No. No matter where you go you are always "Alive", Just how it is spent depends on religon, So do you want to believe in God and fly around and have a good time? Or do you want to spend your (After) Life in a lake of fire? Your Choice
Fire isn't a Liquid, you can't have a lake of fire it's impossible. (All though you can have a lake ON fire)
Some people think only a privileged few enter the gates of "heaven". After faithfully worshipping god for making us, we get to enter the endless paradise; where good things don't come to an end. If we haven't, then we burn for eternity. Now some might say "Muahaha, now all the criminals get to feel pain for what they've done. Ahahahaha." But that's kind of sadistic, isn't it? Thinking of people burning... I don't know if it's just me, but I don't think physical pain is how anyone should be punished. Also, I don't think that anyone can know the criteria to get into "heaven". However it's fair to say people generally know what is "good". Since that is so, I believe we should go through life helping others and becoming better people; that is what I think gets you in heaven. But enough of this tangent. What exactly is the afterlife? Well, since I'm here, I'll give you my take on it. What I think happens in the afterlife is that god welcomes you in, and he shows you around. "This here is the gym, and there's the supermarket, ooh and the club..." etc. etc. Then you get to meet everyone you ever knew; people you like and dislike. You get to look them in the eye and remember every single thing you ever did to them. This could be good (if you're a kind person, or if you see your girl) or a bad thing (if you happened to be an asshole). Now since this is eternity, you gotta live with all this, especially knowing that you'll be seeing these people around. There's no killing them or voting them off the island; no suicide. You're in the afterlife baby! Eternity likes you too much to leave. In the end, whatever you did is with you everyday; there's the metaphorical heaven and hell. There's no burning, torture, maniacal laughter, none of that.
Recruiting people into your religion through fear? I hardly believe that is a valid point. Believing in a religion just to go to heaven is the same as not believing in a religion. I believe the punishment (if there is one) is just as severe for the two. What you're doing is covering all your bases, where you could say, "Well if there is a god I get to go to heaven, but if there is no god then it doesn't make a difference." But that is not why people should be a part of a religion. Before someone joins a religion, they should say, "The only outcome of your afterlife will be an eternity in hell. Now, do you still believe?" Though I have a question: Why do you have to believe in a god to go to heaven? Can god really put the human race into two bins, the worthy and the not worthy?
According to Jesus, too get into heaven you have too sell EVERYTHING. A REALLY short list. TV Computer (That you're reading this on, and posting christian beliefs on) Your Body - Yeh, that counts too Your bible Your 'soul' Your Car
Its a metaphor.. Now you're denying the omnipotence of a God. If there were to be a God, he truly would be omnipotent, (the Christian God, that is) and there's nothing within his rights that says he can't expand heaven. The problem with everyone's realization of heaven becoming "boring" is a false analogy. Its not like you have any idea what heaven is like, you can't just call it boring because its eternity. You're comparing eternity on earth to eternity on heaven. Whether or not you accept that statement its blatantly true in your post. You can't just go and slap any adjectives to heaven except eternal. You can't then begin to label it with more adjectives, like boring. It just doesn't work. Nobody knows what its like, and even if we did, they haven't been there as long as eternity to figure out its boring. 1) I'll be getting in your roots of semantics here. Heaven is made up. Of course it is. Is the universe not made up? Are you not made up? The main thing you're missing the next part of that phrase. What is it made of/from/by? Obviously to someone as myself heaven IS made up, but by God, therefore it being true. You're made up, by different elements. The universe is made up, by dark matter, energy, and subatomic particles. 2) What are you trying to say here? Is it already not apparent that we die and rot like an animal? Its undeniable fact because we witness it here. I'm sure we haven't witnessed someone else's spirit go to heaven, have we? We just notice right now, the natural. Considering heaven is most likely the supernatural and the universe is the natural, you only know what goes on down here. When a person dies, their physical being dies. What about the soul? Is that soul that gives them life? For debate purposes, since you are saying heaven is a dead paradise, and according to the same beliefs that hold heaven as true, it would be a living paradise, because the premise is that the soul/spirit gives life.
Hmm well since Im not really religious at all. I think when you die your mind just like the rest of your body just stops working. Nothing moves on and becomes something else or wth ever all your thoughts and all that crap are gone inside your brain which died. when you die nothing happens, the world moves on. You either stay as ashes or stay decaying underground in a coffin or whatever happens to your body.
Good job Diablo. Great response. Short and to the point. All though I wished in step 4 you would have included a link to Eddie Izzard where he compares that to vampirism and cannibalism. It would have been a nice touch of humor. Though, I would tread lightly on issues of religion such as reincarnation. There is always a qualifier or a but or maybe. For instance, "the population rises because god creates new souls for 'X' reason."
I was only using his methods to disprove his idea. Don't worry. I don't know what happens. He may very well be right. That;s just what I think.
So what makes your religion correct? It's not the only religion in the world which creates a sense of ignorance in your post. Hypothetical situation. Say Buddhism is the correct religion. You've spent your life bettering yourself in Christianity, when you could have been saving yourself with Buddhism. To sum it up, you've wasted your time. We all have our faiths and obviously can't choose a "correct" religion. Or if there is a religious meaning behing mortality at all. I think that if there was really an omnipotent god who created the universe and all of whom are created to praise their name, why wouldn't that god reveal themself, especially in these times of religious reform. Why waste my time on a specific religion when it could be a hoax? And I can't respect all out of contradiction, so I'll remain neutral until the time being.
Essentially there are two sides. The "Physicalist/ Materialist side" that doesn't believe in the soul and the "theist side" that believes the body is separate from the mind. We can all agree that the "body rots", the real question is whether their is anything else. If I created a body structurally identical to mine at a molecular scale, would that have a soul? Or is there some "invisible string" tying my soul to my body in "another dimension" where it can't be measured, examined, or quantified in any way? Why have a body in the first place? ... how strange it is to be anything at all. Link Link ^Light-hearted jests at the issue.
OK I conceed on that one. Sure, God could make Heaven infinite and over-crowding would not be an issue. So if we don't know what heaven is like how do we know it's any good at all? If we can't compare it to anything how can we say it's such a great place to spend eternity? If I can't label it with any form of adjectives, or make any kind of comparison whatsoever, how can it impact me in any way at all? We feel emotion, this cannot be denied. In heaven we would have to feel emotion as well, otherwise what's the point of heaven and hell? If heaven is so "good" and hell is so "bad" but we don't feel any emotion then how could it really be "good" or "bad", e.g. "Burning in the fires of hell" - Well if I don't feel the emotional response from pain then I'm not feeling anything at all, in which case why should I care? Likewise I would not feel any sense of happiness in heaven, so why should I care? Sure I can fear Hell while I'm alive, but then I wouldn't give a hoot once I'm there... So either you have to believe that, which surely you can't for there to be a point to Heaven and Hell, or you believe that we can still feel emotion in the afterlife. Well, guess what? Boredom is an emotion! Given long enough, you'd get bored! So again I question the point of Heaven and Hell, since all paths would eventually lead to boredom. I don't know, after half an eternity in Heaven I may just ask to be transferred to Hell out of sheer boredom. It doesn't matter what Heaven and Hell are like, an eternity is, well, an eternity and one cannot be satisfied for that long regardless of the stimuli. Can you fully fathom what an eternity would be like and say you wouldn't honestly get bored at some point? I know I would, after seeing the splenders of the Afterlife for a few trillion years or so. (Don't respond about me using "years", an eternity still implies a sense of time, with no sense of time, again, you couldn't really feel emotion, I use years as a bench-mark, to put this stuff in a context you could comprehend) Of course I could easily say, how about after a few quadrabillion years? Or a Googleplex of Googleplex of years. Or, well, God knows how long Eternity, no thanks.
You know what if ghosts exist? How would that explain death? If they did exist then that would mean we probably just wonder around earth. Well I personally believe in reincarnation and I also believe we just simply die and that's it. Nice avatar Scarecrow L is awesome.
The soul is really not anything. People say your soul drift to whatever you believe in but I think wrong. Soul is just representing your feelings,thoughts,and what you are. So when you die your sould dies to and goes nowhere