Household Debate

[willtruncheon]

Sandy and I have been having a religious argument in our house this morning, which I want to reproduce here in the hopes that others might want to comment on it. I asked her to reproduce her side here, but she's a little too busy right now, so I'll just try to objectively boil down our respective statements here

Comments

[olivine_sidhe]

Wow, it's amazing how many responses there are here in such a short period of time (even if many are by you yourself). Considering the vast number of people who would have a great deal of difficulty even having this discussion, that's pretty impressive

[willtruncheon]

I am very lucky in that I have amazing, intelligent, open-minded LJ friends. There are many forums in which I would just get blasted out of the water for even daring to ask questions about beliefs commonly assumed to be sacrosanct. Thank you for posting.

[warriorbard63]

I will await you both in the Otherworld just to say "I told you so". ;-)

coincidence? i think not

[lizzieokane]

random interesting fact..jamie and i have had that exact same debate before, and he agrees with you and i agree with sandy. jamie considers himself atheist while i am agnostic (with a tiny side of diet catholic because of my upbringing, education, etc).

mostly i think its just terrifying to think that one we die, thats it. what makes me me, and you you and pete sampras pete sampras etc doesn't exist anymore? i just can't comprehend that nor do i want to, because that means all of the people i love that died or will die are POOF! gone.

nooopppeee, liz kane doesn't like that.

(i understand this is a more emotional response vs. an intellectual, well-constructed response but it is simply too early in the day to string thoughts of higher levels of thinking together. i'll need about 4 more cups of coffee to attempt to mentally tackle the subject without confusing myself.)

Is the end so bad if there's nothing else?

[tirianmal]

There is also a lot of damage that the opposite view causes. You have Jehovah's Witnesses that won't allow blood transfusions, you have Christian Scientists that don't use doctors, you have suicide bombers that ... well, you get the point. All because folks believe that there's something after death that they have to protect or get access to. Which of them are right? Can they all be right? Can all of them be wrong?

When the belief that there's something after death governs the behavior before it, to the detriment of your current life, what is the point? Does God/god(s)/nature really want you living your life badly so that you can have a good "life" afterward? Can that really make sense? Doesn't it make sense to make the most of this life, both for oneself and for all of those around you (up to an including the entire world). Especially if you had to consider that your life is so much MORE special because you get just these few years? And so does everyone else? Wouldn't that galvanize everyone to maybe be kinder to each other? Maybe?

Re: Is the end so bad if there's nothing else?

[willtruncheon]

Hear hear!

Re: coincidence? i think not

[willtruncheon]

LOL "Diet Catholic"?