Sheshbazzar

Just out of curiosity Ted, which kind of the Bible's heavens is your ticket for?
Or has your G-d given you some other vision of your destination?

I'm serious, and am not intending to be poking fun at you. If you believe you are going to heaven, you must hold some serious views on what it is that you expect.
Are you going there directly upon your death? or are you going to sleep in the earth until 'The Second Coming' of Christ' to arise from the grave at his glorious appearing?
When does your bodily resurrection and Day of Judgment fit into your scenario?
Does your G-d open His Book of Life billions of times, every time someone dies, or just once at Judgment Day?

TedM

I thought I addressed all of this sufficiently earlier but apparently not. I lost my Christian faith 36 years ago. I've missed it ever since. I don't have a strong belief about life after death anymore. I hope there is one and it is wonderful because I become very sad when considering the possibility that I may never see the people I care most about ever again. It's about the people for me and not so much about God, now. I'm grieving.

maryhelena

Ted, grieving is part of what we do when we loose a loved one. It's not pleasant but we have to deal with it and it's very sad. But to hold on to a hope that we may see our loved ones again is, surely, to fly in the face of reality as we know it. That is a hope that has no possibility - it's illusion. An illusion that could well be preventing one from facing reality - and finding, somehow, contentment with what is instead of wishing things were otherwise in that regard.

It's living Ted, here and now - with all of it's ups and downs - that we have to get to grips with. And no, it's not all meaningless - that sort of thinking belongs to the illusion that there is something else that is better than what we have. It's acceptance of what we have - our reality - that allows us to really be alive - and to find contentment in our living it.

Big subject I know......but here is a video link to that great song Being Alive - sung by a man with a talent beyond compare...

TedM

Thank you again mary. That's some powerful singing. I especially appreciate what you wrote about acceptance...wise words...I"l be ok adjust and move on. Acceptance of so many things related to the loss is the process I'm working through now.

spin

The religionist would say that your christian faith hasn't lost you, as it informs so much of your thought when you post here. But think about it: if you have jettisoned the primitive religion, how can you keep its primitive trappings? La-la-land is only there if you buy the whole shebang. Once you shed the skin, it's pretty meaningless trying to keep bits.

I have a shelf full of dead faces staring out at me. They all mean something to me. They're all gone, long turned to dust, but I found myself recently pouring over google maps looking at New York. There was Herald Square; there was Broadway and 42nd Street. I've never been to New York, never will, but it was because of a song my mother used to sing, Give My Regards to Broadway, a song from long before I was born. She used to be a singer, so I have an attic full of such songs. She's long ago gone, but I can always be reminded of things like

I've been around the world in a plane
I've settled revolutions in Spain
The North Pole I have charted
but I can't get started with you

or

He's washing dishes and baby clothes
He's so ambitious, he even sews
So don't forget folks,
That's what you get folks
From making whoopee.

And so so many more. I can do a Jolson impression. Way before my time. But it's part of the system. I don't think of the fact that she's under a slab on a hillside. She's not. I think of her rushing to work in the morning because she had mouths to feed--mine was a single parent family. I think of her having bought and paid for the house we lived in when single working women were not a socially acceptable thing.

I could walk you down the corridor and show you the photo at the end of a dashing young man in a military uniform from WWI. I only remember him as a jovial old man. He's so resolute in the photo. He had been in Palestine and had brought back a few small souvenirs, coins, photos. His wife at ninety used to remember the communist party from 40 years before, still an old commie, and she'd preface her radical statements with, "you'll think I'm strange, but...." She also stares out at me from time to time from the shelf.

David Bowie has a line, "my brain hurts like a warehouse, it had no room to spare". Mine certainly is a warehouse, but it doesn't hurt.

Use your brain. Forget about the vanity of an afterlife. I laugh and cringe when in a film they talk about walking into the light. When I was a child, I thought like a child. How does such silliness work when you don't buy the whole deal? It was not really that long ago that we were just part of the food chain on this planet. We stepped out of managed nomadism and settled down to growing things and raising animals. And we didn't know shit. So we spun all sorts of simplistic stories to help us deal with everything around us. Several thousand years along we get to see more developed versions of those stories in the texts from Mesopotamia, stories of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, for example. Enkidu's backstory preserves the process of leaving nature and becoming a civilized person. It was painful for him, being seduced away from nature. The two developed a strong relationship and with Enkidu's death Gilgamesh was driven to attempt to find the secret of eternal life. He never made it. They were dealing with these things in very familiar ways 4000 years ago. We have attempted to deal with the same things ever since.

You can't forget and you won't get over it. Embrace and remember those who were part of you. They will always be.

I'll go home and get my clothesies
You'll go get your these and thosies
And away we'll go. Ohh, ohh,
Off we're gonna shuffle....

Sheshbazzar

Thank for the reminisce spin. I can relate, those beautiful memories of those we have known bring tears to my eyes.

TedM

Thanks spin. Good thoughts.

Adam

Well, try mine. Here's an excerpt from my blog at FRDB:
http://www.freeratio.org/blog.php?b=325 Circle of Truth

stephan huller

When I die all my memories are going to be from this place

Adam

Just checking that my Post #268 didn't cause this thread to get moved over to "The Existence of God". Maybe the non-response is acknowledgment that it does not belong in BC&H. But if it were moved over, it might get confused with Self-Mutation's 11,000+ thread over there that seems to have no result except for everyone else to ridicule him.

Maybe it's that my ideas are so unusual that no one could make any standard retort to me. Practically my first post in FRDB was in "Existence of God" (with basically the opening from my FRDB blog), but the response led me to focus on texts as something more amenable to resolution. However, nothing seems resolvable without an agreed definition of "evidence".