First, a comment about death and the afterlife.

"Afterlife?"

Hold that thought.

Should I now be a godlessly prejudiced, close-minded, bigoted, shithead asshole.....by not scientifically rather than merely religiously referring to something I have innocently happened to encounter called: The Holy Bible?

"God forbid."

Hold that thought.

Sorry about the supposedly-inflammatory descriptive terms. It was my forthright and angry intent by using such shocking but questionable vulgarity to successfully frighten away all hypocrites and atheistic FOOLS (yes: fools), along with all smart-ass shit-ass revilers. To be burdened by such vile-crap irrationals who only mindlessly argue, bicker, and rant on with pseudo-"intelligent" asininity off on any and all tangents they can connive and concoct with no intent of cooperatively learning anything but only to beller out their own superstitions, misconceptions, and deplorable ignorance.....and I hope I have accomplished that sacred and righteously-holy purpose of ridding my cyber-audience away from such obnoxious filth - so as to only retain those of you webpage readers who are TRULY open-minded, GENUINE scientists.....not afraid to thoroughly investigate anything that is obviously not self-destructive to explore.

Now, about death.

In the Old Testament, we constantly now and then come across references to Sheol, which as I understand it is: The Abode of The Dead. When Christ, as indicated in the New Testament, came on the scene, He elaborated on that Sheol in the sense that He spoke of a rich man in "Hades" and a "Paradise" wherein Lazarus was and from where Moses and Elijah appeared with our Lord Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. All that transpired BEFORE His death, BEFORE His resurrection (during which He led a host of captives upward), and BEFORE His ascension into the sky.

I just said: BEFORE His death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven.

That plainly reveals that both Hades and Paradise existed as part of Sheol all throughout the Old Testament, applicable to all personages described therein.

On to other things.

In all honesty, I as a Christian claim NO grounds to state that the contents of the Bible are a LIE. Also, I as a Christian do claim - thus conversely - grounds to state that the contents of the Bible are VALID.

In sad and lamentable stark contrast, the disbeliever claims no grounds to state that the contents of the Bible are true. Also, he or she as a disbeliever claims grounds to state that the contents of the Bible are a lie.

Completely the opposite - the disbeliever - in comparison to myself, a Christian.

And what are 'grounds?'

First, everything around us exists. Some laughable and ridiculous nonthinkers allege that we only think things exist around us and thus the five or more senses we utilize to contemplate such cannot be trusted as giving us accurate information pertaining to all this. They claim we might only be "imagining" it.

"Might?" Might is irrelevent to this discussion. The reason for that is that it is either ONE way or the OTHER - not a case of "might" be - either way. The stoplight is either red or green - not both. A car is either traveling forward or traveling backward in the arrestable determination of a squad-car traffic cop. Neither scenario is a case of it "might" be red or it "might" be green. Or it "might" be going forward, or "might" be going backwards. Must I give more examples, or is that enough?

Moreover, even our thinking and our imagining that entities exist are phenomena themselves that exist!

So, let's not be facetious, silly, nor stupid.....but simply assume (not presume) that phenomena exist.

The next 'grounds' that we can and should assume (not presume) is that those phenomena we perceive and obviously interact with either pleasantly or painfully (thus again proving their reality) were not created by us. We were, in all honesty, merely born into it all. Our parents (if they are honest?) also do not claim creatorship, nor their parents claim it......all the way back to 'Adam and Eve,' if you will.

That leaves us with a wonder of who that creator was or who they were (if a group of more than one). Rumor has it that "the Godhead" is trinitarian in nature and character. If you don't mind, I will capitalize: Creator, because of the extremely-intricate complexity, overwhelming variety, impeccable orderliness, breathtaking magnificence, and obviously intelligent design of everything obviously designed and perceivable by us humans. [Let me know if a BMW or VW ever pops out of a steel smelting refinery or assembled out of a junkyard without somewhat-intelligent assemblers somewhat-intelligently assembling it]. In other words, the Being or Beings WHO (clearly not: that) created everything we perceive (with Him/Them logically the obvious exception of things created) certainly deserves the honorable concept of 'Divinity' if we must (and we do have to) assign that title to not "a" but rather THE Entity Deserving Such.

Do the contents of the Bible for me, a Christian, in any way relate to what I have just been mentioning as therefore constituting part of the 'grounds' I inferred from the start? Of course, they do! It relates. Quite nicely, I must admit. As they say: "Do the math."

It is easy to see why tales or stories of miracles made it into the Bible. Bizarre one-time occurrences quite non-typical of everyday events would rather stand out as nearly incredible and thus worthy of understandable recording within Scriptural literature. Merely stating that events occurred does not, of course, prove their actual historical occurrence, but also does not prove their historical non-occurrence nor disprove their actual historical occurrence. Biblical records of the events themselves are not described by eyewitness-claiming Biblical authors as being fictitious, myths, fairy-tale legends, metaphors, parables (except those specifically labeled as such), allegories, etc. Written words of the past and present are, admittedly, no substitute for special-effects magic illusions of Hollywood masterminds as to what is real or not and what historically is fact, nor substitutes for hard-copy rock-solid re-touched history-rewritten deceptive and altered photographs and videos from trick cameras.

The infrequency of many miracles mentioned in the Bible does not prove that they never happened at all. I would use the word "abnormal" pertaining to such non-explainable events if such term did not have a derogatory meaning. But again, the non-reoccurrence of some miracles in Scripture is absolutely no proof whatsoever that they never happened at all. [Remember what I stated about fucked-up assholes at the beginning of this piece if you are tempted to disagree with me at this point! And excuse me for reminding you thusly.]

More 'grounds' for what I as a Christian can prove and disprove? Yes.

So the disbeliever claims no grounds to state that the contents of the Bible are true. Also, he or she as a disbeliever claims grounds to state that the contents of the Bible are a lie.

I have just shown 'grounds' to state that the contents of the Bible are true and no lie - contrary to the lack-of-presented-evidence disreputable dishonesty of the disbeliever wrongly and errantly claiming grounds that the Bible is a lie.

The disbeliever who claims no grounds to call the contents of Scripture true is also indicating - in reality and all honesty - not only that he or she is deliberately ignoring what should not be ignored and hiding their repulsive and disgusting heads up their shitty rectums (so much for rectal-insertion-enema intercourse!), but actually also lying with contemptible dishonesty about the matter.....because they must, of necessity, interact at least enough with the created phenomena they hypocritically deny existence of for them to continue to live on and not allow their hideous carcass to cease functioning which would then be joyfully transported in an ambulance to a hospital, a morgue, a funeral parlor, a casket, and a cemetery within which their rebellious and defiant belligerant objections against obvious reality and truth will thankfully forever have ceased to be ever heard again other than by themselves in the solitary confinement of the outer-darkness eternally-tormenting Lake of Fire.