What if

[Trailblazer]

Personally, I no longer believe what the Bible claims or teaches about the afterlife, and I no longer believe in the concepts of heaven or hell either. I've discussed what I believe about the afterlife in other threads, but I can repeat what I've said in this thread if asked.

The Bible says lots of things about the afterlife, many of them contradictory. The same goes for Christians and Jews who interpret the Bible. They all believe in different afterlife scenarios.

What do you believe about the afterlife? Can you summarize it?

 

[Trailblazer]

So this God isn't intelligent enough to work out I'm only believing just in case?

God would know that you are only believing just in case. That might be better than not believing at all but it is not ideal. God wants us to believe because we really believe, not to get a reward or avoid punishment.

 

[LuisDantas]

What if judaism, christianity and islam is correct about that people who do not believe in God go to hell? What if all people who do not worship the one God go to hell?

If this is reality then God is angry and jealous. But what if.. this is really true?

That would be supremely perverse and ironic, I guess. It would mean that existence is the creation of a rather schizo deity with severe problems in both expression and self-steem.

It is wise to believe in one God just in case?

Of course not. It is neither possible nor defensable.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

I believe it is wise to believe in the one true God because that is the only God that actually exists.
What happens to people who don't believe in Him is another matter and only God knows.

As a Wiccan and polytheist, I believe in multiple gods, and I'm agnostic when it comes to the existence of the Abrahamic god. I cannot prove or disprove the existence of any gods, and that includes the Abrahamic god that I spent the majority of my life, including thirty years as a devout Christian, faithfully believing in. As a spiritualist, I completely reject the belief that only the Abrahamic god knows what happens to people (theists or not) after they die. As a psychic medium and a sensitive, I can personally confirm that there are human spirits who choose to remain earthbound, meaning they refuse to cross over to the spirit world, and there are human spirits who are earthbound because they are confused and sad and, as a result, are unable to cross over into the spirit world on their own, or they are unaware that they are dead. And for the past 15 years, I've interacted with these spirits, and I've helped a few cross over.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Very true, but the converse also applies. If there is a heaven and hell, or only a heaven and no hell, and you worked to get to heaven, then you have not wasted your life.

I think the only true way to guarantee not wasting your life is by feeling fulfilled in this life, instead of living for something we don't even know happens after.

 

[Trailblazer]

If humans or some humans are God's children, that implies responsibility.

Are parents still responsible for their children after they are adults, all grown up and out on their own?

And if God has no responsibility for anything that happens in my life, why should I possibly care about him?

God does not 'need' anyone caring about Him since God has no needs since God is self-sufficient and self-sustaining. God only 'wants' us to care about Him for our own benefit, not for His benefit.

God cares what happens in your life, just like parents care about their adult children, but after parents raise children and children have what they need, they leave home and go out on their own, and the the parents are no longer responsible for them. Likewise, once God has given us what we need to take care of ourselves God is no longer responsible. But God will care about us throughout our lives, just like parents will always care about their children, no matter what age they are.

And if God doesn't take responsibility, why should he be able to issue laws to follow, and have people follow them, if he's above any law and responsibility?

That is God's responsibility, to reveal laws that humans are to follow, but God is not responsible to follow those laws since God is not a human who is subject to good and evil. God is by His very nature all-good so God needs nothing to make Him good.

 

[osgart]

I do not believe it is. Belief in God is not everything, deeds also matter.

I fully agree, heaven has to be earned.

I fully agree, and I don't believe that anyone gets a free pass.

Again, I agree. The Bible might have been inspired by God (?) but it was written by humans, and those humans probably had an agenda.

Why would God need humans to write The Bible? Why would God second source God's message?

I go further to say that these books have no such inspiration. They are entirely human created books. If I read it figuratively, literally, or as metaphor it still is only human. The books neither explain nor justify anything. They make declarations and claims only, and leave their expressions up to the imagination. There's no evidence, nor irrefutable proof in these books.

There's nothing obviously true about these books. What could they possibly mean to people thousands of years into the future?

 

[Wildswanderer]

I consider a God that sends people to hell to not be worthy of worship.

What about a God who let's people have their way?
All good comes from God. If you don't want God, you will be removed from all that's good by your own request.

 

[Trailblazer]

I think the only true way to guarantee not wasting your life is by feeling fulfilled in this life, instead of living for something we don't even know happens after.

That would be true if "feeling fulfilled" in this life was the purpose of this life, but if that is not our purpose we might be wasting our life seeking fulfillment. Either way, we are taking our chances, because there is no guarantee.

But I see no reason why we cannot seek fulfillment and still try to achieve our God-given purpose. That way we have covered all our bases.

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

What about a God who let's people have their way?

I don't see a problem with that.

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

Are parents still responsible for their children after they are adults, all grown up and out on their own?

So when humans grow up, they are no longer God's children?

God only 'wants' us to care about Him for our own benefit, not for His benefit.

The Golden Rule has its limits, which is why I prefer the Platinum Rule in this case.

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

The Golden Rule has its limits, which is why I prefer the Platinum Rule in this case.

Platinum rule - Religions Wiki

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

God is by His very nature all-good

Problem is, I have no proof of that - at least, nothing that I see that can point to it.

 

[Trailblazer]

Why would God need humans to write The Bible? Why would God second source God's message?

God is not a human so God cannot write, so God outsources His message to the Messengers. The Messengers of God are both human and divine so they can understand both God and humans, so they can relay God's message to humans in a way that humans can understand God's message..

I go further to say that these books have no such inspiration. They are entirely human created books. If I read it figuratively, literally, or as metaphor it still is only human. The books neither explain nor justify anything. They make declarations and claims only, and leave their expressions up to the imagination. There's no evidence, nor irrefutable proof in these books.

Whether the Bible is a only a human creation or the word of God is a matter of opinion. Baha'i beliefs lie along a spectrum.

"Although Bahá'ís universally share a great respect for the Bible, and acknowledge its status as sacred literature, their individual views about its authoritative status range along the full spectrum of possibilities. At one end there are those who assume the uncritical evangelical or fundamentalist-Christian view that the Bible is wholly and indisputably the word of God. At the other end are Bahá'ís attracted to the liberal, scholarly conclusion that the Bible is no more than a product of complex historical and human forces. Between these extremes is the possibility that the Bible contains the Word of God, but only in a particular sense of the phrase 'Word of God' or in particular texts. I hope to show that a Bahá'í view must lie in this middle area, and can be defined to some degree."
A Baháí View of the Bible

There's nothing obviously true about these books. What could they possibly mean to people thousands of years into the future?

I do not know what the Bible mean to people thousands of years from now, but why do you think has the Bible withstood the test of time for thousands of years? To me, that is an indication that it is more than a mere book created by humans.

 

[Trailblazer]

Problem is, I have no proof of that - at least, nothing that I see that can point to it.

Nor do I have any proof of it. All we have is are scriptures that say that God is all-good.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

The Bible says lots of things about the afterlife, many of them contradictory. The same goes for Christians and Jews who interpret the Bible. They all believe in different afterlife scenarios.

What do you believe about the afterlife? Can you summarize it?

As a psychic medium and a spiritualist, I believe that the spiritual realm (the spirit world) is an everlasting state where spirits (human spirits and non-human entities) are free to come and go whenever they please and are not limited by the laws of time and space. It is not confined to a specific, static location like heaven or hell. I believe that spirits can travel between the spirit world and the physical world as often as they like, either through a spiritual vortex (read more about them here) or a spirit portal (mirrors, windows, and doorways, for example). I believe that human spirits can choose to cross over into the spirit world, or they can choose to return to the physical world and remain for as long as they desire. That being said, I know that there are human spirits who remain earthbound because they are stuck and unable to cross over on their own or because they are unaware that they are dead and need the guidance of a psychic medium to help them cross over into the spirit world. Finally, I believe that the claims in the Bible about the afterlife are contradictory and utterly inaccurate because I've spent the last fifteen years interacting with and communicating with human spirits.

 

[Trailblazer]

As a spiritualist, I completely reject the belief that only the Abrahamic god knows what happens to people (theists or not) after they die. As a psychic medium and a sensitive, I can personally confirm that there are human spirits who choose to remain earthbound, meaning they refuse to cross over to the spirit world, and there are human spirits who are earthbound because they are confused and sad and, as a result, are unable to cross over into the spirit world on their own, or they are unaware that they are dead. And for the past 15 years, I've interacted with these spirits, and I've helped a few cross over.

Knowing about the afterlife involves more than knowing that there is a spiritual world, it would mean we also know what the spiritual world is like. What happens to human spirits, whether they are earthbound or cross over to the spiritual world, does not tell us what the spiritual world is like. Only by communicating with spirits who have fully crossed over to the spiritual world can we know anything about the spiritual world, but what those spirits report to us through psychic mediums is that the spiritual world is too different from this world to describe in words, which is exactly what Baha'u'llah wrote.

I believe that only God and the Messengers of God know what the spiritual world is like. God knows because He created it and the Messengers know because their souls (spirits) were in the spiritual world before they were born into this world and has a physical body. Baha'u'llah wrote that the Prophets of God never would have endured all their sufferings if they had not known that there were other worlds besides this world.

“Wert thou to ponder in thine heart the behavior of the Prophets of God thou wouldst assuredly and readily testify that there must needs be other worlds besides this world. The majority of the truly wise and learned have, throughout the ages, as it hath been recorded by the Pen of Glory in the Tablet of Wisdom, borne witness to the truth of that which the holy Writ of God hath revealed.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 157-158

He also wrote that His dearest wish was to be taken out of this world , hen His enemies has assailed Him on all sides.

“I am He that telleth abroad the favors with which God hath, through His bounty, favored Me. If this be My transgression, then I am truly the first of the transgressors. I and My kindred are at your mercy. Do ye as ye please, and be not of them that hesitate, that I might return to God My Lord, and reach the place where I can no longer behold your faces. This, indeed, is My dearest wish, My most ardent desire. Of My state God is, verily, sufficiently informed, observant.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 228

 

[Trailblazer]

As a psychic medium and a spiritualist, I believe that the spiritual realm (the spirit world) is an everlasting state where spirits (human spirits and non-human entities) are free to come and go whenever they please and are not limited by the laws of time and space. It is not confined to a specific, static location like heaven or hell.

This is also what I believe from reading books about the afterlife such as The Afterlife Revealed and Private Dowding, and it is also congruent with Baha'i beliefs about the spiritual world. The spiritual world is not a fixed geographical location where people either go to heaven or hell and stay there throughout eternity.

 

[Trailblazer]

So when humans grow up, they are no longer God's children?

I never said that humans are God's children. That is a Christian belief, not a Baha'i belief.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Knowing about the afterlife involves more than knowing that there is a spiritual world, it would mean we also know what the spiritual world is like. What happens to human spirits, whether they are earthbound or cross over to the spiritual world, does not tell us what the spiritual world is like. Only by communicating with spirits who have fully crossed over to the spiritual world can we know anything about the spiritual world, but what those spirits report to us through psychic mediums is that the spiritual world is too different from this world to describe in words, which is exactly what Baha'u'llah wrote.

I believe that only God and the Messengers of God know what the spiritual world is like. God knows because He created it and the Messengers know because their souls (spirits) were in the spiritual world before they were born into this world and has a physical body. Baha'u'llah wrote that the Prophets of God never would have endured all their sufferings if they had not known that there were other worlds besides this world.

“Wert thou to ponder in thine heart the behavior of the Prophets of God thou wouldst assuredly and readily testify that there must needs be other worlds besides this world. The majority of the truly wise and learned have, throughout the ages, as it hath been recorded by the Pen of Glory in the Tablet of Wisdom, borne witness to the truth of that which the holy Writ of God hath revealed.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 157-158

He also wrote that His dearest wish was to be taken out of this world , hen His enemies has assailed Him on all sides.

“I am He that telleth abroad the favors with which God hath, through His bounty, favored Me. If this be My transgression, then I am truly the first of the transgressors. I and My kindred are at your mercy. Do ye as ye please, and be not of them that hesitate, that I might return to God My Lord, and reach the place where I can no longer behold your faces. This, indeed, is My dearest wish, My most ardent desire. Of My state God is, verily, sufficiently informed, observant.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 228

I have specifically asked several spirits about God, and the responses I received were either "Yes, God exists" or "No, God does not exist" or something to that effect. However, other spirits seemed confused about whether God existed or not, as well as whether heaven even existed, because they weren't in heaven yet and hadn't seen God, despite their belief that they would be with God in heaven after they died. Despite my efforts to uncover the truth, I've never received a definitive answer as to whether God is real or not. I have, however, had the impression that asking a question about whether God exists or not might be considered taboo because the question wasn't always well received when I asked. Some spirits I asked refused to answer any questions about God or Jesus.

On the other hand, I've spoken with some earthbound human spirits who asked me questions like, "Where is God?" or "Why am I not in heaven yet?" About six years ago, I was involved in a paranormal investigation at the Hotel Galvez & Spa (in Galveston, Texas) with some paranormal investigators whom I personally knew. As we were walking down the hallway of the fourth floor with our spirit box turned on, we heard a spirit say, "Where is Jesus?" and another spirit anxiously say, "The children aren't in heaven yet!" One of the investigators suggested that these spirits may have been responding to my presence, but we didn't get any answers from either of these spirits when we asked them questions, such as if we could help them cross over. It's because of these experiences and many others that I no longer believe that human spirits either go to heaven or hell in the afterlife and are then eternally trapped there.