The afterlife

I was thinking about life and the ridiculously meaningless existence we have and started thinking about what happens after we die. This thought process began with the assumption that it is just infinite nothingness which is a scary thought for a sentient being, but then I thought, reincarnation would not be that bad but it would not make much sense since one lifetime was meaningless enough. Then I thought, well an eternal resting place or a 'heaven' would be nice but I just could not bring myself to find anything logical about the idea of heaven. Now the part that gets me annoyed is the fact that I then shrugged and thought "I will find out when I die I guess" and went to sleep, but there are millions of people that are unable to accept that they have no idea what is coming so they force themselves to believe whichever theory they hear first. The most irritating part is the fact that this is typically the first step in most people's lives in which they decide to start blindly believing in a faith or set of ideals simply because it answers a question that they are to scared to leave openended. Worse yet, they latch onto these beliefs so strongly that they feel threatened by anyone who questions them. This just leads entire civilizations deeper into ignorance.

this post got me thinking about the ridiculous argument of "the meaning of life", i'll have to rant about that later. i don't understand how making something up provides them with any comfort at all. as you said, we don't really know for sure either way yet. so how can they then just assert that its true, and accept it on face value? i see no reason to speculate about possibilities that currently have no proof to them.
the last part is too much of a generalization though, and in many cases probably wrong. it is hard to narrow down the primary reasons for why people believe in gods. however, i will say that in many, if not most cases, heaven and hell are used as reinforcements of faith as opposed to the creation of faith. most religious people tend to be indoctrinated into it, believing in gods before they can truly comprehend their own mortality. in this case, the fear of the unknown doesn't play a factor yet. once they believe it, and understand that they are going to die, heaven and (divine justice) hell, provide them with the comfy little security blanket they need to feel complacent.

Which is pretty funny since by their own standards, most of the heaven/hell believers just assume they would go to heaven even though they break the rules that they base their beliefs in.

The north american indian tribes believe everything is sacred. One
cannot dismiss something because of how absurd it might sound, that is
ego. They believe this because everything is energy and that energy has
the potential to become us and beyond us... After all that I don't know.

Quote :

The north american indian tribes believe everything is sacred. One cannot dismiss something because of how absurd it might sound, that is ego.

that statement is absurd. Something should not be accepted just because it is believed by someone. When something is stated that is contradictory to fact, it can indeed be dismissed. people often hold beliefs that are wrong, and when they assert a claim they need to prove it with factual information. if they are unable to do that, there is no reason to accept their opinion on that issue.

aram624 wrote:

The north american indian tribes believe everything is sacred. One
cannot dismiss something because of how absurd it might sound, that is
ego. They believe this because everything is energy and that energy has
the potential to become us and beyond us... After all that I don't know.

I wonder how many times that works?

Hitler believed that blonde hair, blue eyed germans were sacred. One cannot dismiss something because of how absurd it sounds, that is ego. He believes that the world would be a much better place by removing people he vieqed as inferior... After all that I don't know.

The egyptians believed that their pharoahs take everything buried with them along after they die. One cannot dismiss something because of how absurd it sounds, that is ego. They believe that it is necessary that thousands of slaves and cats are buried alive... After all that I don't know.

The judges of the 1600s believed that the devil recruited thousands of witches to do his bidding. One cannot dismiss something because of how absurd it sounds, that is ego. They believed that anytime someone claimed to have seen another's "spectral image" at night, this was legally binding evidence which resulted in a death sentence... After all that I don't know.

It sounds to me like some of that "ego" would have been beneficial... But after all that I don't know.