Over at The Philosophy of Me, Tim has posted a thoughtful essay, Religion and Anxiety-Reduction Theories. One commenter wrote, "If God and religion are all man-made constructs and there is nothing after this life, then why bother?"
Of course, from my humble perspective, the question posed makes far more sense the other way around: If there IS an afterlife, then why bother with THIS one? Why not skate through life on earth doing as little as possible in a positive or negative light in the hopes that the next "life" will be so much better?
I've never understood why so many Christians are fixated on the notion of something that comes after this life on earth. In many such instances, they waste their lives in trying to position themselves to enjoy a later one that may or may not exist.
As far as anyone KNOWS, the life any of us has today is the ONLY life we have. None of us KNOWS how long or brief that life will be. So, it makes sense to me to embrace every moment of the here and now. Any form of existence beyond this very moment is pure conjecture and speculation.
Even IF this life turns out to be nothing more than a grand illusion, it is an illusion we are conscious of. An afterlife is beyond our capacity to comprehend in a meaningful way. So, why not concentrate on what we can see, hear, feel, and think about in this singular moment and let everything else go?
Of course, from my humble perspective, the question posed makes far more sense the other way around: If there IS an afterlife, then why bother with THIS one? Why not skate through life on earth doing as little as possible in a positive or negative light in the hopes that the next "life" will be so much better?
I've never understood why so many Christians are fixated on the notion of something that comes after this life on earth. In many such instances, they waste their lives in trying to position themselves to enjoy a later one that may or may not exist.
As far as anyone KNOWS, the life any of us has today is the ONLY life we have. None of us KNOWS how long or brief that life will be. So, it makes sense to me to embrace every moment of the here and now. Any form of existence beyond this very moment is pure conjecture and speculation.
Even IF this life turns out to be nothing more than a grand illusion, it is an illusion we are conscious of. An afterlife is beyond our capacity to comprehend in a meaningful way. So, why not concentrate on what we can see, hear, feel, and think about in this singular moment and let everything else go?
exactly :)
ReplyDeletei think far too many of them do *not* spend much time addressing the afterlife.
ReplyDeleteyou see, the fundamentalist notion of "salvation by grace" has been turned into "salvation by faith". all you have to do is believe in jesus, and you're saved. don't have to do all the messy work of actually being nice to people, not sinning, etc. see, god made us sinners, so of course we sin. and jesus is god, so of course we can never be as good as him, so it's useless to try too hard to emulate his actions. it's a form of magical thinking.
however, it breaks down when anyone criticizes their beliefs, because that makes them think, which threatens their belief/faith, which would make them burn in hell. their potemkin village of belief is quite fragile, you see.
so when a christian minister turns out to be paying for gay prostitutes, that's ok. because he immediately confesses he's a sinner (ie, doesn't protest that what he was doing was not a sin), which according to the fundamentalist notion they already knew since everyone is a sinner. and now there's someone that's a worse sinner than them, so that makes them feel even safer, as there are worse sinners than themselves.
however, if the "sinner" protests that being gay is not a sin, then that threatens the fundamentalist beliefs, so those people must be viciously attacked.
or, to simplify all the above into a joke i heard:
when i was 5, i prayed for a bike, but didn't get one. then i realized that's not how prayer works. so, i stole a bike, and prayed for forgiveness!
--sgl