Is this Life or an Afterlife more Important?

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PsychoticEpisode

It is very dry in here today
Valued Senior Member
You don't have to be religious to believe in an afterlife. Depending on your own beliefs which of either life or afterlife would you consider more important?

Since I am not a believer in afterlife I'm realistic enough to deduce that my time in the universe, although merely a blip chronologically, is more important. If I thought I would live on forever in an afterlife then this life doesn't carry any real signifigance. Why worry about it if I'm going to live forever anyways. It's almost relegating life to nuisance status.

An average lifespan is around 70 years (approx). The universe is a least 15 billion years old and seemingly going on forever. Again, how important is my little hiccup in time?

However my life timeslot would be very important if I believed in an afterlife and my status there was dependent upon how my Earth time is judged by a supernatural being. Does that make your physical existence more important than an afterlife? It seems that it does. If that is the case then life on Earth is equally more important than afterlife no matter what position you take.

But then living for an eternity would seem to be vastly more important than this life especially if you want to be with your deity. I'm not encouraging everyone to go jump off a bridge but if it's the afterlife your waiting for then why wait?

And how important is this life if I can behave badly, have my deity judge me undesirable, send me to an eternal hell, and then if I follow the script for forgiveness I'd go to heaven anyway? In this scenario I find life absolutely meaningless.
 
Why is there even a question: both are equally important. If you dont serve God in this life, your next life will be a sorry sight.
 
An agnostic would hedge his bet. He would try to enjoy this life, but at the same time live it in such a way as to gain favor from the supernatural beings so they would reward him with an enjoyable afterlife. Eventually most mentally healthy people realize they are one in the same, regardless of whether there really are supernatural beings or an afterlife. The only reason people fail to be the "good" people that religions tell them to be is weakness. And weakness befalls religious and irreligious people indiscriminately.

As I have posted elsewhere, like all social species humans are endowed with an instinct to do what's best for the community. Our problem is that since we invented civilization our community keeps growing larger. It gets harder to figure out what's best, and it requires more strength and discipline to do it once we know what it is.
 
Lawdog said:
If you dont serve God in this life, your next life will be a sorry sight.
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Judging by that answer I can assume the afterlife is more important for you. God on the other hand is more concerned with how you perform in this life.
 
Psychotic,

Like Lawdog says, why even ask the question? There is only one life, your physical life, and you should enjoy it and live it to the full, there is nothing else.

The afterlife concept no longer has any credibility in the light of modern science and is a vestige of the significantly more ignorant times of our past. The concept has many origins and variations but most require some form of spirit or soul to exist that forms one part of a duality with the physical body.

The word soul is derived from the idea of air or breath and one of the first beliefs about this mysterious entity was the observation that when someone died they had no breath. It was assumed that your breath was your life force and that when your body died your soul would leave and go somewhere else. This quickly led to the idea that these spirits were floating around and some could be evil. And if you could “breathe” one out you could inadvertently breathe one in. From that we find all the ideas about possession etc. But a common problem in those early times was the many illnesses and diseases, and with no real science in those times it was assumed all of these were caused by evil spirits. And so the fantasies grew and morphed into myriad variations. None of course based on any factual information.

This infantile concept of soul and its variations became embedded in nearly all cultures and is still amazingly considered real by billions of people today who follow many of the outdated superstitious religions that capitalized on these ignorant concepts developed 1000’s of years ago.

As time passed more sophisticated philosophers reasoned that this soul/spirit must be the source of thought, emotions, intellect, memory, etc.; all of these ideas from times before electricity was discovered and the development of modern neuroscience. Now of course through countless clinical trials and surgery we know all of these properties are derived entirely from the brain.

What then of the soul/spirit that is alleged to survive a person’s death and exist in some ethereal plain of existence? Well nothing. All of its preceding values and properties have been explained away by science. There is no role remaining for this ancient foolishness. However, there will be many who ignorantly and stubbornly cling to this ancient silliness and say something like the spirit is the life force that sustains us or something similar. The last dying hopes of a redundant concept; supported by those who prefer the ignorant past.

The soul/spirit/afterlife are silly concepts born from ancient ignorance and should no longer be considered worthy of thought by any rational person.
 
The afterlife is more important because it is for eternity, you sould think about that when you sin because that internity will be in hell.
 
Imap - well yeah if only it existed and the fantasies you suggest were true, which of course they aren't, unless of course you can show otherwise.
 
Cris said:
Imap - well yeah if only it existed and the fantasies you suggest were true, which of course they aren't, unless of course you can show otherwise.
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If you look in your bible it says that so you can see the proof for yourself.
 
imap,

If you look in your bible it says that so you can see the proof for yourself.
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Any particluar page and verse - it's quite a big book you know?
 
And since when was Bible fact? because the bible says it is? or because people who believe the bible say it is?
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
The only reason people fail to be the "good" people that religions tell them to be is weakness.
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Can I just say that spuriousmonkey was right about you when he said that you're the smartest, most literate, most thought-provoking poster on Sciforums (or words to that effect)?

OK:

Is being homosexual 'weak'?
Is masturbating 'weak'?
Is sex outside of marriage 'weak'?
Is consensual anal sex between a man and a woman 'weak'?
Is shopping on a Sunday 'weak'?

You're an idiot, Fraggle Rocker. :cool:
 
redarmy11 said:
Can I just say that spuriousmonkey was right about you when he said that you're the smartest, most literate, most thought-provoking poster on Sciforums (or words to that effect)?

OK:

Is being homosexual 'weak'?
Is masturbating 'weak'?
Is sex outside of marriage 'weak'?
Is consensual anal sex between a man and a woman 'weak'?
Is shopping on a Sunday 'weak'?

You're an idiot, Fraggle Rocker. :cool:
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Modern religions do not change as fast as the societies in which they live, not by a long shot. How do these behaviors look in a historical perspective? Abrahamic religion comes from a desert-roaming nomadic tribe whose population needed to be controlled to prevent famine. Might the policies of religion have roots in past circumstances? Use your imagination...
 
How to compare? (1) No such evidence to the existence of afterlife; and (2) not appropriate because they are not paralel, but sequential one after the other.
It's more possible drawing a line between the two instead of comparing.

If one asks "is there an afterlife?", I'm sure there will be no satisfying answer, for evidence is absolutely impossible to be provided, considering we are all behind it. So it's more likely to predict, by providing reasonable possibility towards it's existence.

I can view the situation from these question :
- What is this life's position/meanings towards afterlife? i.e the relationship between both.
- Why should there be afterlife; how important afterlife so it could influence they way we live our life.
- Why not just living this life and that's all, done!

maybe there are some more questions could be arised.
 
baumgarten said:
Modern religions do not change as fast as the societies in which they live, not by a long shot.
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Then why should we not dismiss them as outdated and irrelevant?
baumgarten said:
How do these behaviors look in a historical perspective? Abrahamic religion comes from a desert-roaming nomadic tribe whose population needed to be controlled to prevent famine. Might the policies of religion have roots in past circumstances? Use your imagination...
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I'm aware of this. So my question is: what relevance do the morals of an ancient nomadic tribe have to modern-day inhabitants of Western civilisation?

Not that any of this really addresses the questions I was asking.
 
what relevance do the morals of an ancient nomadic tribe have to modern-day inhabitants of Western civilisation?
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A religion is really just a part of culture. There are all kinds of things in culture that are totally extraneous, outdated artifacts of tradition that we could easily live without, and perhaps we would even be better off without some of them. We tend to keep them anyway because that's human nature. Outdated and nonsensical moral codes are part of the Christian cultural identity; you will find similar puzzles of reason to varying degrees in any ancient culture.

I wish I could think of a secular counterexample, but I'm pretty tired right now.
 
imaplanck. said:
If you look in your bible it says that so you can see the proof for yourself.
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Never mind the Bible! I'm half way through the Gospel of The Flying Spaghetti Monster! It's fantastic, but no mention of the afterlife yet (perhaps only Pirates have an afterlife?).
In all seriousness the afterlife is just wishfull thinking, nothing more.
 
wsionynw said:
Never mind the Bible! I'm half way through the Gospel of The Flying Spaghetti Monster! It's fantastic, but no mention of the afterlife yet (perhaps only Pirates have an afterlife?).
In all seriousness the afterlife is just wishfull thinking, nothing more.
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FINNALY! A FELLOW PASTAFARIAN!!! Arg to you, and may his Noodley Appendage bless you in the name of the Noodle, the Sauce, and the Holy Meatballs. RAmen.
 
Cris said:
Psychotic,

Like Lawdog says, why even ask the question? There is only one life, your physical life, and you should enjoy it and live it to the full, there is nothing else.
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I only asked because it seems odd to me that God waited these oh so many billion years to plop me on this Earth for only what seems like a few minutes then send me off somewhere to spend eternity after I'm dead.

If God is out there then my short time of physical existence holds some importance to God. Is it a test?... like rolling a new car off the line and test driving it.

But its not my physical body he's testing, supposedly I have a soul and its being put through the mill. My body is therefore useless really, rendered recyclable once my soul is finished the probationary period. Based on the fact that the soul doesn't suffer from the same Earthbound illnesses as the body, then if a God exists He doesn't give a shit if you have cancer, mental deficiencies or serious maladies of any kind because that isn't important. I have to believe those people praying for cures are wasting their time.

So for a God, my turning out the way He wants it, my life and soul, is more important. The only reason must be that God needs to see if we do as we're told. Is this a game? or do God's have selfish motives like seeing their manufactured product live up to expectations? Who does He have to impress?

So I wonder why my life is more important to a God than for me? For a God the afterlife is meaningless, a given. I don't think a God worries one second about afterlife, I mean there is no afterlife if you've never been dead. On the other hand if I'm a believer it is very important that I qualify for the better afterlife. The afterlife is what keeps believers going. If no afterlife then who gives a shit about God.
 
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