Life after Death : are we going to dance among ghosts and have a toast to our legacy?

[basics]

As far as the original question asks we are certainly not going to be dancing among ghosts or have any toasts to make about any legacy since that part of life for them saved exists no more. We'll be in the presence of God as sons and heirs thanks to Jesus Christ who changed everything for us on that great day He gave Himself for our sin.

[Bethrezen]

In life, I think some of the most important questions right now are what are the mind and consciousness exactly and how do they "work". Also, if we live in an universe and it has limits, what is outside those limits.

Death is most probably returning to the exact state we were before being born: non-existence. Remember what a nice and perfect existence we were having before birth? Neither do I, and I believe that's exactly were we're going back to. I'm an agnostic though, so I think virtually anything is possible, but I believe some scenarios are more probable than others.

[basics]

In life, I think some of the most important questions right now are what are the mind and consciousness exactly and how do they "work". Also, if we live in an universe and it has limits, what is outside those limits.

Death is most probably returning to the exact state we were before being born: non-existence. Remember what a nice and perfect existence we were having before birth? Neither do I, and I believe that's exactly were we're going back to. I'm an agnostic though, so I think virtually anything is possible, but I believe some scenarios are more probable than others.

Bethrezen,

My consolation is that I know that God had me in His mind before the existence of the universe and that soon I won't experience a non-existent state because I am going to live with Him forever. That's the wonderful revelation that God gave us when Adam plunged all things into sin and from that we can read of others long thought dead yet alive and well in that same place and I think of Jesus Christ, Moses, Abraham who were seen after death, by the writers of the Gospels.

[MaximiIian]

That's exactly what I believe. I'm a pagan, the norse tradition has two basic options when we die.
..
Christians spend so much time worrying about the next life they fail to live in this one...

I'm mostly in agreement, because I also am a Pagan (mostly of the Greek and Roman tradition). My view the afterlife is in tune with the Classical view that, mostly, we pass into a realm of mist and meadows where we live a shade of our former lives-- not paradise, but certainly no prison. The ordinary person goes to a neutral land of the dead and your conduct in life scarcely affects it. What matters in life is that you are fulfilled by it.

I adhere more to the Roman view that the spirits of the dead remain active and effective, and can be propitiated.

[Bethrezen]

Sorry, I've been going through the forums and found your older post.

2018:

I'm mostly in agreement, because I also am a Pagan (mostly of the Greek and Roman tradition). My view the afterlife is in tune with the Classical view that, mostly, we pass into a realm of mist and meadows where we live a shade of our former lives-- not paradise, but certainly no prison. The ordinary person goes to a neutral land of the dead and your conduct in life scarcely affects it. What matters in life is that you are fulfilled by it.

I adhere more to the Roman view that the spirits of the dead remain active and effective, and can be propitiated.

2007

Religion-wise, I've been an atheist all my life, really. In middle-school, I told people I was a Norse neopagan just to get 'em off my back, but now I just ignore *****y people like that. I still think Norse paganism is frigging cool, though.
The idea of a god never really appealed to me.
Philosophically, I'm an ethical relativist, always have been, but only recently came around to socialist thought. But, I think I've always been a humanist and human nationalist.

So, the question is: why the change? What proofs/revelations did you come upon that made you change from atheist (with attraction towards Norse paganism) to Greek-Roman paganism?

[DaVinci]

"Life after Death : are we going to dance among ghosts and have a toast to our legacy?"

It's of course an essential question. But nothing at all from this is in my mind an option. Every organic life, but also non-organic physical appearance (say, fe. architecture or industrial design or art), "survives" only in the mind of the living (or just presently experienced with our senses), as long rememberance serves (or is saved somewhere on data-carrier, and thus revoked when "replayed"). Our psyche (or soul or ghost) is bounded inherently to the physical life form. When we assume it is energy like the physical form of bodies, then one could assume that "must" (?) survive somehow, changes just its aggregate (that's just where old knowers in the eve of human development started to think about, and religion started). But if we wanna know that really todays, or judge about it, we dive inevitably into the deep field of physics researchment. Else, it's pure human belief, culturally developed and kept alive early on due to "knowing" men and women who told the "truth" and later teached additionally in text form, and nowadays distributed in all available technological forms.

Of course, there are some human individuals, who claim, they experience(d) supernatural items. Those exist as well, but limited to their brain. And the brain is a very capable organ (to a degree). First of all it is able to learn, also very open to manipulation because of that. Furtheron it's for example able to believe into things which can't be measured, it can dream complete nonsense, it can create art, it can even heal via self- or foreign suggestion (fe. placebo-effect), it can release deep emotions like love and hate. etc.. But all these processes are bounded inherently to bio-chemical processes.

Btw, i did a thread years ago, Life and Death in the philosophy section.
Not much frequented, although i find (or found there) the theme pretty relevant.
Problem is, one can pretty much not discuss such things with real believers of a religion, who in principle ignore nature-science or have only half-knowledge of it, and stop or stopped to learn that for example the "solutions" offered by religions (its texts or telling forms) are purely man-made in the search for answers of what i strive in my Life and Death thread comments, as i see it: Trying to escaping from the fear of non-being. One can implicate, that this developed belief, thus religion, was necessary for the human development. But i would say, there are other options available to live properly, without that kind of developed religious belief system, which traditionally come with a mass of dogmas and thus "offer" a big field of controversity, especially whenever it gets institutional.

[basics]

Quite apart from Jesus explaining that there is life after death and Him being God, there is enough documentation of people having died experiencing moments of what He was talking about before being restored to life. Although never having died and come back to life myself I have experienced being taken back in time to see Jesus' last words being cried out just before He died on the cross and you know what my brain knew nothing about the crucifixion other than the fact he had been crucified. So, for some seven hours I experienced by sight what that actually meant for me and my future and it changed my life forever. I have seen and heard enough since then to know that these experiences were not delusional but real Supernatural works of God in all of them.

[95thrifleman]

Quite apart from Jesus explaining that there is life after death and Him being God, there is enough documentation of people having died experiencing moments of what He was talking about before being restored to life. Although never having died and come back to life myself I have experienced being taken back in time to see Jesus' last words being cried out just before He died on the cross and you know what my brain knew nothing about the crucifixion other than the fact he had been crucified. So, for some seven hours I experienced by sight what that actually meant for me and my future and it changed my life forever. I have seen and heard enough since then to know that these experiences were not delusional but real Supernatural works of God in all of them.

I'd really love for you to a) post the exact scripture where jesus describes what is like to die and b) this documentation.

I mean no disrespect to your personal experiences and interpretation thereof, however personal hallucinations are not exactly going to convince other people of anything.

[MaximiIian]

So, the question is: why the change? What proofs/revelations did you come upon that made you change from atheist (with attraction towards Norse paganism) to Greek-Roman paganism?

Around 2006 to mid-2007 was when I was flirting with Paganism as something to actually identify with, partly because of my lifelong interest in pre-Christian cultures and myths. I will admit, some of my attraction was due to seeing Neopaganism as a cultural-social counterweight to the aggressive Christianity of some of my peers, but before 2006 I'd mostly reacted to their aggression with a bluntly militant atheism. It wasn't until the tail-end of 2007 that I started considering myself a Pagan, along the lines of "Wiccanate" neopaganism. At the time, it was mostly the ethics and social mindset that appealed to me. The emphasis on connecting to nature, feminism and social justice, and sexual liberation matched my own existing opinions on the subjects, and it was nifty to find a spirituality that fit my own ideas. By that point I had drifted from atheism to pantheism as my position, so that post you quoted was probably near the very end of me being an atheist. My interest in adhering to a spirituality at all probably stemmed from my gradual move towards pantheism.
I began practicing rituals, and studying Western Occultism, as a conscious attempt to have an experiential connection to that pantheistic energy or being. I even started practicing Wicca and identifying as Wiccan around 2008, accompanied with the somewhat duotheistic soft polytheism that was popular at the time, though I hesitated from fully throwing myself into polytheism. It was an idea that I thought made more sense than monotheism, but my inbuilt skepticism overrode that and I remained a kind of pantheist. I fell out of practice for a year or so, and thought of myself as more of a theoretician or as a non-practicing Pagan.
But around 2011, I started practicing again and I had a series of vivid spiritual experiences over the course of a couple years, including interactions with several gods and spirits. I quite simply became a polytheist then.

As far as why my religion drifted towards Hellenistic and Roman Paganism, from the Celtic- and Germanic-oriented Wicc-ish neopaganism I'd started out with? Initially just a drift in my interests towards Classical studies; and later my UPG was primarily concerned with Greek and Roman figures, so that's who I honoured. I never entirely dropped my interest in and veneration for Celtic and Germanic gods and my ancestors, it just took a backseat to my realignment towards Hellenistic religion.

Now, all that having been said, I still think of myself as a skeptic. I don't believe something until I've experienced it for myself, or unless it otherwise fits with the experiences I have had. And I encourage others to have the same attitude, and to not take things on blind faith.

[basics]

I'd really love for you to a) post the exact scripture where jesus describes what is like to die and b) this documentation.

I mean no disrespect to your personal experiences and interpretation thereof, however personal hallucinations are not exactly going to convince other people of anything.

95thrifleman,

Well it's like this as these were not hallucinations at all. Did the disciples hallucinate on seeing Jesus walk on water or turn water into wine, even eat and talk with Him after His resurrection? Was it hallucinating to see my baby girl in her hospital crib only 12 hours after her birth yet when I walked into that ward it was exactly as my dream of eight/nine years earlier which I had forgotten about never thinking I would father a girl? No my friend you have much to learn about the power and love of God.

[fkizz]

I mean no disrespect to your personal experiences and interpretation thereof, however personal hallucinations are not exactly going to convince other people of anything.

Well you just admited openly that accounts who contradict your worldview will go to "hallucinations" folder.

Two types of "empirical experience" then:

1) the ones who confirm your worldview, the "true ones"
2) the ones who challenge your worldview the "failures of the brain ones"

There is some inherent solipsism behind this way of classifying things!

[MaximiIian]

I mean no disrespect to your personal experiences and interpretation thereof, however personal hallucinations are not exactly going to convince other people of anything.

I get where you're coming from here, and I have had to fight hard to get rid of my instinctive dismissal of Christian peoples' personal experiences. But fkizz is right-- UPG is fair and fine for each person, because no-one has the same experiences. You don't have to believe that his experiences are real, I certainly don't. But at least understand that his experiences are real to him, and inform his worldview, and aren't necessarily hallucinations just because they contradict yours or mine. The same way that we, as Pagans, want others to at least be understanding and accepting of our internalization of our experiences.

[basics]

Well guys,

Look at it this way you give honour to something or somebody, earthly things or some imaginary god or gods whilst I give honour and worship to the Creator of all things, Him being Jesus Christ Whom Paul authenticates in his book to the Romans. You see how you miss the root? You're one step away from the Creator giving homage to what He created and not Him Himself. Luke 16;19-31 tells of a rich guy in hell and a poor guy in the bosom of Abraham. Now as for the stories of people having died, experiencing certain wonderful things and then being brought back to life can be found by typing in about these experiences so surely if they can be read that is documentation?

[conon394]

Well it's like this as these were not hallucinations at all. Did the disciples hallucinate on seeing Jesus walk on water or turn water into wine, even eat and talk with Him after His resurrection? Was it hallucinating to see my baby girl in her hospital crib only 12 hours after her birth yet when I walked into that ward it was exactly as my dream of eight/nine years earlier which I had forgotten about never thinking I would father a girl? No my friend you have much to learn about the power and love of God.

Hallucinate I don't know really but seeing as you don't have transcript of that just late writing to the effect - do you believe Herodotus when he talked to Athenian veterans of Marathon who saw the spirits of the Heros of Ancient Athens leading them to victory? Or is that just a false religion even thought it was one far more logical than the bible - which is only made tolerably not ridiculous by the heavy lifting a tone of bright guys trained in the classical tradition.

He knew what Adam had done and the consequences of it and out of that religion sprung up but as we know it wasn'r enough, the flood awaiting

Which would require a singular genetic bottle neck for all living terrestrial creatures and well unfortunately not a real thing.

[basics]

conon394,

It is written that God raises up nations whilst destroying others so what happened or didn't happen in the lives of men is down to God's hand so maybe there is truth in the Athenian venture. The universal flood has enough backing by many nations who all can tell of it.

[conon394]

There are indeed many types of flood stories, but your problem is the particular one you choose to believe has left no observable evidence. If real it would have left a profound and detectable bottleneck in at minimum every mammal.

[basics]

conon394,

I have no problem with the flood or any other event written of in the Bible for it gives us great detail of how the world was before it and how it is now. Indeed we can all see the mighty power that water has if unleashed even at the local level. Back then we can read that the earth was one mass but when the flood came coupled with volcanic action it split apart creating mountain ranges as well as great undersea chasms alongside cutting out great chasms like the Grand Canyon. Before it the land was pretty much low lying which allowed for the passage of the Ark as it rode out the storm. So, in the space of a year the flood did what you guys think evolution did over billions of years without you having any evidence to prove that. I mean many put store into global warming melting all the ice caps and flooding great swathes of land yet as far as the flood is concerned it's all hogwash despite many nations able to know of it even if by folklore.

[Sar1n]

basics, your ignorance is not an excuse to spout false claims.

Geological record and related science give quite clear picture of Earth's history, firmly entrenched in evidence. It is biblical flood, or, for that matter, the entire biblical creationism that does not have any evidence supporting it. Naturally, it can't have any, since it's founded on belief in direct divine intervention, rather than logical sequence of events.

[basics]

basics, your ignorance is not an excuse to spout false claims.

Geological record and related science give quite clear picture of Earth's history, firmly entrenched in evidence. It is biblical flood, or, for that matter, the entire biblical creationism that does not have any evidence supporting it. Naturally, it can't have any, since it's founded on belief in direct divine intervention, rather than logical sequence of events.

Sar1n,

What evidence? It's all supposition to fit a theory that is unprovable in itself. I mean the story of the Big Bang takes more delusional faith to believe in it than does the Bible's explanation for how we got here yet all you guys just accept it as fact, why? Because that's what the world of science wants you to believe. Paul puts it into perspective in Romans when he writes that man would rather worship the created than the Creator.

[Bethrezen]

What evidence? It's all supposition to fit a theory that is unprovable in itself.

This concludes our meeting, yes?

Translation: All different opinions are wrong; mine is correct. And there is nothing you can do to change my mind.

My question is, why bother?
My second questions is: why would anyone bother to reply to you?

Did the disciples hallucinate on seeing Jesus walk on water or turn water into wine, even eat and talk with Him after His resurrection?

Damn right they did. Or they lied. Or others lied long after they were gone.
Also, Jesus did not exist.