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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[Bohandas]

I'm really not seeing the whole 'will have free will, but won't sin' thing. Unless God removes the parts of our minds/personalities that makes us desirous of another's possessions, even if they be abstract ones like wife or husband, we will have temptation, if there is social interaction. And while I can see the whole 'wiser so we don't sin' thing, in the sense of us knowing it's a bad idea for a variety of reasons, and never acting on it and setting the thought aside and blah, if I remember right, having that desire in the first place, is sin.

Well you'll be like a rat in an experiment constantly and mindlessly pressing a button to stimulate the pleasure center of it's brain, perpetually content in this activity and no longer having any desire to do anything else

...how?

If I'm pretty content with my life as it is, happy and contented, does this mean that I'm like that right now? If you're basically saying it's wire-heading, I would have to disagree with you, as wire-heading entails not interacting with other people, or at least not doing so in any meaningful way other than to try and get back to wire-heading.

If your objection is just that it's sorta similar, then I find your argument inherently flawed. If you think that the list of possible things to do that don't involve sin are so finite as to necessitate some sort of mindless pleasure-seeking activity, which is quite a bit of what sin is considered bad for (gluttony, lust, greed, envy...), then I'd also have to disagree.

Well we wouldn't actually be seeking it. It would be more like if the button was taped down, so we'd just mindlessly sit there in "contemplation of the almighty"

[TD1]

And we will be praising God with whatever we do.

Yeah, but that doesn't really mean anything when it comes to what we're doing. Best guess is that'd be like this life, with jobs and games and books and bad cooking.
The differences would be that everyone is nice to each other and goes to church on Sunday. And we don't suffer from illness and so on.

Also, disclaimer - pretty much everything re: Heaven is speculative. We can infer from some things (like Eden, stuff Jesus said, and occasionally the epistles) the basic idea, but for the most part it's just making it up as we go along. It's best to bear that in mind.

...

Personally I prefer Pratchett's take on the afterlife, that is, whatever you want, but this is based on a book so... um... never mind.

Actually, that sounds like Price's Dream World Theory.

[scrdest]

And they somehow make it interesting, but in the end it seems like wishful thinking.

Yeah, that's my major problem with it. It's too... well, convenient. Pratchett's attitude towards death in general always reminded me of Eliezer Yudkowski's quip that if people were beaten in the head with a baseball bat every day for a couple centuries, people would start tripping over themselves to come up with explanations how being beaten over the head with a baseball bat is beneficial and essential to proper functioning of society.

[Graknorke]

if people were beaten in the head with a baseball bat every day for a couple centuries, people would start tripping over themselves to come up with explanations how being beaten over the head with a baseball bat is beneficial and essential to proper functioning of society.

Hoo boy, we circumcision thread now? I'm not American so the cultural thing is pretty much entirely lost on me, but they're always interesting to watch.

[TempAcc]

Eh, my favorite view of afterlife is one that is intermittent and continous, since I'm a reincarnationist. In short, we're here because this is a place where we can suffer and experiment feelings in ways that aren't (initially) possible without a body, which furthers our development. The body is basically a physical interface we use untill we reach the point we're developed enough that we dont need it, after which we continue developing as souls/spirits/living consciousness/tim curry. We go through different inhabitable worlds that vary in accordance to the general developmental level of the beings that inhabit it, using bodies adapted to said worlds, with earth being a low/mid level world of trials and expiations.
IE we're not here to be truly happy, or rather, what we know as happiness in this world pales in comparison to other levels of existence, "happiness is not of this world" / "my kingdom is not of this world".
Worlds under this view aren't static, though, they also become better as the inhabitants become "better", IE less materialistic, selfish, etc.

I like it because there's no silly hell or place of eternal suffering, altough you can totally fuck up and incarnate in a lower level world in relation to you, which can be quite hellish (imagine being Mozart in the stone age), but even then, its temporary untill you expiate for whatever you did. There's no heaven, either, but there are higher levels of existence in which greater levels of happiness can be achieved. There's also no real end point, just an infinite march forward, and the speed of your development depends almost entirely on you, and it also means the people you like and love are never lost forever to you.

[i2amroy]

-dreamworld-

Does that really count as a "full" afterlife though? I mean it still doesn't tell you anything about what happens after your "real" death in the afterworld, which seems to me like what a fair portion of the concept of an afterlife is supposed to do. I mean if someone was explaining that to me as an afterlife I know that my first question would be "well what happens after you die again?"

[Rolan7]

I suppose it counts in that it takes place after you die (granted, it's more complicated than that ).  As for what happens to you when you stop happening, I think that we all know the answer to that...

[Bohandas]

In SubGenius mythology there's the idea that human life and civilization is a huge cosmic joke, and when you reach heaven God tells you the punchline

[Egan_BW]

That joke has a lot of suffering invested into it.
...Just like the best jokes!

[Graknorke]

Long drawn-out jokes with convoluted setups and comically underwhelming punchlines are the best.

[Orange Wizard]

That sounds like something worth dying for, to be honest.

[Rolan7]

Long drawn-out jokes with convoluted setups and comically underwhelming punchlines are the best.

... The aristocrats!

[Grim Portent]

My favorite afterlife is probably the Celtic one, or at least one variation of it, there are probably several different versions depending on what time period and tribe you look at.

When you die you get reborn in the Other World, when you die there you are reborn in this world. Back and forth, back and forth like the cycle of the seasons. Winter leads into Spring which ultimately leads back around to Winter.

Never bothered to look into the details of the concept or what the Other World was supposed to be like, but I find the idea kind of appealing.

[Bohandas]

Winter leads into Spring which ultimately leads back around to Winter.

...they wait patient and potent for here they shall reign again :p

[Descan]

if people were beaten in the head with a baseball bat every day for a couple centuries, people would start tripping over themselves to come up with explanations how being beaten over the head with a baseball bat is beneficial and essential to proper functioning of society.

Hoo boy, we circumcision thread now? I'm not American so the cultural thing is pretty much entirely lost on me, but they're always interesting to watch.

No, that's a death thing, "Death is a good thing! No really!" not a circumcision thing. Though I can see how you would connect them together like that.

Then there's that time-travelling reincarnation where everyone is just one soul...  That, I'm not crazy about...  Time travel is dumb

Aw but that's my favourite one. ;-;