An untimely death is never a good thing for a person to have to endure. Just because there may or may not be a heavenly afterlife, we should not look forward to death. Life is short, death is forever, so perhaps maybe we shouldn't be so hasty in embracing it.
If the belief is that death is a good thing for the righteous, would a sadistic maniac actually be doing you a favor by murdering your children? Of course not. Let's not be silly.
Of course, when discussing the supernatural, it's hard not to be silly. A man made up an entire absurd story about a trillion year old galactic warlord who infected the human race with spirits that escaped from the tortured victims of atomic bomb blasts, and today, it's treated with equal weight as the Old Testament. As well it should, I might add. We take both far too seriously.
Given how the Bible was written, assembled, edited, added to, taken away from, mistranslated, etc... it seems obvious that it's not THE WORD of God, if there is such a thing. Many people choose not to take it literally, which means it's open to interpretation, which means it cannot be considered binding law. The most literal interpretation is contradictory upon itself, logic and evidence. That leaves only the subjective interpretations, of which there are countless.
When something has no literal or objective meaning, only subjective meaning, it should not be considered law, but organized religion attempts to make it so, either the law of nations or the laws pertaining to its own community.
I would argue that a book of Aesop's Fables has as much to teach us as the Bible does, and it was written and assembled in much the same way, and should have as much weight in governing our lives. Cute stories, some of them horrifying, some of them absurd, and none of which to rule our consciousness as the unquestionable WORD of God.
But, that's a non-theistic view. Even accepting the idea of God and the afterlife, the conflicting accounts contained within the Bible itself, it's many different versions, predecessors, successors, cheap knock-offs, differing sects and denominations, and so on; only one view could possibly be correct. I simply don't think 99% of us are going to burn in hell for choosing the wrong faith. So it seems to me having a literal and 100% conforming viewpoint with any hypothetical "correct" faith should not be necessary.
If so, then why the big deal over religion? Can't we just be decent people who follow a standard, agreed upon moral code and have that be enough? MUST we follow ancient traditions, rituals, sing little songs and pray constantly to someone who has a "PLAN" for us all, but apparently will change it on a whim based on our little wishes? Is God a master planner or a genie in a bottle? If he doesn't answer all prayers (and he doesn't) then he has a plan. If he has a plan, then why bother praying? If it's merely enough to be a good person, why do we insist on teaching everyone our own exact precise and entirely subjective interpretation of something that at the end of the day is a private and harmless thing?
I don't see Buddhists conquering the world and enslaving us to serve the devil. To be honest they've been persecuted over the centuries quite a lot, and some of them HAVE to be decent people. If God doesn't want them in heaven, I don't want to be in his heaven. And if they are allowed in, then it's not necessary to do all these rituals and sayings and follow every tradition exactly, and if that's the case then not everything the Bible says is true, which means that other falsehoods are likely present, which means it cannot be the word of God.
Basically, if it's the word of God, I am hoping there is no afterlife. And if it's not, then we should really stop listening to it.
Re: Stories to Live Your Life By
Originally Posted by Ronin
your mean just like you cherrypicked your reply?.....
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