Any notion of an afterlife...
Posted on: June 26, 2009 - 4:01am
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Any notion of an afterlife...
Could anyone explain how an afterlife would stop someone from making another religion up once they got to heaven to worship another god even higher than god (all of the same arguments would seem to work)?
If all doubt, reason, and understanding was removed then why would it be called heaven?
Can there be any understanding of good/pleasure and evil/pain with no experiential contrast between the two to study?
What's so heavenly about absolute mind control over an empty husk?
What's the difference in purpose between a purposeless universe and one with a god (what do you live for when you live forever)?
Who'll start with the naked assertions first?
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I'd never thought of this before. What an interesting idea!
One of the turning points in my life was when I realized how contradictory heaven is. If some people go to hell, and some to heaven, then there has to be sadness in heaven when we realize our friends and loved ones are being tortured by the guy whose dick we're sucking for being a good guy.
Then again, if we don't remember earth and our friends... why bother with it in the first place?
The whole thing is very arbitrary and silly.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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I agree that the same arguments would work. This would not lead to a new religion, however, because we would tend to assume that the creator was the God we would have direct knowledge of. I just don't see what would lead people to postulate a new, unknown creator with an equally viable, known creator right there. By analogy, imagine that your house is trashed one day when you come home from work. If you don't live with anyone, you will posit that someone you don't know broke into your house and trashed it. But if you have a teenage son, you will almost certainly blame him rather than assuming that someone you don't know was involved.
You probably intended this as a new way of making the (very old) point that all of the arguments for a creator would apply as much to God as to the universe we know directly. That is true of some theistic arguments, but not of any of the theistic arguments that reasonably well-informed people use nowadays. The initial premise of Craig's Kalam, for example, is conspicously worded "everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence."
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
Lol, the whole making up a new religion in made me laugh and I suppose there would be no way for god to stop you (I assume here that god has as much power in heaven as he does on earth or anywhere else in the universe). I suppose since its an all powerful being we're talking about it could just zap everyone's minds into not doing that. However, this raises the question why he doesn't do that to people who are still alive when they try to make up new religions or think of sinning and all that.
What I would like to know is, if I die and go to heaven and learn all about god and his secrets then how will I know it is all true? and what would stop me from being just as skeptical of god's truth as creationists are of science. In both cases the truth is right there. On earth it is obvious that following reason and science is the way to discover the intricate working of the universe; in heaven it would be listening to god, since god is 100% proven to be who he says he is. I suppose if I went to hevean I would either have to convert to XXX religion or become heaven's version of Ray Comfort or anyother mind numbing creationsit spouting things that obviously aren't true.
I find things like this very hard to talk or even think about, not because its a hard subject or that I'm stupid but because the god described by chrsitian just makes so little sense in and of itself.
Well, the afterlife doesn't stop people from making religions, how do you think the spiritism appeared? And dozens of other religions, mostly small. This is why the majority of astral realm sucks, it's more than half full of shit, but gullible people think it's gold.
The Eastern notion of heaven is based on the concept of Pralaya, or Devachan. It is a non-physical, non-emotional and non-mental state of existence. The only thing left is the supremely expanded consciousness. This is deeper than physically achievable nirvana. But a western notion of Heaven or Paradise is primitive, based on the pleasure of senses (including mind) and some abstract God's "glory", which people can perhaps imagine best as a glory of a rock star
a) we have only this one universe, regardless if godly or ungodly, there's no manufactuter's label.
(Warning: may contain gods
b) Living forever doesn't mean that we live forever, but that after some point in development, the time becomes firstly relative, and then completely irrelevant, because it does not exist. It is only an illusion, created by our brains and there will come a time when we'll see through it. There is no time, there is only one existing moment of NOW, which continually changes it's content. There is no time with objectively perceivable length, the same hour can seem like a minute if I have a hot chick in my bed, and it may seem like a week, if I spend that hour kidnapped by an ugly, fat, old woman. Can I force the whole universe to stretch or compress the time? No, only the illusion of time maintained by my own brain was changed a little. Everything works in countless cycles, even the universe itself, (or the clock rotation) but the perceived "speed" of them is purely subjective. There is no time, thus living "forever" is an irrelevant concept.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
My girlfriend and I occasionally participate in BDSM activities together but that wasn't what I was getting at. I'm kind of wondering how you could even have a concept of good/evil or pain/pleasure if you've never experienced either (especially things dirrectly felt because of body tissue/nerves).
Then the question still remains. What's the point of an afterlife if nothing of your previous life is kept? Why should anyone have to worry about it then?
You're relying on everyone having the exact same mindset, no one questioning anything. What's the difference between this "direct knowledge" you talk about, and direct mind control? After all, people postulate new, unknown creators all the time.
Also, I made them to be seperate points, but they do intermingle easily. I find the cosmological arguments extremely weak, they ALL rely on assumptions, assertions, and other fallacies. Causation itself is an arguable point.
Maybe, but so are you. You hold that in heaven, men will use the same arguments that they use now. You ignore a number of factors in so doing: What if they find flaws in the arguments (perhaps the very flaws you believe you have found), and stop using them on that basis? What would stop them from developing new arguments that did not create an infinite regress of creators? Why would they use arguments at all, since the Christian concept of heaven includes God's sharing his complete knowledge of reality with man?
Anyway, isn't it plausible that no one would need or want to question anything in heaven, since they would experience constant bliss without any effort?
Assume that "direct knowledge of God" is a form of mind control that prevents people from postulating a Creator who is different from God (as you describe). In that case, direct knowledge of God would be a good thing. It would prevent the people in heaven from speculating unprofitably about a large set of false propositions. If that is mind control, then I wish we had mind control here on Earth. Imagine how much effort might have been saved if people had had a mental block that prevented them from coming up with, for example, astrology.
Everyone on this site says this, but no one is willing to back it up. People on this site are generally content to sneer at theistic arguments rather than engage them intelligently.
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
Post your argument in here if you like and I can pick apart the naked assertions and equivocations.
Cosmological arguments are basically just a ruse to say "I win" by confusing the other person to death. It usually ends up being a dead end anyway as most people defending it will put a blind eye to their own fallacies while pointing out all others.
I've posted the KCA in another thread. You are welcome to engage it there, since the thread in question has basically morphed into a free-for-all.
Q: Why didn't you address (post x) that I made in response to you nine minutes ago???
A: Because I have (a) a job, (b) familial obligations, (c) social obligations, and (d) probably a lot of other atheists responded to the same post you did, since I am practically the token Christian on this site now. Be patient, please.
Again, you're right, that of course gives a sense.
It is a technical question, as for what is kept from the previous life. The human being has three parts. Let's leave out the Monad for now. The second is called the "Soul". It is a vehicle of Monad, created specially for interaction with the physical world. The Soul is capable of remembering all the experience of all the incarnations we ever had. It manages the personality, the man or woman. When the personality dies, it eventually sheds some of it's own vehicles, and gets to the Soul. The Soul processes all the experience of a previous incarnation, desings carefully a new personality, and chooses a place, time and family where it will be born. The circumstances are chosen to develop certain qualities, relationships and skills or for example, to "burn" the excessive karma which would impede a further faster development.
So the answer is, all the memory, all the experience is kept, and all the causes of our previous actions. What is not kept, (for the most part, at least) is the physical body (obviously), and the emotionality and mentality of previous incarnations.
This is a part of standard esoteric theory, appearing in multiple sources. It was also confirmed in practice by methods available to us here, in our civil association. You also originally asked, "What's so heavenly about absolute mind control over an empty husk?" Well, that's a wrong question. This is no mind control. An ethical or moral control perhaps, but not always, unfortunately. The Soul and the personality struggles with each other for the ethical control, and the Soul eventually wins, but that may take a long time. What happens, is that the personality gains access to an immense intuition, wisdom, and charisma, maybe even geniality. The person starts to determine his or her own reality, thus becomes more succesful in life or business. The culture of a nation is created by the initiates.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I'm extremely skeptical of claims of reincarnation since they're hard to verify as truthful. Previous exposure to information, coaching, and confirmation bias are always possibilities. I as much as anyone would love them to be true but it all gets shot down under controlled conditions. Post some valid links and I'd be happy to read them though.
I can accept a concept of a mind that's distinct from the brain, but not seperate. Damage to the brain can lead to permanent damage to anything you could consider to be a part of the soul.
The thing I don't really care for on these boards is arguments about consciousness, vague god-concepts, and some unifying nature of reality because they're completely subjective. One can view the world as materialistic objects, another as pure energy taking form, and another as some continium of consciousness; none of them are necessarily wrong in those general contexts. Time can be explained through math but the personal experience of it can't be, it's an example of the classic disconnect which most of these discussions flow from. Whether these disconnects are illusionary, perfectly explainable, or simply a misunderstanding in our way of thought isn't and will probably never be known.
Why do you externalize struggles? I think it's mind control to lose all will to question anything. Those personality struggles are easily reflected in brain scans and not everyone comes up with the same conclusions so obviously souls vary as greatly as personalities do; why add the complicated and unfounded 'soul'? You only seem to be looking at the culmination of a person's life and not the immense amount of information and experiences they have gone through. That wisdom you talk about can ONLY be brought about through interaction.
Of course, the therapy features usually a historical story, in chronological order, if more. Very frequent are deaths in WW2, or witch burnings, or other executions. For the most part, regression therapy is about a brutal, traumatic death and a painstaking and tedious effort to desenzitize the trauma. This is why it is absurd, that a good therapist would make up a story. They don't go after stories, the point is the client's physical and emotional response, which must be taken to minimum and then the client is cured.
Ask yourself: why do people during the therapy cry and feel physically all the details of the past life story unfolding in their mind? Why they suffer so much by something they obviously never experienced in their life? I mean, for example, a severed limb or burning to death, which is not something that anyone would want to fake.
Btw, what does it mean to be distinct from the brain? Does it mean just that we don't think in terms of neural connections?
And perhaps also this: http://esotericscience.org/article13a.htm
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
But wasn't Satan in Heaven and then one day he decided that he should be God and people should worship him? So didn't this new religion(Satanism) already kind of happen? And God said there's no room for any disention so he had to create hell?
Heaven must not be all that great, if Satan decided things should change, right? So maybe hell's not that bad either?
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Give me a link to a genuine account of a regression of a past life that has been verified (lol @ fake accents). There's no evidence to support that they're not just pulling these stories out of immagination or forgotten material that they've been exposed to. How about accounts of people who don't believe in reincarnation at all because from the looks of it all these results are from people who believe in it in the first place.
Anyway, most of the arbitrary numbers thrown out in that page have zero evidence backing them. They sound exactly like a Christian/Muslim propoganda site trying to spread the truth about science in their holy text, ignoring the fact that they're not making any testable predictions that aren't completely vague.
If you think you can observe things out of line of sight through OBE's I'd love to see it in person. 24/7 uninterrupted camera feed and a double blind study wouldn't be too difficult to set up I would think.
Also, by distinct I meant that gap between experience and matter, the disconnect between understanding time as a function of x, y, z, etc... and personally experiencing it. I'm not a dualist though, I think the mind is 1-to-1 with physical processes and is just a possible outcome of emergence, the same principle that lets two elements fuse together to create a totally new one with new properties. I find it interesting but not in some zealous spiritual way, I think we're just too limited in thought to truely "understand" anything we're a part of.
We here have only very little historical verification of the past lives, because the client's benefit is our priority. The time is devoted mainly to unblocking the trauma, instead of looking around for a calendar and adress. Usually, the approximate historical period and continent can be determined, but that's all. There were various cases, for example, a pioneer priest with a family killed by Indians during colonization of America, etc.
So you know as much as I do - this is, ask uncle Google.
http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/articles/04/0401284.html
http://paranormal.about.com/cs/reincarnation/a/aa081103_3.htm
http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=12970
And higher states of mind have even less common with the physical processes. In these states of mind, the neural activity is minimal, (alpha or theta) but the subjective consciousness is enormous, all-embracing.
And finally, it seems that the mind has a control over the brain itself. (http://www.physorg.com/news10312.html)
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Now there will be a rash of atheists believing in god, just on the off chance that they can get to heaven with the sole purpose of fucking things up. It'd be like Pascal's Wager, but for dickhead atheists.
I'm a fan.
I don't think it would stop someone from coming up with another religion. I also don't think the afterlife automatically means you go to heaven.
I would think "heaven" implies a spiritual paradise of some sort and I don't see why doubt reason and understanding would be removed.
I don't think so.
Heavenly is subjective. Some might like having no control over their minds. I don't.
One has a purpose and one doesn't, I suppose. I've never lived forever so I don't know whar you would live for.
You apparently.
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