| Does God exist and is their an afterlife. |
[Oct. 16th, 2008|08:15 am] |
While looking up some information on the political debates, I ran across an advertisement for a DVD entitled "The God who Wasn't There." I have never seen the movie, but I read the review on it and came across a wikipedia article explaining the premise of the argument held by those who made the movie. Apparently there are people who believe that Jesus was not an actual person, just a myth that follows the patterns of previously heroic mythical characters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acharya_S
After reading the wikipedia article, I found the argument not compelling in the least. It tries to make several parallels that did not originally exist (The December 25th birthday of Jesus), and it tries to draw conclusions from a lack of information about Jesus' life given in the Pauline letters of the New Testament, despite the letters being written to Christian churches that already teach about the life of Jesus. Even in the article, it describes how modern biblical scholars, even the skeptic ones, are quick to dismiss this claim.
The second article I read recently was in Scientific American today. It was talking about how after death there is nothing, a total void, a lack of experience.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=never-say-die&ec=su_neversaydie
In some ways I find it interesting, and in other ways I find it disturbing how many people attack the idea of an afterlife or the idea of religion. This article completely dismisses the idea of an afterlife by claiming it is a psychological protection measure to prevent death anxiety. While that may be a side benefit of belief in an afterlife, there is so little we know about death and what might come after that to completely dismiss it is short sighted.
The main question I have for those who do not believe in an afterlife: If there is nothing after life, if there is no accountability for what is done in this life, if the only things to be gained is what can be gained in this world, then what is there to stop the already rampant selfishness of the average human? Those who are impoverished, oppressed, and miserable would then have no excuse to not want to take that which will let them enjoy this life. Those who avoid the justice of the current system while committing immoral, dishonest acts would be prime targets for vigilante justice.
Even if there is no afterlife(not that I would believe there ever wasn't an afterlife), the human race is nowhere near the intelligence or maturity or primarily the selflessness to handle that idea. |
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