This is all fine and good....up to the point your charmed life ends.
No after life?
I didn't realize that you responded to my earlier post.
Like anybody else, I recognize that my life will someday end.
"Nothing lasts forever." I find it hard to deny this. Many, however, deny this with all the dread and angst and horror and hope against hopelessness that they can respond with to that which they simply refuse to accept.
It's been a good life. It's been rewarding and satisfying and amazing and miraculous and wonderous... it's also been frustrating and disappointing and full of scenes I wish I could do over and there's been heartbreak and disaster... It's been for real.
All in all I'm pretty pleased with the whole long story. Like i said, "I've lead a charmed life." It would be nice to have more. We always want to have more to look forward to. It's hope of something more that drives many to fantasize about there being more and that paradise and absolute perfection, the dream of "heaven" or "enlightenment" or "Nirvana" or whatever is a real state of being they personally will somehow aspire to.
They're nice dreams. For me though, I've come to terms with accepting reality for what it is in all its unperfection. My reality, your reality, the reality of the people I love and who will remember me in some limitted ways, the reality of the many friends and family who have passed before me... It would be wonderful to be able to believe that I will one day be able to be with some of them again, but I recognize that as just fantastical, wishful thinking.
Yes. Unless I'm some sort of solipsist, I do believe it is safe to say there will be life carrying on beyond my life, just as there always has been beyond my experience while I've been a living participant in the goings on of this planet.
No. There appears no basis for believing that there can be anything that corresponds to what many commonly think of as an "afterlife".
The 'so called' afterlife is just a fantasy - a great sales promise. It's one of those "too good to be true" sales promises. It's part of the marketing that has gone into some of the most effective frauds ever perpetrated against the ignorant and desperate amongst us. It's an effective bit of deception backed up with some really really really slick sales support.
I don't even blame people or consider them that unreasonable in believing in the afterlife fantasy and all that is sold along with it. People are desperate and the product here is hope. The marketing campaign is phenomenal. Most likely it's even been vouched for by people they trust.
We should really be understanding of their shortcomings in persisting with such primitive beliefs. they really know not what they believe.
Ever read a great book with an adventure and characters you were really getting into? It cam to an end. Right. Maybe there were even sequals [think in this metaphor in terms of kids or others carrying on in some way] but eventually, things ended and even though you wished for more, you did eventually come to "THE END".
So to shall we all.
the end