Afterlife (Endings)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 09, 2013, 19:04 (4334 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Perhaps you can explain to me why God's purposeful concealment puzzles you. It is an integral part of mature religion. It requires a strong faith to have faith in a concealed God. Tony understands.-You have answered your own question, though I wonder what makes a religion "mature". It requires a strong faith to believe in a power for whose existence there is no evidence other than inference, for whose presence there is no evidence whatsoever, and whose nature and intentions are totally unknown. It also requires a strong faith to believe in the ability of chance to assemble the ingredients for life and evolution. (Richard Dawkins understands.) I have no faith in either. I'm puzzled by your puzzlement at my puzzlement. -Thank you for your ideas about an afterlife. I presume that human consciousness joining "the universal consciousness" as a subsection still allows us to retain our individual identity, as experienced by all the NDE-ers. I'm not sure in what sense you're using the word "Heaven", which suggests some sort of paradise. Do you think all of us will enter this harmonious world? Or will mixed-up kids be reunited with their mixed-up parents in a continuation of life's miseries? Or do you visualize some kind of "cleansing" operation, through which everyone will live happily ever after? Or do you think there will be a selection policy based on what happens here? (Only a small proportion of resuscitated patients experience an NDE.) I ask such questions, as I did with Tony, because although NDEs and other such phenomena compel me to keep an open mind, no concept of an afterlife has ever made much sense to me. I am genuinely looking for answers.