Quote:
Originally Posted by rezdesign
Hey I have another question for Atheists, what do YOU think happens when you die? Do you have a soul? Are you still able to think, touch, see, smell, whatever, in the grave? Or do you just cease to exist? The thought of just "not existing" is a scary and depressing thought. :Oh crap
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I believe in souls, I don't think my soul will remain 'in the grave' with my body, (which, btw when I die, I want to be cremated & have my ashes mixed into the sand of a zen garden)
...I don't worry too much overall about where I have come from, I concern myself more with where I am now & where I am going. That said, here's what I believe about life/afterlife/purpose of life (a "brief" summary)
I don't believe that life on earth is "it" all there is all there will be, by any means. Look around at the growth patterns that we see in all things all around us. Pay close attention especially to the schooling that happens in all living things, enabling them to survive on their own. Now look closely again at our own school systems. They have absolutely nothing to do with the overall purpose of our lives, but they make for a fabulous metaphorical image to help explain my "theory" on this stuff. Now think back to the stories our parents or grandparents have told us about "back in the day" when schools were not seperated by age/grade classifications. Everybody was clumped in together. Keeping that image in mind now, apply it to earth. Earth is the school, the souls are the pupils, and we are all here to learn "life" lessons. Think now about some of the people you have encountered in your life. We've all met people that make us feel to be about the size of an ant without trying very hard, and we've also encountered people who will say or do something & not think anything of it, and leave us completely mindboggled and left wondering how they can possibly not know any better. There are things that we all can think of that we "know" in our minds/hearts/(...or souls) that nobody has ever flat out said to us directly "Don't do this, it is bad." Example, (slightly extreme) ...nobody has ever told me, "Tami, you shouldn't kill people, its wrong." Nobody has ever had to tell me that, I know that it is wrong. Murderers still exist however, and very likely because the soul inhabiting that individual, has not yet learned that killing people is wrong. Could very well be the lesson they are on this planet to learn. Now, is the lesson always learned in one lifetime? Does going to jail "teach" them? No, I think this is where Karma comes into play in a big way. Not to spook you all with the murder references, but I'm going to use it as an example again. Take Canada's Clifford Olson for example. He's killed several children, I don't think that going to jail has taught him anything, I dread the fact that he's going to finish his sentence in a frighteningly short amount of time.. (getting sidetracked, sorry) I don't think his soul is going to fully understand the full lesson until Karma has taught it... I think when he dies (shouldn't be too long after his release lol) his soul will come back and for each child he killed, he will be a child killed, and closer to the 'end' of his learning, he'll be the parent of a child who gets killed. That soul won't come back & murder anybody else, that will be a lesson learned.
That's just one very simplistic example, as I've said there's plenty of other things people say/do that we can think of and be appalled at.
Now, I've had people ask me stuff like "For what purpose are we here learning these lessons then?" Lets look again at our own society as an example. Why do we send our kids to school? So they can learn discipline, social skills, etc etc (Very little of the academics taught in school are either remembered, or useful to life as a whole). Why do our souls come to Earth, our classroom, to learn lessons? So that once they've learned them all they can graduate from this existance & become a part of a larger "society" or an even bigger picture.
That's the short version, it's all pretty complex, ... :)
