When one of us 'goes'

4 May 1976 i was told i went during the ride in the ambulance to the hospital as i am still here and able to enjoy life in France it would appear that neither place wanted me if there is such a place as up there or down there so perhaps i am destined to forever haunt this earth

With you Mike. I am so accident prone that the idea of stepping into the abyss would worry me. I would be bound to break something on the way :-(

Brian,

We seem to be singing from the same hymn-sheet.
But I don't much like the idea of eternal life - can't see any future in it!

Exactly Mike. All life as we know it and most of all else is a freak accident of molecular fusion and then chemical interactions far down the chain when oxygen and hydrogen had formed and then 'met'. That life itself came out of that is an accident of another kind. All that good science tells us is now very solid, despite those of faith telling us it is lies and whatever else they have. Religion is a simplistic explanation that preceded sophisticated science that is still only known to a relatively small minority of all people. So live and let live. Whatever the outcome, there is no way anybody is possibly going to be disappointed once they are gone.

But there is no known mechanism by which the collection of thoughts, memories and sensations we receive from the outside world, that we call Self, can continue after brain death.
Many people find it hard to accept that their existence is temporary and only came about by chance, so religion is comfortably reassuring.
Is life worth living without having a reason for being here? Strangely, I find that it is. The simplest explanation is that life would not be able to exist without a powerful instinct to survive and reproduce. And maybe a belief in an afterlife is just an intellectual by-product of our survival instinct.

To a point that is true since we are made up of electrons which make up atoms, which make up molecules and so on all the way through until they make up our physical cells. Remembering my little bit of general knowledge, a molecular structure is atoms and bonds which are natural manifestations of a system's observable distribution of electron density distribution. The electron density distribution of a molecule is a actual a kind of structured probability distribution that describes the way in which the electronic charge is distributed within real space in the field of attraction of the nuclei. The electrons have infinite life but the atoms, molecules and so on up the chain to life can be modified although they too have almost infinite life. Thus we revert to dust, so as to speak, which in trillions of years can be once again an electron attracting others to form a life chain again but in an entirely different form and even somewhere else in the universe. The electrons are the most fundamental part of existence, so to that extent we are only a product of that energy. God is perhaps a metaphor for most people's inability to understand complicated physics. I certainly do not and only repeat what I have written parrot fashion however I can imagine that if anybody wanted say that is god then why not.

I am a Quaker and although the Society of Friends is a Christian society, all are welcomed who recognise that they are on a spiritual journey.
For me the first time I went to the Meeting House in Cirencester I was asked where I was on my journey and I was astonished to see the wonderful array of eclectic books on the shelves.
Friends do not impose their beliefs upon others but try to live simple and honest lives and help others to do the same, so as an example to follow a good one.

It all depends upon what you call God. We can understand that we are all part of the greater energy and we can return to some part of that when we die.

Exactly Mike.

Yes, I forgot to mention the Society of Friends. Impossible to pin them down to what they actually believe. But their humility and acceptance of doubt seems to result in sincere humanitarian behavior. And I admire their pacifism. If we were all Quakers the World would be a much better place.

I admit that religion is my weak component in my discipline and I did anything to avoid ever needing to teach or otherwise deal with the topic, but you said it. There are still actually a couple of thousand religions although dwindling steadily and Baha'i do play that superiority game. I have learned an awful lot from two sources. Buddhism, but from the original teachings of Siddharta Gautama, or at last things attributed to him, in which he emphasised ethics and correct understanding of the material and spiritual. He very much questioned everyday notions of divinity and salvation, also saying that there is no intermediary between mankind and the divine whereby distant gods are subjected to karma themselves in their decaying heavens. Those are metaphors for the fact that deity based religions were dying, wrong then but happening now. My other influence is the Society of Friends, the Quakers, through their courage in promotion of non-violence, pacifism, how they practice ethical business and how some of them fought for the abolition of slavery.

I have no faith whatsoever, will not label myself agnostic or atheist because I do not want to be one of 'those' in people's minds and eyes. I also respect all religions and despise factions of each that become extreme and inhuman, but I will not be part of any other them.

I have no problem with other people's views and will not tell anybody they are wrong and what there is and is not. Thus I find my life as a passing, fleeting moment in the existence of humanity an adventure that I have enjoyed but it ends one day. I have no fear of that day or the moment.

It's a fair question Barbara.I just don't see any point in concerning myself with things that cannot be demonstrated to be true. Religion is the ultimate Catch 22. If you can prove it, you don't need faith and you can only be saved by faith. That implies that God is a tricky kind of guy, not the sort of person I would want to hang out with. And of course, there are hundreds of religions, each one thinking they are right and all the others are wrong, except for the Baha'i who believe that all religions are a way to God and by implication think they are superior. So how do we decide which faith is right, or is it possible that, if most are wrong, there is a fair chance that they are all wrong. Might as well believe that we are all going to end up on the planet Zog in some yet to be revealed afterlife. I find it more satisfying to think that we are all destined to return to stardust, from which we were made.
If you want to believe that there is a spiritual world that we can only be aware of by faith, that doesn't bother me very much, so long as you don't want to hurt me for not sharing your belief. But I could argue a case that what we do in our lives is all the more meaningful if we act as if there isn't a deity who will put everything right in his own good time.

........or indeed Camembert or Roquefort...

Sorry that my question has caused a bit of a fricassee.

What proof is there Mike that there is nothing else.

Certainly it would be something which science has not

seen.

It seems to me that SF is a place for intelligent beings to

discuss all manner of things.

This, perhaps s more vital than do you buy cheddar or Cantal?

Meditation, Peter.
We are now into matters spiritual.
Speaking of which, I'm thinking it's time for a drop of the bottle!

Brian, did you hear about the two birds sitting on a perch ?

One said to the other, "hey, can you smell fish ? "

Back on your perch...

What? This parrot is dead...

Time for your medication Doreen !

A wink's as good as a nudge...

Take it as an omen! Or should that be amen? ;-)