Nothing gets answered here on the Cafe.  We argue for pages and pages, to help you make your own answers.

Isn't it more honest to acknowledge "I don't know" than to make up one's own answers?

Dodging...

I would say, yes it is.

It's also more honest to say "I choose to agree with what this person/book/scripture says about it" than to say "this is what GOD says"

When you say "Hell", are you referring to the post expansion Christian idea of the final abode of Evil, or are you referring to the Norse Goddess from whom the name is taken?

Who is dodging?  I don't personally have a belief in anything supernatural at all, but I also don't claim to have knowledge about the subject.  My earlier response was to ShamanWolf's post, not to you.

Nobody knows for sure, but there is no reason to believe the answer is anything other than we cease to be.

If someone comes up with something more impressive than "If you don't believe in me then you'll burn in hell for eternity after you're dead", let me know.

hahah

I should argue your point

Yes, I believe Heaven and Hell are actual literal places, dimensions of being, states, call them what you will. As a moderate Calvinist, I believe those who have accepted God's free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ spend the afterlife in Heaven. Those who have not so accepted, I believe, spend the afterlife in Hell. That's all a solid part of the belief system which I've chosen to adopt. What say you?

How about this...

Every soul eventually reaches T'ir Nan Og, at a time of their own choosing, where no pain or sickness dwells, and pork, fowl, mead and beer are in endless supply...

Of course I'm not going to try anything foolish, like claiming that my beliefs are absolute truth, without having objective evidence to back me up (I believe it to be true, but that's a different kettle of fish...).

But you have to admit, "everyone gets the beer in the end" is a lot more impressive than the whole "burn in Hell" thing.

Well for one I'd say thank you, for the way you stated it.

....you're my new hero.

Hi Jae,

I am in essential agreement with your statement.  The point of divergence I have is that it places a limit on one's ability to reach heaven, which effectively states  there is a limit to what God can do. 

That's just my take...

My "dodging" post was to Shaman Wolf not you Azdgari.  And no offence was meant...

God bless,

Thanks for the clarification, Dave.

It may not be fair to classify ShamanWolf's post as a "dodge", though.  He was never pressed or even directly requested to answer the question, so there was nothing for him to dodge.

He could have refrained from posting in this thread at all, and you would never have even thought to accuse him of dodging.

I think I've answered this question before, but I'm an agnostic on the existence of a "spiritual" or "supernatural" afterlife. No reason to believe, no reason to completely dismiss it, either. At the funeral of a friend of mine back in the winter, another friend who gave a eulogy talked about how our friend's great wish was to travel to the nearest star and that, in some way, he someday might as the atoms that once were part of him get dispersed back into the universe. Both friends were/are atheists, needless to say. That vision is as appealing to me as any kind of eternal afterlife.

Mendalla

Hey, I like that!

I say this is a new definition of "solid", of which I was not previously aware.

That IS the answer, I often give.  Actually "I don't know" is a knowledgable assertion!

(And are not all answers 'made up'?)

Hey, about that I am certain!

...the phrase 'more honest' is an interesting comparative,

Thanks to you all I am learning.

Dave, I believe that God can give the gift of salvation to anyone God so chooses. However, I also believe that there is a single condition on a person to accept that gift, he/she must believe.

No, I don't believe in Hell, but I agree with everyone here who says "I don't know" because it's impossible to know.

What about hell as a symbol for remorse?  Does this make sense to anyone?

"After you die, you are sent to remorse, there to burn in remorse-fire for eternity"...?

How do you go from "torture" to "remorse"?  The concept of hell is clearly designed to make people believe out of fear of torture.  You can try to dress it up any way you want, but it's still reprehensible.

Where do we go when we draw our last breath?

This all depends on how we define "we," doesn't it.

If we define ourselves as biological individuals only, then these individuals expire in death.

If, on the other hand, we define ourselves as eternal energy—which we also and ultimately are—then we are forever.

What's more, if we define energy not only as the material but also as the spiritual substance of the universe, then we are eternal spirit/energy, and the organisms which we also are are just a temporary forms of spirit/energy. The forms arise and die, but the substance of which the forms consist is forever.

I think mystical experience is experiencing ourselves as the substance which we ultimately are: eternal spirit/energy.

I don't know...

But THIS would be pretty nifty...followed by this chaser...always remember to ingest first...easier to say the world is Good or Evil than to realize The Truth is "We Created It, Recreating moment by moment"...

Even Ozzy says he doesn't know.

Interesting that this subject was posted today on the Facebook link.

Interesting because yesterday my father's spirit left his body behind and I have just come home from a family farewell gathering around the table in our sanctuary. 

I find no 'solution' to this question of Heaven, Hell or an afterlife.  Any answer that comes to mind brings God, Source, whatever term you use, down to my small limited intellect and puts a limit to what I feel is an eternal, unending flow of conscious energy.

I am left wondering about the transition that my father found so difficult yesterday.  The energy that was has left to join with the energy that sustained it all along.  And even those are just words that can only be felt, not defined.  Living in wonder and awe of creation now and forever is worship to me.

I think "hell" is the absence or denial of that core spirit within that calls or draws your soul to join with it.  Hell is an intellectual search for answers that cannot possibly be known. 

I believe Heaven is found when you open your inner being to that source to allow "God's will" to be done within you even though we cannot possibly know the what or how or why of it all.  I believe Jesus found the way to open completely to the Kingdom within.  "I am in God and God is in me". Jesus has shown us the way to follow if we can but keep our egos from trying to make sense of it.  We must just 'go with the flow'.  And that flow is Love.

-jan-

Do you include continual consciousness in this? Your atoms may float around eternally,,,to what end must YOU be aware of that?

To what end are you eternal?

The word 'eternal', it seems, is being divided, chewed, flavored, and re-re-redefined.

In an infinite set of Universes, do you get to be eternal in just one?

The beauty of Quantum Theology! (which for an ego-moment a few years ago I thought I had invented), but after reading Robert Anton Wilson's "Quantum Psychology" I realized that I am (again) but a surface-scratcher.

...but what a neat-o scratched surface!

Divest your self from thoughts of hell, death, sin...

Join the Church of Variable Likelihood!  Oops. Sorry, we already have  six members --

Sooo-- go divest yourself anyway.

--and take your time you have exactly --uh--forever

Post Scriptum:

Wilson's book is on-line--free! (Thank you, Google)

Let Hell freeze over! The real concern is, 'Does Infinity exist?"  If so, where is it?

thats what the Eagles said too

Glad you asked. If  you think about Quantum Mechanics, the part that believes in infinite universes - you don't have to believe in God (except for considering the possibility that you may atain to being one. More and more serious people come around to the view that you're 'in' a new universe  every time an alternative possibility exists. Individual consciousness thus persists.For-EV-er.    Sooo.    That takes care of heaven, Hell, God, Death and Evil.

In one swell foop. I wonder... Why aren't millions flocking to my Church of Variable Likelihood?

Have people run out of flock?

Now, Chanson, you don't need to accept non-understandable theology, just believe, only believe in incomprehensible mathematics!

Oh. My church is not accepting new members. There's six.  Plenty.

Yes! And I'm getting better and better at it....

Whops! Well, I  thought I was...

I think it is geneticly wise for us to not realize that we are going to live forever -- until we hit intimation at about 125,,,certitude at 150...and a complete change of plans for the next couple of  hundred...

(Asimov's "Foundation")

Cantor talked a lot about the various kinds, sets, and relationships twixt infinite sets....

In most cases (I could be wrong) :

That mathematical --uh-- convenience,,,is likely an asymtotic curve,

but whatever  it is, it  resides in the same place your consciousness does.

uh, what's with th theological climate change?

Cheers!

Hi Happy Genius:

I perceive the ultimate state of spirit/energy to be unquantified (the "dark void" of Buddhism). Although spirit/energy quantified, multiplied, chaotified, diversified and humanified ITself, IT still and ultimately is unquantified energy capable of transcendence.

I perceive this spirit/energy to be a singularity in a state of synthesis, capable of transcendence. Although IT quantified, multiplied, chaotified and eventually humanified ITself, IT always is a singularity in a state of synthesis.

This singularity is my (our) ultimate self. 

Right here, right now.

To paraphrase Eckhart Tolle, it is "The Eternal Now," which can be experienced, and is being experienced, in the pure, unconceptualized or non-thinking experience, as in meditation, deep contemplation, and other, similar, states.

Arminius : quote:

"I perceive the ultimate state of spirit/energy to be unquantified (the "dark void" of Buddhism). Although spirit/energy quantified, multiplied, chaotified, diversified and humanified ITself, IT still and ultimately is unquantified energy capable of transcendence.

I perceive this spirit/energy to be a singularity in a state of synthesis, capable of transcendence. Although IT quantified, multiplied, chaotified and eventually humanified ITself, IT always is a singularity in a state of synthesis.

This singularity is my (our) ultimate self. "

Gosh Arminius..... that's easy ........!

Yes, Inanna, we created The Truth, and recreate it, moment by precious moment.

Way to go, eh?

Elementary, my dear stardust.

Hi, Arminius!

Here we go!

Quantification has several distinct senses. In mathematics and empirical science, it is the act of counting and measuring that maps human sense observations and experiences into members of some set of numbers. Quantification in this sense is fundamental to the scientific method.

And...how many states till you get to the ultimate one. How would you know? Why do you mention it if you cannot describe it or lead someone to it?

Apart from the drug use, in what way does your experience differ from the experimentations of Dr, Timothy Leary?

Emerson and the Transcendentalists - do you see similaries? Differences? Do you think what you have experienced should be experienced by everybody else? Why, or why not?

Gad! This from your first sentence!

Unquantified, quantifiedness. It cannot be described, you say in every attempt to describe it.

(Sigh) I feel if I had just just been told something, properly explained. earnestly declaired, honistly written.

"...and exit the same door wherein I went"

(Because, like the jewel in the lotus, the Tao, the motivation of Promeheus, et cetera ---)

.,..And "....it depends on what the meanng if  'is', is."

If it is a singularity, grasshopper, what is out side of it, perceiving?

How does this impinge in any way upon the far more clear:

"The Kingdom of God is within you." ? Within, among, at hand.

(That is about as Christian as I get.)

And even though  not rranscendental the thought gives me enjoyment - and a recognition of my - uh- abundences

============

The only really strange belief is in having a Holy Guardian Angel. 65% (the other 35% believes in an amazing number of co-incidences)

============

I move the amber forward, the emerald back. I believe you have the next 10,000 turns...

Hi Happy Genius:

By "unquantfied" energy I mean energy that is immeasurable, that has no measurable quantity, that does not occur in the familiar quanta or quantum states of energy. It is energy that is nothing, but not an absolute nothing. It is the empty set in mathematics, the nothing that contains everything, the nothing that contains infinity. This unquantified or zero state is the ultimate one.

I don't know any of this for sure; it's all speculation.

"If IT is a singularity, what is outside of IT, percieving?" you ask.

Well, the singularity used ITs innate power of transcendence to transcend ITself and become a duality and plurality while remaining a singularity (for a thing to transcend itself and become its opposite while remaining what it originally is is my definition of transcendence). Thus, by transcending its nondualistic nature and becoming dualistic, IT became both subject and object to ITself and thus perceives ITself. And, in and through us, IT experiences ITself in human form.

All of this is the same as saying "the kingdom of God is within us." I'm just trying to say it in terms of scientific philosophy. As I said before, it's all speculation. It is, however, not idle speculation but speculation based on my mystical peak experience and other lesser mystical experiences.

My mystical peak experience may be similar to those described by some of the disciples of Timothy Leary. LSD-induced experiences are reported to be similar to those brought about by meditation, contemplation, sensory depravation, etc.

I don't know "Emerson and the Transcendentalists;" I'm far less educated than I appear. Actually, my formal education is almost nil. But I've read a few books and am a creative thinker.

I think what I have experienced, or something similar to it, could be experienced by others. I published my experience in order to encourage similar experiences in others.

A Guardian Angel may not be essential. But, prior to my peak experience, I prayed to Jesus Christ for a godly revelation. I prayed for a mathematically and geometrically definable revelation of God, for me to pass on to humanity, so that humanity may save itself—and I got exactly what I prayed for! Don't ask me why, I can't answer that.

Does Hell exists? Yes. It's Burford, Ontraio.

Over 50 years ago during a spiritual retreat, the leader (a Jesuit priest) tried to envision eternity in this way: "Imagine the Himalayan mountain range, the most massive range in the world, standing in places almost six miles high. Once every 100 years a butterfly wafts over them and strikes a rock with its wing. When those butterflies have worn the Himalayas down till they are as flat as Saskatchewan, then the first fraction of a second of eternity will have passed." Eternity is totally beyond the capacity of the human mind to comprehend! Now imagine a condemned soul suffering the most agonizing possible pain continuously for all eternity. Got the image? I certainly have! And it is an image that I find totally incompatible with the notion of a loving and compassionate God. A God who could inflict such a punishment on even the most vile and evil human being would not really be worthy of our respect, our worship or our love. I do, however, believe very strongly in God's justice but even more strongly in God's love and compassion. I will leave it with confidence in God's care.

All of which is to say that like others I remain agnostic as to the question of an afterlife.

AND WHEN I DIE
Album : Greatest Hits
Blood, Sweat, & Tears

I'm not scared of dying,
And I don't really care.
If it's peace you find in dying,
Well then let the time be near.
If it's peace you find in dying,
And if dying time is here,
Just bundle up my coffin
'Cause it's cold way down there.
I hear that its cold way down their.
Yeah, crazy cold way down their.

Chorus:

And when I die, and when I'm gone,
There'll be one child born
In this world to carry on,
to carry on.

Now troubles are many, they're as deep as a well.
I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell.
Swear there ain't no heaven and I pray there ain't no hell,
But I'll never know by living, only my dying will tell.
Yes only my dying will tell.
Yeah, only my dying will tell.
 

Amen.

Well put.

Making "God's Justice" nothing more than some expanded version of human justice has corrupted the concept into nothing more than a big stick - "be good or else" - or, in a perverse way, a consolation for the hopeless. "I might not have any hope of a decent life here, but that fat cat banker/dictator will get his. When I'm dining on milk and honey, he'll be writhing in agony."

This is why, when people say things like "If everyone goes to heaven, God's Justice is a joke", I just shake my head.

 Even the predesination folks, who try to get around the "we're all sinners" problem by saying "Yeah, but God has already done his pickin' and choosin' so that's okay" simply put a capricious face on the "Judge".

If God is limited to human interpretations of justice then, like the God who would torture people for eternity for being imperfect for a few decades, God is not worth the effort.

Hell seems as likely as Wonderland, Santa's Workshop and a million other made up venues and there's the same amount of evidence for all of 'em from my POV, so I choose not to believe in this one - or 'heaven' - or I'd feel equally obliged to believe in them all.  Same with 'God' (in any of humanity's various forms/guises) and Alice, Santa, gnomes, faeires, elves, et al, for that matter.

But as others point out, one cannot know - maybe only Santa and His Workshop are real...

{Quote=Arminius]

This singularity is my (our) ultimate self.

[/quote]

Does our consciousness remain the same? Does it improve...if so what is the limit?

..if not what does THAT imply?

--------

What do you perceive as the ultimate state of matter?

Do you disavow entropy?

I think in my case and possibly yours the desire to teach comes far too soon.

(whether the desire to learn comes too late, is questionable)

To make any sense to me I must learn what you are thinking when you use the following underlined words. I'm not quarreling, I'm merely saying that your definition of them would be at odds with others...and you link many,m whcich scews up the definitions possible to the others....

 I perceive

In what way?

the ultimate state

How many states 'till ultimate?

spirit/energy

Is that like space/time or E=M C²?

to be unquantified

We've done that. to do that though, is to dis-embrace science, which you declare your affirmation to be. 'Speculative science'. .

Capable? What is the enabler?

"Dark Void" is death. Nothing. Nada.

One of the six states of matter.

I fon't follow that that has to do with IT.

How do you distinguish IT from "Higher (Evolved?) Consciousness?"

An indescribable something/nothing in a scientifically impossible "state"

Your use (often!) of the word synthesis confounds me.

  σύνθεσις, σύν "with" and θέσις "placing"

...

The more I think about what you say the more I realize that I am understanding you less and less...

(and oddly, liking you more. )

Is? Or will be. Is? How long has it been?

How is this different from Socrates' "Know thyself"?

Oh oh. They're knocking at my door...I see them, they have torches and carrying "Don't Pick on Armenius!" signs...

Hey, fellas, I'm just ASKING....

[quote=JRT]

Over 50 years ago during a spiritual retreat, the leader (a Jesuit priest) tried to envision eternity in this way: "Imagine the Himalayan mountain range, the most massive range in the world, standing in places almost six miles high. Once every 100 years a butterfly wafts over them and strikes a rock with its wing. When those butterflies have worn the Himalayas down till they are as flat as Saskatchewan, then the first fraction of a second of eternity will have passed."

Thank you! That is from a book by George Gamow:  "1, 2, 3, Infinity!"

that I read in the early forties...

One of my very firsr 'serious' books.

His was a bird who sharpened his beak every 1000 years...(And there was no reference to Saskatchewan! )

Hadn't thought about it much sinch then, but what a nice way to say " a very long time"

hmmm. 68 years ago. I used to think THAT was a very long time

(on hell)

an image that I find totally incompatible with the notion of a loving and compassionate God.

Total agreement.