Some thoughts on life...

This is for encouragement, ideas, and support for people going through a faith transition no matter where you hope to end up. This is also the place to laugh, cry, and love together.
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Guy
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Some thoughts on life...

Post by Guy » Mon Dec 11, 2017 3:37 pm

Reading through Sparky’s thread on the loss of his sister (so sorry Sparky) has brought up a new set of thoughts and emotions that have been recurring for me lately.

Having been a non-believer for almost a decade now, my thoughts on religion and God have pretty much settled into place. In the beginning, there was a lot of angst and anger. I felt betrayed by a religion that white-washed its past. I spent months immersing myself in books and forums and material trying to understand what was true, or not true, about the religion I was born into. That evolved into researching more than just my religion, but researching ALL religions, and their deities. Eventually (8 or 9 months into my research I suppose) I came to the conclusion that mankind created the Gods, and not the other way around.

In the beginning I was happy and satisfied with my new belief paradigm. Having this new knowledge actually helped me to understand many of the things about my own religion that I never understood before. Things I had stored on my “shelf” because of the cog dis. Some of these things reflected poorly on the church, which I now understood why. But at the same time some reflected well on the church. The big thing now was that I could reflect on them objectively instead of from a programmed (brainwashed) point of view.

Interestingly, before having gone through my paradigm shift, I considered myself a “good Mormon boy” (albeit with some minor flaws). But after the paradigm shift, I began to see myself in a new light. I realized that while I still had some flaws, I was now a much better person than before. I became more understanding, more tolerant, more giving, and more loving than I was as a “good Mormon boy”. I became a “Humanist”, believing in doing good deeds for my fellow man. Not because of some eternal reward (which may or may not exist), but because as a fellow human being they deserved to have something good done for them! And I was “happier” knowing that we all are indeed the rulers of our own lives and our own decisions, and the only ones judging us on how we live our lives are ourselves.

But lately I have been having these new thoughts roll around in my head, and they are not fun.

As a Humanist/Atheist, I believe that our time here on this Earth is it. Once we pass on, the only thing that exists is the memory of us in the minds of our loved ones. And in the beginning I was ok with this. It didn’t bother me that at the end of this life, I will be no more.

Recently though, I received a message from Dad (in his mid 80’s). In that message he said that he believes that his time to pass on is near. This made me sad of course, to think that soon he may not be around to talk with. And being just a few years from retirement myself, of course it made me realize that I’m getting older as well. As a result thoughts of my eventual passing have begun to enter my head with increasing frequency. And while I know with my own personal certainty that there is no “afterlife”, I think to myself “wouldn’t it be nice to once again have that hope in something after the grave!”

I know I could never go back to being a believer.
But there are times when I think it might have been nice to have never found “the truth”!
Happy Dissenter :D

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Red Ryder
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by Red Ryder » Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:07 pm

Guy wrote:I know I could never go back to being a believer. But there are times when I think it might have been nice to have never found “the truth”!

Yes, there's a sense of lost innocence that would be nice to have back at times. I miss some of that during difficult times.
“It always devolves to Pantaloons. Always.” ~ Fluffy

“I switched baristas” ~ Lady Gaga

“Those who do not move do not notice their chains.” ~Rosa Luxemburg

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Hagoth
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by Hagoth » Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:59 pm

Those kinds of thoughts bounce around in my head from time to time as I get older too, but as much as I wish there was more to life, and as fun as it sounds like it would be to make your own planets and fly around a warp drive speed, I always come back to the notion that even those things would lose their sparkle after a few thousand years. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a million years into an infinite lifetime, having done every fun/cool thing you can imagine hundreds of thousands of times and just being sick and tired of it all, knowing that there are still millions, billions, trillions, zillions of years ahead of you.

And that's if you became a God. Anything below that, which all religions tell us is the more likely outcome, would be significantly less rewarding. Scripture tells us that most people end up, assuming you don't go to some kind of hell, spending eternity around God's throne, praising him night and day. Doesn't that sound like a great time? Of course, the response is to say that the terrific thing about the afterlife is that you always feel great and you never get bored. So you have a pointless eternity ahead of you of doing the same things over and over and over, and the upside is that you are just contented with that? I wish

I could add another hundred years to my life and take it in increments from there, with the option to opt out at some point, but if you think of the implications maybe oblivion isn't that bad.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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slavereeno
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by slavereeno » Tue Dec 12, 2017 9:21 am

Hagoth wrote:
Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:59 pm
Those kinds of thoughts bounce around in my head from time to time as I get older too, but as much as I wish there was more to life, and as fun as it sounds like it would be to make your own planets and fly around a warp drive speed, I always come back to the notion that even those things would lose their sparkle after a few thousand years. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a million years into an infinite lifetime, having done every fun/cool thing you can imagine hundreds of thousands of times and just being sick and tired of it all, knowing that there are still millions, billions, trillions, zillions of years ahead of you.
I have been going round and round on this in my thoughts as well. I had this very thought before shelf borked when I watched the move "Inception." They could basically do and create whatever they wanted, but it got boring after a while.

I am still not "sure" what happens after we die. I could see us going on in some way but not at our current level of consciousness, because no matter how awesome "heaven" is, eventually it would get boring.

I like to play Minecraft with my kids. Sometimes I get a little wigged out comparing our Minecraft adventures to life. I get shoved into an avatar where I do things, fight monsters, build stuff, become a survivor. We have a ton of fun playing together but eventually we get bored of the game and step back into real life, pulling our "Souls" from the Minecraft avatar. Then, after a time we want to go back and do it again. Sometimes with a slightly different twist on the game. And we always play with the difficulty set to maximum, because its not as fun if its too easy. Why is that? I wonder if we aren't just living a projection that we setup to experience, and when we die we've just left the game. Maybe we come back in a whole new different game after a while... I dunno, it ends up making more sense to me than most religion does anyway.

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LaMachina
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by LaMachina » Tue Dec 12, 2017 10:49 am

I have the same thoughts all the time.

I went through some tough losses while still struggling to hold onto my faith and, while it's never, ever easy to deal with loss, I believe I find it easier to deal with now as an atheist/humanist than it was as I believer. I can't even really explain it but I think it has to do with the fact that I no longer feel the need to please some divinity to be "blessed". I can just take life as it comes.

There are certainly moments when the thought of annihilation is unsettling but, as Hagoth mentions, the thought of eternity can also be unsettling.

I listened to this podcast recently, perhaps it will be of some interest to others who have these ponderous moments:

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/ ... s-of-death

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Guy
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by Guy » Tue Dec 12, 2017 11:13 am

LaMachina wrote:
Tue Dec 12, 2017 10:49 am
There are certainly moments when the thought of annihilation is unsettling but, as Hagoth mentions, the thought of eternity can also be unsettling.
Yes, Hagoth makes a very astute point that I've never considered. While my eventual death may be unsettling, the monotony and boredom of eternal existence may be just as unsettling!
Happy Dissenter :D

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sparky
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by sparky » Tue Dec 12, 2017 12:19 pm

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience, Guy. It feels similar to what I've gone through, and I've also ended up with an atheist-humanist paradigm. I'm a practicing scientist, and I know there are many scientists who maintain some kind of faith or religious belief in an afterlife, but personally I just can't believe it. It seems clear to me that our conscious experience derives entirely from the physical stuff in our brains and bodies. How that works is a mystery, but all the evidence points to a materialistic cause. So once that stops, it's all over. Anyone who has gone under anesthesia for surgery knows what being dead "feels" like—nothing. No different from what becomes of a flame once the candle is blown out.

The best way I've found of accepting the idea of death as an end comes from the ancient Epicurean poet Lucretius from his work, On the Nature of Things. It's called the Symmetry Argument; basically, time after we die is no different from time before we were born. We simply don't experience it:
In days of old, we felt no disquiet...So, when we shall be no more - when the union of body and spirit that engenders us has been disrupted - to us, who shall then be nothing, nothing by any hazard will happen any more at all.

Look back at the eternity that passed before we were born, and mark how utterly it counts to us as nothing. This is a mirror that Nature holds up to us, in which we may see the time that shall be after we are dead.”

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Hagoth
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by Hagoth » Tue Dec 12, 2017 1:31 pm

Or as Mark Twain said:
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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deacon blues
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by deacon blues » Tue Dec 12, 2017 4:11 pm

I enjoyed reading your thoughts, Hagoth. I find some peace in the words of pop singer Laura Nyro: “And when I die, and when I’m gone, there’ll be one child born to carry on.” I have hope for an after life, but if there isn’t one, there will still be children being born, in the foreseeable future, to experience the joys and pains of life.
God is Love. God is Truth. The greatest problem with organized religion is that the organization becomes god, rather than a means of serving God.

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Ghost
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by Ghost » Sat Dec 16, 2017 3:18 pm

I can relate to the thoughts you describe. I've experienced several deaths in the past few months, including a friend's suicide and one of my favorite people in the world (a family member) succumbing to cancer in a particularly unpleasant way.

It seems like such a waste that someone's accumulated experience and personality is simply gone. I can't help but veer at times into the territory of wondering why anyone should bother having experiences in the first place. But I can't really take a full-on nihilistic view to heart, simply because I enjoy living and having experiences, regardless of whether nothing will come of it in the grand scheme (because there is no grand scheme). There will be plenty of time for nonexistence later, so I might as well go ahead and have this experience for now.

One of the things that really hit me during my faith transition (I say that as if it's a done deal. Though maybe it is and I'm still in denial. Who knows?) is that when I consider the real underlying questions, it makes little difference whether there's an afterlife or whether the God I have conceived of exists. Those things don't magically make anything more or less meaningful. Meaning seems to be just the stories that I invent or adopt, totally independent of truth or reality (which may be nothing more than terms that I use to describe aspects of some of those stories).

Also, what Hagoth said.

Thoughtful
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by Thoughtful » Sat Dec 16, 2017 4:05 pm

When I go through phases of existential woe, I'm comforted by the idea that for angst to exist, hope must also exist.

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crazyhamster
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by crazyhamster » Sun Dec 17, 2017 9:53 am

I console myself with the knowledge that in a real way, the matter and energy that make up "me" at this moment have existed since the Big Bang, and will continue to exist in some form until the end of the Universe. For a time, they come together to give me consciousness. It's inevitable that the pattern that is me will break down but that energy and matter will still exist.

As far as my own mortality goes, I try not to dwell on it. I don't need to rehearse it through my mind every day - that's like dying thousands of deaths. I will experience it once, and that is quite enough.

I'd still like to see how it all turns out, though!

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Emower
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by Emower » Sun Dec 17, 2017 12:38 pm

Interesting thoughts. What often bugs me when I ponder death is that there will be no satisfaction of being "right" if there isn't anything there after death. Say you know you are dying, it is only moments away. You think to yourself, "well, I guess I will find out in a moment if there is something there." If there isn't anything there, you aren't going to find out, you just cease to know anything. That is the most discomfiting thought about it all for me.

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Emower
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by Emower » Sun Dec 17, 2017 12:45 pm

Hagoth wrote:
Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:59 pm
Those kinds of thoughts bounce around in my head from time to time as I get older too, but as much as I wish there was more to life, and as fun as it sounds like it would be to make your own planets and fly around a warp drive speed, I always come back to the notion that even those things would lose their sparkle after a few thousand years. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a million years into an infinite lifetime, having done every fun/cool thing you can imagine hundreds of thousands of times and just being sick and tired of it all, knowing that there are still millions, billions, trillions, zillions of years ahead of you.

And that's if you became a God. Anything below that, which all religions tell us is the more likely outcome, would be significantly less rewarding. Scripture tells us that most people end up, assuming you don't go to some kind of hell, spending eternity around God's throne, praising him night and day. Doesn't that sound like a great time? Of course, the response is to say that the terrific thing about the afterlife is that you always feel great and you never get bored. So you have a pointless eternity ahead of you of doing the same things over and over and over, and the upside is that you are just contented with that? I wish

I could add another hundred years to my life and take it in increments from there, with the option to opt out at some point, but if you think of the implications maybe oblivion isn't that bad.
I have thought about this before as a TBM. I always figured that there would be some sort of plan God was following, administered by some other higher gods or powers. And they must have some plan as well. It probably just continued in some divinely satisfying progression forever. No, it doesn't make sense but it never has to if you have faith. I always thought it was possibly like the scene at the end of Men In Black where our universe turned out to be a marble played with by some other aliens which hinted at an exponentially more vast and complicated existence. That only partially solved the eternal boredom problem by shrouding it in uncertainty enough that the mind boggled and i thought "well I can't understand it."

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Guy
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Re: Some thoughts on life...

Post by Guy » Wed Dec 20, 2017 12:47 pm

Thanks everyone for taking the time to share your many profound thoughts. I've really enjoyed reading them and using them to expand my own thinking concerning this topic! :D
Happy Dissenter :D

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