According the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (and the subject of future thought-provoking posts), the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life interviewed 35,000 Americans across 14 religious beliefs and determined 71 percent are absolutely certain they believe in God and 68 percent believe religious dogma can be interpreted in more than one way.
I’d like to focus on 70 percent, or 24,500 Americans, who believe many religions can lead to eternal life.
I assume the majority of the 35,000 sample population refer to a crossing-over into heaven.
I don’t believe in heaven. But I do believe life goes on.
A radical atheist blogger who I found online agrees with mainstream theism that life is the stuff between birth and death.
I also agree.
He wonders if religion’s motivation is to answer the question, Does life end at death?
I’m not an atheist but I wonder why religion matters at all when asking about eternal life.
A thing is born, lives, and dies. No denial there. But what happens after death?
I suggest that life (to summarize all three processes in one term) is not linear but circular.
Life doesn’t end at death. It keeps going. I don’t believe in mythological or Eastern dogmatic philosophies of rebirth and reincarnation, but I do believe that life &mdash or the soul, if you need a word &mdash continues beyond death. Not an afterlife either, but more of a transition into something else.
I can’t prove this, obviously, but I can’t disprove it either. And science is on my side.
By analogy, consider a person dreaming. Scientists, as advanced as society is, can strap a person onto a bed, attach wires to machines, and can prove when the person enters sleep. We know about the science of sleep. We know about rapid eye movement, activation synthesis theories, and lucid dreaming.
But society can neither prove nor disprove the subject matter of a person’s dream. If John Smith said he saw elephants in his dream, who can prove him wrong?
Similarly, society is at a crossroads of belief about what happens when someone dies.
Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg may have said it best: This life continues into the other, and death is simply a transition.
Do you believe in eternal life? Or you disagree with the 70 percent surveyed?
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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Yes, I do believe that life goes on after “death.” But not just because the majority thinks so. Even if most people were atheists, I’d keep my opinion on the subject. Besides, I’m not American, so those stats don’t apply to me after all.
I’m spiritist, which means that I believe in reincarnation. Only the body actually dies. The soul goes on forever and returns to the physical world as many times as needed until moral perfection is reached by the individual.
Well, I’d better stop here, otherwise I’ll end up writing a book at your comment page, hehe!
Karen, I’m curious how far off U.S. statistics on religion differ from other countries, Western nations at that.
What do you mean by moral perfection? I feel perfection is an illusion; one can strive for perfection but it will never occur.
Until someone can give me a scientific explanation of the miracles that Jesus Christ performed, then I must belive that he was from another world…a world where miracles like that happen all the time.
The same person that performed all of those miracles told us that he was dying for the specific purpose of us going to that world safely and soundly. I believe Jesus’s promises.
However, if I am only kidding myself and a world like that (Heaven) does not exist, well then, I would still want to model my life after Jesus’s teachings because I don’t think I would be happy if I lived it any other way.
Okay, first of all, read up on Jesus Christ — all the historic facts. Not just what’s in the Bible. It is fascinating. Miracles aside, we shouldn’t focus on miracles. We need to focus on the philosophy he brought and not be wide-eyed about the miracles. Big deal on miracles. They happen daily. What’s bigger is that he proposed a new kind of religion that crossed all racial and national borders. Not tied to race or nation. That is huge, and most of the world today, unfortunately, misses that point.
I’m not a rabid christian. I’d rather be a Zorastrian to tell you the truth — good thoughts, good deeds, and good words. However I don’t live in India and there are no temples handy, but here’s what I think.
There is a larger force, larger than ourselves. Listen to this story. I woke up last night hearing the noise of a computer. For some unknown reason, on of the five computers in my home rebooted itself.
I woke up, kind of worried that someone was in my home. I was a little shaken so I turned on the TV. Only one station would come in — PBS. There was something ‘wrong’ at that moment with my cable, and I could only get that one station. The show that was one happened to be one of those TV psychologist/theologians, talking about life, your purpose, your connection to the larger life force.
I watched, mesmerized, thinking — this is exactly what I needed to hear. That if I could feel more connected to that larger force, I would feel more secure.
I mean, you’ve got to be kidding me, but did the universe wake me up last night to tell me to get my act together?
hm….
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