Bittersweet Candy Bowl

i think you face god and he decides what to do.
i dont believe in heaven or hell, i believe that it decides whether or not to use the basic mental blueprints on further humans, and enjoys watching us suffer, but doesnt care if we die.
thats why i kinda look forward to death. getting to face the bastard head on will be my crowning moment.

I believe that you are judged through your actions in life and that that will determine where you go. I believe what is after death is unfathomable to the human mind. I am christian by the way, not sure if that matters though.

kewl.
i still think god is a stupid bastard, but thats a better way of looking at it then almost every religion.

Your loved ones or lack thereof burn or bury you and you gradually break apart into the soil. Otherwise: nothing. I feel nothing and don’t care about it, nor do I care about convincing people there’s something or nothing. It’s like kids who’ve never seen tobacco arguing what it smells like.

(Fact: It smells good and makes you look cool.)

Same as JB

I think this topic fits more with religion.
Anyways, here’s my opinion:

Death is the end.
It doesn’t matter about heaven, hell, or God(s).
Your time here on Earth is over.
The mind goes blank and everything goes dark.
No one knows for sure, but perhaps we are recycles into other bodies.

And while the topic of God is up:
God exists because we brought him into existance.
He is our answer for the unknown.
If we believe, he provides.
It’s in this cycle that we start to let God take over our lives.
Forgetting that we were the ones who created him.
Not the other way around.


EDIT: For the record, I am totally a karma person. :3

…..k….i dont mean the traditional omnipotent god in mine, i mean something more akin to a kid and an ant farm sort of thing.

Hey Kazi, want to hear a weird coincidence? When I first heard about what was happening to Jessie this summer, the first thing I did was threaten to kill God. If it’s anything like my sister describes it, God deserves has it coming.

On that note, read a synopsis for the comic “Preacher.” I think you can appreciate it.

To be honest I’ve never really believed in karma . Too many bad people get away with bad things.

@ JB: That’s not how karma works. The principle behind karma is that everyone has a certain amount of weight upon their soul. Doing bad things will make it heavier, so to speak, while doing good things and enduring suffering makes it lighter and brings you closer to enlightenment. You continue reincarnating until you have burned away all your excess karma.

My father is Hindu.

I believe in reincarnation. Depending on how you lived your life you get reincarnated as a certain animal but if you lived your life right, you’ll be reincarnated as another person. sounds far-fetched I know.

Oh my bad, thanks Jerk, I guess I had it confused with something else.

when i die, i want to be fired from space, into the atmosphere, in one of those heat resistan suits there making for astronaughts, at the white house.

@ GoldenArbiter01: I want to rent out a commercial spaceflight just for you on the condition I can play “Space Oddity” at your funeral.

@ JuniorBoomer: No worries. I only know it because I spent a lot of time doing religion studies at Baylor.

From an agnostic/atheist point of view:
What happens when you die? Nothing and everything.
Time stands still. You simply cease to exist. Consciousness stops in all degrees. Your body decomposes (if you choose to be buried) and you feed thousands of insects, microbes, and bacteriae. Who in turn will be eaten, either in life or death, by other bugs/animals. The cycle continues ad infinitum. Just because we happen to be at the top of the food chain now, does not mean we stay there.

This is the extent of our existence after death. Just a memory and a meal.

From a suspected religious point of view:
Assume that there is an afterlife. You never know until you die. I wonder what good does knowing then do you now? I suppose you can take comfort in the belief that your soul will ‘live’ forever in the company of your passed friends/family and whatever deity you chose to worship in life.

Other than that, I’m afraid I don’t know much about religious afterlife. I choose to not take solace in a theory, but rather, live for today and look towards tomorrow. I’m certainly not trying to bash religion. I just think that the evidence given is pretty inconclusive to prove the existence of an omnipotent being. You really want to live for all time? Wait for science to make it possible. That’s what I’m doing. Assuming it happens in my lifetime. lol.

There’s this one where you get seventy houris who stay virgins no matter how many times you screw them, but you have to be a crazed mass murderer to get them. Sounds fishy to me.

if there is an afterlife, it would only be a copy of you, since your “soul” so to speak, is all contained within your brain, so it would be like that asimov story where the guy is radiowaves or something.

@jerk, yeah, people are retards, some persons are intelligent

I tend to avoid the subject as I myself am too confused over the concept of religion and such.

What I like to THINK happens is pretty much the Diskworld theory. When you die, death shows up and escorts you to wherever you think you’re supposed to go. Hindu’s get reincarnated… Vikings go to Valhala… Christians go to Hell… etc etc.

well, i always thought that death was where everything would be answered: all the questions you ever asked are answered for you. But mostly i think its where you go to wherever your belief takes you. As a catholic, i dont believe in hell, as my God is too benevolent and all good to force anyone to go there. the worst i can imagine he’d do would put you in purgatory (infinite nothing) for as long as it took for you to reconcile, then your allowed to get into heaven.

heres a better way of looking at it, God is called Father because he is like the best dad:
-He never gives the answers, always just gently guiding and supporting.
-Whatever he does, you have to trust him because he knows whats best.
-He cant and wont fix everything for you everytime you ask him, or you’ll never learn.
-Whatever happens, he’ll always be there for you when you need him the most, but in the end, you have to help him to help you: dont rely on him alone to solve everything.

As for the issue of “Karma”, bad people didnt get away with what they did. Take Hitler for example: He committed genocide, killied millions and brought the world to war. What happened to him?

He lost. he was defeated over and over again, his dreams fell to ruins, Berlin, the capital, was overrun by the Russians (who he always thought would be easy) and he probably went insane and killed himself.

And all the people who died didnt die for nothing: the staggering death toll from WW2 terrified the world. Generations will learn from this, and a war like that wont happen for a long, long time. the relatives and survivors of WW2 still teach us about how horrible it was and how we cant let that happen again.

Like i said before, God knows whats best for us. if it takes a lot of death and a big fear factor for us to turn our lives around, then he’ll do that. the impact that those who died made on the lives of everyone around them only made us better.

Everything happens for a reason. People dont die for nothing, everything is part of a greater plan: in short, everyone and everything has a place. a part to play. maybe our generation will give birth to the generation of space colonists or something. just cuz you dont know your part doesnt mean you dont have one.

Death and God are two things i know a lot about, as i am an enthusiastic religious philosopher. (big wordz! ^_^). Im pretty much the expert at my school.

@Chazfullmetal
You claim that you are catholic, and that you don’t believe in hell… So then you do not believe in the bible? You don’t listen to the pope? The vatican? Any preachers in your religion at all?

Because if memory serves, all of those are more than happy to tell you how anyone who sins, who doesn’t believe in god, or has relationships with members of their same sex will all be thrown into the lake of fire and burn for all eternity.

After we die we realize that we were stupid idiots who did a lot of bad shit in our lives. We then realize that we deserve Hell and assume that we will be sent there after judgment. So you stand in an excruciating long line thinking of all the horrible things you did in your life.

Finally as you get closer to your chosen god, you realize that none of that matters. You are escorted to paradise where friends and family awaits you. Everyday will be a different and fun adventure.

Don’t get me wrong, standing in that line with be it’s own form of Hell, imagine reliving over and over again the worse moments in your life. But that will be our cleansing if you will, after that, we all have our own Heaven.

This thread gave me an idea to restore the Bernie Mac Show.

I call it “Weekend at Bernie Mac’s.”

I say your put in a hole then hudreds of thousands of years later we all become oil so that if you weren’t loved in the first life in death your so loved people are killing eachother over you :/

Being a natural pessimist, I’m betting the afterlife is just as terrible as this life.

Me: I’d rather have no God than a stupid, petty, blatantly unjust God who caters to sycophants. Is that really so much to ask? Until then, I’m just going to be me and make the best decisions I can.

In my heaven, I have a harem. Seventy Jessies. She may not appreciate this joke so much, as she actually is Muslim. n_n

just throwing this out there, the idea of a heaven at all is wholly unappealing to me. a place where my every desire is satisfied is just terrible. i simply cannot be fully satisfied ever. i always feel that i must work towards a goal, but i wont if there is an easier way. theonly true satisfaction for me would be the void, but i will always try to evade the void. because i will always feel that there is more to accomplish.

I think that kind of heaven can exist as a theoretical concept but since it’s so subject I don’t think it’s always something you can comprehend. If you feel most complete working toward a goal, your heaven would always have a goal for you to struggle toward and you’d never feel like it were a useless accomplishment. It would always be fresh and wonderful and beautiful, and you’d struggle and suffer but win and feel strong. See what I’m getting at? It’s one of those concepts that if you find a flaw in it, the flaw is not in the concept by your reasoning the same way it’s impossible to imagine a number greater than infinity. Make sense?

but i dont feel complete working towards a goal. i never feel complete. what joy i get is from making other peoples lives more complete. in any sort of heaven i wouldnt like it. and i expect i will be ready to die and not want to live anymore when i finally do, so some type of reincarnation is out, and i really hate being lied to.

I can’t speculate on what your perfect situation would be, but I can assure you that it would be something beyond anything either of us could comprehend, kind of like the way I felt trying morphine and oxycontin for the first time. You don’t expect to feel that good, and a practical execution of “heaven” would be on a scale much bigger than even the happiest thing you can imagine. If you have never felt complete, you do. That’s just the way it works because, real place or not, that’s its definition as a philosophical concept.

heh……although i would prefer not to use brain altering drugs, even ones without needles
(bad memories, strapped to a table while a needle is put in you, before everything completely changes in your perception is scary)

For me it’s the opposite that are bad: I became lucid after surgery before they had the pain-pump hooked up so I basically woke up to excruciating pain after being, literally, disemboweled. Dear Nurses: fuck you in the eye socket, you cunts. My IV fell out and they left me screaming from my room for twenty minutes during which so much of my blood spilled on the floor a janitor had to mop it all up. And they didn’t have the morphine ready when I woke up screaming about how I needed some fucking painkillers.

@jerk- threaten to sue for malpractice or something. be calm and serious when you talk about it and tell them that if you are not treated well, they will lose their jobs and never work in a hospital again.

hatred works.

I have my own theory, whenever there is a God or not:
We humans are made of 3 important things: Body, Spirit and Soul. Spirit is like the energy that lets our Soul stay attached to our body, and dying is when that energy disappears from your body, and thus, your soul is gone. Souls, being without a body to stay, have to become pure again, and begin to loose all memory of their “past life”. Unfortunately, sometimes the soul gets a little too attached to its past life, or to the material world, and don’t accept their “deaths”. Those souls end up wandering for the eternity, between the astral world and ours. That is the so called “Hell”, the state of self-torture. This souls may also return to our world, and with enough will power, may show themselves to us, as what we call “ghosts”, or, in some rarer cases, reincarnate. The souls that get to totally purify themselves will continue their journey… Where…? who knows… some call that place Heaven, others call it Nothing… nobody is sure
That is my theory XD

My thoughts are 2
im a science guy so u die u lost memoriesthats wat makes us people in my opinion life is a set of enotions and memories to me die is wen you lose emotions and memories and you are forgotten that is being dead
the most religious thought i can get is you get in the core of a newborn and be reborn with new emotions and able to get new memories

I think I’ll be one of the sheep that walk to God’s right side.

Or that is what I hope, at least. ^_^

maverik said earlier that even though i’m catholic, i should believe in hell.

Well, different catholic communities have different beliefs. what i’v been taught is that God created hell and “the devil” as more of a fear factor, and that he isnt cruel enough to send anyone there for eternity

besides, even though im catholic, i dont read the bible often though i do learn from it, i dont care for the pope too much and preachers in my religion teach tolerance and friendship. nothing about hell. at least where im from. So i dont know ehre your getting your knowledge, but christian catholic communites dont believe in hell that much and are taught to be extremely tolerant.


Plus, i doubt that the Pope would say that anyone is beyond reconciliation. Its not his duty to mete out judgement.

@Chazfullmetal
No. He doesn’t. He believes that all souls are salvageable. Unless they refuse to renounce their evil ways. The big one being homosexuality.

Seriously. Ask around your church. See just how many catholics you know who don’t belive that you’ll burn in hell if you break the cardonal rules and engage in sodomy with a guy.

Yes. Catholics teach tollerance and all those good things… But Catholasisum is Catholasisum. And coming from a christian background, I know first hand that the religion believes firmly in heaven and hell. The Bible is VERY cut and dry on that fact.

Granted, you may belong to a fringe sect. But yeah…

Seriously. I’m curious. Ask your church and family what their stance would be if you were gay. Ask them if that’s a damnable act, or if the all loving god doesn’t care.

u mispelt Catholicism.

Actually, most people in my church are very nonchalant about the bible. few of them take it literally and the priest himself thinks the bible is more of a guideline to follow. besides the most important thing is to love god, as long as you dont do anything that is completely against the ten commandments then youre ok, and i dont think it says anywhere in the commandments “thou shalt not be gay”.

God always cares, but he’s not gonna send you to hell for something as small as homosexuality. Since god created us, and homosexuality isnt a choice, i dont think he has any reason to hate gays at all. people are people and i think god isnt as “cut and dry” as one may think. If he is all good, why would he send anyone to hell for eternity?

And i dont think it says in the bible that love is wrong, and most gays in my church (yes there are gays in my church. I’m bored, i look around and see them all the time.) are stubborn christian catholics themselves. hell im pretty sure most of them are kosher as well.

everything is for a reason after all: everyones there for something and there are no exceptions. God created everything, including gays, so there is no sound arguement that gays will go to hell.

In fact i’m pretty sure that no one is capable of being hell-worthy. Even Hitler made more of a good impact on the modern age than he did in WW2. That one guy made sure no one like that will happen again because everyone hated him. If you watch Code Geass, (this is relevant) then Lelouch (main character) becomes emperor, then makes everyone hate him and directs the worlds anger upon him. When he died, every country was at peace because there was no reason to fight anymore.

Besides, how heartless can anyone be? you cant send someone to hell if what they genuinely thought what they were doing was good, cuz they wouldnt know any better. If they know its wrong, and they do it anyway, THEN thats sin. If they dont know, and they do it, then learn after that it was wrong and are sorry, thats NOT sin

No… No there is no commandment that says “Thou Shal Not Be Gay”… However. There IS the following.

Lev. 18:22, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.”

Lev. 20:13, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltness is upon them”

1 Cor. 6:9-10, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

Rom. 1:26-28, “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.”

Seems pretty cut and dry to me :\

Honestly, I’m quite surprised if you’re right and your church honestly doesn’t give a shit. That’s pretty amazingly progressive.

Just as a point of interest, I don’t actually believe any of this myself, I’m just kind of baffled that there’s actually a catholic group that is THAT progressive.

I hear those types can be cured with aversion therapy.

If they have something the exact opposite of Sarah Jessica Parker’s face, I’d like to see it.

…..are you sure its not a unitarian universalist church instead?
i thought catholics were the ones who hated being accepting.

Well this looks like a theological and philosophical train wreck.

You go to the respawn room and wait for your turn

yeah i guess the bible is kinda cut and dry. hmm

i suppose that God didnt himself write it, humans did. no matter how holy one can get, the bible isnt the utter word of God, the commandments are. im sure that god will sacrifice the bible for the sake of the greater good or something. bible is bible but commandments take priority.

True my church is rather progressive, but we are a local church and we dont try to ‘spread our word’ so there wont be many (if any) churches like us around. its also my school, but then my school is stunningly diverse and multicultural and accepting depsite it being a roman catholic school. i guess its because nobody cares that much anymore. if a black guy can be president and an idiot can be mayor of London, and Gordon Brown hasnt been killed yet, then i dont think anyone will care too much about a few rather biased bible readings from what sounds like the OLD testament

Old testament became less important when JESUS arrived, and he taught everyone how God wanted it and i dont think he damned a gay once. cant beat the son of god

What happens when we die? To explain it I think we need to compare it with the PC in an almost discriminatory manner.

Well I think that our soul divides into millions of particles, or hundreds of thousands at least, then by some manner or other each particle joins with millions of others to form a new soul. Kinda like how no two PC’s have the same software and documents really, though more complex and advanced. That way the combined series of previous experiences update the new soul in an indiscreet manner and this affects our physical shell. That way because we become better or more potent beings with each passing generation, our mortal shells become bigger, just as a PC or console needs to be bigger to use the better quality applications. So humans are therefore larger and live longer than their previous generations.

But of course the soul particles are finite.To answer how the population in the planet increases with each passing year, I believe the soul particles are copied just as a back up and their information sent to another shell. There it combines with some original particles and some particle copies to generate a new soul function. And in that manner we can explain the intricate creation of new souls and what happens to them when our mortal shell expires. It also explains how as we advance in our understanding we look back to Gaia herself.

I just think whoever’s on the other end when you die beats the sh*t outta you if you’re an arse, and gives you a lollipop if you were good.

thats one way of looking at it

I think you die, and usually other people are upset about it