Assuming there is a God , then Gods promise of everlasting life , and of heaven can be refused , and it would,nt be evil , should I choose to just opt out , like I was opting out after midnight from a party because Im tired .
If I choose , I can become absolutely nothing , Since for God to be great he must grant me freedom , I therefore have the freedom to deny his offer if I choose to do so .
I can lose my conciousness at death , give over my spirit as you give over your bowling shoes , and become nothing , I would,nt even be aware I was nothing .
God does,nt own me anymore than a parent owns its child , I am free to deny god . But if there,s a devil then he owns most religious folk who try to convert others in sly ways with “their” saviour , owns them like slaves
But suppose God exists but is not personal. Your life on earth may be a continnuum as suggested in Buddhism. If this is true, you wouldn’t have the choice “not to live.”
Right now our lives are very useful to the earth. We react with great intnsity transforming a lot of energy and substances like other organic life serving the earth well and actively participating in what Buddhism calls “suffering.” Organic life then continues to blindly react and repeat serving the process of samsara.
Your only choice is not to participate in the process. But it would require intent, consciousness, and will which as creatures of reaction is undeveloped in our being… As part of life on earth you must continue to live as a connection of one life to the next. The choice then is if by not blindy unconsciously reacting to life’s influences as organic life does, the quality of the continnuum can change for you. Then it may be posible to gradually outgrow your use to the earth which is similar in choosing not to live.
Life must live and serve some purpose. It is through consciousness that there can be a certain choice of purpose.
Agreed . My point really was that “finding” christ or mohammed is,nt the big deal most christians and Muslims make it out to be .
I think a lot of Buddhists are just as wrong as Christians and Muslims . Suppose there is no God , A spinning piece of rock in space , hurtling through the atmosphere after the big bang , a chaotic process , finally cools down , becomes the world for no reason in particular , yet somehow manages to develop a system of punishment and reward that “luckily” seems to suit people very well , in that they can now say- there might not be a god , but whats for you wont go by you
Thats Nonsense I reckon . Atheists who believe in karma ? . Karma logically must rely on some being/s to make it function correctly , or does the earth itself have the power to judge me ? Has it too came from chaos , yet remarkably has some power to control what happens to me after death ? I dont think so
When people die they run out of quarders.
Game over.
Can’t solve the mysteries and beat the targets anymore.
Thinking that god made life, death, pleasure and pain for his own amusement is a disrespectful instult to everything that exists.
The universe is beyond meaning, thus it appears meaningless.
The universe is beyond morality, thus it appears amoral.
If you had virtually no morality, perhaps you would view anything good or bad in the universe as simply an interesting change?
The idea of eternal life just means people can keep on playing the game. After a while, if they get bored with it, they may want to commit suicide, or not. There’s so much to learn and do in the universe, boredom is just retarded.
Heaven is idealist.
Idealism is a form of mental illness.
Be careful not to want to go to heaven.
In the same way that human sight is only aware of a limited spectrum of the motion of energy and matter,
Human approval is limited to only a small spectrum of meaning,
Because the human body can only preform a limited number of tasks,
The human mind [which is the director of those parts] can only feel that a limited number of things are meaningful.
OK but suppose this continuum natural for the purpose of organic life is not the purpose of man but has become so from the realities loosely expressed as the “fall of man?”
Suppose man has the potential of a higher conscious purpose? Suppose that consciousness doesn’t initiate with man but rather man as the highest form of organic life on earth has the ability to receive conscious influences from higher consciousness existing within the great whatever that can show man on earth the Way towards human meaning and purpose. Now the presence of higher conscious being such as Jesus becomes imperative for supplying the needed help if man is to become conscious and evolve more towards conscious purpose normal for man’s potential.
The fact that God, Tao, Void, or whatever you call it is beyond human comprehension is not to deny the existence of divine plan. The question then becomes what our obligation is to divine plan and how, through the help from above, we can become conscious of it.
I’ve been kicking around a similar notion the last few days. If there really was such a thing as Heaven, and you were given the choice between going there for all Eternity or simply ceasing to exist, which would you choose? I think that would be a tough call to make. Certainly my mind can’t conceive of any way the traditional notions of Heaven could be satisfying on an eternal basis. The faithful will say that’s just because our human mind is too limited to understand but to me that’s just a cop-out.
You would be like a stone I suppose in some ways , completely outside of any mode of thought , just being . It would,nt feel like a punishment because you would,nt feel anything .
For God to be great , I can refuse him if I like , and if I dont have negativity towards him I wont be guilty of sin . I believe The story of lucifer is supposed to illustrate that rebellion against Gods authority is wrong , directly questioning what God must do and doing the opposite , since if there,s a God , its gods universe .
But if we are not attacking Gods rule , if we are saying its great n all , just that we dont want to be part of it , he should allow us this freedom .
Can I not come undone from God , must I experience ? I dont think so , for god to be great he must allow the possibility of me being an independant spirit , another observer & co creator , with its own rights . Although God may have created me , God does,nt own me . I can decide whether to follow or not . Like being in business with someone , and then wanting to get out of the contract to do other things .
Its says in the old testament that the beings created in the beginning had the power to decide their own fate , God did not own them , although he made them . If God exists , we are also these angels , with the power to destroy or build , follow , or rebel . But I,d imagine those wanting to remain part of “gods consciousness” do have a certain standard to live up to . The question would be do you want to remain conscious I suppose
As I say , I dont believe in hurtling pieces of rock in space chaotically coming together over billions of years to form a worlds like ours , which then somehow develop a system which could only be described as extremely intelligent , ie , karmic law & a divine plan .
The suggestion that nature , something which in light of the big bang is essentially just mud & clay , borne of fire , being intelligent enough to utilize me again and again , like some sort of useful ecological tool , is a bit ridiculous I find . I could be wrong , but Im sure that this is,nt possible .
Everything here on earth shows us that for a job to be done , you need a company of beings to carry out the task , Everything works this way , the post office , law & the justice system , the military , the restaurant trade , the goverment .
Yet most of us dont draw any conclusions from that when we discuss cosmic morality and the natural cycle of rebirth
Perhaps it is not so chaotic. Do you really believe that the placement of stars within the Milky Way is accidental? Why form the cluster called the Milky Way. Why don’t stars exist at random throughout the universe? Is their bond purely chaotic?
I know that time seems a barrier but if you consider that time may be relative in the sense that what seems for us as a an enormous amount of light years may be just a “day” for consciousness at the level of the Milky Way. Divine plan is just universal laws. Time is not the issue. Karma is just a continuation of effects. Our energies that we give out attract similar energies so we end up getting back what we give out provoking reactions which create new karma and on and on it goes as part of a universal process the goal of which is the continual transformation of substances.
Consider nature as a giant machine which is part computer. It contains all these parts and its function is to try to keep them in balance. Yet there are intentional laws designed so as to make such balance impossible so keep the machine running. This continual effort towards balance we experience as cycles. There is no consciousness required for this but just a computer programmed for this purpose.
Mud and clay is not some sort of thing that exists in isolation but is part of a continuing process in response to universal laws or divine conscious plan.
But society is not everything on earth. How many experts are required in nature for an acorn to become an oak? A favorable environment is all that is necessary.
For a man to become a man and not just continue to live in darkness also requires a favorable environment but in this case, a favorable “inner” environment. which though teachings can help, must be created by oneself. Another cannot do it.
Perhaps keeping the questions open and impartially verifying what we are; “Know Thyself” is more important then drawing conclusions. If we live in imagination, what good are our conclusions?
So if we don’t draw conclusions and cannot make the necessary impartial effort to “Know Thyself,” you can see why speaking of human meaning and purpose seems so absurd to so many.
What if the choice was not between heaven and oblivion, but a choice between eternal torture and working a satisfying job on a new pollution free earth with absolute justice, peace and honesty among your neighbors. Would that make the choice easier? As I understand it, that’s the biblical choice before us.