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speed dawg

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Anazon, what happens when you die? It's all over, right? According to you, it will all be over. You're dead. Nothing.
 

azanon

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speed dawg said:
Anazon, what happens when you die? It's all over, right? According to you, it will all be over. You're dead. Nothing.
I have no idea. That would be the most logical conclusion (that it would all be over), but I do not know for sure. My religious position is that I am agnostic, though i do not take offense to being loosely referred to as just an atheist either (since I think the burden of proof lies with those claiming that there is a God, and not vise versa).

I realize i'm not being very human when I admit I dont have all the answers, but my solution to that deficiency isnt going to be to make up one, or adopt some belief by any degree of faith. Faith is believing in something that you cannot know for sure is true and there's not anything logical about doing that.

I have spent a LOT of time studying this issue, so believe me, I tried to come to a definitive "right" answer but ultimately i just have to be humble about it, and say I just really dont know what happens after you die.

I also really value having the freedom to reason and utilize freethought so I must admit that's another reason pre-set dogmas aren't very appealing to me. I can't understand having a mind as powerful as ours, but still not being allowed to reason for ourselves.

..................

I see Christainity as mostly a cultural thing for most Americans. 80% of Americans claim to be "christain". The majority of India is Hindu. So, I think whether people want to admit it or not, the primary reason most anyone born today will be christain or Hindu in their respective countries (other examples around the world) is not (necessarily) because said religions are true, rather because that's what everyone else around them already are. Over time, they will all be adequately manipulated to believe that their adopted faiths are not just cultural, but also truth.

Only those standing outside the box are going to have a clearer picture of what's really going on.

I'm not really that much different that you Speed Dawg. I only believe in one less religion than you do.
 

speed dawg

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The ONLY thing that I could ever do to convince you otherwise would be my own personal experiences with Christianity. And that can't happen on sosuave.com.
 

blueguy

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I've lived in both mindsets.

Immersed in the belief of my religion growing up. And the subjective and logical agnostic mindset. I've talked to a lot of people who still believe in the religion I used to believe. I've told them about some of the inconsistencies in that religion. It doesn't effect them. It always goes back to, "I know it's true because this is the way I felt at certain points in my life, and I can't deny it" etc. I tell them that I had felt that way as well even about things that aren't true, and you can't base your decision on emotion. When they feel good about something that is wrong, it is the devil deceiving them. Ultimately, there will always be people that will base their decisions more on emotion than logic even when logic is saying the opposite of what emotions say.
 

Bonhomme

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What happens when you die? Ask me after I'm dead. Dark humor aside, I don't think it has much to do with what any religious dogmas say.

When my dad died I was in the room, and felt an unmistakable sort of
"presence," which one might call his "spirit," reassuring me that he was OK, I shouldn't worry for him, and should just go out and do my thing. He was not religious toward the end of his life. Rather anti-religious, in fact, but he became a more open-minded person, and spiritually progressed (in my perception) all along.

However, I did not get the same good, peaceful sense of the deaths of some other people, some of whom happened to be more religious. They did not seem to be "progressing" at all, in terms of their "consciousness." They weren't outgrowing their hangups. I won't get into the gory details, but that's definitely the sense I got.

So I'm convinced there is some kind of spirit that leaves the body and moves on. Where it goes I just don't know, but my working model is that it is reincarnated into another body, taking the lessons from previous lives with it. I don't believe there's any sort of "cosmic retribution" for wrongdoings or reward for being "good," whatever that is (that's up to us to do on Earth). This is congruent with the impermanence of everything, the spiritual progress of the human race, and my feelings about the deaths of people close to me.

I think my dad, if reincarnated, is likely to turn out a phenomenal, "highly evolved" human being; the others, I would expect, would have a much longer way to go. But bear in mind, I don't "believe" in this as such, it's just a model. My best guess, if you will, based on my observations and experiences.

Anyone who thinks the human race has not made spirtual progress should have a chat with a "minority" person who lived in the southern US in the 1950s or earlier. There are many similar examples I can cite, but this one comes to mind first.
 

Bible_Belt

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Can you believe we got away with this much discussion of religion without the thread getting closed? The off-topic veer from the thread title has kept it alive. Notice that no one has called anyone else names, and it has not devolved into a lengthy flamefest.
 

comote

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By the nature of "God" it can not be proved. I am also agnostic but with a stronger slant. Not just that God hasn't been proved but actually that God is an unprovable concept.

Any "concrete" proof for the existence of God will eventually be explained away in the halls of science.
The idea of a "soul" is already being studied by those who study consciousness in a scientifically rigorous way.
Physicists already believe they understand all but the very earliest moments of the universe.

In the middle of all this great science with all it's great implications and explanations lives Godel's idea of incompleteness. It essentially states that you can never answer every question. This space of unanswered questions, by it's very nature, is where "God" must exist. Any God would be a concept unrealizable by the human mind. It would be like ants arguing over whether Bush is going to Bomb Iran, just the ants have more comprehension of Bush than we could ever have about a God.
 

Bonhomme

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Interesting take, Comote. Makes sense.

The native tribes in what is now North America used to refer to the "Great Spirit," with the implication that it's in everything. That makes more sense to me than the monarchial conception of a God that most "western" people believe.

Still, as far as I'm concerned, if Christianity works for someone, fine for them, as long as they don't try to force others into it.
 

azanon

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Bible_Belt said:
Can you believe we got away with this much discussion of religion without the thread getting closed? The off-topic veer from the thread title has kept it alive. Notice that no one has called anyone else names, and it has not devolved into a lengthy flamefest.
Well as i pointed out earlier, we already have a current marriage thread discussing the very thing(s) jonwon discussed (A misconception about marriage). If anything, those comments are the ones that should be moved and this one should be retitled.
 

Rollo Tomassi

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Proverbs 19:13
A foolish son is his father's ruin, and a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping.

Proverbs 21:9
Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife

Any more questions?
 
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