The Afterlife: What You Want Versus What You Believe

I canät help but wonder how many religions are essentialy well hidden Religions of Death.

Now don't get me wrong and hear me out: In many religions, you are tought that time here is irrelevant, except to define what comes after death. In other words, you don't live for deity or any other reason, you live so you can die. These teachings revolve around Death and possible reward or punishment. Love? If you love others, your death will be better. Hate? Hate wrong group, you shall suffer upon Death and other way around.

that's why Christianity always seemed so silly to me.

Not Judaism, or at least to a much lesser extent than the other major monotheistic religions. (Possibly except for some ultra-orthodox branches, which I don't know much about.) In Judaism, it's what you do in this life that matters, and beliefs about the afterlife are actually pretty vague and brushed over a lot of the time. Even though I don't believe in the religious tenets of Judaism anymore (not that my family was particularly religious to begin with), I still feel that the emphasis on doing good in this life was a significant influence on me, and it's probably shaped my personal philosophy a great deal.

This is true, but the currently popular one (at least the one I heard) was that people who weren't worth forgiveness ended up with Cessation of Existence... or something...

The OT doesn't really mention anything about after death except Sheol, which is translated into Hell by the NT (rather unfairly) and is often translated into "grave" otherwise, which, well, of course dead people are in a grave. That's where you put them, unless you're going to burn them. I don't know what a real actual decent translation would be, but the implications are that that's where everyone goes and is otherwise extremely vague.

Most of the stuff in Judaism concerning death has to do with the living. How to mourn, how long you can mourn, what is considered dead, burial practices... etc.

Buddhism can seem that way. As such I often blow that aspect out of proportion and pretend it's an evil death cult dedicated to Hotei, "Fat Buddha". A good deal of the practice and symbolism focuses on death, but then there is a reason for this. The reason being this: the purpose of Buddhism is to deal with anxiety and humanity's biggest anxiety by and large tends to be death and things related to it (loss, decay, and change). It is in essence a religion of being happy though not happy in the sense most consider happy. When many think happy we think of that exciting and addicting feeling caused by a lovely mix of neurochemicals. This is considered happiness in Buddhism. I forget what word we use for it at the moment. The sort Buddhists strive for and speak of mainly is total calm, an unbreakable peace not marred by passions of any sort be they positive or negative. This of course means giving up good feelings you like which ends up becoming many people's problems with the religion along with the aforementioned death cult thing. And then you can die in ease. You have accepted it and no longer fear it. So I suppose in a way it is a death religion, though I am not sure that is a bad thing since it is built around the idea of dealing with the anxieties surrounding death (and anxiety in general, death just happens to be a big one for humanity).

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Death religion is death religion to me, no matter how much teachings try to jump around admiting it. Approach may differ, liek you said dying in peace vs. punishment/reward after death, but they stil lrevolve around how you die. Life is not for life, it for death in all these. You don't live to experience thigns, you life to achieve peace so you can die in peace.

Is that bad or good though?

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Tehcnically... dunno. Depends your view. I want religion that doesn't have everything to do with death, like, where death is something like "And after all your wonderfull things you did, you died. THE END. You didn't get into heaven or hell, you didn't get reincarnated, no you were forgotten in few 200 years(Religion of Life retains all rights to be wrong) and stuff liek that. You jsut had a damn good life lad, what more you want? Get laid for eternity?"

Just wanting to find out your point of view on the matter. I personally find it a good thing in Buddhism's case.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I think what people don't get about my fear of Heaven is this: I don't fear that Heaven will be boring. I fear that in Heaven, I won't be able to be bored; and that terrifies me. For that matter, I won't be able to feel any negative emotions. In fact, I won't be able to feel any positive emotions in the same sense that I do now, because my positive emotions right now don't have to do with God, they have to do with life, and life is sinful and not-God, and God is all that there is in Heaven. I won't even be able to care about meeting my deceased relatives in Heaven, because God will be the "main attraction". Likewise, my deceased relatives won't care about meeting me; they'll have the exact same fate as me, unless they're in Hell.

It's just kind of scary... It almost seems like Heaven is having your soul eaten by God.

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

Why worry about a hypothetical afterlife like that, though? Simple Cessation of Existence is far more probable.

I'm not going to change my beliefs just because they make me uncomfortable. That wouldn't be intellectually honest.

Also, becoming an atheist would send me to Hell, and though I'm not sure if Heaven's any better than Hell, I at least am pretty sure I know what Heaven is (even if it's bad), and by all accounts Hell's miserable too.

edited 13th Dec '11 4:35:39 PM by PDown

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

Well, how do you know those beliefs are true in the first place? No need to worry about Hell if it doesn't exist, either.

Must resist temptation to quote John Lennon...

edited 13th Dec '11 5:43:23 PM by Enthryn

Mandemo: I disagree. While a lot of religions use the "You'll go to Hell if you don't!" argument as a fallback, I think they are mostly trying to get people to be happy in this life. It's just that being convinced that you'll be happy for eternity also tends to make you happy in the present.

Besides, death is a big deal to everyone. It's the apex of an uphill train track, you can't see past it until you get there, and as far as you know it's an eight hundred foot drop. Or, it could lead through a nice meadow with SHEEP in it! Anyway, it's the biggest milestone for any life. Religions have to pay attention to it, as does everyone else.

Still Sheepin'

@P Down:

This, I believe, is not correct. The positive emotions that you feel now — no matter how trivial or, yes, even sinful — derive ultimately from God. The pleasure that you get from a glass of beer is as God-given as the most lofty spiritual experience.

That's more or less Lewis' position, right? I must say that I never found it very convincing. Why would closeness to the source of Love make one so callous and uncharitable? I'd believe it more likely than in Heaven, people will be able to care more about their friends and relatives — and yeah, that counts for the ones, if any, who got in hell.

Yeah, this implies that every single damned soul makes Heaven itself dimmer than it could be. Yet another reason to hope that it is empty.

edited 15th Dec '11 4:44:01 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I believe, and want Cessation of Existence.

Sure, it would be nice to think I could meet my loved ones and my idols after death, but I do think remaining conscious after death defeats the point of life. We must make most of life as it lasts. To fear death is to fear life, if you allow a cliche.

My belief is that we come back, again and again, like salmon returning to their spawning-grounds by instinct. I don't think this is due to gods; gods are our creations, our intermediaries to deal with the infinite. Just the life-cycle of the parasitical spark of soul.

I agree with the Buddhists that one may be able to cease this cycle by learning, over lifetimes, how not to desire it, how to kill that hunger for more lives. I disagree that this is necessarily a desirable thing.

I'm fine with this believed state of affairs.

A brighter future for a darker age.

Hummm, I can't help but wonder how many of you would change your tune about not minding dying or ceasing to exist if say... someone was holded a gun to your head with the intent to kill you or if you lived a life full of constant hardship and suffering.

In such a situation (having a gun put to my head), my survival instinct would most likely override rational thought.

Anyway, I still don't want to die anytime soon, and I wouldn't hesitate to accept immortality as long as I kept the option to end my own existence at a later time. However, I accept the likely inevitability of my own death, and nonexistence doesn't bother me to the point of being a source of significant worry. What's so terrible about my existence being localized to a finite span of time?

edited 18th Dec '11 4:19:07 PM by Enthryn

It's depressing.

edited 18th Dec '11 5:23:03 PM by LMage

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

Why?

I at least hope that if I have a gun to my head my thoughts will be on getting out of the situation alive. If my life was full of pain I would be more likely to belive in a pleasant afterlife - but that just means everyone wants to be happy, and if they aren't in this life they want to belive they'll get it from the unknown

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

@The Whole Death Religion Thing: Isn't that the point? Religion is a tool, a device, that is used to explain the divine. Hand someone a good book on how to live in this life, and how to take advantage of what surrounds you without being too big a dick to others, and you have yourself a nice worldview and perception to things, but it's not a religion if there's nothing divine in it. So it's nice, but not religious.

Sure, someone could argue that there's divinity all around us in this life, and that it doesn't necessarily have to extend to any point beyond our natural lives. Sure, again, that's nice, but then I'll point out that I believe the Force exists, which might throw a chink into the whole divinity all around us thing (especially if someone tends to believe in a different divine entity existing in this world at the same time; God help you there).

Besides, as far as this world is concerned, religion is ultimately pointless. We can explain everything empirically. We can reduce the feeling of love to a series of chemicals released by the brain upon a certain external stimuli, attributing the same thing to nearly every other feeling you could imagine under the sun. We can describe the cosmos from our lil' rinky-dink planet pretty well, admitting that we don't know much of everything. But what if that's not enough, or satisfactory? Cue religion, where the primary trait is to have faith in something, faith here being defined as a belief without proof

.

Though back to the topic, I feel a tad sad when reading all of this. I kinda' have to ask: why are there so many people here that want to believe in something, yet choose to align themselves with a more rigidly defined set of beliefs set forth by an external source? Seems kinda' defeatist.

I like Buddhism's view on faith. There are two forms of faith. Faith without intent to challenge and faith with intent to challenge. The former is criticized in various places in our canon for being unhelpful to the path and potentially dangerous. The latter is praised very heavily however and is the sort we are taught to have in our religion's teachings. We don't know that there is a Nibbana and that what the Buddha said was true in that regard, however, we have faith that there is and follow the Path. We ask questions, seeks answers, and challenge the words passed onto us and, through heavy practice, either prove or disprove the Path.

My belief in a panentheistic God, however, is something that I feel that I cannot prove. I can challenge it and think about it, but ultimately I cannot prove it. I believe that I lack the capability of even being able to create something to comprehend the All in its fullness outside of reality as well as inside it. All I have in this regard is a vague feeling that it is there. I feel that the belief helps me explain things like kamma to myself better though so I am pondering its usefulness to me as a Buddhist. Ultimately it doesn't play much a part in my life though.

To declare religion useless seems a tad offensive. It has plenty of uses. Things like community, providing ways to help oneself (Buddhism is sort of like ancient CBT), and so on. Yes you can get these things from other places. Yes religions do cause problems. So do other groups. This doesn't lessen the usefulness of a religion however. It works for some people. Others it does not. This is fine.

My rigid following of rules are part of Buddhism being a sort of long term therapy. As I dive deeper in I can start adding on stricter rules gradually. And hopefully I can direct my thoughts as I please and not want so strongly that it pains me. And so that I can look at the deaths of those I love and of myself with calmness and without pain.

edited 22nd Dec '11 1:54:39 PM by Aondeug

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I agree with you completely, though I never said that religion was useless, but pointless. As I mentioned, religion is primarily there to explain a certain something, which you could term whatever you'd like. Science, empirical data, and other fields do this just as well. Hell, other forms of media do just as well a job at explaining metaphysical phenomena that we're not accustomed too. But even pointless things have a use, and it's the why behind that which makes religion and having a faith so important to an individual. And it's not just religion, mind you. There's plenty of things that are pointless in some scheme of some thing, but find their use and become precious to us.

Despite that thought, it was primarily a thought from all religions being mostly concerned about death instead of life; in that regard I find religion to be pretty pointless, as the general point to religion is to explain that which most would define as the unexplainable, and life seems pretty easy to explain using other methods, which doesn't leave a whole lot of room for religion to do it. Case in point is even in the Gospels in the Bible: Christ seems pretty adamant about the idea of not being an asshole while you're alive, and that being a decent person will enrich your life. He's got a few ideas on how society can and should be run, but mostly sticks to metaphysical topics and more lofty ideas. Though according to the definition set earlier, this may classify it as a death religion thought process, wherein you're good now to reap benefits later on when you die.

Just some food for thought, as I'm not trying to be offensive to anyone of any faith. Still a tad sad that there's so many that want to believe in something other than what they choose to believe in though.