Belief in the Afterlife - where do you sit on the scale?

by jgnat 41 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  unshackled

  Perhaps more importantly...do you believe in the after-party? I sure do.
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  Morbidzbaby

  This is something I'm still busy exploring. I've had some strange and quite unexplainable experiences, I've had a guy who didn't even know me freak me out when we went on a date and he started telling me about my dead relatives...stuff no one but me would know. He also told me some stuff about my ex that no one else knew and when I asked how he knew that, he said my ex's grandfather (deceased) told him. That, to me, is kind of evidence...maybe not of an afterlife per se, but something that will be eventually explained scientifically (I'm atheist, so I don't credit a "god" of any sort for this). That's my take on it. But I'm still young
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  flipper

  JGNAT- I believe that fear of the unknown or what happens after we die makes people believe in an " afterlife ". So to insure that they don't get fearful of that time coming- humans put little labels like " going to heaven or somewhere " to offset that fear. Personally I lean towards NOT believing in an afterlife- although I'm open to whatever reality happens AFTER I die. I guess I'll find out AFTER I die. About as close to reality as I come to. I'm of the religion that " I really don't know ". I consider myself basically a secular humanist
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  jgnat

  I've been thinking of cyberjesus' atoms, too. Doesn't life start with a complex protein molecule? By that definition, our components, broken down to their simplest parts (atoms), are not alive.
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  jgnat

  Hey, flipper. I believe that grief and the hope of seeing loved ones again drives many Witnesses to the hope of a Paradise to come.

  Here's Freud's perspective, also quoted in the Time book: "In the unconscousness every one of us is convinced of his [or her] own immortality....Our unconscious...does not believe in its own death; it behaves as if it were immortal." I know that the very existence of consciousness; that there is a me that thinks and knows, gives me a sense of forever. How could me just...end?

  Karl Marx and Doris Kearns suggested that belief in a hereafter helped people cope. (Marx considered it a tool of the oppressors). Quoting Kearns, speaking of the treatment of immigrants in America, "The degradation endured for generations by the poor peasants in the Old World combined with a Catholic value system in which the preparations for one's death and rebirth eclipsed the affairs of the immediate present to produce an acceptance of conditions in the New World which few other people would have tolerated."

  I guess I am saying that there are many possible reasons for belief in a hereafter, beyond fear of the unknown. People's reasons and feelings are complex.
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  cyberjesus

  AFter-parties are troublesome for me
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  Nickolas

  Thanks, lwt, good to "see" you, too. Wow, SBC, you've changed your avatar. It used to be so certain and brave. This one is intense. I like this one better.

  Karl Marx and Doris Kearns suggested that belief in a hereafter helped people cope. (Marx considered it a tool of the oppressors).

  I'm impressed. Someone who actually understands and doesn't misrepresent Marx's infamous opium of the people statement. Good thread. I'm looking forward to rejoining the conversation.
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  chickpea

  nothing exists that hasnt always been here
  from the "beginning"; altho the configurations
  might be different, the building material is the
  same stuff, recycled endlessly.... stardust

  i expect my bits to be recycled.... again

  To my thinking.. THIS IS IT FOR ME!
  i just lucked out to have had consciousness
  for this fleeting moment on a backwater
  planet revolving around an insignificant
  star in a fringe galaxy... almost wish there
  was someone to thank!!

  get busy living!
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  mindmelda

  What difference does it make? I'll be dead.
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  Retrovirus

  I believe that that something of me will live on after death, and that includes awareness. I've nothing that could be called proof or evidence, but choose to believe this way.

  If I'm wrong, at least no-one will be able to say "I told you so!"