or writer or musician - someone who could inspire everyone - would be perfect. But think who we could get!
- zil2 and NeuroTypical
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1 minute ago, mikbone said:
Well then, who is this wan<€r, dude?
Ummm...the Prime Minister of Canada?
We have one too...
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2 minutes ago, mikbone said:
I hear the term ‘wanker’ associated with this Royal.
Ooooooo Mikbone said a naughty word!
I'm not a Cockney but I prefer "merchant banker" 😉
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1 hour ago, mikbone said:
On average, a country celebrates independence from Britain roughly every six days. 65 countries have gained independence from the United Kingdom or British military occupation, and 48 of them celebrate a national day for it. This means that around 1.6 billion people can celebrate independence from Britain.
Hence - Not my King.
Fourteen of the countries you're referring to still have the British monarch as their head of state. Don't ask me to name them all, but there's Canada, Australia and New Zealand to start with
Dead people
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Jamie123
Based on some earlier threads I remember, this statement is going to ruffle a few feathers. It's essentially Polonius' advice to Laertes:
I remember arguing till I was blue in the face with someone who insisted that "true to yourself" and "true to God" must be mutually exclusive. I'll say it again: NO THEY'RE NOT!
Shakespeare may have given these lines to an annoying old windbag, but that doesn't make them wrong. Like Tennyson said, honest doubt is better than phony faith.
(Not that honest faith isn't better still!)
P.S. A few years ago my daughter played Polonius in school production of Hamlet. She was good!