Is afterlife the main reason why people wanna believe in God

[Rebel_L]

I agree with you. I think the heaven and hell gambit was, and is, simply laziness. Ethics are abstract and the reward and punishments for transgression are often far removed from the actual action. This is a poor method to reinforce the lessons that ethics teach us. Laws and justice systems are a better method, but are still hit or miss, and have no reward method built in. Rewards have always been better at reinforcing good behavior than punishment is at discouraging bad ones.

So, it was just easier to come up with an imaginary reward and punishment system that reinforces the system of ethics that mankind has devised for maintaining a civil society. One that was perfect in its ability to know your successes and transgressions and promised an amazing reward for each good act, and a terrible punishment for each and every bad one.

Yet Christianity as a system can give you the ultimate reward with zero good actions and the ultimate punishment with zero bad actions. The only importance is opting into the system in the first place.

I do believe that the carrot/stick factor of heaven/hell is used a lot to exert control over people, yet I see that control as a corruption of religion by people for their own gain, rather than as basis for the existence of the religions in the first place.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Honestly the afterlife is the biggest thing that separates me from mainstream religion.

The concept that human being are tortured in hell for eternity for actions done during their limited time on earth seems to fit the definition of "cruel and unusual punishment."

My religious family members don't focus on that, they see hell as a place where "the bad people finally get punished." There is never any thought they or people they love might end up there, instead it is all about who they will see again in heaven.

Even if I had a ticket into heaven as it is popularly conceived, I would give it up if that meant there was no hell that billions of souls are tortured in.

The idea of no afterlife makes me feel better.

 

[Exophase]

Honestly the afterlife is the biggest thing that separates me from mainstream religion.

The concept that human being are tortured in hell for eternity for actions done during their limited time on earth seems to fit the definition of "cruel and unusual punishment."

My religious family members don't focus on that, they see hell as a place where "the bad people finally get punished." There is never any thought they or people they love might end up there, instead it is all about who they will see again in heaven.

Even if I had a ticket into heaven as it is popularly conceived, I would give it up if that meant there was no hell that billions of souls are tortured in.

The idea of no afterlife makes me feel better.

I'm not a Christian (or a theist for that matter), but when I was I believed in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilationism

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

The idea of no afterlife existing even where a god exists is interesting.

More interesting is the idea that an afterlife exists even though no god exists.

 

[irishScott]

People already do after a fashion, Taoism has been around for thousands of years and has no real God and no real afterlife. Some denominations believe that by essentially meditating your ass off for decades you can merge your consciousness with the Tao and your consciousness will survive into another life (so reincarnation), but for the vast majority who don't make that commitment their "energy" simply "returns to the Tao". Given that the Tao is described in abstract terms you can basically interpret it as "the essence of the Universe", one interpretation of "energy returning to the Tao" is essentially the 1st law of Thermodynamics.

That said one of the main promises of Taoism is a sort of indirect immortality, as Taosim states that acting in accordance with your nature and in harmony with your environment will ensure your actions have eternal consequences, whereas forcing yourself or others into unnatural states will ensure that your actions have temporary consequences that are ultimately smoothed away by nature.

Needless to say there's millenia of debate over precisely what "natural" and "unnatural" mean (it's usually left to the individual to interpret), but the promise of some sort of immortality is there, even if it isn't equivalent to "eternal life".

 

[Caravaggio]

Ethics are abstract and the reward and punishments for transgression are often far removed from the actual action. This is a poor method to reinforce the lessons that ethics teach us. Laws and justice systems are a better method, but are still hit or miss, and have no reward method built in. Rewards have always been better at reinforcing good behavior than punishment is at discouraging bad ones.

Yes, the delay in any positive reinforcement in the religious ' avoidance of sin' model is so extreme that the reward must, by definition, be huge to compensate for the lifetime of uncertain, hopeful waiting for the promised 'afterlife'.

Needless to say, some smart sinners tried to buy into the salvation 'game' at a late stage, after a life of narcissistic excess. Catholics allow access to heaven even to sinners who make a 'death bed' confession or conversion. In earlier times the Catholic priests smelled a rat and exploited this flagrant manipulation by selling 'indulgences' to speed-up the heaven-ward journey of the more wealthy cynical entrants.

Calvin spotted the problem and made it clear that the genuinely good (who really would be saved) showed their worth before God throughout their lives. There are no short-cuts in Protestantism. You work your passage.
Max Weber believed that this capacity for deferred gratification within the Protestant Church explained its adherents' remarkable drive and success.

Without heaven we should have fewer hang-ups about minor 'sins' but perhaps we will lose some of the old Protestant drive, to prove our worth, here on earth.

 

[omega3]

deleted

 

[sm625]

I have no faith but I know what you mean by connection to this 'spirit' notion.
I have felt it strongly in a number of very different settings but I am not sure that it is necessarily a religious phenomenon.

1) I felt it at dawn in Yosemite, looking up at El Kapitan. The air was cold and still. I felt somehow fused with 'nature' and natural beauty.

When a person sees something incredible, I am 100% convinced that they send out waves of what I can only call spiritual energy. We cannot measure it (yet) but again I am 100% convinced that we will soon be able to. We know whatever this energy is, it most definitely is a real phenomenon.

All throughout history, there have been countless stories of how two people, working totally independently, both make some kind of scientific breakthrough at the same time. I believe the reason this happens is because their brains are tuned in the same way, being hyperfocused in the same sort of pattern. Those two patterns converge over space-time, and some sort of resonance or entanglement occurs. So when one mind has some sort of "eureka moment", the other mind also has this same "eureka moment". I dont know if there is a name for this sort of cosmic mental binding, but it is definitely a real phenomenon. Just as real as presentiment. There are other phenomena like these, most people dont even know they exist. But the more I learn about them, the more convinced I am of something greater still.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I think yes. All the other stuff that they believe in along with the afterlife is just self-misdirection designed to make that one belief go down a bit easier. You need a religion that is a huge ineffable construct with lots of rules and mythology in order to hide the essential self-serving truth of the thing.

When I say designed, I don't mean some nefarious mastermind actively wrote any religion to cleverly subvert people's ability to question it, but rather the believers themselves slowly molded it into what they needed it to be in order to believe in it. They needed to believe in an afterlife, so whatever kind of religion was necessary for that was the religion they found themselves a part of. This is clearly going on today with "new" interpretations of the same old passages being "discovered' constantly as human society changes and needs them to mean different things. So even if the source remains static, we can still change the religion into something we believe in if we want to badly enough.

 

[omega3]

I think yes. All the other stuff that they believe in along with the afterlife is just self-misdirection designed to make that one belief go down a bit easier. You need a religion that is a huge ineffable construct with lots of rules and mythology in order to hide the essential self-serving truth of the thing.

When I say designed, I don't mean some nefarious mastermind actively wrote any religion to cleverly subvert people's ability to question it, but rather the believers themselves slowly molded it into what they needed it to be in order to believe in it. They needed to believe in an afterlife, so whatever kind of religion was necessary for that was the religion they found themselves a part of. This is clearly going on today with "new" interpretations of the same old passages being "discovered' constantly as human society changes and needs them to mean different things. So even if the source remains static, we can still change the religion into something we believe in if we want to badly enough.

The main question might be WHY exactly people like myself have this strong desire to live on beyond death here on earth.

I do think that reality is very likely something completely different then we can even imagine. If we are random beings, then also our thinking is nothing more.

 

[SlitheryDee]

The main question might be WHY exactly people like myself have this strong desire to live on beyond death here on earth.

I do think that reality is very likely something completely different then we can even imagine. If we are random beings, then also our thinking is nothing more.

We evolved to be terrified of the unknown. That makes sense because we survive by controlling our environment. Anything unknown can't be controlled, can't be made safe by the application of our cognitive powers to it. Death is the big unknown. Not only is it unknown, but it is unknowable. After all, if we're honest with ourselves we must admit that it probably marks the cessation of the ability know anything in the future and the end of all the knowledge we retain from the past. It is abhorrent to us by it's very nature. It isn't a stretch to think that in the case of death we would be likely to grasp at any straws, even those of our own invention, to make it seem like a more palatable concept.

 

[flexy]

There is no "after life" since this physical existence is just ONE of a greater whole. Yes, obviously we require a physical body to experience physicality, but physicality is only ONE aspect of various levels of reality.

As "far out" this may sound, there is evidence for this.

Let's keep it simple..the statement that we experience this physical world with our senses such as eyes, ears, touch etc. 1st grader stuff. Or is it?

Then explain to me how I can *hear *see *communicate *move etc. in dreams.

Common sense would say it's impossible. How I can I "see" in a dream? How can I actually walk in a "parallel world" quite similar as I do in the physical world and use senses while my BODY IS ACTUALLY ASLEEP, my eyes closed, etc.

(It's an example I can literally experience a "reality" with all my senses not even active)

So of course...science comes and makes-up some "less than satisfying" explanation such as that dreams is your brain randomly firing neurons etc....seriously can it get less idiotic? How does science explain that I can get surprised in a dream or that I don't know what another "dream person" would reply in conversation? I mean, the common "explanation" - isn't it a dream is all "made by ourselves"? If this is the case how can I get surprised in a dream? <--- SIMPLE example here

It can get more interesting when we touch the subject of OOBE/Astral Travel etc....or other extra-ordinary states such as trance or from the use of drugs.

Or NDEs and similar experience, or Reincarnation.

>>
reality is very likely something completely different then we can even imagine.
>>
Reality is NOT just limited to this physical reality.

Get some of the better books on the subject out there, get some hundreds of NDE accounts and credible reincarnation stories....and do the math.

The funny thing is that some, and especially "ancient" and "nature-religions" had and have a better understanding of this, there "death" often wasn't or isn't the "end of all things", it's often better understood how we're "multi dimensional" (sorry, I know how this sounds)...rather than the odd/limiting idea of Christianity that we live ONCE (oh really, do we?) in this one physicality, then we die..and then...OH NO! we might face "internal hell" or "eternal damnation" and if we've been nice and god judged us accordingly "eternal paradise".

 

[MongGrel]

I'll pass on this one...

 

[sandorski]

To some degree it is, but there are other motivators as well. Some people want a helping hand in this Life as well, for eg. I think the After Life belief is largely just a de-motivator to stop Believing in "God(s)". Meaning, that to stop Believing will have dire consequences.

 

[omega3]

We as a species strive to find meaning in everything, even if there is none. We read and imagine. We look to the sky and see patterns. We look to the past, discard it and plan for the future. We see conspiracies everywhere because random is just so futile. I think folks are just searching for a punchline that doesn't exist.

But then the question is.. why do we do that? Why as a species do we strive to find meaning? Why do we even strive to evolve? Where does that come from?

 

[MongGrel]

Title doesn't match poll name close enough to begin with.

You seem to assume everyone cares or thinks there is a god to begin with from what you posted.

 

[omega3]

Title doesn't match poll name close enough to begin with.

You seem to assume everyone cares or thinks there is a god to begin with from what you posted.

No, however the thing i do assume is that at least alot of people would like an afterlife where our souls can live on peacefully. That even if you're life on earth is horrible, that you probably have an idea of what feeling happy could possible feel like and that it would be amazing if you could feel that in an afterlife.

Personally i'm a sceptic, i don't believe as such in all the existing Gods but i don't rule anything out.

If according to evolution we're nothing more then random creatures, then also our brain and our reasoning is nothing more then a random activity and the larger scheme of things could be something completely different from what we can even imagine. That would leave all options wide open.

 

[MongGrel]

No, however the thing i do assume is that at least alot of people would like an afterlife where our souls can live on peacefully. That even if you're life on earth is horrible, that you probably have an idea of what feeling happy could possible feel like and that it would be amazing if you could feel that in an afterlife.

Personally i'm a sceptic, i don't believe as such in all the existing Gods but i don't rule anything out.

If according to evolution we're nothing more then random creatures, then also our reasoning is nothing more then a random activity and the larger scheme of things could be something completely different from what we can even imagine.

If it makes you happy, and not want to rage on people outside of your beliefs, more power to you.

Deeply based religious beliefs have killed more people and accelerated a lot of hate in the world while accumulating wealth in the name of a God for a few in general has been my experience.

 

[elitejp]

I understand that believing in God makes you feel better as is the same with me.. but that doesn't mean he actually exists unfortunately.. I'm not interested in an imaginary friend.

I think the main reason people wanna believe in God is because that idea provides the comfort that reality can't give.. however that doesn't make it true.

There are so many arguments against God but to name just one.. how do you explain that so many people in Africa are born with HIV or just die shortly after birth because they have no food.. or all the handicap people out there.. even if you gonna say that it is mankinds fault for not finding a solution for those problems, are you saying that in the meantime those innocent people deserve to suffer and God is cruel and sadistic?

Unfortunately most christians seem to hold this view too as God is in complete control and does things like this. So I dont blame you for not reading the Bible with carefulness. However the Bible does speak of a Devil and does call him the god/ruler of this world. Not to mention that the Bible teaches that humans have a choice. So with that said I wouldnt be blaming things on God until I took a look at a few other of the participants.

 

[elitejp]

Deeply based religious beliefs have killed more people and accelerated a lot of hate in the world while accumulating wealth in the name of a God for a few in general has been my experience.

As if people who dont believe in God or Gods never hated or killed. Wars are based on people trying to aquire wealth. Nothing complicated about that.

 

[TeeJay1952]

The search for relevance is the curse of sentience.
I think therefor I am is followed by why?

 

[SlitheryDee]

If according to evolution we're nothing more then random creatures, then also our brain and our reasoning is nothing more then a random activity and the larger scheme of things could be something completely different from what we can even imagine. That would leave all options wide open.

I don't think it's really random though. We aren't some haphazard jumble of parts that happens to be able to think and move about. We evolved specifically to suit our environment. That doesn't mean that we were inevitable, but it does mean there was something guiding our development, even if it was something as mundane as environmental pressure. Even if you want to bring the idea of random mutation into the picture, you still have to consider that it was our living conditions that ultimately determined which mutations stayed in the gene pool and which ones washed out. Evolution always seems ready to take a random occurrence and turn it to it's own use, which has the effect of making it non-random because it is selectively kept or discarded depending on whether it is beneficial or not.

 

[flexy]

Deeply based religious beliefs have killed more people and accelerated a lot of hate in the world

This is correct but I think we're mistaking cause and effect here.

Religious beliefs, no matter how irrational or silly are a natural consequence of humans being stupid, irrational ..we're no robots who live by "0 or 1". MOST things that play a role in our lives are emotional & subjective.

That we tend to organize ourselves, eg. politics, religions etc. is ALSO a human characteristic.

Spoken differently: We kill, hate and do all those things whether we belong to some religious group or not.

This is proven alone if you look at societies where religion is/was indeed banned (Communism etc.)..the absence of religion does NOT automatically create a peaceful society. Not by a long-shot! The SAME factors at work , people would group for whatever other reasons and kill & hate, they find SOME justification for it be assured.

I also tended to think that belonging to some religious group would possibly accelerate those things, but TBH I am not sure about this, maybe it does maybe it doesn't.

 

[MajinCry]

Just going to chime in for a mo'.

Saw a lot of "Religions seek to inform people how to live well on this world"...Yeah-no.

Ever read the OT? Evil incarnate; commands slaughter, rape, slavery, sex slavery, infanticide, child rape, etc. Not a good book.

The NT? Why, it preaches torture for all eternity if you don't worship Yahweh. And it commands you to follow the OT. Y'know, Luke 16:17.

The Koran? Holy hell, it's even worse. It takes fourty or so characters from the Bible, then rewrites it, going several steps further in barbarism.

Buddhism? Well, all I gotta say about that, is the lama caste system.

Jainism is probably the religion closest to being one that teaches you how to live well, but I'm not too certain on how they stand towards genital mutilation.

Haven't investigated Sikhism, so forgive me for omitting that. From what little I remember reading, it's no better than Judaism.

As for the OP:

Afterlife, I'd wager, plays little part in the belief. It's what is in their belief at the time when they joined it that matters to the believers. Otherwise there'd be no Jews.

 

[elitejp]

Ever read the OT? Evil incarnate; commands slaughter, rape, slavery, sex slavery, infanticide, child rape, etc. Not a good book.

So where did you see it command that? wherever you got that impression from totally doesnt know how to comprehend whats being written.