Poll: Who do you thinks gets eternally rewarded?

By eternally rewarded I mean, goes to heaven, gets resurrected, achieves nirvana, whatever fits your belief system.

Nobody. I think that when you die, it's lights out. Anything else just seems like a human invention to make us feel better about the inevitable.

We humans love our sugar coated inevitability.

Sounds like a new cereal...

manufactured no doubt by, Post Mortem

;:dies::

They also make Frosted Jews and Mouseketeer Stigmata*

*not being racist, just quoting DVN.

It's True!

Frosted Jews

I misread that as Post Mormon

NEW! sugar coated inevitability!! Crispy corn cereal with coffin shaped crunchies and tombstone marsmallow bits!

i tend to think lights out = salvation.��

I don't know. I personally believe in lights out, game over like Josh. But...I don't believe as a sort of conviction, I believe more as a result of not believing anything else. THat didn't sound right. I don't believe in god and an afterlife and all that. But I also don't rule it out. I'm not really searching, but I'm not closed. In my heart of hearts I don't believe in anything spiritual. But if something comes along and changes my mind, so be it.� If heaven exists, yay, hope the rules do let me in for being a good person, otherwise I'm headed the other way. *shrug*

It's the only way I can make an all-powerful, loving God fit into my cosmology.

Of course, old William of Ockham has something to say about creating universes when there's a simpler explanation. But I'm just not ready to believe that this is all there is.

To quote that philosopher poet Meatloaf, "life is a lemon, and I want my money back."

I'm seeing the world through increasingly buddhist eyes, and i'm beginning to think that when you die, you don't "go" anywhere, but it's also not the end. Everything is also everything else. A part of one big universe. You die, and your body decomposes into soil which feeds an oak tree whose leaves condense into moisture that becomes the rain that makes the grass grow under the feet of a child. Eternal life and resurrection are no more a mystery than that. Just the pure fact that nothing is every destroyed or created, just changed.

If you personify a wave, you might say that as it's about to crash, it would be sad because its life is over and it will no longer be a wave. But once the wave realizes that it is water, its fear and anxiety subside. The more I think of myself as water, instead of a single solitary wave, the more the mystery *clicks* like eyelids snapping open after being asleep.

That's why Dave Carter's "When I Go" song really touches me.

Also why I love Stuart Davis's music, especially the songs "Dive," "Swim" and "Drown." Deals with very similar themes.

I ain't touching this one with a ten foot pole. There's no way for me to say that salvation through Christ is the only way without opening up a can o' worms and pissing some people off.

*psshht* ithink i alredy heard it open.

Yum!� Worms!

more proof that I need more sleep:

I misread that as "Salvation Through Chris" about four times.

Something you're not telling us, Mr. Chin?

/me starts singing Onward ChrisChin Soldiers

::dies::

�. . . ::and goes to heaven::

I prefer listening to The ChrisChins and the Pagans, but that's the Dar-head in me.

oh good!� the ChrisChin religion is ecumenical!�

*goes to rescue pumpkin pies*�

Not telling us?� For months, Chris has been telling me that I need to pay him $50 on a regular basis if I want to get to heaven.� I'm starting to get skeptical . . .

I'm willing to join the chris chin religion if it involves hugs...not so sure about the $50 though,�that is nearly a day's work after tax!

Oh Justin, you're not telling the whole story.

For the ChrisChin salvation plan, you can either give me 20 dollars a month or 50 dollars every 3 months, which is a much better deal. It's like getting 2 extra months of salvation for free! And it's guarantee or your money back.* And there are plenty of hugs, which are free, but those may not get you to heaven alone.

Don't Delay! Eternal Salvation is just 50 bucks away!

*guarantee void if you're dead.

.oO There's a church on the corner of the street in my town where the blind lead the blind to salvation Oo.

Thanks for the earworm, Gordon ;-)

There is a classic probablistic arugment in favor of being christian. As the rewards of following christianity are infinite (going to heaven) no matter what the probability of it being true as long as it isn't zero the expectation value of the reward is infinite.

This wasn't a direct response but could be. Someone, I think it was Mike Douglas, asked the lawyer Melvin Belli if he was worried that after he died he'd find out he was wrong about being an atheist. Melvin said something to the effect of: If I'm wrong then he thinks god will let him into heaven for acting rationally and not let in all the people that blindly believed what they were told.

There is a classic probablistic arugment in favor of being christian. As the rewards of following christianity are infinite (going to heaven) no matter what the probability of it being true as long as it isn't zero the expectation value of the reward is infinite.

That's Pascal I believe, or a variant on his simpler argument for belief.

But if you don't truly believe, is an omnipotent God going to fall for that?� That's one reason why I don't understand going-through-the-motions Christians.� If I know in my heart that I don't really and truly believe that Jesus died for my sins, isn't God going to know that, too?

Of course, that argument is also ignoring the fact that, if some other religion turns out to be right, you'll probably end up being in pretty much the same place as if you hadn't believed anything at all.

I don't really believe in an afterlife, but I hope that, if it turns out there IS one, God (or the gods, if there turns out to be more than one) will find more favor with basically good non-believers than with people who use their beliefs as an excuse to torment others.

Of course, that argument is also ignoring the fact that, if some other religion turns out to be right, you'll probably end up being in pretty much the same place as if you hadn't believed anything at all.

Yeah, but of all the world religions there are only a relative few that subject nonbelievers to "hell". Those just happen to be the belief systems with, collectively, the most members, and that (because of this hellish doctrine) generate the most "fear factor" in religion, so they're the ones whose "afterlife" position is most known.

but if the "right" religion is not one of these few that insists it alone is the way, the truth, and the light, and that all who don't believe in it and/or follow its precepts are damned, it'll still be okay for those who don't believe, or who don't believe the "right" way. :) After all, if it's -- let's say -- a Buddhist world (which is a contradiction in terms, but bear with me, please) and you're not a Buddhist, so what? You reincarnate a lotta times (just like everyone else), learning a lot of lessons until you gradually figure out what it/you are about. At which point (also just like everyone else) you achieve nirvana and can stop incarnating.

Yeah, but of all the world religions there are only a relative few that subject nonbelievers to "hell"

thankfully. :)

what's always bothered me about that position, too, is that it doesn't differentiate between not-really-such-a-horrible-thing and absolute-evil. The idea that people who don't believe in 'the right God' but otherwise lead a good life would suffer the same eternal torment as mass murderers makes no sense at all.

It really isn't the same eternal torment. If you look at Dante's Inferno the virtuous pagans have it much better than the real sinners. They aren't actually tormented at all. They just don't get to go to Heaven.

My problem with the religions that dont' believe non-believers go to hell is what is the point of following the religion? Why go through rituals that don't affect your divine account? Judaism is different. They feel that non-jews are fine if the obey the 7 Noachian laws while Jews must obey 613 laws. So a Jew has to go through the rituals to be saved while a gentile does not.

I appreciate logical consistancy even when I don't believe the premises.

My problem with the religions that dont' believe non-believers go to hell is what is the point of following the religion? Why go through rituals that don't affect your divine account?

I don't think that's a problem at all, I think that's the point where a religion becomes a philosophy -- not worship of and obedience to a punitive and utterly separate higher power, the stern white-haired judge in the sky, but a striving for knowledge and self-actualization as part of the divine force of the universe.

My problem with the religions that dont' believe non-believers go to hell is what is the point of following the religion? Why go through rituals that don't affect your divine account?

cause some religions present themselves as a way of living on earth, not collecting points for after. even judaism with so many rules that have no apparent reason, is officially (biblically) not so concerned with life after death as life before.

this makes sense to me, sometimes, in some ways. weirdo rules do serve a function of keeping a community together. when i fast, i think about all the other people around the world whose stomachs are growling for the exact same reason.

Why go through rituals that don't affect your divine account?

Rituals are one of my favorite parts of my Jewish observance, and it doesn't really have much to do with my divine account. Through rituals I connect myself to people who have come before me, and can view the world through a lens made of all their experiences. I prefer the Reconstructionist view that incorporates rituals into a contemporary context. "The past has a vote but not a veto."

There are Jews for whom doing the 613 mitzvot (which means both "good deeds" and "laws") are a way of upping their divine account, but I've always understood it on a community scale - and not for personal salvation. That is, for every mitzvah (singular) done, the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah) is sooner. It's not unusual for these people to try to get unobservant Jews (especially males) to do rituals with them.

I think you are right. It certainly makes sense he was one of the founders of probability theory and devoted his later years to theology.

"people who use their beliefs as an excuse to torment others"


Interesting....

I don't think he's saying that all religious people use their beliefs to torment others. But it's undeniable that some do. Think of all the radicals in the middle east who use Islam to justify terrible behavior. You don't even need to travel that far to find it - the conservatives of this country are using religion as a way to push their view of morality onto homosexuals, women who want abortions, kids in school, etc.

If the christian god is real, and these choads get into heaven at the expense of people who lead a truly moral and compassionate life, then I'll happily burn in hell along with the rest of the infidels.