Belief in the Afterlife - where do you sit on the scale? (page 2)

jgnat

*feeling a little bit like freud twiddling his beard...* So, how does this time perspective make you feel?

*waves to Zimbardo fan*

Oh, and to be fair, here's how I sit on the scale. My belief in the afterlife is on the decline from Protestant and heading swiftly to Jewish. (Don't tell my daughter. She'll freak). Not that I won't discount the existence. I just can't prove it. I think I am a better person when I focus my efforts on being the best solid, fleshly, earthy woman that I can be. Any taste of eternity must live on through my progeny and my writing.

*phew. That was hard to put in to writing.*

jgnat

Thanks, Tammy. It's really something that so many of us, with widely different eternity perspectives, can discuss this in the same forum. I don't think there are many boards out there as broad as this.

DagothUr

As soon as our brains die, we die and our body minerals decompose and return into the Earth's crust. We are nothing before we are born and we are nothing after we die. And in the grand scheme of the Universe, we are also nothing while we live.

cyberjesus

i read that book.

anyway, I believe that I have lived since the beginning of the universe and will live until the end. Except that not as me but as many other things. I am sure at some point part of me was in a dinosaur and I was in the sun and other stars. I am made of shrimp and lettuce and I have some chicken in me and when I die I am sure I will be on someones lungs or stomach at some point.

unshackled

Nope. I appreciate the astronomical odds of having come into existence, so gratefully live in the here and now.

"Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one." - Richard Dawkins

White Dove

Wow, you guys are interesting!

jgnat

I see gratefulness comes with many perspectives! By the way, any of us can take the Zimbardo time perspective survey, here:

http://www.thetimeparadox.com/surveys/

With the results he also posts the "ideal". My results show that I focus too much on past negative experiences.

Twitch

I believe that any life after death is wishful thinking and is contrary to the natural order of things. I don't believe I existed as I am now before I was born and do not presume that I will exist after I die. Everything that has a beginning has an end.

I figure I lie between buddhist and no religion on the scale

cyberjesus

oh you will live, just not as you and that is a fact. Regardless of what you believe. We are made of Hydrogen and Oxygen and Carbon and many other atoms. ALL of those atoms already existed before you were born and they will continue after you die. We just transform into something else. Now if you believe in Heaven then well I guess the law of nature will have to be modified.

doofdaddy

Despite having an open mind as to supernatural experience and yes I have seen incredible sights that defy logic, I have no reason to believe that I have a special place in the universe that requires me to remain conscious on some level after death. But can I also say that my belief pattern is in flux, so is constant being refined and sometimes in the past rocked. What is definitive in a timeless shapeless state of opposites that is our universe?

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

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