Quote:* But whether it's God's plan or ours, difficult questions are raised. If God, why would He allow such awful tragedies like the tsunami that take such a huge toll in lives and suffering? But if we are the authors, why would we do it either? Surely we must realize the agony and heartache that such a script would cause the survivors.
My thought is that only through material suffering and deprivation can there be spiritual progress. I know it sounds cliche, but I really believe it's true. Jesus, Buddha, and most other spiritual masters taught versions of this basic principle.
Quote:* Or we might have to shed our belief that God is necessarily "loving" at least in terms of how we understand that word. I suppose he can love our souls while at the same time not caring too much about our physical lives. I know the bible says God loved us so much that he gave his only begotten Son to die on the cross.....but he really didn't give up his Son other than for a few days, after which the Son rejoined the Father for all eternity. Not that much of a sacrifice if you ask me.
I think a lot of Christians misunderstand the meaning of the cross. I think it has to do more with God showing how much He loves us -- even the people society perceives as totally worthless and rejected. That is how the Jews and Romans perceived a crucified man. In Judaism, one who "hangs on a tree" (interpreted as crucifixion) is regarded as "accursed" of God. In the Roman mindset, crucifixion was the punishment of only the most heinous criminals of the lower class. By putting Jesus on the cross and then resurrecting him from the dead, God was proving to the world that His love extends even to the rejects of society, and that there is in fact an afterlife where the downtrodden will find justice and peace. I don't think the point was to inflict maximum possible suffering on Jesus; it is obvious that there are some people who have suffered more severely even than Jesus, although certainly being crucified ranks up there as one of the worst forms of torture ever devised by man.
Quote:* I sometimes think that the fear of death is so powerful among so many people that we cannot grasp and accept the possibility that we will cease to exist. Or at least our egos can't. So we devise all sorts of things to make ourselves believe the opposite. What is astounding to me is that no one, thruout the entire course of human history, has ever established proof that we do in fact survive. Not even proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Even the intriguing NDE accounts can be replicated in some respects by ketamine, including seeing dead relatives and hearing celestial music.
Just because a drug can produce an OBE/NDE doesn't necessarily invalidate the phenomenon. It could be that ketamine shuts down the part of the brain that is responsible for maintaining connection with the soul or astral body.
I have found the NDE of Pam Reynolds to be scientific evidence of an afterlife. She had an NDE during brain surgery in which her brain had been drained of blood and there was no electrical activity recorded in any part of her brain. Unless she is lying, it seems to me her experience is pretty close to proof that human consciousness transcends the brain.
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.htmlAnother reason I believe in an afterlife is because of the resurrection of Jesus. The Bible contains eyewitness testimony of various people who claimed to see Jesus after he died on the cross. Many of these people died for their belief, so strongly did they believe Jesus really was still alive. Also, the Shroud of Turin seems to provide scientific evidence that Jesus really did rise from the grave. Scientists have not been able to explain this image of a man on an ancient cloth except by the hypothesis that it was the historical Jesus whose body dematerialized into light energy, imprinting the image on the burial cloth -- in other words, some form of resurrection or transition from physical matter into an astral body. There is all kinds of hard scientific evidence linking the Shroud to Jesus. The latest finding is that the carbon dating test that supposedly showed the Shroud to be medieval was bogus, because the sample of cloth taken was a medieval repair patch, not the original cloth. This study has been reported in the news recently. For more information on the Shroud of Turin, see the excellent website of Barrie Schwortz, a
Jewish scientist who has examined the Shroud himself and believes it is really the cloth used to wrap the body of Jesus!
http://www.shroud.com Quote:* And the big question seems to always be, how does any of this impact how we live on a day to day basis? Sure, it helps us share in our hopes and fears, but does it help in terms of how we treat others as per the Golden Rule?
Believing in an afterlife definitely helps me to see more purpose in my life and the lives of others, and to be a better person. It also helps me psychologically. There is so much suffering and injustice in this world, that if there is no life after death, life is terribly unfair to many people. That is a proposition I do not wish to accept. Nor do I feel I have to. There seems to be plenty of evidence for an afterlife -- although admittedly, all evidence can be disputed. Perhaps with time, more and better evidence for life after death will become available.
Freebird
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