Free Thinkr

I was just reading over the other thread and I began to wonder why it is you believe in monotheism. Also I was wondering why you believe in heaven and hell type places. I ask purely out of curiosity.

mark9950

I think that people believe in things without proof because they either want to believe or are brainwashed to believe.

I cant speak for emotional but I once believed in God as a monotheistic God and was a christian(I just went along with the program)

Until I started asking questions about what the bible really said and after that I was not a christian longer after that after my official ex-communication from the catholic church.

I could go to other catholic churches as long as no one knows who I am,but I want to stay away from christianity.

emotional

There are a few reasons for that:

1. Logical reason (according to my logic, not atheistic logic): since I believe the universe has a cause, I posit the most simple cause, a spirit that transcends space, time, matter and energy. Such can only be one - one God alone.

2. Spiritualist Writings: I get a great many of my ideas about God and the afterlife through spiritualist books. They talk about a God of Natural Law. That is, one single God, and Deistic. Here, for example, is a relevant snippet from the guide Silver Birch:

Silver Birch says that he was a polytheist while alive on earth, but when he passed onto the afterlife, he recognised that there is only one God (the "Great Spirit").

3. A Sentimental Reason: I am a Jew by birth and live in the cradle of monotheism. While I did flirt with polytheism (Wicca, Roman paganism) once, I always felt guilty about it. I think it is best for me not to stray too far from monotheism, if I decide to believe in deities.

Again, these concepts come out of my reading of spiritualist literature. There are seven principles of spiritualism:

• The Fatherhood of God
• The Brotherhood of Man
• The Communion of Spirits and the Ministry of Angels
• The Continuous Existence of the Human Soul
• Personal Responsibility
• Compensation and Retribution hereafter for all Good and Evil deeds done on Earth
• Eternal Progress open to every Human Soul

One of them, as you can see, is compensation and retribution hereafter for all good and evil deeds done on earth. This means there are varying degrees of bliss and anguish in the afterlife. Another source is near-death experiences (yes, I know they can be explained as tricks of a dying brain; I'm just answering a question here) - apart from NDE accounts where the subject feels great peace and love and encounters a Loving Light, there are also hellish accounts, like that of Howard Storm, where the subject feels great anguish after a life of much undoing. It is not eternal, however - it ends upon repentance.