It was actually her obsession with the afterlife and the coming of the end times that led to me cutting off contact with my mother in 2014 and me renouncing my faith.
My mom was a devout Christian my whole life, but she went full-on fire-and-brimstone Bible thumper during her divorce from my dad. My dad had cheated on her multiple times and she’d finally had enough of it.
She hated my dad for walking out, but vehemently denied that fact and instead projected her hatred onto God himself. She would always say my dad (and anyone who supported him on his side of the family) would be judged harshly for his actions in the next life. By the way, she said this about basically anyone she didn’t like, including people she disagreed with politically or morally; it might not surprise you to learn that she was quite a bigot as well.
In the last few years I knew her, she started to obsess over the prophecies in Revelations. She’d constantly send me chain emails about how the various conflicts in the middle east were a sign that Jesus Christ was about to return, or a misquoted article about the US government looking into identity microchips was Obama (the Antichrist, obviously) giving his followers the Mark of the Beast. The last time I spoke to her was in 2014 so I never got to ask her what she thought of Trump and his MAGA hats, but I have a strong feeling the irony would have been lost on her; I once had to explain to her that an article she showed me from The Onion was satire and her response was, “they shouldn’t be allowed to say those things.”
She died in 2020, but not from COVID. Two years earlier, she had let a kidney stone get infected which then progressed to full-on sepsis. It responded to the treatment at the time but the infection damaged her heart, which ended up killing her. For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why she didn’t see a doctor because a kidney stone would have hurt like hell, but then I realized she probably felt that it was just God calling her home.
So yes, anecdotally speaking there are religious people out there who are obsessed with the afterlife. I think people are still inherently afraid of death, though, so they’re not exactly in a hurry to die. But for a religious person who’s ready to die, it’s likely nearly all they can think about.
Or, you could spend your whole life dreaming of the day that God judges your enemies for you, instead of listening to your loved ones telling you to move on and find your own happiness, or you know, learning some actual conflict management skills.
Yeah. As someone who really likes thinking about metaphysics I’m really excited to die and see what it feels like. That being said I also really enjoy living and I’m not in a rush to die. It’ll happen eventually and I want to try to do as much as I can while I can.
Everyone should be excited to die, not just religious people. Being excited to die means you lived a good life that you’re satisfied with.
I feel different today as my sensory as well as sensory processing organs have developed.
Being dead, just as before being born, I possess no such organs and expect not to “feel”.
But my position isn’t the interesting one, @RadicalEagle suggested something I interpreted as still having perception beyond life, and I was wondering if that excludes having perception before life, and how that ties into their metaphysics.
I feel different today as my sensory as well as sensory processing organs have developed.
There are a lot more changes influencing your perception of reality than just sensory development.
Being dead, just as before being born, I possess no such organs and expect not to “feel”.
That’s dependent on your consciousness being limited to your physical body. Who’s to say that your consciousness wasn’t limited so a pantheistic deity could interact with itself. Both theories are equally unscientific as you can’t disprove what happens before or after life
There are a lot more changes influencing your perception of reality than just sensory development.
I’d agree, but those are enough to clearly demonstrate a mechanism for changed perception in the proposed time span. The underlying question is question begging and whataboutism, so I think I’ve provided an overly generous answer to a dishonest question.
That’s dependent on your consciousness being limited to your physical body. Who’s to say that your consciousness wasn’t limited so a pantheistic deity could interact with itself. Both theories are equally unscientific as you can’t disprove what happens before or after life
As we can reliably affect consciousness though manipulating the body, it’s well established that it’s contingent on the body.
And as we can map consciousness happening in the body down to individual neurons firing, where would a non-corporeal consciousness interact with a body?
You calling these reliably reproducible facts unscientific belies a fundamental misunderstanding of science.
Though naturalism might not be the only way to investigate the universe, we have yet to encounter any reliable other paradigms. And even if we would discover them, naturalism would still be part of science, we’d just add the other paradigms to the areas they’re useful, like we’ve done with psychology, sociology, and even quantum physics.
A difficult question for unfalsifiable hypotheses is that if they’re unfalsifiable, they are also undetectable, and as such no different from figments of imagination. Why should I believe your imagination when my imaginary friend says not to?
And as we can map consciousness happening in the body down to individual neurons firing, where would a non-corporeal consciousness interact with a body?
Did I mention dualism or substance monism? Materialism doesn’t necessarily include physicalism.
You calling these reliably reproducible facts unscientific belies a fundamental misunderstanding of science.
Read up on why physicalism is not verifiable. Your imagination saying consciousness ends with death is equally verifiable as my imagination saying you’re taken away by the flying spaghetti monster.
Though naturalism might not be the only way to investigate the universe, we have yet to encounter any reliable other paradigms.
Ever heard of ontological pluralism? Naturalism is not physicalism…
Nah. But reason and logic are just human constructs that you’ll get to let go of when you die. The process of being born is indescribable for me. I think the process of dying will also be indescribable by definition.
The problem is, most of the current generation is well aware they haven’t lived good lives. Not to mention, the conundrum of living longer implies a chance for an accumulation of more misdeeds. Personally, the most likely scenario is almost everyone becomes aware there is likely nothing afterwards at some point. Religion is more there like the bumpers for kids cosmic bowling, ensuring zero gutter balls. Keeping you playing, until the day you’re old enough to remove them and pay taxes, revealing life is a subscription, and childhood was a free trial all along.
Not everyone can live a “good” life by your definition of good, but they can live a good life by their definition of good.
Current generations realize that what older people are trying to sell them is a scam, and they’re working on building a new better reality based on their fresh perspective on what reality is.
You can look at religion through many lenses, but at the end of the day religion is just an unprovable fiction we choose to believe because it’s how we want the world to work. My belief that if you want to live a good life you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you is religious. Game theory and my life experiences support my belief, but it is ultimately an unprovable belief because of Hume’s Guillotine and the fact that my definition of “good life” is subjective.
It’s 100% possible that I’m just tricking myself into thinking helping other people is good and makes me happy, but I will still choose to believe.
The good afterlife is only available to them if they have been “good people” while alive, and dying early is not being a “good person”. Also, after their death, they supposedly get “judged”, and everybody is going to worry about the X number of “sins” that they did during their life that might end them up in hell.
That’s not true even for all of Christianity, let alone all religions…
For example orthodox Christians believe everyone goes to heaven, and that we are all bathed in unconditional love from God. Hell is finding yourself unworthy of that love because of how you lived.
Orthodox Christians believe that everyone has sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God, that the punishment for sin is death, Jesus is the only way to The Father and the way or forgiveness of sins. It’s not everyone. If everyone went to heaven that would mean sin would go unpunished.
Punishment is a part of catholic dogma, and makes no sense if you think of God as absolutely good and loving.
If we have allowed our hearts to be purified, then God’s presence will be healing, joyful, and life-giving. If we refuse God’s healing embrace, then His love will burn like fire, “for our God is a consuming fire” (Deut 4:24, 9:3, Isa 33:14, Heb 12:23)
Here’s an alternative translation of those verses from NLT:
I loved your ancestor Jacob, but I rejected his brother, Esau
But I don’t know any Hebrew and only a few words of ancient Greek, so can’t comment on how accurate it is.
Besides that, the perception of God is vastly different between the testaments:
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9
1 John 4
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
Regardless of how much you look forward to what comes after and how certain you feel about it, no one is going to want to go through the pain that comes with dying.
What if dying feels like letting go of all your pain? I can imagine dying feels good. The best part about dying is you can’t be certain what it’ll be like. It could be the ultimate punchline, the ultimate letdown, or just utter nonsense as you fall asleep.
Just like life, dying is out of my control so I’m just going to go with it and try to enjoy it as much as I can.
I mean, maybe after your heart stops and your brain function starts to slow down it might be peaceful, but unless you’re on a lot of painkillers the process up until that point tends to be excruciatingly painful - at least personally, thats the scary part.
I mean, as grim as it is, how many people get the luxury of a safe environment when they die, nonetheless proper care and support. Half the world barely even has access to real medicine, and even in the most developed and progressive countries, medical assistance isn’t always adequate and not everything can be predicted or prevented. Not everyone meets death in pain but most do. The reality is death (and health issues in general) does tend to be scary regardless of what comes after. At the same time, thats all the more reason to care for each other and push for a safer and more caring world, be it in preventative safety measures or in proper care for those who are terminally ill, not just for the wealthy, but for everyone.
But yeah I totally agree. I still feel mortal fear in my daily life, especially in dangerous scenarios.
But isn’t that what the ultimate high would feel like? In order to look forward to dying you have to be able to look forward to limit experiences and bad trips, which is insane.
I just hope that if I die in a violent accident I’m listening to “Last Surprise” from the Persona 5 soundtrack because I would really appreciate that.
Careful that’s how you end up drinking the blue Kool aid.
The ending of life is a sad thing, it can be frightening to imagine losing that control.
Faith is one form of trying to capture that control. Please try to cherish the life you have here and make the most of it. For most I suspect there’s no need to rush it.
Faith is also trying to cherish the life you have, and make the best of it. For example “God gave you a talent, don’t waste it” or saying grace and focusing on what you’re thankful for in life. I even knew people who use prayer as a form of mindfulness meditation to keep them grounded in the present.
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