Life after this one…

Ge wrote:

I suspect in 5,000 years time today’s scientific knowledge will quite rightly be viewed as primitive.

I suspect in 5,000 years time, humanity will be a thing of the long distant past.

Or, humanity will be extinct.

Ge wrote:

Why would a benign God damn you for eternity, beyond redemption, when you are dead rather than alive. Why would a benign God grant an afterlife that seeks to punish, rather than redeem, that makes no logical sense to me. A bit like people in the UK celebrating Christmas, assuming it is primarily a Christian festival, when in fact its roots are in Paganism and the winter solstice.

???

I’ve no idea about why a benign God would do this.

because he’s not benign? because he can do whatever he likes? because he might be a God that none of us like?

Or maybe there isn’t any Hell or Heaven???? Not in the snese we can envisage???

Who knows? not me.

Christians who believe in Hell say it’s not a condemnation of you as a dead person, but as a living soul.

I did mention Adrienne von Speyr. Also read George Herbert’s love III for another approach to Christianity. That was the poem which converted Simone Weil from Anarchism to Christianity. Not all Christians accept Hell.

I’m still waiting for an answer to the contradiction you pointed out. Why is the absence of an afterlife incompatible with God?

Sceptical I don’t believe in religion the way you present it, black and white. I believe you live life the best way you can, with the tools you have at the time and I won’t be in any heaven when I am gone, but so long as I was honest while I am still alive I can live with that, while I am still alive.

My neighbour is 87 years old and openly states she would rather fly to Switzerland and end her life, rather than and this is her own words “sit in a chair drooling and unable to wipe her own backside”. Religion doesn’t make life easier while you are alive but if it brings comfort to people while they still are alive, who is any one else to judge.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by  Ge.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by  Ge.

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Sairs73, Psycho Babble

Ge wrote:

Sceptical I don’t believe in religion the way you present it, black and white. I believe you live life the best way you can, with the tools you have at the time and I won’t be in any heaven when I am gone, but so long as I was honest while I am still alive I can live with that, while I am still alive. My neighbour is 87 years old and openly states she would rather fly to Switzerland and end her life, rather than and this is her own words “sit in a chair drooling and unable to wipe her own backside”. Religion doesn’t make life easier while you are alive but if it brings comfort to people while they still are alive, who is any one else to judge.

Gerry, I’m not presenting religion as black and white, not to my knowledge.

There are many different religions.

We all live our lives the best we can; there are some real bastarsds in the world, and some are religious and some aren’t. To some, religion is a comfort; to others, it’s not sufficient.

I’m just saying that there is a lot of room for grown-up discussion, and this can be be blocked out by people who take a fierce attitude to those who don’t agree with them – whether it be religious bigots such as the JWs and hot gospellers on the one side or the Dawkins brigade on the other.

While we can’t convince, we can understand others.

The common sense of the moment in the UK is anti-Christian. Anyone who accepts Christianity is seen as weak-headed, feeble-minded; the Dawkins crowd base their appeal on that common sense. The more tolerant ones will allow some of the feeble-minded to get some comfort from their foolishness, but the ‘common sense’ of 2000 still says that we live in a disenchanted cosmos.

500 years ago ‘common sense’ genuinely believed in Satan, and saw devils and hobgoblins hiding everywhere. The cosmos was an enchanted place. If anyone came and told them this was nonsense, they would be ridiculed (or in Galileo’s case, tortured for claiming that the sun didn’t revolve around the earth). If someone was brave enough to deny God, they could end up dead.

The ‘common sense’ of 1500 whihc saw the cosmos as enchanted, and the cosmos of 2000 whihc sees the cosmos as disenchanted, belong to their time. Common o sense usually does. You made a good point in an earlier post when you said that in 500 years time people would look back and see us as primitive in our outlook.

So – understand what and why someone has a different attitude to god and the universe. It’s a more adult approach; it’s also a more interesting approach.

Gerry,

there is plenty of evidence on both sides of the case about God’s existence.

God exists or doesn’t exist is something we can all agree on. We can stop at agnosticism, or something can make us move on. There is evidence that the cosmos is a creation of Love; there is also evidence that the cosmos is a cold and indifferent place.

The adult conversation lies in presenting arguments against or for his existence; in listening to the arguments; and in sifting the evidence at each point in your life to make a decision.

I don’t know whether God exists or not, unlike the Dawkins crowd and the fundamentalists. I have human doubt, and I don’t intend to let go it it, as that way lies the enthusiasm whihc tends to fanaticism. I feel pretty confident (as far as possible) that some versions of God are less likely than others.

Human reasoning can certainly lead you so far, to the lip of faith. Whether you then withdraw or move forward could be a result of some secretions within the brain or it could be the revelation that God is there waiting for you to stop keeping the door shut. I don’t have a final answer to that one.

That acknowledgment of doubt and of the possibility of stepping forwards or backwards  despite the doubt isn’t a black and white decision. It’s a decision whihc is always open to us all.