Life after Death (Islamic, Christian, Jesus, evidence)

[ocpaul20]

justamere10: I accept that it is 'of course' for you in your belief system, however, without going into a deep religious debate I still do not understand how your beliefs can assume that God looks like a human and humans look like God. Everything else is apparently 'beneath' us and we humans are the top of the tree.

If we ever get to meet Mr ET Alien, then there will be a whole lot of people with your beliefs whose world will fall apart very quickly and with dire consequences.

[justamere10]

Originally Posted by ocpaul20

justamere10: I accept that it is 'of course' for you in your belief system, however, without going into a deep religious debate I still do not understand how your beliefs can assume that God looks like a human and humans look like God. Everything else is apparently 'beneath' us and we humans are the top of the tree. If we ever get to meet Mr ET Alien, then there will be a whole lot of people with your beliefs whose world will fall apart very quickly and with dire consequences.

Oh ye of little faith...


"But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!

My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join.

I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”

He again forbade me to join with any of them; and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this time...."



http://scriptures.lds.org/en/js_h/1/14-20

[Old Gringo]

Originally Posted by Indurain

Do you believe in life after death?

This isn't a debate about whether or not one goes to heaven or hell.

Just want to know if people believe that there is an existence after our physical body dies.

What possible reason could there be for anyone to think that life continues after death?

Life before conception makes more sense, and we all know that's pure fantasy.

[FentonForche]

I'm going to offer up my own rather disjointed set of thoughts on the process.

I don't know if there's an afterlife or not--and I'm using the term generically to describe anything other than some eternal nothingness. Here's what I do "know"...

I know a lot of intelligent people fall on both sides of the debate.

I know it's not something likely to be empirically verifiable, barring a complete paradigm shift in science.

I know I feel some pull to believe that there's something that extends beyond this material plane, and I think that pull extends beyond simply a fear of oblivion or a need for psychic security.

I know that if there is a reason and a purpose to us being here, it's not to blindly devote ourselves to a particular book or a particular telling of history (did Muhammad really receive the Koran, did the Buddha really achieve Enlightenment, was Jesus really the son of God), but rather to use our minds to contemplate our purpose, to seek out knowledge and wisdom, to find "truth" in all its subtlety and nuance.


And here's what I think...

I think we're supposed to be compassionate to eachother, despite the fact that justifications for compassion and selflessness are (to me) strained when you're a pure materialist. I think the reason we're supposed to be compassionate isn't because some authority told us so, because we covet eternal prizes and fear eternal punishments, or because we want compassion for ourselves. It's something far more complicated to me that almost escapes language.

I think that at some level, because of the reductio ad absurdum argument, science is fundamentally incapable of answering the big "why" questions.

I think that there's something spiritual to the notion of consciousness. The materialist notion that the mind and the brain are one is insufficient to me. I don't understand why I am an embodied consciousness...it's a hard concept to explain and I struggle to communicate it with others. But even if the brain is responsible for all thought, I can't understand why that makes me anything other than a highly complicated robot, and I don't think artificial intelligences have consciousness, so there's something that makes me different.

And in the end, I think that the words that ring the most true to me right now are the words of John Updike:

"”I am very prone to accept all that the scientists tell us, the truth of it, the authority of the efforts of all the men and woman spent trying to understand more about atoms and molecules. But I can’t quite make the leap of unfaith, as it were, and say, ‘This is it. Carpe diem (seize the day), and tough luck.”

[ocpaul20]

justamere10:
Haha - yes I have faith, but not your faith. I would need to ask all kinds of questions and none of the answers that I got would be any good for anyone else. They would have to find their own answers and ask their own God (or personages). You passage is assuming that every great light that is so bright that it cannot be looked apon is God or Jesus, which I do not accept. I think we all get to that stage eventually when we expand our consciousness to that degree.

General point:
Anyway, getting back to the point of the topic, I believe in life after death because twice I have found myself in a waking state and floating near to the ceiling. Much to my disappointment I was so surprised that I recoiled back into my body. I have also done meditation where I have experienced the feeling of coming back into a suit of wet clothes which is a classic feeling of being out-of-body and returning.

Of course, I cannot convince others, but there is a lot of circumstantial evidence (and occult stories too) that it is possible to leave the body vessel and then return safely. And... without being possessed or taken by the devil either.

[kozmoz]

In my concept "a life after death". These are your ideas and the beginning transferred in the inheritance and/or that claimed that .

[Dusty Rhodes]

Life after Death

Well, life after birth is not guaranteed. But, after I am dead and cremated, I suspect life will go on quite well without me. Of course there will be life after my death, I just won't be an active participant in it.

[justamere10]

Originally Posted by Dusty Rhodes

Life after Death

Well, life after birth is not guaranteed. But, after I am dead and cremated, I suspect life will go on quite well without me. Of course there will be life after my death, I just won't be an active participant in it.

Good one Dusty.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by ocpaul20

justamere10: I accept that it is 'of course' for you in your belief system, however, without going into a deep religious debate I still do not understand how your beliefs can assume that God looks like a human and humans look like God. Everything else is apparently 'beneath' us and we humans are the top of the tree.

In the first chapter of Genesis, we are told that God created man "in our image, after our likeness." In the fifth chapter of Genesis, we are told that Adam had a son, and that this son was "in his likeness, after his image." What I don't understand is how people can accept the fact that Adam's son bore a physical resemblence to him (at the very miminum, he had the physical form of a human) but blithely dismiss the very same words when they are used to describe mankind's physical resemblence to our Father in Heaven. Genesis 1 is describing the physical creation of the universe and of all life in it. It emphasises the creation of all forms of life and says that all of these will reproduce and create new life "after their kind." It then goes on to describe man as being created in the image of God, at which point people simply dismiss the definition of the word "image" and try to twist the meaning of what the Bible says into something different entirely. An image is the representation of something's physical qualities. We see our image in the mirror. If a little boy looks like his father, he is said to be "the spitten' image" of his dad. A sculpture is the image of whatever is being represented. Even when we say that someone is "the image of health" or something like that, we mean that he looks healthy. When we "imagine" something, we picture it in our minds. Why do people insist that we are created in the image of a God who has no image? As far as everything else being "beneath us," my understanding of the biblical phrase describing man as "having dominion over" all other forms of life is that it is our God-given responsibility to care for the earth and for all life. Personally, I hold most animals in much higher esteem than I do a great many people!

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by Old Gringo

What possible reason could there be for anyone to think that life continues after death?

Life before conception makes more sense, and we all know that's pure fantasy.

Hmmm. I believe in both life before conception and life after death. To me, the idea that we "exist" for a mere 80 years or so is what can be described as fantasy.