Life's real test

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If there is an all-loving creature, that would be great. You are right, I see some incompatible notions on what everyone is teaching about god though. In the eternal scheme of things, when everyone has learned all they can and progressed etc., it seems like heaven would not be a hierarchy though... no king, no subjects, it would be a place where everyone is united with one heart and one mind - and the uniting power would be principles, not beings...

Does anyone else believe in eternal existence without the need of an eternal hierarchy? eternal heaven/hell/ruler/subjects etc. - just a happy united equally together family? Not forced to be equal, but equal through free will and education - that we will all come to love and respect one another due to actually knowing one another well enough?

Your idea seems internally consistent enough, but I've personally seen no reason to believe in any sort of eternal existence. Meanwhile, the afterlife schemes that have been presented to me all seem to be packaged with some sort of hierarchy.

I think I see why they're packaged this way: I think that beliefs about "eternal existence" and the like are created to address a human need - fear of death - and therefore are framed in terms of human understandings and concepts. It's understandable how people who fear death and understand their lives in terms of hierarchies will invent an afterlife with a hierarchy to hope on.

 

[idea]

Your idea seems internally consistent enough, but I've personally seen no reason to believe in any sort of eternal existence. Meanwhile, the afterlife schemes that have been presented to me all seem to be packaged with some sort of hierarchy.

I think I see why they're packaged this way: I think that beliefs about "eternal existence" and the like are created to address a human need - fear of death - and therefore are framed in terms of human understandings and concepts. It's understandable how people who fear death and understand their lives in terms of hierarchies will invent an afterlife with a hierarchy to hope on.

No eternal existence? Here is a question - have you ever seen anything just poof - 100% disappear into thin air? or magically poof out of thin air? Things change from one form to another, but nothing just disappears or appears out of nothingness - that is basic thermodynamics. I've had a couple of experiences now that have convinced me that death is not the end... Not that I know the details of it, perhaps we should only worry about what we know - the here and now. There are quite a few patterns in science, somehow I suspect what lies beyond the veil is not so very different from what we have here.

There might be some fear of death in it, but it is also I think a human need for greater meaning and purpose in life, the human need to resolve injustice (imagine their abuser being sent to hell), or maintain moral and social values - help, rather than harm and kill the weak - sort of things. So very many humans are religious, why? why so many? In a court case it only takes two or three witness to validate something - and there are billions of humans who would all testify in court that there is something after death. ... something we all feel in our bones and have to come to terms with...

 

[Katzpur]

I think I see why they're packaged this way: I think that beliefs about "eternal existence" and the like are created to address a human need - fear of death - and therefore are framed in terms of human understandings and concepts.

I don't really think most people are afraid of death, though they might be afraid of the pain and suffering that could be associated with the process of dying. Either people believe there is nothing after death -- in which case what is there to be afraid of? -- or they believe in some kind of an afterlife. And I have never talked to anyone who believes there's an afterlife and that it's going to be bad for them. Somehow, to me, the idea of a self-aware being just suddenly ceasing to exist seems much more unlikely than the idea that that self-aware being continues to exist in maybe a different form and in a different realm.