What Happens After Death
- Thread starter Into Darkness
- Start date
I hope there isn't an afterlife. The idea of existing for eternity is horrifying, especially if you can't cease to exist. No matter what you did, you still have eternity ahead of you. I get bored watching shows I like, I won't even be able to handle a billion years.
A
Amaris
Guest
I could handle a billion years, easy.
Go read about the eventual fate of the universe and get back to me. Nothing but darkness and emptiness await you.
I'll let there be light.
A
Amaris
Guest
Oh, I'm aware of that; this is about some kind of eternal life, apparently elsewhere where universal change is static. If we're talking our world/universe as it is, then it's not eternal life either way, but I'll take all I can get.
I guess I'm more pointed at the idea that we get maybe, MAYBE 100 years, possibly a few more if the genetic dice are rolled just the right way. Most of us will get 60 - 80 years, with the first 20 being voted to education/growth, the middle 20 being devoted to building a career and family, and the last 20 being devoted to enjoying life how one wants it, with anything after that a nice bonus.
Pisses me off, it does.
One of the stories my favorite book, Einstein's Dreams is about a world where people live forever unless killed by accident or suicide. In the story no one is truly free. No man can act of his own volition, because he is bound to the previous generations who are all still there: if he asks his father for advice, his father in turn asks his father, who asks his father, and so on down the ancestral line. So humanity gets stuck in perpetual infantilism, except for the brave few who end up taking their own lives.
I was under the impression that the way it works is that, when we die, our souls remain in the body until the Rapture described in Revelation, when we all rise and are judged at the Second Coming. THEN we depart to our final destinations. ...As I recall the Scripture, anyway...I believe that when a person dies, they either go to Heaven or Hell. I don't mean to ruin all this scientific talk, but the OP did ask what we believe happens after death.
No, every Protestant denomination I'm aware of (mine included - I'm Lutheran) teaches that the soul goes immediately to its final destination upon death.
The way I understand it is that both views are correct. That is because of the nature of Eternity. There is no time there. When someone dies they are immediately judged at the final judgement and then go to their final destination. Sometime during that we are runited with our body that has been recreated. For example, my mother died in 2011. I believe her experince was she immediately was at the final judgement and then went to "heaven." My experience is that she died and now I must wait to see here again. She is asleep to me. When I die I will immediately go to final judgement and to my final destination and will see her again. A third perspective is that of believers who are raptured. Instead of dying they are just taken right to final judgement and their final destination. For us, still alive everything happens on a time table. For those in Eternity it all happens now. So in a way my mother is not waiting to see me, for her I'm there now.
That is sorta how I see it.
In Christianity, are there souls before birth? Or is the soul created with the baby?
The soul is created at the start of a new life.
Some see it as at the taking of the first breath because of God breathing into Adam and Adam became a living soul at that moment. However there are passages where God is refering to an unborn child as if they are already existing.
Does the Bible say much about Heaven? I remember the bits about mansions and streets of gold, all of which sound impressive if you were born in the desert a few millennia ago before we developed CG and imagination. It just seems like stuff that convinces poor people to be content with being poor because they get good stuff later. Where are the rivers made of joy, mountains of light and park benches made of orgasms?
If there is a God, he should hire me to reboot Heaven, it stinks. I'll make it like Tron meets Asgard with an alcohol lake and a weed forest. No one needs a mansion, just a nice place to go to and relax from being dead. I'd go with a ranch style home with big windows and a pool/hot tub.
If there is a God, he should hire me to reboot Heaven, it stinks. I'll make it like Tron meets Asgard with an alcohol lake and a weed forest. No one needs a mansion, just a nice place to go to and relax from being dead. I'd go with a ranch style home with big windows and a pool/hot tub.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmZYIyySxPE[/yt]
-- may contain fake breasts.
-- may contain fake breasts.
In my Heaven reboot, Jaws 2, 3 and The Revenge will not be shown without a MST3K riffing or "Heaven-vision" which makes bad movie good. The Star Wars prequels are going to take a lot of work, God will have to call in some back-up from the other gods. But we can fix those movies.
You mean Adywan?
Followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster get beer volcanoes, so I'd at least expect some larger fountains in yours.
There are older traditions that are a bit more specific about soul origin, particularly Jewish mysticism and the concept of the Tree of Souls or Guf - possibly the reference to the existence of the metaphysical child before birth of the physical that you mentioned:
Most of the heaven/hell stuff is non-biblical or heavily elaborated from the text. Most of it comes from interpreting 'kingdom of god' as meaning a post-mortem 'heaven' rather than a temporal, corporeal, human world based on Jesus' teachings. As you might realise from my tone, I subscribe to the latter interpretation. I see heaven, hell, and all associated stuff about good and bad people and postmortem judgment as products not of Jesus but of the medieval church.
As for what happens after death, I lack evidence as the dead are very slow at contributing properly to the literature. I'd like to believe that our 'soul', whatever it is that makes us 'alive' rather than 'dead' continues in some manner. But I can't say it is central to my philosophy or faith, and I accept that it is far more likely that the answer is 'dust to dust'. And in honesty, I see wonder in that too - that what is inside me came from the stars and will return there. I don't think its as awful and empty as people make out.
I have plans for a water park-type attraction. We can get Walt Disney's ghost to help plan the layout and some of the rides. Due to it being Heaven we don't have to worry about it ever getting dirty.
Followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster get beer volcanoes, so I'd at least expect some larger fountains in yours.
No, a complete overhaul. New actors, new script, new story.
