ok first off i am not trying to put down anyones religion and im not trying to convert you... so please when u read this DO NOT get all defensive unless you can back it up with a logical and resonable answer ok here we go... i will also try to supply interenet links to prove my point..


k so my mom and i had a talk yesterday about religion... i was feeling a little down and slightly depressed and i asked her "mom how do u know we are believing in the right thing" (im christian). she looked and me and said "kendal look at it this way... i would rather believe that there is a better place for us then this world and go through life with hope than go through life without any hope and no idea what will happen to me after i die." And i started thinking about it and it really made me think.

Atheist thinking

http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/whatis.htm
"Definitions in Dictionaries vary but �disbelief in God (or gods)� is a good explanation of Atheism." (paragraph 2)

"We accept that the blink that is our life was nothing before and will not continue after our time." (paragraph 13)


buddhism

http://www.ibps-sweden.com/eng/buddhism/belifes.htm

"Buddhists view death as exiting one realm of existence and entering another. The cycle of rebirth into countless lives continues until final enlightenment and Nirvana occurs. Rebirth is not the same as reincarnation, as Buddhists do not perceive an eternal soul, which migrates to a new physical form. Rather, the body and mind are continually changing death is merely another change. While body and mind are impermanent, they are also interrelated throughout time and space. Every voluntary action produced by one�s body, speech, and mind will have consequences, either in the current life or a future one."


The Atheist way of thinking to me is so depressing.. u have nothing to look forward to then the 80 or so years u live and if u lucky maybe 90 years......

And the buddhism way of thinking just is scary..... how do u know if u did enought to get to the point of nirvana and what if u rebirth as a bug or something.. and it says " Rather, the body and mind are continually changing death is merely another change. While body and mind are impermanent, they are also interrelated throughout time and space. " so you pretty much you lose your body and mind when u rebirth........ that would suck. how would u know how close you are getting to nirvana.. "Nirvana, however, is perfectly free from the Three Poisons (ignorance, anger, and greed), and is therefore outside of the realms of existence. It is often said that Nirvana is the ultimate goal of Buddhists."

so you go through countless lives just to be free of ignorance anger and greed! man i dont think that that is worth the risk of being rebirthed as a ant or something and getting stepped on.

Christian belief

http://geneva.rutgers.edu/src/christianity/major.html
"Christians believe in one God, who created the universe and all that is in it. All believe that this God is active in history, guiding and teaching his people."

"Christians believe that God created human beings to live eternally in fellowship with him"


ok sounds pretty good.. nice cheery hopeful... there are also many different things christians believe in... why because people start throwing their opinions into the bible and make there own "branch" of christianity....... I believe in the king james bible and only the king james bible it is the most accurate oldest and untouched version of the original bible we have. plus most everything people have changed they mark in italics. I also do not believe in the trinity... if u can find the word trinity in the king james bible then we will talk :].

ok so if u read this kudos to you :] hope it was interesting!

i also know i only covered a couple of religions sorry but i dont have hours to type everything i would like to put......... if u would like to contradict me make sure u have something to back it up...

Personally I'm agnostic. I don't see why we need to have something to look forward to after death. Death is "the end" for a reason, and putting something after that seems to defeat the purpose of it.

I don't think being reincarnated as an ant would be so horrible. Humans as a rule are pretty egotistical and believe they are at the top. And maybe we are, as the "dominant" species, but that doesn't mean it's worse to be something else. And if you did get stepped on as an ant, you'd just be reincarnated into something else. Chances are you wouldn't really be conscious of it at all.

And I don't quite see how that description of Christianity makes it sound cheery/hopeful... I was raised Christian but don't believe in all that, and it never seemed that optimistic to me. There are too many conflicting opinions to know what's really right and wrong in that religion. Plus there's Hell if you screw up. I'd rather take Buddhism if any of this is even real, at least I'd get more than one chance.
» randomjunk on 2008-05-08 08:47:01

i'm a buddhist and i understand ur concern. for buddhism, we believe in reincarnation. and i know it's something to be scared of because as u said how do u know what r u going to be reborn as in ur next life? but then buddhism itself has so many branches so it also depends on which sect u r referring to. even though i don't know what i will reborn as in next life, i try my best to accumulate good fortune in this present life and live life to the fullest because i won't recall what i did in this present life.

sometimes all u need to do is accumulate as much good fortune as u can in this life so it can be carry forward in the next life. and all these fortunes are needed to determine ur next life other than ur previous deeds. just imagine ur life as a blank sheet and each time u reborn, ur next life is determine by those sheet filled of what u did and bla bla.

and also pls remember that karma doesn't mean only bad karma... there's also good karma. karma is accumulated via thinking, speaking and action. so if u backstabbed a person in ur mind u r accumulating bad karma. haha. don't worry i do that all the time. XD.

and u know what? u can achieve nirvana in this life and anytime.
» renaye on 2008-05-08 09:28:12

No, I don't really get scared of the end. I know I'm not really important enough to matter in the grand scale of things and I've come to live with that. It's this whole idea of self-importance that really keeps some of these religions going...
» randomjunk on 2008-05-08 10:07:19

Sorry, you do not have permission to comment.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.