Religions are based on assumption that soul/spirit lives forever...

Realize that we assume that life goes on after we die?
Can you be so sure that life goes on after we die?
Aren't regions taking advantage of this uncertainty?
Are we 100% sure that life goes on after we die?
If you believe that life goes on, then we either go to heaven or hell. Or we reincarnate.

I wonder, can we just be a biological machines?
Can we accept that we a just another cow experiencing life with a more advanced brain?

lately I feel that we humans are not as special as we think we are. We feel that after we die, we have this spirit that will live on forever, either in heaven or hell.. or reincarnate into something else.

All religions based on this assumption that we have a soul/spirit.

But I come to think, we humans dont' have a spirit/soul.

Lately, I feel like we are an ADVANCED BIOLOGICAL MACHINES.

Religions are based on books, books written by humans. The Bible is a collection of books, certain books didn't make the cut. Religions tell you not to question them. Religions have the answer, they are not in search of the answer. I am opposed to religions and think they are the single most important barrier preventing moving humanity into a more positive, peaceful, and enlightened era.

the question isnt the significance of religion but can you think of a beter way to collaborate these nutters together to keep them out of your lives 1 day a week christians sunday, jews saturday and islamist um friday. i once had seen a monkey at the zoo with its hands together it looked like it was praying with its eyes closed. manson quote: were all monkeys with alien babies.

Originally posted by Grimnal
the question isnt the significance of religion but can you think of a beter way to collaborate these nutters together to keep them out of your lives 1 day a week christians sunday, jews saturday and islamist um friday. i once had seen a monkey at the zoo with its hands together it looked like it was praying with its eyes closed. manson quote: were all monkeys with alien babies.

edit on 18-9-2010 by Grimnal because: (no reason given)

hahaha, that is funny.

Don't we assume that life goes on after we die? Thus religion?

my thread sucks

I don't believe in any book or religion, but I've experienced being out of my body and I've experienced what I believe to be heaven during an NDE.

Seeing I existed outside my body for a while I believe I will continue to exist after my body dies.

Many religious people would disagree with me. My born again Christian brothers insist that when your body dies you stay dead until the Rapture, when Jesus will some how put together all the decayed and, by then, wide-spread pieces and reconstitute your body so you live again. They believe sinners like me will be then snuffed out again forever.

So it's a bit more complicated than ascribing one belief to religions in general.

Originally posted by Ignorance_Defier
Religions are based on books, books written by humans. The Bible is a collection of books, certain books didn't make the cut. Religions tell you not to question them. Religions have the answer, they are not in search of the answer. I am opposed to religions and think they are the single most important barrier preventing moving humanity into a more positive, peaceful, and enlightened era.

Oh let me put it this way,


We assume that we are more than a robot.
We assume that we live on after death.

If god told you that you are R2D2 or that Robot from Star Wars series... and told you that your battery will only last 80 years, then how would you experience this reality?

reply to post by Kailassa

My born again Christian brothers insist that when your body dies you stay dead until the Rapture, when Jesus will some how put together all the decayed and, by then, wide-spread pieces and reconstitute your body so you live again.

didn't michael jackson already do a video clip of that?

(sorry - one of us had to say it)

I tend to agree with Kailassa.

There's more to it than just pre-digested answers in a book. The amount of anomalous experiences (near-death, transcendent, astral, whatever) is quite big. Though nothing of it justifies any definite conclusions. There's just more between heaven and earth.....

Relating directly to the topic of this thread, definitions of 'religion' and 'soul/spirit' wouldn't be a bad idea. Even atheists sometimes experience the extra-normal.

Can you be so sure that life goes on after we die?
Aren't regions taking advantage of this uncertainty?
Are we 100% sure that life goes on after we die?

reply to post by saabacura


I believe there is casual evidence that our personalities/souls/spirits survive physical death. That's my personal opinion based on (of course) a degree of the religious training I received over the years. But there are a few other factors as well, not the least of which being my own experiences with the subject that led to even further research.

Now, like so much of our existence, there is no empirical proof beyond the stand, I think, therefore I am.

When you pop the hood and get down into the nuts and bolts of it, there is very little to prove that our lives are anything more than some celestial program playing itself out as if the universe was an immense life form of itself, dreaming us into being.

On a quiet night, I can sit staring at the stars and find myself feeling as if everything we count as assured... our jobs, our homes, our very world... all of it is something far less than a greater hidden truth... the obscured reality of reality.

So, life after physical death? I'll let you know someday when and if we both get there.

reply to post by saabacura

No, historically religion came first.
if you look into the history of Old Testament Israel, you'll find that belief in a life after death seems to have been a very late development. Which is why the Sadducees of the time of Jesus refused to accept it- they were old fashioned conservatives, and they thought the idea of resurrection was a dangerous novelty.

Religion is thought to come from the Latin LIGO, "to bind".
It is a commitment.
You are tied to doing something, or committed to something other than yourself.

The modern world's objection to religion is based partly on the fact that modern people are developing an almost obsessive sense of self-reliance and independance, a refusal to believe there could be anything beyond.our strength.
But suppose this self-reliance is based on a false assumption? Suppose there really are things beyond our strength?

you know i find the whole LIVE for EVER thing funny .
As a HUMAN what would it meen to live FOREVER now lets get the rules down shell we.
one there is no need to eat or drink .(so if you think you can sit around and heaven and have a cold one forget it).
two there is NO SEX ( now come on guys could you give up sex for a year? how about a 100 years? how about NEVER again?)
Ok you never change you know every thing there is to know apon your new life. Nothing left to learn and what can you do with this knowledge ?Build a ship to goto another world? YOUR a spirit .
Ok now one with the accommodations >The streets are paved in gold WOW were all rich?? RIGHT????
dude your DEAD its worthless and even if you could spend it The streets ARE paved in it . Which meens its EVERY ware . Well grass is every ware how much would you give someone for a blade of grass??
Hold on now in heaven there is NO grass and they DONT import any thing .
so NOW how much would you give to see something BESIDES gold.
No matter what your version of heaven is (75 virgins) streets paved in gold man you would be SICK of the site of virgins and gold .
But hey ill give the Muslims credit for thinking of something thats better then GOLD lol.
But a million years of 75 virgins a day???
live forever? naa no thanks even if there is a heave it would become hell after ther first 1000 years you would be so sick of not being able to sin lolol

I often wonder, why does it always have to be heaven, hell or reincarnation? couldn't it be something completely different?

The truth is no-one knows whats beyond "the great dark barrier", could be nothing, could be everything.

Only the dead know the truth! (damn thats depressing).

Peace.
ALS

Originally posted by xxcalbier
live forever? naa no thanks even if there is a heave it would become hell after ther first 1000 years you would be so sick of not being able to sin lolol

Can you imagine a scenario of eternal life that you'd like?

I wonder if we might not keep developing, changing into something we can't even imagine now, and having amazing, varied experiences along the way.

As you say, the same thing for ever could soon become just a prettier hell.

Buddhists have a scenario, for one of their heavens, of a landscape in which all the leaves and flowers are jewels.
- Give me real leaves and flowers anyday.

Even if we do live forever, the this life-time may be the ony opportunity to experience the things we love on Earth, so I believe in finding joy each day, and making opportunies to do the things that are important to you now.
One could regret for eternity that one never rolled down that hill covered in fresh, powdery snow.

reply to post by saabacura


Not only am I entirely unconvinced that life doesn't go on after you die but I am almost 100% certain it doesn't.

Why?

Well they call it DEATH don't they? And when was the last time you spoke to a corpse and it talked back? (though I wouldn't exactly recommend going around asking corpses questions, people tend to look at you funny )

All the science points towards death being the end, as frightening an idea as that is.

Can we accept that we a just another cow experiencing life with a more advanced brain?

Yes and no. The point of after-life beliefs is to save us from the fear of death. Accepting that death is truly the end can be psychologically unnerving for any self-aware being and so of course we came up with the idea that they are not truly dead but have passed to a new level of being. The idea is absurd - even laughable - but it is comforting psychologically.

I'm an atheist so I believe death is truly the end but as depressing as that sounds I'd rather remain on the side supported by scientific facts than allow myself to buy into a comfortable lie. However I can fully understand why some might want to hold on to the idea - death is not an easy thing to cope with.

Originally posted by saabacura
Realize that we assume that life goes on after we die?
Can you be so sure that life goes on after we die?
Aren't regions taking advantage of this uncertainty?
Are we 100% sure that life goes on after we die?
If you believe that life goes on, then we either go to heaven or hell. Or we reincarnate.

I wonder, can we just be a biological machines?
Can we accept that we a just another cow experiencing life with a more advanced brain?

Reincarnation, the belief that after a person dies he is reborn in some other form, has been part of man's beliefs since ancient times. In recent years its popularity has surged with the advent of the New Age movement and the associated renewal of interest in Eastern philosophies and religions.

I was taught by the Christian church that I attended as a child that Reincarnation is not real, that we have but one life. The idea behind reincarnation is that the more experience one has in life, the more pure and enlightened one becomes. A mere seventy-odd years is not enough time to attain perfection. There-fore a person's soul must go through the cycle of life, death and rebirth many times until he or she has reached enlightenment and perfection, and is prepared to meet and/or become part of The CREATOR. Then we find that Early Christians did believe in Reincarnation:

Reincarnation and the Early Christians

Reincarnation as Taught by Early Christians

Many Christians believe in reincarnation, astrology, the "evil eye," poll says

What did early Christians believe about Reincarnation?

Originally posted by DISRAELI
reply to post by saabacura

 

The modern world's objection to religion is based partly on the fact that modern people are developing an almost obsessive sense of self-reliance and independance, a refusal to believe there could be anything beyond.our strength.
But suppose this self-reliance is based on a false assumption? Suppose there really are things beyond our strength?

For some people - at least - they object to religion because it is a tool of control. Religion is akin to slavery; spending life on the knees and then the afterlife too - who would look forward to that? To break free from dogma and false doctrines, people need to look inward and seek universal knowledge to find the answers to the mysteries of the soul.

I think we do have souls, certainly! We are energy and that never dies, it only transforms. There have been too many experiences for too many people to deny that. I recently read an article that discusses this type of thing - showing how the discoveries of science (mathematics, Einstein's theory of relativity, etc.) can be reconciled with the spiritual. It's not easy material for everyone and it's long reading, but below are just a few snippets:

"Nature is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes - I mean the universe - but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth." Galileo

We take light so much for granted, yet all of the profoundest enigmas are encapsulated by light. In science class at school, everyone learns that light is the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, but "light" can also refer to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, visible and invisible, and that's the sense in which we will use the term. Particles of light are called photons, from the ancient Greek word photos, meaning light. (An alternative designation is luxon, from the Latin word lux, meaning light.)

* * *

Many people have difficulty contemplating the human soul. They think that an immortal, mass-less entity with no dimensions that exists outside space and time is inherently preposterous. But they are perfectly willing to accept the existence of light. Yet what is light? Einstein's special theory of relativity says that it is an immortal, mass-less entity with no dimensions that exists outside space and time.

--- If this is understood, then we can understand why things like music and ELF waves affect us as they do as well, but that might be another topic ---

The Imaginary Dimension
There are other articles that serve as a introduction for this one, but I'm sharing this since it's most relevant to the topic. This is meant for everyone to know, really, but I think those who consider themselves Atheist, Agnostic or Gnostic will be most appreciative.

All humans are idiots. Even all future humans are going to be idiots. No question.

Mainly because human can think only if something exist. so make things exist in his illusional mind. Ofcourse it is collective illusion (religion).

Religion is a must for human though. It is more for the suicide cure of humans.

Lets assume if there is no religion , what happen? human need for living purpose will come to nothing and he commits sucide.

Because humans are not really evolved to a level that he can live without religion , atleast most humans need religion.

That said lets ignore that 99% idiotic humans who needs religion and talk about facts as i see it.

Instead of talking about religion , you should ask what is the truth , what is next , what should we live for,

Questions are key for your brain to free from belief systems and fly away anywehere without a burden.

Ask questions , never agree or disagree

Originally posted by saabacura
Realize that we assume that life goes on after we die?
Can you be so sure that life goes on after we die?
Aren't regions taking advantage of this uncertainty?
Are we 100% sure that life goes on after we die?
If you believe that life goes on, then we either go to heaven or hell. Or we reincarnate.

I wonder, can we just be a biological machines?
Can we accept that we a just another cow experiencing life with a more advanced brain?

the irony is... the bible doesnt teach that the soul lives on forever.

genesis 3:[17] And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
[18] Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
[19] In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

psalms 146:[3] Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
[4] His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.

eccl 9:[5] For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
[10] Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

ezekial 18:[20] The soul that sinneth, it shall die.