A laissez-faire God would not be manipulative. We can't even tell the difference between that and if there is no God. And I don't understand your last sentence.
True, from Deism's perspective, it would be hard to tell
the difference, and yes, I don't see a lot of manipulation
from God in that scenario.
About the free will part, if we truly had it, then we would
be able to enter the gates of heaven on our own terms,
rather than simply settling for the turn-or-burn/turn-or-
be-annihilated options.
You're right. It will be far different. Feelings of mourning and loss will be offset by knowing God gave them a second chance at physical life, while heavily stacking the deck in favor of choosing eternal life, and they stubbornly rejected it anyway.
Well, it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out.
I think it's a cool perspective, though, that there's a
grace period *after* death for folks to be able to make
an actual, fully-informed decision for or against God. Out
of curiosity, is there a name for that particular view? I
was a Christian Universalist for a time (still hold the
universalistic part even though I hesitate to label myself
"Christian"), and that name refers to the belief that everyone
will be saved in the end, and that any hell there is after
death is temporary, for restorative, rather than merely punitive,
purposes.
Only one problem with reincarnation, how can we learn from our past or correct our mistakes if we don't remember them or even the individual we once were?
Yeah, I think that's a valid concern, and it likely depends
on the reasons for reincarnating.
I got into this awhile back in discussing this with Hindus
(actually, I think it was on this very site—I should go
back and try to find it!) and one claim was that if you eat a
cow, then you run the risk of having to incarnate, as a
cow, as many times as there are hairs on the cow's body.
Something along those lines.
I took exception to that: Firstly, one might as well just
be in hell forever because that's a *lot* of hairs.
Secondly, as a cow, especially after the hundredth
incarnation as one, how the heck am I going to remember
why I'm a cow?! So yes, I think that's a valid question.
My own take on reincarnation is that it isn't driven by
"bad karma" so much as it's the soul's voluntary desire to
come down here and have new experiences. One isn't
necessarily being "taught a lesson" for having done
something wrong previously.
"Feelings" of a past life are as unsubstantiated as the other feelings people have that they "communicate" with God. And no one can tell me I'm not listening, or can't hear because I don't have faith or whatever ephemeral quality I was apparently not endowed with. I trust (have faith) in my demonstrated, inherent ability to reason, and have learned to live with the doubt. By all appearances, this is our one shot, make the most of it instead of procrastinating to the next life.
Yes, this feels very much like the one and only life we
have, although that could be by design. It would
probably get absolutely confusing to have past-life
memories crowding those of our current life.
The only accounts of past-life memories that have made me
wonder have been those—usually kids—who claim to
have been a particular person, or to have lived in a
particular house, and who can recall details about that
existence / location that they had no way of knowing about.
Beyond that, yes it could just be speculative for many people.
-
