Considering our afterlives, or lack thereof

Religion and Secularism
1

It’s taken me a while to get to this point, but now that I’ve seen the light it seems so damned self-evidence.

Consider yourself, what are you? A body, a brain, a spirit (your little voices ; ) in dynamic union.

All you experience, all you do gets filtered through your body, healthy or ailing, a source of pride or of shame, matters not.

Who are you without your body? How could your fleeting spirit possibly pretend to be you without the vessel of your physical body?

We are creatures born of our Earth, we are made up of star dust that has been processed through Earth’s amazing ever evolving biosphere over unimaginable periods, then we die back into our Earth. Our spirit released to find a new home if you like. Your afterlife consists of the people you touched, events you influenced, the impressions you made upon the world you’ve left. Your heaven or hell will be played out here on Earth while you are with the living, not during the eternal sleep that follows.

Sure, it’s scary at first, but allow it a few years and decades to soak in. It’s not about rejecting spirit or soul, quite the contrary, it’s about the exhalation that I am a thinking curious loving passionate human with a spirit that’s at the height of what the universe is capable of and I am genuinely part of it all.

Consider it through a poetic filter, whatever opinion scientists have, Earth’s history is one of biology striving for every greater manipulatory control and sensing abilities always with the mental processing needed to make it work. I Am The Eyes Of The Universe. It’s more than a pretty lyric from that perspective. Imagine evolution being God’s need to know itself, how could god reflect on itself, without eyes to gaze and appreciate. Human’s are the most fantastical, but all other creatures have connections and mental abilities humans are just starting to appreciate. We are the eye’s of the universe, and when I die, my moment is finished, though I will have an interesting afterlife in the echos of people and things I’ve touched during my short dance across this Earth.

 

Christ why isn’t that enough? : - )

 

2

Continuing slowly through that Ursula Goodenough book (mentioned in another thread). She runs into this human condition of seeing the universe as mysterious. We evolved without understanding quantum physics. We survived without knowing the size of the universe. But now we have some idea of that, or at least we know that someone can calculate it, and we are slowly evolving the ability to trust that those calculations are true. She bridges this with the term “religious naturalist”, which I think means that she accepts the belief that all these mysteries can be explained naturally. Whether or not they actually are, or even ever will be is a separate issue.

Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis
3

Just thumbing through my Kindle library and came across Ursula’s book. A couple of quotes:

Theism versus Non-Theism. The choice has been presented to us as saved versus damned, holy versus heathen. But when I talk to thoughtful theists, I encounter not a polarity but a spectrum. Belief and faith in supernatural Being(s), when deeply wrought, are as intensely personal and individual and dynamic as our earthly relationships. They add another dimension, another opportunity for relationship, to be sure. But those of us incapable of embracing that dimension remain flooded with opportunities to open ourselves to human relationship and hence to fill our lives with the religious experience of love.

It seems likely that the emotional circuits invoked when we contemplate our deep evolutionary affinity with other creatures, and when we are infused with compassion, will turn out to map closely onto the circuits that drive our parental instincts, emotions that generate such feelings as tenderness and warmth and protectiveness. These same emotions extend to our understanding that the Earth must be nurtured, an understanding embedded in many religious traditions.

4

To believe in a powerful god who watches over us and rewards us after death is a big comfort.

Atheists and materialists as me deprive themselves of it.

Lucidity has a price.

5

I never got to the comfort. I don’t think I was overthinking it. I don’t see how it could be comforting if you under think it. I take comfort in knowing that others who evolved on the same line as me must come to similar conclusions as me. I can’t completely explain why I think it’s better to care about as many people as possible, but it’s comforting to believe someone who doesn’t know me includes me on their circle.

6

From the last chapter, titled, “Emergent Religious Principles”

Throughout the ages, the weaving of our religious weft has been the province of our prophets and gurus and liturgists and poets. The texts and art and ritual that come to us from these revered ancestors include claims about Nature and Agency that are no longer plausible. They use a different warp. But for me at least, this is just one of those historical facts, something that can be absorbed, appreciated, and then put aside as I encounter the deep wisdom embedded in these traditions and the abundant opportunities that they offer to experience transcendence and clarity. I love traditional religions. Whenever I wander into distinctive churches or mosques or temples, or visit museums of religious art, or hear performances of sacred music, I am enthralled by the beauty and solemnity and power they offer. Once we have our feelings about Nature in place, then I believe that we can also find important ways to call ourselves Jews, or Muslims, or Taoists, or Hopi, or Hindus, or Christians, or Buddhists. Or some of each. The words in the traditional texts may sound different to us than they did to their authors, but they continue to resonate with our religious selves. We know what they are intended to mean.