No Religion

To encourage the hiatis of religious posts, here's a hypothetical situation to ponder.

God appears to you alone (your God, the one you follow) and does whatever is needed to convince you that he/she/it/they is/are genuine. God tells you that its all over for the human race and they are now banned from any kind of afterlife (including reincarnation). God, along with all spiritual being (angels, demons etc) will now leave the earth. Humans can continue living and giving birth and everything they do now, but when they die thats it, utter nonexistance.

This means that there is no heaven to reward the good, no hell to punish the bad, no reincartion of the soul, no rejoining of the cosmic consciousness.

Would you change the way live? If so, in what way?

Please no speculation about what others would do, this pertains only to you. (although we know what John Lennon thought already )

I dunno. Where are we going?

Well, I'd probably be posting on this thread. Woah. It's like... nothing happened.

(trusting that this isn't going to turn into a bash-fest)

My answer would be no.

But I like Amanda's question even better!

coco

So, if we dont believe in deities or mystical places of reward and punishment... what do we answer here?
Actually, anyone who believes in heaven and hell is kinda stuck in the middle ages... pope John Paul II once said that heaven and hell were states of mind rather than physical places.
If you lead a sinful life, you will be filled with guilt and regret. That, rather than the fiery innards of Earth, will be your punishment.
In light of this, Heaven equates to Nirvana. A state of inner peace, well being, and enlightement that you attain by leading a virtuous life (Dharma anyone?).

As long as we are having a reasonable religious conversation here, I will mention that I don't believe in hell. I could be wrong! And if so, I'll probably burn!

I don't even believe in God quite the way other Christians do; more like the way pantheists do. Heaven I think of as the return of our splintered consciousnesses to the universal one.

But all of this is much more reachable to me and to my family if it is translated through Christian terms. Hence, I'm a Christian. An organized religion also gives form and structure to what would otherwise be a state of being continually cosmically over-awed.

I think most people become Christians (or followers of any other religion or belief system) because they want to do good, because they have already agreed that way is best, and wish the input of other thoughts of like-minded believers. I don't think they become members of a faith because they want to be MADE to be good, or because they fear eternal damnation if they aren't good. Of course, they also become followers because they believe that there is something greater than all of us and what we know of life on earth, and they call that something God - or any number of other terms.

I think the concept of eternal damnation in literal fire-pits of hell is pretty much going by the wayside, in favor of other motivations and interpretations, such as those Eggy mentioned above.

coco

P.S. I'd also go to church more, in the hopes of talking God out of his plan.

Y'know, maybe i'm just silly....but I try to do good by other people because I like doing good things. It's fun to be helpful and to make people smile. The idea that we're on Earth to earn Brownie Points to get into Heaven is laughable. (Mmmmmmm, Brownies......)

I will admit, tho: if God came down from the heavens and suddenly turned the world atheistic...I'd be pretty shaken. I'm a living being, and have this sense of the preservation of self. To *know* that I am nothing, other than a random fluke of self-aware protiens...that's a shock.

I think in the end I would still do good things for people...because I enjoy doing good things. And maybe after a while of thinking about it, I'd think of my eminient non-existence as a really long nap.

This isn't what I believe, or course. I believe in the hereafter...because, as Fox Mulder once said very plainly, "I want to believe."

This is a new idea to me - Christianity without hell. Is this a fairly common interpretation these days? Interesting, as it really changes a lot.


Were I to be addressed by a diety, alone, and fully convinced of the happening - and then told that I'd missed the cosmic boat... I think I'd become deeply, deeply depressed. And I'm not the sort to be depressed normally.

Rather like discovering some incredible truth, only to lose it all in the same moment... who would *not* be affected?

On the other hand, depending on how high the bar was raised for entry into heaven - eternal oblivion seems to be much more preferable than hellfire.

If you meet the buddha, kill the buddha

Let me save Ulrika the trouble, NOT RANDOM. _NOT_RANDOM_.

Read my font: NOT RANDOM.


I do good things for the same reason- it feeds my ego and makes me feel like I have some kind of power even if none exists.

You would answer "no".

You're my long lost brother or something, except I would replace that last word with "deity X."

Evidently I've missed this part of Ulrika's Unified Theory. I'm not sure I understand...If you don't believe in anything that could *cause* the universe to exist as it does, how can you *not* believe in the statistical probabilities?




Egos are so much fun to feed!

I would celebrate the emancipation of humanity

[/font]

You were talking about a collection of proteins, not the creation of the first form of life. At least, that's what you said. I guess I didn't read between the lines enough. Or were you saying that humans sprang forth from the universe like this?

Go start your own thread, Chance or I'll have Jake spank you