JehovahsWitness wrote:
# While the Hebrew wordtranslated as the English "heaven" covers what we call the "sky" ie the atmopher surrounding the earth were birds fly) the same word also, and more frequently refer to the spirit realm. It is arguably this meaning that is exclusively used when speaking of God's literal location.
I don't see how you can accept this JW.org position.
The Bible clearly makes many references to Jesus "
ascending" to heaven. It even describes Jesus' disciples actually witnessing this event when Jesus supposedly actually does ascend to heaven.
He also takes his physical body with him which makes these tales even more absurd.
Keep in mind that these ancient people were not even aware that the Earth's atmosphere only reaches a very short way into space.
There are many things that these ancient rumors and myths state that clearly are not consistent with a "spiritual realm".
Don't you think that if there truly was a God who understood this he would have at least has Jesus simply fade away? In fact, the story would have actually made more sense if Jesus had left his physical body in the grave and simply returned as a spiritual ghost.
Clearly the humans who wrote these stories didn't want Jesus to be a spiritual ghost. They wanted him to be a physically resurrected man. But this all backfires on them in the end.
Today, Christian theists need to argue that these were all just abstract metaphors in an effort to correct the gross mistakes made by the original authors who made this stuff up originally. But really doesn't fly at all. If there truly was a God who wanted modern day people to believe in these ancient stories surely that God would have made sure that the stories made sense. The fact that they don't make sense is actually overwhelming evidence that no God had anything to do with any of this.
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I would just like to point out that the same thing applies to the concept of evil demons being cast out of people's bodies. Modern day theists like to argue that this was never meant to be literal, but instead this idea of casting out demons actually refers metaphorically to simply changing a person's character and having them realize the difference between good and evil.
However, there's a major problem with this because there is a story where Jesus goes to cast demons out of someone and the demons beg Jesus to cast them into nearby swine. This hardly makes any sense at all as an abstract metaphor of someone supposedly having a change of heart or character.
So these stories simply cannot be repaired by trying to claim that they are simply metaphors. Clearly the original authors were describing actual demons being cast out of a person and into swine.
So these metaphorical apologies for the Bible don't hold up.
Jesus supposed ascended up into the clouds taking his physical body with him. He didn't just fade away into a spiritual world leaving a dead physical carcass behind.
So the biblical stories are indeed literal. They were intended to be literal descriptions and not spiritual metaphors like modern day apologists try to make them out to be.
