God and a after life

[BilliardsBall]

No one knows if a god does or doesn't exist. No one knows if there is anything after death. There is no evidence of either. That being said we say those that accept both/either is faith based.

Does that mean those that don't accept them are faithless because it's all about evidence? I doubt that because they have faith in other things like their kids for example even when sometimes the evidence shows different they will still have faith.

If a person is not a scientist does that person have faith to believe what science says or do they just accept it because they have no faith for anything different such as a god?

So how and or what dictates what a person will have faith in?

Someone better tell Jesus Christ, who came from Heaven, died for sin, and rose from the dead when His Father "called Him out", that His Father God doesn't exist and that Jesus "can't know" the He Himself exists as God!

 

[dfnj]

So how and or what dictates what a person will have faith in?

Two things dictate. First, the testimony of people having near-death experiences. And second, is the word God itself. The word God has unique semantics in our language and represents the most profound meaning we can experience in our minds coming from our brains. Words have meanings. We must keep this keep this in mind as we speculate about death. If we just accept God is just a word and at the same time accept God as a word has the most profound meaning possible, then combine it with the first dictate I mentioned, we come up with this idea of what we experience when we die:

God is both transcendence and immanence. God is whole, complete, perfect, having no desires or needs. Because God does not have any desires or needs, God is perfectly good. All evil comes from having desires or needs.

God created the Universe not out of any need or desire. God created the Universe out of an outpouring of excess energy. God still is God in spite of all the energy in the Universe. That is, God is still perfect, whole, complete, having no desires or needs.

The Universe however is NOT whole, perfect, or complete. Because the Universe is not whole, complete, or perfect we have imperfections in Nature and in human character. It is these imperfections in nature and human character that are the source of all that is evil in the World.

So why are we here. We are here to experience great beauty and great performance in nature, ourselves, and in other people. Counter to our imperfections as human beings, we can have near perfect experiences. It is in these moments of near perfect experiences we become closer to God and God's perfection as we experience slivers of God's greatness. As incomplete and imperfect beings we are drawn to the total complete perfection that is God.

These experiences bring us closer to God throughout our lives until we die. When we die we go into the light, look directly into the face of God, and experience God's infinite beauty and absolute perfection. We then experience a state of Heavenly bliss for all eternity. Experiencing God's infinite beauty is the greatest and most profound experience a consciousness can have. At this moment, we have no remaining desires or needs just like God.

Even though our final moments of life may only be a few seconds of real time, for our minds time slows down because of how deeply profound the going into the light experience is felt. So for all practical purposes it pretty much feels like all eternity as the last few volts of electricity fade from our neurons. We return to the nothingness that is the essence of God's transcendence. Essentially we return back to God perfect, whole, and complete without any needs or desires.

****

Now I have a slightly different possibility of what may happen after we die. This has to do with quantum mechanics and the nature of nature. The one maxim about nature is that is always turns out to be so much stranger than anything we could ever imagine. Keep this in mind. Now consider experiments in quantum mechanics. It turns out we do not live a clockwork Universe with hard determinism. It turns out we live in a Universe that is strangely spiritual. Nobody knows what is the IT that decides something is being observed in double slit type experiments. This dance between observer and observed and the IT making decisions has profound implications. Although the Universe follows so called "laws", and the Universe has a level of order to it, at the same time, the Universe is strangely spiritual in that it is unimaginably creative in what happens.

So taking into account the nature of nature and how the Universe is strangely spiritual then the most strangest thing I could come up with for what happens after you die is the Old Testament God is real. There's life after death just like in the Bible. And most people will suffer Eternal Damnation because the Old Testament God is not very loving.

*****

Oh wait, I have a third possibility. I have to go dig it up. Hold please.

Actually, I may have 2 more. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes a fourth path.

 

[Argus]

"If a person is not a scientist does that person have faith to believe what science says or do they just accept it because they have no faith for anything different such as a god?"


Most do not have FAITH in science (if we mean as applied to religion). Most have CONFIDENCE (acceptance based in evidence). I have confidence Evolution is a robust, accurate model based on evidence.

So how and or what dictates what a person will have faith in?


I have no faith. I have confidence based on evidence. Most people deploy faith in whatever belief system they are indoctrinated into.

 

[syo]

No one knows if there is anything after death.

I know for sure that when we die our body rots. Or if it burns it becomes ashes.

 

[dfnj]

Oh wait, I have a third possibility. I have to go dig it up. Hold please.
Actually, I may have 2 more. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes a fourth path.

So here is my third possibility for what happens after you die.

If you choose to go into the light and look into the face of God and experience God's infinite beauty, what you experience is the very best possible experience one could have. Experiencing God's infinite beauty is a million times more satisfying and fulfilling than just having a brief moment of experiencing sex. You become so enamored with God’s infinite beauty, all time ceases to exist, you stop having conscious thoughts, and you melt into the mind of God experiencing eternal Heavenly bliss.

The God experience is greatest possible experience one can have by definition. No other experience is so fulfilling and complete than the God experience, again, by definition. The God experience is like every cell in your entire body is having a simultaneous orgasm. You have no remaining needs or desires. All you feel is absolute fulfillment. Even though this only happens for a few nanoseconds before physical death, with your brain operating at 100% heightened neural capacity, it feels like eternity to the conscious self.

If for whatever reason, you decide NOT to go into the light and to turn away from God, you are cast out to Hell. At that moment, God immediately gives you the power of omnipotence. Your mind enters a free-form delusional state where anything you imagine spontaneously comes into existence and is experience. Again, with every cell in your body heightened in excitation time slows down. For just a few nanoseconds you experience having the power of omnipotence feels like it essentially is lasting for all eternity.

An omnipotent God can certainly dole out the power of omnipotence and still retain all his powers.

Now at first this may sound like a really good thing. But after millions and millions of years, or what just seems like millions of years, which is only nanoseconds real time, living out all your petty profane desires and imaginations you will become extremely bored. Your mind will have exhausted every possible thing it is capable of imagining. Every possible conceivable scenario of experience will have been played out millions of times over. After having sex with two chicks 10,000 times is probably enough.

Eventually you will decide there's no point in turning away from God any longer and you will turn back and look into the face of God. However, this time you don't look away. All the reasons you would have to look away have been resolved during your stint with omnipotent powers. And just after you look into the face of God you have a very brief thought where you think what the heck was I thinking when I turned away the first time! Time will then cease to exist and you experience everlasting heavenly bliss.

Now some of you may be thinking, gee, you die, you turn away from God and you get rewarded with the power of having omnipotence. This may sound unfair if you are immature in your thinking and you take pleasure at the thought of sinners suffering. Or maybe your heart is full of hate and you are seeking revenge against people who have sinned against you. But from our omnipotent all-loving God's perspective, what better way to win over someone’s love so absolutely and completely than by perfectly giving them everything their heart desires? Why would anyone ever think God would NOT use His omnipotent powers after death to ensure EVERYONE is saved? Of course He would!

The real sad thing is why anyone would ever waste any time at all with any of their own petty and profane desires when they can be looking into the face of God basking in the glow of heavenly eternal bliss. Nothing we can imagine or invent could ever come close to experiencing God's infinite beauty.

*****

The fourth possibility is based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. As the Tibetan Book of the Dead describes, if we choose to turn away from the light, we are then tortured by evil demons of our own creation that perfectly match our greatest fears as we travel down a spirit path to be reincarnated in someone born in a New Jersey hospital. We then continue our endless cycle of death, birth, and suffering in New Jersey until we cleanse ourselves from all our bad karma.

When we are born, as we pass through our mother's birthing canal, our head is painfully CRUSHED right before our head pops out into the light for the first time. At this moment, we have our first thought, "Who designed this thing!" Our contempt for God starts at the moment of our birth.

 

[dfnj]

It's actually "you only live once(YOLO) and the person that died at 10pm tonight did have a today and a yesterday, he just won't have a tomorrow.

Another theory is we do not really die because being alive is a delusion. Contrary to popular propaganda, life does not begin at conception. Life began millions of years ago before conception.

Death is a lot like sex. None of us invented sex. Sex is just something that is part of what it means to be a human being. What if the same thing is true about death. None us invented death. But more importantly, none of us owns what it means to die. What I mean by this is if you take away your own Ego delusion, everything that you think that is unique to yourself, our brains, our characters, the way we think, the way we love, the way we fear, the way we laugh, is exactly the same in EVERY other human being. We did not invent and we do not own what it means to be a human being.

So in this sense, as long as the human race continues to live and thrive, the very things you hold most dear about who you are as a person, are not going to die with you. When you realize this and accept it, then you realize you do not really die because you are not really alive to begin with. Everyone lives on in everyone else. When your Ego delusion dies and you are born again into a much wider experience of what it means to be a human being.

Since we are all the same person, then maybe you won't be so selfish next time when it comes to sharing with your fellow human being. Because when you share, you are really giving something back to yourself. And helping other people live enthusiastic lives is what makes this place a lot more fun to live in.

 

[1213]

…

So how and or what dictates what a person will have faith in?

To me “faith” means faithfulness, which means loyalty. I choose to be loyal to Bible God, because I think He is good.

 

[osgart]

Some of us can not see a mindless process as a progenitor of life. Life produces life is the implication of this. If life produces life and only life can produce life then life is an eternal process.

I understand that people see death and automatically draw the conclusion that the physical process that is humanity ceases to exist. Where would one go to after death in a purely physical and ever-changing existence of only space, time, and energy/matter! There seems by way of the senses that there is no separate or extra dimensionality to existence.

So the mystery goes both ways for me. Seeing purposefulness and purposelessness in existence.

 

[Nakosis]

No one knows if a god does or doesn't exist. No one knows if there is anything after death. There is no evidence of either. That being said we say those that accept both/either is faith based.

Does that mean those that don't accept them are faithless because it's all about evidence? I doubt that because they have faith in other things like their kids for example even when sometimes the evidence shows different they will still have faith.

If a person is not a scientist does that person have faith to believe what science says or do they just accept it because they have no faith for anything different such as a god?

So how and or what dictates what a person will have faith in?

I have faith in what I have experience with.
Having had experience with several different religions, I have faith that they are all wrong about God.

 

[QuestioningMind]

No one knows if a god does or doesn't exist. No one knows if there is anything after death. There is no evidence of either. That being said we say those that accept both/either is faith based.

Does that mean those that don't accept them are faithless because it's all about evidence? I doubt that because they have faith in other things like their kids for example even when sometimes the evidence shows different they will still have faith.

If a person is not a scientist does that person have faith to believe what science says or do they just accept it because they have no faith for anything different such as a god?

So how and or what dictates what a person will have faith in?

Does that mean those that don't accept them are faithless because it's all about evidence? I doubt that because they have faith in other things like their kids for example even when sometimes the evidence shows different they will still have faith.

Faith is what people use when they have no verifiable evidence to back up a claim. I do my absolute best not to accept claims that do not have verifiable evidence to back them up. I have unconditional love for my children, but not faith. Expectations from my children are all based on my past experiences with them. No faith is required.

If a person is not a scientist does that person have faith to believe what science says or do they just accept it because they have no faith for anything different such as a god?

I have confidence in the scientific method based upon the fact that this method has been more successful at helping us understand how the universe works than any other method we've ever used. I don't have to use faith in order to believe in the method's success. This confidence is based on all sorts of verifiable evidence for the success of the method in the past.

 

[Scott C.]

No one knows if a god does or doesn't exist. No one knows if there is anything after death. There is no evidence of either.

If the God of Christianity exists, then there are people who know that God exists with the same degree of absolute certainty that any human being is capable of knowing any thing. For example, in my faith, if Joseph Smith were a prophet and if everything he claimed to happen of a revelatory nature did happen, then he is one of these witnesses of God. If true, his knowledge of God's existence transcended belief or faith or hope. Again, he was as certain as any human being can be of any thing. He's not alone in the history of Christianity or specifically in the history of my Church. Now I realize that what I just said is an expression of my belief, my faith, and my conviction. Most believers don't have that special type of witness of God. Most of us work on a personal spiritual conviction.

 

[loverofhumanity]

No one knows if a god does or doesn't exist. No one knows if there is anything after death. There is no evidence of either. That being said we say those that accept both/either is faith based.

Does that mean those that don't accept them are faithless because it's all about evidence? I doubt that because they have faith in other things like their kids for example even when sometimes the evidence shows different they will still have faith.

If a person is not a scientist does that person have faith to believe what science says or do they just accept it because they have no faith for anything different such as a god?

So how and or what dictates what a person will have faith in?

hi

To me it’s a matter of knowledge not just faith. We can reach a station of Certitude or knowing that is much more than faith if we fulfil certain conditions.

 

[Mock Turtle]

When we are born, as we pass through our mother's birthing canal, our head is painfully CRUSHED right before our head pops out into the light for the first time. At this moment, we have our first thought, "Who designed this thing!" Our contempt for God starts at the moment of our birth.

Sounds painful, and all before we have acquired any language (to speak of), but I can see how it might affect our earliest feelings. Our belief/non-belief in any God I'm sure comes much later - after we are given the concept and decide to reflect on this - if we are capable of such.

 

[We Never Know]

OK, I feel that is lumping together some quite distinct phenomena.

For example, I can have *confidence* to a high degree that my wife won't kill me in my sleep. That confidence is based on evidence accumulated over the years and I very much hesitate to call it 'faith'.

I can also have *confidence* that a licensed plumber knows what they are doing. That is the job of the licensing authorities to ensure, and it seems that (mostly) they do their job.

I can have *confidence* in (most) science simply because there is knowledge there to be gained and I understand the general process of testing all ideas as being useful for finding out new things. The scientists are people whose careers are based on being correct *and* there is knowledge they have access to.

For me, 'faith' is far beyond believing without knowing. It is believing when there is no way to know. The reason people still debate about whether God exists or not is that *no* evidence has been enough to get past even that basic point. So, to go beyond that and guess what God wants or does not want, what scripture, if any, is validly from God, or to conduct one's life to please such an unknowable entity (if it even exists) seems to be of a quite different thing than the confidence in a licensed plumber.

Some may see it as lumping. It doesn't change the fact that it's believing without knowing no matter how confident you may be. Nothing is guaranteed for us except death

 

[We Never Know]

hi

To me it’s a matter of knowledge not just faith. We can reach a station of Certitude or knowing that is much more than faith if we fulfil certain conditions.

.

If it isn't guaranteed, known for a fact, with no doubt, then it's believed upon by faith, belief without knowing. That of course is my opinion. Every one is free to have their own opinion.

 

[loverofhumanity]

.

If it isn't guaranteed, known for a fact, with no doubt, then it's believed upon by faith, belief without knowing. That of course is my opinion. Every one is free to have their own opinion.

When I was a devout atheist I though that too. Now however I know God exists not through blind faith or mere belief but through knowledge.

 

[TheBannerofHomuraAkemi]

Faith is simply believing without knowing.

If Joe has faith god exists, he believes that without knowing.

If Bob has faith his son will grow to be great, he believes that without knowing.

If Bill agrees the earth is 4.5 billion years old because of the science evidence, unless he is a scientist, he believes that without knowing because he accepts the science evidence on faith(without really knowing).

But since you brought it up, how many meanings of faith do you think there are?

Correction

Bob has confidence in his son that he will grow up to be a good person because he has past experience in his childhood that he can pass onto his son

Bill has read the scientific data on the age of the earth and has found the evidence to reasonable. He then went and tested the date himself and found the evidence to be sound.

 

[Linguister]

To my mind, the majority of our convictions are not evidence-based. Whether in life's big questions or everyday life, our beliefs, or lack thereof, are results of the combination of different bases (from strongest to weakest):

1- People we trust.
This is especially true with children, but I believe it applies to all adults also even if some are too proud to admit it.

2- Our feelings/emotions.
Although some people might look down upon them, our feelings influence us a lot more than we think, ask psychotherapists. ​

3- Reason
To varying degrees, people use their logical capabilities to examine ideas and find proof for their convictions.

4- Empirical evidence.
This is the fancy filter so many people claim to use. I have put it last not because it's weak, but due to the small number of ideas that can be empirically examined by the lay person.

 

[We Never Know]

Correction

Bob has confidence in his son that he will grow up to be a good person because he has past experience in his childhood that he can pass onto his son

Bill has read the scientific data on the age of the earth and has found the evidence to reasonable. He then went and tested the date himself and found the evidence to be sound.

Faith
Noun
Confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

Definition of faith | Dictionary.com

 

[We Never Know]

When I was a devout atheist I though that too. Now however I know God exists not through blind faith or mere belief but through knowledge.

Yet you can't produce any evidence for a god. You believe by faith and only faith.