I think it is stupid to worry about the after life when you are living on earth

As there is absolutely no possible way for any of us to ever know anything whatsoever concerning what might be there after death...anyone who decides to believe someone "Knows" is irrational and relatively ignorant of this reality.

 

It's called agnostic, I don't know and nobody else does either. I'm betting one thing.......if there is anything after death we'll all be treated the same. There isn't some invisible man in the sky keeping books about who believed a 2000 year old fairy tale and who didn't. All religion can be easily decoded into pieces which were written by mankind......not god.

Examples of ancient dreaming and idiosy:

A flood covered the earth to a depth of five miles and evaporated within a year
Big fish puked up live men
Seas separated for the good guys and drowned the bad guys who were chasing them
Walls fell at the sound of a trumpet
A human was turned into a pillar of salt in her tracks
Men lived through a 1200 degree furnace
The earth stood still
The ten commandments were presented to one man by god in the form of a burning bush
A Man Walked on water,
Fed five thousand plus women and children who also ate with two fish and five loaves then gathered 12 baskets of leftovers
Turned water into fine wine, healing by touching, raising from the dead, etc......virgin birth and resurrection too.

GIVE ME A BREAK!!

 

?
Your family is great, and the grandchildren still have fathers and mothers raising them, while half of all babies born today are fatherless kids who suffer great abuse, before they, themselves, become great social problems.

That is being a good parent to the future kids.
It is what Religion is really all about,... whether you believe the Bible way of promoting sexual prudence or not.

You acted the way Religion wants parents to behave, and did a great job of it.
I wonder further, if your children attend church, however reluctantly it may be.

 

Hmmm,...
Freud and Jung disagree with you here:


Isn't the Collective Unconscious Mind a living "book" of life as far as Modern Homo sapiens is concerned?

The Collective Unconscious is a storehouse of all the experiences of humankind transmitted to each individual.
As the repository for all past experiences, it includes even our pre-human animal ancestry.
(Assumably through the genetic processes, though unknown to Freud and Jung at the time.)

It becomes the primary base of a person's pyche, directing and influencing behavior.
It is the deepest and most inaccessable level of the psyche.
Jung believed that a person accumulates and files all of his past experiences, so does humankind, collectively.

Jung was supported by Freud, in that Freud predicted our eventual discovery of what he called "Phylogenetic Memory."
Jung said, "the form of the world into which a person is born is already inborn in him, as a virtual image." (Jung, 1953, pg 18.

An example of the meaning of this was suggested in that an infant is born predisposed to perceive the mother in a certain manner.
Assuming that she behaves as we have generally considered mothers should behave, then the babies predisposition will correspond with his reality.
The form of an infant's world, "inborn within him" thus determines how he adapts and reacts to his world."

 

Oh,...
Then your kids did pretty well in a Step-father environment which has the worst record available for child abuse.

Obama did well without a father, too.
The wife's mother and her husband took the parental role very seriously.
They were well off economically.

Perhaps your wife had some such back like that, too.
You on the other hand are not that great guy I mentioned.

 

Many people disagree with me here.....but they do not do so based on fact. Psychology is nothing but advanced opinion, yet is nothing but opinion.

Fact is reality...and must be considered above it rationally.

 

The "invisible man" is inside your own head,... i.e. The Unconscious Mind.

This is that Third Eye which people have spoken about over the centuries.
Recent studies by MRI investigators are showing that it NOT your Conscious mind that is so strong in the decisions you make, but the Unconscious mind working behind the scenes.

In the future, you will be born again into a world, where all people will have access to their own Unconscious mind, a step forward in evolution, which will judge you and your previous life experiences.

The Bible supports this judgement day, too.

 

That has been the case, indeed.

However, the recent studies have been completed using MRI techniques and Brain Investigation which have FACTUALLY explained things previously only guessed by guys like Freud and Jung.


"Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior"

Publication Date: April 24, 2012
Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of The Drunkard’s Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), gives us a startling and eye-opening examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world and how, for instance, we often misperceive our relationships with family, friends, and business associates, misunderstand the reasons for our investment decisions, and misremember important events.

"Sophisticated new technologies have revolutionized our understanding of the part of the brain that operates below our conscious mind— what I’m referring to here as the subliminal world. These technologies have made it possible, for the first time in human history, for there to be an actual science of the unconscious. That new science of the unconscious is the subject of this book."

 

They do this because threatening people with eternal damnation is a great way to control dumb people that they want to do their bidding for the purposes of making their earthly lives more enjoyable. Can you imagine how dumb people needed to be for the Salem witch trials to have occurred? Think about it for a minute. Its why in Church, they tell you to sit, stand, kneel repeat after me, stand, kneel sit, repeat after me, tell me what you did wrong and I will hand you your penance, come back next week and we will begin the process over again. Its brain washing and why they tell you that you need to come back. A true god wouldn't need you to go back, true God would already know what you did wrong.

 

pardon my boldness, but the fruit of his loins seem like sound people, which speaks well of HIM.

you, on the other hand, haven't so much as changed a diaper. I almost wish rebellious kids on you.

 

You know....as with all Religions as time passes....Today's Religions are Tomorrows Mythologies.

I was thinking today and I realized....you know what? I myself have been CONDITIONED to believe that either there is NO GOD or there is A GOD.

And then I thought.....Given the current level of evidence and data there is the EXACT SAME PROBABILITY that MULTIPLE GODS EXIST compared to a single GOD existing.

Both of these possibilities have the exact same extremely low Probability of being a FACT.

AboveAlpha

 

i'm very afraid of what happens after death.

It's not a comforting thought to me to just wink out.

neither is the message of Christianity. You either worship and obey God or you burn in hell for all eternity.

I don't relish going to hell, neither do I relish going to heaven and doing the same thing forever and ever.

 

heaven & hell are just one of the zillion whacky ideas humans have come up with to try to cope with the idea of death. it's one of the by-products of having evolved into reasonably intelligent apes - we know we're going to die. anyway, not worth worrying about. or at least, if you're intent on believing you'll be immortal, why not go for something a little less childish than that black and white heaven/hell nonsense? why not an afterlife which is not too different to actual life ... where good and bad muddle along together, but everyone is gorgeous and 27 years old

 

Maybe, I'm not really willing to just dismiss it as easily as you.

Because, it could be real. They could actually exist.

 

of course, but so could those zillion other 'afterlifes'. and the great thing is, if you pick on of the others, you probably won't encounter such brutal selection criteria. so, as it's really just a matter of taste (since no one has the first clue of which, if any, might exist), why not pick one that is more inclusive and friendly?

 

I don't know. That Tibetan book of the dead describes a pretty nasty after life.

 

that's two which are horrible

there are plenty more out there! that's the wonderful thing about modern communications and education - we have a much wider selection of interesting cultures and mythologies to choose from. gone are the days when you were compelled to adopt the local variety - for lack of any other options.

 

There's also a possibility that people tend not to think about.

What if ALL religions are real?

And I mean every single one of them.

Not to mention all afterlifes.

What then?

 

effectively, they're all as real as each other. until one of them stumps up with some empirical evidence, we have to assume they're all wrong, or all 'maybe'. the way in which afterlife claims are made (in the various texts) has absolutely no bearing on this fundamental. I realise that's patently obvious, but there are many theists who feel that because a thing was jotted down in a certain manner, with certain accompanying flourishes, that their own version is somehow superior to others. that's like saying "my magic book says that only those who stand on their head every Tuesday night after dinner, naked, for 10 minutes, will become immortal. your book doesn't say that, so clearly my book is the best!"

 

I am not going through this whole thread to see how long it is before folks pop this imbecility. Folks find time to think, ponder, meditate, and contemplate, worry and muse about all sorts of things. Part of our nature as abstract thinkers. Many of those same folks work to make earth a better place for people to live. Some of them are religious, some spiritual and some neither. Some think about the afterlife, some about politics, some about their bills and some about what sex feels like in outer space These groupings are not mutually exclusive, and mix and match in all sorts of combinations. I can tolerate even appreciate anti- faith postings with some merit, but If one is old enough to type in sentences, one is too old to ask such idiotic questions at a site like this.

 

Let's see; the people who actually "worry" are doing goods deeds (who doesn't want to get into heaven?)

So where is the problem?

 

I'm not posting here to win a popularity contest or to win friends and influence people. I do this between medical appointments, fishing, boat riding and visits to and from my family. I've lived one helluva life and I'm ready to go. I just hope I stay alert enough to continue to key data. I'm certified at 25wpm sending and receiving morse code and used to type 70wpm. I'm lucky if I can hit half that rate on either now.

 

How can you ignore the harm done to half the kids in America because marriage has been dropped by people who have fatherless kids and suffer child abuse, but talk about choosing a better course for idealism?

If the social problems where you live are not sexually related to family life you need shut up about America, where 50% f the babies are now illegitimate, and fatherlessness is the cause of all our social problems, and even the economic ones, too.

 

How do you explain the matter, a divorced guy who still had great kids who married and have two parent families?
Did you pay support and stay close while they grew up, or was grandmom/grandpop working the same way Obama's did?