What about the lake of fire and the worm (your worm) that never dies?

>Justin Martyr actually warned specifically against Christians claiming your soul goes to heaven when you die

No, that is a mischaracterization. He's saying that people who deny the resurrection of the dead shouldn't be called Christians. Basically he's criticizing gnostics.
I've quoted his Apology to the Roman Senate to refute people who subscribe to "soul sleep" before. He explicitly affirms the continuation of consciousness after death.

We know there are souls in heaven right now, before any resurrection of the dead, because they are identified as the souls of martyrs crying out from the altar in the book of Revelation.
Earlier in this same book, there are described 24 elders with crowns of gold.

Lazarus and the rich man too.
It's hard to imagine where you got this ludicrous idea that the church didn't think anything like this for centuries when the soul of Lazarus is said to be with Abraham, while the soul of the rich man suffers from the parching flame.

The rich man pleads with Abraham to send an angel to his brothers, who are still alive, that they might not meet his fate.
This means it definitely isn't a post resurrection of the dead story, because they're still living normal lives in this world.
Seriously who's teaching you this nonsense? It seems mostly a slight against orthodox doctrine.

>>18541019
It's right there in the book of john, so 1st century at least. In the beginning was the logos, which I take to mean discrete information. It's abstract. The gospels were written in greek by hellenized jews.

There's literally nothing wrong with incorporating concepts from philsophy into theology, because the intellect is just one way one can know God. Platonists were as correct as one can be without having access to revealed truth.
But also you're a retard and 2nd temple jews believed that the souls of the dead went to Sheol. See i.e. the passage of Saul and the witch of Endor.
And don't reply to me with some retarded shit that ackshully they didn't, this is well documented

>>18541164
Josephus literally says the Pharisees thought souls persist after separation from the body.
Were they all hellenizers too?

How about the Essenes?
Was their idea of the immortal soul likewise Greek?

I've seen lots of people like OP say this before, all equally wrong.
They must be getting it from a common source.

>>18541019
Incorrect, and if people received jail time for posting shitty ideas, more of their postings would stop. When Obama was president , he let Washington DC have homelessness and crime e everywhere. So before he was president, people could go there and eat and see beautiful parks and stuff. But after him, people didn’t go there because they’d leave their car and come back and it is vandalized, and they would be attacked on the street. And homeless are living everywhere. So when Trump became president he actually started having all of these people be arrested and then suddenly people could actually enjoy the state again. Imagine that.

When Adam and Eve sinned, their bodies immediately died like God said they would, but they didn’t physically die yet.
When Abel died, his blood cried from the ground.
The body, the soul and the spirit always existed and it was always Christian even before God created anything for Moses.
The fact is that you are doing the sin of Korah, who stood outside Moses’ tent arrogantly like he was more deserving of the high priesthood than the one God chose. So God consumed Korah into the earth for not repenting even though Moses begged God not to kill them. Also, God almost did it to the Jews, too, but Moses begged God not to destroy them either. But Korah got what he deserved, all 250 of them. Furthermore, you Jesus Christ is literally the definition of not paganism since it came from Israel and the Jews and worship of the only true living God, which the only one there is was of the Jews.

>>18541164
>>18541190
Tertulian literally stated
>What has Athens to do with Jerusalem
Paul also rejected philosophy when he called the wisdom of the world a “foolish” thing.

>>18541190
>Josephus literally says the Pharisees thought souls persist after separation from the body. Were they all hellenizers too?
Considering that they spoke Greek, I’d say yes
>How about the Essenes? Was their idea of the immortal soul likewise Greek
Considering that Greek-language versions of the Bible have been found amongst the Dead Sea scrolls, I’d say yes

>>18541313
>Paul also rejected philosophy when he called the wisdom of the world a “foolish” thing.
He says that God made foolish the wisdom of the world and that God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. I don't think this is a total rejection of philosophy, but rather a way of emphasizing that in his view there are some important things philosophy can't reach, which God has instead dispensed by revelation to be taken on faith. I believe his attitude toward Greek philosophy isn't too different from his attitude to the Jewish law, which he in one place calls a curse and in another place implies that he regards the righteousness which comes from it as rubbish (Philippians 3). But the proper conclusion from that isn't that our efforts to be moral are worthless—they're valuable as expressions of faith, but it has to be understood that perfect righteousness isn't something we can obtain solely by our own efforts, and even the written Jewish law is only an imperfect approximation and shadow of it. Similarly, philosophy isn't worthless, but it has to be understood that it's only an imperfect approximation and shadow of something higher which we, at least in our current state, are incapable of grasping in its entirety.

>>18541019
The claim that the soul is a Greek pagan import collapses on three points.
First, 2nd Temple Judaism already believed in post-mortem consciousness. 2 Maccabees 7, written around 150 BC, shows martyrs declaring that God will raise their bodies while their souls persist. The Pharisees believed in immortality of the soul and resurrection simultaneously. Josephus documents this explicitly. Were the Pharisees secret Platonists?
Second, Christ Himself taught the soul's persistence. Luke 23:43: "Today you will be with me in Paradise." Not "today your body will be raised." Today. The soul. Revelation 6:9 shows the souls of martyrs under the altar, conscious, speaking, before the resurrection. Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:8 says "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." These are 1st century texts, not 4th century additions.
Third, the Catholic position is NOT Platonism. Plato said the soul is a prisoner of the body, escaping at death to never return. Christianity says the soul is the form of the body (Aquinas, following Aristotle). Death is unnatural, a tearing apart of what should be united. The soul persists in a separated state but it is incomplete, awaiting reunion with the body at the resurrection. This is why Christianity insists on BODILY resurrection, which Plato would have found absurd.
Justin Martyr's warning was against gnostics who denied the resurrection of the flesh, not against the soul's persistence. Read him more carefully.
The Hebrew nephesh means "living being," not a ghost trapped in a body. You ARE a soul, you don't "have" one. But that soul can exist temporarily without the body, and will be reunited with it. That is not Platonism. It is a fundamentally different anthropology.

>>18541019
The bible is older than Platonism

>>18541164
>>18541313
The issue here is not the relationship of philosophy to religion because OP’s thesis is wrong. The holy scriptures show the soul to be an immaterial aspect of man’s being independent of his physical body in its earliest pages, Genesis 2:7

>>18541019
Jews didn't believe in an afterlife at all though?

>>18541019
>The concept of the soul being a seperate entity from your physical body, and that it can live on after bodily death is a concept from Platonism, aka paganism. That literally did not exist as a concept in Jesus's time and region in the apocalyptic Judaism
judaism was insired by platonism

>>18542486
everything was inspired by platonism, plato was the most brilliant man in the western hemisphere

Not OP but:
>>18541042
That's after the resurrection. Revelation 20:13 says people go into the lake of fire after "the sea gave up the dead who were in it, death and hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done".

Prior to that they were not in the lake of fire.

>>18541130
>Lazarus and the rich man too.
This is a parable. If you think parables are literal descriptors of objective realities then by all means, put that idea to the test: see how literal Matthew 21:21-22 is by praying that Mount Rushmore will go into the sea.

Really, try it right now. Take a moment and truly do it.
...
...
Now check the news. No reports of an inexplicable geological event in South Dakota?

Matthew 21:21-22 is as literal to our world as the rich man and Lazarus parable is to Sheol.

>>18542419
>The holy scriptures show the soul to be an immaterial aspect of man’s being independent of his physical body in its earliest pages, Genesis 2:7
Why does the "immaterial aspect of man's being" go in through the nostrils and is called by the same word as normal physical breath?

An immaterial object is something you have to strain this text to be referring to. It's just respiration and oxygen.

>>18541429
>He says that God made foolish the wisdom of the world and that God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.
Except Yahweh is Typhon, so this statement is complete bullshit

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>>18542410
>>18542414
Judaism and by-extension Christianity and Islam are complete nonsense. There is no evidence of a complete Torah existing prior to the 5th century AUC (after of the founding of the city [of Rome]).
The Exodus myth was written as a polemic against Manetho, not the other way around (again, no complete Torah prior to the 5th century AUC).
Manetho was citing earlier sources and he has been proven correct by history. He was writing about the Shasu and his ONLY mistake was confusing them with the Hyksos. The Shasu were a group of nomads from the southern Levant who worshipped Yahweh and would later contribute to the ethnogenesis of the Jews. They were considered a nuance due to their tendency to raid the Egyptian borders and at some point in the late Bronze Age, they nearly succeeded in plundering Egypt but got their asses kicked and expelled. Manetho wrote this in his Aegyptiaca and the Jews, being mad that people remember this, wrote the myth of Exodus in response.
Only those with a mental illness and leprosy would deny any of this. Also, Egypt didn’t even have the type of chattel slavery depicted in Exodus.

>>18542410
>2nd Temple Judaism already believed in post-mortem consciousness...around 150 BC
This is very late in Judaism's pre-Christian history and there is extreme Hellenistic influence at this point. Maccabees is entirely about a civil war between full-on Hellenistic Jews who essentially became outright Greek Pagans backed by a Hellenic empire vs. those who opposed it led by the Maccabees. That doesn't mean they themselves were immune to any Hellenistic influence. Look at Philo of Alexandria for example who is all about stuffing Hellenistic philosophy into the Bible.

And there were two major factions who disagreed on this point. The Sadducees rejected a conscious afterlife.

>Were the Pharisees secret Platonists?
Have you read five pages of Philo?

Platonism had heavy influence over thought in the entire Roman world, including Jews who lived there. If you want Jews unmoved by Platonism you want the Sadducees.

Ironically for this point, it's because they were concentrated in Israel rather than being more in the diaspora, where the Hellenistic influence was stronger, that we don't have their writings since they were for all practical intents and purposes completely destroyed in the Jewish-Roman War. Otherwise Sadducee texts could be brought forward that disagree.

>Luke 23:43: "Today you will be with me in Paradise."
And what is "paradise"? Consulting Strong's Concordance (https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g3857/kjv/tr/0-1/):

"the part of Hades which was thought by the later Jews to be the abode of the souls of pious until the resurrection"

So it's just a reference to Sheol/Hades, where the dead have always been believed to go.

>Revelation 6:9 shows the souls of martyrs
It also shows a multi-headed dragon coming out of the ocean and ruling the world. John's vision was the least literal thing in the entire Bible.

>>18543830
>>18542410
I hate to multi-post but you brought up many examples so there's little choice. It's almost always easier to present a falsehood than it is to respond to it.

>Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:8 says "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord."
A) You are lying. Inventing words. It does not say this. It says "Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord."
Consider carefully what Revelation 22:18-19 implies about those who add and remove words from scripture.
B) This is not a new idea. Solomon had already said this in Ecclesiastes 12:7. And what had he said about this state in chapter 9? That it is unconscious sleep where you do and experience nothing. Being in a location or being with someone does not mean that you are conscious there.

>the Catholic position is NOT Platonism...The soul persists in a separated state but it is incomplete, awaiting reunion with the body at the resurrection
This idea is, for any practical intent or purpose, absent from mainstream Catholicism. I have never ever once ever heard a Catholic say anything about the future physical resurrection. Exclusively, 100%, it is the "going to heaven".

Technically it is part of Catholicism but it is a minor trivial afterthought that the vast majority of Catholics have nothing but the most dim awareness of. For them it's all about "going to heaven". Just like Plato taught.

>You ARE a soul, you don't "have" one.
We know now that your spirit isn't where your skills, memories, personality, emotions, etc. are. Those are all in and from your brain.

Heaven doesn't exist. Plato wrote about it and it was co-opted by hellenized jews

>>18541019
>did not exist
Jesus is questioned about it in the bible. So it did exist.

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>>18541019
This idea is greatly promoted by Hollywood propaganda.

>>18543859
Souls without bodies are as dead and inert as corpses. At most it seems like your soul, if indeed you have one, allows for true consciousness and for free-will choices. But almost everything you are mentally is a product of your brain, including awareness.

And the Bible says essentially this in Ecclesiastes 9, the one place it directly addresses the question "what do the dead experience?".

Contrast this with Platonism, where nearly all mental processes are directly done by the soul and your body is actually working as chains on it holding it back. His student Aristotle didn't know at all what a brain did and thought it was a cooling system. That is where Catholic thought on this issue comes from, not from the Bible.

>>18543926
I dont disagree with what you just said, but the concept did exist, and jesus adressed it. He says that the dead are like angels (messengers) in heaven (conceptual realm), and that God is a god of the living, not the dead. As to the resurection, he describes the prophets coming alive in us, and his name is Emmanuel.

>>18543861
>Ricky Gervais
Notice how these ideas are pushed by atheists.

>>18543939
>He says that the dead are like angels
He says they will be like that after the resurrection. He does not say that those currently dead are like that

>and that God is a god of the living, not the dead
And what sense would that make if the dead were actively worshipping him?

>he describes the prophets coming alive in us, and his name is Emmanuel.
...What?

>>18543926
In regard ex materia vs ex nihilo, I think its a bit of a paradox. But I'm not going to argue, because people are very sensatibe about this for some reason. I personally go with ex nihilo, because it is more empowering, and there really isn't proof either way.

>>18543941
Yup, trying to make you familiar with demonic spirits who pretend to be your dead relatives. Ricky Gervais is a willing agent of Satan.

>>18541019
The soul is like a job description in the form of a name which describes a role in the kingdom of heaven. You can have a soul, but when you die it can be inherited by another, or sleep until needed again.

The spirit is another matter entirely, you either share in it or don't, knowingly or unknowingly.

>>18543939
>>18543944
>>18543954
real schizo hours

>>18543955
This is correct >>18543954 like it or don't, believe it or not, makes no difference.

>>18543956
What's your best evidence for it? Give me your single strongest piece of supporting data.

>>18543961
Logical alignment.

>>18543964
I asked for your evidence. You named a type of argument. You must actually present that argument for it to be evidence.

Or are you unable to do so because this is merely an idea that is deeply *felt* but there isn't actually any reasoning behind it?

>>18543968
There is no evidence for these things because they're concepts used to rationalize systems of organization that provide desired outcomes. You believe it because it creates tangible heaven on earth and saves the world from literal hell.

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Religious materialism is somehow more annoying than atheist materialism. At least the atheist materialist can be forgiven for having a reductionist disposition across the board, likely motivated by a high epistemic standard. But the religious materialist brings in all the motivated reasoning that typically comes along with being religious only to reach the dullest conclusion. it's almost like they specifically want the world to be less interesting.

>>18543972
In other words, whatever it is you're trying to say, you don't believe that it's actually true, just a useful fiction.
So when you talk about it like it's actually true, like you have been in this thread, you're a liar.

>>18543830
The argument that soul persistence is a late Hellenistic import collapses when you examine what the texts actually say versus what Platonism teaches.
The Pharisees believed in immortality of the soul AND bodily resurrection simultaneously. These are not the same doctrine. Plato taught the soul escapes the body and never returns. The Pharisees taught the soul persists AND the body will be raised. If they were simply borrowing from Plato they would have dropped the resurrection, which is exactly what gnostic heretics did.
The Sadducees rejected the afterlife. They also rejected angels, providence, and oral tradition. They were the temple aristocracy who collaborated with Rome. Citing them as evidence of "original" Judaism is like citing them as proof Judaism never believed in angels. They were the minority. Christ explicitly refuted them on this point (Matthew 22:31-32), quoting Exodus 3:6 to prove the patriarchs are alive to God. That is 1st century, from Christ himself, using the Torah the Sadducees accepted.
On Philo: yes, he was Hellenized. That proves some Jews absorbed Greek philosophy. It does not prove post-mortem consciousness is Greek. 2 Maccabees 7 shows martyrs declaring God "will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life" while their mother says "the Creator of the world will give you back both breath and life." Body AND soul. Not Platonism.
Catholic anthropology is explicitly anti-Platonic. Aquinas follows Aristotle: the soul is the form of the body. Death is unnatural separation. The soul persists incomplete, awaiting reunion with the body at resurrection. Plato would find bodily resurrection absurd. The Catholic Church teaches it as dogma. These are not the same system.

>>18543978
Its real if you believe it because through faith the fruit is provided.

>>18543979
Your argument is that some of them believed in both a conscious afterlife and in resurrection so therefore their belief in a conscious afterlife can't be due to external influence. You must see how thin that is. The norm is syncretism: you combine your beliefs with whatever idea is causing cultural pressure. Its why Philo of Alexandria isn't rejecting Moses but is trying to make Moses into a Platonist: syncretism.

The Bible teaches an unconscious death with an eventual resurrection. Platonism, in Plato's Republic, teaches a conscious soul that returns to a body and then dies again.

Throw these into the blender of syncretism and what came out was a conscious soul that comes back to a body but that's only one time for its final resurrection.

>Citing them as evidence of "original" Judaism
Strawman argument. I never said Sadducees were original Judaism. You're putting words in my mouth like you did with Paul.

I said there was a major disagreement about this in Judaism, which you were presenting as a monolith that believed in a conscious afterlife. The group who we see for sure hasn't the slightest trace of mainstream Hellenism in their ideas completely rejects a conscious afterlife.

>quoting Exodus 3:6 to prove the patriarchs are alive to God
Because they will be resurrected. The Sadducees' question is about resurrection, not about the soul in the afterlife.

>2 Maccabees 7
I already addressed this.

>Body AND soul. Not Platonism.
Plato taught souls (generally) go to bodies anon.

>Aquinas
Medieval philosophy is utterly soaked in Platonism anon

>follows Aristotle
Plato's direct student. You're not doing your case any favors.

Here's my challenge. Can you find any Jewish text from before Hellenism spread into their area that clearly teaches a conscious afterlife? I can bring forth Solomon in Ecclesiastes who obviously denies the concept. Can you show the same?

>>18543984
Do you believe it is objectively true in the external world?

>>18544016
>Can you find any Jewish text from before Hellenism spread into their area that clearly teaches a conscious afterlife?
NTA, however the story of the witch of Endor has already been mentioned. In 1 Samuel 28, Saul finds a medium in order to help him contact the ghost of Samuel, and I believe a plain reading of the text is that she succeeded. The narrator seems to assume that the ghost she perceives really is Samuel, not a demonic imitation or anything, and neither is there any indication that a special miracle was performed by God for the occasion. Taking the plain reading for granted, that would mean that, even if the dead are "asleep" most of the time, they're at least conscious enough to be disturbed and complain about it despite not having been resurrected yet.
>Then Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”

>>18543955
Are you a pacifist, or an activist?

>>18543968
The evidence is that you pick up a book, read it, and do what is written in it. That is evidence that the message is now active and alive in you. The nomenclature sounds schizo, because its from thousands of years ago, and you need to interpret the words with context and try to understand the meaning of what the author was actually saying. Not just what it sounds like to a modern comedian.

>>18544031
Fruit is provided. That is how the prophets are judged.

>>18543978
>don't believe that it's actually true
Its juat different nomenclature. If you want to know more modern meanings, read Philo, or Rambam, or Aquinas. They provide interpretations for some of the words. It wasn't until 500 years ago that the catholic church stopped explaining the allegory. They now encourage literal interpretation. However, just because you literally use the word, as it is written, that doesnt mean a word cant still be a Polysemy.

>>18544077
>and I believe a plain reading of the text is that she succeeded.
Verse 12 says "When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice, and the woman said to Saul, 'Why did you deceive me? You are Saul!'". For it to actually work and Samuel to actually appear was something shocking and unexpected and she immediately knew something was very out of the ordinary, all because it actually worked. What you should get from this is that it working was something surprising and shocking.

>neither is there any indication that a special miracle was performed by God for the occasion
Other than the fact that she herself reacts like her summoning actually working is shocking and instantly infers this must be something special with the king, consider the implications of what you're saying here. If this wasn't a special miracle then it would mean seances actually work and you can really summon and communicate with the dead. But that's patently false, every serious study of mediums and seances has come away with them simply being parlor tricks. If this really worked and wasn't a special miracle you should be able to go to most a medium and summon Samuel today to ask him questions. You cannot.

>they're at least conscious enough to be disturbed and complain about it
The same word had been used about something the ground itself did in chapter 14 according to https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h7264/kjv/wlc/0-1/, so it doesn't tell us Samuel was necessarily conscious before this, any more than the ground is.

>>18544146
>Polysemy
Many signs.
no sign will be given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah

>>18544077
The conciousness is in the prophet doing the recitation, not the book.

>>18544149
There's an obvious alternative explanation for her shock, which is that she's realized her life is in danger. Because, as it says in verses 9, "Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the wizards from the land. Why then are you laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?" And then in verse 12, "When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice, and the woman said to Saul, 'Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!'" But he calms her by saying, "Have no fear; what do you see?"

The text doesn't say exactly how she realizes who Saul is, but just *seeing* Samuel, even if she had never seen a real ghost before, obviously wouldn't give her that information by itself. So to me it's implied that Samuel communciated this to her, or maybe she psychically perceived that Samuel recognized Saul. Although later it's written as if Saul is directly hearing Samuel, at the beginning Saul is fully reliant on the medium's visual description of Samuel, so i the same way that the medium was seeing something Saul wasn't, she could have heard something Saul didn't as well, like Samuel telling her who Saul is. Or maybe she psychically perceived Samuel's recognition of Saul, since mediums are liable to do that sort of thing.

>>18544202
You seem to have answered yourself. She'd already raised that concern and had it allayed in verses 9-10. And then it ties her shock to "When the woman saw Samuel she cried out with a loud voice"; under your model it would be "When the woman learned that it was Saul she cried out with a loud voice".

It makes more sense for her to scream like, well, she's just seen a ghost because she has just seen a ghost than for her to do it because of something they'd already discussed.

>The text doesn't say exactly how she realizes who Saul is, but just *seeing* Samuel, even if she had never seen a real ghost before, obviously wouldn't give her that information by itself.
Now you're going beyond the text and more into trying to psychoanalyze someone in it. I don't see this as odd: it would make sense that someone great would only answer to someone great. Or she herself might have thought only the truly great could call up the dead so she had to put on tricks for the nobodies. There are endless such reasons. But the text itself, as we have it, ties her sudden and jarring change to seeing Samuel. So with the text we have and what is directly stated, seeing Samuel did indeed inform her she was dealing with Saul.

>Or maybe she psychically perceived Samuel's recognition of Saul, since mediums are liable to do that sort of thing.
To clarify, do you believe psychics and mediums are real?

>>18544228
I believe that anyone who isn't selectively biased against my interpretation will read the text as I have, and that what you are engaging in is the typical religious apologetic style of forcing an unnatural interpretation of a text while insisting that it's a natural interpretation of the text. Which is incredibly annoying. In line with my earlier post here: >>18543976

>Do you believe psychics and mediums are real?
I believe they're far more likely to be real in some way by themselves than any common intepretation of Christianity is taken as a whole. I put some stock NDEs as supporting some kind of immediate afterlife, and I put some stock in psychic powers which IIRC the scientific evidence is a little ambiguous about. I do think you'd have to say that for some reason the big paranormal things are deliberately hiding from us or there's some fancy mechanism keeping them hidden, which is usually a deal-breaker when relying on Occam's razor. But I think Occam's razor cuts out God just as easily or even more easily than it does ghosts.

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>>18544284
>ghosts
Take heart, it is ego.

Young's Literal Translation has it as: "And the woman seeth Samuel, and crieth with a loud voice" which doesn't suggest simultaneity quite as strongly as the "when" translation does. I also wonder if the "seeing" might be a broader sneslry perception than the English suggests, more similar to the English "had a vision," which can include hearing as well as seeing. Regardless, she somehow almost immediately realized that Saul was definitely Saul, and the most direct for that to happen is for Samuel to communicate that somehow. The idea that she could infer "that guy is definitely Saul" from only "wow a real ghost, haven't seen that before" doesn't make actually make sense.

>>18544348
*broader sensory perception
*the most direct way

>>18544016
You are right that Judaism was not a monolith. My point was narrower: the combination of soul persistence AND bodily resurrection is not Platonism. Plato wanted the soul to escape the body permanently. Resurrection is the anti-Platonic move. Whether Pharisaic belief was influenced by Hellenism is a separate question from whether it IS Platonism. It is not. The content is different.
On your challenge for pre-Hellenistic texts: Ecclesiastes is likely 3rd century BC, already Hellenistic. But it is skeptical philosophy, not systematic theology. It observes life "under the sun" and concludes the dead know nothing from that vantage point. The same book says "the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (12:7). If the spirit returns to God, it goes somewhere.
Earlier: 1 Samuel 28 (pre-exilic). Samuel's ghost appears, speaks, knows current events, predicts Saul's death. He says "tomorrow you and your sons will be with me" (28:19). Not "you will sleep until resurrection." With me. The dead Samuel was conscious and locatable.
You did not address Luke 23:43. "Today you will be with me in Paradise." Not "today your body will be raised." Today. That is Christ himself, 1st century, to a dying thief. No syncretism, just a direct claim.
On Aristotle: yes, he was Plato's student, and he rejected Plato's theory of forms, theory of recollection, and the immortal soul escaping the body. Aristotle's soul is the form of the body, not a pre-existing entity trapped in flesh. Aquinas took Aristotle's hylomorphism and made it explicitly Christian. That is a deliberate departure from Plato on exactly this point, not "soaked in Platonism."

Also, even if it was a miraculous ghost of Samuel, that's still a ghost of Samuel appearing visibly only to a medium, so not made of flesh, and the text still plainly indicates that it *was* Samuel, not an illusion. So the Biblical God has not made it a law that souls can only be conscious when combined with their living bodies.

>>18544202
>There's an obvious alternative explanation for her shock, which is that she's realized her life is in danger.
Since she calls Samuel a divine being in 28:13, she might also have been shocked at seeing him because he was an unusually impressive ghost in some way, though her shock would be amplified further by learning about Saul.

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>>18543844
>>You ARE a soul, you don't "have" one.
>We know now that your spirit isn't where your skills, memories, personality, emotions, etc.
Irenaeus makes it very clear that souls remember their worldly existence and that they continue as actual persons even after death
>Those are all in and from your brain
Most forms of dualism do not deny that the brain holds your memories, skills, and personality. Instead they claim that the physical brain alone cannot fully account for conscious experiences and/or the self

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>>18542705
>It's just respiration and oxygen.
He seems to understand it to be "life and perpetual duration" and that this is distinct from the soul itself so you're not wrong in that sense, but it surely isn't just breathing oxygen. It is the breath of life rather. The Greek uses https://biblehub.com/strongs/greek/2222.htm which is "1. universally, life, i. e. the state of one who is possessed of vitality or is animate: 1 Peter 3:10 (on which see ἀγαπάω); Hebrews 7:3, 16; αὐτός (ὁ Θεός) διδούς πᾶσιν ζωήν καί πνοήν, Acts 17:25; πνεῦμα ζωῆς ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ, the vital spirit, the breath of (i. e. imparting) life, Revelation 11:11 (Ezekiel 37:5); πᾶσα ψυχή ζωῆς, genitive of possess, every living soul..." crucially it doesn't mention anything about nostrils from what I am seeing instead it uses "prosópon: Face, presence, person, countenance" https://biblehub.com/strongs/greek/4383.htm which matches a meaning found in the Hebrew as well other than literal nostrils https://biblehub.com/hebrew/639.htm "aph: Anger, nostril, face"

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>>18541019

Yet there might already be scientific evidence about the existence of souls

>>18544555
But have you considered the interpretation where Santa determines quantum states?