So I was walking to the store to get my lunch and a thought popped up. I condensed this thought and would like to share it with you here. For the past couple of months I have turned by mind towards religious books because I felt that to have an opinion on it I should really know what IT is, i.e. know what the books are "teaching us". However, I'm not strictly comfortable with the internet as a medium for the discussion of such materials and so I'm hesitant about this but I wanted to put this up for discussion.
Assume religion A and religion B. They both rely on a "corpus" of teachings which some might call "the word of god", others might call it a "moral codex" and maybe it could just be called "reasonable guidelines for the survival of a population", whereby of course reasonability is subjective and pertains only to those teachings regardless of overlap between religion A and B. In fact, religion A and religion B will always be different regardless of how much overlap there might be and thereby a follower from religion A who eats rice on a Sunday because his/her teachings order it thus will still be a heathen and unbeliever even if religion B also preaches the eating of rice on a Sunday simply because he is a follower of religion A, and not B. (note that the eating of rice is simply a place holder for any ordained activity).
Now it appears to me that, no matter how peace and love preaching and adhering a religion might be there always seem to be reasons for the lawful, even necessary, annihilation of "the heathen" (or the wavering follower for that matter).
Assume then the following scenario. I'm a follower of religion A and you're a follower of religion B. We both managed to offend each other and our religion teaches us both that in order to save ourselves (and the well being of our society) the other needs to be wiped off the face of this earth, and that despite the fact that we operated completely faithfully to our religious teachings. So now I kill you, you kill me, order in accordance with our religious teachings is satisfied (accepting and ignoring the slight temporal and technical difficulty of simultaneous annihilation; who cares?!), and we're both dead.
This we had to do, for our religion demanded it, and following our religious teaching is, after all, what brought us here in the first place, is it not. So all is well then. Except, that we're both dead. Which leads me back to my initial question.
"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"
It's not a question I necessarily need an answer to. I'm not sure I am entitled to ask anyone that question at all, except for myself. But I think it's an interesting question to put out there and one everyone should ask themselves no matter the outcome.
"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"
Assume religion A and religion B. They both rely on a "corpus" of teachings which some might call "the word of god", others might call it a "moral codex" and maybe it could just be called "reasonable guidelines for the survival of a population", whereby of course reasonability is subjective and pertains only to those teachings regardless of overlap between religion A and B. In fact, religion A and religion B will always be different regardless of how much overlap there might be and thereby a follower from religion A who eats rice on a Sunday because his/her teachings order it thus will still be a heathen and unbeliever even if religion B also preaches the eating of rice on a Sunday simply because he is a follower of religion A, and not B. (note that the eating of rice is simply a place holder for any ordained activity).
Now it appears to me that, no matter how peace and love preaching and adhering a religion might be there always seem to be reasons for the lawful, even necessary, annihilation of "the heathen" (or the wavering follower for that matter).
Assume then the following scenario. I'm a follower of religion A and you're a follower of religion B. We both managed to offend each other and our religion teaches us both that in order to save ourselves (and the well being of our society) the other needs to be wiped off the face of this earth, and that despite the fact that we operated completely faithfully to our religious teachings. So now I kill you, you kill me, order in accordance with our religious teachings is satisfied (accepting and ignoring the slight temporal and technical difficulty of simultaneous annihilation; who cares?!), and we're both dead.
This we had to do, for our religion demanded it, and following our religious teaching is, after all, what brought us here in the first place, is it not. So all is well then. Except, that we're both dead. Which leads me back to my initial question.
"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"
It's not a question I necessarily need an answer to. I'm not sure I am entitled to ask anyone that question at all, except for myself. But I think it's an interesting question to put out there and one everyone should ask themselves no matter the outcome.
3 comments:
I am christain by birth (C of E) simply because my mother is C of E and tradition has it that you take the religion of your mother (I have no idea why this is, maybe in compensation for taking your father's name?). By choice I am agnostic; I do not believe that there is a supreme being or an afterlife, but if someone can show me the proof I will happily accept it. As a scientist it makes no logical sense for there to be an afterlife; we have a physical body, our personality and 'spirit' comes from part of that body (the brain) and when you die it all just decomposes. So for me to live my life with a focus on the afterlife is a no brainer. My father died suddenly at 57 (I'm 53) so I don't even live life now for what I might be doing in 5 years time; I may not even live that long!
Hi Adrian. Your facebook status tempted me here.
I'm not quite sure what you're asking here - I don't think any religions actually *do* consider the next life more important than this one; at least inasmuch as the current one is the one in which we have power and decisions to make - once you're in the next things are basically static (or if not, as in the case of Purgatory, you at least have no further control over events).
Judeo-christian religions seem to consider the real world as a kind of "proving ground" for the next, in that it is your decisions here that affect your state in the next life. Christianity (and possibly the others) explicitly forbid suicide because it constitutes a refusal to continue making those choices. It's frowned upon as being a kind of cop-out.
(actually the real reason they forbid it is that religions which encourage their adherents to commit suicide tend to die out, unsurprisingly!)
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