I just want to say that I appreciate the sincerity and respect this thread has encouraged/revealed. I wish that all OT’s were treated the same.
Not Sports related and New to this site but Do you believe in the afterlife?
- Thread starter WillyDavis33
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Excellent post. I believe a lot of what you believe, pittbb. I also believe that this current Pope is corrupt and nothing more than a leftist communist. He is a poor leader of the Catholic Church and I disregard everything he says as too radical and extremist for me. I have problems with my local church as well as they continue to shuttle priests in and out and we never get a chance to know any of them for any length of time. Gone are the times in my church where you can develop a relationship and get to know the priest. So at least in my Catholic Church, it is more important now to have a relationship with God as an individual and not rely on the church to do anything to help.
Satan exists as the evil force that is in all of us. We have the power to overcome and resist that force with the help of Christ or whatever higher power we worship.
Our soul, our conscientious, continues on after our bodies die and that is what I believe is heaven if we can sense being with Christ and our loved ones during that period. I know your beliefs and my beliefs may not blend in with what the new "progressives" want us to believe since they strive to de-emphasize religions other than the religion of worship of politics. I don't care and we are free to believe what we want to believe regardless of the criticisms of others.
I also believe that the Jewish faith is a wonderful, beautiful faith and also contains much of what I believe. I know I'm supposed to be a Christian and believe totally in what the Christian faith teaches. But I also believe that Christ was a Jew and I want to know that faith better as it helps me through life.
It is unprovable so "I believe" is a necessary phrase. Just as the non-existence of an afterlife is unprovable. So your leaning toward one unprovable over another is a telling sign.
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Yes, it is a choice as to what we believe. The Santa Claus analogy is not a good analogy, or maybe I should say it is a weak analogy, in this case.
I was raised a Catholic. My mother says to this day that was the biggest mistake she made with her kids. Catholicism is based on the Catechism and not the Bible. It gets much wrong including the idea of mortal sins.
It is weird, there is this ying/yang with organized religion right? I do believe the lack of morals and values are attributed to the erosion of religion and god in this country. That being said, how do you expect someone to have strong morals, be generally good and respect others and then on the other hand tell them, it doesn't matter what you did on earth as long as you accept Jesus Christ as your savior. That seems very contrary to each other.
Secondly, nothing has caused more murders and mayhem in the world than religion. It is why a strong faith, a blind faith in anything is not necessarily a good thing. Whether it is religion, politics or even family. You have to have some measure of common sense and sense of right and wrong.
I didn't mean Santa Claus to trivialize believing in God or Jesus. I am just saying you can see how Santa Claus mirrors our Christian doctrine and how it came about.
See, but you say this like it is an absolute. You weren't there. How do you know what they got wrong. There wasn't film. Or records. Sure there is the bible, but it was written when people had little idea of like China or America existed. The world was flat, etc...
I was raised a Catholic and still am an active member. For sure I disagree with a lot of what the church taught and teaches today. I’ve gone and occasionally go to other devices. But for me i prefer the Catholic mass. As I said in another post I’m lucky to have a local community church where the pastor is filled with the spirit and is a good Godly man. We actually followed him when he was transferred from another church. If he were to leave again for some reason we’d have to think about finding another church to attend (Catholic or otherwise ). The entire point being that the local priest/minister is what makes the church as well as the members of that congregation
Actually it’s quite the opposite It’s the secular world that has equated God to Santa Claus. Well that and some flim flam preachers.
Religion has always been a farce (my opinion) absolutely bursting at the seams with human intervention. It has killed so many more people than it has helped. Thousands a day continue to die because of it (it just doesn't make the news over here).
Someone earlier mentioned the documentation of Jesus. Yeah, sure... and at least four different religions tell a completely different story about him. Even the writings of Jocephus, which is what I'm sure many on here accept as truth, were almost certainly "amended" by Christians, as Jocephus was a Jew yet still referred to him as the Messiah. I mean, he probably existed... but, outside of a few details, it's anybody guess what happened after that. To the surprise of no one, he's a useful cog that fits in place to help make completely different religions "work," though.
Again, those are just my opinions. I don't fault anyone for believing in anything; go for it. But when you look at the blatant contradictions that exist in the same book, especially in the context of humans' propensity to create a good story (like Helen Keller being completely blind and deaf), well...
It’s pretty simple. God gives us a free will to either believe in him and love him or not I know people get caught up in these hypotheticals of “ well what if a person was good and never sinned” but didn’t believe I. God. Why wouldn’t God accept them ? Well first off all there are no Sinless people. Secondly if they didn’t love God and believe in him why would they want to be with him in eternity. They made their choice and lastly I’ll leave these hypotheticals up to God. it’s. It for me to judge other people
And as far as wars go yes men sin we’ve seen that with priests and other situations. Men make up religions. Men are flawed just because your a Christian in name doesn’t mean you are exempt from succumbing to evil Sadly we’ve seen men use God to justify their actions
My statement is absolute. The Catechism does not align with the Bible in many areas. That is not even arguable.
If your point is that one is more right than the other, then that becomes a matter of individual faith. Me, I'll go with the Bible.
I am an imperfect man of Faith who follows an imperfect religion in an imperfect world.
Since I was a young boy I could sense a presence. Still can. My wife calls me an “empath”.
For as long as I can remember I have sensed the Spirit of God and I have encountered that Being. So too the power of evil and whatever name you wish to ascribe. I assure you. Evil is real and it is prevalent. It can be sensed by other animals.
Love is real. I don’t believe in an earthly body experience after death here. That vessel for the soul turns to dust.
The soul will occupy a timeless and beyond joyful eternity.
Sometimes…souls can be sensed. That because they occupy a border less sanctuary.
Since I was a young boy I could sense a presence. Still can. My wife calls me an “empath”.
For as long as I can remember I have sensed the Spirit of God and I have encountered that Being. So too the power of evil and whatever name you wish to ascribe. I assure you. Evil is real and it is prevalent. It can be sensed by other animals.
Love is real. I don’t believe in an earthly body experience after death here. That vessel for the soul turns to dust.
The soul will occupy a timeless and beyond joyful eternity.
Sometimes…souls can be sensed. That because they occupy a border less sanctuary.
Do you consider yourself a Christian or of the Christian faith? If so I have a question. If not , no big deal.
I have heard many agnostics who still go to church say they enjoy the community/socialization while not really adhering to any beliefs per say. And it makes sense. We are a social species.
Also interesting that a lot of cultures show a similar evolution of beliefs of multiple deities to singular deities to no deities, etc.
If there is eternal punishment, so be it. I’ll have questions for the gatekeeper, such as you want me to believe in something where teachers have abused kids in their power. This is not limited to Catholics. I also do not feel we need religion to know right from wrong, or to work for a higher good. I have more fear of popping back out in a third world county than a hell per se. I call it luck that I was born to my parents and situation. Next time I may not be as fortunate.
As for the Bible, scholars will make note that stories from 2000 years ago were meant to be stories and not taken literally/fundamentally. There are plenty of references to mistranslations that have been kept. For example, the word almah, that precedes Mary for Virgin Mary was not supposed to be mean virgin, but rather “young.” A young woman conceiving makes a lot more sense than virgin woman, yet it’s been kept for ages. I guess technically one could get pregnant without having sex though, so not totally far fetched. They really needed a beginning to the story and a reason to get rid of John the Baptist, who was also a leading prophet at that time who some thought was the messiah.
Barabas, literally translates to son of the father. There likely was not a Barabas, but metaphor that they chose to release the wrong son of the father.
As for rising on the third day, it has been suggested it was not a physical resurrection, but rather the body did not decay after three days, which was very significant in the Jewish faith. Either way, if someone attempts to rebel or cause an uprising, it’s a lesson that those in power will try to shut it down publicly and in a cruel way. I do believe in a historical Jesus.
But, none of these things takes away from the possibility of an afterlife. None of these things impacted us from literally popping out of nowhere into living beings talking about our existent and existential thoughts.
Also interesting that a lot of cultures show a similar evolution of beliefs of multiple deities to singular deities to no deities, etc.
If there is eternal punishment, so be it. I’ll have questions for the gatekeeper, such as you want me to believe in something where teachers have abused kids in their power. This is not limited to Catholics. I also do not feel we need religion to know right from wrong, or to work for a higher good. I have more fear of popping back out in a third world county than a hell per se. I call it luck that I was born to my parents and situation. Next time I may not be as fortunate.
As for the Bible, scholars will make note that stories from 2000 years ago were meant to be stories and not taken literally/fundamentally. There are plenty of references to mistranslations that have been kept. For example, the word almah, that precedes Mary for Virgin Mary was not supposed to be mean virgin, but rather “young.” A young woman conceiving makes a lot more sense than virgin woman, yet it’s been kept for ages. I guess technically one could get pregnant without having sex though, so not totally far fetched. They really needed a beginning to the story and a reason to get rid of John the Baptist, who was also a leading prophet at that time who some thought was the messiah.
Barabas, literally translates to son of the father. There likely was not a Barabas, but metaphor that they chose to release the wrong son of the father.
As for rising on the third day, it has been suggested it was not a physical resurrection, but rather the body did not decay after three days, which was very significant in the Jewish faith. Either way, if someone attempts to rebel or cause an uprising, it’s a lesson that those in power will try to shut it down publicly and in a cruel way. I do believe in a historical Jesus.
But, none of these things takes away from the possibility of an afterlife. None of these things impacted us from literally popping out of nowhere into living beings talking about our existent and existential thoughts.
Accept as given:
1) there is a Supreme Being “God”;
2) God loves us
Therefore - questions:
1) why should it matter to God whether we claim belief or not? Is the Supreme Being petty? That has never made any sense to me and strongly colors my personal belief.
2) if God loves us, why would God consign us to hell for not following the rules? Again - doesn’t that sort of reduce God to the pettiness of a children’s club leader, e.g. if you don’t say the prescribed words, or use the secret handshake, you don’t get into the clubhouse. What sort of love is that?
We all know there are men and women who are concrete thinkers who tend to interpret the world in a literal way. And I conclude that those literal thinkers over the ages have taken hold of this glorious concept of an all powerful God of Everything and wrongly ascribed wholly HUMAN characteristics to It. That, I believe, is an error.
1) there is a Supreme Being “God”;
2) God loves us
Therefore - questions:
1) why should it matter to God whether we claim belief or not? Is the Supreme Being petty? That has never made any sense to me and strongly colors my personal belief.
2) if God loves us, why would God consign us to hell for not following the rules? Again - doesn’t that sort of reduce God to the pettiness of a children’s club leader, e.g. if you don’t say the prescribed words, or use the secret handshake, you don’t get into the clubhouse. What sort of love is that?
We all know there are men and women who are concrete thinkers who tend to interpret the world in a literal way. And I conclude that those literal thinkers over the ages have taken hold of this glorious concept of an all powerful God of Everything and wrongly ascribed wholly HUMAN characteristics to It. That, I believe, is an error.
The God I know is all loving. That God doesn't throw his children to some place that I think humans made up called hell. I believe that we as humans make our own hell on earth. And when we die, we are reunited with our God and the consciousness that is peace and love.
That's just what I believe. I have no way of knowing that just as none of us knows anything for sure.
Well I will tell you why. It is the basis for the rule of law in most societies. And behavior. If you don't have that "heaven/hell" outcome when you die, many people will do whatever they damn well please.
It is very contrary because that understanding of Christianity is not backed up scripture.
Really? Just going by the 20th century how do you compute the murder totals of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, etc.?? All were clearly not motivated by religion when it came to their inhumane actions and beliefs.
Ummmm......I don't know if you missed the one History class that discussed something called the Holocaust?
The Crusades. The MidEast. Africa. The Seven Year War. Even today in China the treatment of Muslims.
Hitler was a pantheist. He was not Christian.
What organized religion does China support in slaughtering of Uyghurs?
My undergraduate degree is in History.
The Crusades had an estimated 1.3 million casualties. Pol Pot alone was responsible for 2.5-3 million death during the Cambodian genocide. Do you want to deep dive into Hitler, Stalin, Mao??
Just keeping it simple, and I did grow up in a Catholic family, but my most likely thought is that being dead is just like how it was before we were born.
That said, we just don’t know for sure, which is why I guess I would be considered agnostic at this point in my life. Would love to embrace the belief there’s more to our fate than eternal darkness, but we’ll see (or… we won’t, because you know, we’ll be dead).
That said, we just don’t know for sure, which is why I guess I would be considered agnostic at this point in my life. Would love to embrace the belief there’s more to our fate than eternal darkness, but we’ll see (or… we won’t, because you know, we’ll be dead).
If we'll have eternal darkness after we die, that is something. It isn't nothing. Truly having nothing after this life is just nothing, no darkness, no nothing.
I believe what you believe but in a slightly different form. I believe that our consciousness, our souls, existed before we were born. And they will exist when we die and maybe even be reincarnated to another physical life somewhere. Hopefully not in China, the Middle East or West Virginia.
If you read: "Imagine Heaven" by Burke - you'll believe in the afterlife.
It's all about NDE.
Owtie - you're searching for some things - Trust NC Panther on this one and if you *do* read it, send me a PM.
It's all about NDE.
Owtie - you're searching for some things - Trust NC Panther on this one and if you *do* read it, send me a PM.
Have you ever heard the story about the twins in the mother’s womb? They are discussing if there was an afterlife. They had no proof, no idea whether there was an afterlife or not. So they didn’t believe….
Then all of a sudden, with out warning they are ripped away from the only body they ever knew. There is pain and crying….They are taken to a bright light…There is great joy on the other side…
Then the twins discover that the world they are now in is better than the one they left….
Sound familiar?
Then all of a sudden, with out warning they are ripped away from the only body they ever knew. There is pain and crying….They are taken to a bright light…There is great joy on the other side…
Then the twins discover that the world they are now in is better than the one they left….
Sound familiar?
Almah is a Hebrew word. The New Testament gospels was written in Greek, not Hebrew. So the debate is actually about Isaiah's use of the word in ~ 700 BC in prophesying events that were to occur in the future, prophecies which Christians claim Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled.
Regarding the use of the word at the time of Isaiah, almah was a word that would always refer to a woman who was unmarried yet of marriageable age. It was never used to describe an immoral woman. In Jewish culture at that time, virginity was the norm for a young unmarried women. Contemporaneous context suggests an individual described as a almah would most likely be a virgin.
The debate often centers around differing use of a similar Hebrew word, betulah, some would posit is more directly translatable into "virgin," and there is also some debate of the contemporaneous vs contemporary use of this word in comparison to almah. However, betulah was also used to only mean young girl of marriageable age, not necessarily distinctly virgin.
So what to do? Was there a contemporaneous interpretation of the word? The in Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the use of the word almah in Isaiah was translated by 70 Jewish scholars working on it into the Greek using the word parthenos, which means virgin and is unambiguous. The Septuagint was completed over 150-250 years BC. It predates Christianity and any claims of Christianity by well over a century.
Mathew and Luke, two writers of separate accounts of Jesus' life, both used the unambiguous word parthenos. There is no mistaking the intent of both of their use of the word parthenos, regardless of Isaiah's original intent.
One can believe in a virgin birth or not, but it takes a lot of effort to contort things into a narratives that suggest words don't mean what they were intended to mean.
However, the intent of New Testament writers in describing a literal, bodily resurrection is unambiguous. One can decide to believe in these accounts of supernatural occurrences or not, but to suggest what was meant was some sort of metaphor or allegory for a lack of decomposition requires fairly substantial mental and literary gymnastics. One can decide for themselves that those claims are lies or accounts of the delusional, but the intent and claims from the multiple authors of these texts are nonetheless unambiguous.
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Likewise the "no real Hell" enthusiasts. Which brings me to this question for all these posts by people of faith who buy it all except the belief of Hell as Christ describes it in the Gospels.
It begs the question: If hell is not terrible why would the son of God be sent to Earth to die a horrible death to save people from some brief discomfort in some place like a purgatory? This is much harder to believe than the traditional teaching itself, IMO.
I don’t really know if there’s a conscious afterlife. I’d like to think so - it’s certainly a comforting thought - but I think if it’s not going to be anything but darkness when I leave, I don’t want to wait around expecting something different.
I do believe that there’s an unconscious afterlife. I think that people live on, obviously first in the memories of the people they leave behind, but I believe that we all exist as part of the river of energy that life flows through, the pulse and the undercurrent that connects all living beings. Even after the last living memory of each of us fades, we live on as part of the morning air, the heat of the sunshine, the flow of the creeks that our ancestors stepped in and that are children and grandchildren will step in in time. There’s a scientific explanation for each of those phenomena, sure, but I think our energies are along for the ride. I think that’s true for both humans, pets, wildlife, and flora.
I do believe that there’s an unconscious afterlife. I think that people live on, obviously first in the memories of the people they leave behind, but I believe that we all exist as part of the river of energy that life flows through, the pulse and the undercurrent that connects all living beings. Even after the last living memory of each of us fades, we live on as part of the morning air, the heat of the sunshine, the flow of the creeks that our ancestors stepped in and that are children and grandchildren will step in in time. There’s a scientific explanation for each of those phenomena, sure, but I think our energies are along for the ride. I think that’s true for both humans, pets, wildlife, and flora.
Again, it is so big and vast, that I cannot comprehend. I am humbled enought to say it is beyond my comprehension. You guys who have it all figured out in the name of faith, well I mean I respect having that conviction. I just don't know.
One of the books in the Bible I find fascinating is The Book of Revelation. Specifically I find Chapter 8 intriguing with the trumpets. Some biblical scholars that study Revelation believe we are between the 5th and 6th trumpet.
The third trumpet is very interesting as it mentions the word “wormwood.” The Russian word for wormwood is Chernobyl. I believe the third trumpet describes the events of Chernobyl. I also believe the 5th trumpet is describing Desert Storm.
For more on the trumpets, please see the following link:
I know almost nothing about the books of Revelations, but a friend of mine who really delved into that stuff years ago has told me that the "Second Coming" so many people are awaiting already happened when Peter North...
Kidding, but he told me it already happened, according to some religions, in like 70 AD when Jesus saved a number of Jews.
One thing is for certain.
Some day, EVERYONE will KNOW the answer.
Some may be really happy or disappointed.
The real shame is no one will be able to dunk on the side that is wrong.
Some day, EVERYONE will KNOW the answer.
Some may be really happy or disappointed.
The real shame is no one will be able to dunk on the side that is wrong.
These are ideas that come down to faith and as many have said, we’ll never REALLY know until our earthly presence ends. Nevertheless I think keeping alive the concepts of Heaven and Hell, and I mean both of them, is critical for orderly society, regardless of whether they are “truisms” or not in the spiritual sense (whether real or interpretations of scripture etc).
Not enough humans in this world are kept in line merely doing the “right thing” merely for the right thing’s sake, or ‘earthly’ laws, rules, etc. Right or wrong, crazy or not, many if not most are motivated either in the Ultimate Positive (Heaven) and/or Ultimate Negative (Hell). Negating the concept of both, or even just Hell, will cause more problems than most probably would realize. If even a single percentage of people (which I think is far higher than that) abandoned towing the line with the assurance of no afterlife punishment or reward, I shudder to think…
Not enough humans in this world are kept in line merely doing the “right thing” merely for the right thing’s sake, or ‘earthly’ laws, rules, etc. Right or wrong, crazy or not, many if not most are motivated either in the Ultimate Positive (Heaven) and/or Ultimate Negative (Hell). Negating the concept of both, or even just Hell, will cause more problems than most probably would realize. If even a single percentage of people (which I think is far higher than that) abandoned towing the line with the assurance of no afterlife punishment or reward, I shudder to think…
Both during life and in the afterlife, yeah. Pretty much. This is why cities who are becoming soft on crime are turning into literal jungles.
Not everyone. People are wired differently. For some, nothing at all can deter them from acting badly. For others, they don’t need those concepts at all to act orderly or nicely etc.
But if the promise/threat of Heaven and/or Hell are the last bastions of what motivates even a single tiny percentage of people to act kindly, peacefully, etc. and absolutely nothing else will… that’s still a hell, sorry, heck of a lot of people. In the end, all of us, religious believers or not, should be happy for these concepts that help curtail murder, violence, thievery, destruction, etc.
But nothing is black and white. I personally believe in these things in the context of Christianity and scripture and generally in the merit of them … BUT definitely think the impacts of these concepts were cynically emphasized (possibly exaggerated… pearly gates, fire and brimstone, “thousand virgins” etc,) or at least encouraged, by governments (whether faith based or not), through the ages to help maintain order and encourage “desired” behaviors (fighting Crusades, suicide bombings on Israeli buses etc.). That’s when things can go squirrelly.
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