Theists who do not believe in an afterlife?

[arcanum]

To me having an afterlife almost degrades the human experience we have now. If you believe in heaven then you believe that you will be stripped of free will as Hitchens once put it. You will exist in a state where you can only do good things as god prescribed but knowing what it is to be human anyone would know that we are not purely good or evil.

Simply loosing consciousness and fulling dawa'yir(circles) is to be an act of worship . I know it sounds strange but loosing consciousness is also loosing any flaws we have. We return into our default state as intended.

What makes you so convinced that consciousness is exclusively the product of physicality? Perhaps you've never had an experience to convince you otherwise. What if our "life/lives" are simply a continuum? You are experiencing things through the experiential lens of this life, do we really know this sliver of existence is all there is? I say no, we don't. The beginning of wisdom is to realize one doesn't have all the answers.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

If you believe in God, But not the afterlife, Then what is the point to life to you?

I don't know, It doesn't really make sense to me.

A great irony coming from someone who follows a religion built solely around the appeasement of God. When one devotes their entire life to God, what need is there for an afterlife?

Sounds like simple selfishness to me.

 

[Sha'irullah]

Belief in an afterlife makes what happens here and what we do here even more important. It by no means lessens it. Helping a fellow christian is what may bring me closer to God and allow my own forgiveness and salvation.

No no no. Salvation is not afterlife. Your salvation is a personal quality which exist while you are alive or dead and is not exclusive to an afterlife. One can acquire salvation from physical suffering as well as suffering in the hereafter.

Helping others is just as important and more so without an afterlife.

You are saying that you help others out of fear of hell or loosing salvation. One can easily kill out of fear of hell and loosing salvation as has been done before by the Christian church and the Ummah.

So you just quenched your own fire.

Even if I do something small, but with great love, it exists in history and can effect eternity. Jesus died once on the cross, but it effected eternity. If my life is full of suffering and misery, I can do the best I can, and my life will still matter. I don't even pretend to know what the afterlife is like because I have no idea. What is important is that no matter what happens to me in life, how I react to it does make a difference. Not only here, but in eternity.

You are missing the point altogether. We do not live for the sake of each others or any purpose at all by default. That is something which we choose as with any other purpose.

What you are stating is egotistical and self centered since you are only concerned with your actions towards others for your own sake.

So having an afterlife as you mention it is pointless and does not benefit.

 

[Sha'irullah]

What makes you so convinced that consciousness is exclusively the product of physicality? Perhaps you've never had an experience to convince you otherwise. What if our "life/lives" are simply a continuum? You are experiencing things through the experiential lens of this life, do we really know this sliver of existence is all there is? I say no, we don't. The beginning of wisdom is to realize one doesn't have all the answers.

You have not read my first argument then because I am not opposed nor supportive of an afterlife, I am entirely agnostic.

As I said in my first post, I have only ruled out many conclusions about the afterlife and there are only a set few plausible events that could occur. The most primary of in which can be found in Islam and Hinduism in regards to metaphysics.

There is simply no evidence either way to support an afterlife as many claim and considering the numerous examples of people having their actual self be effect through physicalities such as brain damage only backs up the conclusion that our consciousness only emits from our brain.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

To me having an afterlife almost degrades the human experience we have now. If you believe in heaven then you believe that you will be stripped of free will as Hitchens once put it. You will exist in a state where you can only do good things as god prescribed but knowing what it is to be human anyone would know that we are not purely good or evil.

That's not true, if you put any stock on the story of the fall of the angels.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I have no belief in an afterlife, much less in the theological mechanics of reward and punishment.

 

[arcanum]

You have not read my first argument then because I am not opposed nor supportive of an afterlife, I am entirely agnostic.

As I said in my first post, I have only ruled out many conclusions about the afterlife and there are only a set few plausible events that could occur. The most primary of in which can be found in Islam and Hinduism in regards to metaphysics.

There is simply no evidence either way to support an afterlife as many claim and considering the numerous examples of people having their actual self be effect through physicalities such as brain damage only backs up the conclusion that our consciousness only emits from our brain.

And there will be no evidence because evidence from this world cannot prove existence in other one's. I believe it's a matter of dimension(s), perhaps one aspect of "ourselves" belongs to another dimension and is not subject to the tools of this worlds analysis? Your approaching this with your left brain, where I believe this question is best approached through the right brain.

 

[Sha'irullah]

That's not true, if you put any stock on the story of the fall of the angels.

Just a contradiction. So do you know if angels can be personally motivated? What about the angels who appeared before Maryam?

How could you even trust an angel? Also how could god trust yourself considering that he is providing free will to you in heaven which would allow you to do sin.

The entire argument of him striping desires away from us which are sinful while in heaven already constitutes as a lack of free will and removal of the individual.

So either way you argue this you are essentially doomed.

 

[Sha'irullah]

I have no belief in an afterlife, much less in the theological mechanics of reward and punishment.

:clap:clap:clap......

 

[Sha'irullah]

And there will be no evidence because evidence from this world cannot prove existence in other one's. I believe it's a matter of dimension(s), perhaps one aspect of "ourselves" belongs to another dimension and is not subject to the tools of this worlds analysis? Your approaching this with your left brain, where I believe this question is best approached through the right brain.

You are stating the thing that I am saying except you believe in the afterlife on the account of Russel's Teapot.

You are making a conclusion with no evidence and only providing a hypothesis yet you hold belief in the conclusion despite the obscurity of the hypothetical claim to the existence of something.

If you believe in the afterlife on this basis then you should believe in ponies, aliens and the flying spaghetti monster since nobody has disproven their existence as well.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Just a contradiction. So do you know if angels can be personally motivated? What about the angels who appeared before Maryam?

How could you even trust an angel? Also how could god trust yourself considering that he is providing free will to you in heaven which would allow you to do sin.

The entire argument of him striping desires away from us which are sinful while in heaven already constitutes as a lack of free will and removal of the individual.

So either way you argue this you are essentially doomed.

The point is that we all have free will, including the Angels. I see no reason to believe that free will is stripped from us after death or in Heaven. The Angels who didn't fall have made the choice to continue to follow God and be His messengers.

 

[yokomodoful]

No no no. Salvation is not afterlife. Your salvation is a personal quality which exist while you are alive or dead and is not exclusive to an afterlife. One can acquire salvation from physical suffering as well as suffering in the hereafter.

Helping others is just as important and more so without an afterlife.

You are saying that you help others out of fear of hell or loosing salvation. One can easily kill out of fear of hell and loosing salvation as has been done before by the Christian church and the Ummah.

So you just quenched your own fire.


You are missing the point altogether. We do not live for the sake of each others or any purpose at all by default. That is something which we choose as with any other purpose.

What you are stating is egotistical and self centered since you are only concerned with your actions towards others for your own sake.

So having an afterlife as you mention it is pointless and does not benefit.

Yes salvation can be for here right now whether there is an afterlife or not. However with an afterlife it is even more important because my actions can last an eternity instead of end with my death or those they impact. I am concerned with truth. I want my actions to have purpose and united with God's will. It is not egotistical to want your life to have purpose. I, like you, hunger and thirst for the truth. I once read a women's (a saints) autobiography. She loved God so much, that she had thoughts of wanting to go to hell so even there God will be worshiped and glorified. Not for God's sake because he is perfect and not in need of our adoration, but because it is truth.

Yes it is good to do well for another just for the sake of that person for what it
means for that person. In a certain sense it is good because it is pure. Just as religion that is pure and undefiled is caring for widows and orphans without expectations or without reward. It is there that a person may find God. There are atheists I know that are good people and they are good to others just because. It in no way detracts from it if a person also does it for the love of God, for there own soul and for eternity. In fact it makes it have meaning, because if there is no God, doing good for another is not good, it is not bad, it doesn't even really matter.

 

[arcanum]

I have no belief in an afterlife, much less in the theological mechanics of reward and punishment.

Would you say that many religious Jews would share your sentiment? Just curious JS, seems the Jewish belief in the afterlife is varied and inconsistent. I know Judaism emphasizes what happens in this life, the afterlife seems like it was a strange appendage that some Jews came to believe and graft on after the Babylonian captivity. Can you clear this up for me(us)?

 

[Sha'irullah]

The point is that we all have free will, including the Angels. I see no reason to believe that free will is stripped from us after death or in Heaven. The Angels who didn't fall have made the choice to continue to follow God and be His messengers.

So we can kill and commit sin in heaven?

 

[Sha'irullah]

Perhaps you've never had an experience to convince you otherwise.

Oh yes I actually have had an experience to convince me otherwise, the issue is that it cannot be separated from delusion or divine revelation.

 

[arcanum]

Oh yes I actually have had an experience to convince me otherwise, the issue is that it cannot be separated from delusion or divine revelation.

Well only your Higher self or "insert preferred term" to know it's authenticity. The rational mind is not a good judge as it will be filled with doubt and contradictions upon trying to judge such an experience.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

So we can kill and commit sin in heaven?

You can't kill spiritual beings, so that's out. But I suppose we could choose to rebel, but the chances of that are probably slim. I'm just guessing, though, because the Angels have free will, live with God in Heaven and some of them rebelled. I don't know what the Catholic Church specifically teaches about that, but that's my opinion from my understanding. I should look it up.

 

[yokomodoful]

You can't kill spiritual beings, so that's out. But I suppose we could choose to rebel, but the chances of that are probably slim. I'm just guessing, though, because the Angels have free will, live with God in Heaven and some of them rebelled. I don't know what the Catholic Church specifically teaches about that, but that's my opinion from my understanding. I should look it up.

The catholic church teaches that Lucifer is a fallen angel. He chose to put himself above God and not worship him. The church also teaches that one third of the angels did the same and are fallen.

It is not official church teaching, but here are some catholics who believe that that angels were tested. The knew in advance that God would become man. The angels that rebelled would not lower themselves to worship a being that is fully God and fully Man. The angels who are pure spirit are more powerful than man and the one third who rebelled felt it beneath them to glorify man.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

The catholic church teaches that Lucifer is a fallen angel. He chose to put himself above God and not worship him. The church also teaches that one third of the angels did the same and are fallen.

Yeah, I know that.

It is not official church teaching, but here are some catholics who believe that that angels were tested. The knew in advance that God would become man. The angels that rebelled would not lower themselves to worship a being that is fully God and fully Man. The angels who are pure spirit are more powerful than man and the one third who rebelled felt it beneath them to glorify man.

That sounds like Islam's teachings about Iblis, who wouldn't bow to Adam when he was created.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

Yeah, I know that.



That sounds like Islam's teachings about Iblis, who wouldn't bow to Adam when he was created.

I think most of that comes from the book of Enoch actually.