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Why do folks need a promise of an afterlife for them to live(morally, happily, etc)? How would there being a place with "streets of gold" and "no pain" make your life more meaningful? Why wouldn't being, here, be enough?
Why do folks need a promise of an afterlife for them to live(morally, happily, etc)? How would there being a place with "streets of gold" and "no pain" make your life more meaningful? Why wouldn't being, here, be enough?
It's kinda like a parent telling a child "if you eat all your veggies, you can have a cookie after dinner".
Why do folks need a promise of an afterlife for them to live(morally, happily, etc)? How would there being a place with "streets of gold" and "no pain" make your life more meaningful? Why wouldn't being, here, be enough?
Seriously?
Being here is not enough becuase its not a long term gig. Alternatively, eternity is a long time to not exist.
If the only morality is man made, which is inherently arbitrary/non-absolute, some folks would not deem that enough to restrain their "baser" instincts.
If a person can do whatever they like while alive with zero (non-earthly) consequences, you really dont understand how that might give SOME people license to behave REALLY badly? Hmmm
Whatever the afterlife is, I doubt many envision it as streets of gold.
Its not the afterlife that makes life more meaningful. Its the connection with the creator/higher being/God.
Why do folks need a promise of an afterlife for them to live(morally, happily, etc)? How would there being a place with "streets of gold" and "no pain" make your life more meaningful? Why wouldn't being, here, be enough?
In my opinion absurd beliefs can be understood only if their history can be known.
Compared to the Celts, who would sell their house on agreement to be paid for it in afterlife, the “streets of gold” and the “rice and honey” we, today, are expecting to find over there are not so bad for our economy.
The ancient Egyptians, we are told, believed they could have sex only in afterlife and thus the whole subject turns out to be quite irrational. However, what is hidden behind the absurd idea of the afterlife is a tremendous fraud initiated by the Egyptian priests: The Egyptian sacred texts describe a judgment of people alive which the priests presented as a judgment of the dead, the consequence being that the normal life living people had after their judgment was interpreted as their life after they died and thus the idea of afterlife came to be.
Once an idea is born and taught to the kids, it will be accepted as rational no matter how illogical the idea is.
Why do folks need a promise of an afterlife for them to live(morally, happily, etc)?
No idea. I find the opposite is true. An eternal after life cheapens the value of this one in the same way that an enormous mountain of gold in front of you would cheapen the value of the gold ring on your finger.
The rarity and uniqueness and transience of ones sole life here on earth is what gives it value.
For example take the myth of the Resurrection. A god was meant to have impregnated an underage child in order to give birth to itself as its own son, so that it could become a preacher that was meant to have "given" his life as a sacrifice to human kind by sacrificing its own son that was in fact in some ways actually itself.
Yet what sacrifice was made if the preacher was promised eternal life ruling over an eternal domain of bliss and happiness. That is not a sacrifice, it is a profitable trading of circumstances. The entire concept of a "sacrifice" is eroded by the idea that the preacher is still alive, will always be alive and will be eternally rewarded.
Nor did the god "Give" his only son. Given he got said son back for eternity at best this god can only be accused of "lending" us his son.
Similarly the idea of an after life cheapens the sacrifices of people who have actually given their life for a person, cause or ideal.
What would have been a good myth would be if the Jesus preacher had been OFFERED eternal life and bliss but turned it down in favor of the True Death in order to atone for the sins of man kind. That might be a story worth the telling compared to the fatuous and intellectually insulting request that we treat what the story actually claims as being a "sacrifice".
Why do folks need a promise of an afterlife for them to live(morally, happily, etc)? How would there being a place with "streets of gold" and "no pain" make your life more meaningful? Why wouldn't being, here, be enough?
It's not a promise; it's nature, a natural phenomenon.
If you extinguish a candle where does the light go? Does it anihilate and never comes back?
The light always comes back when conditions are met to light the candle.
Likewise, when conditions are met (as always) life comes back after dying.
You need another candle = a body either manifested or not
A light source = a thought
Someone who lights = one's own actions done when one was lacking wisdom, attached to sensual desires and reacts accordingly (kamma, avijja, sankhara and tahna in Pali terms).
It is a simple natural phenomenon and not a promise of 'streets of gold nor of milk and honey'!
When one is wise enough to extinguish all the causes to light the candle, only then, the light will extinguish completely. It's a simple logic, no magic!
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